The Grotian Religion Discovered, Section 76
SECT. LXXVI.
I Know you will say, that its you that are §. 76.now persecuted, and others are guilty of the same that they blamed you for. But I answer, 1. If that be so, the sense of it should cause you to confess your former sin, and not to justifie that in your party which you blame in others. 2. I have heard of an Ordinance or Proclamation while the Major Generals were on foot prohibiting any sequestred man to preach, but I know not of one that ever was punished for preaching. What may be done out of my knowledge or hearing, I cannot tell. 3. The casting out of the Insufficient and Scandalous, is so far from being a persecution, that it would have been a cruelty to mens souls for the Magistrate to have forborn it. 4. If any Able, Godly, Faithful Minister be anywhere cast out upon the account of our late Civil differences, or being for Episcopacy, or the Form of Liturgy lately used, let them look to it that are guilty of it: for my part I detest it, or any other act that tends to the diminution of Piety, or the desolation of the Churches. I think if all the Able, Godly Ministers on earth were employed in the Lords harvest to the utmost of their power, they would all find work enough to do, if they were fourty for one. Of what Opinion or Party soever they be, that is consistent with godliness and the edification of the Church, I dare say, we have no Able, Godly Ministers to spare; and therefore none of them should be laid by. Yea Princes should put up some injuries at their hands, rather then silence them to the apparent injury of the Church, and Christian cause, and the souls of men. 5. And yet I must add, that the restraint of the exercise of the Prelatical Government, in these times of common Liberty, doth seem to me to be so far from such a persecution as some make it, that a stander by would strongly imagine it were purposely contrived by your friends for your greatest honour and accommodation. For it was not a meer spiritual Governing of the Willing and Consciencious that you formerly exercised, but it was the Magistrates Sword that did the work, by forcing men to your obedience: So that Episcopacy hath the honour of the Unity that seemed to be among us; and they that see the late risen sects applaud Episcopacy for it, that deserved no more of that applause, at most, then Presbyterie that in other Countries did as much: It was the Magistrates that did it, and the Bishops have the honour of it. And now when all have liberty and the Magistrates Sword doth Second none, (though some think that you have Liberty still upon Consenters, yet really or seemingly) a restraint is laid on Prelacy: And so the people that see the sects and heresies that arise, do acquit you from the guilt, and think with themselves, that if Prelacy had liberty, it would not be thus. But really do you think that if you had a meer liberty now as Presbyterians have, it would not be the greatest blow that ever was given to your Government? What more could any of your enemies wish against you? Should one of you now pretend to be the Bishop of a Diocesse, its two to one, but ten parts of the Clergy would disown him, and those the best (unless he came in on terms that are not yet set on foot:) So also would the best of the people for the most part: So that you would have a small Clergy, and none of the best, and the people in most Parishes that are most ignorant, drunken, prophane, unruly, with some civil persons of your mind among them that fear God, who would be inconsiderable in the crowd of the ungodly: these would be at first your Church or Diocesse: And what would you do with them? Either you must exercise Discipline on them, or not: If you do, you must mad them by casting abundance of them out again, and then they would fly from you, and hate you as much as they hate Presbyterians or Independents. For the cause of their love to Episcopacy is, because it was a shadow (if not a shelter) to the Prophane heretofore, and did not trouble them with Discipline, and because they troubled and kept under the Puritanes, whom they hated. But if you did not exercise Discipline on them, your Churches would be but the very sinks of all other Churches about you, to receive the filth that they all cast out, and so they would be so great a reproach to Episcopacy, that would make it vile in the eyes of sober men: So that a Prelatical Church would in the Common account be near kin to an Ale-house or Tavern (to say no worse) where some honest men may be; and yet its taken for the note of an honest sober man to be as little in them as may be. Had Episcopacy this day in England an equal Toleration with Presbyterians and Independents, it would make so conspicuous a difference between them (in their Churches and administrations) in the eyes of the sober sort of men, as would be likely to make the Prelacy odious, and do more against it by far then that which you call persecution doth. (And I cannot take it for a persecution, that you are not armed or seconded by the sword; and enabled to persecute others): So that for my part, were I your enemy, I would wish you a toleration; but being really a friend to the Church and you, I shall make a better motion: Yet desiring that you may have your choice for a Toleration, if you refuse this.