Catholic Communion Doubly Defended by Dr Owen, Section 1
SECT. 1.
SIR, Your Book called, A Vindication of Dr. Owen, I find containeth four distinct Parts or Subjects.
I. A Vindication of Dr. Owens Personal Worth: which you and I agreeing in, I have nothing in that to say against you.
II. Your Consent to the main of the Cause which I defend, and your dissent from the Persons whose words I Confute: Of this I shall thankfully take notice.
III. Your blaming of me for my naming the Dr. and for my manner of defence against his Arguments.
IV. Your dissent from me in certain Doctrinals.
Having dismist the first, as to the second, I thank you,
1. That you profess your self a hearty friend to all good men, and to the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace.
2. I thank you that you say, p. 3. [I do not pretend in what follows to maintain against you that it is unlawful to use a form of Prayer, or comply with an imposed Lyturgy, or under some circumstances to joyn in the use of ours in Worship.] Neither shall I undertake to justify altogether the 12 Arguments you have printed as Dr. Owens, in order to refuting them.
3. I am pleased that you expound the Doctors words, p. 24. as signifying only, [It is not lawful for us to go and joyn in publick Worship by the Common-Prayer,] He doth not say it is not lawful for any: and for ought you know this [Us] whom he concerned in it, might be a very few to whom this Manuscript was imparted, and they might be under such circumstances as your own resolutions oft in Print would discharge from that Worship as a duty.]
Were I never so well able to prove from this, and the Doctors many printed Writings, that he meant more, I would not now do it. I only here desire the Men and Women that have been with me, and profest that they thought the Doctors 12 Arguments to be unanswerable against the Lawfulness of joyning in the use of the Lyturgy, to take notice of what his worthy Vindicator saith.
4. You grant, p. 25. that you [Conceive that the Author doth not mean by these words, [Because that Worship itself—is not lawful] that it is simply unlawful, which must render it so at all times, and to all Persons, under what circumstances soever: But that taken with all its modes, as well as matter, and the manner, severity, and universality of its imposing, it is so: Besides, it is not said that according to the rule of the Gospel it is Unlawful, but [according to the rule of the Gospel it is not lawful, [which may fairly be construed thus; The rule of the Gospel doth not authenticate, or warrant it; and I think it ought to be so construed: It being the defect of the rule, not its Opposition, which he lays the great stress of his Cause upon.
Remember Reader, that I was mistaken that thought not-lawful, and unlawful had been all one, and that the Doctor said not that the joyning in the Lyturgy as aforesaid, was unlawful, but only not lawful, not as in opposition to the rule, but without it, (and so are the 20 circumstances which I named.]
5. When he saith [It is not in our power to make use of any part of it as we shall think fit.] And I maintain that though man hath not put that in our power, God hath put it in our power to joyn in the good part of tolerable Publick Worship, without owning the faults (or else we must joyn with none;) you deny not this, p. 27. but say that he meant it of mans giving us power (which I never denyed.) But it is God that we serve.
You say [When men pray, they bid us pray—in extempore prayer, both are required to what is good.] True: And I may joyn with the good in an extempore prayer, without owning any evil in it.
Indeed you say, p. 28. [The Mass is not more twisted in all the parts of it by Law, than the Lyturgy, nor left less to our power to pick and choose: If this Union do render the far greater pollutions, the Idolatry, and Heresy of the Mass infectious to the whole Worship, who can prove that the pollutions of other Worship, when we are likewise commanded not to distinguish or divide, doth not in their kind and degree diffuse the taint alike. ]
Ans. God is the Master of his Worship: I do what he bids me, tho man contradict it: If God bid me hear and believe the Scripture, and man say, hear also, and believe the Apocrypha, I will openly profess I obey God, and you, no further than you contradict not God: Rather than not hear the Scripture, I will hear also the Apocrypha, but not believe it to be Gods Word. But if they bid me also hear the Alcoran, I will withdraw. 2. It is not the Conjunction, but the kind of the thing joyned that maketh it unlawful: An honest weak man, an Antinomian, an Anabaptist, a Presbyterian, or whoever you dissent from in tolerable cases, may mix his Opinion, and faulty expressions and methods, with his Prayer and Sermon, as intimately as evil is mixt in the Mass, and yet you will not refuse Communion with him: It is lawful to drink beer that hath bad water mixt, rather than none, but not to drink that which hath poyson equally mixt.
To p. 29. I think if a Turk pray against Idolatry, Murder, &c. that Prayer is materially good: But as to Goodness from a Holy Principle, no Hypocrites is good. The insufficiency of my answer you no way manifest, till you prove that I must joyn with all that is in publick Worship, or with none.
6. Pag. 32. You say [ Doth he say a word of owning Parish Churches, and Worship. ] Ans. If you or he say nothing against these, we shall leave the Diocesan case to others: But if you be the man that I have lately privately written to, I doubt not but I have proved to you, that Parish Churches that have good Ministers, are true particular Churches, and those Ministers true Pastors, and that any Bishops holding the contrary, doth not disprove it.
7. When you recite my words, describing the Cause I plead, viz. [I have written over and over, that I persuade no man either to, or from a publick Church, till I know his Circumstances; And that I doubt not but it is one mans duty, and another mans sin.] You add [I believe dear Sir, that though this concession may displease those who may best bear it, it may reconcile you to most of those that are called Dissenters.]
If so, those Dissenters it seems by you do not much differ from me: But I think ten to one of the people accounted commonly Dissenters through England, are of my mind, and are for Parish-Worship rather than either none or worse. But by Dissenters, I suppose you mean those of the Doctors mind, or your own: And if so, I thank you for your own Charity and Reconciliation: But if you did not know them better than I, I should doubt that your said Friends are not altogether so reconcileable.
Sir, You add, p. 39. [And if (as you allow) the practical determination depends on the circumstances of the Persons, you reduce the Controversy to a far narrower room, than was by most supposed: And every one being best capable of understanding his own circumstances, it will not bear great heat or importunity from another.]
But whence came those wrong Suppositions of the most? If after 20 years Communion in the Parish Churches, I venture on the Censorious so far as to give my Reasons for my own Practice, and defend those Reasons, and that Practice against contrary Writings, and such wise Men as you are so reconcilable, and see how narrow the Controversy is, whence comes it that most think it to be what it is not, against such frequent plain expressions? You and I may conjecture at the Cause.
Your Conclusion is a pious Profession of that Love, and the main Principles of that Concord for which I write.
10. You wisely leave the Vindication of the Doctors words, when it cometh to the case which I oppose him in: As [That neither God, nor good men will allow of, judging our Profession and Practice by any reserves of our own;] when I have proved that our reserves against owning mixtures of evil, are necessary in all Communion.
11. You vindicate not his words, that [He that joyns in the Worship of the Common-Prayer, doth by his Practice make Profession that it is wholly agreeable to Gods mind and will. And that to do it with other reserves is Hypocrisy, and worse than the thing itself, without them.
12. You vindicate not his grand Argument [Religious Worship not Divinely Instituted and Appointed, is false Worship,] without excepting any secondary sort of Worship.
13. You defend not his saying [That there is nothing accidental in the Worship of God: and that every thing that belongs to it is part of it, or of its subsistence.]
13. You defend not that, [ Because outward Rites and Modes of Worship Divinely Instituted and determined, do become necessary parts of Divine Worship, therefore such as are Humanly Instituted and Determined, are thereby made parts of false Worship.] What work would this Argument make? If all outward Modes are false Worship, when determined by Men, if Divine Determination would make them necessary.
14. You do not vindicate that [All Prayers and Praise in Church-Assemblies, meerly as such, are prohibited by the Lyturgy,] unless you do it by denying Parish-Churches.
15. You do not defend [That the Lyturgick Worship was in its first Contrivance, and is in its continuance, an Invention, or Engine to defeat, or render useless the promise of Christ to his Church, of sending the Spirit in all Ages to enable it to the due discharge, and performance of all Divine Worship in its Assemblies, and therefore unlawful to be complyed with. That the very being and continuance of the Church, without which it is but a dead Machine, lyeth on this.
Doth this speak only of the English Lyturgy, which is not 200 years old, think you? When next he tells us, that [ It's the way of Worship by a prescribed Lyturgy, and that it was insensibly brought in (when in several Ages the Church had lived without it) and that to render the promise of Christ, and the work of the Holy Ghost in the Administration of gifts useless.
16. You defend not that [Hence followed a total neglect of all the Spirits Gifts in the said Administration—Nor that [This produced all the Enmity—of the said work of the Spirit, which the world is now filled withal—that it ariseth from hence alone. Nor that the Worship Treated about, consists wholly in the Institutions, and on the Authority of Men, and therefore is false Worship—and to renounce the Kingly Office of Christ in the Church.
Nor that [It belongs to the faithfulness of Christ to appoint and command all things in the Church that belong to the Worship of God—in the Forms and Modes of them—(Doth this speak only of the English Lyturgy.)—
Nor that liberty to use gifts in Prayer and Preaching, is ridiculously pretended, & they are excluded in all the solemn Worship of the Church.
17. You defend not that [ This Practice (joyning in the Lyturgy) condemns the suffering Saints of the present Age, renders them false Witnesses of God, and the only blameable cause of their own sufferings.] And if all the Nonconformists that 1660. gave their Testimony for a Reformed Lyturgy, were not Saints, at least they have been Sufferers: And doth not this as much make them false Witnesses? And if both you and we were mistaken, I am confident you will not justify all that we suffer by, and say we are the only blameable Cause? As if every such mistake were worthy of all the punishment undergone? Nor will you think that every good Mans Opinion must be justifyed, which he suffereth for, lest he be made the only Cause.
18. You defend not that [All the Promises, Aids of the Holy Spirit, with respect to the Prayer of the Church, whether as to the matter of them, or ability—or the manner—are rejected and excluded by this Form of Worship.]—
19. You defend not, I hope, that your Church Covenant is to observe —nothing but what Christ commandeth in the Worship of God.
20. Nor that [The Practice inquired into contains a vertual renunciation of our Church State, and of the lawfulness of our Ministry, and Ordinances therein.] If you do, it is no renunciation of ours.
I thank you that you defend none of all these. For truly they be not things Indifferent, but if they be not true, they are of confounding, dividing, unpeaceable Consequence.