Catholic Communion Defended Against Both Extremes, Preface
THE PREFACE.
REader, when the last sheet of the foregoing Paper was Printed, I received these Twelve Arguments, famed to be Dr. John Owen's: Whether Fame truly or falsly father them, I know not: It is the Cause that I am concerned in. After Three and Twenty years practice since the Bishops return, I was by Accusations, called to give the Reasons of my Practice, which yet I had often done in part before. They said, That my communicating in the Parish-Churches, even when my self and others were maliciously persecuted by a sort of proud and worldly Clergy-men, did more harm than ever I did good: Tho I am bound with meekness to …ender them a Reason of my practice; I have found by experience, that neither side can bear the account which they call for. Some wise and good men will blame me for making our differences to be so much known, especially for remembring old miscarriages: I obey my Conscience: All these things are commonly known already; and we hear sharply of them from God and Man, because Men hear not our Repentance, but our Iustification: Had we conf…st, God is faithful to forgive. Impenitence threatens our yet greater suffering. When we give glory to God, and take shame to our selves, our hopes will revive. Nothing bringeth so much scandal, and armeth Enemies against us, as owning sin, or hiding it. I durst no longer see Thousands of good Christians misguided into mistakes, and like to be ruined for them, and hereby hardening their Persecutors, rejoycing the Papists, who joyn with them in Separation, reducing the Protestant Religion into corners, and giving it up as publick to—we may know whom; censuring one another, and dividing on these mistakes, and fathering all this on God: I say, I durst not stand by in silence to see all this, no more than to see men drowning, or the City on fire, without endeavouring to save men. It is an exceeding great quiet to my Conscience, under all the Confusions and Divisions that have befall…n us, that in 1660, and 1661. I plainly and earnestly foretold the King and Bishops of them, and did my best to have prevented them.
And the Author that I deal with, necessitateth me to recite the late fruits of Separation, in pulling down all Governments, casting out all the Ministers in Wales, and were near casting down those of England, with Tythes and Universities, persecuting and killing godly men, and fathering all on God, and now flying from the Bishops when they had opened them the door to return. He layeth his main Cause on the ill fruits of Liturgies (which indeed are rather the fruits of Pride and Malignity), and constraineth me to shew the fruits of Separation. I dare not bury that in silence which God so dreadfully disowned by their own diss…lution, without any blood; and that when multitudes are running into the old error, by mistaking the Iudgment of the Nonconforming Ministers, thinking that they took that for unlawful which they did not, and condemning all the excellent old Nonconformists and Conformists, and almost all the Churches on Earth.
Let wiser men deal wiselier: I use the best wisdom that I have.
It's true, that abundance of good people fear and distaste Communion in the Liturgy: What wonder, when such Reasonings as these Twelve Arguments (which how gross soever, poor people have not the skill to answer) perswade them it is false Worship, and heinous sin; and say others, Idolatry. They are conquered as the Mexicans were by the Spaniards, by the frightful roaring of their Cannons; the Militia used, Acts 15.1, 2. [Ye cannot be saved]; and as the Pope conquered Kings and Kingdoms, by threatning to keep them out of Heaven: Even as since men tell me, that they medicate their Wines with Arsenick and Mercury, I am afraid to drink them, which before I feared not; so are honest souls affrightned from Liturgies and Communion. How much in them I dissent from my self, I have openly intimated to the World: But he that will joyn in no good that is mixt by men with faultiness and evil, must separate from all the World, and all from him: But how will he separate from himself? England in her Articles and Ordination, professeth to cleave to Scripture-sufficiency, as being the Protestant Religion. I go to joyn in this profest Religion: If the Speaker of any side add any unwarrantable passages by book, or without book, let him answer for them; I own them not: Did my presence own all that I hear, I would joyn with no man living. The Lord fit us for a wiser and more loving World.