Baxters Narrative of His Life and Times, Appendix · Section 3 · Letter 10

Baxters Narrative of His Life and Times · Appendix · Section 3 · Letter 10

p. 98Dear Friend,

I This Day received and read your Book and knowing so well the Author's Experience, Judgment, and Sincerity, it hath made a great change upon my Judgment; viz. Whereas I once thought that some Mens Usage of this poor Kingdom and Christ's Ministers, and the false Reports and Representations made of them, did shew not only Charity, but common Honesty and Humanity, by which the civil differ from others, to be with such Men very low; I find now my better Thoughts of those Men much revived, by finding that so good a, Man as you, can in any Measure in such a time and place so far mistake the case as you have done. But long Experience hath acquainted me with more of the Cause than perhaps you have observed your self: That is, 1. All Mens Capacities are narrow, and we cannot look every way at once: Our thoughts are like a Stream of Water which will run but one way at once, and carry down all that's moveable in that Stream. When you were for Anabaptistry and Separation, it's like the p. 99Stream of your Thoughts, run all that way, and you studied more what was for you, than what was against you: and now the Sense of your Error hath turned your Thoughts the contrary way, I may judge by the Effects, that you think more what may be said against Nonconformity than what may be said for it. 2. And Experience makes me take it for granted, that to judge hastily before they fully understand or hear the Cause, is the common Disease of Man's depraved Intellect, which few are cured of in any great Degree. I would not be guilty of it while I blame it, if my Frailty can avoid it, and therefore I will suppose that you have more Reasons for what you say, that I yet understand, and shall only as a Learner, desire you to help me to understand them.

And 1. Seeing almost all your Book is against Anabaptistry and Separation, I desire you to acquaint me why you entituled it, An Address to the Nonconformists? when it is certain that the ignorant Multitude, who have some such Thoughts already, will hence be more persuaded that the Nonconformists are commonly for Separation; which being a Calumny, I suppose you thus indirectly propagate it for some Reason which I know not. Falshood and Hatred are so befriended by common corrupted Nature, that they need no Books to be written to encourage them. If a Philosopher wrote against Manicheism and called it An Address to the Christians; Or a Papist wrote against Anabaptistry and Separation, and called it An Address to the Protestants, the Intimation were unjust.

Quest. 2. Will not the Conformists think that you prevaricate, in pretending to plead for a National Church, p. 101. and when you explain your self speak but of a [Church Inorganical] that is equivocally and ineptly so called: seeing forma denominat, and the Word Church in the common Controversy about [National Provincial, Diocesan Churches] is taken for an Ecclesiastical Polity and Society, and not for a meer Community: A Family without a Master, a School without a Schoolmaster, a Kingdom without a King, and a Church without a Pastoral Regiment, are equivocal improper Denominations a materia; when you knew that the Nonconformists have long asked which is the true constitutive Ecclesiastical Head of this National Church? When you were upon the Subject it would have done well to have told them; for an accidental Head (the King) they confess as much as others.

Quest. 3. When you plead so much for Parish-Churches, are you therein a Nonconformist, and is your Address to your self? or do you take the Word [Church] there also equivocally and improperly? If so, you should have said so. The Prelatists grant with Cyprian, that ubi Episcopus ibi Ecclesia; and with Ignatius, that to every church there is one Bishop with his Presbyters, &c. No King, no Kingdom; no Master, no School nor Family; no Bishop, no Church: Therefore the Prelatists hold that we have no true proper Church below a Diocesan, and that Parishes are not Churches but Chappels, or parts of a Church, and this is not the least part of our Nonconformity, how hold that Parishes are, or should be true Churches, and not only parts of a Church in fini ordinis, without any proper Bishop. Tell me better I pray, which side you here intend to take.

Quest. 4. Seeing p. 111. &c. you very well plead for the Power of Kings in Determination of Parish-Bounds, and Church Orders, as under the Jewish Polity, and the new way of the Conformists is so far contrary, as that they hold that if a Bishop command one Time, one Place, one Translation, Metre, Ceremony, Utensil, &c. and the King another; that the Bishop is to be obeyed before the King, because it belongs not to him, but to the Church. Is it the New Conformity in this that you are for, or for the old, and the Nonconformists who in this Agree.

Quest. 5. Some Words p. 124, 125. move me to ask you, whether such Anabaptists as you formerly taught and joined with, or the ignorant irreligious vulgar, as you then accounted them, were the better People? If the Religion of them that mind little of God or Life Eternal, further than to join with the Church, be the true State of Regeneration and Holiness, were it not more worth your Labour to write a Book against that which now we take for Holiness (seeking first God's Kingdom and Righteousness): But if other Wise and Pious Sectaries be better than impious Churchmen, were those times so much better than these as you describe them, in which there was not one counted Religious (e. g. from 1625. till 1637.) for Three that, I say not for Ten or Twenty, that are now in most places that I have known.

Quest. 6. And I add, hath not Scotland kept out Sects without our Conformity, more effectually than Conformity here kept them out?

p. 100Quest. 7. P. 129. Had you nothing but [Suspicion] and [Opinion] to oppugn? and must that be granted you? and yet have lived so long where you live.

Quest. 8. Because you talk so much of [Shism sinful in it self] without ever telling us exactly how to know it, I pray tell me if Mr. Sangar, Dr. Manton, and such others should say to these Parishioners [we are in the Relations which we were truly and justly stated in, and because the Magistrate hath given others the Parish-Churches and the Tythes you separate from us, and come not to our Assemblies; therefore you set up a sinful Schism, as some did in the Churches of the Roman Empire, who adhered to Pastors put in by the Emperors, while the People adhered to their former Pastors] How shall I answer them better than they do you.

Quest. 9. Your Question p. 157. moveth me to put you to think it over again, whether you think indeed as your Words import, if all the People of England these fourteen Years past had heard no Sermon but in the Parish-Churches, and so had heard none of the 2000 Nonconformists (or neer) that were silenced even in all those Parishes, where the reading of the Liturgy is the far best and likeliest means of the Peoples Good, and in all those Parishes, where not one of very many hath any Church to hear in; I say, do you think that there would have been more Persons truly converted and saved by this means? If you think that all these 1800, or 2000 Mens Preaching hath done, and doth more harm than good, had it not been a directer way to have written to them to convince them of it, that they might cease? of which more anon.

Pag. 161. You say, [If instead of this each Christian of you had kept to Parochial Communion, and each outed Minister had kept their Residence among them, and Communion with them as private Members in the Parish way, and had also in a private Capacity joined with those Ministers which have succeeded them in doing all the Good they could in the Parish, as by a private Application and Improvement of the publick Labours of their Minister, together with Catechizing and other personal Instruction and Exhortation privately administred to the several Families in the Parish, &c.]

Quest. 10. Will you do us the Favour as to answer first those Books that be written to prove our Obligation to Preach such as Ios. Allen's Call to Archippus, and my Sacrilegious Dissertion, &c. was not that to have gone before such Advises as this? If you say Dr. Fullwood hath done it, I beg of you to tell me what Arguments of his you think have done it (while he yields the contrary).

Quest. 11. Would you have all those Ministers take this course that must lye in the Common Goal if they come within five Miles of the Place? can they do it in Newgate? If you say that the Act of Consinement had not been made but for Conventicles, we have Proof of that, nor is the Occasion now any Remedy for the future.

Quest. 12. Do you not know that Conformists will not endure us in this private Diligence which you speak of? I will give you in the end an Instance from the Parish where I live.

Quest. 13. Do you well know what sort of Ministers are in too many Parishes of England? I will not imtate the Gloscester Cobler in gathering up their Faults; but only ask you if for Instance Mr. Corbet that was turned out of Bromshut, had stayed there where Mr. Hook the Patron hath often told me, that their Preacher was formerly an Ale-seller, and was so common a Drunkard that he would be drunk in the Pulpit, could you have advised him to do nothing but apply this Man's Sermons, as you say? When I was young the first place I lived in had four Readers successively, some Drunkards, all my Masters; the next place had in my time an old Reader that never preached, (as had most of the Churches round about us) his Curates were successively three Readers, of which one never Preached, one Preached and was a Stage-Player, another (my Master also) a common Drunkard, never preached but once, and then he was stark drunk: when the Old Man's Eyesight failed (that was the chief Incumbent) he said Common-Prayer by rote, and one Year a Day Labourer, and another Year a Taylor read the Scriptures, and we had no more. What Mr. Dance and Mr. Turner were at Kidderminster and Mitton Chappel, I suppose you know.

Quest. 14. Would you have those Ministers take the Course which you describe, in the Parishes, where the generality of the People must be then untaught? You know, I suppose, that a Man that must go but from House to House can speak but to few Persons in a Year: 1. If all Families were ready and willing, how little a part of great Parishes would be taught? 2. People are commonly poor, and from Morning to Night about their hard Labour, and cannot hear us. 3. They are unwilling that p. 101we should come into their Houses, and see their Disorder, and Poverty and Uncleanness. 4. Many Ministers are so Valetudinary that their cold Houses would destroy their Health to talk with them there but an Hour. 5. By this way we must be almost continually speaking, and he that can preach once or twice a Week cannot preach four or five times every Day, without which it would be next to nothing: One may preach to Two Thousand at once in Publick, when to say the same to those Two Thousand by One or by Four at a time, must take Five Hundred Sermons. 6. By this means Ministers (were there Bodies able) must do nothing else: and whereas most have little or no maintenance of their own, what time will you allow them to labour with their Hands to get Bread for their Families? how shall their Rents and Charges be paid? 7. Or if they must beg or live on others Charity, where shall they have it, if they take your Course? If they teach but few, few will relieve them; if they stay from Cities and Corporations in poor Country Villages, few are able, if willing to relieve them. Some that have done so, and Preached too, have yet been put to keep Wife and Children upon little besides brown Rye Bread and Water. By what Law is both Silence and Famine made their due? 8. You know doubtless that in such Parishes as Stepney, White-chappel, Algate, Giles Cripplegate, Sepulchres, Giles in the Fields, Andrews Holbourn, Clement Danes, Martins, &c. it is but a small part of the People that can hear in publick: I suppose there may be Twenty or Thirty Thousand untaught in the Parish whence Mr. Read is gone to Goale for teaching. The People say that this Parish hath Fourscore Thousand Souls; suppose it be less, when scarce Two Thousand can hear well in the Church. Are you risen up now so near the Silencers Opinion as that you would have all these Souls untaught and America transplanted into London? Is the Gospel grown so indifferent to you, in Comparison of your … indifferent? can they believe without hearing, and hear without preach…? I am not yet grown so desperate a Gamester, as to cast away so many thousand Souls to the Devil at hap hazard, for fear of hearing [Schism, Schism]. Why should Preachers be sent to the Americans rather than to St. Martins, St. Giles, and such like places?

Quest. 15. How will you absolve us from our Ordination Vow? even Papists say the Character is indelible: we were not ordained pro tempore, or on Tryal: If a Man may forbid us preaching to all, save four among a Thousand, or Forty Thousand, or Fourscore Thousand, why not also to those Four? If to all Corporations and Cities (where Churches only were planted at first) why not also to the Villages? If where Souls need the Number of Twenty or Ten Teachers, all may be forbidden save one, why not that one also? How many hundred Years did prohibited Pastors teach and guide the Churches? I beseech you clearly satisfy us what it is that disobligeth us all from God's dreadful Charge, 2 Tim. 4. 1. 2. Before God and the Lord Iesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his Kingdom to preach the Word, be instant in season, out of season, &c. And why we may not as well be disobliged by Man's Prohibition from relieving the Poor that else will perish? Yea, our own Children?

Quest. 16. Might not Daniel then have forborn Praying, and may not, yea, ought not you if forbidden, forbear praying in your House, reading the Scripture, or exhorting, and admonishing, and teaching others in your place and Converse?

Quest. 17. Is it likely to be of God which is so pleasing to the Flesh, the Papists and the Devil, as our ceasing to preach the Gospel would be?

Quest. 18. Is it not the great Mark to know all false Sects and Sectmasters by that they are still for that which hindereth the Gospel, and hurteth Souls. The grievous Wolves, though in Sheeps Cloathing, devour the Flocks: the Thorns and Thistles have Pricks instead of Grapes and Figs: And if the silencing one faithful Minister in the Churches Necessity be a heinous Crime, what are you turned to, if you would have near Two Thousand silence themselves? They that silence us by a Prison, cause not our sin, because it is not voluntary but forced; but you would make us the sinful Doers of it our selves, which is far worse.

Quest. 19. Is it the way to prevent our threatned Judgments to call us all to Repentance for preaching the Gospel these Fourteen Years, and to call us all off from preaching it for the Future, that we might not call Sinners to Repentance for their Sins? (how glad would the Papists be if you could prevail but with a few that most molest them?) what a Life have I to repent of if this must be my Repentance? and at how cheap and easy a rate, might I have prevented it? must I that p. 102have hazarded my Life for many a single Sermon now repent of all? what then can I take Comfort in of all my Life?

Quest. 20. Is it not as sinful to Write and Counsel when prohibited, as to Preach? and must we repent of all our prohibited Writings to? If God bless out Preaching and Writing to the good of many Souls, doth it not forbid us to repent, or at least make it very hard to us? can I honestly wish all undone again?

I pray you hasten your convincing Reasons to keep me out of Prison, and further Guilt if this be criminal.

Pag. 197, 198, &c. You speak principally to me, which bids me further ask you, Quest. 21. Whether we did profess that our private catechizing alone did all that Good, without our publick preaching or rather with it? If not, whether you did not unhappily hence collect our Unhappiness?

Quest. 22. If I were able in this Parish, or the last I lived in (or the ejected Pastor who liveth near me) to go from House to House, it would be many Years before he or I could go over half the Parish. And do you think that to be taught once a Year, or in many Years, is enough to counterwork Sin, the Devil and his Instruments? Would you have no more, except for Two or Three Thousand of all the Parish.

Quest. 23. But are you not too suspicious when you talk of shrewdly suspecting (p. 198, 199.) those that support the Ministers, unless they would do it to them that cease Preaching? You must needs know that in most Country Parishes the People cannot support them; and others far off are less apt to feel the Wants of distant Persons; and Charity would have gathered but this: It is their Supporters Judgment and their own, that not the Loyterer, but the Labourer is worthy of his Meat (at least); and that to cease Preaching till Mens necessity cease is a heinous Sin: and a Man may forbear rewarding and encouraging heinous Sins, without the Guilt that you seem to suspect.

Quest. 24. Why do you think that the Ministers do not do their best in private (as well as in publick) to those that will receive them… Read Ios. Allen's Life, enquire better in London whether Mr. Sangar, Mr. Caughton, Mr. Reed, Mr. Doelittle, Mr. Turner, Dr. Anesly, Mr. Vincent, and such others, do not labour as well in Private as in Publick? for my part, I am not now able, must I therefore do nothing? is it a Sin to speak to Two Thousand at once, and a Duty to speak to them one by one, doing that a whole Year, which I can do in an Hour?

You say, p. 205. you speak not to all alike, but to all in their several measure you speak: And you'll say all Parishes be not so great, nor all Ministers so bad as some in publick, nor so unable, &c. I answer, 1. Nor do we behave our selves in all places alike: Not only I, but other more eminent Ministers of London (many) go to the Parish-Churches, especially in the Country, and countenance honest publick Ministers to the utmost, and communicate ordinarily with them. And many Ministers in the Country do as you advise, in living in great Love and Communion with the Parish-Ministers, save that they cease not Preaching as you would have them, and they gather not distinct Congregations; but must the same course be taken in London, where the Fire hath burnt the Churches, and half and more of the People have no Churches to go to, through the greatness of the Parishes: Should such a famous City be Paganised by the Persuasions of Godly Men, as for the promoting of Unity and Godliness? If you say, that most Ministers settle where the Churches are not full, and not in the great Parishes. I answer, 1. That is because they are driven out of the great Parishes by force. 2. And People cannot come out of the great Parishes to them, where they are, or else to the publick Churches the better when their Absence maketh room.

Pag. 182. You say If those formerly or more lately who desired some Alteration in the external Form of Administration used in our Church had not run so high as to assert things unlawful, which by all their Mediums they could never prove to be so, &c. Quest. 25. Why then did not their Charity or yours shew the weakness of what we took for Proofs, nor ever answer our three last large Writings given in to them?

Quest. 26. You (truly) contradict many Writings of the (unanswerable) Conformists, who say that at Worcester House, or in that Treaty we professed all that we opposed to be lawful, and only inconvenient? which of you shall the ignorant believe?

Quest. 27. Know you not how much is added since? Will you join with them that build up a double Wall of Separation, and will by no intreaty take down one Stone of it, and then cry [Schism, and Separation].

p. 103Quest. 28. Did you ever see or hear our Reasons to prove that … which we took for such? If not, how can you judge so peremptorily of them? … of of the eight Points that at the Savoy we undertook to prove great Sins, and of … that I take for heinous Sins (should I commit them) which are now in my Thoughts, I will only beg the Charity of your Arguments to prove … of these very few following, least by the number I discourage you.

Quest. 1. How prove you it lawful to Assent and Consent to a doubled … that Infants baptized and dying before actual Sin, are saved? not excepting any Infanfant of Pagan, Turk, or Atheist, or Insidel? Were you certain of this by Gods Word heretofore? Are you certain now? O then help us to certainty by your Proofs. May not a Man be baptized that is not certain that the Gospel is true, if he believe it so far as to venture Life and Soul, and all upon it?

Quest. 2. How prove you that I may assent and consent that no Parent shall be Godfather for his Child, nor enter him at all into God's Covenant, by speaking one Word of Promise or undertaking (nor saith the Canon may he be urged to be present) but that the only covenanting Undertakers or Promisers shall be our God-fathers and Godmothers, who perfideously promise what not one of thousands (that adopt not the Child) ever make any Man believe that they have any intention to perform, and tempt Anabaptists to take us all to be unbaptized, as not being covenanted for by any that had Authority to do it by God's Law.

Quest. 3. How prove you it lawful to Assent and Consent, to deny Christendom to all Infants, whose Parents will not have them dedicated to God by the Transient Image of the Cross? or will not have such God-fathers the sole undertaking Covenanters, but will openly enter their own Children into that Covenant them… selves? especially when the Liturgy saith, 1. That these Infants are certainly and undoubtedly saved, if baptized. 2. And denyeth them Christian Burial if they dye unbaptized. Prove that a Minister may Assent and Consent to deny them Christendom and certain Salvation, because of this Judgment of Godly Parents.

Quest. 4. Prove it lawful to deny Christian Communion to all Christians that dare not receive Kneeling, or that are Excommunicate for not paying the Fees of the Court, or all that a lay-Chancellor using the Power of the Keys doth Excommunicate; and to assent and consent so to do (to the first at least).

Quest. 5. How prove you it lawful to assent and consent to deny Christian Communion to all that are not Confirmed by the Bishop, or willing to be so? though he were never so willing to own his Baptismal Covenant, and do all that a Christian Man should do. When the Reformed Churches have written so much against the necessity of such Confirmation.

Quest. 6. How to prove you it lawful to assent and consent that all the Atheists, Infidels, Hereticks, and Wicked Men, yea, every individual Person in England, except the Unbaptised, Excommunicate and Self-murderers shall at their Burial be Ministerially pronounced Saved; viz. That God of his Mercy hath taken unto himself the Soul of this our dear Brother out of the Miseries, &c. as you read. And when we are stifled in a Goale our selves as Schismaticks, unless a Man (usually) excommunicate us, they will pronounce us saved.

Quest. 7. How prove you it lawful deliberately to publish your Assent and Consent to that little gross Falshood, the Rule to find out Easter-day.

I will trouble you with none of the many greater things. If you say that you mean not to justify all these and such like, 1. Will not common Reason think so by your Words, do they not imply it? 2. If you think our Nonconformity our Duty, what meaneth your Address to us as such, and your Counsels aforementioned? and how cometh our Silence and forsaking the Preaching of the Gospel to be our Duty during the need of so many Thousand Souls?

As for unwarrantable Separation and Accusation of the Parish-Churches, and Liturgy, we are many of us as truly (though not as far) from them as you. If what I have written displease you, it will but tell you that I prefer Truth and Conscence and the Churches Good before my very dear and much valued Friends Opinion or Will; and the Welfare and Peace of his own Soul, before the pleasing of him: I am past doubt that you do in Sincerity seek the same thing that I and others do, that is, the healing of a divided People, and the Cure of those Distempers which have drawn many to sinful Separations. Three sorts of Schism we disclaim as well as you: 1. Making Factions and Parties in a Church to the Hindrance of Love, Peace, and Concord. 2. Separating from a Church on the Account that its Communion is unlawful, when it is not so. 3. Much more separating p. 104from a Church as no Church, and a Ministry as none, when it is not so. In none of these respects do we separate or divide from the Church or Churches that we should hold Communion with. 1. We separate from the Catholick Church; 2. Nor from the Church of England, as accidentally headed by the King. 3. Nor as a number of Churches associated for Concord; 4. Nor as a meer Community, part of the Church Universal; 5. We separate not from the Parish-Churches that have true Pastors, either as no Churches, or as holding Communion with them in ordinary publick Worship to be simply or commonly sinful: 6. Nor would we make any Division in the Churches by unjust contention: but that there are Separatists that do so, and deserve all your reproof, and need all your Admonitions we doubt not: But by overdoing (the ordinary way of undoing) I doubt you have lost your labour, and much worse. Not but that all of us have great cause to thank you, if truly you do detect any guilt of ours, as well as others: but if you have done much to increase the Schism, and made your self guilty of it, you have crost your own end, notwithstanding your good meaning.

1. We are not for building up any Walls of Separation; some Masters of Schism are.

2. We think that no Humane Churches have power to abrogate the Priviledges or Duties of the Churches of Christ's own institution. Some Schismaticks think otherwise.

3. We hold that Christians should live in holy Love and Peace, when tolerable Differences of Opinion placeth them in divers Congregations: but some Schismaticks think otherwise, and make such a peevish unreasonable noise against all that do not meet with them, and subject themselves to them, as that their Clamour is the scandal to the Infidels, Atheists, and Papists, making them believe that we are mad, or all in pieces, when we differ but in little things: and so they reproach the Frailty of Humane Nature and the common Imperfection of Believers with calumniating Censures and Accusations, as if they were a greater evil than they are.

4. We hold that Love and Tenderness and Self-denial should pardon honest Christians, for choosing such Pastours, as are really most serviceable to their Salvation, and their own Experience find to be so, rather than unsuitable Men (to say no worse) that are thrust on them against their wills: and that other Ministers should be glad, if they will live peaceably under others, and profit by them, though they choose not them: but some turbulent Self-seekers are of another mind and way.

5. We think (as is said) that the Parishes are or should be true Churches, and we hold Communion with them as such: but some Conformists un-Church them, and make them but parts of a Church, and hold no Communion with them otherwise.

6. We go upon certain and plain grounds in determining what Schism is (as the three sorts e. g. aforesaid) but so do not many Schismaticks that yet cry down Schism.

1. Some of them make it Schism not to obey the Pope as Universal Monarch.

2. Some make it Schism not to be subject to a true Universal Council, as the Collective Head of the Church, when there neither was, is, or ever will be such a thing in the World; much less the rightful Head of the Church.

3. Some (with Bishop Bromhall and his Advocates, and others) would have the Pope to be Principium Unitatis, and Patriarch of the West, and so it shall be Schism not thus to submit to him.

4. Some (as Mr. Thorndike) would have these Councils and Canons to rule us for Concord which were till the time of Charles the Great.

5. Some are for Concord on the reception of the four first Councils, some of six, some of eight, Grotius of all well expounded.

6. Some hold that its Schism to disobey the King's Church-Orders, and to refuse any Bishop or Minister that the King or a Patron choose for us.

7. Some hold that it's Schism to obey the King in the circa sacra, as aforesaid (in choice of Pastours, Time, Place, Translation, Meetre, &c. if the Bishops or Bishop be against it, and command the contrary; and that these must rather be obeyed.

8. Shme hold that it's Schism to separate from a Parish Church as no Church: others think it none.

9. If the Archbishop command one thing, and the Bishop another, and the Parish Pastor another, and a Parent another, (as when to Communicate, and in p. 105what Gesture, Habit, &c.) they are not agreed what Disobedience here is the Schism.

10. Some take it for Schism if a prohibited Minister speak to God in Prayee, or to the People in teaching them, in any words but what Bishop or Bishops write them down; or if he obey not a Bishop never truly chosen by the Clergy or the People even in every commanded Form and Ceremony.

11. Some think it Schism if we hold Communion with those whom a La…-Chancellour Excommunicateth, or if we deny our Communion to those that he absolveth, yea if we publish not his Sentence as in the Bishop's name, that perhaps never knew of it.

12. Some say it is Schism if we preach in another Man's Parish, be there never so great need, without his consent.

13. Some say it is Schism if we preach without the Bishops licence, though we have the King's, or at least be Ordained even by the Bishops.

14. Some say, that if we be licenced, it's Schism to preach to above four in an unlicensed place.

15. Some say, if Person and Place be licenced, it is Schism to preach without the Common Prayer.

16. Some say, that if the Bishop command us rebus sic slantibus to preach or meet only at midnight, or twenty miles off, or but once a month, or if they forbid all God's Publick Worship (which yet Mahometans offer him some) it is Schism not to obey.

But if the Bishop do but say the word, we may meet daily without Schism: and the Place, Person, Exercise that before was Schismatical, if he do but licence them, are presently lawful. So that the Bishop's word against the King's (yea, against God's command to preach in season and out) can make a thing Schism and his word can make it none again in a moment.

17. Whether it be Schism to go to a better Minister in another Parish in the same Diocess, though we separate from no Church (in their sense, the Diocesan being the lowest proper Church) is not well agreed on.

Feigning Schisms is making Schism by turbulent noise and … Accusations.

We that impose on no Man, and that obey them in lawful things that we for Universal Love and Peace, even with that meet in different Assemblies, and in different Forms; we that hold Communion with all true Churches as aforesaid, and yet because we can be but in one place, at once do choose the best, obeying God's Command, [Let all things be done to edification] and knowing best what edifieth our selves, we suppose are farther from Schism, than those that as from the Throne of Authority pronounce Schism, and never help us to understand the sense and reason of their words; but use it as for the advantage of their Cause: And as one lately writeth, Have led that Bear so long about the streets, till the Boy: lay by fear, and do but laugh at it. Nor are there many more effectual Causes of Schism, and that harden true Schismaticks against all Conviction, then when it is seen, that Men of Contention, Pride, and Worldly Interest, first make the Schism by sinful or impossible terms of Unity, and next falsly call the most Innocent, that obey, not their Domination, Schismaticks, and the greatest Duties (even Preaching where many and many thousands have no Preaching, nor no Publick Worship of God) by the Name of Schism, as if we must let London turn Heathens for fear of being Schismaticks. Dear Friend, though these things have these Forty years had my deep, and I hope impartial thoughts, and I dare not for a thousand Worlds think to do otherwise than I do in the main, yet I shall heartily thank you if by true light you help me to see any Errour which I yet perceive not.

And seeing Experience hath justly taught you to dread Anabaptistry and Separation, think further, 1. Whether they that forbid Parents to enter their Children into Covenant with God in Baptism, and lay all that Office on those that have no power to covenant in their names, nor shew any purpose to perform what they promise, and deny Baptism, as aforesaid, to the Children of such as submit not to this and the Cross, be not quantum in se Destroyers of Infant Baptism (which is no Baptism if there be no Covenant).

2. (Again) Whether they be not Separatists that both un-Church all the Parish-Churches quantum in se, and also deny Communion with the Nonconformists Churches, as null or unlawful, even when they had his Majesties Licence? Be impartial against Antipedobaptists and Separatists. I constantly heard and communicated with the Parish-Church where I lived; but the Conformists usually fly from p. 106the Nonconformists Assemblies as unlawful: but if both sides were heard in their Charge against the other, I know which would have the more to say. Accept this freedom from the unfeigned Love of

Your much obliged Friend, Rich. Baxter. May 13. 1626.