Examination.

I will not detract from the Religious houswifery of such a Queen of famous memory, but wee know her Reformation is talkt on now in a politick reverence, and we are commen­ded back into her times, only to hinder us from going forward in our own; for I am sure till this engine was con­trived, she was not such a Saint in the Prelates Calender.

For the Doctrine established from her times, though it bee not the businesse so much of our Reformation as the 39 Ar­ticles where it dwels, yet this wee know; either the light of the Doctrine was very dimme, or the eyes of our Bishops and Iesuites, for one of them would needs spie Arminianisme, and Bishop Montague, Frans. a Sancta Cla­ra. the Iesuite Popery, and some will make it a Probleme yet, whether their glosse may accuse the Article or the Article [Page 3] their glosse; such Cassanders found so much latitude in our Doctrine, as to attempt a reconciliation of their Articles and ours together.

Examination.

These are but subtle Apologies and distinctions for the superstitions in the Church, and to take off the eyes of our Reformers, and entertain them into changeable discourses; as if they were faults, and no faults; and those that were, were irreformable, and could not be made better: and thus, while the errours of our Church should call them to reform; your difficulties and impossibilities would call them off; you say, it were a miracle to have none; this is such Sophi­stry as the malignity of your Clergy would cast in the way of our Reformation: and for the Innovations, they have been made by your most learned, the immediate issues of our Church; our Rubrick and Practice have been called to witnesse it; therefore goe not on to perswade such a funda­mentall integrity, and essentiall purity; you know in what a poore case that Church was, when shee thought her selfe rich and full and glorious, he is no lesse an enemy to the patient, than to the Physitian that would perswade him that all is well; or at least incurable.

Examination.

If your thorough Reformation in this page be compared with your 14. 15. 16. 17. pages, where you have bound it up with so many restrictions; the falacy will soone appear: You would smoothly taxe some brethren for clamor and noise in their desires after Reformation: indeed if you could perswade the Prophets of God into silence or slight endeavours; halfe your designe were finished: but they have a fire which flames into stronger expressions; if the zeale of the Prophets and Martyrs had given no further testimony to the truth then their own bosoms, we had not had at this day such a cloud of witnesses; you know these loud im­portunities awakens and hastens men into that holy business you would so faine retard: if you think it your vertue that you can be silent in the midst of our importunities, and loud cryes after Reformation, I am sure 'tis your policy too, for should you make too great a noise after it, you might be heard to Oxford; and perhaps you are loath to speak out till you see further.

Examination.

You write of the Reformation of a Church like Bodin, not like Bucer; you make it a work of Policy, not of Piety, of Reason not Divinity: such Counsellors had Ieroboam and Iehu, and they made a Church as unhappy as a Kingdome miserable. This moderation and qualification you speak of, is not so consistent with spirituall essences and operations; if the spirit of God should not work in the soules of unre­generate, but expect an answerable compliancy first, who should be sanctified? if God had expected any such con­gruity [Page 5] in our businesse of salvation, we had yet been unre­deemed. To speak closer, what Qualification did Queen E­lizabeth expect, when she received a Kingdom warme from Popery? what Qualification did Henry the eigth expect, in his attempt against the Supremacy, when all his King­dom was so universally conjured to Rome? such moderation and qualification is no other but a discreet taking so much as will serve your turne: to the Law (saith the Scripture) and to the testimony; Moses wrought according to the Pat­terne, so Solomon too: godly Bucer makes it his work to per­swade Bucer in l. [...] de Regno Christi. King Edward to build up a perfect Church, and he prophesies sadly, that he was afraid Popery would succeed, because the Kingdom of England was so averse to the King­dom of Christ, and we know the Marian dayes followed; me thinks we are too like his prophecy, and our Marian times approach too fast.

Examination.

I had not known your meaning by the lawfull Calling you name, but that you expound it in the lines that follow to be the Calling of the supreme Magistrate, as if no calling were warrantable at first to premove a reformation but that; but you must take notice, there is an inward and outward Call; the inward is a speciall excitation from the spirit of God, and such a Call is warrantable to be active: I am sure it hath been sufficient alwayes to set holy men on work. Another Call is outward, and that is either of Place and Magistracy, or publike relation: now though Magistracy be [Page 6] of publike relation, yet when I speak specifically of publike relation, I mean that in which every man stands bound in to God and his Countrey; now all these callings are Com­mission enough, either to meddle as Christianly inspired, or Christianly engaged: in ordinary transactions: I know the ordinary dispensation is to be resorted to; but the bu­sinesse of Reformation, as it is extraordinary, so God gives extraordinary conjunctures of times and circumstances, and extraordinary concurrencies, and extraordinary incitations. In the building of the Temple you shall see in Ezra and Nehemiah such workings of God; when the people were ga­thered [...] 8, 1. together as one man, they spake to Ezra the Scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses; here the people put one even Ezra to his duty.

And whereas you say, Reformation is of those duties that are impaled in for some particular persons; I answer, this were a grand designe, if you could heigthen Reforma­tion into such a holy Prodigy, as you would of late the Church into the Prelacy and Clergy, and excluded the Laity, as a prophane crew, and to be taught their distance. Luther will tell you this is one of the Romish engines to make such an holy businesse like the mountaine in the Law, not to be toucht or approached to, but by Moses alone; Thus you might take off many good workmen, and honest labourers in the Vineyard, whom Christ hath hired and sent in, and to whom he hath held out his Seepter, as Ahasuerus to Esther.

And whereas you tell us, that the supreme Power alone hath the lawfull Calling, as appears in the Kings of Iudah; I answer, that if so, the Parliament were now in a dangerous Praemunire, for you know that is suspended from us, and yet our state goes on in their work, enabled (as they say) by their fundamentall power, and constitution; I shall not here dispute the e [...]ations of this power in ordi­nances, [Page 7] votes, and orders, they have made it appeare in their owne Declarations; only this, I read of an ordinance made by the Nobles and Elders of Israel, those Lords and Com­mons, That whosoever would not come, according to the Counsell Ezra 10, 8, which was taken for Reformation, all his substance should bee forfeited, here is no King of Iudahs hand, nor a Cyrus King of Persia's, but an ordinance of their own to their own peo­ple, only they have King Cyru's writ for their first assem­bling and consulting. Had Christ and his Apostles waited in their Reformation for the consent of the Roman Magi­strate, the supreme power, they had not made that holy ex­pedition they did. Had Luther and Zuinglius and Oecolam­padius staied for the Emperours Reformation, they had not shed halfe that light in the German Hemisphere. There was a time when God took part of the spirit of Moses and put it upon the Elders.

Examination.

Still you drive on your design through many plausible in­sinuations; you would keep private men doing, but still doing in their own circle: I confesse I would not improve their in­terest too high, nor too soon, for the early settings forth of private men is apt to exceed into a tumultuary motion; yet I would not put them so far behind, as they should lie like the lame and the diseased at the Poole of Bethesda, wayting till a su­pream power came down amongst them: there are many publick engagements which they are capable on, and which providence will often guide them to, as in finding out wayes of facilitation, and advancement for the businesse: besides some other arcana and secret preparations, we see every thing [Page 8] naturally is spirited with an instinct of ayding the whole; water and ayre will part with their own interests to serve the universall, in the danger of a vacuity; the very Romans by a morall principle would contend to be first in the service of their Countrey; and it remaines as a crime upon record, that Gilead abode beyond Iordan, and that Dan remained in ships, and Ashur abode in his breaches, that is, that they would sit downe▪ circled with their own interests and affaires.

And though you would put private men upon such duties here as are godly and commendable, the policy is to keep them exercised in one good duty, that they should not ad­vance another; and thus you would cunningly make one piece of Divinity betray another, and make the friends of the Reformation do it a discourtesie in ignorance.

Examination.

I wonder you should here expresse an indulgence which is not allowable, and the memory of the Parliament will be honourable for that; they knew so much Divinity as taught them not to value their offence, and to proclaime to them both in Ireland and England an irreconcileable war; this carefulnesse and tendernesse you plead for, was the first principle which embased our Church so farre as to take up their Altars and Ceremonies to avoid offence. Saint Paul was of another spirit, who forbore not a Disciple and Apo­ple, When I saw, sayes he, that they walked not uprightly, accor­ding to the truth of the Gospel.

You doe much mistake the Divinity of Christ in matter of offence, who never forbore to preach or publish any ne­cessary truth; nay, when his Disciples were scandalized and said this is an hard saying, doth this offend you? sayes he, what and if, &c. he goes on and pursues the offence, till they left [...] 6. 60. 61. [Page 9] him, and his Doctrine too, and for the Papists, they are much of the relation and constitution that the Scribes and Phari­sees were; not without, as you say, nor within; and yet fee if you can finde our Saviour or his Apostles letting out them­selves into your restrictions and moderations and cautions; those truths which are essentially, universally, alwayes, and at all times holy, ought not to be measured by the umbrage and scandall of the Adversary; indeed in things meerly civill or indifferent, our use and liberty may appeare more, but for such truths as our Reformation brings, they will be alwayes an offence to the Adversary; We preach Christ, sayes the Apostle unto the Jewes a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishnesse; and yet the Apostle preaches, and layes these blocks and this rock of offence in the way too.

Examination.

He that looks abroad, shall soone have his sight termina­ted but the more he goes on, the more hee sees, and that which closed his prospect, opens then into new discoveries; if you see no perfect Reformation as you stand, doe not therefore say there is none, they that stand higher, and on a holier Mountaine perhaps see further, you that stand in the Horizon of Prelacy cannot see much beyond it; corruption is deceit full, and makes us like Adam, see all generations in our selves; because we will not be perfectly reformed, let us not argue our Judgements into a beliefe that we cannot, let us think it as possible to be the best, as easie to be the worst; let us not think that a Plato's Common-wealth, or a Moores Vtopia, which for ought wee know, is reall and existent; There is under the Gospel, a Royal Priesthood, an holy Nation a peculiar People; and certainly had former Ages lived to see but the discoveries of later times, they would have ad­mired [Page 10] their owne ignorance and our happinesse.

Examination.

If wee had no more light than what you insinuate were seen from the Fathers, why doe we see more and more clear­ly and further? hee that sees farre must either have a good sight or a cleare light, and sure in this age we have both, those errors which our Fathers saw for dimme truths, we see for heresies; so surely both our eyes and our light are better; for the light which our Fathers have in their lamps can discover but so much to us, as it did to them; and we know our discoveries are such, as we are able to see the shadow which followed them, even that mystery which was work­ing in their dayes, both in Prelacy and Ceremony, who will deny but that the cloud of Antichristianisme was thick in their times, and then the light could not be so glorious as now, when these clouds grow thinner, and more attenuated by the Preaching of the Gospel, the Gospel doth work and wind its beames into the world according to the Propheti­call seasons for Revelation, many Propheticall truths were sealed up and those not unsealed but successively, and as our Revel. generations after, may have a starre rising to them, which we have not, so we may have beames and radiations and shootings Act. 3. 36. which our Fathers had not. The Apostles had not all their truths and light revealed at once, some early, some late, some not till the Holy Ghost was bestowed: Revelations are graduall, and the vaile is not taken off at once, nor in one Age: wee honour the Fathers as men in their Generations famous, their light was glorious in its degree and quality but they had not all the degrees attainable; they had a light for their own [Page 11] times, and we for ours; and who cannot think we are rising into that Age, where in God shall poure his spirit upon all flesh; and wherein the light of the Moone shall be as the light of the Sun, and the light of the Sun as the light of seven dayes.

But we see the policy of commending the Fathers light to our Generation for could you prevaile with us to set our Di­als by that, you then might reform our Church by the Canter­burian gnomen, and so set us back to a falsly-reputed Pri­mitive Reformation.

Examination.

That it may appear I look not onely at the worst of the Sermon, there are excellent truths in it, and it is pitie they are not better situated, I could alwayes wish to see a Dia­mond set in Gold.

These are good Positions, and in their Pages not with­out their enamill of wit, yet there is a Policy to write faire in one leafe, though you make a blot in another, but I cannot let these passe without some observation;

First for the Qualification, I dare say never age afforded more eminent in this Kingdom, their Calling lawfull, their Pietie exemplary, their knowledge radiant, their courage expe­rienced thorow a legion of difficulties; their prudence in the conduct of a businesse, though opposed with the Policy and Malignity of a grand and potent Enemy;

And for the decent buriall of Ceremonies, and superstitions of the fathers, they shall have a Parliament of Senators, and an Assembly of Divines to lay them in their Grave, and I dare say, a godly Congregation in the Kingdom to sing a Psalm at their Funeralls; and will not this be a very decent buriall?

And for the honourable reservation to the Reformers and their memories, our Divines and Reformers now have ever made re­sorts [Page 12] and appeals to the truths they delivered; and in those times when Beza, and Calvin, and P. Martyr were set lowest; till the Master of the feast came lately and bid them sit up higher; a Caietan and Bellarmine, and a Councell of Trent, I am sure, had more honour from the Divinitie of the other year, or your times, so farre we admire the Reformers, as to love their Truths, and to pitty their errors.

But I will not say much, Nimis remedies ir­ritantur de­licta tacit. [...]. errors may be more provoked than remedied with overhandling; let us be wise in the Colours of good and evill, Plu es a­micos quam sunt arb­tratur, Plin lib. 2. Epist, though it be an honest, yet it is a dangerous mistake to think too many our Friends, and too few our Enemies.