Baxters Narrative of His Life and Times, Part 2 · Section 10 · Floating text 1
The Article
[All the means of Revealing Iesus Christ are subordinate and subservient to the Holy Scriptures; and none of them co-ordinate.]
It is no small trouble to me that I was necessitated to be the least delay to your Proceedings, by reason of my unsatisfiedness with the former Article: But that after our Endeavours for a Closure in that point, and when we thought that all had been brought to Agreement, the Matter of our Difference should be again received, by the Addition of this Article, is yet a greater trouble to me. Not so much for my own sake, as others; lest it should offend the Parliament, and open the Mouths of our Adversaries, that we cannot our selves agree in Fundamentals: and lest it prove an occasion for other to sue for an Universal Toleration.
I am unsatisfied in the last, that is, the Negative Clause of this Article, as I was in the former: 1. As to the Truth of it, and 2. As to the weight of it, as a Test for the Ministers that shall be allowed to preach. 3. And as to the Necessity of it to Salvation, as a Fundamental. Concerning the first, it must be remembred 1. That you speak of [All means] of revealing Christ, without any Exception, Limitation or Restriction; no not so much as to [ordinary] means, nor restraining it to means [sufficient to Salvation]. 2. That you deny them to be [co-ordinate] absolutely also, without any distinction, exception or limitation. 3. I desire it may be observed, that I am not my self imposing any Terms on you, or offering the Terms [subordinate] or any other to be put into the Article, but only giving a Reason why I cannot subscribe it as it is; which I shall now render, having premised these Observations: 1. The word [co-ordinate] being comprehensive and ambiguous, I conceive doth among others contain these several Sences following: 1. As the Species is subordinate to the Genus. 2. As the nearer Causes in the same rank are subordinate to the higher and remote, and all to the first Cause: as in Generation the nearer Parents to the remote. 3. As the Means are subordinate to the End, in order thereto. 4. As the less worthy is subordinate to the more worthy, in degrees of Comparison. Many other common Sences I now pass. These being (at least the three first) common, and the opposed Co-ordination universally denied, I see no Evidence to warrant the denial. 1. In the first respect, I conceive that Divine Revelation being the Genus, by word, and by writing, are distinct Species: And as the delivery of the thing revealed is the Genus, so the delivery of the perfect word in Scripture, and of the Sum of the matter in Sacraments and other Means forementioned, are distinct Species. 2. In order of Efficiency I conceive that some Means are Supra-ordinate to Scripture, and some Coordinate and Subordinate in several Respects, and some Subordinate only: of which I shall give Instances anon. 3. In order to the nearer End; those Means are subordinate to Scripture, which are supra-ordinate in Efficiency; and some of those which ab origine are co-ordinate: when yet in order to the more remote End they are co-ordinate. 4. In order of Dignity, some Means are above Scripture, some below it. For Instances in these Cases: 1. Jesus Christ himself, both as the great Prophet of his Church, inditing the Scriptures by his Spirit, and sending the Apostles, and still sending Ministers, and owning his own Word, is one Means of Revealing himself to Mankind: And he is in order of Efficiency and of Dignity, above the Scripture, but subordinate as to the End which is near, but not as to the ultimate End. 2. The Holy Ghost inspiring the Apostles is a Means of Revelation supra-ordinate to the Scripture in Efficiency, and Dignity: And the Holy Ghost as enabling and sending forth Pastors, is co-ordinate in Efficiency, and subordinate as to one of the nearer Ends: The Holy Ghost as Illuminating and so Revealing by the Instrumentality of the Word, is in Efficiency and Dignity above the Word. 3. The Apostles themselves were in order of Efficiency, above the Writing or Letter of the Word, though in order of Dignity the Scripture is above them. 4. The Ministry and Teaching of Parents, is as to the Original both subordinate to Scripture, as commanded by it, and co-ordiante, as instituted and enjoyned before it by verbal Precept; and doth still acknowledge this double obligation. But it is subordinate to Scripture in Dignity, and as to the nearer End. 5. The same is true of Baptism and other Ordinances mentioned already. 6. The delivery of the Scriptures down to our hands, 1. As to acquaint us with the Canonical Books; 2. And that these are all; 3. And that they are uncorrupted in Matters of moment, is in efficiency a co-ordinate Means of Revelation; for it is not out of Scripture only that it receiveth its force: but as to the End and the Dignity, it is subordinate to the Scripture. These things seeming thus to my apprehension, I cannot yet acknowledge it a Truth, that no Means of Revealing Christ is co-ordinate with the Scriptures.
I need to say no more to the Necessity and Fundamentality than I said in my last Paper.
I earnestly crave that the offering of these Reasons, as my Diffent, may not be offensive to you; seeing I apprehend the Case to impose on me a Necessity; there being no Means in the World (that I remember) more like to be an Engine to tear in pieces the Church, than an unfound composure of Fundamentals; I mean, an Imposing of those Things as Fundamental which are not found; whereby the most deserving may be ejected from the Ministry, and censured to Damnation. We are framing a Means of Union, and not of Division. And though it grieves me to be offensive to my Brethren, yet had I rather suffer any thing in the World, than be guilty of putting among our Fundamentals one word that is not true. The Christian Faith hath been ever the same since the Apostles days: and I find not that ever the Churches Fundamentals contained such an Article as this. The Scripture, nor the Assembly's Confession, have none such that I know of. The word [Co-ordinate] is so ambiguous, that it is unfit to lay so great a stress upon it, and the use of it here yet more perswades me, that it had been better for us to adhere to Scripture Terms.
R. B.
§ 56. At last Twenty of their Propositions were printed for the Parliament. But the Parliament was dissolved, and all came to nothing, and that Labour was lost.
§ 57. At this time the Lord Broghill and the Earl of Warwick brought me to Preach before Cromwell the Protector (which was the only time that ever I preached to him, save once long before, when he was an inferiour Man among other Auditors): I knew not which way to provoke him better to his Duty than by Preaching on 1 Cor. 1. 10. against the Divisions and Distractions of the Church, and shewing how mischievous a thing it was for Politicians to maintain such Divisions for their own Ends, that they might fish in troubled waters, and keep the Church by its Divisions in a state of Weakness, lest it should be able to offend them: and to shew the Necessity and Means of Union. But the plainness and nearness I heard was displeasing to him, and his Courtiers; but they put it up.
§ 58. A while after Cromwell sent to speak with me! and when I came, in the presence only of three of his chief Men, he began a long and tedious Speech to me of God's Providence in the Change of the Government, and how God had owned it, and what great things had been done at home and abroad, in the Peace with Spain and Holland, &c. When he had wearied us all with speaking thus slowly about an hour, I told him, It was too great Condescension to acquaint me so fully with all these Matters which were above me, but I told him that we took our Ancient Monarchy to be a Blessing, and not an Evil to the Land. and humbly craved his Patience, that I might ask him, How England had ever forfeited that Blessing, and unto whom the Forfeiture was made? (I was fain to speak of the Species of Government only, for they had lately made it Treason by a Law to speak for the Person of the King). Upon that Question he was awakened into some Passion, and told me it was no Forfeiture, but God had Changed it as pleased him; and then he let fly at the Parliament (which thwarted him); and especially by name at four or five of those Members which were my chief Acquaintance; and I presumed to defend them against his Passion; and thus four or five hours were spent.
§ 59. A few days after he sent for me again to hear my Judgment about Liberberty of Conscience (which he pretended to be most zealous for) before almost all his Privy Council: where after another slow tedious Speech of his, I told him a little of my Judgment: And when two of his Company had spun out a great deal more of the time, in such like tedious (but meer ignorant) Speeches, some four or five hours being spent, I told him, that if he would be at the labour to read it, I could tell him more of my mind in Writing in two Sheets, than in that way of Speaking in many days: and that I had a Paper on that Subject by me, written for a Friend, which if he would peruse, and allow for the change of the Person, he would know my Sense. He received the Paper after, but I scarce believe that he ever read it; for I saw that what he learned must be from himself; being more disposed to speak many hours, than to hear one; and little heeding what another said, when he had spoken himself.
§ 60. While I lodged at the Lord Broghill's, a certain Person was importunate to speak with me, Dr. Ni… Gibbon: who shutting the Doors on us that there might be no Witnesses, drew forth a Scheme of Theology, and told me how long a Journey he had once taken towards me, and engaged me patiently to hear him open to me his Scheme, which he said was the very thing that I had been long groping after; and contained the only Terms and Method to resolve all Doubts whatever in Divinity, and unite all Christians through the World: And there was none of them printed but what he kept himself, and he communicated them only to such as were prepared, which he thought I was, because I was 1. Searching, 2. Impartial, and 3. A Lover of Method. I thank him, and heard him above an hour in silence, and after two or three days talk with him, I found all his Frame (the Contrivance of a very strong Head-piece) was secretly and cunningly fitted to usher in a Socinian Popery or a mixture of Popery and half Socinianism. Bishop Usher had before occasionally spoken of him in my hearing as a Socinian, which caused me to hear him with suspicion, but I heard none suspect him of Popery, though I found that it was that which was the end of his Design. This Jugler hath this Twenty years and more gone up and down thus secretly, and also thrust himself into places of Publick Debate; (as when the Bishops and Divines disputed before the King at the Isle of Wight, &c.) And when we were lately offering our Proposals for Concord to the King, he thrust in among us; till I was sain plainly to detect him before some of the Lords, which enraged him, and he denied the words which in secret he had spoken to me! And many Men of Parts and Learning are perverted by him.
§ 61. In this time of my abode at the Lord Broghill's, fell out all the Acquaintance I had with the most Reverend, Learned, Humble, and Pious Primate of Ireland, Archbishop Usher, then living at the Earl of Peterborough's House in Martin's-Lane. Sometimes he came to me, and oft I went to him: And Dr. Kendal who had wrote pettishly against me about Universal Redemption, and the Specification of Saving Grace, desired me, (when I had answered one of his Invectives, and had written part of the Answer to the other) to meet him at Bishop Usher's Lodgings, and refer the matter to him for our Reconciliation and future Silence: which I willingly did, and when the Bishop had declared his Judgment for that Doctrine of Universal Redemption which I afferted, and gloried that he was the Man that brought Bishop Davenant and Dr. Preston to it, he perswaded us (who were both willing) to Silence for the time to come.
§ 62. In this time I opened to Bishop Usher the motions of Concord which I had made with the Episcopal Divines, and desired his Judgment of my Terms, which were these: 1. That every Pastor be the Governour, as well as the Teacher of his Flock. 2. In those Parishes that have more Presbyters than one, that one be the stated President. 3. That in every Market Town, or some such meet Divisions, there be frequent Assemblies of Parochial Pastors associated for Concord and mutual Assistance in their Work; and that in these Meetings, one be a stated, (not a temporary President). 4. That in every Country or Diocess there be every year, or half year, or quarter, an Assembly of all the Ministers of the County or Diocess; and that they also have their fixed President; and that in Ordination nothing be done without the President, nor in matters of common or publick concernment. 5. That the coercive Power or Sword be medled with by none but Magistrates. To this Sense were my Proposals; which he told me might suffice for Peace and Unity among moderate Men: But when he had offered the like to the King, intemperate Men were displeased with him, and they were then rejected; but afterward would have been accepted: And such Success I was like to have. I had heard of his Predictions that Popery would be restored again in England for a short time, and then fall for ever. And asking him of it, he pretended to me no prophetical Revelation for it, to himself, but only his Judgment of the Sense of the Apocalyps.
§ 63. I asked him also his Judgment about the validity of Presbyters Ordination; which he asserted, and told me, that the King asked him at the Isle of Wight, whereever he found in Antiquity that Presbyters alone ordained any? and that he answered, I can shew your Majesty more, even where Presbyters alone successively ordained Bishops; and instanced in Hierom's Words Epist. ad Evagrium, of the Presbyters of Alexandria chusing and making their own Bishops from the Days of Mark, till Heraclus and Dionysius. I asked him also whether the Paper be his that is called [A Reduction of Episcopacy to the Form of Synodical Government] which he owned; and Dr. Bernard after witnessed to be his.
§ 64. And of his own Accord he told me considently, [That Synods are not properly for Government, but for Agreement among the Pastors; and a Synod of Bishops are not the Governors of any one Bishop there present]. Though no doubt but every Pastor out of the Synod, being a Ruler of his Flock, a Synod of such Pastors may there exercise Acts of Government over their Flocks, though they be but Acts of Agreement or Contract for Concord one towards another. Quere, If the whole Synod have no governing Power over its Members, hath the President of that Synod any qua talis?
§ 65. When Oliver Cromwel was dead, and his Son almost as soon pull'd down as set up (or upon their Tumults voluntarily resigned their Places) the Anabaptists grew insolent, in England and Ireland; and joining with their Brethren in the Army, were every where put in Power; and those of them that before lived in some seeming Friendliness near me at Bewdley, began now to shew that they remembred all their former Provocations (by my publick Disputation with Mr. Tombes, and writing against them, and hindring their increase in those parts) And though they were not much above twenty (Men and Women) near us, they talk'd as it they had been Lords of the World. And when Sir Henry Vine was in Power, and forming his Draught of a (not Free but) Fanatick Common-wealth, and Sir George Booth's Rising was near, and the look't for Opposition, they laid wait upon the Road for my Letters, and intercepting one written to Major Beake of Coventr…, they sent it up to Sir Henry Vane to London; who found it so warily written, thought himself was mentioned in it, that he could have nothing against it; yet sent he for Major Beake to London, and put him to answer it at the Committee, where, by examination they sought to have made something of it; but after many Threatnings they dismissed him: This was the Anabaptists Fidelity.
§ 66. The People then were so apprehensive of approaching Misery and Consusion while the Fanaticks were Lords, and Vane ruled in the State and Lambert in the Army, and Fifth Monarchy Men (as they called the Millenaries) and Seekers, and Anabaptists were their chief Strength, that the King's old Party (called then the Cavaliers) and the Parliaments Party (called the Presbyterians) did secretly combine in many parts of the Land to rise all at once and suppress these insolent Usurpers and bring in the King: Sir Ralph Clare of Kiderminister, acquainted me with the intended Rising; (the Issue of which was, that the Cavaliers failing, except a few at Salisbury, who were suddenly disperst or taken, Sir George Booth, and Sir Tho. Middleton, two old Commanders for the Parliament, drew together an Army of about 5000 Men, and took Chester, and there being no other to divert him, Lambert came against them, and some Independants and Anabaptists of the Country joining with him, his old Souldiers quickly routed them all, and Sir George Booth was afterwards taken and imprisoned): I told Sir R. Clare that if the Presbyterians and Episcopal Men had but before come to some Agreement, they would the more unanimously join against the Fanaticks: But since the War, the Diocesane Party by Dr. Hammond's means was gone to a greater Distance, and grown higher than before, and denyed the very being of the Reformed Churches and Ministry; and avoided all ways of Agreement with them, but by an absolute Submission to their Power (as the Papists do by the Protestants); and that there is a wonderous difference between the Cause of the one Party and the other: For though they are born equally capable of Government or Subjection, yet all that the Presbyterians (for the most part of them) desire, is but to have leave to worship God, and guide their Flocks in ways of Piety and Concord, without being persecuted for it. And the Prelatical Mens Cause is, that they may be the Governors of all, and that no Man have leave to serve God but as they prescribe to him, nor to rule his Flock but as ruled by them: Yea, as soon as a Man doth but side with the Men of that Opinion, he presently carryeth it, as if by his Opinion he had acquired a right to be the Governor of others: But especially I told him, that the Number of the Ignorant and Scandalous was so great, which the Diocesane Party would restore and set up, and the Number of the godly learned able Ministers so great which they would cast out and silence, that we look'd on it as the ruine of the Church: that we had not any Animosity against them; that we desired no Man should be hindred in his Ministry for any thing he had done in the Wars against the Parliament: But we desired that the People might have faithful Pastors, and not drunken ignorant Readers, as he knew in this Country they had had: And that every ceremonial. Difference might not again be thought a sufficient Reason to cast out hundreds of the ablest Men, and put in such insufficient Persons in their steads: Persecution and the Ruine of the Ministry and Churches were expected by most, if Prelacie got up again; and if such leading Men as Dr. Hammond would but beforehand come to Terms of some Moderation, and promise to endeavour faithfully to bring things to that pass as now should be thought indifferent, it would greatly facilitate Mens Conjunction against the turbulent Sectaries and Souldiers. I told him he had long lived here among us, and saw the worst of us; he saw that our private Meetings were only in due Subordination to the Publick, and that they were only spent in such Actions as every Christian might do (to repeat a Sermon, and Pray, and propose his Doubts to his Pastor, and sing Psalms) and not to any Faction or Sedition; and that we had not a Sectary in the Town, but were all of a Mind, and walked in Humility, and Blamelesness, and Charity toward all; all which he did freely acknowledge; and I asked him then, whether he thought we were fit to be endured or to be supprest? And whether it were not hard that Men who had prevailed in Arms (as the Parliaments past had done) should beg but for Liberty to live quietly by them, or those that were now kept under, and not obtain it. But we cared little for this as it is our own Interest, so that the Souls of Men, (even Thousands in all Countries) might not be injured and undone by an ignorant vitious persecuting Ministry.
To this he confidently affirmed, that he, being most throughly acquainted with Dr. Hammond, who received Letters from Dr. Morley then with the King, could assure me that all Moderation was intended; and that any Episcopacy how lo…soever would serve the turn and be accepted: And a bare Presidency in Synods, such as Bishop Usher in his Reduction did require, was all that was intended; Yea, Bishop Hall's way of Moderation would suffice; that there should be no Lord Bishops, nor so large Diocesses, or great Revenues, much less any persecuting Power, but that the Essentials of Episcopacy was all that was expected; that no godly able Minister should be displaced, much less silenced, nor unworthy Men any more set up, that there should be no Thoughts of Revenge for any thing past; but all be equal.
In Conclusion we agreed that I should make some Proposals to Dr. Hammond, containing the Terms of our Agreement, and he would bring them to him (for he lived but seven Miles from us) and procure me an Answer. Whereupon I drew up a few Proposals, and Sir Ralph Clare shortly brought me back an Answer to them; by which I saw that there was no Agreement that way to be made: For Dr. Hammond cast all the Alterations or Abatements upon the King and Parliament, when as the thing that I desired of him was but to promise his best Endeavours to accomplish it, by persuading both the Clergy and the Civil Governors to do their Parts. Yet I must say, I took the Death of Dr. Hammond (who died just when the King came in, before he saw him, or received his intended Advancement) for a very great loss; for his Piety and Wisdom would sure have hindred much of the Violence which after followed: I wrote him a Reply, but never sent it, because the Tumults presently interrupted us. The Papers on both sides were these following: