A Christian Directory
§. 71. 5. Church-dividers either would Divide Christ himself between them, or else would rob him of a great part of his inheritance: And neither of these is a little sin: If you make several bodies, you would have several Heads: And is Christ divided? saith the Apostle, 1 Cor. 1. 13. Will you make him a Sect Master? He will be your common head as Christians; but he will be no Head of your Sects and Parties: (I will not name them). Or would you tear out of the hands of Christ, any part of his possessions? Will he cut them off, because you cut them off? Will he separate them from himself, because you separate from them, or separate them from you? Will he give them a bill of divorce when ever you are pleased to lay any odious accusation against them? (Who shall condemn them, when it is he that justifieth them? Who shall separate them from the Love of God? Can your Censure or separation do it, when neither life, nor death, nor any creature can do it? Rom. 8. 33, &c. ) Hath he not told you, that he will give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of his hand, John 10. 28. Will he lose his Jewels, because you cast them away as dirt? He suffered more for souls than you, and better knoweth the worth of souls? And do you think he will forget so dear a purchase? or take it well that you rob him of that which he hath bought so dearly? Will you give the members and inheritance of Christ to the Devil, and say, They are Satan's, and none of Christ's. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?
§. 72. 6. Church-dividers are guilty of self-ignorance, and pride, and great unthankfulness against that God that beareth with so much in them, who so censoriously cast off their brethren. Wast thou ever humbled for thy sin? Dost thou know who thou art, and what thou carryest about thee? and how much thou offendest God thyself? If thou do: surely thou wilt judge tenderly of thy brethren, as knowing what a tender hand thou needest, and what mercy thou hast found from God. Can he cruelly judge his brethren to Hell, upon his petty differences, who is sensible how the gracious hand of his Redeemer, did so lately snatch him from the brink of Hell? Can he be forward to condemn his brethren, that hath been so lately and mercifully saved himself?
§. 73. 7. Church-dividers are the most successful servants of the Devil, being enemies to Christ in his family and livery. They gratify Satan, and all the Enemies of the Church, and do the very work that he would have them do, more effectually than open enemies could do it. As Mutineers in an Army may do more to destroy it, than the power of the Enemy.
§. 74. 8. It is a sin that contradicteth all God's Ordinances and Means of Grace; which are purposely to procure and maintain the Unity of his Church. The Word and Baptism is to gather them into one body, and the Lord's Supper to signify and maintain their Concord, as being one bread, and one body, 1 Cor. 10. 17. And all the communion of the Church is to express and to maintain this concord. The use of the Ministry is much to this end, to be the bonds and joints of the unity of believers, Ephes. 4. 13, 14, 16. All these are contemned and frustrated by Dividers.
§. 75. 9. Church-division is a sin (especially to us) against as great and lamentable experiences as almost any sin can be. About sixteen hundred years the Church hath smarted by it: In many Countries where the Gospel prospered, and Churches flourished, division hath turned all into desolation, and delivered them up to the curse of Mohammedanism and Infidelity. The contentions between Constantinople and Rome, the Eastern and the Western Churches, have shaken the Christian interest upon Earth, and delivered up much of the Christian world to tyranny and blindness, and given advantage to the Papacy to captivate and corrupt much of the rest, by pretending itself to be the Center of Unity. O what glorious Churches, where the Learned Writers of those ages once lived, are now extinct, and the places turned to the Worship of the Devil and a Deceiver; through the ambition and contentions of the Bishops, that should have been the bonds of their Unity and peace? But doth England need to look back into History, or look abroad in foreign Lands, for instances of the sad effects of discord? Is there any one, good or bad in this age, that hath spent his days in such a sleep, as not to know what Divisions have done, when they have made such ruins in Church and State, and kindled such consuming flames, and raised so many Sects and Parties, and filled so many hearts with uncharitable rancor, and so many mouths with slanders and revilings, and turned so many prayers into sin, by poisoning them with pride and factious oppositions, and hath let out streams of blood and fury, over all the Land? He that maketh light of the Divisions of Christians in these Kingdoms, or loveth not those that speak against them, doth show himself to be so impenitent in them, as to be one of those terrible effects of them, that should be a pillar of Salt to warn after agis to take heed.
§. 76. 10. Yea, this is a heinous aggravation of this sin, that commonly it is justified, and not repented of by those that do commit it. When a drunkard, or a whoremonger will confess his sin, a Church-divider will stand to it, and defend it: And woe to them that call evil good, and good evil. Impenitency is a terrible aggravation of sin.
§. 77. 11. And it is yet the more heinous, in that it is commonly fathered upon God. If a drunkard or whoremonger should say, God commandeth me to do it, and I serve God by it, would you not think this a horrid aggravation? When did you ever know a Sect or party, how contrary soever among themselves, but they all pretended God's authority, and entitled him to their sin, and called it his service, and censured others as ungodly, or less godly, that would not do as bad as they? St. James is put to confute them that thought this wisdom was from above, and so did glory in their sin▪ and lie against the truth, when their wisdom was from beneath, and no better than earthly, sensual and deviliish. For the wisdom from above, is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, easy to be entreated, full of mercy, &c. James 3. 17.
§. 78. 12. Church divisions are unlike to our Heavenly state, and in some regard worse than the Kingdom of the Devil, for he would not destroy it, by dividing it against it sel • , Matth. 12. 26. O what a blessed harmony of united holy souls, will there be in the Heavenly Jerusalem, where we hope to dwell forever? There will be no discords, envyings, Sideings or contendings, one being of this party, and another of that: but in the Unity of perfect Love, that world of Spirits, with joyful praise will magnify their Creator. And is a snarling envy or jarring discord the likely way to such an end? Is the Church of Christ a Bab • l of confusion? Should they be divided party against party here, that must be one in perfect Love forever? Shall they here be condemning each other, as none of the children of the Most High, who there must live in sweetest concord? If there be shame in Heaven, you will be ashamed to meet those in the delights of Glory, and see them entertained by the Lord of Love, whom you reviled and cast out of the Church, or your communion causelessly on earth.
§. 79. Remember now that Schism▪ and making parties and divisions in the Church, is not so small a sin as many take it for: It is the accounting it a duty, and a part of Holiness, which is the greatest cause that it prospereth in the world: And it will never be reformed till men have right apprehensions of the evil of it. Why is it that sober people are so far and free from the sins of swearing, drunkenness, fornication and lasciviousness, but because these sins are under so odious a character, as helpeth them easily to perceive the evil of them: And till Church-divisions be rightly apprehended, as whoredom, and swearing, and drunkenness are, they will never be well cured. Imprint therefore on your minds the true Character of them, which I have here laid down, and look abroad upon the effects, and then you will fear this confounding sin, as much as a consuming Plague.
§. 80. The two great causes that keep Divisions from being hated as they ought, are 1. A charitable respect to the good that is in Church-dividers, carrying us to overlook the evil of the sin: judging of it by the Persons that commit it, and thinking that nothing should seem odious that is theirs, because many of them are in other respects of blameless pious conversations. And indeed every Christian, must so prudently reprehend, the mistakes and faults of pious men, as not to asperse the piety which is conjunct; and therefore not to make their persons odious, but to give the person all his just commendations for his piety, while we oppose and aggravate his sin: Because Christ himself so distinguisheth between the good and the evil, and the person and the sin; and loveth his own for their good, while he hateth their evil; and so must we: And because it is the grand design of Satan, by the faults of the godly to make their Persons hated first, and their Piety next, and so to banish Religion from the world: And every friend of Christ must show himself an enemy to this design of Satan. But yet the sin must be disowned and opposed, while the person is Loved according to his worth. Christ will give no thanks for such Love to his children, as cherisheth their Church-destroying sins: There is no greater enemy to sin than Christ, though there be no greater friend to souls. Godliness was never intended to be a fortress for iniquity; or a battery for the Devil to mount his Cannons on against the Church; nor for a blind to cover the Powder-mines of Hell. Satan never opposeth Truth, and Godliness, and Unity so dangerously, as when he can make Religious men his instruments. Remember therefore that all men are vanity, and God's interest and honor must not be sacrificed to theirs, nor the most Holy be abused, in reverence to the holiest of sinful men.
§. 81. The other great hindrance of our due apprehension of the sinfulness of divisions, is our too deep sense of our sufferings by superiors, and our looking so much at the evil of persecutions, as not to look at the danger of the contrary extreme. Thus under the Papacy, the people of Germany at Luther's Reformation were so deeply sensible of the Papal cruelties, that they thought by how many ways soever men fled from such bloody persecutors, they were very excusable. And while men were all taken up in decrying the Roman Idolatry, corruptions and cruelties, they never feared the danger of their own divisions till they smarted by them. And this was once the case of many good people here in England, who so much hated the wickedness of the Profane and the Haters of Godliness, that they had no apprehensions of the evil of Divisions among themselves: And because many prophan • ones were wont to call sober godly people, Schismatics and Factious, therefore the very names beg • n with many to grow into credit, as if they had been of good signification, and there had been really no such sin as schism and facti • n to be feared: Till God permitted this sin to break in upon us with such fury, as had almost turned us into a Babel, and a desolation. And I am persuaded God did purposely permit it, to teach his people more sensibly to know the evil of that sin by the ef •• cts, which they would not know by other means: And to let them see when they had reviled and ruined each other, that there is that in themselves which they should be more afraid of, than of any enemy without.
§. 82. Direct. 5. Own n • t any cause which is an enemy to Love: And pretend neither Truth, nor Holiness, nor Unity, nor Order, nor anything against it. The Spirit of Love is that one Vital Spirit which doth animate all the Saints. The increase • f Love is the powerful Bal •• me that healeth all the Churches wounds. Though loveless, lifeless Physicians think that all these wounds must be healed by the Sword. And indeed the Weapon-salve is now become the proper cure. It is the Sword that must be medicated, that the wounds made by it may be healed. The decays of Love, are the Churches dissolution, which first causeth sissures and separations, and in process crumbleth us all to dust: And therefore the Pastors of the Church are the fittest instruments for the cure, who are the Messengers of Love, and whose Government is paternal, and hurteth not the body, but is only a Government of Love; and exercised by all the means of Love. All Christians in the world confess that LOVE is the very •••• and perfection of all Grace, and the End of all our other duties, and that which maketh us like to God, and that i • Love dwelleth in us, God dwelleth in us; and that it will be the everlasting Grace, and the work of Heaven, and the Happiness of souls: and that it is the excellent way, and the character of Saints, and the N • w Commandm • nt. And all this being so, it is most certain that no way is the way of God, w •• c • •• not the way of Love: And therefore what specious pretences soever they may have, and one may cry up Truth, and another Holiness, and another order, and another Unity it se •• , to j ••••• their • nvyings, hatred, cruelties, it is most certain that all such pretences are Satanical decei •• : And •• they bile and devour one another, they are not like the sheep of Christ, but shall be d •••••• d one of another, Gal. 5. 15. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law, Rom. 13. 10. When Papists that show their love to men's souls by racking their bodies, and fry •• g them in the fire, can make men apprehensive of the excellency of that kind of Love, they may •••• it to the healing of the Church. In the mean time as their Religion is, such is their Concord, while all those are called Members of their Union, and Professors of their Religion, who must be burnt to ashes if they say the contrary. They that give God an Image and Carkass of Religion, are thus content with the Image and Carkass of a Church for the exercise of it. And if there were nothing • ll • but this to detect the sinfulness of the Sect of Quakers, and many more, it is enough to satisfy any sober man, that it cannot be the way of God: God is not the author of that Spirit and way which tends to wrath, emulation, hatred, railing, and the extinction of Christian Love, to all •• v • their own Sect and party. Remember as you love your souls, that you shun all ways that are destructive to universal Christian Love.
§. 83. Direct. 6. Make nothing necessary to the unity of the Church, or the communion of Christians, which God hath not made necessary, or directed you to make so. By this one • olly, the Papists are become the most notorious Schismatics on earth: even by making new Articles of faith, and new parts of worship, and imposing them on all Christians, to be sworn, subscribed, professed or practiced, so as that no man shall be accounted a Catholic, or have communion with them (or with the Universal Church, if they could hinder it) that will not follow them in all their Novelties. They that would subscribe to all the Scriptures, and to all the ancient Creeds of the Church, and would do anything that Christ and his Apostles have enjoined, and go every step of that way to Heaven that Peter and Paul went, as far as they are able, yet if they will go no further, and believe no more (ye • , if they will not go against some of this) must be condemned, cast out, and called Schismatics by these notorious Schismatics. If he hold to Christ the Universal Head of the Church, and will not be subject or sworn to the Pope, the Usurping Head, he shall be taken as cut off from Christ. And there is no certainty among these men what measure of faith, and worship, and obedience to them, shall be judged necessary to constitute a Church-member: For as that which served in the Apostles days, and the following ages, will not serve now, nor the subscribing to all the other pretended Councils until then, will not serve without subscribing to the Creed or Council of Tr • nt; so nobody can tell, what New Faith, or Worship, or Test of Christianity, the next Council (if the world see anymore) may require: and how many thousand that are Trent -Catholics now, may be judged Heretics or Schismatics then, if they will not shut their eyes, and follow them any whither, and change their Religion as oft as the Papal interest requireth a change. Of this Chillingworth, Hales, and Dr. H. More have spoken plainly. If the Pope had imposed but one lie to be subscribed, or one sin to be done, and said [All Nations and persons that do not this, are no Christians, or shall have no communion with the Church; the man that refuseth that imposed lie or sin, is guiltless of the Schism, and doth but obey God, and save his soul: And the Usurper that imposeth them, will be found the heinous Schismatic before God, and the cause of all those Divisions of the Church.] And so if any private Sectary, shall feign an opinion or practice of his own to be necessary to salvation or Church communion, and shall refuse communion with those that are not of his mind and way, it is he and not they, that is the cause of the uncharitable separation.
§. 84. Direct. 7. Pray against the Usurpations or intrusions of intrusions of impious, carnal, ambitious, covetous Pastors into the Churches of Christ. For one wicked man in the place of a Pastor, may do more to the increase of a Schism or faction, than many private men can do. And carnal men have carnal minds and carnal interests, which are both irreconcilable to the spiritual holy mind and interest: For the carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to his Law, nor can be, Rom. 8. 7. And they that are in the flesh cannot please God, v. 8. And you may easily conceive what work will be made in the Ship, when an enemy of the Owner hath subtly possessed himself of the Pilots place? He will charge all that are faithful as mutineers, because they resist him when he would carry all away. And if an enemy of Christ shall get to be Governor of one of his Regiments or Garrisons, all that are not Traitors shall be called Traitors, and cashiered that they hinder not the treason which he intendeth. And as then he that was born after the flesh, persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now: But what saith the Scripture? cast out the bondwoman and her son, &c. Gal. 4. 29, 30. It is not the sacred office of the Ministry nor the profession of the same religion, that will cure the enmity of a carnal heart, against both Holiness and the Holy seed. The whole business of the world from age to age is but the management of that war, proclaimed at sins first entrance into the World, between the seed of the woman and the Serpent; And none of the serpents seed are more cruel or more successful, than those of them that creep into the Armies of Christ; and especially that get the conduct of his Regiments. Neither Brotherhood nor Unity of professed Religion, would hold the hands of malignant Cain from murdering his Brother Abel. The same Religion and father and family reconciled not scoffing Ishmael to Isaac, or profane Esau to his brother Jacob. The family of Christ, and an Apostles office, did not keep Judas from being a Traitor to his Lord. If carnal men invade the Ministry, they take the way of ease and honor and worldly wealth, and strive for Dominion, and who shall be the greatest, and care not how great their Power and Jurisdiction is, nor how little their profitable work is: and their endeavor is to fit all matters of Worship and discipline to their ambitious covetous ends; and the spiritual Worshipper shall be the object of their hate: And is it any wonder, if the Churches of Christ be torn by Schism, and betrayed to profaneness, where there are such unhappy guides?
§. 85. Direct. 8. In a special manner, take heed of pride; Suspect it and subdue it in yourselves; and do what you can to bring it into disgrace with others. Only by Pride cometh contention, Prov. 13. 10. I never yet saw one schism made, in which Pride conjunct with Ignorance was not the cause: nor never did I know one person forward in a schism (to my remembrance), but Pride was discernably his disease. I do not here intend (as the Papists) to charge all with Schism or Pride, that renounce not their understandings, and choose not to give up themselves to a beastial subjection to Usurpers or their Pastors: he that thinks it enough that his Teacher hath Reason and be a man, instead of himself, and so thinketh it enough that his Teacher be a Christian and Religious; must be also content that his Teacher alone be saved: (But then he must not be the Teacher of such a damning way). But by Pride I mean a plain over-valuing of his own understanding, and Conceits and Reasoning • , quite above all the Evidences of their worth, and an undervaluing and contempt of the judgments and reasonings of far wiser men, that had evidence enough to have evinced his folly and • rror to a sober and impartial man. Undoubtedly it is the Pride of Priests and people, that hath so l • mensably in all ages • orn the Church. He that readeth the Histories of Schisms and Church-confusions, and marketh the effects which this age hath shown, will no more doubt whether Pride were the cause, than whether it was the wind that blew down Trees and houses, when he seeth them one way overturned by multitudes, where the tempest came with greatest force. Therefore a Bishop must be no N • vice l • st being lifted up with pride ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ) he fall into the condemnation of the Devil, 1 Tim. 3. 6. And if such Starrs fall from Heaven, no wonder if they bring many down headlong with them. Humble souls dwell most at home, and think themselves unworthy of the communion of their brethren, and are most quarrelsome against their own corruptions: They do nothing in grife and vain glory, but in lowliness of mind, each one esteemeth other better than themselves, Phil. 2. 2, 3. and judge not l • st they he judged, Matth. 6. 1. And is it likely such should be Dividers of the Church? But Proud men, must either be great and domineer, and as Diotrephes, 3 John 9, 10. love to have the preeminence, and cast the Brethren out of the Church, and prate against their faithfullest Pastors with malicious words; or else must be noted for their supposed excellencies, and set up themselves, and speak perverse things, to draw away disciples after them, and think the brethren unworthy of their Communion, and esteem all others below themselves; and as the Church of Rome, confound Communion and Subjection, and think none fit for their Communion that obey them not, or comp • y not with their opinion and will. There is no hope of Concord where Pride hath power to prevail.
§. 86. Direct. 9. Take heed of singularity, and narrowness of mind, and unacquaintedness with the former and present state of the Church and world. Men that are bred up in a corner, and never read nor heard of the common condition of the Church or world, are easily mislead into Sschism, through ignorance of those matters of fact that would preserve them. Abundance of this sort of honest people that I have known, have known so little beyond the Town or Country where they lived, that they have thought they were very Catholic in their Communion, because they had one or two Congregations, and divided not among themselves. But for the avoiding of Schism, 1. Look (with pity) on the Unbelieving world, and consider that Christians of all sorts, are but a sixth part of the whole earth: And then 2. Consider of this sixth part how small a part the reformed Churches are: And if you be willing to leave Christ any Church at all, perhaps you will be loath to separate yet into a narrower party, which is no more to all the world, than one of your Cottages is to the whole Kingdom. And is this all the Kingdom on earth that you will ascribe to Christ? Is the King of the Church, the King only of your little party? Though his flock be but a little flock, make it not next to none: As if he c •• e into the World on so low a design as the gathering of your sect only: The less his stock is, the more sinful it is to rob him of it, and make it lesser than it is: It is a little flock, if it contained all the Christians, Protestants, Greeks, Armenians, Abbyssinians and Papists on the E •• th. Be singular and separate from the unbelieving world, and spare not: And be singular in H • liness from Profane and nominal hypocritical Christians. But affect not to be singular in opinion or practice, or separated in Communion, from the universal Church, or generality of sound believers: or if you forsake some common error, yet hold still the Common Love and Communion, with all the faithful according to your opportunities. 3. And it will be very useful when you are tempted to separate from any Church for the defectiveness of its manner of Worship, to inquire how God is worshipped in all the Churches on Earth, and then consider, whether if you lived among them you would forsake Communion with them all, for such defects (while you are not forced to justify or approve them). 4. And it is very useful to read Church history and to understand what Heresies have been in times past, and what havoc Schisms have caused among Christians: For if this much had been known by well-meaning persons in our days, we should not have seen those same Opinions applauded as new light, which were long ago exploded as old Heresies: nor should we have seen many honest people, taking that same course to reform the Church now, and advance the Gospel, which in so many ages and Nations hath heretofore destroyed the Church, and cast out the Gospel. A narrow soul, that taketh all Christ's interest in the world, to lie in a few of their separated meetings, and shutteth up all the Church in a Nutshell, must needs be guilty of the foulest schisms. It is a Catholic spirit and Catholic principles, loving a Christian as a Christian, abhorring the very names of Sects and Parties as the Churches wounds, that must make a Catholic indeed.
§. 87. Direct. 10. Understand well the true difference between the visible Church, and the world, lest you should think that you are bound to separate as much from a corrupted Church, as from the world. It is not True faith, but the Profession of true faith, that maketh a man fit to be acknowledged a member of the Visible Church. If this Profession be unsound, and accompanied with a vicious life, it is the sin and misery of such an Hypocrite, but it doth not presently put him as far unrelated to you, as if he were an infidel without the Church? If you ask what advantage have such unsound Church-members? I answer with the Apostle, Rom. 3. 1, 2. Much every way, chiefly because unto them are committed the Oracles of God. Rom. 9. 4. To them pertaineth the Adoption and the glory and Covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God and the promises: Till the Church find cause to cast them out, they have the external privileges of its Communion. It hath made abundance to incur the guilt of sinful separation, to misunderstand those Texts of Scripture that call Christians to separate from Heathens, Infidels and Idolaters: As 2 Cor. 6. 17. Wherefore come out fr • m among them and be ye separate saith the Lord, &c. The Text speaketh only of separating from the world▪ who are Infidels and Idolaters, and no members of the Church, and ignorant people ordinarily expound it, as if it were meant of separating from the Church because of the ungodly that are members of it: But that God that knew why he called his people to separate from the World, doth never call them to separate from the Church universal, nor from any particular Church by a mental separation so as to unchurch them. We read of many loathsome corruptions in the Churches, of Corinth, Galatia, La • dicea, &c. but yet no command to separate from them. So many abuse Rev. 18. 4. Come out of her my people: As if God commanded them to come out of a true Church because of its corruptions or imperfections, because he calleth them out of Babylon? It's true, you must partake with no Church in their sins, but you may partake with any Church in their holy profession and worship, so far as you can do it without partaking with them in their sins.
§. 88. Direct. 11. Understand what it is that maketh you partakers of the sins of a Church, or any member of it; lest you think you are bound to separate from them in good, as well as in evil. Many fly from the public Assemblies, lest they partake of the sins of those that are there present. Certainly nothing but Consent (direct or indirect) can make their faults to become yours: And therefore nothing which signifieth not some such consent should be on that account avoided. 1. If you by word or subscription or furtherance own any man's sin, you directly consent to it: 2. If you neglect any duty which lieth upon you for the cure of his sin, you indirectly consent: For you consent that he shall rather continue in his sin, than you will do your part to help him out of it. Consider therefore how far you are bound to reprove any sin, or to use any other means for the reformation of it, whether it be in the Pastor or the people; and if you neglect any such means, your way is to reform your own neglect, and do your duty, and not to separate from the Church, before you have done your duty to reform it. But if you have done all that is your part, then the sin is none of yours, though you remain there present.
§. 89. It is a turbulent fan • ie and disquieting error of some people to think, that their presence in the Assembly and continuance with the Church doth make them guilty of the personal faults of those they join with: If so, who would ever join with any Assembly in the World? Quest. But what if they be gross and scandalous sinners that are members of the Church? Answ. If you be wanting in your duty to reform it, it is your sin: But if bare presence made their sins to be ours, it would also make all the sins of the Assembly ours: But no word of God doth intimate any such thing. Paul never told the Churches of Galatia and Corinth so, that had so many defiled members. Quest. But what if they are sins committed in the open Assembly, even by the Minister himself in his praying, preaching and other administrations? and what if all this be imposed on him by a Law, and so I am certain before hand, that I must join with that which is unwarrantable in God's Worship? Answ. The next Direction containeth those distinctions that are necessary to the answer of this.
§. 90. Direct. 12. Distinguish carefully, 1. Between a Ministers Personal faults, and his Ministerial faults, 2. Between his tolerable weaknesses and his intolerable insufficiencies. 3. And between the work of the Minister and of the Congregation. And then you will see your doubt resolved in these following Propositions.
§. 91. 1. A Ministers personal faults (as swearing, lying, drunkenness, &c. ) may damn himself, and must be matter of lamentation to the Church; and they must do their best to reform them, or to get a better Pastor by any lawful means: But in case they cannot, his sin is none of theirs, nor doth it make his administration null of ineffectual: nor will it allow you to separate from the Worship which he administereth. Though many of the Priests were wicked men the Godly Jews were not thereby disobliged from God's public Worship or sacrifices which were to be offered by their hands. Otherwise how sad a case were the Church in, that must answer for the sins which they never committed, nor could reform! But no Scripture chargeth this upon them.
§. 92. 2. It is not all Ministerial faults that will allow you to separate from, or disown a Minister, but only those that prove him or his ministration utterly intolerable. Such are, 1. An utter insufficiency in knowledge or utterance for the necessary parts of the Ministerial work: As if he be not able to Teach the necessary points of Christian Religion, nor to administer the Sacraments and other parts of public Worship. 2. If he set himself to oppose the very ends of his Ministry, and Preach down Godliness, or any part of it that is of necessity to salvation: For then he doth the Devils work, in seeking the damnation of souls, and so maketh himself the Devils Minister, and is not the Minister of Christ. For the end is essential to the Relation. Herein I include a Preacher of Heresy, that doth preach up any damning error, and preach down any necessary saving Truth: that is, that preacheth such error as subverteth either Faith or Godliness; and doth more harm in the Church, than Good. 3. If he so deprave God's public Worship as to destroy the substance of it, and make it unacceptable, and offer up a public false-worship to God, which he disowneth in the very matter of it. As if he put up blaspheamy for praise and prayer, or commit Idolatry, or set up New Sacraments, and guide the people thus in public Worship. As the Papists Priests do that adore bread with Divine Worship, and pray to the dead, and offer real Sacrifices for them, &c. Such Worship is not to be joined in. 4. Or if they impose any actual sin upon the people: As in their Responds to speak any falsehood, or to adore the bread, or the like: These faults discharge us from being present with such Pastors at such Worship. But besides these there are many Ministerial faults which warrant not our separation. As, 1. The internal vices of the Pastors mind, though manifested in their Ministration: As some tolerable errors of judgment; or envy and pettish opposition to others. Phil. 1. 15. Some indeed preach Christ of envy and strife, and some of good will: The one preach Christ of contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds; but the other of love, &c. Here is an odious vice in the public Ministry, even an endeavor to increase the sufferings of the Apostle: yet it was lawful to hear such preachers; though not to prefer them before better: Most sects among Christians are possessed with a tang of envy and uncharitableness against dissenters; which useth to break forth in their preaching and praying: and yet it is lawful to join with such. 2. It is not unlawful to join with a Minister that hath many defects and infirmities in his Ministration or manner of Worship. As if he preach with some ignorance, disorder, unfit expressions or gestures, unmeet repetitions; or if he do the like in Prayer or in the Sacraments, putting something last that should be first, and leaving out something that should be said, or praying coldly and formally: These and such like are faults which we should do our best to reform; and we should not prefer such a Ministry before a better: but it is lawful and a duty to join with such, when we have no better. For all men are imperfect, and therefore the manner of Worship as performed by them will be imperfect: Imperfect men cannot be perfect in their Ministrations: We must join with a defective and imperfect mode of Worship, or join with none on earth: And we must perform such or none ourselves. Which of you dare say that in your private prayers, you have no disorder, vain repetitions, flatness or defects? 3. It is not unlawful to join with a Minister that hath some material error or untruth in his preaching or praying, so be it we be not called to approve it, or make it ours, and so it be not pernicious and destructive to the ends of his Ministry. For all men have some error, and they that have them may be expected sometime to vent them. And it is not our presence that is any signification of our consent to their mistakes. If we run away from all that vent any untruth or mistake in public or private Worship, we shall scarce know what Church or person we may hold Communion with: The Reason of this followeth.
§. 93. 3. The sense of the Church and all its members is to be judged of by their public professions, and not by such words of a Minister which are his own, and never had their consent. I am by Profession a Christian, and the Scripture is the Professed Rule of my Religion: And when I go to the Assemblies, I profess to Worship God according to that Rule: I profess myself a hearer of a Minister of the Gospel, that is to Preach the Word of God, and that hath promised in his Ordination [ out of the holy Scriptures to instruct the people committed to his charge, and to teach nothing (as required of necessity to eternal salvation) but that which he shall be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture ] This he professed when he was ordained, and I profess by my presence only to hear such a Preacher of the Gospel, and Worship God with him in those Ordinances of Worship, which God hath appointed. If now this man shall drop in any mistake in Preaching, or modifie his prayers or administrations amiss, and do his part weakly and disorderly, the hearers are no way guilty of it by their presence. For if I must run away from God's public worship because of men's mis-performance, 1. I should join with none on Earth (For a small sin may no more be willfully done or owned than a greater.) 2. And then another man's weakness may disoblige me and discharge me from my duty. To order and word his Prayers and Preaching aright, is part of the Ministers own work, and not the people's: And if he do it well, it is no commendation to me that am present, but to himself: And therefore if he do it amiss, it is no fault of mine or dispraise to me, but to himself. If the Common-Council of London, or the Court of Aldermen agree to Petition the King for the Renewing of their Charter, and commit the expressing of their request to their Recorder, in their presence: If he Petition for something else instead of that which he was entrusted with, and so betray them in the substance of his business, they are openly to contradict him and disown his treachery or mistake: But if he deliver the same Petition which he undertook, with stammering, disorder, defectiveness, and perhaps some mixture of untruths in his additional reasons and discourse, this is his failing in the personal performance of his duty, and no way imputable to them that sent him, and are present with him, though (in modesty) they are silent and speak not to disown it; For how can it be their fault that a man is wanting in his personal sufficiency and duty: (unless it be that they chose not a better.) And whether he speak ex tempore or more deliberately, in a written form or without, in words that other men taught him, or wrote for him, or in words of his own devising, it altereth not their case.
§. 94. Obj. But if a man fail through weakness in his own performance, I know not of that before hand: But if his faulty manner of praying be prescribed and imposed on him by a Law, then I know it before hand, and therefore am guilty of it.
Answ. To avoid confusion, fix upon that which you think is the thing sinful. 1. Either it is because the Prayers are defective and faulty; 2. Or because they are imposed: 3. Or because you know the fault before hand. But none of all these can prove your joining with them sinful: 1. Not because they are faulty: for you may join with as faulty prayers you confess, if not imposed: 2. Not because imposed: 1. Because that is an extenuation, and not an aggravation: For it proveth the Minister less-voluntary of the two, than those are that do it without any command, through the error of their own judgments, (as most erroneous persons will.) 2. Because (though lawful things oft become unlawful when superiors forbid them, yet) no reason can be given why a Lawful thing should become unlawful because a lawful superior doth command i • . Else superiors might take away all our Christian liberty, and make all things unlawful to us by commanding th • m: You would take it for a wild conceit in your Children or servants, if they say, when you bid them learn a Catechism or use a form of Prayer, It was lawful to us till you commanded us to do it; but because you bid us do it, it is unlawful. If it be a duty to obey Governors in all lawful things, then it is not a sin to obey them. 3. And it is not your knowing before hand that maketh it unlawful: For, 1. I know in general before hand, that all imperfect men will do imperfectly: And though I know not the particular, that maketh it never the lawfuller, if fore knowledge it s • l • did make it unlawful. 2. If you know that e. g. an Antinomian or some mistaken Preacher would constantly drop some words for his error in Prayer or Preaching, that will not make it unlawful in your own judgment for you to join, (if it be not a flat Heresy.) 3. It is an there man's error or fault that you for • know and not your own: and therefore fore-knowledge maketh it not your own. 4. God himself doth as an Universal Cause of Nature concur with men in those acts which he foreknoweth they will sinfully do: and yet God is not to be judged either an Author or approver of the sin because of such concurrence and fore-knowledge: Therefore our fore-knowledge maketh us no approvers, or guilty of the failings of any in their sacred Ministrations, unless there be some other guilt. If you say that it is no one of these that maketh it unlawful, but all together, you must give us a distinct argument to prove that the concurrence of these three will prove that unlawful, which cannot be proved so by any of them alone, for your affirmation must not serve the turn: and when we know your argument I doubt not but it may be answered. One thing I still confess may make any defective Worship to be unlawful to you; and that is, When you prefer it before better, and may (without a greater inconvenience) enjoy an abler Ministry, and purer Administration, but will not.
§. 95. Obj. But he that sitteth by in silence in the posture as the rest of the Congregation, seemeth to consent to all that is said and done: and we must avoid all appearance of evil.
Answ. The appearance of evil which is evil indeed, m • st be always avoided: But that appearance of evil which is indeed good must not be avoided. We must not forsake our duty lest we seem to sin: that were but to prefer hypocrisy before sincerity, and to avoid appearances more than realities: The omission of a duty is a real sin: and that must not be done to avoid a seeming sin. And whom doth it appear so to? If it appear evil to the blind or prejudiced, it is their eyes that must be cured: But if it appear so to the wise, then it's like it is evil indeed: For a wise man should not judge that to be evil that is not. But I confess that in a case that is altogether indifferent, even the mistakes of the ignorant may oblige us to forbear: But the Worship of God must not be so • orb •••• . It is an irrational fancy to think that you must be Uncivil, by contradicting, or covering your heads, or doing something • ff •••• ive to the Congregation, when anything is said or done which you disallow. Your pres • n • ▪ signifieth your Consent to all that you pr • fess, even to Worship God according to his Word, and not to all the human imperfections that are there exp •• ss • d.
§. 96. Direct. 13. Distinguish carefully between your personal private duties, and the duty of the Pastor •• Church with which you must concur. And do not think that if the Church or Pastor, do not their duty that you are bou • d to do it for them. To cast out an ob •••• nate impenitent sinner by sentence from the Communion of the Church, is the Pastors or Churches duty, and not yours, unless in concurrence, or sub • erviency to the Church: Therefore if it be not done, inquire whether you did your duty towards it: If you did, the sin is no • e of yours: For it is not in your power to cast out all that are unworthy from the Church: But private familiarity is in your power to refuse; and with such •••• not to •••• .
§ 97. Direct. 14. Take the measure of your accidental duties more from the Good or hurt of the Church, or f •• m my, than from the immediate good or hurt that cometh to yourself. You are not to take that for the station of your duty, which you feel to be most to the commodity of your souls; but that in which you may do God most service: If the service of God for the good of many, require you to stay with a weaker Minister, and defective administrations, you will find in the end that this was not only the place of your duty, but also of your benefit: For your life is in God's hands, and all your comforts; and that is the best way to your peace and happiness, in which you are most pleasing unto God, and have his Promise of most acceptance and grace. I know the least advantage to the soul, must be preferred before all earthly riches; but not before the public good: Yea, that way will prove most advantageous to us, in which we exercise most obedience.
§. 98. Direct. 15. Take heed of suffering prejudice and fancy to go for reason, and raise in your minds unjustifiable distastes of any way or mode of Worship. It is wonderful to see what fancy and prejudice can do? Get once a hard opinion of a thing, and your judgments will make light of all that is said for it, and will see nothing that should reconcile you to it: Partiality will carry you away from equity and truth. Abundance of things appear now false and evil, to men that once imagine them to be so, which would seem harmless, if not laudable, if they were tried by a mind that's clear from prejudice.
§. 99. Direct. 16. Judge not of doctrines and worship by Persons, but rather of persons by their doctrine and worship (together with their lives). The world is all prone to be carried by respect to persons; I confess where anything is to be taken upon trust, we must rather trust the intelligent, experienced, honest and credible, than the ignorant and incredible: But where the Word of God must be our Rule, it is perverse to judge of Things by the Persons that hold them or oppose them: Sometimes a bad man may be in the right, and a good man in the wrong: Try the way of the worst men before you reject it (in disputable things.) And try the opinions and way of the best and wisest before you venture to receive them.
§. 100. Direct. 17. E • slave not yourselves to any Party of men, so as to be over-desirous to please them, nor over fearful of their consare. Have a respect to all the rest of the world as well as them. Most men that once engage themselves in a party, do think their honor and interest is involved with them, and that they stand or fall with the favor of their party, and therefore make them (before they are aware) the masters of their Consciences.
§. 101. Direct. 18. Regard more the judgment of aged ripe experienced men, that have seen the fruits of the various courses of professors of Religion, than of the young, unripe, inexperienced, hot-headed sort. Zeal is of great use to execute the resolutions of a well-informed man: And the Zeal of others is very useful to warm the hearts of such as do converse with them. But when it comes to matter of Judgment once, to decide a case of difficulty, aged experience hath far the advantage: And in no cases more, than in those where Peace and Concord are concerned, where rash hot-headed youth is very prone to precipitant courses, which must be afterward repented of.
§. 102. Direct 19. When fervent self conceited people would carry down all by censoriousness and passion, it is time for the Past •• s and the aged and riper sort of Christians openly to rebuke them, and appear against them and stand their ground, and not to comply with the mis-guided sort to escape their censures. Nothing hath more caused schisms in the Church (except the Pride and ambition of the Clergy) than that the riper and more judicious sort of people together with the Ministers themselves, have been so loath to lie under the bitter censures of the inexperienced younger hotter sort, and to avoid such censures and keep in with them, they have followed those whom they should have led, and have been drawn quite beyond their own understandings. God hath made WISDOM to be the Gui • e of the Church, and ZEAL to follow and diligently execute the commands of Wisdom: Let ignorant well-meaning people censure you as bitterly as they please, yet keep your ground, and be not so proud or weak as to prefer their good esteem before their benefit, and before the pleasing of God. Sin not against your knowledge to escape the censure of the ignorant. If you do, God will make those men your scourges whom you so much over-valued: And they shall prove to their spiritual Fathers as cockered children (like Absalom ) do to their natural fathers, and perhaps be the breaking of your hearts. But if the Pastors and the riper experienced Christians will stand their ground, and slick together, and rebuke the exorbitancies of the censorious younger-ones, they will maintain the credit of the Gospel, and keep the truth, and the Churches Peace, and the hot spurs will in time either repent and be sober, or be shamed and disabled to do much hurt.
§. 103. Direct. 20. Take heed how you let loose your zeal against the Pastors of the Church, lest you bring their persons and next their effice into contempt, and so break the b • nds of the Churches Unity and Peace. There is no more hope of maintaining the Churches Unity and Concord without the Ministry, than of keeping the strength or Unity of the members without the Nerves. If these nerves be weak or labor of a Convulsion or other disease, it is curing and strengthening them, and not the cutting them asunder that m • st prove to the welfare and safety of the body. Middle with the faults of the Ministry only so far as tendeth to a cure, of them or of the Church, but not to bring them into disgrace, and weaken their interest in the people, and disable them from doing good. Abhor that proud rebellious spirit, that is prone to set up itself against the officers of Christ, and under pretence of greater Wisdom or Holiness, to bring their Guides into contempt; and is picking quarrels with them behind their back, to make them a scorn or odious to the hearers. Indeed a Minister of Satan that doth more harm in the Church than good must be so detected as may best disable him from doing harm. But he that doth more good than hurt, must so be dissuaded from the hurt as not to be disabled from the Good. My brethren be not many Masters (or Teachers) knowing that ye shall receive the greater condemnation.
§. 104. Direct. 21. Look more with an eye of Charity on what is Good in others and their worship of God, than with an eye of malice to carp at what appeareth evil. Some men have such distempered eyes, that they can see almost nothing but faultiness, in anything of another party which they look at: envy and faction maketh them carp at every word and every gesture: And they make no Conscience of aggravating every failing, and making Idolatry of every mistake in Worship, and making Heresy or Blaspheamy of every mistake in judgment, and making Apostasy of every fall; nay perhaps the truth itself shall have no better a representation. As Dr. H. More well noteth, It would do much more good in the world, if all parties were forwarder to find out and commend what is good in the doctrine and worship of all that differ from them. This would win them to he • ken to reforming advice, and would keep up the credit of the common truths and duties of Religion in the world, when this envious snarling at all that others do, doth tend to bring the world to A • h • ism, and banish all reverence of Religion, together with Christian Charity from the Earth.
§. 105. Direct. 22. Keep not strange to those from whom you differ, but be acquainted with them, and placidly hear what they have to say for themselves: O • else converse with them in Christian Love in all th • se duties in which you are agreed, and this (if you never talk of your differences) will do much to reconcile you in all the rest. It is the common way of division, uncharitableness, yea, and cruelty at last, to receive hard reports of those that differ from us, behind their backs, and to believe and aggravate all, and proceed to detraction and contention at a distance, and in the dark; and never be familiarly acquainted with them at all: There is something in the apprehension of places, and persons, and things by the eye sight, which no reports are able to match: And so there is that satisfaction about men by familiar acquaintance, which we cannot attain by hearsay from any how judicious soever. All factions commonly converse together, and seek no familiar converse with others, but believe them to be anything thats naught, and then report them to be so, before they ever knew the persons of whom they speak: I am persuaded this is one of the greatest feeders of enmity uncharitableness, contention and slanders in the world. I speak it upon great observation and experience; I have seldom heard any man bitterly oppose the servants of Christ, but either the grossly wicked, or those that never had much acquaintance with them: And I see commonly, how bitter soever men were before, when once they converse together, and grow acquainted, they are more reconciled: The reason is, partly because they find less evil, and more good in one another than before they did believe to be in them; and partly because uncharitableness and malice, being an ugly monster, is bolder at a distance, but ashamed of itself before your face: And therefore the pens of the Champions of malice, are usually more bitter than their tongues when they speak to you face to face. Of all the furious adversaries that have raged against me in the later part of my life, I remember not one enemy that I have or ever had, that was ever familiar or acquainted with me: And I have myself heard ill reports of many: which by personal acquaintance I have found to be all false. Keep together, and either silence your differences, or gently debate them; yea, rather chide it out, than withdraw asunder: Familiarity feedeth Love and Unity.
§. 106. Direct. 23. When ever you look at any corruption in the Church, look also at the contrary ex • r • am, and see and avoid the danger of one as well as of the other. Be sure every error and Church-corruption hath its extreme: And if you do not see it, and the danger of it, you are the liker to run into it. Look well on both sides if you would be safe.
§. 107. Direct. 24. Worship God yourselves in the purest manner, and under the most edifying Ministry that lawfully you can attain: but be not too forward to condemn others that reach not to your measure, or attain not so much happiness: And deny not personal communion sometimes, with Churches that are more blemished, and fit for Communion. And when you cannot join locally with them, let them have the communion of your Hearts, in faith, and charity, and prayer for each other. I fear not here openly to tell the world, that if I were turned loose to my own liberty, I would ordinarily worship God in that manner that I thought most pure, and agreeable to his Will and Word: but I would sometimes go to the Churches of other Christians, that were fit for Christian communion, if there were such about me: Sometime to the Independents, sometime to the moderate Anabaptists, sometime to such as had a Liturgy as faulty as that of the Greek or the Ethiopian Churches: to show by my practice, what communion my heart hath with them all.
§. 108. Direct. 25. Take heed that you interess not Religion or the Church in Civil differences: This error hath divided and ruined many famous Churches, and most injuriously made the holy truth and worship of God to be a reproach and infamy among selfish partial carnal men. When Princes and States fall out among themselves, they will needs draw the Ministers to their sides, and then one side will certainly condemn them, and call them all that self-interest and malice can invent: And commonly when the controversy is only in point of Law or Politicks, it is Religion that bears the blame of all: and the differences of Lawyers and Statesmen must be charged upon Divines, that the Devil may be able to make them useless, as to the good of all that party that is against them, and may make Religion itself be called Rebellion. And O that God would maintain the Peace of Kingdoms; and Kings and Subjects were all Lovers of peace, the rather because the differences in States do cause so commonly divisions in the Church. It would make a man wonder, (and a lover of History to lament) to observe in the differences between the Pope and Henry the fourth, and other Emperors, how the Historians are divided, one half commending him that the other half condemneth: and how the Bishops and Churches were one half for the Pope, and the other for the Emperor; and one half still accounted Rebels or Schismatics by the other, though they were all of one Religion. It is more to ruin the Church, than Kingdoms, that Satan laboreth so much to kindle Warrs, and breed Civil differences in the world: And therefore let him that loveth the Churches Peace, be an obedient Subject, and an enemy of Sedition, and a Lover and defender of the Civil Peace and Government in the place that God hath set him in: For this is pleasing unto God.
§. 109. I know there are some, that with too bloody and calamitous success, have in most ages, given other kind of Directions, for the extirpation of Error, Heresy and Schism, than I have here given! But God hath still caused the most wise, and holy, and charitable, and experienced Christians to bear their testimony against them! And he hath ever caused their way of cruelty to turn to their own shame: And though (like Treasons and Robberies) it seem for the time present to serve their turn, it is bitterness in the end, and leaveth a stinking memorial of their names and actions to posterity. And the Treatises of Reconcilers (such as our Halls, Ushers, Bergius, Burroughs and many other) by the delectable savor of Unity and Charity are sweet and acceptable to prudent and pea •• able persons, though usually unsuccessful with the violent that needed them.
Besides the fore-cited witness of Sr. Francis Bacon, &c. I will here add one of the most ancient, and one or two of this age, whom the contrary-minded do mention with the greatest honor. Justin Martyr Dial. cum Tryph. doth at large give his judgment, that a Judaizing Christian, who thinketh it best to be circumci •• d and keep the Law of Moses, be suffered in his opinion and practice, and admitted to the communion and privileges of the Church, and loved as one that may be saved in that way, so be it he do not make it his business to persuade others to his way, and teach it as necessary to salvation or communion: For such he doth condemn.
King James by the Pen of Is. Causabone telleth Cardinal du Perron, that [
Grotius Annot. in Matth. 13. 41. is so full and large upon it, that I must entreat the Reader to peruse his own words; where by arguments and authority he-vehemently rebuketh the Spirit of fury, cruelty and uncharitableness, which under pretence of Government, Discipline and Zeal denieth that Liberty and forbearance, even to Heretics and Offenders, (much more when to the faithful Ministers of Christ) which human frailty hath made necessary, and Christ hath commanded his servants to grant. Concluding, Ubi solitudinem fecerant, pacem appellabant (as Tertull.) Et his omnibus obtendi solet studium Divini nominis; sed plerumque obtendi tantum. Nam Deus dedignatur coacta servitia; nec placere illi potest quod vi humana exprimitur. Reipsa solent qui id faciunt non nomini divino, sed suis honoribus, suis commodis & tranquillitati consulere; quod scit ill qui mentes intr • spicit. At{que} ita sit, ut lolium evellatur cum tritico, innocemes cum nocentibus: immo ut triticum saepe sumatur pro l • li • : Non enim tam been agitur cum rebus humanis, ut semper meliora pluribus aut validioribus placeant: sed ut in grege taurus, ita inter homines, qui viribus est editior, imbecilliorem coedit: & iidem saepe quae pati se querebantur, mox in alios advent.—Lege caetera.
Again, I entreat those that would escape the sin of Schism, to read seriously the foresaid Treatises of Peacemakers; especially Bishop Halls Peacemaker, Bishop Ushers Sermon on Eph. 4. 3. and Mr. Jeremiah Burroughs Irenicum: to which I may add Mr. Stillin fleets Irenicum, for the hot contenders about Church-Government, though I believe all the substance of Church Order to be of Divine institution; and Iac. Acontii Stratag. Satanae.
And it must be carefully noted, that one way by which Satan tempteth men into Church-Divisions, is by an over-vehement zeal against Dividers; and so he would draw the Rulers of the world, under pretence of a zeal for Unity and Peace, to raise persecutions against all that are guilty of any excess of scrupulosity about Church-communion, or of any principles or practices which a little swerve from true Catholicism: And so by the cruelty of their penalties, silencing Ministers, and vexing the people they much increase the divisions which they would heal: For when Satan cannot do his work bare-faced and directly, he useth to be the forwardest in seeming to do good, and to take part with Christ, and Truth, and Godliness: And then his way is to over-do: He will be over-orthodox, and over-g •• dly, and over-peaceable, that h • hug the truth and Church to death, by his too hard embracements. As in families and neighbourhoods, some cross words must be passed over if we would have peace: And he that for every provoking unpeaceable word of another, will raise a storm, shall be himself the most unpeaceable; so is it in the Church: He that cannot bear with the weaknesses of the younger sort of Christians, who are too much inclined by their zeal against sin, to dividing ways, but will presently let fly at them as Schismatics, and make them odious, and excommunicate or punish them according to his wrath, shall increase the zeal and the number of dividers, and prove himself the greatest divider.
And by this violence and destroying zeal of Orthodox Rulers, against the real faults and infirmities of some separating well meaning men, a far greater number of Heterodox Rulers, are encouraged to persecute the most learned, sober, and peaceable Ministers, and the most godly and faithful of their Subjects, who dare not conform to all their unrighteous Edicts, and Ecclesiastical Laws, in things forbidden by the Law of Christ: And all this is done upon pretence of promoting Unity and Peace, and suppressing Heresy and Schism. And so persecution becometh the Devils Engine to keep out the Gospel and Godliness from the Infidel world, and to keep them under in the Christian world.
Sed tamen sive illud (Orig • nis de Redemptione futura diabolorum) Error est, ut ego sentio; sive Haer • s • s ut putatur, non solum reprimi non potuit multis animadversionibus Sacerdotum, sed nequaquam tam late se p •• uiss • t offundere, nisi contentione crevisset: inquit Posthumianus in Sulp. Severi Dialog. 1.
Sed non fuit animus ibi consi •• ere, ubi recens fraternae cladis fervebat invidia. Nam etsi fortasse vid •• ntur parere Epise pis debuisse, non ob hanc tamen causam multitudinem tantam sub Christi confession viventem, praesertim ab Episcopis oportuisset affligi. Id. ibid. Speaking of the Bishops provoking the Secular Power to afflict the Monks of Alexandria for defending Origen.
When the Emperor Constantius would by violence force the Orthodox to hold Communion with the Arians, he did but make the breach the wider. Read Lucifer Calaritanus de non conveniendo cum Haereticis, (in Biblioth. Patr. Tom. 9. p. 1045, &c. ) The Emperor saith, that the Orthodox were enemies to peace, and unity, and brotherly Love, and that he was resolved to have unity and peace in his Dominions: Therefore he imprisoned the Orthodox and banished them: Propterea odis nos, quia concilium vestrum malignantium execremur: propterea in exilio sumus: propterea in carcere necamur; propterea nobis solis prohibetur conspectus; id • irco reclusi in tenebras custodimur ingenti custodia: hujus rei causa nullus ad nos visendos admittitur hominum; quia videlicet noluerimus vobiscum impiis sacrilegis ullam scelerum vestrorum habere societatem —Ibid. pag. 1050. which stirred up this Bishop in particular to go too far from free communion even with the penitent Arians, and heap up more Scriptures against that communion which the Emperor commanded, than any had done before. Nobis dicebas, Pacem volo fieri; & in cord tuo manens adversarius religions nostrae, cogitabat per te facere nos idololatras, &c. p. 1051. Consilia vestra contra suam prolata Ecclesiam reprobate Deus: Nec enim potest odire populum suum, haereditatem suam, & amare vos filios pestilentiae, vos persecutores servorum suorum: Dixisti, Facite pacem cum Episcopis sectae meae Arrianis, & estote in unum; & dicit Dei Spiritus, Vias impiorum noli exequi, neque aemuleris viam iniquorum, &c.— Dulce quibusdam videtur, quo tibi Regi in amicitias jungantur suscipiendo haeresin tuam: sed amarius felle sensuri cum tecum torqueri in perpetuum caeperint in perpetua gehenna sentire, qui tecum esse deligerunt, tunc dicturi, Vae nobis, qui Constantium Imperatorem Deo praeposuerimus. Abundance more he writeth to prove that the Emperor being a Heretic, they must have no communion with him or his Bishops. And when the Emperor complained hereupon, that they wronged and dishonored him whom they should honor, the said Lucifer wrote his next book, de non parcendo in Deum delinquentibus; which beginneth, [ Superatum te, Imperator, a Dei servis ex omni cum conspexisses parte, dixisti p • ssum te ac p • ti a nobis contra monita sacrarum Scripturarum contumeliam: dicis nos insolentes extitisse circa te quem honorari decuerit. Si quisquam Dei cult • rum pepercit Apostatis, sint vera quae dicis de nobis; ] and so he heapeth up as many Texts for rough dealing with offending Kings: I give this one instance to show the fruits of violence, as pretended for peace and unity.
Of the persecutions of the faithful in most ages, even by professed Christians themselves, and God's disowning that Spirit of Cruelty by his special Providences, all Church History maketh mention: And how the names of such persecuting hypocrites have stunk in the nostrils of all sober men when their tragoedy was fully acted and understood. Especially the poor Churches called Waldenses, Piccards, and Albigenses, have felt the grievousest effects of this tyranny, and yet have the Testimony of the best and wisest men, to have been the purest and nearest to the Apostlick simplicity in all the world; and the memory of their enemies and persecutors is an abhorrence to the Sons of Charity and Peace. Read Lasitius and Commenius of their Discipline, and Bishop Usher de Eccles. succes. & statu. I will recite one notable passage mentioned by Thuanus and Commenius, the one Hist. l. 36. the other de Bono Unit. & Ord. Discipl. p. 59. Maximilian that good and moderate Emperor, being one day in the Coach with John. Crato only (his chief Physician and a learned Protestant) lamenting the divisions of Christians, asked Crato, which sort he thought came nearest to the Apostolic simplicity: He answered, He thought that honor belonged to the Brethren called Picards. The Emperor said, He thought so too: which Crato acquainting them with, encouraged them to dedicate to him a Book of part of their devotions: For the year before God had thus marvelously saved him, from having a hand in their blood. Ioachimus a Nova Domo, Chancellor of Bohemia went to Vienna, and gave the Emperor no rest, till he had procured him to subscribe a Mandate for the reviving of a former persecuting Mandate against them: Having got his Commission, and passing just out of the Gates of Vienna, as he was upon the Bridge over the Danubius, the Bridge brake under him, and he and all his retinue fell into that great and terrible water; and all were drowned except six horsemen, and one young Nobleman, who seeing his Lord in the Waves, catched hold of his Gold Chain, and hold him till some Fishermen came in Boats, but found him dead, and his Box with the Commission sunk past recovery: This Noble man who survived, was sensible of God's judgment, and turned to the Brethren in Religion, and the Mandate was no further prosecuted. (Such another story Bishop Usher was wont to tell how Ireland was saved from persecution in Queen Mary 's days).
But it is the most heinous cruelty, when, as in Daniel's case, there are Laws of impiety or iniquity, made of purpose to entrap the innocent, by them that confess, We shall find no fault against this Daniel, except it be concerning the Law of his God: And then men must be taken in these Spiders webs, and accused as schismatical, or what the contrivers please. And especially when it is real Holiness which is hated, and Order, Unity, Concord, Peace or Obedience to our Pastors, is made the pretence, for the malicious oppression of it. Gildas and Salvian have told Church Governors of this at large: And many of the persecuted Protestants have more largely told the Roman Clergy of it.
It is a smart complaint of him that wrote the Epist. de malis Doctoribus, ascribed to P. Sixtus 3. [ Hujus doctrinae causa (pro sanctitate scilicet) paucos amicos conquirunt, & plures inimicos: Necesse est enim eos qui peccatorum vitia condemnant, tantos habere contrarios, quantos exercere vitia delectat: In de est etiam quod iniquis & impiis factionibus opprimuntur: quod criminibus falsis appetuntur, quod haeresis etiam perfunduntur infamia: quod hic omnis inimicorum suorum sermo ab ipsorum sumit obtrectatione materiam. Sed quid mirum ut flagitiosis haeresis videatur doctrina justitiae? Quibus tamen haeresis? Ipsorum secretum patet tantum inimicis; cum si fides dictis inesset, amici illud potius scire potuissent, &c.]
The cause is, saith Prosper de vit. contempl. l. 1. cap. 20. & ex eo Hilitgarius Camarac. l. 5. c. 19.) Sed nos praesentibus delectati, dum in hac vita commoda nostra & honores inquirimus, non ut meliores sed ut ditiores, non ut sanctiores, sed ut honoratiores sunus, caeteris festinamus. Nec gregem domini qui nobis pascendus, tuendus{que} commissus est, sed nostras voluntates, dominationem, divitias, & caetera blandimenta carnaliter cogitamus. Pastores dici volumus, nec tamen esse contendimus. Officii n • s vitamus laborem, appetimus dignitatem; Immundorum spirituum feras a grege dilacerand • non pellimus; & quod eis remanserat, ipsi consumimus: Quando peccantes divites vel potentes non solum n •• arguimus, sed etiam veneramur: ne nobis aut munera solita offensi non dirigant, aut obsequia desiderata subducant: ac sic muneribus eorum & obsequiis capti, immo per haec illis addicti, loqui eis de peccato suo aut de futuro judicio formidamus: Ad hoc tantum Potentes effecti, ut nobis in subjectos dominationem tyrannicam vindicemus: non ut afflictos contra violentiam potentum qui in eos serarum more saeviunt, defendamus. Inde est quod tam a Potentibus hujus mundi, quam a nobis, quod pejus est, nonnulli graviter fatigati deper • u • t, quos se de manu nostra Dominus requisiturum terribiliter comminatur —
Sulp. Severus also toucheth the sore when he saith, Hist. l. 2. Certatim gloriosa in certamina ruebatur, multo{que} avidius tum martyria gloriosis mortibus quaerebantur, quam nunc Episcopatus pravis ambitionibus appetuntur.
But when he saith ibid. after Constantine's delivery of the Church, [ Neque ulterius persecutionem fore • redimus, nisi eam quam sub fine jam saeculi Antichristus exercebit, ] either he was very grossly mistaken, or else those are the instruments of Antichrist that are not thought so.
It is a most notable instance to our purpose which Severus ends his History with, of the mischievous zeal of Orthodox Ithacius, and Idacius against Priscillian and his Gnostics; and worthy of the study of the Prelates of the Church, [ Idacius sine modo & ultra quam oportuit Istantium socios{que} ejus lacessens, facem nascenti incendio subdidit: ut exasperaverit malos potius quam compresserit. ] In sum, they got the Magistrate to interpose and banish the Gnostics; who quickly learned by bribing Court Officers to turn the Emperor against the Orthodox for themselves: Till the zeal of Idacius and Ithacius grew so hot as to accuse even the best men, yea, St. Martin himself of favoring the Gnostics: And at last got another Tyrannical Emperor to put Priscillian and many other Gnostics to death: Though they withdrew from the accusation, as tending to their own confusion. And Severus saith [ Certe Ithacium nihil pensi, nihil sancti habuisse definio: fuit enim audax, loquax, impudens, sumptuosus, ventri & gulae plurimum impertiens. Hic stultitiae eo usque processerat, ut omnes etiam sanctos viros, quibus aut studium inerat lectionis, aut propositum erat certare jejuniis, tanquam Priscilliani socios & discipulos, in erimen arcesseret. Ausus etiam Miser est, Martino Episcopo, viro plane Apostolis conferendo, palam objectare haeresis infamiam:—quia non desinebat in • repare Ithacium, ut ab accusatione desisteret. ] And when the Leaders were put to death, the Heresy increased more, and honored Priscillian as a Martyr, and reproached the Orthodox as wicked persecutors: And the end was that the Church was filled by it with divisions and manifold mischiefs, and all the most godly made the common scorn. [ Inter haec plebs Dei & optimus quis{que} probro atque ludibrio habebatur. ] They are the last words of Severus 's History: And changing the names are calculated for another Meridian and for later years.
CHAP. IX. How to behave ourselves in the public Assemblies, and the worship there performed, and after them.
I Have purposely given such particular Directions in Tom. 2. on this subject, and written so many Books about it, and said so much also in the Cases of Conscience, that I shall here only cast in a few common Directions, lest the Reader think I make a bawk.
Direct. 1. Let your preparations in secret and in your family on the beginning of the Lord's days, be such as conduce to fit you for the public Worship. Run not to Church as ungodly people do, with a carnal heart, that never sought God before you went, nor considered what you go about; As if all your Religion were to make up the number of the auditors; and you thought God must not be worshipped and obeyed, at home, but only in the Church. God may in mercy meet with an unprepared heart, and open his eyes and heart, and save him; But he hath made no promise of it to any such. He that goeth to Worship that God at Church, whom he forgetteth and despiseth in his heart and house, may expect to be despised by him. O consider what it is for a sinner that must shortly die, to go with the servants of God to worship him? to pray for his salvation, and to hear what God hath to say to him by his Minister, for the life of his immortal soul?
Direct. 2. Enter not into the holy Assembly either superstitiously or unreverently. Not as if the bending of the knee, and mumbling over a few words with a careless ignorant mind, and spending an hour there as carelessly, would save your souls: Nor yet as if the Relation which the worship, the worshippers and the dedicated Place have unto God, deserved not a special honor and regard. Though God be ever with us, everywhere; yet every Time, and Place, and person, and business is not equally Related to God. And Holiness is no unfit attribution, for that Company or that Place, which is Related to God, though but by the lawful separation and dedication of man. To be uncovered in those Countries where uncovering signifieth Reverence, is very well becoming a reverent soul; except when the danger of cold forbids it. It is an unhappy effect of our Contentions, that many that seem most reverent and holy, in their high regard of holy things, do yet carry themselves with more irreverent deportment, than those that themselves account profane. God is the God of Soul and Body, and must be worshipped by both: And while they are united, the actions of one are helpful to the other, as well as due and decent.
Direct. 3. If you can come at the beginning, that you may show your attendance upon God, and your esteem of all his worship. Especially in our Assemblies, where so great a part of the duty, (as Confession, Praises, Reading the Scriptures,) are all at the beginning. And it is meet that you thereby show that you prefer public worship before private, and that needless businesses keep you not away.
Direct. 4. If you are free, and can do it lawfully, choose the most able holy Teacher that you can have, and be not indifferent whom you hear: For O how great is the difference; and how bad are our hearts? and how great our necessity of the clearest doctrine, and the Livelyest helps. Nor be you indifferent what manner of people you join with, nor what manner of worship is there performed; But in all choose the Best when you are free. But where you are not free, or can have no better, refuse not to make use of weaker Teachers, or to communicate with faulty Congregations in a defective faulty manner of worship, so be it, you are not compelled to sin. And think not that all the faults of the Prayers, or Communicants are imputed to all that join with them in that worship. For then we should join with none in all the World.
Direct. 5. When the Minister is weak, be the more watchful against prejudice and sluggishness of heart, lest you lose all. Mark that Word of God which he readeth to you, and reverence and Love, and lay up that. It was the Law Read and meditated on, which David saith the Godly do delight in. The sacred Scriptures are not so obscure and useless as the Papists do pretend, but convert the soul, and are able to make us wise unto salvation. Christ went ordinarily to the Synagogues where even bad men, did read Moses and the Prophets every Sabbath day. There are thousands that cannot Read themselves, who must come to the Assembly to hear that word read, which they cannot read or hear at home. Every sentence of Scripture hath a divine excellency, and therefore had we nothing but the Reading of it, and that by a bad man, a holy soul may profit by it.
Direct. 6. Mind not so much the case of others present as your selves: And think not so much how bad such and such a one is, and unworthy to be there, as how bad you are yourselves, and unworthy of communion with the people of the Lord, and what a mercy it is that you have admittance, and are not cast out from those holy opportunities.
Direct. 7. Take heed of a peevish quarrelsome humor, that disposeth you to carp at all that's said and done, and to find fault with every mode and circumstance, and to affect a causeless singularity, as thinking that your own ways and words and orders, are far more excellent than other men's: Think ill of nothing out of a quarrelsome disposition, but only as evidence constraineth you to dissent. And then remember that we are all imperfect, and faulty men must needs perform a faulty worship, if any, For it cannot be better than the agent.
Direct. 8. When you meet with a word in a Sermon or Prayer, which you do not like, let it not stop you, and hinder your fervent and peaceable proceeding in the rest; as if you must not join in that which is good, if there be any faulty mixture in it. But go on in that which you approve, and thank God that pardoneth the infirmities of others as well as your own.
Direct. 9. Conform yourselves to all the Lawful gestures and customs of the Church with which you join. You come not thither proudly to show the Congregation, that you are wiser in the circumstances of worship than they, nor needlessly to differ from them, much less to harden men into a scorn of strictness, by seeing you place Religion in singularities in lawful and indifferent things. But you come to exercise Love, peace and Concord, and with one mind and mouth to glorify God. Stand when the Church standeth; sit when the Church sitteth; kneel when the Church kneeleth, in cases where God doth not forbid it.
Direct. 10. Take heed of a customary, formal senseless heart, that tolerateth itself from day today, to do holy things in a common manner, and with a common, dull, and careless mind: For that is to profane them. Call in your Thoughts when they attempt to wander; stir up your hearts when you feel them dull. Remember what you are about, and with whom it is that you have to do, and that you tread on the dust of them who had such opportunities before you which are now all gone, and so will yours. You hear and pray for more than your lives; Therefore do it not as in jest or as asleep.
Direct. 11. Do all in faith and Hope: Believe what you may get of God in prayer, and by an obedient hearing of his word! Would you not go cheerfully to the King, if he had promised you to grant whatever you ask? Hath not God promised you more, than Kings can give you? Oh it is an unbelieving and a despairing heart, that turneth all into dead formality. Did you but Hope that God would do all that for you, which he hath told you he will do, and that you might get more by prayer than by your trades, or projects, or all your friends, you would go to God with more earnestness and more delight?
Direct. 12. Apply all the Word of God to yourselves according to its usefulness. Ask as you go, How doth this concern me? this reproof, this mark, this counsel, this comfort, this exhortation, this direction: Remember as much as you can; but especially the most practical useful parts. Get it home so deep upon your hearts, that it may not easily slide away? Root it by close application, as you go, that affection may constrain you to remember it.
Direct. 13. Above all, Resolve to obey what God shall make known to be his will: Take heed lest any willful sin should escape the power of the Word; and should ordinarily go away with you as it came. Careless hearing and careless living tend most dangerously to a hardened heart, and a forsaken state. If you regard iniquity in your heart, God will not hear your prayers. The sacrifice of the wicked is abominable to him. The foolish shall not stand in his sight, he hateth all the workers of iniquity. He that turneth away his ear from hearing, (that is, obeying) the Law, even his prayer is abominable. To the wicked saith God, What hast thou to do to take my Covenant into thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and hast cast my words behind thee? Obedience is better than sacrifice. He that nameth the name of Christ must depart from iniquity, or else God will not find his mark upon him, nor take him to be one of his: Christ's sheep know his voice and follow him, and to them he will give eternal life. But if you had Preacht or done miracles in his name, he will say to you, Depart from me, I know you not, if ye be workers of iniquity. Look therefore to your foot (to your heart and life) when you go to the house of God, and be more ready to hear (his Law that must govern you, that you may know his will and do it) than to offer the sacrifice of fools, (that is, disobedient sinners) that think by sacrifices and outside worship to get pardon for an unholy life, and to reconcile God to them in their sins, not knowing that thus they add sin to sin. If you seek God daily, and delight to know his ways, as a Nation that did righteousness and forsook not the ordinance of their God; If you ask of him the ordinances of justice (sound doctrine, regular worship, strict discipline) and take. delight in approaching to God; If you humble your souls with frequent fasts; and yet live in a course of willful disobedience, you labor in vain, and aggravate your sins, and Preachers had need to lift up their voices and be louder Trumpets to tell you of your sins, than to other men. But if ye will wash you, and make you clean and put away the evil of your doings, cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, &c. You may then come with boldness, and confidence unto God. Otherwise to what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices? your oblations will be vain, and your incense abominable. If ye be will • ing and obedient, you shall be blessed: but if ye refuse and rebel ye shall be destroyed; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. If you do well shall you not be accepted? but if ye do evil, sin lieth at the door. Let your profession be never so great, and your parts and expressions never so Scraphical, sin is a reproach to any people: And if you would hid yourselves from justice in the purest Church, among the holiest people, and the most numerous and longest prayers, be sure that your sin will find you out. Your secret lust, your covetous over-reaching, your secret gluttony or tippling▪ much more your crimson sins will surely find you out.
Alas, what • hen will those miscreants do, whose sins are scarlet bloody persecutions, under pretence of promoting unity and obedience and the Catholic Church, while the Cloak or Cover of it is but the thin transparent Spider-web of human Traditions, and numerous Ceremonies, and childish complementing with Go • ; And when they have nothing but the prayers of a long Liturgy, to cover the effects, of their earthly, sensual and diabolical zeal and wisdom (as St. James calls it, 3. 15, 16.) and to conc • ct the Widows houses which they devour, and to put a reverence upon the office and work, which they labor all the week to render reproachful, by a sensual, luxurious, idle life, and by perfidious making merchandize of souls.
As ever you care what becometh of your souls, take heed lest sin grow bold under Prayers, and grow familiar and contemptuous of Sermons and holy speeches, and lest you keep a custom of Religious exercises, and willful sins. For oh how doth this harden now, and wound hereafter. He is the best hearer, that is the holiest liver, and faithfullest obeyer.
Direct. 14. Be not a bare hearer of the Prayers of the Pastor, (whether it be by a Liturgy, or without.) For that is but hypocrisy, and a sin of omission; You come not thither only to hear prayers, but to pray. And kneeling is not praying; but it is a profession that you pray. And will you be prayerless even in the house of Prayer, and when you profess and seem to pray? and so add hypocrisy to impiety? I fear many that seem Religious and would have those kept from the Sacrament that Pray not in their Families, do very ordinarily tolerate themselves in this gross omission, and mocking of God, and are Prayerless themselves even when they seem to Pray.
Direct. 15. Stir up your hearts in a special manner to the greatest alacrity and joy, in speaking and singing the Praises of God. The Lord's day is a day of Joy and Thanksgiving and the Praises of God are the highest and holiest employment upon Earth. And if ever you should do anything with all your might, and with a joyful and triumphing frame of soul, it is this. Be glad that you may join with the Sacred Assemblies, in heart and voice, in so Heavenly a work. And do not as some humersome peevish persons (that know not the danger of that proud disease) fall to quarreling with David's Psalms; as unsuitable to some of the hearers, or to nauseate every failing in the Met •• , so as to turn so holy a duty into neglect or scorn (for, alas, such there are near me where I dwell); nor let prejudice against melody, or Church-music (if you dwell where it is used) possess you with a spleen • ick disgust of that which should be your most joyful work. And if you know how much the incorporate soul must make use of the body in harmony, and in the joyful praises of Jehovah, do not then quarrel with lawful helps, because they are sensible and corporeal.
Direct. 16. Be very considerate and serious in Sacramental renewings of your Covenant with God. O think what great things you come thither to Receive. And think what a holy work you have to do: And think what a Life it is that you must promise. So solemn a Covenanting with God, and of so great importance, requireth a most holy, reverent and serious frame of soul. But yet let not the unwarrantable differencing this Ordinance from God's praises and the rest, seduce you into the common errors of the times: I mean, 1. Of those that hence are brought to think that the Sacrament should never be received without a preparatory day of humiliation, above the preparation for an ordinary Lord's days work. 2. And therefore receive it seldom; whereas the primitive Churches never spent a Lord's day together without it. 3. Those that turn it into a perplexing terrifying thing, for fear of being unprepared, when it should be their greatest comfort, and when they are not so perplexed about their unprepar • dness to any other duty. 4. Those that make so great a difference betwixt this and Church-prayers, praises and other Church-woe • ship, as that they take this Sacrament only for the proper work and privilege of Church-members; And thereupon turn it into an occasion of our great contentions and divisions, while they fly from Sacramental Communion with others, more than from Communion in the other Church-worship. O what hath our subtle enemy done against the Love, Peace and Unity of Christians, especially in England, under pretence of Sacramental purity?
Direct. 17. Perform all your Worship to God, as in heart-Communion with all Christ's Churches upon Earth; Even those that are faulty, though not with their faults. Though you can be present but with one, y •• consent as present in spirit with all, and separate not in heart, from any one; any further than they separate from Christ.
Direct. 18. Accordingly let the Interest of the Church of Christ, be very much upon your heart, and pray as hard for it as for yourself.
Direct. 19. Y •• , remember in all, what Relation you have to the Heavenly Society and Chore, and think how they Worship God in Heaven, that you may strive to imitate than in your degree. Of which more an • n.
Direct. 20. Let your whole course of life after, savor of a Church-frame; Live as the servants of that God wh • m you Worship; and as ever before him. Live in the Love of those Christians with whom you have Communion: and do not quarrel with them at home, nor despise, nor persecute them with whom you join in the Worshipping of God. And do not needlessly open the weaknesses of the Minister to prejudice others against him and the Worship. And be not Religious at the Church alone, for then you are not truly Religious at all.
CHAP. X. Directions about our Communion with Holy Souls Departed, and now with Christ.
THE oversight and neglect of our duty concerning the souls of the blessed, now with Christ, doth very much harden the Papists in their erroneous excesses here about. And if we will ever reduce them, or rightly confute them, it must be by a judicious asserting of the Truth, and observing so much with them as is our duty, and commending that in them which is to be commended, and not by running away from truth and duty that we may get for enough from them and error: For error is an ill way of confuting error. The practical Truth lieth in these following Precepts.
§. 1. Direct. 1. Remember that the departed souls in Heaven are part, and the noblest part of the Body of Christ and family of God, of which you are inferior members; and therefore that you owe them greater Love and Honor, than you ow 〈…〉 ny Saints on Earth.
Eph. 3. 15. The whole •••• lie in Heaven and Earth is named of Christ. Those are the happiest and noblest pa •• s, that are most pure and perfect, and dwell in the highest and most glorious habitations, nearest unto Christ, yea, with him: If Holiness be lovely, the most Holy are the most lovely: We have many obligations therefore, to Love them more than the Saints on earth: They are more excellent and amiable, and Christ Loveth them more. And if any be Honorable, it must especially be those spirits, that are of greatest excellencies and perfections, and advanced to the greatest Glory and nearness to their Lord. Make Conscience therefore of this as your duty, not only to Love and Honor blessed souls, but to Love and Honor them more than those that are yet on Earth. And as every Duty is attended with Benefi • , so we shall find this exceeding great benefit in the performance of this duty, that i • will incline our • earts to be the more Heavenly, and draw up our Desires to the society which we so much Love and Honor.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Remember that it is a part of the life of faith, to see by it the Heavenly Society of the blessed, and a part of your Heavenly Conversation, to have frequent, serious and delightful thoughts, of th • se Crowned souls that are with Christ.
Otherwise God would never have given us such descriptions of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and told us so much of the Hosts of God that must inhabit it forever; that must come from the East and from the West, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God: When it is said that our conversati • n ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ) is in Heaven, Phil. 3. 20. the meaning extendeth both to our Relation, Privileges and Converse: We are Deniz • ns or Citizens of the Heavenly Society; and our title to their happiness is our highest Privilege and Honor; and therefore our daily business is there, and our sweetest and most serious converse is with Christ and all those blessed spirits. Whatever we are doing here, our Eye and Heart should still be there: For we look not at the temporal things which are seen, but at the eternal things which are not seen, 2 Cor. 4. 18. A wise Christian that hath forsaken the Kingdom of darkness, will be desirous to know what the Kingdom of Christ is into which he is translated, and who are his fellow Subjects, and what are their several ranks and dignities, so far as tendeth to his congruous converse with them all. And how should it affect us to find that we are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the City of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of Angels, to the general Assembly and Church of the first born which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of Just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new Covenant, Heb. 12. 22, 23, 24. Live then as the members of this society, and exclude not the chief members from your thoughts and converse: though our local visible communion be only with these rural inferior inhabitants, and not with the Courtiers of the King of Heaven, yet our Mental Communion may be much with them. If our home and treasure be there with them, our Hearts will be there also, Mat. 6. 21.
§. 3. Direct. 3. It is the will of God that the Memory of the Saints be honored on earth when they are dead. It is some part of his favor which he hath promised to them. Prov. 10. 7. The memory of the just is blessed: but the name of the wicked shall rot. Matth. 26. 13. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this Gospel shall be Preached in the whole world, there shall also this that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her. The history of the Scripture recordeth the Lives of the Saints to their perpetual honor. And God will have it so also for the sake of his abused servants upon earth, that they may see that the slanders of malicious tongues, shall not be able to obscure the glory of his Grace, and that the lies of the ungodly prevail but for a moment. And God will have it so for the sake of the ungodly, that they may be ashamed of their malicious enmity and lies against the godly, while they perceive that the departed Saints, do leave behind them a surviving testimony of their sanctity and innocence, sufficient to confound the venomous calumnies of the Serpents Seed. Yea God will have the Names of his eminent servants to be honored upon earth, for the honor of their Head, and of his Grace and Gospel: so that while malice would cast dishonor upon Christ, from the meanness and failings of his servants that are alive, the memory of the dead, (who were once as much despised and slandered) shall rise up against them to his honor and their shame. And it is very observable how God constraineth the bitter enemies of Holiness to bear this Testimony for the honor of Holiness against themselves! that many who are the cruelest persecutors and murderers of the Living Saints, do honor the Dead even to excess. How zealous are the Papists for the multitude of their Holy days, and the honoring of their Names and Relicts, and pretending many Miracles to be wrought by a very touch of their Shrines or Bones, whilst they revile and muder those that imitate them, and deprive Temporal Lord's of their Dominions that will not exterminate them. Yea, while they burn the living Saints, they make it part of their crime or Heresy, that they honor not the Days and Relicts of the Dead, so much as they: To show us that the things that have been shall be, and that wickedness is the same in all generations: Matth. 23. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33. Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, Hypocrites! because ye build the T • mbes of the Prophets, and garnish the Sepulchers of the righteous; and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the Prophets: wherefore ye be witnesses to yourselves that ye are the Children of them which killed the Prophets. Fil • ye up then the measure of your fathers: Ye Serpents, ye generation of Vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of Hell. I know that neither did the Pharisees, nor do the Papists, believe that those whom they murdered were Saints; but Deceivers and Heretics, and the troublers of the World: But if Charity be the grace most necessary to salvation; then sure it will not keep any man from damnation, that he had malice and uncharitableness sufficient to persuade him, that the members of Christ were Children of the Devil. But thus God will force even the persecutors and haters of his Saints to honor them. And if he constrain his enemies to it, his servants should not be backward to do it according to his will.
§. 4. Direct. 4. Only such Honor must be given to departed Saints, as subserveth the Honor of God; and nothing must be ascribed to them that is his prerogative: All that of God which was communicated to them and appeared in them, must be acknowledged: But so that God must be still acknowledged the spring of all; and no honor given ultimately to them; but it is God in them that we must behold, and Love, admire and honor.
§. 5. Direct. 5. The Honor of the Saints departed must be only such as tendeth to the promoting of Holiness among the living. It is a most horrid aggravation of those m • ns sins, who make their Honouring of the Saints departed, a cover for their hating and persecuting their followers: or that make it an engine for the carrying on some base design; Some make it a devise for the advancing of their Parties and peculiar Opinions: The Papists make it a very great means, for the maintaining the Usurped power of the Pope; giving him the power of Canonizing Saints, and assuring the world what souls are in Heaven: A Pope that by the testimony of a General Council (as John. 23. Eugenius, &c.) is a Heretic, and a wicked wretch, and never like to come to Heaven himself, can assure the world of a very large Catalogue of persons that are there: And he that by the Papists is confessed fallible in matters of fact, pretendeth to know so certainly who were Saints, as to appoint them Holy days, and command the Church to Pray to them: And he that teacheth men that they cannot be certain themselves of their salvation, pretendeth when they are dead that he is certain that they are saved: To pretend the Veneration of Saints for such carnal ambitious designs, and cheats, and cruelties is a sin unfit for any that mentioneth a Saint. So is it when men pretend that Saints are some rare extraordinary persons among the living members of the Church: to make men believe that honoring them will serve instead of imitating them; and that all are not Saints that go to Heaven: [God forbid, say they, that none but holy persons should be saved: we confess it is good to be Saints, and they are the chief in Heaven: but we hope those that are no Saints may be saved for all that.] But God saith, that without Holiness none shall see him, Heb. 12. 14. Heaven is the inheritance of none but Saints: Act. 26. 18. Col. 1. 12. He that extolleth Saints to make men believe that those that are no Saints may be saved, doth serve the Devil by honoring the Saints. The same I may say of those that give them Divine honor, ascribing to each a power to hear and help all throughout the world that put up prayers to them.
§. 6. Direct. 6. Look up to the blessedness of departed souls, as members of the same body, rejoicing with them, and praising God that hath so exalted them. This, is the benefit of holy Love, and Christian Unity, that it maketh our brethren's happiness to be unto us, in a manner as if it were our own. 1 Cor. 12. 25, 26. That there should be no schism in the Body, but that the members should have the same care one for another—that if one member be honored all the members rejoice with it. So far as selfishness is overcome, and turned into the Uniting Love of Saints, so far are all the joys of the blessed souls in Heaven, become the joys of all that truly Love them upon earth. How happy then is the state of all true believers, that have so many to rejoice with? Deny not God that Thanks for the saving of so many souls, which you would not deny him, if he saved but your friends, estates or lives. Especially when afflictions or temptations would deprive you of the Joy which you should have in God's mercies to yourselves, then comfort yourselves with the remembrance of your brethren's Joy. What an incongruous undecent thing is it for that man to pine away in sorrows upon earth, who hath so many thousand friends in Heaven, in joy and blessedness, whose Ioyes should all be to him as his own?—
§. 7. Direct. 7. When you feel a cooling of your love to God, or of your zeal or reverence or other graces, think then of the temper of those Holy S • uls, that see his glory! O think, with what fervor do they Love their God? with what transporting sweetness do they delight in him? with what Reverence do they all behold him? And am not I his servant, and a member of his family as well as they, shall I be like the strangers of this frozen world, when I should be like my fellow Citizens above? As it will dispose a man to weep to see the tears and grief of others; and as it will dispose a man to mirth and joy to see the mirth and joy of others; so is it a potent help to raise the soul to the Love of God, and delight in his service, to think believingly of the Love and Delight of such a world of blessed spirits.
§. 8. Direct. 8. When you draw near to God in his holy Worship, remember that you are part of the same society with those blessed spirits that are praising him in perfection. Remember that you are members of the same Chore, and your part must go to make up the Melody; and therefore you should be as little discordant from them as possibly you can. The quality of those that we join with in God's service, is • pt either to dull or quicken us, to depress or elevate us; and we move Heaven-ward most easily and swiftly in that company, which is going thither on the swiftest pase. A believing thought that we are Worshipping God in Consort with the Heavenly Chore, and of the high and holy raptures of those spirits, in the continual praise of their Great Creator, is an excellent means to warm and quicken us, and raise us as near their holy frame, as here on earth may be expected.
§. 9. Direct. 9. When you would possess your hearts with a lively sense of the odiousness of sin, and would resist all temptations which would draw you to it, think then how the blessed souls with God do judge of sin, and how they would entertain such a temptation if the motion were made to them? What think they of Coveteousness, Pride or lust? What think they of malice, cruelty or lying? How would they entertain it, if Lands and Lordships, pleasure or preferment were offered them to entice their hearts from God? Would they venture upon damnation for a whore, or for their games, or to please their appetites? Do they set as light by God and their salvation as the ungodly world doth? Oh with what scorn and holy indignation would they refuse a world, if it were offered them instead of God? with what detestation would they reject the motion to any sin?
§. 10. Direct. 10. When you would revive in your minds a right apprehension and estimation of all earthly things, as Riches and Honors and Greatness and Command and full provisions for the flesh, bethink you then how the blessed souls with Christ esteem them. How little do they set by all those things, that worldlings make so great a stir for, and for which they • ell their God and their salvation? How contemptible are Crowns and Kingdoms in their eyes? Their judgment is more like to God's than ours is. Luk. 16. 15. That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God. All the world would not hire a Saint in Heaven, to tell one lie, or take the name of God in vain, or to forget God or be estranged from him for one hour.
§. 11. Direct. 11▪ When you see the Godly under the contempt of sinners here, accounted as the filth of the world, and the off-scouring of all things, defamed, reviled, hated and persecuted, Look up then to the Saints with Christ, and think how they are esteemed and used. And when you would truly know what a Believer is, think not how they are esteemed and used by men, but how they are esteemed and used by Christ. Judge not of them by their short afflictions, nor by their meanness in the flesh, but by their endless happiness, and their glory above. Look up to the home and world of Saints, if you would know what Saints are, and not to the few scattered imperfect passengers in this world that is not worthy of them.
§. 12. Direct. 12. When you are tempted to think meanly of the Kingdom of Christ, as if his flock were so small and poor and sinful as to be inconsiderable, look up to the world of blessed souls which dwell above. And there you shall see no such paucity, or imperfections, or blemishes as are here below: The Subjects there are such as dishonor not their King. Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, Joh. 18. 36. If you would know it in its Glory, look up to the world where it is Glorious. If when you hear men contemn the Kingdom of the Saints of Christ, and at the same time did but see, (as Stephen did) a glimpse into that Kingdom, and all the Glory of the blessed there, what thoughts would you have of the words which did dishonor it?
§. 13. Direct. 13. When you hear sinners boast of the Wisdom or Numbers of their party, and appealing to the learned or great ones of the world, look up to the blessed souls with Christ, and ask whether they are not more wise and numerous than all the sinners upon earth. The greatest Doctors are ignorant and unlearned, in comparison of the meanest soul with Christ: The greatest Monarchs are but worms, in comparison of the Glorified Spirits with God. If they say to you, Are you wiser than so many and so wise and Learned men? ask them, Are you or all the ungodly wiser, than all the blessed souls with Christ? Let the wiser party carry it.
§. 14. Direct. 14. When you are tempted to be weary of a holy life, or to think all your labor is vain, look up to the blessed souls with Christ, and there you will see the end of Holiness: There you will see that of all the labor of your lives, there is none that you are so sure to gain by; and that in due time, you shall reap if you faint not; and if you sow to the spirit, of the spirit you shall reap everlasting life. Gal. 6. 8 9. And that when you have done the will of God, if you have but patience, you shall inherit the promise, Heb. 10. 36. Ask yourselves, whether any of those blessed souls Repent now of the Holiness of their lives on earth? or of their mortifying the flesh, and denying themselves the delights of sin?
§. 15. Direct. 15. When you are tempted to turn back in the day of trial, and to forsake Christ or his cause when persecution ariseth, then look to the blessed souls above, and see what is the end of suffering for the sake of Christ and righteousness. To foresee the great reward in Heaven, will convince you that instead of being terrified by sufferings, you should rejoice and be exceeding glad. Are you to lie in Prison, or to burn in the Flames? so did many thousands that are now in Heaven: And do you think that they repent it now? Ignatius, Polycarp, Cyprian, and many such holy men, were once used as hardly as you are now, and put to death by cruel men: Rogers, Bradford, Hooper, Glover and multitudes with them, were once in Prison and burnt in the Flames; but where are they now, and what is the end of all their pains? Now whether do you think the case of Bonner or Bradford to be best? Now had you rather be Gardener or Philpot? Now which think you doth most repent? the poor Waldenses that were murdered by thousands? or the Popes and Persecutors that murdered them?
§. 16. Direct. 16. When you are dismayed under the burden of your sins, the greatness of your corruptions, the weakness of your graces, the imperfection of your duties, look up to the blessed souls with Christ, and remember that all those Glorified spirits, were once in flesh as you now are, and once they lay at the feet of God, in tears and groans and cries as you do: They were once fain to cry out of the burden of their sins, and mourn under the weakness of their graces, as you now do. They were once as much clogged with flesh as you are; and once as low in doubts and fears, and bruised under the sense of God's displeasure: They once were as violently assaulted with temptations; and had the same corruptions to lament and strive against as you have: They were once as much afflicted by God and man? But is there any of the smart of this remaining?
§. 17. Direct. 17. When you are deterred from the presence of the dreadful God, and think he will not accept such worms as you, look up to the blessed souls with Christ; and remember how many millions of your brethren are there accepted to greater familiarity than that which you here desire: Remember that those souls were once as dark and distant from God, and unworthy of his acceptance as you now are. A fearful Child receiveth boldness, to see his Brethren in his Fathers arms.
§. 18. Direct. 18. When you are afraid of Satan lest he should prevail against you and devour you, look up to the blessed souls with Christ; and see how millions are there safely landed, that once were in as dangerous a station as you are. Through many tribulations and temptations they arrived at the Heavenly Rest: Satan once did his worst against them: They were tost on the Seas of this tempestuous world: But they were kept by the power of God, through faith unto salvation, and so may you.
§. 19. Direct. 19. When you would duly value all your present means and mercies, and see whither they tend, look up then to the souls with Christ, and see whither the like mercy hath conducted them. The poorest Cottage and the hardest fare are great mercies as they tend to endless blessedness. This now and Heaven after, is great; though the thing in itself be never so small. Heaven puts the value and signification upon all your mercies: The wicked make Cyphers of their greatest blessings, by separating them in their esteem and use, from God and Heaven, which is the measure of their estimate.
§. 20. Direct. 20. When you see Divisions among believers, and hear one for this party, and another for that, and hear them bitterly censuring each other, look up then to the Saints with Christ, and think what perfect Love and Peace and Concord i • among them. Consider how unlike our factions and Schisms are to their fervent Love and Unity? And how how unlike our jarring strifes and quarrels are to their harmonious Praise of God. Remember in what work it is that they are so happily united, even Love and Praise uncessant to Jehovah: And then think, whether it would not unite the Saints on earth, to lay by their contendings for the preeminence in knowledge, (covered with the guilded name of Zeal for the Truth of God ), and to employ themselves in Love and Praise, and to show their emulation here, in striving who shall Love God and each other with the more pure heart and fervent Love, 1 Pet. 1. 22. and who shall Praise him with the most heavenly alacrity and delight. Consider whether this work of blessed souls be not like to be more desirable and excellent, than the work of self-conceited wrangling Sophisters? And whether there be any danger of falling into Sects and Factions or falling out by emulations or contentions, while we make this work of Love and Praise the matter of our religious converse? And consider whether almost all the Schisms that ever vext the Church of God, did not arise, either by the Pastors striving who should be the greatest, (Luk. 22. 24, 26.) or by the rising up of some Sciolist or Gnostic, proudly pretending to know more than others, and to vindicate or bring to light, some excellent Truth which others know not, or oppose? And when you see the hot contendings of each party, about their pretended Orthodoxness or wisdom (which I am. 3. is purposely written against) remember how the concord of those blessed souls, doth shame this work, and should make it odious to the heirs of Heaven.
§. 21. Direct. 21. When you are afraid of Death, or would find more willingness to die, look up to the blessed souls with Christ, and think that you are but to pass that way, which all those souls have gone before you; and to go from a world of enmity and vanity, to the company of all those blessed spirits: And is not their blessed state more desirable, than such a vain vexatious life as this? There is no malice, nor slandering, nor cruel persecuting, no uncharitable censures, contentions, or divisions; no ignorance, nor unbelief, nor strangeness unto God: nothing but Holy, Amiable and Delightful. Join yourselves daily to that Celestial Society: suppose yourselves spectators of their Order, Purity and Glory, and Auditors of their harmonious Praises of Jehovah: Live by faith in a daily familiarity with them: say not that you want company or are alone, when you may walk in the Streets of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and there converse with the Prophets and Apostles, and all the glorious Hosts of Heaven. Converse thus with them in your Life, and it will overcome the fear of death, and make you long to be there with them: Like one that stands by the River side, and seeth his friends on the further side, in a place of pleasure, while his enemies are pursuing him at his back, how gladly would he be over with them? And it will embolden him to venture on the passage, which all they have safely past before him. Thus Death will be to us as the Red Sea, to pass us safe to the 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 Land of Promise, while our pursuers are there overthrown and perish. We should not be so strange to the World above, if we thus by faith conversed▪ with the blessed ones.
§. 22. Direct. 22. When you are overmuch troubled for the death of your Godly friends, look up to that world of blessed souls, to which they are translated, and think whether it be not better for them to be there than here? and whether you are not bound by the Law of Love, to rejoice with them that are thus exalted. Had we but a sight of the world that they are in, and the company that they are gone to, we should be less displeased with the will of God, in disposing of his own, into so Glorious a state.
§. 23. All these improvements may be made by a Believer, of his daily converse with the souls above: This is the Communion with them which we must hold on earth: Not by Praying to them, which God hath never encouraged us to do; nor by praying for them (For though it be lawful to pray for the Resurrection of their Bodies, and the perfecting of their blessedness thereby, yet it being a thing of absolute certainty as the day of Judgment is, we must be very cautelous in the manner of our doing this lawful act; it being a thing that their happiness doth not at all depend on, and a thing which will-worshippers have shown themselves so forward to abuse, by stepping further into that which is unlawful; as the horrid abuses of the Names and days, and shrines and relicts of real or supposed Saints, in the Papal Kingdom sadly testifieth.) But the necessary part of our Communion with the Saints in Heaven, being of so great importance to the Church on Earth, I commend it to the due consideration of the faithful, whether our forgetfulness of it is not to be much repented of, and whether it be not a work to be more seriously minded for the time to come.
§. 24. And I must confess I know not why it should be thought unlawful to celebrate the memorial of the life or martyrdom of any extraordinary servant of God, by an Anniversary solemnity, on a set appropriate day: It is but to keep the thankful remembrance of God's mercy to the Church: and sure the life and death of such, is not the smallest of the Churches mercies here on earth. If it be lawful on the 5 of November, to celebrate the memorial of our deliverance from the Powder-plot, I know not why it should be thought unlawful to do the like in this case also: Provided, 1. That it be not terminated in the honor of a Saint, but of the God of Saints for giving so great a mercy to his Church. 2. That it be not to honor a Saint merely as a Saint, but to some extraordinary eminent Saints: Otherwise all that go to Heaven must have Festivals kept in remembrance of them; and so we might have a million for a day. 3. That it be not made equal with the Lord's Day, but kept in such a subordination to that Day, as the Life or death of Saints, is of inferior and subordinate respect, to the work of Christ in man's Redemption. 4. And if it be kept in a spiritual manner to invite men to imitate the Holiness of the Saints, and the constancy of the Martyrs, and not to encourage sensuality and sloth.
CHAP. XI. Directions about our Communion with the Holy Angels.
§. 1. Direct. 1. BE satisfied in knowing so much of Angels as God in Nature and Scripture hath revealed, but presume not to inquire further, much less to determine of unrevealed things. That there are Angels, and that they are holy Spirits, is past dispute. But what number they are, and of how many worlds, and of what orders and different dignities and degrees; and when they were created, and what locality belongeth to them, and how far they excel or differ from the souls of men, these and many other such unnecessary questions neither Nature nor Scripture will teach us how infallibly to resolve. Almost all the Heretics in the first ages of the Church did make their doctrines of Angels the first and chief part of their Heresies: arrogantly intruding into unrevealed things, and boasting of their acquaintance with the orders and inhabitants of the higher worlds. These being risen in the Apostles days, occasioned Paul to say, Col. 2. 18. Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility, and worshipping of Angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Understand so much of the Ministry of Angels as God hath revealed, and so far take notice of your communion with them; but affect not any other sort of communion.
I shall here show how much of the Ministry of Angels is revealed to us in Scripture.
§. 3. 1. It is part of the appointed work of Angels, to be Ministring Spirits for the heirs of salvation, Heb. 1. 14. Not Ministers or Servants of the godly, but Ministers of God for the godly: As the Shepherd is not a servant of the sheep, but for the sheep. It is not an accidental or occasional work which they do extraordinarily; but it is their undertaken Office to which they are sent forth. And this their Ministry is about the ordinary concernments of our lives, and not only about some great or unusual cases or exigence. Psal. 34. 6, 7. Psal. 91. 11, 12.
§. 4. 2. It is not some, but All the Angels that are appointed by God to this Ministration, Heb. 1. 1, 4. Are they not all ministering Spirits sent forth, &c. Mark here, that if you inquire whether God have any higher Spirits, that are not employed in so low an Office, but govern these Angels, or if you inquire whether only this world be the Angels charge, or whether they have many other worlds also (of Viators ) to take care of: neither Nature nor Scripture doth give you the determination of any of these questions: and therefore you must leave them as unrevealed things: (with abundance more with which the old Heretics and the Popish Schoolmen, have diverted men's minds from plain and necessary things.) But that all the Angels minister for us, is the express words of Scripture.
§. 5. 3. The work of this Office is not left promiscuously among them, but several Angels have their several works and charge: Therefore Scripture telleth us of some sent of one message, and some on another: And tells us that the meanest of Christ's members on earth, have their Angels before God in Heaven, Matth. 18. 10. I say unto you, that in Heaven their Angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in Heaven. Whether each true Believer hath one or more Angels? and whether one Angel look to more than one Believer? are questions which God hath not resolved us of, either in Nature or Scripture: But that each true Christian hath his Angel, is here asserted by our Lord.
§. 6. 4. In this office of Ministration they are servants of Christ as the Head of the Church, and the Mediator between God and man, to promote the ends of his superior office in man's Redemption, Mat. 28. 18. All power is given to me in Heaven and Earth, John 13. 3. Eph. 1. 20, 21, 22. And set him at his right hand in the celestials, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the Church. Rev. 23. 16. I Jesus have sent mine Angel to testify unto you these things in the Churches. Whether the Angels were appointed about the service of Adam in innocence? or only began their Office with Christ the Mediator as his Ministers, is a thing that God hath not revealed. But that they serve under Christ for his Church is plain.
§. 7. 5. This care of the Angels for us is exercised throughout our lives, for the saving of us from all our dangers, and delivering us out of all our troubles. Psal. 34. 6, 7. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles: the Angel of the Lord encampeth about them that fear him, and delivereth them: Psal. 91. 11, 12. For he shall give his Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways; They shall bear thee up in their hand, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. In all our ways (that are good) and in every step we tread, we have the care and Ministry of tutelary Angels. They are our ordinary defense and guard.
§. 8. 6. In all this Ministry they perfectly obey the Will of God, and do nothing but by his command. Psal. 103. 10. Zech. 1. 8, 10. Matth. 18. 10. being his Messengers to man.
§. 9. 7. Much of their work is to oppose the malice of evil spirits that seek our hurt, and to defend us from them: against whom they are engaged under Christ in daily Warr or Conflict, Rev. 12. 7, 9. Psal. 68. 17. & 78. 49. Matth. 4. 11.
§. 10. 8. In this their Ministration they are ordered into different degrees of superiority and inferiority, and are not equal among themselves. 1 Thess. 4. 16. Jude 9. Dan. 10. 13, 20, 21. Eph. 1. 21. Col. 2. 10. Eph. 3. 10. & 6. 12. Col. 1. 16. Zech. 4. 10. Rev. 4, 5. & 5, 6.
§. 11. 9. Angels are employed not only about our bodies, but our souls, by furthering the means of our salvation: They preached the Gospel themselves, (as they delivered the Law) Luke 2. 10, 9. Luke 1. 11, &c. Heb. 2. 2. Gal. 3. 19. Acts 10. 4. Dan. 7. 16. & 8. 15, 16, 17. & 9. 21, 22. Luke 1. 29. & 2. 19. Especially they deliver particular messages, which suppose the sufficiency of the Laws of Christ, and only help to the obedience of it.
§. 12. 10. They are sometime God's instruments to confirm, and warn, and comfort, and excite the soul, and to work upon the mind, and will, and affections: That they do this persuasively, and have as much access and power to do us good, as Satan hath to do us evil, is very clear: Good Angels have as much power and access to the soul, to move to duty, as Devils have to tempt to sin. As God hath sent them oft upon monitory and consolatory messages to his servants in visible shapes, so doth he send them on the like messages invisibly, Judge. 5. 23. Mat. 1. 20. Psal. 104. 4. Luke 22. 43. An Angel from Heaven is sent to strengthen Christ himself in his agony.
§. 13. 11. They persecute and chase the enemies of the Church, and sometimes destroy them: as Psal. 35. 5, 6. 2 Kings 19. 35. Isa. 37. 36. and hinder them from doing hurt, Numb. 22. 24.
§. 14. 12. They are a Convoy for the departing souls of the godly, to bring them to the place of their felicity, Luke 16. 22. though how they do it we cannot understand.
§. 15. 13. They are the attendants of Christ at his coming to judgment, and his Ministers to gather his elect, and s • ver th • wicked from the just, in order to their endless Punishment or Joy: 1 Thess. 4. 16. The Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Arch-angel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up, &c. Matth. 13. 41, 49. The Son of man shall send forth his Angels, and they shall gather out of his Kingdom all offenses or scandals, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. At the end of the world, the Angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire, &c.
§. 16. Direct. 3. Understand our near affinity or relation to the Angels, and how they and we are concerned in each others condition and affairs. As to our Nature our Immortal souls are kin or like unto the Angels, though our Bodies are but like the Brutes. Those souls that are created after the Image of God, in their very Natural Essence (as Rational and Free agents ) besides his Moral Image of sanctity, Gen. 9. 6. may well be said to be like the Angels: He made us little lower than the Angels, Psal. 8. 5. And God hath made us their charge and care; and therefore no doubt hath given them a special Love unto us, to fit them to the due performance of their trust. As Ministers have a special paternal Love to their flocks, and as Christians are to have a special Love to one another to enable and engage them to the duties appointed them by God towards each other; so these excellent Spirits have no doubt a far purer and greater Love, to the Image of God upon the Saints, and to the Saints for the Image and sake of God, than the dearest friends and holiest persons on earth can have. For they are more holy, and they are more perfectly conformed to the mind of God, and they love God himself more perfectly than we, and therefore for his sake do love his people much more perfectly than we. And therefore they are more to be loved by us than any mortals are; both because they are more excellent, pure and amiable, and because they have more Love to us. Moreover the Angels are servants of the same God, and members of the same society which we belong to. They are the Inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem, of which we are heirs: They have possession, and we have title, and shall in time possess it. We are called to much of the same employment with them: we must love the same God, and glorify him by obedience, thanks and praise, and so do they. Therefore they are Ministers for our good, and rejoice in the success of their labors, as the Ministers of Christ on earth do, Heb. 1. 14. There is not a sinner converted, but it is the Angels Joy, Luke 15. 10. which showeth how much they attend that work. We are come to Mount Zion, and unto the City of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of Angels, &c. Heb. 12. 22, 23. 24. They are especially present and attendant on us in our holy Assemblies and services of God; and therefore we are admonished to reverence their presence, and do nothing before them that is sinful or unseemly, 1 Cor. 11. 10. Eccles. 5. 6. The presence of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect Angels, must continually awe us into exact obedience, 1 Tim. 5. 21. With the Church they pry into the mystery of the dispensations of the Spirit to the Church, 1 Pet. 1. 12. And so by the Church, that is, by God's dealings with the Church, is made known the manifold wisdom of God, even to these heavenly principalities and powers, Eph. 3. 10. In conclusion, Christ telleth us that in our state of blessedness we shall be equal to the Angels, Luke 20. 36. and so shall live with them forever.
§. 17. Direct. 4. When your thoughts of Heaven are staggering or strange, and when you are tempted to doubt whether indeed there is such a life of glory for the Saints, it may be a great help to your faith, to think of the world of Angels that already do possess it. That there are such excellent and happy inhabitants of the superior Orbs, besides what Scripture saith, even reason will strongly persuade any rational man: 1. When we consider that Sea, and Land, and Air, and all places of this lower baser part of the world, are replenished with inhabitants suitable to their natures: And therefore that the incomparably more great and excellent Orbs and Regions should all be uninhabited, is irrational to imagine: 2. And as we see the Rational Creatures are made to govern the Brutes in this inferior world, so reason telleth us it is improbable that the higher Reason of the inhabitants of the higher Regions should have no hand in the government of man. And yet God hath further condescended to satisfy us herein, by some unquestionable apparitions of good Angels, and many more of evil spirits, which pu • s the matter past all doubt, that there are inhabitants of the unseen world. And when we know that such there are, it maketh it the more easy to us to believe that such we may be, either numbered with the happy or unhappy Spirits: considering the affinity which there is between the nature of our souls and them: To conquer senseless Saducism is a good step to the conquest of irreligiousness: He that is well persuaded that there are Angels and Spirits, is much better prepared than a Sadducee to b • lieve the immortality of the soul: And because the infinite distance between God and man, is apt to make the thoughts of our approaching his Glory either dubious or very terrible, the remembrance of those myriads of blessed Spirits that dwell now in the presence of that glory, doth much embolden and confirm our thoughts. As he that would be afraid whether he should have access to and acceptance with the King, would be much encouraged if he saw a multitu • e as mean as himself, or not much unlike him, to be familiar attendants on him. I must confess such is my own weakness, that I find a frequent need of remembering the holy Hosts of Saints and Angels, that are with God, to embolden my soul, and make the thoughts of Heaven more familiar and sweet, by abating my strangeness, • mazedness and fears: And thus far to make them the Media (that I say not the Mediators ) of my thoughts, in their approaches to the Most High and Holy God: (Though the remembrance of Christ the true Mediator is my chief encouragement.) Especially when we consider how fervently those holy Spirits do love every holy person upon earth, and so that all those that dwell with God, are dearer friends to us, than our Fathers or Mothers here on earth are (as is briefly proved before,) this will embolden us yet much more.
§. 18. Direct. 5. Make use of the thoughts of the Angelical Hosts, when you would see the Glory and Majesty of Christ: If you think it a small matter that he is the Head of the Church on earth, a handful of people contemned by the Satanical party of the world, yet think what it is to be Head over all things, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, (that is, Gave him a power, dignity and name, greater than any power, dignity or name of men or Angels), and hath put all things under his feet, Ephes. 1. 21, 22, 23. Being made so much better than the Angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they: Of him it is said, Let all the Angels of God worship him, Heb. 1. 4 6. Read the whole Chapter. Our Head is the Lord of all these Hosts.
§ 19. Direct. 6. Make use of the remembrance of the glorious Angels, to acquaint you with the dignity of human nature, and the special dignity of the servants of God, and so to raise up your hearts in thankfulness to your Creator and Redeemer who hath thus advanced you. 1. What a dignity is it that th • se holy Angels should be all Ministring Spirits s • nt for our good? that they should love us, and concern themselves so much for us, as to rejoice in Heaven at our conversion? Lord! What is man; that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou visitest him: For thou hast made him a little lower than the Angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor, Psal. 8. 4. 5. 2. But yet it is a higher declaration of our dignity, that we should in Heaven be equal with them, and so be numbered i • to their society, and join with them everlastingly in the praise of our Creator. 3. And it is yet a greater honor to us, that our Natures are assumed into union of person with the Son of God, and s • advanced above the Angels. For he took not on him the nature of Angels, but the seed of Abraham: N • r hath he put the world to come in subjection to the Angels, Heb. 2. 5, 16. This is the Lord's doing, and it is wondrous in our eyes.
§. 20. Direct. 7. When you would admire the works of God and his government, look specially to the Angels part: If God would be glorified in his works, then especially in the most glorious parts: If he take delight to work by Instruments, and to communicate such excellency and honor to them as may conduce to the honor of the principal cause, we must not overlook their excellency and honor, unless we will deny God the honor which is due to him. As he that will see the excellent workmanship of a Watch or any other Engine, must not overlook the chiefest parts, nor their operation on the rest: So he that will see the excellent order of the works and Government of God, must not overlook the Angels, nor their Offices in the Government, and preservation of the inferior creatures, so far as God hath revealed it unto us. We spoil the Music if we leave out these strings. It is a great part of the glory of the works of God, that all the parts in Heaven and Earth are so admirably conjoined and jointed as they are; and each in their places contribute to the beauty and harmony of the whole.
§. 21. Direct. 8. When you would be apprehensive of the excellency of Love and Humility, and exact obedience t • the will of God, look up to the Angels, and see the luster of all these virtues as they shine in them. How perfectly do they Love God and all his Saints? Even the weakest and meanest of the members of Christ? With what humility do they condescend to minister for the heirs of salvation? How readily and perfectly do they obey their Maker? Though our chiefest pattern is Christ himself, who came nearer to us, and appeared in flesh, to give us the example of all such duties, yet under him the example of Angels is also to be observed, and with pleasure to be imitated. And ask the enemies of Holiness, who urge you with the examples of the Great and Learned, whether they are wiser than all the Angels of God?
§. 22. Direct. 9. When you are tempted to desire any inordinate communion with Angels, as visibly appearing or affecting your senses, or to give them any part of the Office or honor of Jesus Christ, then think how suitable that Office is to your safety and benefit which God hath assigned them, and how much they themselves abhor aspiring or usurpation of the Office or honor of their Lord: And consider how much more suitable to your benefit this spiritual ministration of the Angels is, than if they appeared to us in bodily shapes. In this spiritual communion they act according to their spiritual nature, without deceit: And they serve us without any terrible appearances; and without any danger of drawing us to sensitive gross apprehensions of them, or enticing us to an unmeet adhesion to them▪ or honoring of them: whereas if they appeared to us in visible shapes, we might easily be affrighted, confounded and left in doubt, whether they were good Angels indeed or not. It is our communion with God himself that is our Happiness. And communion with Angels or Saints is desirable but in order unto this: That kind of communion with Angels therefore is the best, which most advanceth us to communion with God: And that reception of his mercy by instruments is best, which least endangereth our inordinate adhesion to the Instruments, and our neglect of God. We know not so well as God, what way is best and safest for us: As it is dangerous desiring to mend his Word by any fancies of our own, which we suppose more fit; so it is dangerous to desire to amend his Government and Providence, and Order, and to think that another way than that which in nature he hath stated and appointed, is more to our benefit. It is dangerous wishing God to go out of his way, and to deal with us, and conduct us in by-ways of our own; in which we are ourselves unskilled, and of which we little know the issue.
§. 23. Direct. 10. When you are apt to be terrified with the fear of Devils, think then of the guard of Angels, and how much greater strength is for you than against you. Though God be our only fundamental security, and our chiefest confidence must be in him, yet experience telleth us how apt we are to look to instruments, and to be affected as second causes do appear to make for us or against us: Therefore when appearing dangers terrify us, appearing or secondary helps should be observed to comfort and encourage us.
§. 24. Direct. 11. Labor to answer the great and holy Love of Angels with such great and holy Love to them, as may help you against your unwillingness to die, and make you long for the company of them whom you so much Love. And when death seemeth terrible to you because the world to come seems strange, remember that you are going to the society of those Angels, that rejoiced in your conversion, and ministered for you here on earth, and are ready to convoy your souls to Christ. Though the thoughts of God and our blessed Mediator should be the only final object to attract our Love, and make us long to be in Heaven, yet under Christ, the Love and company of Saints and Angels must be thought on to further our desire and delight: For even in Heaven God will not so be All to us, as to use no creature for our comfort: Otherwise the glorified humanity of Christ would be no means of our comfort there: And the heavenly Jerusalem would not then have been set out to us by its created excellencies as it is Rev. 21. & 22. Nor would it be any comfort to us in the Kingdom of God, that we shall be with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Luke 13. 28. Matth. 8. 11.
§. 25. Direct. 12. Pray for the protection and help of Angels, as part of the benefits procured for the Saints by Christ: and be thankful for it as a Privilege of believers, excelling all the dignities of the ungodly. And walk with a reverence of their presence; especially in the worshipping of God. It is not fit such a mercy should be undervalued or unthankfully received: Nor that so ordinary a means of our preservation should be overlooked, and not be sought of God by prayer. But the way to keep the Love of Angels, is to keep up the Love of God: And the way to please them, is to please him: For His will is theirs.
§. 26. Direct. 13. In all the Worship you perform to God, remember that you join with the Angels of Heaven, and bear your part to make up the Consort: Do it therefore with that holiness, and reverence, and affection, as remembering not only to whom you speak, but also what companions you have: And let there not be too great a discord either in your hearts or praises. O think with what lively joyful minds they praise their glorious Creator: and how unwearied they are in their most blessed work! And labor to be like them in Love and Praise, that you may come to be equal with them in their Glory, Luke 20. 36.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE ABOUT Matters Ecclesiastical, Wich are not before handled.
By RICHARD BAXTER.
LONDON, Printed, by Robert White, for Nevill Simmons, at the Sign of the Princes Arms in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1673.
READER,
I Have something to say to thee of the number of these Cases, somewhat of the Order, and somewhat of the manner of handling and resolving them. I. That they are so Many is because there are really so many difficulties which all men are not able to resolve: That they are no more, is, partly because I could not remember then anymore that were necessarily to be handled, and I was not willing to increase so great a Book with things unnecessary.
II. As to the Order I have some Reasons for the order of most of them, which would be too tedious to open to you: But some of them are placed out of order, because, 1. I could not remember them in due place. 2. And great haste allowed me not Time to transpose them. If you say that in such a work I should take time, I answer, You are no competent judges, unless you knew me and the rest of my work, and the likelihood that my time will be but short: They that had rather take my Writings with such defects which are the effects of haste, than have none of them, may use them, and the rest are free to despise them and neglect them. Two or three Questions about the Scripture, I would have put nearer the beginning if I could have time; But seeing I cannot, it's easy for you to transpose them in the reading.
III. The resolution of these Cases so much avoideth all the extremes, that I look they should be displeasing to all that vast number of Christians, who involve themselves in the opinions and interests of their several sects as such; and that hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, with respect of persons. But there will be still a certain number of truly Catholic impartial Readers, whose favorable acceptance I confidently prognosticate; and who, being out of the dust and noise and passions of contending sides and parties and their interests, will see a self-evidencing Light in those solutions, which are put off here briefly, without the pomp of formal argumentation, or persuading Oratory. The eternal Light reveal himself to us, by Christ who is the Light of the World, and by the Illumination of the spirit and word of Light; that we may walk in the Light, as the Children of Light, till we come to the World of Glorious Everlasting Light. And what other defect soever our knowledge have, if any man hath knowledge enough to kindle in him the Love of God, the same is known of Him, and therefore is Beloved by Him, and shall be Blessed with and in Him forever, 1 Cor. 8. 1, 2, 3.
CASES OF CONSCIENCE ABOUT Matters Ecclesiastical.
Quest. 1. How to know which is the true Church, among all pretenders, that a Christians Conscience may be quiet in his Relation and Communion?
I HAVE written so much of this already in four Books ( viz. one called, The Safe Religion, another called A Key for Catholics, another called The Visibility of the Church, another called A true Catholic, and the Catholic Church described,) that I shall say now but a little, and yet enough to an impartial considerate Reader.
The terms must first be opened: 1. By a Church is meant a Society of Christians as such. And it is sometimes taken Narrowly, for the Body or Members as distinct from the Head, as the word Kingdom is taken for the Subjects only as distinct from the King; And sometimes more fully and properly for the whole Political Society, as constituted of its Head and Body or the Pars Imperans & pars Subdita.
2. The word Church thus taken, signifieth sometime the Universal Church called Catholic; which consisteth of Christ and his Body Politick, or Mystical; And sometime some Part only of the Universal Church. And so it is taken either for a subordinate Political Part, or for a Community, or a Part considered as Consociate, but not Political; or as many particular Political Churches Agreeing and holding Concord and Communion without any Comon Head, save the Universal Head.
3. Such Political Churches, are either of Divine Constitution and Policy, or only of Human.
2. By Christians, I mean such as Profess the Essentials of the Christian Religion. For we speak of the Church as Visible.
3. By [ True ] may be meant, either Reality of Essence, opposite to that which is not really a Church in this univocal acception; or else Sound and Orthodox, in the Integrals, as opposite to erroneous and defiled with much enormity. And now I thus decide that question.
Prop. 1. The True Catholic Church consisteth of Christ the He • d, and all Christians as his Body, or the Members. As the Kingdom consisteth of the King and his Subjects.
Prop. 2. As all the sincere Heart-Covenanters make up the Church as regenerate, and mystical or invisible, so that all that are Christened, that is, Baptized, and profess Consent to all the Essentials of the Baptismal Covenant, not having Apostatized, nor being by lawful Power Excommunicated, are Christians, and make up the Church as Visible.
Prop. 3. Therefore there is but One Universal Church, because it containeth all Christians; and so leaveth out none to be the matter of another.
Prop. 4. It is not Ignorance or Error about the mere Integrals of Christianity, which maketh them no Christians who hold the Essentials, that is, the Baptismal Covenant.
Prop. 5. That the Baptismal Covenant might be rightly understood and professed, the Churches have still used the Creed as the explication of the Covenant, in point of faith; and taken it for the Symbol of the Christian Belief. And no further profession of faith was or is to be required, as necessary to the Being of Christianity.
Prop. 6. If proud Usurpers or Censurers take on them to excommunicate, or unchristian, or unchurch others, without authority and cause, this maketh them not to be no Christians, or no Churches, that are so used.
Prop. 7. Therefore to know which is the true Catholic or Universal Church is but to know who are Baptized-Professing-Christians.
Prop. 8. The Reformed Churches, the Lutherans, the Abbyssinians, the Copties, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Jacobites, the Georgians, the Maronites, the Greeks, the Muscovites, and the Romanists, do all receive Baptism in all its visible Essentials, and profess all the Essentials of the Christian Religion, though not with the same Integrity.
Prop. 9. He that denieth any one essential part, in itself, is so a Heretic as to be no Christian, nor true member of the Church, if it be justly proved, or notorious; that is, none ought to take him for a Visible Christian, who know the proof of his denying that essential part of Christianity, or to whom it is notorious.
Prop. 10. He that holdeth the Essentials primarily, and with them holdeth some error which by unseen consequence subverteth some Essential point, but holdeth the Essentials so much faster, that he would forsake his error, if he saw the inconsistence, is a Christian notwithstanding? And if the name Heretic be applicable to him, it is but in such a sense, as is consistent with Christianity.
Prop. 11. He that is judged a Heretic and no Christian justly by others, must be lawfully cited, and heard plead his Cause, and be judged upon sufficient proof, and not unheard, or upon rash presumption.
Prop. 12. Christianity and Heresy being personal qualities, and nowhere found but in individuals, nor one man guilty of another's error, it followeth that it is single persons upon personal guilt that must be judged.
Prop. 13. Any man may judge another to be a Christian or Heretic, by a private judgment of discerning, or the reason which guideth all human actions: But only Church Rulers may judge him by that public Judgment, which giveth or denieth him his public privileges and Communion.
Prop. 14. If by notorious injustice Church Rulers condemn Christians as no Christians, though they may thereby deny them communion with those public Assemblies, which they govern, yet do they not oblige the people to take such injured persons for no Christians. Else they might oblige all to believe a lie, to consent to malicious injuries, and might disoblige the people from Truth, Righteousness and Charity.
Prop. 15. There is no one Natural or Collective Head and Governor of all the Churches in the world (the Universal Church) but Jesus Christ; And therefore there is none that by such Governing power, can excommunicate any man out of the Universal Church: And such Usurpation would be Treason against Christ, whose Prerogative it is.
Prop. 16. Yet he that deserveth to be excommunicated from one Church, deserveth to be excommunicated by and from all, if it be upon a Cause common to all; or that nullifieth his Christianity.
Prop. 17. And where neighbor Churches are Consociate and live in Order and Concord, he that is orderly excommunicate from one Church, and it be notified to the rest, should not be taken into the communion of any of the rest, till he be cleared, or become fit for their communion. But this obligation ariseth but from the Concord of Consociate Churches, and not from the Power of one over the rest: And it cannot reach all the world, where the person cometh not, nor was ever known; but only to those who through neighbourhood are capable of just notice, and of giving or denying communion to that person.
Prop. 18. From all this it is clear, that it is not either Papists alone, or Greeks alone, or Protestants alone, or any party of Christians, who are the Universal Church, seeing that Church containeth All Christians. And that reviling others (yea, whole Nations) as Heretics, Schismatics, and no Christians, or Churches, will no more prove the Revilers to be the only Church or Christians, than Want of Love will prove a man to be one of Christ's Disciples, who by Love are known to all men to be his.
Prop. 19. It is therefore the shameful language of distracted men, to cry out against other Christian Nations, It is not you, but we that are the Catholic or Universal Church. And our shameful Controversy, which of them is the Catholic, is no wiser than to question, Whether it be this house or that which is the Street? Or this Street or that which is the City? Or whether it be the Kitchen, or the Hall, or the Parlour which is the House? Or the Hand, or Foot, or Eye which is the Man? O when will God bring distracting Teachers to Repentance, and distracted people to their wits!
Prop. 20. There is great difference in the Purity or soundness, of the several parts of the Universal Church; some being more Orthodox and holy, and some de •• led with so many Errors and sins, as to make it difficult to discern whether they do not deny the very essentials.
Prop. 21. The Reformed Churches are the soundest and purest that we know in the world, and therefore their privilege exceeding great, though they are not all the Universal Church.
Prop. 22. Particular Churches consisting of Lawful Pastors and Christian people, associated for personal Communion in Worship and holy living are societies or true Churches of Christ • institution, and the chief parts of the Universal Church: As Cities and Corporations are of the Kingdom?
Prop. 23. There are thousands of these in the world, and a man may be saved in one, as well as in another: Only the purest give him the best advantages for his salvation; And therefore should be preferred by all that are wise and love their souls, so far as they are free to choose their Communion.
Prop. 24. The case then being easily resolved [which is the true Church]? viz. All Christians as Christians are the Catholic or Universal Church? and All Congregations afore described, of true Pastors and Christians being particular true Churches, differing only in degrees of purity, he is to be suspected as a designing deceiver and troubler of the world, that pretending to be a Learned man and a Teacher, doth still perplex the Consciences of the ignorant with this frivolous question, and would muddy and obscure this clear state of the case, lest the people should rest in the discerned truth.
Prop. 25. The Papal Church as such, being no true Church of Christ's institution (of which by itself anon) it followeth that a Papist as a Papist is no member of the Church of Christ, that is, no Christian. But yet whether the same person may not be a Papist and a Christian, and so a member of the Catholic Church, we shall anon inquire.
Prop. 26. There are many things which go to make up the fitness and desireablness of that particular Church, which we should prefer or choose for our ordinary personal Communion: As, 1. That it be the Church of that place where we dwell; If the place be so happy as to have no divided Churches, that it be the sole Church there; However that it be so near •• to be fit for our Communion. 2. That it be a Church which holdeth Communion with other neighbor Churches, and is not singular or divided from them; Or at least not from the Generality of the Churches of Christ; nor differeth in any great matters from those that are most pure. 3. That it be under the Reputation of soundness with the other Churches aforesaid, and not under the scandal of Heresy, Schism or gross corruption among those that live about. 4. That it be under the countenance and encouraging favor of the Christian Magistrate. 5. That it be the same Church of which the rest of the family which we are of, be members; That Husband and Wife, Parents and Children, Masters and Servants be not of several Churches. 6. That the Pastors be able Teachers, prudent Guides and of holy lives, and diligent in their office. 7. That the Pastors be regularly called to their office. 8. That the members be intelligent, peaceable and of holy, temperate and righteous lives. But when all these cannot be had together, we must choose that Church which hath those qualifications which are most needful, and bear with tolerable imperfections. The most needful are the first, second and sixth of these qualifications.
Prop. 27. He that is free, should choose that Church which is the fittest for his own edification; that is, The best Pastors, people and administrations.
Prop. 28. A man's freedom is many ways restrained herein. As, 1. When it will tend to a greater public hurt, by disorder, ill example, division, discouragement, &c. 2. When superiors forbid it; As Husbands, Parents, Masters, Magistrates. 3. By some scandal. 4. By the distance or inconvenience of our dwelling. 5. By differences of Judgment, and other causes of contention in the said Churches: And many other ways.
Prop. 29. A free man who removeth from one Church to another for his edification, is not therefore a Separatist or Schismatic: But it must not be done by one that is not free, but upon such necessity as freeth him.
Prop. 30. It is schism or sinful separation to separate from, 1. A true Church as no true Church; 2. From Lawful Worship and Communion, as unlawful; But of this more in its proper place.
Quest. 2. Whether we must esteem the Church of Rome a true Church? And in what sense some Divines affirm it, and some deny it.
WAnt of some easy distinguishing hath made that seem a Controversy here, which is so plain, that it can hardly be any at all to Protestants, if the question had been but truly stated.
Remember therefore that by a Church is meant, not a mere company of Christians, any how related to each other; but a society consisting of an Ecclesiastical Head and Body, such as we call a Political society. 2. And that we speak not of an Accidental Head (such as the King is, because he Governeth them suo modo by the sword): for that is not an Essential Constitutive Part: But of a Constit • tive Ecclesiastical Head and body. 3. That the question is not, Whether the Church of Rome, be a Part of the Church, but whether it be a true Church. And now I answer;
1. To affirm the Church of Rome to be [ the Catholic or Universal Church, ] is more than to affirm it to be [ a true Catholic Church ] that is, a true part of the Catholic Church; and is as much as to say that it is the whole and only Church, and that there is no other; which is odious falsehood and usurpation, and slander against all other Churches.
2. The Church of Rome is so called in the Question, as it is a Policy or Church in a general sense; And the meaning of the Question is, Whether it be a Divine or a Human or Diabolical Policy; A Lawful Church.
3. The Church of Rome is considered, 1. Formally, as a Church or Policy, 2. Materially as the singular persons are qualified. It is the Form that denominateth. Therefore the Question must be taken of the Roman Policy, or of the Church of Rome as such; that is, As it is one Ruler pretending to be the Vicarious constitutive Governing Head of all Christ's Visible Church on earth, and the Body which owneth him in this Relation.
4. Therefore I conclude (and so do all Protestants) that this Policy or Church of Rome is no true Church of Christ's Instituting or approbation, but a Human sinful Policy formed by the Temptation of Satan the Prince of Pride, deceit and darkness. The proof of which is the matter of whole loads of Protestant Writings. And indeed the proof of their Policy being incumbent on themselves, they fail in it, and are still fain to fly to pretended false Tradition for proof, in which the Sophisters know that either they must be Judges themselves, and it must go for truth because they say it; or else that if they can carry the Controversy into a Thicket or Wood of Fathers and Church History, at least they can confound the ignorant, and evade themselves. Of this see my Dispute. with Johnson, and my Key for Catholics, &c.
5. The Bishop of the English Papists, Smith called Bishop of Chalcedon in his Survey, cap. 5. saith, [ To us it sufficeth that the Bishop of Rome is St. Peters successor; and this all the Fathers testify, and all the Catholic Church believeth: But whether it be jure Divino or humano is no point of faith. ] The like hath Davenport called Fransc. à Sancta Clarâ more largely. By this let the Reader judge whether we need more words to prove their Church to be such as Christ never instituted, when the belief of their Divine right, is no part of their own faith.
6. If the Church of Rome in its formal Policy be but of human institution, it is 1. Unnecessary to salvation; 2. Unlawful: Because they that first instituted it had no Authority so to do, and were Usurpers. For either the makers of it were themselves a Church or no Church. If no Church, they could not lawfully make a Church. Infidels or Heathens are not to be our Church-makers; If a Church, then there was a Church before the Church of Rome, and that of another form. And if that former form were of Christ's institution, man might not change it: If not, who made that form? And so on.
7. Our Divines therefore that say that the Church of Rome is a True Church, though corrupt, do not speak of it formally as to the Papal Policy or Headship, but materially, 1. That all Papists that are visible Christians are visible Parts of the universal Church. 2. That their particular Congregations considered abstractedly from the Roman Headship may be true particular Churches, though corrupt: which yet being the only difficulty shall be the matter of our next enquiry.
Quest. 3. Whether we must take the Romish Clergy for true Ministers of Christ? And whether their Baptism, and Ordination be nullities?
I Join these two distinct Questions together for brevity.
1. As True signifieth Regularly called, so they are commonly Irregular and not True Ministers. But as True signifieth Real opposed to a nullity, so it is now to be further considered.
2. The doubt lieth either of the sufficiency of his Call, or of somewhat that is supposed to destroy it by contradiction or redundancy, 1. Whether he want anything of absolute necessity to the office, who is called in the Church of Rome, or 2. Whether there be anything in his office or entrance, which nullifieth or invalidateth that which else would be sufficient?
For the first doubt, it is not agreed on among Papists or Protestants what is of necessity to the Being of the office. Some think real Godliness in the person is necessary; but most think not: some think that Visible, that is, seeming professed Godliness, not disproved by mortal sin is necessary; and some think not: some think the people's Election is necessary, and that ordination is but ad been esse; and some think ordination necessary ad esse, and Election ad been esse, or not at all: And some think Both necessary ad esse, and some Neither: Some think the Election of the people is necessary, and some think only their Consent is necessary, though after Election by others; Some think it must be the Consent of all the flock or near all; And some only of the Major part; And some of the Better part, though the Minor. Some think the Ordination of a Diocesan Bishop necessary ad esse, and some not. Some think the Truth of the Ordainers Calling, or power, to be necessary to the validity of his Ordination, and some not: some think the number of two or three or more Ordainers to be necessary, and some not: some think it necessary to the validity of the Ministry that it come down from the Apostles by an uninterrupted succession of truly Ordained Bishops, and some think not: some few think that the Magistrates command or license is necessary, and only it, and most deny both. Johnson, alias, Terret, the Papist, in his Disputation against me, maintaineth that Consecration is not necessary ad esse, nor any one way of Election, by these or those, but only the Churches reception upon such an Election as may give them notice, and which may be different, according to different times, places and other circumstances.
In the midst of these confusions What is to be held? I have opened the Case as fully and plainly as I can, in my 2 Dispute. of Ch. Gov. about Ordination, to which I must refer the Reader: Only here briefly touching upon the sum.
1. There are some personal qualifications necessary to the being of the office (of which anon) and some only to the well-being.
2. The efficient conveying cause of Power or office, is God's will signified in his own established Law; in which he determineth that such persons so called shall receive from him such Power and be obliged to such office-administrations.
3. Any Providence of God which infallibly or satisfactorily notifieth to the Church, who these persons are, that receive such Power from God, doth oblige them to submit to them as so empowered.
4. God's ordinary established way of Regular designation of the person, is by the Churches consent and the Senior Pastors ordination.
5. By these Actions they are not the proper Donors or efficients of the Power, or office given, but the Consent of the people and the Ordination do determine of the Recipient, and so are Regularly causa fine qua non of his Reception. And the Ordination is moreover a solemn Investiture, in the office, as when a servant is sent by delivering a Key to deliver possession of an House, by his Masters consent, to him that had before the owners Grant; And so it ceremoniously entereth him into visible possession; Like the solemnizing of Marriage, or the listing of a Soldier, &c.
6. The people's Consent (before or after) is not only by Institution, but naturally necessary, that a man become a Pastor to those persons (for no man can Learn, obey, &c. without consent): But it is not of necessity to the Being of the Ministry in General, or in the first instant: A man without it may be authorized as a Minister to go Preach the Gospel for Conversion, and Baptize and gather Churches, though not to be their stated Pastor.
7. When death, distance, corruption, heresy or malignity of Pastors within reach, maketh it impossible to have Ordination, God's choice of the person may be notified without it; as by, 1. Emi • ent Qualifications, 2. The people's real necessities, 3. And the removal of Impedimens • , and a concurrence of inviting opportunities and advantages; 4. And sometimes the people's desire. 5. And sometimes the Magistrates commission or consent; which though not absolutely necessary in themselves; yet may serve to design the person and invest him, when the ordinary way faileth; which is all that is left to Man to do, to the conveyance of the power.
The case being thus stated, as to what is necessary to give the power or office, we may next inquire whether any Papists Priest have such Power, by such means.
And, 1. We have sufficient reason to judge that many of them have all the personal qualifications which are essentially necessary. 2. Many among them have the consent of a sober Christian people (of which more anon.) And Mr. Jacob who was against Bishops and their Ordination, proveth at large, that by Election or Consent of the people alone, a man may be a true Pastor, either without such Ordination, or notwithstanding both the vanity and error of it. 3. Many of them have Ordination by able and sober Bishops: if that also be necessary. 4. In that Ordination, they are invested in all that is essential to the Pastoral Office.
So that I see not that their Calling is a Nullity through defect of anything of absolute necessity to its being and validity: though it be many ways irregular and sinful.
II. We are next therefore to inquire whether any Contradicting additions make null that which else would be no nullity. And this is the great difficulty. For as we accuse not their Religion for having too little, but too much, so this is our chief doubt about their Ministry.
And. 1. It is doubted, as to the office itself, whether a Mass-Priest be a true Minister, as having another work to do, even to make his Maker, and to give Christ's real flesh with his hands to the people; and to preach the unsound Doctrines of their Church: And these seem to be essential parts of his function.
The case is very bad and sad: But that which I said about the Heresies or Errors which may consist with Christianity, when they overthrow it but by an undiscerned consequence, must be here also considered. The prime part of their office is that (as to the essentials, ) which Christ ordained: This they receive, and to this they sew a filthy rag of man's devising: But if they knew this to be inconsistent with Christianity or the Essentials of the Ministry, we may well presume (of many of them) they would not receive it. Therefore as an error which consequentially contradicteth some essential article of faith, nullifieth not his Christianity who first and fastest holdeth the faith, and would cast away the error if he saw the contradiction, (as Davenant, Morton and Hall have shown Epist. Conciliat. ) So is it to be said as to practical error in the present case. They are their grievous errors and sins, but for ought I see, do not nullify their office to the Church. As a Mass-Priest, he is no Minister of Christ (As an Anabaptist is not as a Rebaptizer, nor a Separatist as a Separater, nor an Antinomian, or any erroneous person as a Preacher of that error;) But as a Christian Pastor ordained to preach the Gospel, baptize, administer the Lord's Supper, pray, praise God, guide the Church, he may be.
The same answer serveth to the Objection as it extendeth to the erroneous Doctrines which they preach, which are but by Consequence against the Essentials of Religion.
2. But it is a greater doubt, Whether any power of the Ministry can be conveyed by Antichrist, or from him? And whether God will own any of Antichrists administrations: Therefore seeing they profess themselves to have no office but what they receive from the Pope, and Christ disowning his usurpation, the same man cannot be the Minister of Christ and Antichrist; as the same man cannot be an officer in the Kings Army and his Enemies.
But this will have the same solution as the former. If this Antichrist were the open professed enemy to Christ, then all this were true: Because their corrupt additions would not by dark consequences, but so directly contain the denial of Christianity, or the true Ministry, that it were not possible to hold both. But (as our Divines commonly note) Antichrist is to sit in the Temple of God, and the Popes Treason is under pretence of the greatest service and friendship to Christ, making himself his Vicar General without his Commission. So that they that receive power from him, do think him to be Christ's Vicar indeed, and so renounce not Christ, but profess their first and chief relation to be to him, and dependence on him, and that they would have nothing to do with the Pope, if they knew him to be against Christ. And some of them write, that the