The Defense of the Nonconformists Plea for Grace, Part · Chapter 32
CHAP. XXXII.
SInce the writing of my Answer to your Book, you were with me, and when I gave you two or three Objections which I published not, you gave me no Reply to them, but went from me and Printed an Answer to them in a Supplement. Seeing your judgment is most for that way, I crave your patience while I use the way you choose. I confess my judgment is, that you have unavoidably made me a great Temptation to you: For if you be not a Man of great Humility, you will
1. Be offended to find all your Labour proved to be hurtful, and your Reasoning vain; and you will think that the disgracing of them by a just Confutation, falleth on your self.
2. And you will be tempted to turn your thoughts too partially, to justifie what once you have so publickly said, and so to run further into the Extream. But my persuasion of your great sincerity, maketh me hope that you will overcome the temptation which you have chosen.
I. I thought that the word [Use of all] did much aggravate, and not extenuate the burden of the Declaration, as added to Assent. But to them that thought otherwise, I thought that when both Lords and Commons at a Conference upon Reasons given, had rejected that Exposition which confineth the sense of the words to [Use,] it had been a more satisfactory notice of the Law-givers sense, than either your private Conceit, or any Bishops Exposition could be. But you tell us, That this Conference was no Law, or repeal of the Law.
Ans. Impertinent! It is an Exposition of the meaning of the Law-makers only, that we are enquiring of, and not the repealing or making of a Law. It is the Law-makers part to be the publick obliging Interpreters of the Law to the whole Kingdom. We are enquiring in point of Conscience, how we must understand them: And you will not believe them it seems, unless they make a new Law, to tell you the sense of the old one.
II. Every one may know, that it's usual for the Means to have somewhat in it for the End, besides the intending of the End it self; and that usually Laws and Canons command many Means for one End. And therefore to make your full and constant usage of Conformity to be the End, and the Assenting and Consenting to all things in the Book to be the Means, even in that form of words, are no contradiction. And it's usual to be stricter in prescribing forms of Words, for Oaths, Covenants, or Confessions, than in the other integral parts of a Law. And it is a great wrong to a Parliament of England to say either that, in such a form imposed on the Learned and Consciencious Tribe, they knew not how to speak intelligibly according to the common use of words, or that they were so mischievously Malignant, as seventeen or eighteen Years to refuse to open their sense, for the healing of so distracted and endangered a Church and Nation, if they meant not as their words do signifie according to common use. It's no vanity to say, I have known the Men, Bishops and Commons, better than you have done, and heard more of them and their Debates, than you have done; and I am satisfied in my Conscience to conclude, that they meant plainly as they speak, and no better: Even that no Man's promise to use the Liturgy shall be taken for trusty and satisfactory, that will not declare that he Assenteth and Consenteth to all things contained in it, and prescribed by it:] And this plainly Ex animo, without uncouth Exposition, Equivocations, or Jesuitical mental Reservations.
§ 2. I have not wit enough to find out sense in your Quibble, that [If the later words (the Form) do import more than the former (for the Use) then there is something added and altered, which possibly may inconsist and be contradiction.]
Ans. Is not all prescript of Means an addition to the Precept De fine? Doth the prescript of the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance, impose no more than to be Loyal? Yes: It requireth a particular test of Loyalty. Doth the Command of subscribing the thirty nine Articles contain no more, but to be Orthodox? Yes: It enjoineth us by this means to profess those particulars, in which our Orthodoxness consisteth.
§ 3. Assent when thus distinguished purposely from Consent, signifieth Assenting to some Truth, and Consent respecteth the Good. So that when you make Assent to be but the same as [Consent to Use] you feign them to speak Nonsense, or to Tautologize. You say, [You Assent to all,] but not that All is true: Which is a Contradiction, or Equivocation.
§ 4. [Prove (say you) that there is any one thing in the Book, which may not in the course of Conformity be godly used?]
Ans. To some Men I will undertake to prove nothing. If there be no proof in the Book which you write against, when you have got leave to Print it, you are likely to have more. Till then, to call for proof when you have it, and speak not sense against it, is too easie a way to satisfie the Just.
§ 5. III. I told you by word of Mouth, that your Catholicon of trusting, to the Bishops Exposition of the Book (yea, to his silence, so gentle and tractable are you become) is no relief to you for expounding the Assent, Consent. Subscription against the obligation of the Vow, and about Arms, &c. because these are part of the Act of Uniformity; and you say, that Act is no part of the Book. To this you Print your Answer, that you [Have another string to your Bow.] viz. That the Bishop is by Law the Ordinary, to Ordain and take Subscriptions, and may admit Ministers to subscribe these Tests with such Explications, Meanings, and Allowances, as will well stand with the words justly and fairly construed.
Ans. 1. The Bishop is not made the Expounder of the Law, but the Receiver of your Subscription according to the Law.
2. If you will confound Indulgent Connivance, and Conformity, must we do so too? This is Mr. Humphrey's project, And I freely confess to you, That if you can meet with an Indulgent Bishop, it's a fairer way to intromit a Dissenter, than any that you have named in your Book. All words are ambiguous: The sense is the Soul of them. If, e.g. I were commanded to say that [The Scripture is not God's Word,] and I had leave to expound it;
1. [All Scripture, or Writing, is not God's Word, but the sacred Bible is:] Or [It is not God's Eternal Coessential Word, which is Christ;] were it not for Scandal, this might be said as true. And some think the Scandal is sufficiently avoided, if you give in your sense in Writing, and make it as publick as is your Subscription. But I think that the very subscribing such scandalous Words, will scandalously harden others, and encourage Tyrannical Imposers more, than your Exposition can Cure; and therefore I would not use them.
And if I would, I could cast in such an Expository Writing, whether the Bishop will or not.
And if he accept it, I pray better understand that, This is not Conformity, but Indulgence, Connivance, Toleration, or Prevarication: You might as well say, He Conformed, that by the King's Indulgence, was excused from Subscribing and Declaring.
You put a Supposition, that you had gone to Bishop Sanderson, and askt his sense according to his Rules, de Juramento.
Ans. I doubt your Party will think you betray their Cause by Prevarication.
1. I told you how publickly in a meeting of Bishops, Bishop Sanderson gave his judgment about Baptism against you.
2. I cited the words of his Rules de Iuramento, in the Book which you answer, as being plainly against Conformity: And you give no answer to it, and yet suppose them to be for you. This is too supine neglect to satisfie us.
§ 5. You come over your foresaid sense of the Declaration again, and pag. 160. You have better bethought you, and will take the Debate of the Lords and Commons as useful to know the meaning of the Law.
Ans. What shall we do then by your Useful Error? Why you now say, [You know nothing in the Book but what may be assented to as true.]
Ans. And why was this so much disclaimed before? When you put us to the trouble of Confuting you, you Confute your self by changing your Cause, and so we labour in vain.
Your Repetitions of the same things, with saying and unsaying, and bare saying without proof are so many, that I will not wrong the Reader with Confuting any more of them, save only to give you some account why I am sorry: 1. That you retract your saying that Oaths are stricti juris, 2. And that while you pretend to own Bishop Sanderson's Rules de Iuramento, you renounce this which is one of the chief of them. And I will tell you the reasons of my dissent from that, and most of your Book.
IV. By stricti juris, is not meant the meer Literal Sense as different from the less Proper, which is more notified; but strict is contradistinguished from loose and stretcht. I told you the Rule that we go by in this, and it pleased you not to Confute it. Thus much I repeat:
1. We must take Oaths, Covenants, and Professions imposed by Authority, in the sense of the Imposers as near as we can know it.
2. But if they discover their Sense in words so unmeet, as that in the Vulgar Sense they seem false or wicked, we must number such with unlawful words, unless we can by the publick notifying the Exposition avoid the Scandal.
3. We are to take the Laws, and imposed words of Rules, especially in Oaths, Covenants, and Professions, in that sense as those words are commonly used and understood in that time and place, by Men of that Profession: Unless the said Rulers make known, that they use them in a different unusual sense.
4. We must not presume that they mean not as they speak, by an unusual sense, upon dark and uncertain Conjectures, especially dictated by our Interest, but only by Cogent Evidence. These are our Rules.
The reasons why we cannot Swear, or Covenant, or profess in your Laxe and stretched sense, nor call that sense honest, as you do, (especially on pretence of a Bishop's Exposition, contrary to what I have reason to be fully satisfied our Law-makers meant) are those which I gave you in the thirty Aggravations, Sect. 16. which it did not please you to contradict. These few I repeat:
I. The words of the Third Command are dreadful, God will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain, or falsly.
II. Such licentious stretching of Oaths and Professions overthrow that mutual trust which is necessary to Humane Converse.
III. It depriveth the King of his due security of his Subjects Loyalty, and of his Peace and Life. I much fear lest relaxing and stretching the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy but as much as you relax and stretch the words of the Subscription, Declaration, Liturgie, &c. may untie the Consciences of Rebels and King-killers so far, as to make way for, and consist with Rebellion, and killing the King.
IV. It seemeth to me most dangerously to expose the Lives of all the Subjects of the Kingdom, to the will of their Enemies, and to be a Vertual Murdering of many, or any (if not all) Persons that have Enemies: For while two false Swearers may take away a Mans Life, if Men are taught to stretch Oaths and Equivocate, it will embolden the Consciences of Men so far, as that few Mens Lives shall have any security, but be at the mercy of any Rogues. It is a wonder of God's Merciful Providence, that false Swearers murder no more than they do: But such a Laxity would make our Case far more dangerous.
V. I that greatly fear lest God's late dreadful Corporation Iudgments, Plague, Flames, Poverty, and Divisions, are inflicted for Corporation Sins, and among those Sins, eminently for Perjury, am more inclined to call them in Bradford's words at the Stake, Repent, O England, than to encourage them in such Sin, and by Printing, to persuade them not to repent.
VI. When we cry out of the Jesuits for stretching Oaths and Testimonies, and all words by Equivocations, and Mental Reservations, to the endangering of Kings and Kingdoms, and Mens Lives and Souls, it ill beseemeth us to imitate or encourage them, or to enable them to say, that they stretch words no more than we.
VII. It would be an unexcusable Sin in such a one as I, who live not in another Age, Land, or Place, where the Imposers sense could not be known, but in the same Age, and Place, and have had so many Personal Treaties with the Bishops and the Lord Chancellor Hide, who were the chief promoters of the Impositions, and who know so many of the Parliament and Convocation that made these Forms, and have had so great and satisfactory testimony of their Minds and Meanings, and their Speeches and Reasons in Parliament upon these subjects; and am fully satisfied in my Conscience, that you satisfie their meaning. It is not the sense of any Bishops that came in since that Act was made, nor of any odd Person that is to pass for the Law-makers sense.
VIII. People commonly think that Preachers should be so much more holy than they, that if they come but near us they are safe. And therefore if we stretch Oaths and Covenants, they may do that, and such as they count lesser Sins than Perjury; and so we may harden them to Damnation.
IX. It is a heinous aggravation of Sin to do it as for God, and that we may serve him in the Ministry.
X. It is a dreadful thing to undertake to justifie thousands whom we never knew, as well as the old Parliament Men whom we know, and to prove that they ought not to Repent, nor to endeavour Church Reformation, if it should prove that by a Vow they are bound to such endeavour by lawful means.
XI. I dare not provoke God to desert me in my Ministry, (yea, and in my secret Comforts) nor tempt Men to think basely of the Ministers as a Perjured sort of Men, who cry down other Mens Sins, while they have greater of their own.
XII. It is a dreadful aggravation to do all this (not by sudden Surprize, but) upon Deliberation, and to make a Covenant against Duty and for Sin, and to say I ought to do it, and never to Repent; yea, and by justifying it to harden multitudes against Repentance: Especially if it tend to corrupt the publick state of the Church, and Worship.
For these Reasons I cannot use Violence with imposed Oaths, Covenants, or Professions; but must expound them in the common sense of Men of that Profession, till the Law-makers themselves shall declare that they mean otherwise.
And all this I speak but as the Reasons of our own Practice, and not at all to accuse any Conformists: Yea, I so far excuse them against the Non-conforming Conformist, that I do take the chief Men of them whom I have known, to mean plainly as they speak: I suppose they really Assent and Consent to all things contained and prescribed in the Books; and really mean contrary to your stretching Expositions of Infants Salvation, of Baptism, Communion, Burial, and the rest. And by Dr. William Smith's Books, and such others, I believe they take such Conforming Non-conformists to be (as the late Westminster Assembly proved) the most dangerous underminers of their Church.
And when we have Confuted such as you, our Work is all to begin again, with the serious Conformists, who deal plainly and go on other Principles.