An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry, Treatise · Part 3
AND now we humbly lay these Petitions at your feet, and beseech you (not for our own ease, or honour, or wealth, but) for the Souls of many Hundred thousands of ignorant, sensual, impenitent sinners, that you who call your selves their Pastors, and the Fathers of the Church, will not deny them the bread of life. We beseech you for the Souls which are ready to appear before their Judg, and to receive their final doom, and are lost for ever, if they be not presently recovered! Their lives are going! Time will not stay while you are waiting for advantages to attain your ends! They are posting into another world! O let them know whither they are going before they are there! And feed not your anger, envy, or interests, at so dear a rate, as the damnation of so many! If you believe that if the Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost, and that men cannot love, desire or seek what they know not, deny not poor souls the means of knowledge. If you yet believe that ignorance and sin is not so common as we think, or that the silly, dry and dead discourses or sayings over of some broken Notes, which is the food of too many Churches, is enough to cure them; we beseech you come out of your Palaces a while, and dwell in some Countrey-Village, and be familiar with the people, and confer with all the poor of the Parishes, as we have done, that you may not see many Hundred thousands damned, by your means, and have nothing to say when it is too late, but a non putarem. As ever you believe there is a Heaven to be obtained, hinder not Souls from entering in, if you will not help them: Strive not for a title to the Keys, that you may lock the doors, and neither enter your selves, nor suffer them that would to enter. If you believe there is a Hell, have some pity on Souls, and tye not their hands who desire to save them. If you believe not the Gospel, confess it, and deal plainly with the world. If you do believe it, forbid us not to preach it, till you have made our labours needless by better supplies. We beseech you remember the price that was paid, the blood that was shed by Christ for Souls, and sell them not now for a thing of nought, and make not merchandize of them for your honour, interest, or passions. Remember that you, and we, and they, are ready to lye down in rottenness and dust, and our Souls to appear before our Judg! And where then will be your wealth, and ease, and greatness! And how will these things appear in the review, when you shall stand in that more clear convincing light? Fall not on the corner-stone that you should build upon, lest you be broken; and strive not against it, lest it fall on you, and grind you to powder. Who will set the bryars and thorns against him in battel? Will he not go through them, and burn them up together? Remember that our God is a consuming fire. Though (as Paul once) you have verily thought that you ought to do many things which are contrary to the Gospel and work of the Lord Jesus, be warned in time, and do so no more. O that God would make them sensible by repentance who are truly guilty, how many thousand persons damnation is like to be charged upon them, for what they have already done in above seventeen years, hindering so many faithful Ministers of Christ to labour the saving of their Souls.
Right Reverend Lords! though we are your Petitioners for the sake of poor Souls, and of the Church and Gospel, and for the sake of Christian Love and Peace, and for the sake of Christ who valueth these; yet are we not your flatterers. Had we not seen in history and experience, especially in the numerous Roman Clergy, how far interest and self-love can blind men, and bring both Learning, Reason and pretences of Religion into their service, it would be a wonder to us, that humane nature could be guilty of your course, and that in the face of such dreadful judgments as have lately been upon us! That when Gods displeasure had afflicted your selves (or some of you) for many years, you should come out of the fire so unrefined, as to use the Gospel and Ministers of Christ much worse than your Predecessors did before you! and shew that you have learnt so little by all Gods judgments on you, and on the land, as to forget what God did, and what your selves did, while you remember only what the Instruments of his wrath did! Nay under pretence of remembring your afflicters, your wrath burneth implacably against the innocent, that never hurt you, nor had the hundredth part so great a hand in your afflictions as you had your selves. Wonderful! that in the very time while the Plague was devouring, and souls crouding out of time into eternity, and each man a terror to another, and about a hundred thousand dead in one City, you should be a terror to your surviving brethren, and study how to stop the mouths of those that would but help to prepare poor souls for so great a change! That when such dreadful flames have followed such Wars and wasting Plagues, yet nothing moveth you to see so great and grievous sins▪ as the silencing so many hundred Ministers, and the starving so many hundred thousand souls, that never deserved evil at your hands! That the instances of the obduration of Pharoah, and the Pharisees, with the consequents, make you not afraid, lest the wrath should come upon you to the uttermost, while you please not God, and are contrary to all men, forbidding Christs labourers to gather in his harvest, and to preach to the ignorant and impenitent that they might be saved! 1 Thess. 2. 15. That you are no more sensible of the foretold tenor of Christs final doom on them that did not feed, cloath and visit the least of his servants; but think that you please him by reproaching those whom he calleth his Brethren; and think still that you do God service, when you do so much against his servants, and against the peoples souls! Wonderful! when Christ had so plainly rebuked his Disciples for striuing who should be the greatest, and forbidden them to Lord it over his Heritage, and told them the necessity that they become as little children, and the servants of all; that yet the pomp and vanities of this world, and an uncharitable mind, can make the very name of Obedience to your selves, seem a sufficient pretence for the lamentable dissipations and confusions of the Churches of true believers! That ever you can preach for Loving your neighbours as your selves, and not feel the convictions and sentence of your Consciences for what you have already done! For my own part I have little sense of any of your injuries to my self! Nor am I unthankful for that respect of my Governours, which would have advanced me to your degree of honour. But, I must profess, if it were the last word that I should speak in the world, that I had rather be the basest scavinger, yea and suffer many deaths, than be found at the Judgment-seat of Christ, in the place, and under the guilt of those of you who have done what is done against the Gospel and Church of Christ among us in this Land.
I am not so foolish as not to know that all this talk is grievous to you, and not the way to my ease, or honour with you, nor to procure favour in your eyes: But if in such a day, and in such a case we should all be silent, and none so much as call you to repentance, nor plead the Cause of an injured Saviour, and deserted souls, we should partake of the crimes which we are lamenting; and not only Gildas and Salvianus, and such like, but all the Prophets and Apostles would condemn us.
And if all that is here said have no other effect, than to increase your indignation and our sufferings: Judg O posterity! Judg all disinteressed impartial men, between these Reverend Lords and us; whether the Petitions here presented to them, be selfish, or unreasonable, or such as should be rejected at so dear a rate as our lamentable divisions and Church-distractions come to! yea Christ, whose cause and interest we plead, will certainly and shortly judge; before whom their worldly grandeur and dignities will be insignificant, and wrathful reproaches will not prove the innocent criminal, nor justifie them that condemn the just, or that will not understand the will and interest of their Lord. Even so, Come Lord Jesus, Come quickly, Amen.
If you ask why I write all this to you, and not to His Majesty and the Parliament. I answer, It is not them, nor any of their Laws or Actions, which in all this book I intend to speak against. The most pious Princes and Rulers have been most addicted to reverence the Counsels of the Bishops in the matters of Religion: All men are supposed to know more than other sorts of men in their own professions. Uncontrolled Fame imputeth all our sufferings to your designs and wills. And I have reason to remember, that when his Majesty did graciously authorize you by his Letters Patents, to make such Alterations in the Liturgy as were necessary to the satisfaction of tender Consciences, you would make none at all, but what is now done, which maketh our burden much greater than before. And more than once his Majesty by his publick Declarations hath warranted us to be confident, that his Desires are and have been for the quiet, peace and welfare of his Subjects, upon moderate terms. And I know not any man alive that doubteth, but if you would cordially desire it, and endeavour it, the King and his Parliament would soon be found the healers of our wounds, and the restorers of Unity and Concord, by casting out that which hath cast out Love, and turned the people as into Guelphes and Gibelines; and we might soon see the blessed fruits of Concord.
Amen.