Works, Book 4 · Letter 70
EPISTLE LXX.
Dr. Twisse's Thirteenth Letter to Mr. Mede, wherein (after his desire to know his judgment of Mr. Potter's Book touching the Number of the Beast 666) he expostulates with him about certain Ceremonies, &c.
Reverend Sir and my worthy Friend,
HAD I stay'd longer in Cambridge, you had enjoy'd my company longer, or (to speak more properly) I should have desired to enjoy your company longer; and it would be very long ere I should be weary of your discourse. I long to hear your judgment of Mr. Potter's Discourse touching the Number of the Beast 666. I presume also you know Bishop Usher's opinion of Christ's Kingdom here on earth; I would gladly know it, and whether he doth retract his former opinion touching the Binding of Satan, which in his Book De successione Ecclesiae he conceives to have been in the days of Constantine.
I have returned your Paper, and sent you a Copie of your own concerning*See Epistle VIII. page 743 The Four Monarchies, which you call The A B C of Prophecies. I have sent you also Tilenus his Synod of Dort and Arles reduced to practice, with an answer thereunto. In Oxford it's counted unanswerable, translated out of French by D. or A. from whom it was spred (as I hear) in O. and at first fathered upon one of them. But it appears by the Dutch copy and Voetius his answer in Dutch, that Tilenus was the Author. At my coming from Cambridge I found 8 Copies of them sent unto me, and 6 of them I have sent amongst you; for truly I never found better content in any friends than there with you, and with your self amongst the rest. O Mr. Mede! I could willingly spend my days in hanging upon your ears, while you discourse of Antichrist and the accommodation of his Legend to the Pope of Rome, and the Whore of Babylon to Rome it self; though my studies have lain far more in their Writings than in our own Divines, and I was never found to dislike any Opinion of a Papist for the Papist…s sake who maintains it, as having profited in Divinity more by their Writings than by our own, always excepting Interpretation of Scripture: How much more to hear you discourse of the glorious Kingdom of Christ here on Earth to begin with the ruin of Antichrist? It may be you do not find many Disciples more docile this way than my self.
But I would intreat you to spare me in the point of Ceremonies; in some particulars whereof you told me once in a*See Epist. LVI. Letter you were no Practitioner; but now I fear by that which I find you are a Promoter of them. In Easter-term last I heard—your good Friend, while he lived, complain not a little of a Sermon of yours which you had then lately preached, and he delivered it with much grief. After Mr. B. wrote unto you of the battel of Armageddon, inquiring whether the time thereof were not already extant, the next Letter I received from him had this passage; I am verily of Mr. Ms. Opinion in this, that the times wherin we live are the times for the slaughtering of the Witnesses. Whereupon I compared your Letters, and I found that well it might be by your opinion. And if it be so, how sorry should I be to observe that you should have an hand in the slaughtering of them? as namely by promoting of such courses and countenancing them, for not conforming whereunto many are like to be slaughtered, that is, according to your interpretation, turned out of their Places—And as for outward complements, nothing more pleaseth a natural man in Religious worship, and he finds himself apt enough for it, yea far more apt than he who, knowing and considering that God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit, are most careful for the performance thereof; whereupon while their minds are intent, they find themselves not so free for outward complements, the care whereof is apt to cause avocation and disturbance in that Unum necessarium.
You bade me stand up at Gloria Patri, and it was in such a note too, that you had the mastery of me I know not how. I profess I little look'd for such Entertainment at your hands. My Wife…s father, Dr. M. was Bishop Bilson's Chaplain, and most respected by him of any Chaplain that ever he had, and he a Cathedral-man too; but they could never get him to stand up at Gloria Patri. I living in a Countrey-Auditory am a mere stranger to such Ceremonies; neither do I know any order of our Church urging thereunto; neither do I know when it began and upon what grounds: it may be it was upon their prevailing against the Arrians; and as the Creed is pronounced standing, so and in the same respect this also; all which is duly to be considered before we come to the practice of it. It is true, we were private, and I was loth to offend you.—In like sort, concerning Bowing towards the Altar, for which it was (as I heard) that you preached, I profess unto you I have hitherto received no satisfaction, and I long to hear of my Lord of Armagh's judgment of the passages between us. And therein I perceive the main thing you reached after was a certain Mystery concerning a Sacrifice, which the Papists have miserably transformed, but in your sense is now-a-days become a Mystery to all the Christian world. And hereupon you touched upon the Iudgments of God at this time in Christendom, as if it were for the neglect of that Sacrifice; which while I attended, in the issue came only to the Sacrilege of these Times. But whether your meaning were not, That for God to be robbed of such a Sacrifice was a great Sacrilege, I know not. And by Mr. B. I heard, as from your self, the practice of Bishop Andrew's Chappel was that which first cast you upon such a way, so as from thence to observe the course and practice of Antiquity. But in my poor judgment it is very strange that a matter of such importance as you seem to make it should have so little evidence in God's Word and Antiquity, and depend merely upon certain Conjectures. That which you style your Conjectura de Gogo & Magogo, in my poor judgment, is more rational by far; and yet the matter thereof you know to be very strange, but it prevails very much with me—That Declaration of the Palsgrave's Churches, since I came home, I have seen: I remembered your Censure of it as a laxe thing: Others passe other judgments upon it on my knowledge, and those Divines were accounted in those days as grave and learned Divines as most in Christendom. Indeed the matter of Bowing at hearing the name of Iesus is nothing pleasing to some in these times: But how doth B. As. reading in Antiquity serve his turn for that? Cornelius à Lapide is a Papist and a Iesuit: he saith ad nomem Iesu in S. Paul is no more than ad Iesum. I know it is the Father's pleasure, that as we honour the Father, so we should honour the Son, and all the world shall never bring me to shew more reverence at the hearing of the name of Iesus then at the hearing of the name Iehovah; and when we are, as we should be, intent upon our religious comportment before God according to the inward adoration in spirit, that we should watch when a word comes, to perform outward obaisance, in my judgment is very strange. And I remember how faintly Mr. H. carries himself in this; and others, in pleading for it, most of all urge this, that no body is troubled about it: but now more than enough must yield or suffer—I never had experience of the practice till now, and that makes me the bolder to write as I do: Yet whatsoever we shall be put unto, I am glad that I have such liberty to confer with you thereabouts. I am lately grown acquainted with my Lord of Armagh, being encouraged to write unto his Grace about the matter of the Sabbath; which I willingly apprehended, and acquainted him with all my Grounds whereupon I proceeded: and he justifies them all. I intreated also help in Antiquity about the Notion of a Sabbath given to the Lord's-Day; and he profest unto me, that he never inclined his mind to observe that in all his reading, and added this reason, For he never thought to see such times as these to call into question Whether the Moral Law contains Ten or but Nine Commandments. And Dr. Reynolds being ask'd what he thought of Beza's judgment concerning the Sabbath, made no other answer but this, You know the Commandment. Thus have I made bold to write freely as to my dear friend. I doubt not but whensoever I am put unto it, I shall find you the readier to afford me your best satisfaction; for certainly I will neglect no means to keep me out of the paw of the Lion as well as I can. I commend you to the grace of God, and with many thanks for your love and free communication of precious things I take my leave, ever resting
Newbury, March 20. 1636. Yours to love and honour you, Will. Twisse.