f. .

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

DOCUMENTS

KELATING TO THE

SETTLEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

ACT OF UNIFORMITY

±332.

Wit\ an f istorial Intototto.

LONDON:
W. KENT AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW.
And at the Office of the Central United Babtholomevt Committee,
10, Broad Street Buildings, E.G.
1862.

ENGLISH PURITANISM
Its Cfjaracter anli l^tstorg.

AW introduction to
DOCUMENTS
RELATING TO THE SETTLEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
BY THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY OF 1662.

PETEE BAYNE, Esq., A.M.

In the paper explanatory of the objects and plans
of the United Saint Bartholomew Committee, issued
many months ago, occur the following sentences : —
" The Committee are unanimous in their resolution that
•¦' in their collection of historical facts bearing upon the
" Ejection of the Two Thousand, and in their presentation
••' of them, in whatever form, to public notice, the most
" rigid impartiality shall be observed. Implicit deference
'•' to truth they recognise as the most important moral of
" the event to be commemorated, and they would look upon
" the indulgence of any predisposition, should it exist, to
" dress up a case for the purpose of establishing foregone
" conclusions, as a desecration of the opportunity which
'•' God's providence has brought round to them. They are
" fully aware of the danger they will incur of unconsciously
" imparting to] narrative a bias which the events themselves
" might fail to justify, and of controversially pressing them

VI

" to a service foreign to their real significance ; and they
" purpose conscientiously to exercise their utmost vigilance
" against it."
It was on the distinct understanding that these were
the views of the Committee that I complied with the
request which they did me the honour to address to
me, to prepare an Historical Introduction to the
Documents contained in this volume. The Com
mittee have fulfilled their pledge by scrupulously
respecting my independence in the composition of
the introductory essay : the public will judge
whether I have been upright and impartial in the
treatment of the subject.
P. B.

ENGLISH PURITANISM
ITS CHAEACTER AND HISTORY.

The Nonconformity of the T?estoratIon was properly
the last phase of old English Puritanism ; and with
it as our special theme, we are in an advantageous
position for reviewing, in its characteristic features
and main historical developments, the entire phe
nomenon of Puritanism.
There is a general feeling that the hundred years
during which the Puritan agitation was at its height
are the most memorable in the history of England.
The part played by England in modern civilization
was then determined. The benefits, political, social,
religious, which she has enjoyed, were then secured.
The seeds of blessing and of bane which still spring
around us were then sown. The essential aspects of
our national character, in the widest sweep of their
diversity and the profoundest conditions of their
agreement, were then displayed. All this, we say,.
is matter of general assent, and it is therefore no
B

2 English Puritanism.
wonder that the tumult of the Puritan times echoes
in the ear of England, or that Englishmen still
enquire with interest what Puritanism was and what
mark it left on the history of our country.
For all earnest minds the past is sacred, and there
is something of profanity in bringing into its silent
chambers the disputes and the watchwords of the
present. In the senate of the immortals, in the
temple of the dead, the only voice worthy to break
the stillness is the voice of truth. On the present
occasion, we are peculiarly tempted to infringe this
canon, yet would its infraction be more than ordi
narily pernicious. The questions and interests of
Puritanism in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen
turies bear precisely such a resemblance to questions
and interests of our own time as is likely to mislead ;
but an imperative condition of our understanding
the former is the frank acknowledgment -that they
are different from the latter. If the slightest benefit
is to be derived from our discussion, it will be necess
sary for writer and reader alike to divest the mind of
partisan feeling, to check modern prepossessions, and
to suspend modern sympathies. He who writes a
panegyric looks of set purpose to a single aspect of
events and actions. He who enters the magazine of
history in quest of weapons for the controversia
warfare of to-day, is as one who, penetrating into
the tomb of an ancient warrior and snatching the
spear from the skeleton hand, should find it crumble
on the instant into dust. He who expects in the most

What it was. 3
illustrious heroes a stainless perfection, or in the worst
of men the depravity of demons, may move us with
the grandeurs of poetic passion, but will not ulti
mately satisfy our judgment. To realize that the
men of the past were our brothers, to feel the force
of their motives as presented to their own minds, and
to attain any apprehension of those high intents of
Providence, in which men are always, more or less,
unconscious actors, we must pay homage to truth,
and to truth aloUe.
What, in heart and essence, apart from every acci
dent, esery accompaniment, was English Puritanism 1
Its nature has been correctly indicated by its name.
The popular instinct has fixed upon its central
thought and meaning. It was a purification, — an
eflfort, wise or unwise, to rid the Christianity of
England from all adhesions foreign to its nature or
obstructive of its power, — an endeavour to remove
everything, in doctrine, discipline, ceremonial, which
during the middle ages had been added to the gospel
of Christ. It will be necessary for us clearly to ap
prehend this grand regulating fact in the character
and history of Puritanism.
When, to use a Scriptural image, the angel of the
Reformation filled his censer with fire from God's
altar, and cast it unto the earth, there were " voices,
and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake."
Principles which had long slumbered in the hearts of j
the European nations, or agitated them with inarticu-
B 2

4 English Puritanism.
late yearnings, were roused by sympathetic attraction,
and started into gigantic manifestation.
In England, for hundreds of years, a powerful current
of religious feeling had set in a direction opposite to
Eome. The doctrines of Wickliffe had been widely
adopted ; the Lollards had clung to their faith in the
agonies of death by fire ; and devotion to a political
leader, combined with reverence for a martyred saint,
had hallowed to the popular imagination the name of
Cobham. That stifled cry of appeal to God against
the corruptions of Rome, which through the medi
aeval time was audible in every country of Europe,
had long been heard in England.
Side by side with this strictly religious antagonism
to the papacy, there had existed an opposition of a
purely secular and political kind. The sovereigns of
England had fretted against the authority of Rome.
A weak monarch, a John, or an Edward the Second,
had succumbed to the terrible power then in the hand
of the pontiff; but when the king was firmly seated and
of resolute will, the death of a Thomas a Becket, or
the promulgation of some statute attaching grievous
penalties to the recognition of papal supremacy
within the realm, had taught the haughtiest occupants
of the chair of St. Peter, that the vassalage in which
they held the throne of England was partial and.
precarious. When the Reformation, therefore, broke out, a
two-fold response awaited it in England. The
people had been educated by spiritual teachers to

The Reformation in England. 5
receive the doctrine of the Reformers ; the sovereign
was encouraged by a long course of precedent to dis
own the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Pope. One
Reformation was set on foot by the Court; another
proceeded among the people. The former was in the i
main political ; the latter was profoundly religious :
the first result of the one was the State Church of
Henry VIII ; the working of the other, within and
beyond the ecclesiastical pale, constituted for more
than a hundred years the thing we name Puritanism.
The Church of England, as constituted in our day,
owes its ultimate form and character to both.
Of Henry VIII we shall not speak. The Church of
England, thank God, does not retain the worst traces
of that coarse and bloodstained hand. The Church
of which Henry was Pope, held the dogma of tran-
substantiation, and sanctioned prayers to saints, and
kneeling and burning incense to images. Its views
on confession, on celibacy, on private masses, would
have given no offence to Loyola. It was, in one
word, a Romish Church with Henr]» for Pope. In
his right hand, this energetic Pontiff held a faggot to
burn those who denied the real presence ; in his left,
a halter to hang those who abjured his ecclesiastical
supremacy. His personal contribution to the cause of
the Reformation in England was a defiance hurled by
the throne against the Pope, a defiance so proud and so
comprehensive, that the reverence which lingered in
the national mind for Rome must have been rudely
shaken. It was one important part of this defiance

6 English Puritanism.
to sweep England clear of the monastic institutions
by which, in large measure, the nation had been
held in allegiance to the Roman See ; it was another
to sanction measures for the religious instruction of
the people, which tended to eradicate belief in those
Romish doctrines which Henry retained in his Church.
But the more favourable representative of the first
stage of governmental reformation in England was
Archbishop Cranmer. The extravagant denunciation
of this prelate by Macaulay, is probably the estimate
of his character best known to English readers ; and
many who are startled by the antithetic emphasis of
the young essayist, will accept the judicially calm,
but sternly unfavourable verdict of Hallam. A
recent American writer adduces conclusive proof that
Cranmer was not present at the Council Board
when the writ was made out for the execution by fire
of Joan of Kent, and he recurs to a strain of pane
gyric which had almost ceased to celebrate the politic
divine. " Cranmer " says this writer. " was a princely
Christian ; his ^Tors, like chance rents in a royal robe ;
his rare and sterling virtues, like a diadem on a royal
brow." Very generous, very eloquent. But are not
fortitude and consistency necessary to the ideal of a
princely Christian'? And, among the gems in
Cranmer 's diadem of virtues, must not those six pearls
which stand for his six recantations, be allowed to be
of paste 1 You cannot escape from that stern verdict of
• Professor Hopkins. The Puritans and Queen Elizabeth. Vol. i,
cap. iii.

Cranmer. 7
Hallam's : Cranmer's fame requires the lustre of the
flames which consumed him. He was the genius of
compromise. Under Henry, he accepted with satis
faction every instalment of reform which could be
wrung from the grasping and self-centred tyrant ; and
he industriously promoted those efforts for the
religious instruction of the people, the translation
and diffusion of the Bible, and the promulgation of
homilies and prayers in the vernacular, which had
an effect little dreamed of by Henry, in stimulating
the progress of that spiritual Reformation, which was
all the time advancing in the nation. Under Edward,
Cranmer ventured to assume more of the character of
a religious reformer, and endeavoured to convey to the
Church certain of those ecclesiastical powers which
Henry had monopolised. Under Mary he would
have lived as a Roman Catholic, if recantation could
have propitiated the queen. But his treasonable
support of Lady Jane Grey, and the Protestantism
which was known to lurk in his heart, made Mary
implacable. He died at the stake, a Protestant
by choice, a martyr by compulsion. England owes
him much ; but the part he played in her Reformation
was that of an instrument rather than that of an
agent, and there is no character mentioned in history
better fitted to adjust a plausible compromise between
the old and the new.
There were, however, men in England of a different
spirit from Cranmer's. Their religion was no courtly
inspiration. They were not careful to keep terms

8 English Puritanism.
with Rome. They had hailed with earnest satis
faction, with passionate sympathy, the rise of the
second school of the Reformation, the school at
whose head stood the great French Reformer. John
Calvin exerted a more potent and penetrating in
fluence upon the mind of Europe, in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, than any other man,
Luther not excepted. The nature of his influence is
not, in these days, generally understood. It seems
paradoxical to say that the influence of Calvin is
confounded with the influence of Calvinism ; but
this is in a sense true. We think of the effect
produced by a certain creed, as it has been left in
cold and crystalline clearness by the Synod of Dort ;
not of the impression made by the grand ele
ments of that creed, vitalized and sublimed by
intensity of religious fervour, and incarnated in a
living man. We represent Calvinism to our minds
as an intellectual system, complicated in ramification,
and hard as iron. It is to ordinary conceptions a
vast metal framework, which may once have been
used in the illumination of a city, but is now
black and bare. From that framework a thousand
jets of living fire, of radiant light, once poured
their effulgence over Europe. When we pass from
the Confessions of the Calvinistic Churches to the
Institutes of Calvin, we can understand this fact.
The entire logical system of the book is irradiated
by the spirituality of Calvin's conception of the
Christian revelation. So completely are the formal

Influence of Calvin. 9
precepts and positive ordinances of the Hebrew
economy absorbed and lost for him in the unity of
life in Christ, that not only the Jewish seventh day,
but the Christian flrst day disappears, and the Lord's
day is for Calvin any day of the week. The grand
principle, the all-determining method, of Calvin's
thought, was contemplation of the universe in God.
In all place, in all time, from eternity to eternity,
he saw God. Such faith will be infinitely appalling,
or infinitely consoling, according to our conception
of the Divine character. If God be an iron fate,
if God's will be aught else than infinite truth,
justice, and love, blended iu one indissoluble ray of
light, then will it be fatalism. But the God of Calvin
was the God revealed in Scripture, the God manifested
in Christ, the God whose name is Love ; and to think
that the God-light enveloped the universe, touching
the cloud which veiled its beam, touching the Sinai
smoke beneath which Israel trembled, was to him a
thought, not of terror, not of enslavement, but of awful
and adoring joy. It is agreed, by all competent to
judge, that the mind of Calvin was, in power and
comprehensiveness, of the very highest order exhibi
ted by the human race ; and when we conceive that
colossal intellect inspired through all its faculties by
transcendant intensity of religious emotion, we may
realize, to some extent, the might of the spiritual
impulse which he communicated to the West of
Europe. It was a theological impulse, but it was
also and equally an emanation of moral fervour; it

10 English Puritanism.
found manifestation not only in reformed faith but in
reformed manners.
It followed from that intense realization of the idea
of God which governed the thinking of Calvin, that
the authoritative declaration of God's will should be
regarded by him, and all who learned of him, with
corresponding reverence. Around the AVord of God
they drew a line of demarcation, setting it far apart
from every human production. On this rock Calvin
placed his foot, confronting Rome with tranquil and
inflexible defiance. From the authority of the Church
he appealed to the authority of One greater than the
Church. It is important to bear in mind that this,
and no other antagonism, was present to the mind of
Calvin ; the Word of God was by him opposed to the
infallibility of the Pope ; it seems scarcely to have
dawned upon him that there could be antagonism
between reason and conscience on the one hand, and
Scripture on the other. And in considering that
urgency of appeal to Scripture, and Scripture alone,
which throughout its whole history was made by
English Puritanism, an appeal which, with our
modern prepossessions, may seem to us to be a wilful
searing of the eyeballs of reason and conscience, it is
essential to recollect that it was against the authority
of Rome that Calvin and his followers asserted the
supremacy of God's written Word.
This position of reference pure and simple to
the Bible, gave Calvin and his followers a signal
advantage in maintaining the conflict with Rome.

The Word against the Church. 11
That veil of imaginative splendour and super
stitious devoutness by which the ancient Church
drew towards herself, by a thousand chords of associa
tion, the veneration of Europe, became, with all its
gorgeousness, a mere mask, hiding a truth more
majestic, a beauty more ethereal, a simplicity more
divine. The Papacy, said Calvin, has decided. She
is joined unto her idols. Let her alone. The Spirit
of God is shrined in no earthly temple, though it has
been building for a thousand years. The Spirit of
God is here ; in the temple of the soul ; in the temple
of the Word. This was an opposition more profound,
more comprehensive, than Rome had yet encountered.
The Reformed Church became constructive, ceasing
to be only a force of destruction. Instead of
seeming the rebel child of the Papacy, she beamed
forth, serene and terrible, the daughter of God
new-born. If no powers had been granted her by
the decrees of Popes, she claimed a charter direct
from heaven, she pointed to rights sealed to her
by the hand of God. If her faith was not based
upon the decisions of Councils and the opinions of
Fathers, it was written for her in the Word of
God. Thence she could take her doctrine, her ritual,
her discipline; and taking them thence, she could
attach to them an authority higher than any autho
rity on earth.
Rome, now fairly roused from that stupor in which
she had been sunk when overtaken by the Reforma
tion, was quick to signalize Calvin as her mightiest

12 English Puritanism.
adversary. A new spirit passed through the flagging
ranks of Protestantism, a spirit of independence, of
intrepidity, of burning earnestness, of heroic zeal.
The Reformed Church, as distinguished from the
Lutheran, took the van in the onward march of
Protestantism. From the middle of the sixteenth
century, the conquests won from Rome were almost
entirely made by the Reformed communion. The
great English divines, who flourished in the reign of
Edward VI, and perished at the stake in the reign of
Mary, — Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, nay, with all his
courtliness, Cranmer himself, — sympathised with the
Calvinistic Reformation. The Presbyterian John
Knox was chaplain to the king. The Marian exiles,
during their residence on the Continent, were treated
with kindness and cordiality by the Calvinists, with
coldness by the Lutherans. When Elizabeth as
cended the throne, the feeling among the English
divines in favour of completing the reformation of
the Church, so as to bring her ceremonies and
ritual into closer accordance with those of the Calvin
istic Churches, was all but universal.
We crave particular attention to these facts. Unless
they are distinctly apprehended, no correct idea can be
formed of the ecclesiastical history of those times;
and the part played by the Puritans will be wholly
misconceived. " How did they get there"?" asks the
clerical dapperling of these days, who has an incon
ceivably slight smattering of acquaintance with the
history of the Church of England, and fancies that

The Early English Puritans. 13
the Puritans were from first to last intruders within
her pale. The Puritans were in the Church of
England from the days of Bradwardine and of
Wickliffe; and had not their spiritual ardour and
unconquerable fortitude in the Church of England
defied the arts of power, she would, humanly speak
ing, have been no living Church, imbued with
sacred fire, a vessel and habitation of Christ, but a
thing of clay, fit only for the uses of her royal
potters. There is a consensus of testimony to the
fact, that the English Reformers of the Tudor reigns
were almost to a man of Puritan sentiments. Lord
Macaulay informs us, not in his youthful essays, but
in that history in which his early enthusiasm for the
Puritans is so decidedly toned down, that the Re
formers of England wished to go as far as their
Continental brethren ; that they unanimously con
demned, as Antichristian, numerous dogmas and
practices which Henry retained, and which Elizabeth
approved; that Bishop Hooper had the strongest
aversion to the episcopal vestments; that Bishop
Ridley pulled down the altars of his diocese, " and
ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the
middle of churches, at tables which the Papists
irreverently termed oyster boards;" that Bishop
Jewel pronounced the clerical garb " a stage dress,
a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites;" that
Archbishop Grindal "long hesitated about accept
ing a mitre, from dislike of what he regarded
as the mummery of consecration ; " that Bishop

14 English Puritanism.
Parkhurst prayed that the Church of England might
model herself on the Church of Zurich; and that
Bishop Ponet thought the word "bishop" should
be exchanged for "superintendent." ."When it
is considered," says Lord Macaulay, summing up^
" that none of these prelates belonged to the extreme
section of the Protestant party, it cannot be doubted
that if the general sense of that party had been
followed, the work of reform would have been carried
on as unsparirigly in England as in Scotland."
Hallam — the Lord Chief Justice of our historical
literature — pointedly exposes the misrepresentation
that Puritan scruples were confined to a few, and
sets before us, in two well-packed and weighty sen.
tences, the precise state of the case at the accession
of Elizabeth, " Except Archbishop Parker, who had
remained in England during the late reign, and Cox,
Bishop of Ely, who had taken a strong part at Frank
fort against innovation, all the most eminent Church
men, such as Jewell, Grindal, Sandys, Nowell, were
in favour of leaving off the surplice and what were
called the Popish ceremonies. Whether their objec
tions are to be deemed narrow and frivolous or other
wise, it is inconsistent with veracity to dissemble that
the Queen alone was the cause of retaining those
observances to which the great separation from the
Anglican establishment is ascribed."
The important and admirable work recently pub
lished by Professor Hopkins, of America, on the
Puritans of Elizabeth's reign, abounds with evidence

The Early English Puritans. 15
that these views are correct. Episcopacy was not
in those days deemed essential to the constitution of a
Christian Church, or to the due administration of the
sacraments; and holy orders conferred by any regular
Church were recognised in the Church of England.
In doctrine the latter had been radically reformed.
Queen Elizabeth, though she had some scruples
about assuming an authority so explicitly spiritual as
that exercised by her father over the Church, was
vehemently ambitious; and her imperious will, and
magnificent self-reliance, prevailed with her to retain,
with some slight modification, the ecclesiastical su
premacy bequeathed her by Henry. By the statutes
of Supremacy and Uniformity, enacted in the first
year of her reign, she was declared head of the
Church, and changes in discipline and ritual without
approbation of parliament were prohibited. A gene
ral uniformity in worship was thus secured, and it
became competent to any zealous bishop to proceed
against clergymen who departed from the established
model. But no unexcepting assent to the Book of
Common Prayer was required, and the Puritans con
tinued for the most part to regard themselves as
having a place in the Church of England. The
great parties in the kingdom were three : the State-
Protestants, who regarded the settlement of Elizabeth
as leaving nothing to be desired ; the Puritans, who
were of opinion that reformation should be carried
further, and should be regulated exclusively by the
Word of God; and the Roman Catholics, who

16 English Puritanism.
watched the controversy between the other two with
a view to profiting by their dissensions.
The Puritans, we said, had hailed with ardent
sympathy the rise of that school of Reformers who
made the breach with Rome complete. They did
not become Puritans at the bidding of Calvin, but
they experienced the full might of that spiritual
impulse which emanated from the French Reformer,
The terrible and sublime idea of God's omnipotence,
and of the immutability of His will, rested upon
their souls. It impressed them with a gravity which
deepened almost into gloom, and it lost somewhat of
that spirituality by which it Was transfigured for the
mind of Calvin, The positive ordinance of the sab
bath, which to Calvin had been lost in the spirituality
of Christian life, was a distinctive tenet of Puritan
ism, The prevailing emotion, in the Puritan concep
tion of the Almighty, was awe. If we would know
how the Puritan felt, we must resolutely divest our
minds of all ideas relating to the Divine Being, de
rived from the habit acquired by men in these last
ages, of sitting in judgment on the character of God,
and discussing the quality of Scriptural ethics. The
Puritans had not risen or sunk to that tender French
conception of the Almighty as " le bon Dieu." They
did not think of God as a simple impersonation of
the benevolent principle, an easy, placable Father of
the universe, wearing a smile of eternal indifference to
right and wrong. God was to them what He was
to the Hebrew king, when he said, "The Lord

The Puritan Pear of God. 17
reigneth, let the people tremble ;" what He was to
the rapt prophet who declared all nations to be to
God " as the small dust of the balance." For
these men the unseen was the reality, the seen a
fleeting shadow. They lived in the presence of the
Eternal. " If we provoke the mediator," said Crom
well once to his parliament, " He may say, I will
leave you to God, I will not intercede for you ; let
Him tear you in pieces ! " Cromwell was not
sensible of ditficulties in atonement ethics. He
would as soon have thought of discussing theories
of electricity when the blinding flash was on his eye
balls. Men who in the wildest storm of battle were
placidly dauntless, men whose adamantine fortitude
no danger could ruffle, no difficulty appal, trembled
and grew pale at the thought of falling into the hand
of the living God, To such men it was consolation
unspeakable to know that the divine will was actually
expressed in the Bible, In that fear of God which
made them towards men courageous and inflexible,
they abode rigidly by the letter of Scripture, " Who
are ye that set yourselves in opposition to an ancient
church, to a venerable hierarchy, to famed divines, to
anointed kings ? Who are ye that, with downcast
eyes of humility, tower in presumption, and with
self-abasement on the lip, swell in pride?" We,
might the Puritans reply, are men to whom God
hath spoken. Our humility is not feigned; our
trembling hesitancy is not hypocritical ; but our fear
and reverence are for God only. On our knees be-
• c

18 English Puritanism.
fore Him, with strong crying and tears, we learn
what His word means. Knowing that, we deem it
no pride to set our conclusions above human authority,
no presumption to dare to adhere to them. Has not
the Reformation startled Christendom from its mortal
slumber on the breast of the Romish mother, and set
each man of us face to face with his Maker] Will
God accept the opinion of divines for us ? Will He
accept the voice of Councils for usl Has He not
cast us back upon our personality, and laid upon us
the issue of life eternal or death eternal'? The
tumult of men, the conflict of authorities, this is to us
but a faint murmur from the shores of finitude : we
shall listen for the voice of the infinite God.
But did not their stubborn rejection of forms, their
scrupulous avoidance of the sign of the cross and the
use of the surplice, argue a pinched and morbid
narrowness in the Puritans '? Were not their hearts
void of genial sympathy, of wholesome imaginative
fire, of the larger charities which glowed in the hearts
of apostles and in the bosom of the early Church?
We shall meet these charges with no sweeping nega
tive. The Puritans were men ; the best of them im
perfect saints, the worst of them stunted and intolerant
bigots. But it is fair to contemplate this scrupulosity
of theirs from one or two points of view, suggested by
the circumstances of their position, and enabling us to
judge them with candour, wisdom, and impartiality.
The principle of adherence to Scripture was, in the
first place, acknowledged on all hands to be the prin-

The Rites and Ceremonies. 19
ciple of the Reformation, and on doctrinal matters it
had been boldly applied by the Fathers of the Church
of England. Naturally and logically, in the absence
of circumstances adequate to establish an exception,
the application of the principle to worship would
have followed its application to doctrine. Faith and
form, creed and ceremonial, doctrine and devotion,
have a reciprocal connection. They are associated by
the law which assimilates the foliage to the trunk,
the costume to the character, the expression of the
features and the words of the lip, to the sentiments
of the heart. Mediaeval Romanism was not in its main
character a religion of the moral faculty and of the
reason. With an undefined doctrinal centre, the gor-
geous draperies of its ceremonial floated appropriately
round it, and it acted upon the popular imagination by
form and rite, by solemn show and reverent circum- .
stance. But Protestantism was essentially a spiritual, a
moral, an intellectual religion. A rectification of the
belief of Christians by the test of God's Word was its
primary, its distinctive work ; a rejection of those
symbols, in which Romanism expressed its character,
appeared to be the next step in advance. This,
we saw, was felt by the first generation of Eng
lish Reformers, even though they were prelates of
the Church. This was recognized by the Reformed
communions of Germany, of Switzerland, of Scotland.
These had passed on from the rejection of Romish
doctrine, to the rejection, equally complete, of Romish
ritual. Surely it was not unreasonable that the
c 2

20 Plnglish Puritanism.
Puritans should call upon the Church of England to
follow this example, and having emptied the cup of
the Romish enchantress of its sorceries, to cast away
the glittering chalice in which they had shewn their
witching colours 1
But the Puritan had other reasons besides the
preservation of logical consistency in advocating a
root and branch Reformation. He believed that
dalliance with Rome was a wilful exposure to danger.
He feared that delight in the symbol might lead to
adoption of the substance. He spoke of the deadly
malady of Romish error, of the moral atrophy and
intellectual paralysis of Romish superstition, and he
feared that a sweet and subtle poison might work
through Romish ceremonies and forms. Arguments
of admirable plausibility may be adduced to prove
that this idea is erroneous. There are minds which
seem constitutionally incapable of conceiving the
peril apprehended. Following the stately argument
of Hooker, one is apt to wonder how reasoning so
plausible could have failed to satisfy the scruples of
the Puritans. There is an amplitude in Hooker's
mental vision, which commends him to all abstract
thinkers, to all politicians of the library, and to
all reformers of the closet. But the man who has
to deal with definite, practical problems, who has
to legislate for a world, not of judicious Hookers,
but of injudicious and headstrong persons, will
distrust the generality of his maxims. Hooper,
Jewel, Hampden, Cromwell, all the thorough-going

Were the Puritans ivwng? 2\
Protestants of the time, all the practical thinkers
who knew mankind, believed that retention of cerop
monies would predispose the people to Romanism,
And looking along the intervening centuries, listeur
ing to the unappealable verdict of time, do we find
that those rugged practical men were in the wrong?
To Hooker's challenge to shew how deadly infection
could arise to the Church of England from similitude,
in matters of indifference, to the Church of Rome,
history has spoken their answer. Reminding hey
children constantly of the ancient church, leaving
them to decide whether her affinity is greater for
Rome or for the Reformation, the Church of England
has entailed upon them a trial to which many in
every generation have fallen victims, A long pro
cession of illustrious deserters from her communion,
a procession in which glitter two crowns and many
coronets, a procession in which have gone some of the
noblest hearts and proudest intellects of England, a
procession from which a constant arrow-flight of
venomed taunts has reached her own bosom, testifies
whether or not the Puritans of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries erred in pronouncing it danger
ous for the Church of England to halt between the
Romanists and the Reformers,
It is but just, also, to the Puritans to recollect that
Popery had for them in those days an aspect of
menace which few believe it now to wear. The
historical drama of the Reformation was not
concluded; the boundaries of Romanism and Pro-

22 English Puritanism.
testantism had not been fixed throughout Europe;
Jesuitism was still in the ardour of its mighty youth,
thrilling armies with a fire as of the crusades,
hanging on the outskirts of retreating Protestantism,
here wooing back to the embrace of Rome gray-
haired men who in early years had been disciples of
Calvin, there asking the Lutheran with bitter scorn
as he and his children passed weeping into exile,
whether his God was indeed a tower of strength,
and with its Tillys and Wallensteins setting the
battle in array against the Reformed throughout
all the German countries, Puritanism was already
a power in England when the Massacre of St,
Bartholomew befel in Paris, Midnight murder, —
such was the doom which, in that impressive manner,
Rome announced that she reserved for every Pro
testant, Those shrieks breaking the night-silence,
shrieks of men to whom faith had been pledged, —
those gutters running with blood, blood of French
citizens and patriots, — were likely to be remembered
by Protestants, Puritanism had made its way into
the corporations and manor houses of England,
when the long conflict of the thirty years was pro
ceeding, when the wail of Magdeburg went up to
God, when Gustavus, who seemed the last hope of
continental Protestantism, drooped his head in the
moment of victory, and was led, in the sickness of
death, from the field of Liitzen, Circumstances like
these were fitted to interfere with mental equanimity,
to disturb the appreciation of Romish ceremonies

Were the Puritans wrong? 23
from the aesthetic and antiquarian point of view, to
urge practical and impetuous minds to make the
issue clear and simple — Rome or the Bible.
But to cast one glance into the depths of this
subject, — was it, after all, a degradation of the worship
of the Most High which was attempted by these
Puritans ? Were they altogether wrong in believing
that there is a profound difference between the re
ligion of taste and the religion of conscience ; between
the sense of elevation, the contemplative rapture, the
glow of lofty emotion, which are worked by modu
lated music and solemn pageantry, by pictured
wall and painted window, and the adoring humility
and reverent awe which befit a man in the
presence of his Creator? Is not the true sublimity
of Christian worship its simplicity? Is not the
radiancy of hallowed passion, the tear of peni
tent rapture, as man kneels before his God, the
true beauty of holiness? It may be difficult for us
to conceive this, but it was not difficult for the
Puritan, The intensity of his religious feelings
raised him above the ministry of sense and imagination.
We are apt to think of Puritan devotion as similar
to that which now most resembles it in externals,
but wants its animating spirit, its transfiguring glow
of religious emotion. There is, indeed, no dreariness
like that witnessed when, in a bare, unsightly edifice,
a listless congregation goes through the bald forms of
Puritan worship. When the spirit of adoration is
away, the absence of that mechanism, by which

24 English Puritanism.
sense and imagination are tenderly elevated or
pleasurably subdued, is felt. But the pure might of
religious feeling supplied for the Puritan the place
of all such aids ; the intensity of his realization of
God's presence made him commune with Him as
spirit with Spirit, What to indifferent or to super
ficially affected minds would have been cold and
barren, was to the Puritan the serenity of impas
sioned feeling. In the eloquent silence of God's
presence, he required not the melting strains of
music; in the piercing blaze of God's truth, he
desired not the imagery of symbolic forms.
On the whole, let us recollect, as an important
practical fact, that the forms which they scrupled to
accept were not, to the Puritans, what they are to
members of the Church of England in our time.
The sacredness they had possessed for Romanists had
been rudely swept away : the sacredness they possess
for modern Churchmen, who, from infancy, may have
seen them combined with pure preaching of the Word,
who may know them as the garb of a solemn and
stately but sincere Protestantism, had not yet shed its
halo over them. The Puritans associated with them
only the dread and aversion with which they regarded
Rome, They viewed them as badges of an alien
Church. Their ancient lustre seemed the pallor of a
corpse ; and the glory of a new life, infused into them
by the Church adopting them, had not yet gifted
them with solemn beauty or ancestral tenderness.
The seventeenth century opened upon England

State of Parties in 1600. 25
with the transference of the sceptre of the Tudors to
the Stuarts. At that time, both Puritanism, and the
opposition to Puritanism, were comparatively mild.
The large majority of Puritans disliked the ceremo
nies ; but desired their abolition chiefly for the relief
of tender consciences, and to promote the peace of
the Church. With a considerable number, conformity
was a painful alternative, a choice between two evils ¦
to use the ceremonies might be an actual sin ; but to
commit schism, to infringe that unity of the Church
which seemed to men in those days so august and
awful, would be a greater trangression. They earnestly
desired, therefore, that the Church would release them
from a yoke which galled their consciences, and enable
them to read their duty as ministers, in the clear bold
characters of Scripture, instead of spelling it out from
the tormenting oracles of casuistry. Still fewer, yet
not without influence from their talent, intrepidity,
learning, and piety, were those who composed, what in
modern diction would be called, the Puritan left.
These joined with Cartwright in demanding that
spiritual authority should be vested, not in the Crown
but in the Church; and held that Presbyters, in
Synod assembled, had an authority the same in kind
with that of Bishops. On the extreme edge of this
section were the followers of Brown, who found the
ecclesia only in the congregation, and denied authority
both to Bishop and Synod. Presbyterians and Con-
gregationalists of the more decided type were already
beyond the ecclesiastical pale ; but the great body of

26 English Puritanism.
the Puritans were still churchmen. These demanded
not the imposition of their own model upon all, but
permission for all who had conscientious scruples to
exercise Christian liberty.
It seems difficult to believe that, for statesmen or
churchmen of the liberal school of Hooker, it would
have been impossible to make this concession. In
the fourth book of his great work. Hooker quotes
with approbation the large and generous sentiments
on the subject of rites and ceremonies expressed by
Gregory, Augustine, and Calvin, " Where the faith
of the holy Church is one," — such is the opinion he
adopts from Gregory, — " a difference in customs of
the Church doth no harm," He agrees with Augus
tine that unity of belief is not infringed by " variety
of certain ordinances," Nay, he accepts from Calvin
the sagacious and deeply Christian decision that,
" sometime it profiteth and is expedient that there be
difference, lest men should think that religion is tied
to outward ceremonies," The main intention of
Hooker, it is true, was to argue that the Church of
England, as a whole, had a right to adopt a different
ceremonial from that of other Reformed Churches.
But no theologian has denied the claim of the indi
vidual congregation to be in itself a Church, however
justly the name may be applied to a multitude of
congregations. In point of fact, if this is disputed,
the first little company of believers, who met to
worship Christ after His resurrection, did not consti
tute a Church, And if Calvin and Hooker admitted

James I. 27
that uniformity of rites throughout Christendom
might lead to the idea that religion depends on
ceremonies, with what plausibility could they
have maintained that uniformity in every jot and
tittle, throughout the ten thousand congregations of
England, would not be attended with the same deadly
peril ?
It might have seemed that the accession of the
royal line of Scotland to the English throne would
inaugurate a period of tranquillity and reconcilement
between the parties within the Church, James was
a Calvinist; Scotland was Presbyterian, But Cal
vinism in James was not that vision of all things in
God which it was to Calvin, nor that habitual inter
pretation of every event as the syllable of a Divine
decree, which it was to Cromwell, but the logical
conclusion of a coward's heart and a pedant's intel
lect. And if James was theologically a Calvinist, he
had learned to fear and detest that haughty spirit of
Presbyterianism Which his despotic fussiness had
irritated but could not quell. When, therefore, nearly
a thousand of the Puritan Church ministers met him
with their millenary petition, and implored on bended
knee, "neither as factious men desiring a popular
party in the Church, nor as schismatics aiming at the
dissolution of the state ecclesiastical," that tithes
snatched by greedy laymen might be appropriated to
maintaining ministers in dark places, that non-resi
dence and incapacity among the clergy might be

28 English Puritanism.
checked, that ministers might be permitted occasion
ally to meet for conference and deliberation, and that
zealous and able pastors, fearful of offending God by
adoption of the forms and ceremonies, might not be
cast out of the Church, they found his mean petu
lance as intolerant as the imperial ambition of Eliza
beth, Four Puritan Doctors were permitted to argue
against nearly a score of violent High Churchmen,
backed by the King, with what result may be sup
posed. The Conference, known as that of Hampton
Court, was followed by a proclamation enjoining a
strict enforcement of uniformity. It is a notable
fact, and admirably illustrative of the way in which
temperate, wise, and large-minded men then looked
upon the demands of the Puritans, that Lord Bacon
published, about the time of this Conference, a
pamphlet advocating their principal opinions. "He
excepts," says Hallam, " to several matters of cere
mony; the cap and surplice, the ring in marriage,
the use of organs, the form of absolution, lay-baptism,
&c." Let those who deem the Puritans narrow-
minded bigots weigh that fact. There must have
attached to the points on which they insisted a sig-
nificance hard for us to conceive, or they could
never have enlisted the sympathy of a mind
so capacious, discreet, clear-sighted, and vigilant as
the mind of Bacon,
During the reign of James, the Puritans expe-
rienced no relief, and the inarticulate discontent and
displeasure of the nation grew steadily in intensity.

James L 29
James was in truth an irritating sovereign. As his
religion was a pedant's syllogism, so his despotism was
an argumentative hair-splitting egotism. It fretted
the proud English people, who had bent impatiently
to the princely rule of the Tudors, to be lectured on
divine right and infallible kingship by the incarnation
of a logical formula. The bite of James was not
much, but the venom of the creature stung shrewdly.
He had an occasional glimpse of insight. He per
ceived at a glance that Laud would make nothing of
Scotland — " Ye ken not the spirit of that folk."
But what on the whole strikes the modern mind
with amazement is that such a man should so long
have ruled such a nation; that reverence for kingly
descent should have so filled the atmosphere that not
mere court favourites, but statesmen, divines, poets,
and philosophers, should have rejoiced in the light of
James's countenance. The English of that time believed/
themselves a free people. They valued their funda
mental laws, and unviolated parliaments. But when
we reflect on what they bore, not only from the
Tudors, but from the first Stuarts, and recall the
accents of slavish adoration in which they addressed
their kings, the thought is borne irresistibly upon
our minds, that constitutional monarchy, as we under."
stand it, could never have flourished in Englandj
unless the nation had been taught, in some trans-
cendently impressive manner, to believe that kings
are mortal.
The historical effect of this reign was to em-

80 Plnglish Puritanism.
bitter the dispute between Puritans and High
Churchmen, and to identify the former more com
pletely with the cause of England's civil freedom.
The seventeenth century was entering its second
quarter, when King Charles the First ascended the
throne. He was the greatest monarch, and the most
remarkable man, sent by the Stuart race to the throne
of England. He willed that the state of England,
political and ecclesiastical, should be one thing; the
Puritans willed that it should be another. If we
would know, therefore, whether the Puritans deserved
well of their country, or whether their memory is
righteously loaded by High Churchmen with con
tempt and execration, we must place distinctly before
the mind's eye a picture of England as it was when
the Long Parliament rose against the King.
Charles himself was a man whom his bitterest
opponents allow tb have possessed many high and
admirable qualities. In domestic relations irreproach
able, a good husband, a good father, a friendly and
indulgent master, chaste, grave, and temperate, with
the demeanour of a gentleman, and the majesty of a
king, he startled from his court, by the mere awe of
his presence, that brood of foul and grovelling vices
which nestled in the court of his father, and which
rushed back to revel in the court of his son. His
passions did not belong to the animal part of our
nature, but to the spirit and the soul. He was a
patron of learning ; he was not only a patron but a

England under Charles I. 31
judge of art; and his intellectual activity took a
higher elevation, his sensibility to the beautiful de
rived a hallowing lustre, from his reverent apprehen
sion of divine and eternal realities. That belief in I
the divine right of kings, which was with his father =
a pedant's formula, was with him an article of reli
gious faith, of mystic veneration. That favour for
episcopacy, which was with James a maxim of despotic
policy, was with Charles a conscientious enthusiasm
for the Anglican Church. This must, we think, be
conceded, if we will conceive the elements of that
strength which made Charles so much more formi
dable to the Puritans than James had ever been ;
and if we will form any correct idea of the better
portion of that cavalier party, as the representative ;
and ideal of which he stands before history, Charles
was a man of purpose, of religion, of conviction. We
see it in those melancholy eyes which appeal to us
from the canvas of Vandyke; we find it in the
princely dignity and martyr fortitude with which he
bore himself, one awful day, before his palace of
Whitehall, But if we maintain Charles's conscien
tiousness against the general voice of Puritan writers,
we must still more decisively allege, in contradiction
to his blinded admirers, that his character had cer-(
tain subtle but essential defects. His intellect was '
fine rather than strong ; the centre of his moral
nature was a delicate sense of propriety, rather than
a transcendent sense of truth. Hence in all things
he lacked simplicity. His virtues had not the ruddy
hue of health, but a sickly and cloistral air. His

32 English Puritanism.
sincerity was enervated by vacillation, and entangled
with craft ; it was a wish, an aspiration, a longing,
not a clear and unalterable fact. His religion
was perplexed with casuistry, and tainted by
dissimulation. He was, we say, not simple. He
could be known and trusted by no man— not
even by Strafford, His ambition — for he was
ambitious — was not the yearning of mighty faculties
for the tasks of empire, as was the ambition of Caesar
and of Cromwell; it was alloyed with the petulance
of self-assertion, it was enfeebled by morbid no
tions .of duty. In all things he was specious,
plausible, imposing, never direct and true. To what
extent he was influenced by the powerful minds
which came in contact with him, it would be difficult
to determine. We believe that he was profoundly
affected by Laud and Strafford, But natures like
his have an inborn antipathy to free institutions, and
his hatred to Parliaments was more intense even
than Wentworth's. That was an age when all free
constitutions were in danger. The continental sove
reigns were one by one securing the command of
standing armies, and changing the parliamentary
mace into the sword-sceptre. With more or less
consciousness it was the grand aim of Charles to
follow their example. His policy was not fully de
veloped until it was in the hands of his two great
ministers, the one for ecclesiastical, the other for civil
affairs. Laud and Strafford : but from the commence
ment of his reign its spirit was unmistakable.
I The first Parliament summoned by Charles met

Charles the First's Early Parliaments. 33
111 1625. It showed a disposition to enquire into
grievances, and to express disapprobation of the
king's proceedings against the Huguenots. It was
dissolved within the year. A second was called in
the spring of 1626. The Commons were willing to
grant supplies, but were still intent upon grievances,
and dared to impeach Buckingham, Charles im
prisoned the managers of the impeachment, dissolved
the Parliament, and arrested the chiefs of the oppo
sition. In 1628 a third Parliament was convoked.
Before its dissolution in 1629, it had extorted
from Charles, by a bribe of five subsidies, the
ratification of the Petition of Right. The provisions
of that celebrated instrument were what not the most
abject worshipper of prerogative could deem revolu
tionary. The exaction of money by forced loans was
condemned; the right of habeas corpus, a right of
Englishmen as old as Magna Charta, was vindicated ;'
the billeting of soldiers on private persons was\
restrained ; and the substitution of martial for civil
law was forbidden. But Charles had no sooner got
his money than he hurried the Parliament away from
Westminster, and sent HoUis, Valentine, Eliot, and
other members of the opposition to languish in<
prison. Were these arbitrary proceedings justified by the
conduct of the Parliaments? Let Clarendon be
witness; Clarendon, whose reverence for Charles
approached adoration, and whose hatred for the
Puritans thrilled his cold nature almost to passion.

34 English Puritanism.
He says that there occurred in those Parliaments
several distempered passages and speeches "not fit
for the dignity and honour of those places, and un
suitable to the reverence due to his Majesty and hi s
councils," But for such passages the historian of
the Cavaliers assigns the just excuse: "Whoever
considers the acts of power and injustice of some of
the ministers in those intervals of Parliament, will
not be much scandalized at the warmth and vivacity
of those meetings," And as for their general
character, he declares that in no formal act of either
House was there aught which was not " agreeable
to the wisdom and justice of great courts on those
extraordinary occasions," Charles not only dismissed
them ignominiously, but clenched his teeth in implac
able resentment, and determined in his heart to call
no more Parliaments.
He had now occupied the throne for four years,
Buckingham was dead. The transformation of the
court of James into the court of Charles, which
never could have been complete while the favourite
lived, was accomplished. Laud had supplanted all
others as ecclesiastical adviser ; and Wentworth, the
eloquent, daring, chivalrous patriot, had become a
peer and an apostate.
Laud, the father of Anglicanism strictly so-called,
the martyr, saint, and apostle of the holy Tractarian
Church, has been severely treated by authors,
Macaulay spurns him with intemperate disdain,
" The mean forehead," says his lordship, " the

Laud. 35
pinched features, the peering eyes, of the prelate,
suit admirably with his disposition. They mark
him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic, differing
from the fierce and gloomy enthusiast who founded
the inquisition, as we might imagine the familiar
imp of a spiteful witch to differ from an archangel
of darkness." Caiiyle handles him, as he always
does those whom he regards as too weak for great
goodness or great badness, with a playful, pitiful
contempt, — " Little Dr. Laud !" Hallam, speaking
as usual from the bench, is not contemptuous; he
says all he can for the Primate ; and all is not much.
Theological learning, generosity in patronising letters,
warmth in friendship, and a slight tincture of religion,
are imputed to him by Hallam, But his talents
were poor; his ambition was servile: his religion
was alloyed with worldly interest and temporal pride ;
and his temper was choleric, vindictive, harsh, and
cruel. He was " the evil genius " of Charles. WiU
no one speak a good word for Laud? We turn
hopefully to Clarendon. He sets out well. We hear
at last that Laud was " a man of great parts, and
very exemplary virtues ;" but the next moment our
enthusiasm is damped by learning that these were
" alloyed and discredited by some unpopular natural
inflrmities." The Laud of Clarendon is an impracti
cable, choleric pedant, with raspy voice and irritating,
impatient ways; without natural humour, incapable
of seeing or taking a joke ; one of those incurably
disagreeable persons whom Hazlit would have advised
D 2

36 English Puritanism.
to give up the attempt to make themselves tolerable tb
humanity. Professor Masson thinks, even, that the
secret of Laud's ascent may have lain in his personal
repulsiveness. "To have hold of the surrounding
sensations of men, even by pain and irritation, is a
kind of power ; and Laud had that kind of power
from the flrst." He had. Enthusiasm for Laud
among his contemporaries, there seems to have been
absolutely none, unless the soul of Peter Haylin was
capable of enthusiasm.
Yet is it not difficult to explain Laud's influence
with his contemporaries ; nor is it impossible, though
less easy, to account for that reverent enthusiasm for
his memory, which constitutes, in modern times, one
of the best proofs of an exalted frame of Oxonian
piety. He had a sincere faith in the externals
of religion ; he attached infinite importance to
making clean the outside of the cup and platter.
He died with this affirmation on his lip, and, beyond
question, it was true, " Ever since I came in place,"
he said before his judges, " I laboured nothing more
than that the external public worship of God, too
much slighted in most parts of the kingdom, might
be preserved," Neglect of externals had, he averred,
" almost cast a damp upon the true and inward
worship of God; which, while we live in the body,
needs external helps, and all little enough to keep it
in any vigour," This was Laud's idea of the beauty
of holiness. He conceived that, in seemly and im
posing externals of worship, there lay a mystic power

Laud. 37
to win the heart to religion. It was an idea which
possessed an obvious attraction for the stately, ceremo
nious Charles, and Laud went all lengths with the
king in affirming the right divine of monarchs and of
bishops. For the rest. Laud was intense, vehement,
energetic ; he made his soul like unto a wedge. He
was troubled with no doubts or scruples, turned
neither to the right hand nor to the left, paused for
no recreation, and was never caught slumbering. Like
Robespierre, between whom and Laud there was in
several things a close resemblance, he believed every
word he spoke. It is this character, in which tem
perament plays as important a part as mental capacity,
that commands success. Bishop Williams — a man
of incomparably nobler faculty than Laud, brilliant,
genial, eloquent, versatile; who, when he brought
Laud to James, had probably never conceived the
possibility of his becoming a rival — was soon thrust
aside by the wiry, sleepless zealot, all iron, and dull-
burning, unquenchable fire.
Let no one imagine that Laud was gifted with
sensibility to grace and solemn loveliness. He is ever,
when we look at him closely, the raspy-voiced,
bustling, peevish little doctor, whose beauty of
holiness is only the apotheosis of formalism. In that
famous consecration of the Church of St, Catherine,
in London, by the archbishop, we find, with some
amazement, that the ceremonial consisted mainly in
regulated antics— bowings, stoppings, jumpings back
ward and forward, according to number and measure.

38 English Puritanism.
without any discernible principle of beauty or im-
pressiveness. "As he approached the communion
table," thus proceeded the consecration at its most
solemn part, "he made several low bowings; and
coming up to the side of the table, where the bread
and wine were covered, he bowed seven times ; and
then, after the reading of many prayers, he came
near the bread, and gently lifted up a corner of the
napkin wherein the bread was laid; and, when he
beheld the bread, he laid it down again, flew back a
step or two, bowed three several times towards it;
then he drew near again, and, lifting the cover of the
cup, looked into it, and, seeing the wine, let fall the
cover again, retired back, and bowed as before." We
calculate that Laud, the little, red-faced, mean-looking
man, bowed here some two dozen times, with inter
spersed skippings and pacings. Can anything he
conceived more grotesque than the whole affair ?
How then is it that Laud is to many devout Angli
cans of modern times a poet-priest, whose adoration
clothed itself naturally in beauty, who trimmed the
lamp of sacrifice that its golden light might stream
more radiantly towards heaven, and fill with hallowed
effulgence the temple upon earth \ Laud stands for
more in history than he was in fact. He originated
what it seems impossible that he can have deeply
sympathised with. For George Herbert there was
real poetry in the choral chaunt, in the coloured
window, in the marble altar, in the solemn aisle. In
Herbert's church of Layton, which was "for the

Herbert and Ferrar. 39
workmanship a costly mosaic, and for the form an
exact cross," there ministered a true poet-priest. The
man who at Bemerton prayed and mused until " The
Temple " gradually rose in melody to his enraptured
imagination, meant more than Laud by the beauty of
holiness. Nor is it quite with the Puritan shudder
that we think of that " Protestant nunnery," which
Nicholas Ferrar established in those times at Little
Gidding, on the borders of Northamptonshire. There,
night and day, did the sound of prayer and praise
ascend from virgin-choirs, while candles, white and
green, shed around a dim, religious light, and the
deep organ filled the place with moving sound.
These are for us the more tender lights of the Laudian
picture, and when we fix our gaze upon them, and
reflect on all that has been done by genuine sensibility
since the days of Laud, to invest the worship of the
Church of England with lofty imagery and melting
grace, we cease to be astonished at the veneration
entertained in some quarters for Laud's memory.
These were, we say, the high lights of the Laudian
picture. It is well to make the most of them. The
shadows they have to relieve are dark. For the
Puritans there was one fatal circumstance in all this
cultivation of the beauty, or at lowest of the uphol
stery, of holiness. It was not optional, but compul
sory. We know what songs are to a heavy heart.
Perhaps it might be equally tormenting for a Puritan,
trembling in the eye of the awful God, asking, as
with the reeling earthquake under his feet, what he

40 English Puritanism.
should do to be saved, to be compelled to interpret
the divine command to worship in spirit and in truth
after the Laudian fashion. For there was no tole
rance in the Archbishop. The large spirit of the old
Romish Church, in respect of form and rite, was alien
to the contracted soul of Rome's pedantic imitator.
The generous breadth of the first Reformers and.
their immediate successors, the philosophic liberality
of Hooker and Bacon, were unknown to the iron
formalist. The word of the law, enjoining uniformity
of worship, had since Elizabeth's time been strict
enough, but it had been indulgently applied. Practi
cally the result had been a general uniformity, with a
pleasing and salutary variety. But Laud could allow
no free sprouting of the forest boughs; every tree
must be cut in exactly the same form. This was new
in England, and if the Puritans, in the day of their
ascendancy, enforced a uniformity of a different kind,
it must be remembered that it was Laud who taught
them the lesson of intolerance. The just and tem
perate prayer of the old Puritans, that, while they
interfered not with others in worshipping as seemed
to them best, and while they held the unity of the
faith, and were loyal subjects of his Majesty, they
might be permitted a certain latitude in the manner
of celebrating divine worship, was for the first time,
in practice as well as in theory, rejected by Laud.
Uniformity had been previously enforced with an
occasional touch of whips ; he enforced it constantly
and universally with scorpions.

Enforcement of Uniformity. 41
And Laud's education of the clergy in the prin-
ciples of aesthetic piety did not cease with ceremonial.
An act had been passed in James's reign ordering the
Book of Sports to be read after sermon in churches.
While James lived, neglect to obey the statute had
been overlooked, but an instrument so exquisitely
adapted to torture the Puritans could not escape the
new inquisitor. The clergy of the Church were
rigorously compelled to proclaim from the pulpit, as a
decency and duty, what every Puritan who believed
in the binding nature of the fourth commandment
regarded as a heinous sin. The moral dilettante
of these enlightened days, who has so much to
find fault with in the Puritans, is specially incensed
at their Sabbatarian narrowness. But was it, after
all, so unreasonable in clergymen to wince under
a command to enjoin Sabbath-breaking? Even
the Sunday league do not, we believe, expect ministers
to recommend their hearers to erect Maypoles in the
parks on Sabbath afternoons, and dance round them.
And in estimating that habit of discountenancing
amusements, of which so much has been made against
the Puritans, it is fair to reflect upon the galling
bondage of which Maypoles were to Puritans the
type. Laud's surveillance over doctrine was as keen as
over ceremonial. He proscribed Calvinistic preach
ing throughout the Church, To his other honours is
to be added that of having reformed the Church, for
the fourth or fifth time, in an Arminian sense. For

42 English Puritanism.
daring to preach against Popery and Arminianism,
Mr, Nathaniel Barnard "was excommunicated, sus
pended from the ministry, fined a thousand pounds,
condemned in costs of suit, and committed to prison."
Preferment ran in full flood towards the Arminian
preachers. Papists, on the other hand, were treated
with ostentatious tolerance; and Rome began to
gather in the flrst of those harvests of Laudian
converts from the English Church, of which the
sheaves have been so rich and abundant in the nine
teenth century.
But it was when the Puritans fretted against the
yoke, and one of those remonstrating books or pam
phlets appeared, which were then the popular press
of England, that the might of the Anglican Dominic
was most imposingly displayed. In 1630, the father
of Archbishop Leighton was prosecuted in the Star
Chamber, for his Zion's Plea against Prelacy. He
was deprived of holy orders, and committed to prison.
He escaped, and was recaptured. His age was then
between forty and flfty, his complexion fair, his fore
head lofty. " I mean to come over," he had written
to his wife from Utrecht, " upon Jehovah's protection,
under whose wings if we walk, nothing can hurt us."
He was flrst severely whipped. Next, he was set in
the pillory, and had one of his ears cut off. His
nose was then slit, and he was branded on the cheek
with a red-hot iron. This was the flrst half of his
punishment. He was taken back to the Fleet prison,
kept there for a week, and then " his sores upon his

Leighton, Burton, Prynne. 43
back, ears, nose, and face, being not cured, he was
whipped again at the pillory in Cheapside, and there
had the remainder of his sentence executed upon
him, by cutting off the other ear, slitting the other
side of the nose, and branding the other cheek,"
Flung again into prison, he remained there ten years,
William Prynne, for writing a book against the stage,
in which he said that female players were notorious
courtezans, had his ears cropped, and his forehead
branded in 1633, He was condemned to perpetual
imprisonment. Unconquerable as an old Norseman,
he wrote in his dungeon another attack against Laud
and his suffragans. In June, 1637, he was brought
out, with Dr. John Bastwick, a physician, and the
Rev. Henry Burton, a parish clergyman, guilty also
of anti-Laudism, to undergo another . punishment.
They were set in pillories in Palace yard, the people
flocking round them, not to pelt and hoot malefactors,
but to look with wonder and passionate tears on
brave Englishmen, true to the people and to God,
Prynne was regarded with peculiar spite by the
authorities, and private directions were in those days
sometimes given to executioners ; his ears were sawed
off with a ragged knife, " Cut me, tear me," he
cried, as with the snarl of a baited lion, " I fear thee
not; I fear the fire of hell, not thee!" What a
reality the fear of hell was in those days ! Prynne
addressed the people, told them that he could prove
against Lambeth and Rome that these things were
contrary to the law of England. " If I fail to prove

44 English Puritanism.
it," he said, " let them hang my body at the door of
that prison there." The crowd had the utmost con
fidence in Prynne's logic, and expressed the same by
a great English shout. Burton made the pillory a
pulpit, and preached the gospel to an audience pro
bably more attentive than usual ; but the hot June
sun and the agony of his mangling nearly overcame
him, and as they carried him away, he almost fainted.
" Bastwick's wife, on the scaffold, received his ears in
her lap, and kissed him."
Such things rather impeded the popular apprecia
tion of Laud's upholstery of holiness. And be it
remembered the Puritans had to content themselves
with Laud's religion or none. An Association had
been formed in the last year of James's reign by a
number of pious men, for the purpose of buying up
tithes which had been snatched by laymen, and
applying them to the support of preachers who
agreed with Laud neither in his Arminian theology
nor his ceremonial worship. It was the first grand
exhibition of the voluntary principle in England ; its
head quarters were London, a city then eminent for
its godliness and patriotism, and one of its supporters
was Oliver Cromwell, an energetic farmer of Hunting
don, whose spiritual experience was in those days very
comforting to his pious friends. A letter of Oliver'sj
referring to one of the lecturers to whom the Associa
tion had lent assistance, is extant. " Building of
hospitals," he writes, " provides for men's bodies ; to
build material temples is judged a work of piety ; but

Fnfofcement of Xlniformity^ 45
tkey that procure spiritual food, they tbat build up
spiritual temples, they are the men truly charitable,
truly pious." Oliver Cromwell, we may remark in
passing, seems to have thought that the highest kind
of Church extension is the procuring of men who are
living spiritual temples. It is an opinion not in the
least antiquated, worthy of the greatest practical
genius that ever lived in England, and deserving
careful consideration at this day. But the Association
and its lecturers were beyond the regulation bounds ;
Laud, therefore, brought the leaders into the Star
Chamber, had them condemned to pay a severe
penalty, and broke up the whole scheme.
And constantly, as we said, the throng of proselytes
was pressing on from the Church of England to the
Church of Rome. In doctrine, as well as in ceremo
nial, the Laudians were drawing nearer and nearer to
that Church at which the Puritans shuddered as the
great apostacy. The Archbishop plainly declared
that in disposing of benefices he would prefer single
to married priests. Montague, Bishop of Chichester,
favoured the invocation of saints. Some argued foi*
prayers for the dead, thus making way for a belief in
purgatory. The clergy in many quarters cast wistful
glances on that powerful Romish weapon of auricular
confession. The doctrine of transubstantiation was
not explicitly avowed, but its essence, wrapped up in
vague phraseology, was generally accepted ; and the
keystone of the Lutheran reformation, justification by
faith, not by works, was obscured and unsettled. " It

46 English Puritanism.
must be confessed," says Hallam, " that these English
theologians were less favourable to the papal supremacy
than to most other distinguishing tenets of the Catholic
Church. Yet even this they were inclined to admit
in a considerable degree, as a matter of positive,
though not Divine institution; content to make the
doctrine and discipline of the fifth century the rule
of their bastard reform," The King had opened
secret negotiations with Rome,
Was it strange if rugged Prynnes, terribly afraid
of hell, and with their sense of ecclesiastical aesthetics
rather deadened in the pillory and the dungeon, and
earnest prayerful Cromwells, for whom the clear
shining of Gospel light was the sole beauty of holi
ness, should have viewed these things with infinite
alarm and dismay? There is an organization so
exquisitely strung, so delicately poised between
extremes, that it can balance itself with angelic safety
on the thin aerial line which the Laudian Church
takes for its own between Rome and the Refor
mation, But ordinary mortals are not only unable
to perform this feat ; they are unable even to under
stand how others can achieve it. The Pope,
who ought to have been a good judge whether
Laudism is really different from Romanism, offered
Laud a Cardinal's hat. Add a little higher elevation,
a somewhat more ethereal sentiment, to a Laudian
sister of mercy, and she becomes a Romish nun;
add a little more learning, a keener intellectual fire-
edge, to a Laudian doctor of divinity, and he becomes

Strafford. 47
a Romish Newman : it is a faith which can be held
only by a peculiar people; a faith which he who
runs cannot easily read. Prynne, with his ears twice
sawed from his head, was excusable in not quite ap
preciating its music of the spheres.
Laud was now in the heyday of his glory, a glory
like that of the sultry sun which ripens pestilence in
the marsh; but he was still vexed by the contra
diction of men with more bowels, and less faith, than
himself. Even the Star Chamber, " where those who
inflicted the punishment reaped the gain, and sat,
like famished birds of prey, with keen eyes and
bended talons," scowHng ruin upon their victims,
was not energetic according to the measure of
Laud. In one man alone did he find sympathy
vehement enough to cheer his dark soul, and stroke
his raven plumage till it smiled. He sent croak
after croak across St. George's Channel to a strong
eagle, which answered with proud, exultant scream.
All men have agreed to deny high talent to Laud ;
all men have agreed to impute supreme genius to
Wentworth, He represents the civil arm, as Laud
represents the ecclesiastical, of that comprehensive
despotism which was being prepared for England
under the auspices of Charles. He is one of those
characters which fascinate and awe the historian, as
he marks their forms sweeping in majestic gloom
along the twilight galleries of the past, Alva, Wal-
lenstein, Strafford, still lay a spell on the imagination
of mankind. "Wentworth," exclaims Macaulay,

48 English Puritanisni.
dashing in, with firm, quick strokes, the most vivid
portrait he ever drew, " who ever names him without
thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled by
their expression into more than the majesty of an
antique Jupiter ; of that brow, that eye, that cheek,
that lip, wherein, as in a chronicle, are written the
events of many stormy and disastrous years, high
enterprise accomplished, frightful dangers braved,
power unsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly
borne; of that fixed look, so full of severity, of
mournful anxiety, of deep thought, of dauntless
resolution, which seems at once to forbode and defy
a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living
canvas of Vandyke ? " But no material portraiture
is necessary in order to convey an impression of
the colossal powers of Strafford, That scheme of
Thorough was a masterpiece of practical genius,
Wentworth, alone perhaps in his generation, saw
precisely whither things were tending. He knew
the historical import of the great events of his day ;
he saw to what hour of destiny the hands pointed on
the clock of time. The grand issue between des
potism and constitutionalism was to be decided in
England. Strafford did not wish unmasked des
potism to be established in that country of which
he was once an illustrious patriot. His desire was
that the supremacy of the will of the sovereign,
which had existed in the Tudor reigns, should be
perpetuated. Under Henry and Elizabeth Parlia
ments had hardly become vocal, and reverence for

Strafford. 49
the prerogative was so profound that, except in rare
cases, they were quelled by a strong exertion of the
monarch's will. But the intelligence and eloquence
of Parliament had risen to an extraordinary height in
the early years of Charles, and sympathy had been
perfectly established between Parliament and the
nation. Nor was the majesty which doth hedge a king
quite so overpowering to that generation of English
men as it had been to their fathers. If the preroga
tive was to continue supreme, some reinforcement of
its power was indispensable. Such reinforcement
could consist only in a standing army; and it was
this fact on which Wentworth laid his giant grasp.
The king was to raise money without reference to
Parliament; an army was to be embodied; and
Charles was then to treat the Houses with that'
amount of respect which to his gracious condescen
sion should seem fit. Such was the project which
Wentworth named Thorough ; and for which the
raven of Canterbury croaked that he went in
" thorough and thorough," It was well named :
had it succeeded, the ancient Parliament of -Eng
land would have become part of the pageantry of
the throne.
Side by side with the reformation of the Church
on the model of Laud, went on the reformation of the
State on the model of Slrafford, Year . after year
passed without a parliament. The exchequer wasi
replenished by ruinous fines, by the sale of monopolies, '
by royal proclamations. At length the audacious step

60 English Puritanism.
of levying ship-money in the inland counties was
resolved upon. Elizabeth, when the Armada, like a
terrible bird of prey, was flitting along the white
cliffs of England, had raised money in the sea-ports
for the equipment of vessels of war ; but not even
" the imperial lioness " had demanded ship-money in
the interior of the country ; and, as it was never a
regular method of raising supplies, never intended to
supersede the legal method of parliamentary vote,
Charles had bound himself by the Petition of Right to
abandon it. Among the other inland shires, Buck
ingham was now assessed, and as a landholder of
Buckingham, John Hampden was called upon to pay
for one parish thirty-one shillings, for another, twenty
shillings. He refused to pay a farthing, and defied
the whole power of Government. England gazed
with proud admiration on this country gentleman,
who attached importance so transcendent to a princi
ple, and who believed that, in the tribunals of his
country, the subject had as firm a footing as the king.
The memorable ship-money case was tried in 1637, a
few months after the triumph of Laud over Prynne,
Bastwick, and Burton, in Palace Yard. The judges
in the Exchequer Chamber, pronounced, by seven
against five, that Hampden was bound to pay. The
provision of the Petition of Right, that no " gift, loan,
benevolence, tax, or such-like charge" should be
levied without consent of parliament, was thus swept
away. Englishmen were placed at the mercy of the
crown, to an extent unknown since the concession of
Magna Charta,

The Scottish War. 51
The great work was almost complete. The Parlia
ment of England had not sat for eight years. The
Courts of Law were subservient to the Crown, The
Church was ruled with a rod of iron, A little more
sleep, a little more slumber, and the eyes of England
had been sealed in eternal despotism. The bosom
of the nation heaved as in the stifled agony of night
mare, but "pacific England, the most solid pacific
country in the world," as Carlyle well calls it, gave no
sign of insurrectionary fury. The American wild
was becoming peopled with English exiles. Lord
Say, "the wise and cautious;" Lord Brooks, "the
brave, open, and enthusiastic ;" Hampden, the mag
nanimous, thoughtful, and dauntless, were beginning to
despair of England, Suddenly a streamer shot from
the northern sky; all eyes were turned upon the
portent of storm ; and a thrill of fierce joy struck to
the hearts of the patriot Puritans of England, as the
trumpets of gathering war sang clear from the
Scottish border,^
Laud, vehement and intense, with no statesman
like breadth of view,"and none of that human sym
pathy which enables the practical statesman to know
how nations feel, appears to have thought that, as
Scotland was a little kingdom, he could deal with it
more summarily and easily than with England. He
set to work with emphasis. Episcopacy was forced
upon the Scotch ; and, in 1637, the final step of intro
ducing a liturgy was attempted. The result is known
to all. Jenny Geddes flung her stool at the__head of
E 2

52 English Puritanism.
the officiating Dean of Edinburgh, and an uproar
ascended in the old Greyfriars Church, loud enough
to waken the dead that slept around. Clarendon
thinks that this riot in Greyfriars was a kind of acci
dent, and that men of craft and influence, acting with
and upon it by various artificial methods, produced
the world-historical movement of which the centre
was the Solemn League and ¦ Covenant. The theory
is interesting. It serves at least to show the his
torical capacity of that stately senatorial author — his
power of appreciating the feelings which produce
national revolutions. The tumult in Greyfriars was
a jet from fire-fountains that had long swelled in the
heart of the Scottish people. That stool of Jenny's,
flying aloft so conspicuously, was a cinder from
the deeps of a true burning mountain. The Scotch
had long been enthusiastically Presbyterian. The
preachers were the popular leaders of the nation;
the General Assembly of the Church, with its exten
sive lay representation, was the real Parliament of
the country. The cause of liberty and the cause of
religion were allied in England; in Scotland they
were one. The Scots, having once risen against the
impositions of Laud, glowed speedily into a universal
passion of excitement; the Solemn League and Cove
nant, for the establishment of Presbyterian uniformity
throughout the three kingdoms, was signed by all
classes with tears of rapture, often in the blood of the
subscribers ; and an array in hodden grey and blue
bonnets, ranged beneath a banner inscribed in golden

The Covenant. 53
letters, with the blazon. For Christ's Crown and Cove
nant, announced to Strafford, Laud, and Charles, that
the time had not yet come to bring out with shouting
the topstone of Thorough.
The whole body of the English Puritans were from
the first in sympathy with the Scots, and disaffection
had spread so generally throughout the nation, that
it was impossible for Charles to 'raise an army in
spired with any right enthusiasm for his cause. He
went north in 1639, and looked upon the army of
the Covenant, garnishing the hill of Dunse, above
Berwick, with its brave new colours, its white tents,
and crown of mounted cannon. He may have gone
near enough to hear the drums, which acted as
church bells and called the ruddy-faced young
soldiers to " good sermons and prayers morning and
even, under the roof of heaven," or he may have
heard, at dawn or sun-down, the singing of psalms
and the voice of prayer borne mellow from the far
hill-side. Laud had found " no religion " in Scotland,
not the slightest talent for, or appreciation of, the
upholstery of holiness. It might have widened his
ideas a little, or at least struck him into dumb amaze
ment, to have seen that worshipping army, in its
azure temple with the floor of green.
The expedition to Scotland exhausted the royal
exchequer, and, as no lasting peace came of the truce
which was cobbled up, a supply of money became
indispensable. After eleven years' intermission, and
with profound reluctance, Charles called the Par-

54 English Puritanism.
liament, which met in the spring of 1640, The
Enghsh. nation, with that infinite tolerance for
monarchs v^hich was in those days its characteristic,
rejoiced to see once more the face of parliament; and
the Houses were sober, dispassionate, and disposed to
please the king. But they had a manful sense of
the abuses under which the nation groaned, and
quietly, but resolutely, set about their redress. They
had sat some three weeks when the king turned them
adrift. His friends were filled with mournful aston
ishment; his enemies with bitter joy. This was the
short Parliament.
All the old illegal methods of raising money were
now resorted to by Charles, and in August he marched
again to meet the Scots, who this time had advanced
into England. The king had got an army, but it
would not fight. Posted on a hill to receive an
enemy which had to ford a deep river in its front, it
waited not to give or take a blow, but broke at once
into what Clarendon calls " the most shameful and
confounding flight that was ever heard of." This
was at Newburn on the Tyne. The Scots estab
lished themselves in the northern counties, and the
embarrassments of Charles became desperate.
It is impossible not to be struck with the shining
part played by the Scottish people in this the first
period of their intermeddling in the English Puritan
business. Clarendon, who hated Scots with a perfect
hatred, cannot veil the brilliancy and success of their
proceedings. There is a stirring poetry, akin to that

The Scots in England. 65
which thrilled the Hebrew nation of old at the
thought that Mount Zion was to become the crown
of the whole earth, in the aspiration of the little
kingdom to make its Covenant a bond of union, a
fount of blessing, for the three nations. Away
among their misty hills, the Scots could not be left
alone. Laud must torment them with his genu*
flexions, his surplices, his services, his bishops. So
they towered suddenly up in a passion of sacred
wrath and enthusiasm, and vowed that the brethren
whose groans they heard from England should also
be free of Laud and his inventions. Their carriage
in England was discreet and sagacious, as well as
brave. Their leaders, the Earl of Rothes, Lord
Louden, Alexander Henderson, men of tact, energy,
and ability, appreciated the danger of wounding the
pride of the English people by seeming either to con
quer or to lay them under too great a debt of grati
tude. They earnestly declared that the Scottish
people " remembered the infinite obligations they had
from time to time received from this nation ; especi
ally the assistance they had from it in their reforma
tion of religion, and their attaining the light of the
gospel ; and therefore, as it could never fall into their
hearts to be ungrateful to it, so they hoped that the
good people of England would not entertain any ill
opinion of their coming into this kingdom in a hostile
manner." Clarendon expresses astonishment at the
skill, harmony, self-command, and " confidence in
each other," with which the numerous Scotch nobility

56 English Puritanism.
and their clergy acted; and laments that "this
united strength, and humble and active temper, was
not encountered by an equal providence and circum
spection in the king's councils," These judicious
Scote secured a splendid maintenance for their army
in Durham and Northumberland, and the chiefs, lay
and clerical, found their way to London, They were
lodged in the heart of the city, near London stone, in
a house adjoining St. Antholin's church, which was
assigned them for their devotions. There Alexander
Henderson and his brethren preached, and, to the
great disgust of Clarendon, the Londoners flocked in
crowds to hear them, so that " from the first appear
ance of day in the morning on every Sunday, to the
shutting in of the light, the church was never empty."
Readers of sensibility will imagine the horror of
Doctor Laud !
But we have anticipated. An event or two not
unknown to history had occurred before Presby
terian preachers could become popularities in the city
of London. As the best of many bad alternatives,
Charles had resolved, in the autumn of 1640, to call
another Parliament. It met in November. It has
been named the Long Parliament ; and is regarded
by judges as the most remarkable representative body
that ever sat in this world.
The English nation had been hard to rouse, but
the day of their wrath was come. The pent up in
dignation of eleven years rushed on with the might
of an Atlantic tide ; and Thorough went down before

The Long Parliament. 57
it like a house built by children in the sand of the
shore. Yet is it not so much the fervour of righteous
vengeance in the statesmen of the Long Parliament
which strikes upon the imagination, as the wisdom
and calm intrepidity with which they directed it
against its objects. They had formidable enemies to
deal with. In reading of the French Revolution, we
are constantly impressed with the feebleness of the
opposition with which the chiefs of the popular party
had to contend. Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette,
Calonne, Maurepas, Lomenie de Brienne, were poor
creatures, and the triumph of the revolutionists
over them shows like a massacre of the innocents.
But our fathers fought with men. Laud, Charles,
above all Wentworth, were no despicable adversaries.
It was a perilous task to cope with these. Can any
thing be more terribly magnificent than that arrest
of Strafford ? As we recall the day when Pym made
his accusing speech, and the Commons sat hour after
hour until the dread business was accomplished, we
seem to see a royal eagle poised high in the heavens,
and mark an eagle-slayer, planting his foot on a dizzy
crag, bending his bow with giant force, taking, calm
and steady aim, and sending the shaft hurtling
through the sky. The arrow mounts, strikes, and in
a moment the poised wings flutter, and Wentworth
sinks like a stone into the abyss. What was the
thought which struck along Strafford's brain when
his " proud glooming countenance" darkened at the
tidings that he was impeached for high treason?

58 English Puritanism.
Was it not the thought that, great as he was, the
men against whom he had measured himself, Pym,
Hampden, and their compatriots, were abler men
than he ?
The mighty tide swept on, Strafford died on the
scaffold ; Laud was committed to the Tower ; the
Star Chamber, the High Commission, the Council of
York, were abolished ; every agent by whom Charles
had for eleven years striven to decree injustice by a
law either saved himself by flight, or was called to
account ; and the Parliament passed a Bill to which
Charles dared not refuse his sanction, ordaining that
it should not be dissolved without its own consent.
Clarendon may well call the statesmen of the Long
Parliament " terrible reformers." They were terrible,
but they were also great, and they originated all that
has been greatest in the history of nations since the
day they met.
When we pause to ask what was the pre-eminent
glory of that Parliament which, in its earliest years,
set the constitution of England on an immovable basis,
we find that it was the harmonious combination of
two elements, which have been separately appre
ciated and admired, but never clearly apprehended in
their symmetry and their unity. The entire school
of political speculation represented by Bentham, by
the Mills, and by Buckle, a school imbued with the
secular spirit of the French Revolution, has extolled
the respect for law, the reverence for justice, the
affection for constitutional form, which animated the

The Statesmen of 1640. 59
Puritan legislators of England. But to these modern
speculators the religious fervour of the Puritans is an
offence which they shun to contemplate, a scandal
which they seek to hide, or an accident to which they
attach no importance. Mr. Carlyle, on the other
hand, pours fierce contempt on all that which these
men deem worthiest of praise in the statesmen of the
Long Parliament. He passes lightly over the ship-
money case, Hampden is for him a man of close
thin lips, vigilant eyes, and clear official understand
ing, very brave but formidably thick-quilted in con
stitutional theory. It is with the religious fervour of
the Puritans, and that alone, that Mr. Carlyle has
any ardent sympathy. He paints in colours of vivid
poetry the sublime passion of their spiritual enthu
siasm. " Our ancient Puritan Reformers," he ex
claims, " were, as all Reformers that will much benefit
this earth are, always inspired by a heavenly purpose.
To see God's own law, then universally acknow
ledged for complete as it stood in the holy
written Book, made good in this world ; to see this,
or the true unwearied aim and struggle towards this,
it was a thing worth living for and dying for!
Eternal justice ; that God's will be done on earth as
it is in heaven." True words ; true as they are
beautiful: but not the whole truth. The special
glory of the Puritans is that they combined all that
is seen in them by Bentham with all that is seen in
them by Carlyle, They had the thoughtfulness, the
sagacity, the wholesome conservative sympathy, the

60 English Puritanism.
veneration for law and precedent, which mark con
summate practical legislators; but they had also a
spiritual ardour, a pure moral enthusiasm, a perpetual
sense of responsibility to the Most High God, which
raised those qualities to a more ethereal temper, and
shone through them like sacred fire dwelling in taber
nacles of clay, England then had statesmen who were
godly; and godly men who were statesmen. Never
was a political revolution so hallowed and elevated by
religion as that of the seventeenth century; never
was a religious revolution so moderated and guided
by political wisdom. It was by no base material
desire that those Conscript Fathers of the state were
moved. They were no raging anarchists, maddened
by famine, and deliriously wailing and gnashing
round their king for bread. Clarendon expatiates
on the material prosperity of England during the
ascendency of Laud and Strafford, and reflects, with
a dignity worthy of some high magnate in an oriental
empire, on the unreasonableness of men who were
roused to such indignation by mere infraction of law,
nay of one law, namely, that supplies should be
raised by Act of Parliament, What a little matter !
It was only that the king should be nourished by an
opulent realm without humiliating appeals to his
people. It was only that a rich Hampden here and
there should be illegally sentenced to pay a few
shillings. It was only that, in the background, unseen
by the common eye, like two dark enchanters in their
Cyclopean cave. Laud and Strafford should forge the

The Statesmen of 1640. 61
one a chain for the Church, the other a sword for the
State, chain and sword the emblems of that abstract
danger, that unfelt and ideal woe, the system of
Thorough. It was only, in one word, that England
should be lulled gradually into the sleep of des
potism, to await, with the other European monarchies,
like those sceptered forms that slumbered in the hall
of Eblis, the awakening of anarchic revolution. Our
fathers discerned the peril ; no semblance of external
prosperity could veil it from their eyes. They felt that
a subtle poison was stealing through that balmy air.
They knew that the heaven, for all its azure and sun
shine, would become brass, and the earth, for all its smil
ing plenty, would become iron, if once those guardian
angels, law and freedom, forsook their ancient trust in
England. Not by the will of one, but by the wisdom of
many, was this England to be governed. That these
Puritan legislators had resolved. They felt by sure
instinct that it is an unnatural state of things ; a state
of things which never was, and never will be, perma
nently combined with true national greatness; a state
of things which was conceded to the Hebrews as a
self-sought doom ; a state of things which is inhuman,
pernicious, infinitely and incurably wrong, that the
destinies of millions should hang upon the will of one
erring man. There are, indeed, exceptional periods
in the lives of nations, periods when the passions,
furious and unchained, can be curbed only by a single
gigantic hand. At such times, the heaven-born
leader, the solitary towering genius, the dictator sent

62 English Puritanism.
from God, is indispensable. But the perpetuation of
despotic authority in a line of hereditary descent is the
most fearful disaster that can overtake a nation, and
entails stupendous calamities on mankind. Only in
the " multitude of councillors" is there durable safety
for kingdoms. This truth the Puritan statesmen
knew ; and, with their lives in their hands, they stood
in the gap, beneath the banner of law and Parlia-
\ ment, and withstood the entering procession of civU
and religious despotism.
We shall not deny that there were weak and
narrow-minded men among the Puritans, men whose
earnestness froze their small natures into a wiry
intensity, who were as much formalists as Laud, and
of a still meaner type. There were Puritans for
whom the beauty of holiness consisted in hair cropped
" close round their heads, with many little peaks," in
looks perpetually demure, in phrases affectedly pre
cise. Who can have forgotten the disdain, so proud,
so womanly, so delicious, with which Lucy Hutchin
son relates that the magnificent locks which flowed
over the shoulders of her prince of men, her adored
Colonel, prejudiced his religious reputation with
"the godly of those days?" And was there ever a
great religious party to which did not adhere a
certain number of hypocrites, whose profession, fair
as it looked, gilded " not a temple of living grace,
but a tomb," holding only " the carcase of religion" ?
There are stains on the memory of the Puritans ; but
they are grains of dust on an imperial garment. The

The Puritans in 1640. 63
ispirit which animated Puritanism, the spirit which
throbbed in its heart of hearts, the spirit which made
it irresistible in its own time, and lends it still an awful
grandeur, was an inspiration of heroism from Almighty
God. Both Lord Macaulay and Mr. Carlyle suggest too
forcibly the idea that the Puritan religion was a mere
spasmodic excitement, a burst of hysterical p'hssion.
It was not such. As we see it in Cromwell while he
was yet a quiet farmer, before that liquid gleam in
his eye, expressive of all tender, true, and profound
emotions, had kindled into the lightning glance of the
warrior, it was as placid as it was strong, " The
Lord," he wrote to a lady, " accept me in His Son,
and give me to walk in the light, as He is the light !
He it is that enlighteneth our blackness, our darkness,
I dare not say, He hideth His face from me. He
giveth me to see light in His light. One beam in a
dark place hath exceeding much refreshment in it :-—
blessed be His name for shining upon so dark a heart
as mine !" That is religion for a peaceful, sober man,
wending quietly to the grave ; a beam from the heart
of heaven, falling tenderly among the household
charities, among the duties of every day. And was
it not the same religion, was it not the religion of a
healthy, clear-seeing, practical man, which accom
panied Cromwell to the field? Was it extravagant
in a Christian hero to believe that God was as near
to him as to the Hebrew David? Cromwell's God
was a living presence, uttering His wrath in the
victorious battle charge, smiling His approval in the

64 English Puritanism.
broad light of returning peace. Religion of -this
kind is sublime ; but surely, unless with our theories
we have shut out the Most High from His universe,
it is not absurd, it is not extravagant. And can any
thing be more wise and beautiful, more excellently
removed from godlessness on the one hand, anij
morbid introspection, self- worshipping pietism, or
fanatical frenzy, on the other, than the religion which
pervades Mrs. Hutchinson's memoir of her husband?
Grant that the Colonel, as she pourtrays him, is an
ideal Puritan, a saint crowned with the halo of
glorious feminine love : must it not, on any showing,
have been a noble party to which either Hutchinson
-or his wife belonged ? " In the head of all his
virtues," writes the high Puritan dame, " I shall set
that which was the head and spring of them all, his
Christianity — for this alone is the true royal blood
that runs through the whole body of virtue, and
every pretender to that glorious family, who hath no
tincture of it, is an imposter and a spurious brat.
. This is that sacred fountain which baptiseth all the
Gentile virtues, that so immortalize the names of
Cicero, Plutarch, Seneca, and all the old philosophers;
herein they are regenerated and take a new name and
nature ; digged up in the wilderness of nature, and
dipped in this living spring, they are planted and
flourish in the paradise of God. By Christianity I
intend that universal habit of grace which is wrought
in a soul by the regenerating Spirit of God, whereby
the whole creature is resigned up into the Divine will

The Puritans in 1640. 65
and-love, and all its actions designed to the obedience
and glory of its Maker." Such was the Christianity
of the Puritans, Ever in the great Taskmaster's eye.
We see them in the manor-houses of that old time, a
stately, polite, religious people ; not austere, yet not
frivolous. Their theory of life was that man's chief
end is not to amuse or to be amused, not to create or
experience sensation, but to glorify God and to enjoy
Him for ever.
They loved England with a glowing, a haughty
affection. Herein lay another notable difference be
tween the Puritans of England and the revolutionists
of France. To these last old France had become
horrible ; their soul's wish was to raze it to its founda
tions. But the Puritans stood up against Laud and
Strafford, because they were binding new chains round
the form of their beloved England, " Whoever," says
the Puritan Mrs, Hutchinson, " considers England,
will find it no small favour of God to have been made
one of its natives, both upon spiritual and outward
accounts. The happiness of the soil and air contribute
all things that are necessary to the use or delight of
man's life. The celebrated glory of this isle's inhabi
tants ever since they received a mention in history,
confers some honour upon every one of her children,
with an obligation to continue in that magnanimity and
virtue, which hath famed this island, and raised her
head in glory higher than the great kingdotns of the
neighbouring continent  Better laws and a happier
constitution of government no nation ever enjoyed, it

66 English Puritanism.
being a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and demo
cracy, with sufficient fences against the pest of every
one of these forms, tyranny, faction, and confusion;
yet," — here the brave lady explains how even in such
a state a patriot might have to draw sword, — " yet is
it not possible for man to devise such just and excel
lent bounds as will keep in wild ambition, when
princes' flatterers encourage that beast to break his
fence, which it hath often done, with miserable con
sequences both to the prince and people ; but could
never in any age so tread down popular liberty, but that
it rose again with renewed vigour, till at length it trod
on those that trampled it before."
Such were the sentiments of the Puritan patriots of
England at the commencement of the Long Parliament.
A large proportion of the party were persons of high
breeding, of noble culture, of refined intelligence ; in
morals pure, in faith earnest, in devotion sincere.
Many of them were of the aristocracy; the body of
the party consisted of country gentlemen and the
most substantial portion of the middle class. They
dreamed not of overturning the monarchy or destroy
ing the Church, but were resolute to maintain the
freedom of their country, to rescue the Church from
the thraldom of Laud, and to carry on that work of
further reformation within her pale which had been
contemplated by the first English Reformers.
Conjecture as to what might have occurred, if the
circumstances which combine with men's dispositions to
work out the results of history had been different, is

The Puritans in 1640, 67
generally futile ; but it seems as probable as any event
which did not take place can be said to be, that, but for
a few untoward circumstances, the Long Parliament
might, in its earliest sessions, have reformed the
Church more satisfactorily either than Cromwell or
than Charles II, The Commonwealth swept away the
whole framework of Episcopacy, and ordained the
discontinuance of the Book of Common Prayer ; the
Act of Nonconformity not only re-established Epis
copacy, but laid clergymen under more searching
tests of Conformity than those of Laud himself: the
dispositions of Churchmen, when the sittings of the
Long Parliament commenced, were favourable to a
mean between these extremes. The proscription of
Calvinism might have ceased ; the adoption of certain
ceremonies might have been left to the will of pastors
and congregations; liberty of prayer beyond the
letter of the liturgy might have been conceded ; and
presbyters might have been associated with bishops
in the exercise of Church discipline. These reforms,
with perhaps the addition of the exclusion of bishops
from the Upper House, would have met with no
serious opposition from Episcopalians of the school of
Usher, and would have satisfied almost the entire
Puritan party. In point of fact, the Puritans in the
Church of England, the Puritans who loved the
Church, clung to the Church, and desired no more
than that the Church would reconcile them to her
self, by granting them such liberty as might enable
them to dwell in her courts, had only in solitary
F 2

68 English Puritanism.
instances demanded more than this. There were
thorough-going Presbyterians in England, who ob
jected on conscientious grounds to even a modified
Episcopacy ; there were thorough-going Independents
who maintained the Divine right of congregations
only: but those who could not conscientiously,
conform to a Church, retaining an Episcopalian
framework, and tolerating, though not enjoining,
the ceremonies, were in 1641 in a minority in
England. The self-will, however, and unmanly vehemence of
Charles, urging him to that fatal " arrest of the five
members," and the horror, alarm, and suspicion
created by the Irish rebellion, hurried a resolute but
constitutional opposition into revolution. Hampden,
and other leaders of the Puritans, who had made
common cause with the Scots on their first advance
into England, knew that the triumph of Charles
would be their destruction. The Puritans of the
middle and lower classes were agitated with fears
of massacre. The breach, therefore, which, in 1640
or 1641, might have been closed, had in 1642 be
come irreparable ; and the quarrel was referred to the
arbitrament of the sword. A beneficent and har
monious settlement became thus, for that century,
impossible ; and the Puritans gained only the melan
choly assurance that spiritual reformation could not
be effected in the battle-field, " We have spiritual
weapons," said a Puritan who saw the conflict from
beginning to end, " given us for spiritual combats, and

The Brethren of Scotland. 69
those who go about to conquer subjects for Christ with
swords of steel, shall find the base metal break to
shivers when it is used, and hurtfuUy fly in their
own faces."
We saw how discreetly the Scots comported them
selves when, in 1640, they ruined the king's affairs
in the north of England, and compelled him to call
the Long Parliament. From the end of 1640 their
Commissioners had been in London, and their
popularity with the Puritans never flagged. An
order was entered by the House of Commons, " that
upon all occasions the appellation should be used of
our brethren of Scotland." Those were the days
when Milton hailed the two kingdoms as united in
invincible might, in virtue, and in the brotherhood of
godlike deeds. " Go on both hand in hand, O
nations, never to be disunited ; be the praise and the
heroic song of all posterity !" But in fact the union
could not be perfect; it contained elements of dis
ruption from the first; and what seemed to the
exultant Scots to cement it indissolubly, was the
cause of its being finally rent asunder.
The Scots were all aglow with enthusiasm for
their Presbyterian faith. Presbyterianism was to
their apprehensions so benign, so beautiful, so divinely
good and great, that to persuade all men that it was
the one thing needful, for time and eternity, for
State and Church, seemed an easy, off-hand process.
Before starting from Newcastle for London, in No
vember, 1640, their Commissioners had been careful

70 English Puritanism.
to take along with them four Presbyterian luminaries,
calculated, it was thought, to irradiate the four corners
of England. Mr. Robert BaiUie of Kilwinning, who
had left his quiet manse in Ayrshire, with sword on
thigh, and two Dutch pistols at saddle-bow, and come
into England with the army of the Covenant, tells
us how the matter was arranged. " Our noblemen
and ministers," writes Mr. BaiUie, "in one voice
thought meet that not only Mr, Alexander Hender
son, but also Mr. Robert Blair, Mr. George Gillespie,
and I, should all three, for divers ends, go to London ;
Mr. Robert Blair to satisfy the minds of many in
England who love the way of New England f Inde
pendency) better than that of Presbyteries in our
Church; I for the convincing of that prevalent
faction (Arminian Episcopals) against which I have
written ; Mr. Gillespie for the crying-down of the
English ceremonies, on which he has written ; and all
four of us to preach, by turns, to our Commissioners
in their house." If this does not bring the English
up to the mark, what will ? Beautiful and wonderful
the simplicity of those "noblemen and ministers!"
As we think of the strife of opinion from that day to
this — of the weltering war of words, never-ending,
still-beginning, like the old battle between the winds
and waves — is there not something pathetic in the
thought of the four Presbyterian magicians, who were
to reduce the ocean of English opinion to sublime
and everlasting silence ?
Unaccountable as it must have seemed to the Rev.

The Brethren of Scotland. 71
Mr. Baillie, the work of convincing England of the
infinite superiority and Divine and exclusive right of
Presbyterianism proved difficult. The Scots had no
doubt that it was a duty to impose the heavenly
truth upon all ; to establish Presbyterianism, and
to forbid everything else. A considerable party
in England took their view of the question, but
at no period were the English Presbyterians so
numerous and decided that strict enforcement of
Presbyterian uniformity throughout the country
would not have been felt to be oppressive. Mighty,
no doubt, as were the spells of our four ma
gicians, the most powerful advocate of Presbyterian
uniformity in England proved to be David Leslie,
the crooked little soldier, who had once put Wallen-
stein to his mettle, and who was at the head of the
Scotch army of the Covenant, When the prospects
of the Parliament were at their darkest in 1643, —
when Bristol, Exeter, and all the West had submitted
to Charles, — the presence of Leslie and his Scots
became extremely desirable. The Presbyterian in-'
fluence in the House of Commons grew strong.
Subscription of the Covenant by all classes was or
dained. Oliver Cromwell set his hand to that famed
document, pledging himself to put down Popery,
Prelacy, and Superstition, and to promote uniformity
in religion and worship throughout the three king
doms. It turned out that Oliver's conception of
uniformity meant chiefly a uniform absence of com
pulsion; and that he interpreted the Covenant in

72 English Puritanism.
a sense different from that of the Presbyterians.
Meanwhile, however, twenty-one thousand Scots
came trooping across the border, and proved highly
serviceable to the Parliament in the summer of
1644. They held the King's forces in the north
in check, took forts and towns, and astonished
the English by their capacities of martial toil and
"patient sufferance of the ill weather." On Marston
Moor, " the Scots delivered their fire with such con
stancy and swiftness, it was as if the whole air had
become an element of fire." What with Mr. Baillie's
convincing syllogisms, and old Leslie's rolling fire,
Presbyterianism seemed in a fair way in England.
But Presbyterians of the Scottish school would
tolerate neither Episcopalians nor Independents;
and these last found a defender in Oliver Cromwell.
The Houses, in offering resistance to the King,
had proclaimed that they did not fight against him
but against his evil Councillors. The Scots, and those
English Puritans who hailed them with the most for
ward sympathy, were consistent and emphatic in the
disclaimer of any wish to overturn the monarchy.
This has been commonly regarded as a pretence. Mr,
Caiiyle sneers at it as a piece of mere constitutional
verbiage, treated with just scorn by Cromwell, We
believe that it was sincere : nay more, that, unless we
understand its sincerity, we shall attain no clear con
ception of the chain of historical cause and effect in
those dubious years. The distinction between the
Monarch and his Ministers was from of old familiar

Views of the Presbyterians. 73
to the mind of England, It was an ancient principle
of the law, firmly grasped by the national mind, that
a minister might be led to death for infringing the
rights of the subject, though he could plead the ex
press command of his sovereign. This principle being
generally recognised, the Puritans saw no absurdity,
no hypocrisy, in the profession that armies were
levied and war declared, in order to bring a monarch,
safe on account of the inviolability of his person, into
amity with Parliament and alliance with law.
The early proceedings of Parliament, and the
conduct of the Presbyterian party, from first to
last, corresponded with this theory. The Cove
nant, whUe making no terms with the Episco
palian Church, was an oath of allegiance to the
Stuart dynasty. " We kept," said an English
Presbyterian divine, who saw the fall and the
restoration of the monarchy, "to our old prin
ciples, and thought all others had done so too,
except a very few inconsiderable persons. We were
unfeignedly for King and Parliament. We believed
that the war was only to save the Parliament and
kingdom frcm the Papists and delinquents, and to
remove the dividers, that the King might again
return to his Parliament, and that no changes might
be made in reUgion, but by the laws that had his free
consent. We took the true happiness of King and
people, Church and State, to be our end, and so we
understood the Covenant, engaging both against
Papists and schismatics," Hence the unwUHngness

74 English Puritanism.
of the Parliamentary generals to annihilate the
military power of Charles, They and all the Pres
byterians desired to force a treaty upon him, but
not to put him out of the way and proceed to an
independent arrangement. In their programme two
things were essential: the establishment of the
Presbyterian Church; and the maintenance of the
ancient throne. It is beyond dispute that, under
the influence of the Scots, they dealt more sternly
with Episcopacy than the old English Puritans
required or would have approved. But they stood
with equal persistence by their other essential
point. If they refused to league themselves with
Charles unless he abandoned Episcopacy, they refused
to ally themselves with Cromwell when he struck at
Charles and declared for the expulsion of the Stuarts.
The Presbyterians defended the King to the last.
For his sake, when it became evident that the Iron
sides were going to trample him down, they rose in
arms in Wales, in Scotland, and, in smaller numbers,
throughout England. For his sake, they were
beaten down by the victorious soldiers of Naseby,
For his sake, they were ignominiously thrust from
the House of Commons by Colonel Pride. No
sooner had Charles I. laid his head on the block,
than Charles II, was proclaimed by Presbyterians.
Once more Cromwell joined in death- wrestle with
these determined supporters of the throne. The
fire of their loyalty was quenched in the blood of
Dunbar and Worcester, Then, and not till then,

Hopes of the King. 75
did the standard of the old dynasty sink in England.
In one word, Presbyterian Royalists fought for the
Stuarts with resolution as fixed, with valour as
dauntless, as the Episcopalian Royalists. After the
death of Charles I., Presbyterian Ministers were, as
Cromwell acknowledges, " imprisoned, deprived of
their benefices, sequestered, forced to fly from their
dwellings, and bitterly threatened," for calling those
who had condemned and executed the King, " mur
derers and the like."
If the Presbyterians thought it desirable to form a
league with Charles after his troops were driven from
the field, it is not surprising that Charles himself
should have conceived the monarchy to be an inexpug
nable tower of strength, and trusted to win back by
intrigue what he had lost in battle. His theory on
the subject will seem the wildest hallucination, unless
we justly estimate that reverence for his person and
prerogative, which made men fight against his armies,
while shuddering at the thought of dethroning
himself He thought he could play off the Presby
terians and Independents against each other ; " being "
— we quote his own words, — " not without hope that
I shall be able to draw either the Presbyterians or
the Independents to side with me for extirpating
one another, that I shall be really King again," The
project was not absurd. Under certain circumstances,
it might have succeeded. The prerogative was a
potent engine of destruction in the hand of Charles,
a detonating ball which, if put in the proper place.

76 English Puritanism.
might, at the proper time, have shattered asunder
either the Presbyterian or the Independent coach.
But to place the combustible, with the eye of an
Oliver Cromwell looking fixedly upon the performer,
was a matter of difficulty. Alliance with either party
became a delicate business, when each knew that the
object aimed at was the extirpation of both.
The Ironsides felt that, while Charles lived, the
danger of a league between him and the Presby
terians, based on a rigid Presbyterian uniformity,
.would continue to menace the Independents. This
was historically the cause of Charles's death. Any
Church which could be established in England
during the Commonwealth, had to make room
both for Presbyterians and Independents.
Oliver Cromwell was one of those old Puritans
who groaned under the yoke of Laud. He had
witnessed with indignation the extinction of the
Society for supplying localities, which had no minis
ters, with lecturers. He had trembled at those ' Popish
innovations ' which, for his Calvinistic eyes, had none
of the beauty of holiness. He had told the Parlia
ment, with flashing countenance, and harsh untunable
voice, that Dr, Alablaster had " preached flat Popery
at Paul's Cross." As governor of Ely, under the
Parliament, he had enforced the ordinance of the
Houses against ceremonies, standing up in Ely
Cathedral, and crying out to the Rev. Mr. Hitch, who
ventured to appear in a surplice, " leave off your fooling
and come down, sir." We beUeve, nevertheless, that

Cromwell and Charles. 77
CromweU would have been content with that measure
of freedom in the Church which the majority of the
early Puritans demanded. His principles, as stated by
himself to one of his ParUaments, pledged him to
respect the King's conscience, if it dictated the
duty of estabUshing Episcopacy, " So long," said
Cromwell, " as there is liberty of conscience foi|
the Supreme magistrate to exercise his conscience in
erecting what form of Church government he is
satisfied he should set up, why should he not give the
like liberty to others ?" Might Cromwell, then, have
arrived at an understanding with Charles, restored
the monarchy, and anticipated Monk? We believe
that, at one period, this was not impossible. But
Cromwell soon perceived that Charles could not be
trusted, and that his triumph would inevitably bring
destruction upon all who had fought against him.
Nor could concessions on the subject of Episcopacy
be wrung from the king ; and as OUver was a Cove
nanter, though reading the Covenant rather in the
spirit than the letter, it is probable that he felt
himself, even if he regretted the fact, under a sacred
obligation to oppose the establishment of prelacy.
The result, at all events, was that he left Charles to
his fate, and became the uncompromising enemy of
the family of Stuart. The Lord, he said, had
rejected this house from ruling over England.
To Presbytery, as a form of Church government,
Cromwell had still fewer objections than to Episco
pacy. But he had no sympathy with a party

78 English Puritanism.
whose sole conception of the "glorious Reforma
tion" symboUsed by the Covenant, was the sub
stitution of a domineering Presbyterianism for a
domineering Episcopacy. His Puritanism had been
from the flrst, what the best of English Puritanism
was, not a preference of one form of Church govern
ment to another, but a life of spiritual, personal
religion, an intense realization of the presence of
God, a devotion of the entire being to Him. The
Cavaliers were dreaded and disliked by Cromwell not
as Episcopalian, but as godless ; and as he believed that
both the Presbyterians and Independents were bent
upon serving God in spirit and in truth, he was
ardently desirous of effecting reconciliation between
them. " Presbyterians, Independents," thus he wrote
from Bristol in 1645, " all have here the same spirit of
faith and prayer ; the same presence and answer ; they
agree here, have no names of difference : pity it is it
should be otherwise anywhere! All that believe
have the real unity, which is most glorious ; because
inward and spiritual, in the Body, and to the Head.
For being united in forms, commonly called Unifor
mity, every Christian will for peace-sake study and
do, as far as conscience will permit. And for
brethren, in things of the mind we look for no com
pulsion but that of light and reason." But this
ideal was not easily attainable, even after the downfall
of Laud. Only a few men scattered over England
were capable of responding to the broad sense and
the profound Christianity of those words of Oliver's.

Cromwell's Tolerance. 79
His expressions constitute abundant proof that he
was a hundred years in advance of the general
intelligence of his age. He deplored, a few years
before his death, that his aspiration had been vain,
" Every sect saith," these were his words, " Oh, give
me liberty ! But give it him, and to his power he
wUl not yield it to anybody else,"
Cromwell did as much for liberty of conscience
as his position rendered possible. The Presbyterians
were his implacable foes. He dared not permit them
to assemble in synod, nor would he allow them to
exclude Independents from Church preferment. But
Presbytery remained during the Protectorate the esta-
bished religion of England, and Cromwell's Triers
appointed a good man to a benefice whether he called
himself Independent, Presbyterian, or Episcopalian.
The " frequent use" of the Prayer Book was forbidden,
but the fact that frequency of use was permitted
to no man, demonstrates that occasional use was
conceded to all. Observe also: first, that the
Episcopalian Royalists would not let Cromwell
alone, but annoyed him incessantly with their
conspiracies; secondly, that the Puritans regarded
the gift of prayer as of high importance in a minister,
and deemed frequent use of the Prayer Book, how
ever good it might be in itself, an evidence of intel
lectual poverty, spiritual apathy, or of indolence. The
Protector was beyond comparison the most tolerant
statesman of his age. Standing between the
cramped episcopacy of Laud, and the stern genius

80 English Puritanism.
of Scottish Presbytery, he secured for the British
islands as much religious Uberty as could be main
tained against both. It is a pathetic, a sublime
spectacle, this of Cromwell struggling, inarticu
lately, half-consciously, to force his way to the
practical realization of a great truth then only
dawning on the foremost intellects of the race.
He did what he could. With that marvellous
power of going direct to the heart of every matter
which distinguished him, he made it the grand aim
of his ecclesiastical policy to appoint able and godly
ministers in the parishes of England; and it is
proved by overwhelming evidence that in this he was
eminently successful.
It is a doctrine still current in the clubs of
England, still published in Saturday Reviews, that
the Puritan reformation of the Church of England
came to this : — " the ordained clergy were superseded
by carpenters and cobblers, who were conscious only
of an outpouring of the Spirit," Is not this a curious
view of English Church history in the seventeenth
century? Does it not suggest with painful im-
pressiveness, the reflection, " With how little know
ledge, with how little sense, in this time of super
lative enlightenment, is that public opinion formed,
which governs the world !" The Puritans, as Hallam
testifies, were in the earlier period of their history
the most learned theologians of the Church ; and if,
during the Laudian ascendency, they were discouraged
at the Universities, they continued, beyond question.

The Commonwealth Church. 81
ail erudite and cultivated party. Against Laud's " bas
tard fifth century reform," they appealed not only to
Scripture, but to the records of an earlier Christian
antiquity. "Carpenters and cobblers!" The
Church of Baxter, of Poole, of Goodwin, of Howe,
of Owen, of MUton ! The University of Oxford was
doubtless extinct when Cromwell, its Chancellor,
declared that he knew the value of learning to all
right Commonwealths, The court of Cromwell was
hopelessly UUterate when the Latin Secretary penned
the Protector's despatches to Mazarin. It was to
young street preachers, innocent of the arts of read
ing and writing, that Oliver referred Avhen he boasted
to his ParUament of the " very great seed" for the
ministry which God had at the Universities.
It is surely unnecessary to pour contempt on
England, in order to insult Nonconformity. Our
ancestors never stooped so low as to endure, for four
teen years, a Church of vapouring mechanics. They
were, indeed, not satisfied with the ecclesiastical
organization established by Cromwell ; some of them
longed for exclusive Episcopacy, some of them for
exclusive Presbytery, a few for exclusive Inde
pendency, But they knew that the Presbyterian
Church had throughout its whole history honoured
learning; that the Puritans had numbered in their
ranks a goodly proportion of learned bishops and
divines; that the Universities still performed the
function of educating youth for the ministry; and
that, doctrinally, the Church of the Commonwealth

82 English Puritanism.
agreed with the Church of the Thirty-Nine Articles.
They knew that Cromwell's Triers had, on the whole,
confined themselves to ejecting scandalous ministers,
and that the comprehensive practical energy, which
had trained Ironsides to fight, made itself known in
the quickened zeal and heedful morals of ten thousand
preachers. The Presbyterian Directory of worship, in general
use in the Churches, was no outpouring of unedu
cated extravagance; it was a reverent, thoughtful,
temperate, and judicious document. It contained not
one scornful word against the Book of Common
Prayer, and declared the first English reformers
worthy to be " had in everlasting remembrance, with
thankfulness and honour." It affirmed only that the
time had come for further reformation; that the
Prayer Book "disquieted the consciences of many
godly ministers and people ;" that " others of hopeful
parts " were by it " diverted from all thoughts of the
ministry to other studies;" that the Papists boasted of
it as a compliance, and the reformed Churches felt it
as an offence; and that, therefore, it was well to lay it
aside. The assertion is constantly made, that in the
Church of the Commonwealth, and in the Presbyterian
Churches of the present day, prayer was and is left
entirely to the individual minister. It is an entire
mistake. In the Presbyterian order of worship,
directions are afforded on the subject, brief, but
singularly comprehensive. The preacher, for ex
ample, is instructed "to pray for all in authority.

The Commonwealth Church. 83
especially for the king's majesty; that God would
make him rich in blessings, both in his person and
government; establish his throne in religion and
righteousness, save him from evil counsel, and make
him a blessed and glorious instrument for the
conservation and propagation of the gospel, for the
encouragement and protection of them that do well,
the terror of all that do evil, and the great good of
the whole Church, and of all his kingdoms." This
seems as dignified, as honourable, as worthy of a
Church and as reverent towards God, as to supplicate
blessings on a " most religious and gracious " lover of
Mrs. Barlow, Mrs. Palmer, Lucy Waters, and Nell
Gwynn. Nor are the directions for preaching such as
could have been framed by illiterate bigots, or
capable of application in an illiterate Church.
The minister is " pre-supposed " to have "skill
in the original languages, and in such arts and
sciences as are handmaids unto divinity," and
to be gifted with knowledge " in the whole body
of theology ; but most of all, in the holy scriptures."
The composition of the sermon is thus pertinently
touched upon : — " The arguments or reasons are to be
solid, and, as much as may be, convincing. The
iUustrations, of what kind soever, ought to be full of
light, and such as may convey the truth into the
hearer's heart with spiritual delight." It might be
profitable for preachers, even in our own day, to
take a hint from the old Presbyterian Directory.
G 2

S4 English Puritanism.
"Whatever," says Sir James Stephen, "may have
been the faults, or whatever the motives of the
Protector, there can be no doubt that under his
sway England witnessed a diffusion, till then
unknown, of the purest influence of genuine re
ligious principles." Such has been the concession
of all candid, large-minded Anglicans; and yet,
in the tractarian coterie, in the fashionable club, it
continues to be believed that the Church in which
Oliver Cromwell and John Milton worshipped, was
a den of shrieking fanatics, and ranting fools.
For not a few clergymen, conscientiously attached
to the ritual of the Church of England, Puritan
ascendency was the advent of persecution. Crom
well's Triers, while turning out many incumbents
for vice and incompetency, turned out some for " fre
quent use of the Book of Common Prayer." Of all
such what have we to say ? We have to express for
them unfeigned admiration ; to extol their fortitude
and virtue ; to appeal to their example against the
gold-worship and the respectability-worship of the
present time ; and to reflect, in pride and mournful-
ness, of a time when what we believe to have been
the less great and the less noble of the contending
parties consisted of men so great and so noble as the
Churchmen and the Cavaliers of the seventeenth cen
tury. There is a sunshine so intense, a light so vivid,
that its shadow is scarlet; there are times so iUustrious
that the leaders on all sides have the gait of heroes.
For the rest, we can only remark, that the man

The Ejected Episcopalians. 85
who believes that there was a sweeping ejection
of Episcopalian ministers from the Commonwealth
Church, who talks of 7000 or half that number of
sufferers, has argued himself into an hallucination
contradicting the very laws of arithmetic. Cromwell's
Court of Triers did not come into existence until
about six years before the restoration; and how
lax had been the enforcement of Presbyterianism
since its approval by Parliament some ten years
earlier, must be known to every student of those.
times. At the restoration, the average number of
years during which the ejected Episcopalians had
been out of their benefices cannot have been above
ten ; and it is obvious that every incompetent or
tippling parson, who had been turned out by the
Triers, would present himself as a martyr to the most
religious and gracious King. Yet the claimants, at the
restoration, of benefices previously held in the Church,
did not number, at the utmost, above two or three
hundred. In the next place, it is just to remember
that the Puritans made a provision for the expelled
ministers, sufficient to keep them from starvation. In
the third place — and this is important — the ejected
clergy were not forbidden to engage in that labour
which would come most aptly to their hand, and by
which they could, in many, if not in most instances,
procure a livelihood, the labour of tuition. It was
one of the bitterest cruelties inflicted by the rancour
of the restoration to forbid Nonconformists to become
schoolmasters or private tutors. Jeremy Taylor,

86 English Puritanism.
teaching his school in Wales, could refer to " the
gentleness and mercy of a noble enemy." How
beautiful are those words! How melancholy that
after two hundred years so few Englishmen, on
either side, can feel and emulate the nobleness of
their spirit ! God forbid that we should breathe an
imputation on such a Churchman as Jeremy Taylor.
There, in his Welsh solitude, tranquil as a star
above the storm, did this saint of God utter those
strains of practical piety, so tenderly beautiful, so
richly melodious, which, to latest times, wiU bring
all high virtues, all pure feelings, to dwell like
angels in human breasts; which will cast a gentle,
irresistible spell over the raging passions; which
will convince men how reasonable is faith, how
manly is humility, how divine is charity, how holy
may be the life, how holy and how happy the
death, of the Christian.
But there was now breaking dimly upon several
minds a conception, which, after two hundred years,
still waits for general acceptance, Cromwell, looking
out upon England Avith the eye of a practical leader
and king, seeing that the root of godliness was in
many who strove and persecuted for the sake of
forms, caught a glimpse of it. " Men," he said, the
piercing beam of his genius struggling through the
cloud of his words, "Men who believe the remis
sion of sins through the blood of Christ, and free
justification by the blood of Christ ; who live upon
the grace of God : those men, who are certain they

Comprehension instead of Uniformity, 87
are so, are members of Jesus Christ, and are to
Him the apple of His eye. Whoever hath this
faith, let his form be what it will ; he walking peace
ably, without prejudice to others under other forms ;
it is a debt due to God and Christ, and He will
require it, if that Christian may not enjoy his liberty."
As for his own practice, Cromwell declares it to have
been, " To let all this nation see that whatever pre
tensions to religion would continue quiet, peaceable,
they should enjoy conscience and liberty to them
selves." Many a Presbyterian shook his head
at the mention of tolerance of sectaries; but
Oliver had that penetrating glance of his on the
heart of the matter, and he kept it there. In such a
state of religious opinion as had come to exist in
England, there could be justice and comfort only in
agreement to differ.
Thinkers were beginning to penetrate to a truth
which had been pressed on Cromwell by facts.
John Milton had long proclaimed, in words which
sounded like the Protector's battle charges, that
conscience must be free, Chillingworth had used
a word in reference to communion with the Church
of Rome, which derived a new significance in the
turn men's minds were taking, "The true reason,"
said ChUlingworth, in explaining to Romanists the
cause why Protestants separated from them, "is
not so much because you maintain errors and
corruptions as because you impose them." Jeremy
Taylor had bid men consider, " whether of the two

88 English Puritanism.
is the schismatic, he that makes unnecessary and
(supposing the state of things) inconvenient im
positions, or he that disobeys them, because he
cannot, without doing violence to his conscience,
believe them: he that parts communion, because
without sin he cOuld not entertain it, or they that
have made it necessary for him to separate, by
requiring such conditions, which to no man are
simply necessary, and to him in particular are either
sinful or impossible."
The idea, then, had already touched the intellectual
mountain tops of England that uniformity, which
had been yearned for first by Laud and then by the
Covenanters, might not be more desirable, and was a
thousand-fold less practicable, than comprehension.
Unity in essentials ; diversity in forms : such was the
plan of Church communion which was now agitating,
or composing, many minds in England.
Why could" not Oliver attempt comprehension on
¦ even a broader scale than that of the Commonwealth
Church, and with his strong arm helm it to
success ? For several reasons. Cromwell, while
wielding a sceptre at which Europe trembled, was not
himself free. He lay under dread of the army. The
lion crouched at his feet, licked his hand, defended him
from any power on earth that could come against him.
But he had fed it with victory until the very emotion
of fear had left its heart, and he knew with sure
instinct that there were one or two things which
would bring it in sudden irresistible spring upon him-

Oliver's Difficulties. 89
self. He dared not take the name of King; the
Ironsides would not allow it : probably, also, he
dared not offend them by proclaiming that all minis
ters who chose might use the Prayer Book. In the
second place, Cromwell was never accepted with any
cordiality by the subjects over whom he ruled.
Clarendon says that the three nations " perfectly hated
him." This is an exaggeration, but it is true that he
was looked upon by the vast majority of Englishmen,
Scotchmen, and Irishmen as a conqueror and usurper.
The national pride had been wounded by the success
of a company of soldiers, chosen for particular
reasons by their commander, and having few affinities
with the body of their countrymen. That indomi
table instinct of liberty, which in the history of
England has so often been identical with the instinct
of law, was offended in Oliver. The public mind
could not balance the difficulties of his position, or
consider whether, at any time, he might have acted
differently without sacrificing both his own life and
the cause for which he fought. The facts patent to
all were that, by sheer military force, he had turned
out of doors a large number of the representatives of
England, and that he had used the Parliamentary
instrument, thus adapted to his purposes, to take the
Ufe of the King. The English people never forgave
him. In vain did he moderate between their factions,
earnestly bent upon winning the goodwill of all. In
vain did he offer the gUttering toys of foreign in
fluence and martial glory to a nation wishing only

90 English Puritanism.
for domestic freedom. In vain did he implore the
Presbyterians, his breast heaving with transcendent
passion, his eye radiant with tears, to mark how God
bad owned him; how often he had been answered
from the whirlwind ; how certain it was that, if they
rejected him, the liberty to worship God, which he
preserved to them, would be exchanged for remorse
less persecution. The nation would not be concili
ated. That unconquerable spirit which had wrested
Magna Charta from John, which, when thoroughly
roused had daunted Elizabeth, which had stood with
Hampden in the Exchequer Chamber and had blasted
as with lightning the proud front of Strafford, rose up
against Cromwell and put the question, " By what
right dost thou rule in England ? " He wished to
govern by means of Parliaments ; he held the ar
rangement of the electoral system iii his own hands,
and had major-generals to countenance loyal electors :
but he could neither coax nor compel England to send
him a sycophant House of Commons, and he was
under the necessity of turning from the door nearly a
hundred members of the last he called. It was a
Parliament from which the vital essence had been
extracted that offered Oliver the crown, a Parliament
which had no claim to represent this island. What
hope was there that the Protector, unable to obtain
recognition from the kingdom as its lawful ruler,
should introduce any scheme of ecclesiastical com
prehension granting conscientious Episcopalians that
access to the Church which he would, we believe,

Richard Baxter, 91
have personally accorded them ? David, the man of
blood, could not rear the temple of Jerusalem ;
Cromwell, the victor of Naseby and Dunbar, could
not build up the walls of the Church.
As the years of the Protectorate rolled slowly
towards their close, preparation for a grand attempt
to substitute comprehension for uniformity in the
ecclesiastical establishment of England, was gradually
proceeding. Richard Baxter was the son of a farmer, who
cultivated his fields on the banks of the Severn, at
the time when Oliver Cromwell pursued a similar'
occupation on the banks of the Ouse, Richard had
been born in 1615, and was an observing lad of
eighteen or twenty, when the beauty of holiness was
becoming rather dazzling under the manipulation of
Laud. The Baxters were disposed, however, to judge
favourably of everything which obtained the sanction
of ecclesiastical authority. " There was," says Richard,
" no savour of Nonconformity in our family." But
Dr. Laud contrived to throw a shade of plausibility
on Nonconformity even in the eyes of this unex
ceptionable household. The "conformable godly
teacher," who had edified the viUage in Richard's
boyhood, had ceased to be conformable when required
to " read publicly the Book of Sports and Dancing
on the Lord's Day;" and the pious rustics, whose
conformity came up to the mark, headed by a piper
who was adequately versed in the principles of the
Laudian Church, chose their place of Sunday dancing

92 English Puritanism.
" not an hundred yards from our door," " We could
not," adds Baxter, " on the Lord's Day, either read a
chapter, or pray, or sing a psalm, or catechise, or
instruct a servant, but with the noise of the pipe and
tabor, and the shoutings of the street, continually in
our ears," Rather trying, that, for a family with no
savour of Nonconformity. The Baxters preferred
reading the Scripture on the Lord's Day, to dancing
round the piper, so they were called " Puritans, pre
cisians, and hypocrites," and were the common scorn
of the enlightened Laudian rabble. Nay more :
" when the people by the book were allowed to play
and dance out of public service time, they could so
hardly break off their sports, that many a time the
reader was fain to stay till the piper and players
would give over. Sometimes the morris-dancers
would come into the Church in all their linen, and
scarfs, and antic-dresses, with morris-bells jingling at
their heels ; and " — so admirably did they apprehend
Laud's exaltation of the Prayer Book above the ser
mon, — " as soon as the Common Prayer was read, did
haste out presently to their play again." One could
dance with some satisfaction after having honoured
Church, king, and conscience to that extent. " It
was a shame," Oliver Cromwell once declared, re
ferring to exhibitions like these, "to be a Christian,
within these fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years, in
this nation." Young Baxter began to admit that
there was something after aU to be said for Noncon-
formity; but the reverence for Church and throne,

Richard Baxter. 93
which he acquired in his father's house, never left
him. He was in the prime of his opening manhood when
the wars broke out. A pure, high, intellectual nature,
in speculation intrepid, in simplicity child-like : with a
brain of marvellous capacity and exquisite subtlety, and
a heart thrUling with hope, with ardour, with spiritual
enthusiasm. He had read fathers and schoolmen, until
the scholastic faith that logic is omnipotent stole over
his mind. From his deep, dark, eloquent eye, glowing
with genius and purity, from his well-rounded ample
forehead, from his sensitive yet resolute lip, there
looked forth radiant trust in the good, the true, the
beautiftil, in God, freedom, immortality, and in the
power of strong argument and clear word to woo all
men to a like faith and love. It is an enviable frame
of mind if we think only of the anthems with which
it fills the young bosom, and the touches of morning
crimson with which it brightens the cloud-curtains of
the future : it is not so enviable if we reflect on the
obstructions it throws in the way of success, and on
its power to embitter the pang of disappointment,
when the smiling future becomes the haggard present,
and the soft hues of azure and vermilion dissolve in
lashing sleet or pelting hail. Richard Baxter felt all
the woe of this disappointment, but that blessed music
of faith in God, and love to man, never went sUent in
the temple of his soul.
He became a Presbyterian, but not through the
influence of Mr. Robert Baillie's book against the

94 Mnglish Puritanism.
Episcopals, or exactly after the fashion of that
reverend gentleman's countrymen, Baxter is the
historical representative of English, as distinguished
from Scottish, Presbyterianism, The keen and im
petuous inteUect of Scotland, intense rather than
comprehensive, found satisfaction in a determinate
system of Church government, consistent in principle,
dogma, and framework, and marked off by sharp
logical edges from Episcopacy on the one hand, and
Independency on the other. The Presbyterianism of
that country had indeed passed through a transition
stage. There had been superintendents, a sort of
apology for bishops, in the days of Knox, But the
recognition of the presbyter as equal, in all essential
powers and functions, to the superintendent, had
from the first been distinct, and at length every
vestige of Episcopal form was swept away. The
Presbyterians who crossed the border from Scotland
in the Puritan period, had a strong antipathy to the
very name of bishop. The English Puritans were not
prepared to sympathise with this feeling. They were
familiar as a party with the fundamental ideas of
Presbyterianism. Like all the early English Reformers,
they acknowledged the validity of Presbyterian ordi
nation, and the identity, in kind, of the authority and
duties of all Christian pastors. But they had no
objection to an episcopacy of order, to the appoint
ment of certain clergymen, called bishops, to be over
seers of their brethren in particular districts. Again,
while they agreed with the Presbyterians of Scotland,

Baxter and Cromwell. 95
in attaching importance to the gift of prayer, exercised
by the individual pastor, they saw no reason why the
habit of extemporary prayer should not be combined
with a Umited use of liturgical forms. Nor, in the
last place, did they exhibit that sensitive jealousy of
the interference of the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical
matters, which was so characteristic a feature of Scottish
Presbytery. Such were the views of the large party
in the Church of England which obtained the name of
Presbyterian; and no man had embraced them with
clearer apprehension, or in a more liberal spirit, than
Richard Baxter.
It might be thought that this would dispose him to
alliance with Cromwell. The Protector was bent
upon securing as much tolerance as possible for all
the Protestant parties. But Baxter had a keen,
perhaps a scrupulous, sense of order: he was
offended, therefore, with Oliver's encouragement of
sectaries. Along with the whole Presbyterian party,
also, whether in England or in Scotland, he had a
fervent affection for the old monarchy and the royal
house: he could not pardon Cromwell, therefore,
for upsetting the throne. He was the sort of man
whom Cromwell in every instance vehemently sought
to win. For devoutness of intention, for spiritual
religion, for high abiUty, Oliver had a simple and
reverent affection ; and he was astonished that Pres
byterians and Independents could not be brought
to a cordial agreement under his rule. The formal
reasonings of the Presbyterians, who would not

96 Mnglish Puritanisni.
accept his logic of the battle-field, who would not
allow that victory was always the sign manual of God,
perplexed and distressed him. He had once joined
inclose grapple of argument, on this subject, with the
Presbyterian ministers of Edi nburgh . Those j udicious
persons told him that they did not hang their faith on
events. They could believe that not even the conqueror
of Dunbar was necessarily in the right. There is a
startling directness in Oliver's reply. " Did not you,"
he said, " solemnly appeal and pray ? Did not we
do so too? And ought not you and we to think,
with fear and trembling, of the hand of the great
God in this mighty and strange appearance of
His" in the morning watches at Dunbar? The
Scottish preachers were not convinced, but Oliver
never fairly embraced the idea that his argu
ment could be disregarded by good men. He re
solved to try its force on Baxter, He sent for
him, and addressed to him a speech of an hour's
length, explaining how Providence had manifestly
directed the change of government, how God had
owned it, how Spain and Holland had been defeated.
"He spoke tediously and slowly," says Baxter, "weary
ing his hearers." If the speech was wearisome, it
was very different from those of Oliver's which re
main to us, and one could wish that Baxter had
inflicted its tediousness upon posterity. Tn point of
fact, there was no sympathy between speaker and
hearer ; and while Cromwell pointed to the cloud of
Xvitnessing events by which God testified in his

Baxter and Cromwell. 97
favour, Baxter surveyed him with a look of waning
interest and immutable dissent. At length Cromwell
stopped, and then "I told him," says Baxter, "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 honestly
craved his patience that I might ask him how Eng
land had ever forfeited that blessing, and unto whom
that forfeiture was made?" Consider that reply,
after an hour's speech from the foremost man in
Europe! Cromwell's patience was exhausted. He
started as a gladiator who felt the net thrown
over him, and passionately answered that " it was no
forfeiture, but God had changed it as pleased Him."
For four hours did Cromwell and Baxter argue, the
calm, elaborate reasoning of the divine not being
listened to with sufficient closeness of attention by
the general. " I saw," says Baxter, giving us one
of the most vivid glimpses into Oliver which we have
from any of his contemporaries, " that tvhat he learned
must be from himself." His eager eye, his impetuous
gestures, his voice, harsh and untunable as the quick
rattle of thunder, grated on the sensibilities of the re
fined logician, Baxter returned to quiet Kidder
minster to sigh and pray for the restoration of the
old monarchy. He had his wish ; he saw the regular
Defender of the faith placed upon the throne;
and year after year, as he hearkened to the
groans of Presbyterian pastors rising from the dnn-
H

98 English Puritanism.
geons of England, he thought with more tender recol
lection of the magnanimous and princely usurper,
who had been as a lion to his arguments, but as a
lamb to himself.
At Kidderminster, Baxter realized his ideal of a
Reformed pastor, both in usefulness and happiness.
Sir James Stephens glows into eloquence, as he turns
from the pageantries and the gloom of the world to
look upon the alliance between Baxter and his flock.
" He, a poor man, rich in mental resources, consecra
ting alike his poverty and his wealth to their service ;
ever present to guide, to soothe, to encourage, and,
when necessary, to rebuke ; shrinking from no aspect
of misery, however repulsive, nor from the most
loathsome forms of guilt which he might hope to
reclaim ; the instructor, at once, and the physician,
the almoner and the friend, of his congregation.
They, repaying his labour of love with untutored
reverence ; awed by his reproofs, and rejoicing in his
smile ; taught by him to discharge the most abject
duties, and to endure the most pressing evils of life,
as a daily tribute to their Divine benefactor." This
was the Sabbath of Baxter's life.
Though not co-operating with Oliver in the fur
therance of toleration, Baxter had already originated
a scheme of comprehension. He declared himself for
" Catholicism against parties," and set on foot an Asso
ciation, in which this idea was carried into effect. 'As
we hindered no man," he says, in describing what would
now be called the platform of this Association, " from

Baxter's Comprehension. 99
following his own judgment in his own congregation,
so we evinced, beyond denial, that it would be but a
partial, dividing agreement to agree on the terms of
Presbyterian, Episcopal, or any one party, because it
would unavoidably shut out the other parties ; which
was the principal thing which we endeavoured to
avoid; it being not with Presbyterians only; but
with all orthodox, faithful pastors and people, that
we are bound to hold communion, and to live in
Christian concord, so far as we have attained. Here
upon, many counties began to associate, as Wiltshire,
Dorsetshire, Somersetshire, Hampshire, Essex, and
others ; and some of them printed the articles of their
agreement. In a word, a great desire of concord
began to possess all good people in the land, and our
breaches seemed ready to heal. And though some
thought that so many associations and forms of agree
ment did but tend to more division, by showing our
diversity of apprehensions, the contrary proved true
by experience ; for we all agreed on the same course,
even to unite in the practice of so much discipline as
the Episcopal, Presbyterians, and Independents are
agreed in, and as crosseth none of their principles,"
This comprehension of Baxter's was being carried
into execution during the Protectorate; readers will
find it important to recollect that fact.
Cromwell died ; the most magnanimous, generous,
religious of despots ; but rejected to the last by the
English people. General confusion ensued, the heart
of the nation yearning inarticulately towards the

100 English Puritanism.
king. But no revolution in public feeling is sudden
in England, and nearly two years elapsed before the
tumultuous elements had worked towards such a state
of composure, that what had long been radically the
wish of the nation, could be clearly expressed, and
an invitation sent to Charles IL to return to the land
and the throne of his fathers. The whole of that
party vaguely styled Presbyterian, a party embracing all
who did not hold Episcopacy to be the only divinely
sanctioned form of Church government, and who
could conscientiously engage in public worship
without use of the Prayer Book, hailed with exulta
tion the prospect of the restoration, and exerted
themselves to the utmost in the interest of the king.
This party had become predominant after the death
of Cromwell, and, conscious of its power, was confi
dent also of its ability to form such a settlement as
should prove satisfactory to the majority of its
members. In the Parliament which met in April, 1660, the
Parliament which recalled the king, the Presbyterian
influence reigned supreme. The Independents, who,
though their most important men, Owen and Milton ¦
for example, had been steady supporters of Cromwell,
had retained their reverence for the old English
constitution, assumed an attitude of dignified reserve.
They did not expect, they did not desire, compre
hension within the Church ; but they hoped for
honourable toleration as loyal subjects of the king.
" I have credibly heard," says Baxter, " that Dr.

Independents and Presbyterians. IQl
Thomas Goodwin, PhUip Nye, and Dr. Owen, the
leaders of the Independents, did tell the king,
that as the pope allowed orders of religious parties
in mere dependence on himself, without subjection
to the bishops, all that they desired was (not to
be the masters of others,) but to hold their own
liberty of worship and discipline, in sole depen
dence on the king, as the Dutch and French Churches
do, so they may be saved from the bishops and
ecclesiastical courts."
It would have been the best policy for the Presby
terians, — so we now see from the event, — to league
themselves firmly with the Independents and demand
simple toleration outside the Church, But it was not
in human nature that a party, situated as the Presby
terians were, should have contented themselves with
this clear, modest, and intelligible programme.
They looked confidently for comprehension. Baxter
hurried to London, glowing with the ardour of one
who proceeds upon the chief enterprise of his life.
His intellectual faculties were in their meridian
power, and though his logic had failed in that grand
attempt to argue Cromwell into the fit mood for
throwing himself, with a halter round his neck, at
the feet of Charles II,, he had found it successful in
organising associations for comprehension, and in
reducing to silence the casuists of Kidderminster,
He retained a passionate faith in its efficacy. He
came up in logical mail of proof, brandishing the
sword of argument, a combatant for peace, a gladiator

102 English Puritanism.
for charity. He was at first full of hope. Had he
not ethereal arms? Was not truth irresistibly con-
vincing ? Alas, the cynic may sneer, but the spec
tacle, so often presented in our world, in Roman
revolutions, in English revolutions, in French revolu
tions, of virtue trusting in its own celestial arms,
and finding them insufficient, — of reason, moderation,
brotherly kindness, confident in the right, a,nd van
quished by force or fraud, — is one of the most
sublime, and certainly one of the most melancholy,
presented in our world. Young Harry Vane, won
dering that men would not open their eyes and
become angels in a millennial kingdom, dying on the
scaffold, — fair Madame Roland, hailing with rapture
the doctrine of universal brotherhood, and falling, a
headless corse, at the foot of the statue of liberty, —
Richard Baxter inspired with the idea of a national
Church, holding firm the central verities, but per
mitting its congregations to worship God as each
interpreted conscience and Scripture, outwitted and
thrust into the dungeon by scheming statesmen, —
these are the most mournful scenes in the tragic
drama of human history. Baxter soon perceived
that his eloquent logic would have a stern task to
perform. At first all promised well. Several Presbyterian
Ministers had proceeded to Holland and conferred
with Charles. They were satisfied with the disposi
tions of the king, and the king was pleased with the
ardour of their loyalty. "We found them," said

Baxter and Charles. 103
Charles, " persons full of affection to us, of zeal for
the peace of the Church and State, and neither
enemies, as they have been given out to be, to Epis
copacy or Liturgy, but modestly to desire such altera
tions in either, as without shaking foundations, might
best allay the present distempers, which the indispo
sition of the time and the tenderness of some men's
consciences had contracted," In his Declaration from
Breda, he promised that this tenderness of conscience
should be respected. When he arrived in London,
" above ten or twelve" of the Presbyterian Ministers
were named among his Chaplains in ordinary,
Baxter, Calamy, Reynolds, Bates, and Manton were
among the number. The hopes of the party rose
high, and Presbyterian tears and sobs mingled largely
in the irrepressible weeping with which, in the merry
month of May, 1660, a contrite and enraptured
nation welcomed back its covenanted king.
Shortly after the return of Charles — it was still
June — Baxter and some others were presented to the
king by the Earl of Manchester.* The irrefragable
logician, fixing upon Charles that deep, pure eye,
which had not quailed before Cromwell, addressed to
him an exhortation and advice. He " presumed to
tell" the king, that the Protector's government had
found the way of doing good the most effectual to
promote their interests; that they had encouraged
faithful ministers ; that the people had been sensible
of the benefits they conferred ; and that, if liberty of
* Document, No. III.

104 English Puritanism.
worship were taken away, and- godly ministers ex
pelled from their benefices, the nation might fall into
the vulgar error of supposing that fallen Oliver, seeing
he had done much good, was a good governor. He
entreated his majesty to believe that the religious
part of his subjects, for whom, and not for the Pres
byterians alone he spoke, were resolved enemies of
sedition, rebellion, disobedience, and divisions. He
urged the advantage of union to his majesty, to the
people, and to the bishops themselves. From
exhibiting the advantages of union, he passed
on to show how easily it might be procured. The
king would require only, first, to make things
necessary the terms of union; secondly, to enforce
discipline against sin ; thirdly, to abstain from cast
ing out faithful ministers, and obtruding unworthy
men upon the people,
Cromwell had met Baxter's logic, thrust for thrust,
glaring on him with fiery eye, and paying little regard
to the courtesies of debate, Charles was all gracious-
ness and condescension. He professed his gladness at
learning Baxter's sentiments, and his resolution to
bring all parties together. Old Mr. Ash burst into
tears of joy, and Baxter thought that his logic
had for once vanquished a king. But when the
eloquent reasoner pressed Charles to permit the
Presbyterian leaders to acquaint their brethren in the
country with these proceedings, so that the whole
party might be represented in the negotiation, his
majesty was not to be caught. He was for no

First Presbyterian Proposals. 105
assembly either on one side or other, but would bring
a few of the Presbyterians and Episcopalians together,
to advise him in the matter of concord. Baxter went
from the presence of the rugged, overbearing Crom
well to his peaceful activity in Kidderminster ; he
may have had some misgivings as he withdrew from
this interview with the gracious, soft-spoken Charles.
But he was not the man to be seduced to so vulgar
and illogical an opinion as that " he is the best
governor who doth most good,"
Baxter, then, and the few Presbyterians who
happened to be in and about London, were to stand
alone. They knew, however, that a large proportion
of the people of England were on their side, and
they could not, in a few weeks, cast off the feeling
that they were pastors in what had been for fourteen
years the Established Church of the country. They
knew that their influence had been powerful in
bringing back the king, and that their interest was
strong in Parliament, Naturally, therefore, their
flrst proposals,* made to the king in 1660, had the
tone rather of concession than of demand, and em
bodied not what would induce them to remain in the
Church, but what might, they thought, satisfy all
moderate Episcopalians.
They set out with declaring that they believed a
firm agreement to subsist between them and their
brethren in the doctrinal truths of the Reformed
religion, and in the substantial parts of divine wor-
• Documents, No. IV, V, VI, VII, VIII.

106 English Puritanism.
ship, the differences being only in conceptions of
Church government, and in some particulars relating
to liturgy and ceremonies.
In Church government they offered to accept the
scheme of Archbishop Usher. That scheme may be
defined as Presbyterian Episcopacy, or Episcopalian
Presbytery ; or, more correctly, as Presbytery with an
Episcopal organization. It retains the fundamental
principle of Presbyterianism, that all presbyters are
equal, and that there is no Church ruler superior in
kind to the presbyter. The bishop is to be president
of the Synod of presbyters, but to have no powers
belonging to him distinctively as bishop. Not the
bishop alone, but the bishop and presbyters, are to
confer holy orders ; and the right to administer disci
pline and to dispense the sacraments belongs as much
to every presbyter as to the bishop. An arrangement
similar to this had been adopted in Scotland by the
Presbyterian Knox, and it is difficult to see how any
Presbyterian could have conscientious objections to
its institution. It might seem inexpedient ; it might
appear to lead to an ascription to the perpetual presi
dents, called bishops, of powers essentially superior
to those of presbyters ; but no mere president, no one
who is only primus inter pares, be he called bishop or
moderator, infringes what are deemed the scriptural
ordinances of presbytery. In point of fact, Arch-
bishop Usher's Episcopacy is neither more nor less
than a happy adaptation of Presbyterianism to an
aristocratic condition of society.

First Presbyterian Proposals. 107
In reference to the liturgy, the Presbyterians
declared themselves satisfied of the lawfulness of
liturgical forms of worship, provided they were
agreeable to the Word of God, convenient to the
worshipper, consonant with the liturgies of other
Reformed Churches, not too rigorously imposed,
and did not exclude extemporary prayer, A cer
tain number of " learned, godly, and moderate
divines" might, they believed, revise the Book of
Common Prayer so as to bring it into harmony with
these conditions.
As for ceremonies, they repeated those objections
which had been brought against them by the Puritans
for a hundred years The worship of God, they said,
is in itself perfect without addition of ceremonies ;
" God is a jealous God," and His worship " is cer
tainly then most pure, and most agreeable to the
simplicity of the gospel, and to His holy and jealous
eyes," when it is strictly conformable to the perfect
rule of faith and worship contained in the Word of
God. The ceremonies had, along with popery, been
rejected " by many of the Reformed Churches
abroad ;" had occasioned endless contention and dis
pute ; had caused separation from the Church, pre
judicing rather than promoting her unity. They
next expressed that opinion on the subject which
we found Hooker quoting with approbation from
Calvin, namely, that ceremonies, being at best but
indifferent, ought sometimes to be changed, " lest
they should, by perpetual permanency and con-

108 English Puritanism.
stant use, be judged by the people as necessary
as the substantial of worship themselves." Above
all, they besought his majesty not to render un
necessary things by human command " necessary
and penal," nor to " impose" kneeling at the
sacrament and the observance of holidays of hu
man institution. The use of the surplice, and of
the cross in baptism, and the practice of bowing at
the name of Christ, they proposed to abolish, " these
things being, in the judgment of the imposers them
selves, but indifferent and mutable; in the judgment
of others a rock of offence ; and, in the judgment
of all, not to be valued with the peace of the
Church," They acknowledged the king " to be supreme
governor over all persons, and in all things and
causes, as well ecclesiastical as civil." In this point
alone did these Presbyterian Ministers depart from the
orthodox Presbyterian doctrine, as professed by the
Church of Calvin and of Knox. The Presbyterian
Church of Scotland never owned the ecclesiastical
supremacy of the sovereign, and at the union between
England and Scotland, it was expressly stipulated by
the Scotch, that the old Kirk should retain her
spiritual independence.
Such was the project of reconciliation which
Baxter and his brethren submitted, in the first
instance, to Charles. It was properly a scheme of
comprehension, embracing the Episcopalians and the
Presbyterians of England within one ecclesiastical

' Presbyterian Scheme of Comprehension. 109
pale. It did not recognise the divine and exclusive
right of bishops, and in so far it differed from strict
Episcopacy; it did not assert the spiritual independence
of the Church, and in this fell short of the catholic
doctrine of Presbytery : but a large number of the
most eminent bishops and divines of the Church of
England had held that there is no Christian Minister
exalted by divine right, exalted except for purposes
of order, above the presbyter ; and English Presby
terians had always been more or less " tainted with
Erastianism." The scheme of Baxter and his
brethren appears to us, therefore, a consummately
wise and ingenious plan for blending the two Churches,
as they had existed in England, in harmonious
and permanent union; and we have no doubt that,
if it had been adopted, the result would have
been a vigorous"^ and useful Church, singularly
adapted to the conditions of English society, and
more robustly Protestant than the Church of Eng
land has shown herself to be. And it is highly
important to consider that these Presbyterian Minis
ters, conscientious men as they were, had to propose
an arrangement which could be accepted by nine or
ten thousand pastors who had been members of the
Commonwealth Church. All those had, to say the
least, conformed to a Church recognising the equality
of presbyters, and placing them under no Episcopal
superiors. Not one of all those thousands could have
left the new Church on account of its Presbyteri
anism, though a considerable number of sturdy Pres-

110 English Puritanism.
byterians and Independents might have left it on
account of its Episcopacy. The added elements were
all in the direction of Episcopacy.
But the bishops, who took up and answered these
proposals, rejected them with speed and emphasis.
They would have nothing to say to Archbishop Usher's
scheme, and expressed their doubts whether it had
been really approved by the Archbishop. The Prayer
Book was to them perfect in all those respects in
which the Presbyterians had required a liturgy to
excel, and had in their eyes none of those blemishes
which had been said to adhere to it. The ceremo
nies of the Church of England were faultless, and
the Protestant Churches abroad had not, they said,
rejected them. In one word, the bishops denied all
that the Presbyterians asserted ; asserted all that the
Presbyterians denied ; refused all that the Presby
terians offered ; and offered the Presbyterians nothing
to refuse.
Such is human nature ; such, in particular, has
always been ecclesiastical nature. Nor can we wonder
that the bishops should have adopted this course, A
few Episcopalians, — four or five bishops, and two or
three hundred ministers, — had remained true to their
first love and first faith, through all the troubles
and temptations of the Commonwealth, To them
Episcopacy was a matter of conscience. They had
proved the fact in an honourable and convincing
manner. They had taken no quarter from the Presby
terians ; they had now obtained ascendancy, and they

Position of the Presbyterians. Ill
would make no compromise. Few as they were,
they had become irresistibly powerful at this juncture.
The Episcopalians who had conformed, were naturally
tongue-tied : they had bent to the Presbyterian
stream ; with somewhat more satisfaction they would
bend to the returning current of Episcopacy : they
were like those long weeds in an estuary, which show
which way the tide is setting, but have no influence
either to impede or to impel it. The men who had
suffered were now the men who triumphed, and in
their triumph they would yield nothing. They were
resolved, by one resolute effort, to bring the long
controversy to a close, and thrust the Puritans from
the Church of England. So far their conduct
admits of justification; but considering that they had
triumphed by the magnanimous patriotism of the
Presbyterian restorers of Charles, it was not justifi
able in them to exact a mean and ferocious revenge.
The bishops had now shown their hand. Baxter
and his coadjutors might be surprised and distressed,
but the circumstance, had they known how to avail
themselves of it, was in their favour. There was
still time. The year 1660 had not closed. The
Parliament which had recalled Charles, the Parlia
ment which had been elected while Presbyterian
influence was supreme in England, still sat. It was
now clear that the bishops would concede nothing.
With the king and with the Parliament lay the sole
chance of the Presbyterians. A statesman's eye
would have perceived in a moment that the weapons of

1 1 2 English Puritanism.
logic would prove useless, and would have searched the
horizon for every element of Presbyterian strength.
Sheldon and Morley could not be persuaded ; Claren
don and the courtiers would back the bishops ; the
Roman Catholics, dreading the comprehension of
Protestant Nonconformists, were intriguing in the
background; and the tide of High Church and
Royalist feeling, swollen by the hatred of clergymen
burning to mete out to the Puritans double of all they
had endured, lashed into fury .by the invectives of
returning Cavaliers, and foul with the spite, turbid
with the scorn, of every debauchee whom the
Covenant had made a hypocrite, was coming in like
a flood. To plead with the bishops was to plead with
men who rode on the crest of that impetuous torrent.
But the Presbyterians had the promise of Charles ;
their party still balanced the Cavaliers in the House :
the vital question for them was not how to debate,
but what to do.
Of the king they seemed sure. On the twenty-
fifth of October, 1660, was issued his majesty's
famous Declaration* concerning ecclesiastical affairs.
It acknowledged the loyalty of the Presbyterians, aud
their zeal for peace in Church and State. It recited
the promise given at Breda, that liberty should be
granted to tender consciences, and no man disquieted
or called in question for differences in matters of
religion. It declared that Presbyterians and Episco
palians approved Episcopacy and a set form of liturgy,
* Document, No. IX.

The October Declaration. 113
disliked sacrilege and alienation of Church revenues,
and were anxious to advance piety and true godliness. '
A Defender of the faith, Charles thought, might
make something of these materials. " If," said the
religious and covenanted king, " upon these excellent
foundations, in submission to which there is such a
harmony of affections, any superstructures should be
raised, to the shaking those foundations, and to the
contracting and lessening the blessed gift of charity,
which is a vital part of Christian religion, we shall
think ourself very unfortunate, and even suspect that
we are defective in that administration of government
with which God hath intrusted us." What an
appalling suspicion to cross the brain of Charles the
Second! The ceremonies, — we proceed with the
Declaration, — would not be peremptorily insisted on-
Episcopacy would be maintained, but moderated.
Care would be taken that the Lord's day should be
applied to holy exercises " without unnecessary diver-
tisements," and that insufficient, negligent, and
scandalous ministers should not be permitted in the
Church, The restored bishops were pronounced men
of " great and exemplary piety," whose recent suffer
ings had given them the last touch of perfection ;
and only men of virtue, learning, and piety should,
for the future, be preferred to the Episcopal office.
Bishops were to be frequent preachers. The size of
dioceses having been thought too large, an adequate
number of suffragan bishops would be appointed in
every diocese. Ordination and all exercises of
I

114 English Puritanism.
discipline would take place "with the advice and
assistance of the Presbyters," and no act of spiritual
jurisdiction, such as excommunication or absolution,
was to be performed exclusively by lay officials. The
most learned, pious, and discreet of the Presbyters,
would be chosen for deans and chapters, and a
number of Presbyters, equal to that of the chapter,
" annually chosen by the major vote of all the
Presbyters of that diocese," would advise and assist
with the chapters in ordinations, excommunica
tions, and so on. Confirmation was to be rightly
and solemnly performed, by information and with
consent of the minister of the place ; none were to
be admitted to the Lord's supper till they had made
a credible profession of their faith ; and all possible
diligence was to be used for the instruction and
reformation of scandalous offenders. Every rural
dean was to meet monthly with three or four ministers
of his deanery, chosen by the Presbyters, to receive
complaints from ministers or churchwardens, to com
pose differences referred to them for arbitration, to
convince offenders, to reform things amiss by pastoral
reproofs and admonitions, and to' prepare and present
to the bishop those matters which could not, in this
pastoral and persuasive way, be composed and
reformed. The dean and his assistants were to see
that the children and younger sort were carefully
instructed by the respective ministers of every parish,
in the grounds of Christian religion. No bishop
was to exercise arbitrary power, or impose anything

The October Declaration. 115
beyond the law of the land. The Book of Common
Prayer was to be preserved ; but " an equal number
of learned divines, of both persuasions," were to
review the same, making such alterations as should
be thought necessary, and adding certain forms,
couched, as much as might be, in scriptural
phrase, which ministers, who preferred them to
the others, might use. As for the ceremonies,
they were not to be abolished : but those who found
them galling to conscience, were to be indulged in
their omission. Kneeling at the sacrament, the use
of the cross in baptism, bowing at the name of Jesus,
wearing the surplice, were left, for the time, open
questions, to be decided and determined upon by a
National Synod. The oath of canonical obedience,
and the subscription required by the canon, were to
be dispensed with in the " ordination, institution, and
induction " of clergymen, and in the taking of
university degrees. Lastly, and to sum up the whole
matter, no minister was ,to forfeit his benefice in virtue
of the Elizabethan Act of Uniformity, who " read
and declared his assent to all the Articles of religion,
which only concern the confession of the true
Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments
comprised in the Book of Articles,"
Such was the Declaration to which Charles II, put
his hand " at our court at Whitehall, this twenty-fifth
day of October, 1660." It is not pleasant to think
of the whole thing as a trick, a piece of elaborate
hypocrisy, with which Clarendon and the bishops per-
I 2

116 English Puritanism.
mitted Charles to amuse the Presbyterians, This
view has been taken by men whose authority is im
posing, by Hallam, Macaulay, and others, and can
probably never be disproved. But we lean rather to
the belief that Charles was sincere, and that he really
meant to give the Presbyterians the benefit of his
Declaration. What man so bad that he has not some
visitings of virtue ? What heart so dead that it has
absolutely no sense of the pleasure of generosity and
beneficence? If a glow of manly ambition did not
thrill the bosom of Charles, if he felt no aspiration
to bear himself as a king, no consciousness of royal
duties, responsibilities, and rewards, with the eyes of
a nation fiashing blessings on him through its tears,
he must have been indeed the basest of mortals. We
believe that he would have sincerely rejoiced to see
the Declaration become law.
And in truth it was worthy of his ambition.
If he had obtained for it the sanction of the
Houses, he would have taken an honourable place
beside Henry, Elizabeth, and the other diademed
Reformers of England. The Church might, since
his day, have been less pliant to the hand of states
men ; less exclusive and aristocratic ; less adapted
to supply the name and form of religion to those
decent, respectable multitudes who lack its power;
less studiously courteous and deferential to Rome: but
she would have been the most truly National Church
in Christendom, loved, reverenced, all but adored by
peer and peasant; and the Reformed Churches of

The Presbyterians and the Declaration. 117
Europe would have hailed her with acclamations of
joy and pride as the first and noblest daughter of the
Reformation. Now, Presbyterians, now, if ever, is your moment
of destiny ! Let your representatives in the metropolis
hail the Declaration with shouts of welcome; let its
clauses be regarded as the authoritative basis of
union ; and let every man of you in England petition
Parliament to set it among the statutes of the realm !
Alas, the Presbyterians wanted the statesman's
eye. They were, indeed, elated. Reynolds accepted a
bishopric off hand. Baxter and Calamy signified their
willingness to become bishops when the Declaration was
law. The Presbyterian ministers of London composed
a "humble and grateful acknowledgement," glowing
Avith ardent satisfaction, accepting the Declaration as
adequate to the requirements of peace ; and laid it,
with their signatures attached, at the foot of the
throne. But that passion for absolute logical perfec
tion, which is the distemper of noble minds, would
not let Baxter leave well alone. With an infatuation
truly marvellous, he drew up a petition to his majesty,
expressing indeed the comfort and great joy with
which he and his brethren regarded the Declaration,
but criticising many of its provisions, and suggesting
a few additions and alterations.* Oh for one hour of
those canny, clear-eyed Scots, who put the English
Presbyterians in the way of winning so much in
1640, one hour of the Earl of Rothes, or precious
* Document, No. XII. Documents, No. X, and XI,

118 English Puritanism.
Mr. Henderson, or even of the soUd Mr. BaiUie of
KUwinning, with his irresistible book against
" Arminian Episcopals " ! These would have shaken
Baxter out of his trance of security, his dream of
perfection ; would have torn up his schedule of altera
tions and improvements; would have bidden him
haunt the lobby of the House, besiege every noble
man who had the ear of Clarendon or the King, and
send out emissaries to ride, as Hampden ro9e from
county to county before the Long Parliament, through
the length and breadth of England, calling on the
people to send to Westminster a unanimous, urgent
prayer that the King's Declaration might become law.
For, if Baxter did not find the Declaration abso
lute perfection, there were others to whom it was
infinitely more displeasing. Sheldon, Morley, and the
whole company of Episcopalian martyrs, would have
considered it a miserable and humiliating surrender
to the Roundheads. While Baxter polished and
polished with a view to abstract perfection, they
thought only of throwing the Declaration out of the
House of Commons, They worked upon Clarendon,
They rallied the courtiers as one man round the
banner of High Church, They spirited away Sir
Matthew Hale from the Lower House by having him
appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer, At length
their efforts were crowned with success. On the
twenty -eighth of November, 1660, they saw the
Declaration rejected by a majority of twenty-six.
Bishop Sheldon may now breathe freely; Bishop

The Declaration Rejected by Parliament. 119
Morley may give the rein to his rustic wit ; Mr,
Baxter may wake from his trance exactly when he
pleases: alea jacta est.
In the month of December, 1660, the Convention
Parliament was dissolved. In the spring of 1661,
the new elections proceeded. The nation was in one
of those convulsions of loyalty which have recurred
at intervals in our history, and in which the great
English people has always looked singularly foolish.
We do not find that there was any elaborate packing
of the Parliament ; in fact, when this nation, has felt
strongly on any subject, the packing of Parliament
has proved a hopeless business. The Houses met on
the 8th of May, Meanwhile the negotiation between
the Presbyterians and the bishops went on, and that
meeting of an equal number of learned divines of
both persuasions, which had been promised in the
Declaration of October, took place. There were
twelve bishops and twelve Presbyterians, each party
being supported by nine assistant divines. They met
in a palace in the Strand, built by Peter, Duke of
Savoy, more than a hundred years before. The
discussion which took place has hence been named
the Savoy Conference.*
Bishop Sheldon, Bishop Morley, Dr. Gunning, and
their party, desired no comprehension. To deny this
is gratuitously absurd ; they never thought of deny
ing it themselves ; and any rational defence of their
proceedings must be based upon the hypothesis that,
• Documents, from No. XIV. to No. XXIII. inclusive.

120 English Puritanism.
as shrewd ecclesiastical statesmen, they deemed it
best for the Church of England to expel the Puritans
from her communion. Such was the policy of High
Churchmen at the restoration ; such was the policy of
High Churchmen at the revolution ; and such, in fact,
is the policy of High Churchmen at the present day,
Sheldon, the ruling mind on the Episcopalian side,
was an admirable representative of the school of high
and dry Churchmen, which flourished during the
reign of Charles II. , and is in full vigour in modern
times. He had none of the intensity, sincerity,
narrow gloom, or fanatical enthusiasm, of Laud.
Princely in his liberalities, eminent in the discharge
of those hospitable duties which belong to a bishop's
function, with neither the reality nor the affectation
of saintliness, but with the courtesy, urbanity, and
manner of one who shone in society, his feeling
in reference to the Puritans appears essentially to
have been that their earnestness, their zeal, their
insistence upon personal piety, were disturbing ele
ments in a great social and political institution like
the Church of the throne and the aristocracy. He
was, what a frank reviewer of our day has
pronounced to be ideal perfection in a bishop, — a
thorough man of the world. He judged, and he no
doubt judged correctly, that a Church having within
her borders the old Puritan life and fire, would not be
the quiet, manageable, inoffensive Church which
courtiers flatter and which statesmen love. He
preferred stately stepping in the old paths to impas-

The Savoy Conference. 121
sioned efforts to cause the face of England to glow
with spiritual Christianity, The Church was now to
adapt herself to a society presided over by Charles II. ;
and Sheldon instinctively and justly felt that peace could
not exist within her borders, if the Puritans, from
her pulpits, flashed the mirror of Christian purity
upon the vices and follies of the age. He was
deliberately resolved, therefore, that they should be
thrust out, and the more who went the better.
Sheldon took his measures as an able general who
knew what he had to do, and never turned his eye
from the mark. At the first meeting, April 15th,
1661, he made it plain that the Puritans were to
enter on a campaign rather than engage in a confer
ence. Along with his Episcopal brethren, he
assumed a defensive position. The Prayer Book was
in their eyes perfect ; what did the Presbyterians
wish to add or to alter? The assumption of this
attitude was equivalent to a refusal to entertain the
question of compromise. The revision which his
majesty had promised in the October Declaration was
not to be executed as a common work, in which all
were presumed to have sympathy, in other words,
was not to be revision at all. The Presbyterians
had liberty to object, and the Bishops on hearing
what was asked, would state what they were pre
pared to concede. It was vain for the Presbyterians
to remonstrate. The Bishops had the sympathy
uf the court, and popular feeling became every
day stronger against the Puritans. Delay was

122 English Puritanism.
victory for the prelates ; silence or withdrawal would
have been interpreted as obstinacy on the part of the
Presbyterians. They drew up, therefore, their paper
of Exceptions* to the Book of Common Prayer, and,
on the 4th of May, 1661, presented it to the Bishops,
The leaders on the side of the Presbyterians were
Baxter, Reynolds, Calamy, Clarke, and one or two
others. Reynolds, Calamy, and about half of the
Presbyterian twelve, had sat in the Westminster
Assembly. Their first paper of Exceptions, though
approved of by Baxter, was not from his pen. It
lacks the fervour and copiousness which mark his
composition. It is, throughout, cautious, cool, and
judicious. This will, we think, be assented to if its
terms are fairly considered, and if we grant that the
Presbyterians were bound, in honour and in charity,
to proceed on the supposition that all parties desired
comprehension. The principles on which they proposed to effect
union are distinctly stated at the commencement.
The first sentence in the document is an indirect
but emphatic disclaimer of all wish to substitute a
uniformity of their own for the uniformity of the
Prayer Book, It is the expression of a hope that the
bishops, " in imitation of his majesty's most prudent
and Christian moderation and clemency," will " bear
with the infirmities of the weak," and not " measure
the consciences of other men by the light and latitude
of their own," but consider of expedients fitted to
* Document, No. XV.

The Puritan Exceptions. 123
unite in a single communion "those that differ."
The method of comprehension which they suggest is,
in one word, the exercise of charity on the part of
the Church towards her individual members. " The
limiting of Church communion," they declare, " to
things of doubtful disputation, hath been in all ages
the ground of schism and separation."
Justice requires us to view the particular emen
dations proposed by the Puritans on the Prayer
Book in the light of these general principles. If
some of their exceptions appear to us trivial, we
must recollect that the proposers seek not to bind
even a trivial burden upon others, but crave that in
trivial matters there may be no compulsion exercised
upon themselves. If some of their scruples have
become obsolete, let us acknowledge that the fact
only confirms their main position, namely, that forms
of worship devised in one age, and having, it may be,
for that age, a noble and natural symbolism, should
not be petrified into an unvarying type, and imposed
on men in all ages, in all circumstances, under all
variations of habit and of feeling. They frankly
state that some of their exceptions are " of inferior
consideration, verbal rather than material," others
" dubious and disputable," while some appear to
them to touch on serious corruptions repugnant
to the rule of the gospel. They pray that the
most important blemishes may be removed, and
that there may be no " rigorous imposition" of the
rites and ceremonies in general; they do not hint

124 English Puritanism.
that, if their own liberty is respected, they desire to
push their model of uniformity upon others.
The particular exceptions were those which had
been brought forward by the Puritans from the first,
and which are taken to the Prayer Book at this day
by the Evangelical party in the Church.
The Bishops received the paper from the Puritans,
and their Reply * was brief and peremptory. " For
preserving of the Church's peace, we know no better
nor more efficacious way than our set liturgy " — such
was their frank and scornful avowal, . As for tender
consciences, let persons troubled with these pray for
humility to think their guides " wiser and fitter to
order " than themselves. If the ceremonies were
not imposed, where was innovation to end? "If
pretence of conscience did exempt from obedience,
laws were useless ; whosoever had not list to obey
might pretend tenderness of conscience, and be
thereby set at liberty." Just so. It is the argu
ment of selfish, timorous, and stupid Conservatism
in all ages ; lay a finger on Tenterden steeple,
and the ocean will be upon us. For the rest,
the things to which the Puritans took exception
were, the Bishops allowed, " neither expressly com
manded nor forbidden by God;" but the Church
had a right to impose them on tender consciences
because she was commanded by the apostle to take
care that all things should be done decently and
in order. A good deal of argument, in the manner
* Document, No. XVI.

The Reply of the Bishops. 125
though not exactly in the tone of Hooker, was added,
with a view to show how unreasonable it was for
tender consciences not to fall quietly asleep in the lap
of mother Church. A list of " concessions " was ap
pended to the Reply. It is when we examine this list
that we see what a farce the whole Conference was,
so far as the Bishops were concerned. The yoke of
the ceremonies is not relaxed by a jot or a tittle.
The alteration of the word " Sunday " into " Lord's
day " is refused. Not a sentence of the Apocrypha
is removed. The most important in the seven
teen " concessions " is the omission of the words
" sure and certain " before " hope of the resurrection
to eternal life," as expressed over the body of every
man committed to the grave. And these words, we
all know, are in the Prayer Book to this day. Among
those who have recently objected to them were the
sons of Richard Carlile, the notorious atheist, who
did not wish to purchase from the Church a compli
ment to their father.
Charles had promised at Breda, and again in his
October Declaration, that liberty should be granted to
tender consciences. The Bishops had now finally
attached their interpretation to the phrase. The
Puritans were to have liberty to submit their con
sciences implicitly to the Church.
In presenting the Exceptions to the Prayer Book,
along Mith a reformed liturgy, which Baxter had
unwisely drawn up, but Avhich was never meant by
the Presbyterians to be insisted on as a condition
of their remaining in the Church, the Puritan

126 English Puritanism.
Commissioners addressed to the Bishops a Petition*
for peace and concord. In this petition, and in
the Rejoinder t to the reply of the Bishops to the
exceptions, it is that we chiefly discern the part
played by Baxter in this controversy. There is a
profound and noble pathos in the earnestness with
which he implores the bishops not to deprive Christ
ians, by the ordinances of the Church, of that liberty
which Christ confers upon His people. There is a
more plaintive sadness, also very touching, in the
accents in which he prays that, in a day of common
joy, when old enmities seem gone for ever, when the
turf is growing green on the battle-field, the religious
and loyal subjects of his majesty may not experience
the heart-breaking sorrow of beholding their pastors
driven from the Church, and ignominiously silenced.
There is a very tender wisdom, a wisdom which can
never grow old, a wisdom as deserving of conside
ration to-day as it was two hundred years ago, in his
pleading on the subject of conscientious scruples.
Was all this suffering to be put upon brother Christ
ians for refusing conformity to things, in the Bishops'
own account, indifferent? Were they to be forced
to adopt forms and ceremonies which seemed to them
to pass beyond the directions of Scripture, thus re
flecting on the Word as insufficient, and trenching on
the kingly power of Christ? Suppose they were mis
taken : was theirs not a mistake to be gently dealt
with, a malady of noble souls? Was it so dire
an offence to be fearful of displeasing God, even
* Document, No. XVII. f Document, No. XVIIL

Baxter's Petition. 127
with the alternative of pleasing the Church? Was it
not pardonable to be careful to obey Him, even at
the risk of disobeying His ministers? Did not the
love of Christ instruct Church rulers to be tender of
those who were tender of His honour, to take heed
how they punished men for taking heed of sin?
Nay, did not the love, common to all human bosoms,
still more the special love which binds Christian to
Christian, commend reluctance in driving men by
penalties on that which, as they believed, tended to
their everlasting damnation, and which in truth, not
being matter of faith, was, to them at least, sin ?
The Bishops did not allege difference in faith ; they
knew that the ministers whom they threatened to
exclude, were godly and energetic pastors; would
they refuse liberty and communion on earth, to those
with whom Christ would hold communion in grace
and glory? Baxter dwells upon this love of Christ
for His people, which it seemed so strange to him
that the bishops would not imitate. He recalls those
scriptural passages in which the varied imagery of
prophets and evangelists is employed to depict the
tenderness, care, and loving consideration of Christ,
for those who faithfully, however feebly, serve Him,
He reminds the prelates that Christ is a merciful high
priest, a gracious Saviour, a tender Governor, despising
not the day of small things, feeding His flock like a
shepherd, gathering His lambs with His arm, and
carrying them in His bosom, not breaking the bruised
reed, not quenching the smoking flax, " Bear with

128 English Puritanism.
us," he exclaims, " whUe we add this terrible passage :
— ' whoso shall receive one such little child in my
name, receiveth me: but whoso shall offend one of
these little ones that believe in me, it were better for
him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea,' "
Beyond prudential considerations, the Bishops had
in reality but one argument by which to defend their
impositions, St. Paul, they said, had directed that all
things should be done " ihtr-x/iyijovcog in a flt scheme,
habit, or fashion, decently," and that there should be
a " rag<j, rule or canon for that purpose." The con
text of the passage in Paul's letter to the Corinthians
(1 Cor. xiv, 40,) to which the Bishops referred,
renders its meaning indubitable. Paul had given
many particular directions as to praying, prophe
sying, the conduct of women in church, and so
on. In the end, manifestly to obviate the idea
that each particular direction was to continue binding
under every change of circumstances, he laid down
the general principle, to be applied as circumstances
required, ' Let all things be done decently and in
order.' That this command should enjoin expulsion
from a Christian Church of thousands of devout
persons, whose worship could on no pretence be said
to be indecent or disorderly, on account of variation
in the use of a few arbitrarily appointed signs or
vestments, is as monstrous a conception as ever
darkened counsel. And if the Church had a right
absolutely to impose certain rites unmentioned in

Argument of the Bishops. 129
Scripture, what shadow of argument could be urged
against any of the impositions of Rome? In point
of fact, the Church of Rome had always pursued a
large and generous course in those matters, and the
Presbyterians appealed to the diversity of liturgical
manuals used in the early mediaeval period. The
Church of the Caroline Act of Uniformity is the. only
Church in Christendom which exacts, as a test of
communion, a rigid identity in the observance of
certain positive ordinances, not derived from Scrip
ture. The Church of Rome is indulgent to her chil
dren so long as they are flrm in their affection ; the
Presbyterian and Congregationalist Churches impose
no rite or ceremony for which they can plead no
Scriptural warrant : the Church of England alone
requires of her ministers, on pain of expulsion, to
believe the surplice, the sign of the cross, kneeling at
the Lord's Supper, and bowing at the name of Jesus,
to constitute the identical and unchangeable model of
Christian worship enjoined by Paul upon the Corin
thians. " Grant us," said Baxter, " but the freedom
that Christ and His apostles left unto the churches."
The Bishops granted him their " concessions." A
pang of inexpressible sorrow struck to his heart,
sorrow for the distress of England and the sin of the
prelates, rather than for the cruel sufferings which he
knew to be in store for himself " If these," he cried,
"be all the abatements and amendments you wUl
admit, you sell your innocency, and the Church's
peace for nothing," e:

130 English Puritanism.
These may be considered as Baxter's last words
of solemn protest and appeal. The discussion
which followed was a mockery on the part of the
Bishops, which had become painful from its grossness.
If we carefully examine the report, however, we shall
find the reasoning of the prelates as sophistical, and
that of the Puritans as triumphant, as in the earlier
parts of the controversy.
It has been maintained that Baxter and his brethren
were insincere in their professions, and that they
sought not comprehension but supremacy. The
assertion proves either a great ignorance of the
character of Baxter and his party, or a singularly un-
candid state of mind. We saw that Baxter advo
cated comprehension before the death of Cromwell,
nay, that he organised a general Association embracing
all, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congregationalists,
who held the unity of the faith, but had varying
opinions touching form. In subsequent years, he
retained, amid the utmost severities of persecution, a
reverence which may be deemed superstitious for the
Established Church, " We are so far," he said, in a
book published in 1683, "from desiring to draw
people from the parish churches into conventicles,
that we would keep up the honour of them to the
utmost of our power, as knowing how greatly the
countenance and maintenance of rulers conduceth to
the furtherance of religion." He did not object to
the sanction and recommendation, by a Church, of
particular rites and ceremonies. The type might be

The Views of the Presbyterians. 131
there, inducing harmony if not identity, with the
authority of custom, of public approval, of general
adoption ; only he would not have it absolutely
imposed. He objected to a National Church only
when it became a prison. It must, we think,
be allowed that the views entertained by himself
and his party of the function of the magistrate
in religious affairs set them for the next twenty-
five years in an attitude towards the Church of
England inferior in dignity to that assumed by
John Owen and the Independents. These had no
offer of compromise to make to the Church ; every
company of Christians was, they believed, as much a
Church of Christ as the proudest hierarchy in the
world. But that Baxter was sincere in craving, not
supremacy, but liberty, for his party, not a surrender
of her old ritual by the Church, but permission to
deviate from it within certain limits, is as certain as
any fact in history.
Thus has the Conference of an equal number of
divines of both persuasions ended. The Bishops
hand over the Presbyterians to the tender mercies of
the civil power,
ParUament had met on the 8th of May, 1661.
The House of Commons had shown itself blindly,
foolishly, furiously loyal, and rushed at once with
headlong impetuosity upon Puritanism and the
Puritans. The Covenant was burnt by the hangman,
— a fit homage, by the basest House of Commons
England has ever seen, to the loftiest and purest in
K 2

132 English Puritanism.
spiration ever embodied in a political manifesto ! The
Bishops were recalled to the House of Lords; the
Puritans were turned out of municipal corporations ;
the Episcopalian form of Church government was
fully restored. Still the fury did not abate ; the
pace did not slacken. The bull had its head down,
its eyes shut, its mane erect, its tail in the air, and
went straight forward. At last, concentrating all its
energy in one tremendous toss, it flung the Puritans
clear over the battlements of the Church of England.
This crowning triumph was achieved when the Act
of Uniformity became law, 19th May, 1662.
The Act was deliberately intended, and ingeniously
framed, to exclude the Puritans from the Church. If
there was the slightest relaxation of the ceremonies,
some of them might prevail with their consciences to
let them remain ; therefore, the ceremonies were
bound more closely than ever upon the back of the
Church. It was possible that a few of them might
overcome their scruples in reference to the passages
from the Apocrypha ; so Convocation brought Bel
and the Dragon, and Susannah and the Elders, to
reinforce that important point in the Anti-Puritan
position. It was not unlikely that many of them
might conform so far as to use the Prayer Book,
though not approving of everything it contained;
accordingly, assent and consent to all and everything
within its boards were exacted. And lest all this
should not be enough, the Presbyterians were re
quired to abjure their ordination, to submit to be

The Act of Uniformity. 133
again admitted to holy orders by imposition of the
hands of the Bishop, to declare the Covenant an un
lawful oath, and to swear that taking arms against
the King, for any cause whatever, was unlawful. If
it was in the power of legislation to convert the
Church, as Baxter said, into a prison, this was the
measure to effect the transformation. No Puritan
who had not a soul for the dungeon could remain
within the Church on those conditions.
It is undeniable that the disgrace of this Act lies
chiefly on the House of Commons. The Lords tried
to moderate their madness. The King expostulated.
But the Commons were determined to wreak their
vengeance on the Puritans, and no remonstrance was
of any avail. We believe that the enactment of the
Bill annoyed Charles, The contempt which it osten
tatiously exhibited for his Declarations of Breda and
of October, must have seemed to him insulting. But
firm interposition in any cause of public interest and
personal honour, was not to be expected from Charles.
His best quality was that easy humour, that indolent
facility, that capricious and fickle generosity, which is
apt, as Mr, Thackeray remarks, to distinguish ladies
and gentlemen, whose views of life correspond,
generally, with those of Nell Gwynn. Had he been
a man of character and principle, he would have told
the Commons that he would rather go again upon his
travels than have his name and reign branded with
such a stigma as the Act of Uniformity.
On the 24th of August, 1662, the anniversary of

134 English Puritanism.
the great St, Bartholomew massacre, the measure of
exclusion came into operation. Every incumbent
who did not on that day pronounce from the pulpit
all the oaths, professions, and engagements which it
prescribed, ceased, ipso facto, to be connected with
the Church of England. There was on that day
many a conscience trampled on in the presence of
God. About seven thousand ministers who had
taken the Covenant, and conformed to a Presbyterian
Church, declared the Covenant an unlawful oath, and
pronounced sentence of vehement condemnation on
all they had been doing for a dozen years. But the
Puritans stood firm. The Presbyterians and Congre
gationalists, numbering about two thousand, preferred
the waste to the prison house. Not allowed a
farthing of maintenance, not permitted to preach to
their former parishioners, or to become tutors and
schoolmasters in order to earn a livelihood, deprived
even of a year's stipend which they had earned, they
deliberately chose to obey God rather than man. It
was hard, more hard than we can in these days easily
imagine. The smile of power was, in the seventeenth
century, necessary to the happiness of Presbyterians,
to an extent which we can neither admire nor appre
ciate ; and the Presbyterians of the Church had
clung to the House of Stuart, longed for it, prayed
for it, agitated for it. In the joy they had contri'outed
so largely to create, they were denied a share; the
peace Avhich they had hailed with transport was to
be for them, desolation.

Baxter. 135
Baxter, who had been a king's chaplain, who had
been offered a bishopric, and who had looked for a
joy infinitely greater than Charles could bestow in
winning for England an august victory in the cause
of truth, love, innocency, and peace, was not per
mitted even to resume his charge in Kidderminster,
In suffering he became great. No high-wrought pic
ture conveys to us so touching a conception of the
distress of the Nonconformists as those few simple
words in which Baxter, writing in 1683, describes what
he and his brethren still endured, " The jails," he
said, " are filled with Nonconformists: nine ministers
are now in Newgate, and many more in other places.
And almost all of them mulct and fined in far more
than ever they were worth. Their goods and books
taken by distress : they are fain to fly or abscond that
are not in prison : their wives and children in distress
and want : they are judged by the justices unworthy,
so much as to be summoned to answer for themselves
before they are judged, or to be heard plead their
own cause, or to know and witness their accusers and
M'itnesses ; but as I myself was distrained of all my
goods and books on five convictions before ever I
heard of any accusation, or saw a judge, so is it with
many others, and more. In a word, lords, knights,
and clergymen, take us for insufferable persons in the
land, unfit for human society, enemies to monarchy,
obedience, and peace, and corporations promise to
choose such Parliament men as are for our extir
pation,"

136 English Puritanism.
Never man was more loyal than Richard Baxter,
He had a fastidious respect for authority. " We
abhor schism," he said in 1683, " and have laboured
to have healed the wounds of the Church with all
our power, these twenty-two years and more."
The old irrefragable faith in logic, and the calm
conviction tliat, if men only fairly considered his
arguments, they would be convinced and persuaded,
remained with him to the last. " Have they,"
he asked, in placid invincibility, " answered my
Treatise of Episcopacy, my first and second Plea for
Peace, my Apology, my Treatise of the Terms of
Church Concord?" No; and they never will. Jefferies
or Parker might make an irreverent jest upon the
subject. But answered or not, persecuted or in
prosperity, no earthly power could deprive Richard
Baxter of happiness. " My life," he said, " and
labours have been long vowed to God. He hath
preserved my life, and succeeded my labours above
forty years, by a continual course of remarkable pro
vidence, beyond my own and other men's expecta
tions. What He hath thus given me, is doubly due
to His service ; which hath been still so good to me,
that it hath made even a painful life, a continual
pleasure. He never failed or forsook me : I dare not
ask any longer life of Him, but for more and longer
service. And if my service be at an end, why not
my life also ? " It is beautiful ; it is sublime. With
that deep, steadfast, melancholy eye, Baxter looks out
upon the world of men, amazed that truth, innocencv,

Baxter. 137
love should not win universal homage, but knowing
now with fixed certainty that men will turn a deaf
ear to their pleading; and when the curtain of sad
ness seems about to fall over him in utter night,
suddenly the God-light streams from beyond, like
sunbeams flushing through the veil of evening, and
the joy of a victory beyond death irradiates his coun
tenance. Even as a thinker Baxter did not wholly
fail. His own generation did not listen to him, but
after two centuries, his ideas are still new, and many
an one, who lingers over the vision of a Church of
England embracing within her pale the whole reli
gious life of the nation, will jiurn to his works to
learn the true principles of comprehension. He
sympathised with all the most pure, high, and poetical
minds of his time, with Tillotson, with Hale, with
Chillingworth, with Taylor, and his thoughts find
responsive echoes in the nineteenth century in the
writings of Coleridge and Arnold.
But the position of Baxter and his party was too
indeterminate to be firm, A more resolute and
thorough-going race of Nonconformists arose to carry
on the Puritan descent in England. Owen, with less
poetical feeling and glow of sympathy than Baxter,
but of more compact intellectual structure, and
stronger administrative judgment, saw that Noncon
formists must turn from the Bacchanalian rout of the
restoration, and learn to look with compassionate dis
dain on a Church which stooped in those years to
abject degradation, which celebrated an infamous

138 English Puritanism.
Court in the drivel of Parker and the blasphemy of
South, The Independents asked no comprehension ;
they wished only for toleration : and this was the
most proper and dignifled attitude to assume.
When James II. made it plain to all the world that
he resolutely purposed to lead Church and kingdom
back to Rome, Presbyterians and Independents, cast
ing off all grudges, made common cause with the
Church, and joined in hailing William, Once more
the Church refused comprehension, but the promises
of William were not the promises of Charles, The
Toleration Act was passed.
^ From that day to this, the Nonconformists of
England have ever been found in the van of their
country's defenders ; taunted and hated by Church
men in time of peace, but ready as of old, in
the hour of peril, to stand side by side with
lall who take rank in the phalanx which guards
the Protestant religion and the Constitutional liber
ties of England.
Has not the day come when we may all join in
admiring the valour, in acknowledging the wisdom*
in celebrating the virtue, of those English Puritans of
the seventeenth century? The contest of that age is
past. The thoughts, the feelings, the interests, the
aims, of men have changed. Why should Ave, like
the phantom Avarriors after that fabled conflict of the
middle age, baptise our hate with immortality, and,
setting the battle in array in the clouds, above the
fleld where the faces of the heroes are still aud pale,

Conclusion. 139
renoAV watchwords which have lost their meaning,
and grasp weapons which are shadowy and strange ?
Did not the Puritans deserve well of their country?
Was not the crisis of the seventeenth century neces
sary for England? What man is there who Avould
noAV deliberately wish that they had not risen against
Laud, and Strafford, and Charles? Did they not
make it for ever impossible that England should
fall back into feudal servitude ? Is it not by their
ordinance that the British monarchy has been the
temple of freedom, and that British freedom is but
graceful, spontaneous, melodious order? The tumult
of those times may shock a feminine sensibility ; but
was it not that agitation which rendered possible
the subsequent development? Dante mentions a
belief of ancient sages, that the universe reached per- 1
fection through successive periods of chaos, and that
the principle which ever in the chaos worked
towards cosmos was love. There are chaotic periods
in the life of nations, and the seventeenth century
was one of these in the history of England; but
a kindly principle, a principle of life and growth, a
love for light, for truth, for liberty, worked in that
chaos to produce the gardened England which we
know. If the Puritans had accepted from Charles the^
peace of despotism, Avould England in our own time,
have escaped the agonies of revolution ? If the consti
tution had not been vindicated and established by

140 English Puritanism.
religious Hampdens, Elliots, Pyms, should we not
have had our Marats and Robespierres ? We have
religious liberty : had those men not fought and suf
fered, might we not have had atheistic license? Our
wildest political agitator demands now but admission
within the pale of the constitution, the very demand
a tribute of admiration and regard : our most timid
Conservatives take their stand upon principles Avhich
the Puritans asserted at the risk of their lives,
and which there were then none but they to assert.
And if we value the purity of our domestic life,
if as a nation we revere the household sanctities
and loathe the grosser vices, may Ave not look with
pride and gratitude on those later Puritans, who,
when the foul debauch of the restoration ran its
course, when adultery was a jest and indecency
a fashion, retained their purity of manners and
simplicity of conversation, and rebuked from the
dungeon a Court of profligates and a Church of
slaves? True, the Puritans had their faults, their
follies, their failings. Religion loses its heavenly
aspect when painted on banners, when the Avhite
raiment of saints is exchanged for martial scarlet,
and the truth of God is flashed back from the stained
and dinted mirror of the sword-blade. Yet is there
an influence as benign as it is stirring in those periods
of human history in which the passions of the in
tellectual, moral, spiritual nature, convulse mighty
peoples.

Conclusion. 141
It is assuredly a truth, though Mr. Carlyle may
have asserted it with something of exclusiveness, that
certain generations of men have shoAvn more than
others of celestial purpose, of halloAved aspiration, of
faith in the Unseen, the Eternal, the Divine. Physi
cal achievement, material power, comfort and placid
listlessness in domestic life, — these are the reigning
ideas of our age. To rear pyramids of gold, to pave
the land with iron highways, to send our words in
the electric flash under the roar of oceans, to add
CA'er new adornment to our houses of clay, to touch
with richer embroidery of gold and crimson the couch
of luxury — these are our aims. Such were not the
ideas, such were not the aims, of the Puritan period.
It may be well for us to realise, in intellect and im
agination, a time when all minds were differently
toned; when men looked upward to the heaven of
God rather than downward to the little world with its
dainties, its fashions, its social conventions; when high
spiritual impulses were not deemed proofs of inferior
culture; and when the most practical statesman waited
reverently and fearfully on the providence of God,
The Puritans did not succeed in making England, as
Baxter said, the porch of heaven, with the hymn of
praise, the accents of prayer, rising from her myriad
families to greet the break of morn, and hail the
evening star. In the close surveillance of the indi
vidual life which the Puritans demanded from the
Church,, there may have been something irremediably
alien to the imperious instinct of personal and

142 English Puritanism.
domestic freedom which dwells in all Englishmen,
Yet their conception of earth as a place of waiting
and of worship, not of complete present satisfaction,
is one we must retain if we retain our Christianity;
and according as we embrace or as we scorn the
main ideas by which they Avere animated, shall we
rise into grandeur, or dwindle into insignificance.

THE END.

Norwich : pkinted by j. Fletcher.

DOCUMENTS
RELATING TO THE SETTLEMENT OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
BT THE ACT OF UNIFORMITY OF 1662.

EDITED BY
THE EEV. GEO. GOULD.

This volume has been pubUshed in Ulustration of
the Act of Uniformity, The series of Documents,
now for the first time issued in a connected form,
exhibits the relations of the King, the ParUament,
the Bishops, and the Presbyterian divines to
each other in the discussions which preceded and
resulted in that measure : and the various Acts,
reprinted in this volume, which were intended
to harass and destroy the Nonconformists, wUl
enable every reader to judge of the relentless
animosity Avith which those peaceable and
conscientious citizens were persecuted.
Had it not been for increasing the bulk of
the volume, some other Acts and papers would
have been included in it; bat it is hoped that
the coUection now made is complete for aU
practical purposes.

IV

The example of such accomplished editors as
Wilkins and CardweU — in whose costly collections
of documents relating to the Church of England
many of the foUowing papers have been formerly
reprinted — ^has been foUowed in the preparation
of this volume. The orthography has been
modernized, and the punctuation has been cor
rected. In every other respect the Documents
appear in their original form.

CONTENTS.

- I. Declaration of King Charles II from Breda ... 1
II. Interview of the Presbyterian Ministers with King
Charles II at Breda  4
III. Discourse of the Ministers with King Charles II in
London  6
IV, The first Address and Proposals of the Ministers . .12
V. Archbishop Ussher's Model of Church Government . 22
VI. Requests verbally presented to King Charles II in
consequence of the Act for restoring the English
Clergy  26
VII. The Bishops' Answer to the first Proposals of the
London Ministers, who attempted the work of
reconcilement . . . . . . .27
VIII. A Defence of our Proposals to His Majesty for Agree
ment in Matters of Ec4igion  39
IX. His Majesty's Declaration to all his loving subjects of
his kingdom of England and dominion of "Wales
concerning ecclesiastical affairs . . . .63
X. The Petition of the Ministers to the King upon the first
draft of his Declaration"  79
XI. Alterations in the Declaration proposed by the Ministers 98
XII. Humble and grateful acknowledgment of some Ministers
of London for the Declaration . . . .101
XIII. A Proclamation prohibiting all unlawful and seditious
meetings and conventicles under pretence of religious
worship . . . . . . . .104

VI , CONTENTS. rAGG
~ XIV. The King's Warrant for the Conference at the Savoy 107
- XV. The Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer 111
- XVI. The Answer of the Bishops to the Exceptions of
the Ministers .  146
XVII. The Petition for peace and concord presented to the
Bishops with the proposed Eeformation of the
Liturgy . . . . . . . .176
XVIII. The Eejoiuder of the Ministers to the Answer of
the Bishops  201
XIX. Paper offered by Bishop Cosins, and Answer thereto 346
XX. The Discussion on Kneeling at the Lord's Supper . 551
XXI. The Discussion on the Sinfulness of the Liturgy . 359
XXII. The Reply to the Bishops' Disputants, which was
not answered ....... 364
XXIII. Petition to the King at the close of the Conference 379
^ XXIV. The Act of Uniformity. 14 Car. IL cap. iv. . 386
XXV. Efforts of Presbyterian Ministers to have the
King's Declaration of October, 1660, enacted , 404
XXVI. Extracts from Journals of Parliament relating to
the passing of the Act of Uniformity . . 408
XXVII. The Six Hundred Alterations made iittbe Book of
Common Prayer by Convocation, and adopted by
Parliament ....... 456
XXVIII. The Publication of the Book of Common Prayer . 458
XXIX. The King's Declaration of 27th December, 1662 . 460
XXX. Proceedings in Parliament upon the King's Dec
laration of 26th December, 1662 . . . 468
XXXI. The Conventicle Act, 1664. 16 Car. U, cap. iv. 477
XXXII. The Five Mile Act. 17 Car. IL cap. ii. . . 488
XXXIU. The Conventicle Act, 1670. 22 Car. II, cap. i. . 491
XXXIV. The Test Act. 25 Car. IL cap. ii. . . . 499
XXXV. The Toleration Act. 1 Guil. et Mar., cap. xviii. . 507

DOCUMENTS

RELATING TO THE

s^ttl^mpl of tlt^ djlturrlt 0f d5njglan£

ACT OF UNIFOEIITY OF 1662.

Declaration of King Charles II from Breda. — Clarendon's
History of the Rebellion, bk. xvi, §§ 193—7, Oxford, 1849,
vol, vi, pp. 233—4.
Charles R.
CHARLES, hy the grace of God, King of England, Scot
land, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c. To
allour loving subjects of what degree or quality soever, greeting.
If the general distraction and confusion which is spread over
the whole kingdom doth not awaken all men to a desire and
longing that those wounds which have so many years together
been kept bleeding may be bound up, all we can say will be
to no purpose. However, after this long silence, we have
thought it our duty to declare how much we desire to con
tribute thereunto ; and that, as we can never give over the
hope in good time to obtain the possession of that right which
God and nature hath made our due, so we do make it our
daily suit to the divine Providence, that he will, in compassion
to us and our subjects, after so long misery and sufferings,
remit, and put us into a quiet and peaceable possession of

3 Declaration from Breda. [1660.
that our right, with as little blood and damage to our people
as is possible : nor do we desire more to enjoy what is ours,
than that all our subjects may enjoy what by law is theirs,
by a full and entire administration of justice throughout the
land, and by extending our mercy where it is wanted and
deserved. And to the end that the fear of punishment may not en
gage any conscious to themselves of what is past to a
perseverance in guilt for the future, by opposing the quiet
and happiness of their country in the restoration both of
king, peers, and people to their just, ancient, and fundamental
rights, we do by these presents declare, that we do grant a
free and' general pardon, which we are ready upon demand,
to pass under our great seal of England, to all our subjects,
of what degree or quality soever, who within forty days after
the pubUshing hereof shall lay hold upon this our grace and
favour, and shall by any public act declare their doing so,
and that they return to the loyalty and obedience of good
subjects; excepting only such persons as shall hereafter be
excepted by parhament. Those only excepted, let all our
subjects, how faulty soever, rely upon the word of a king,
solemnly given by this present Declaration, that no crime
whatsoever committed against us or our royal father, before
the publication of this, shall ever rise in judgment, or be
brought in question, against any of them, to the least en
damagement of them, either in their lives, liberties, or estates,
or (as far forth as lies in our power) so much as to the preju
dice of their reputations, by any reproach, or term of^
distinction from the rest of our best subjects ; we desiring
and ordaining, that henceforward all notes of discord, separa
tion, and difference of parties, be utterly abolished among
all our subjects; whom we invite and conjure to a per
fect union among themselves, under our protection, for
the resettlement of our just rights and theirs, in a free
parhament; by which, upon the word of a king, we will be
advised. And because the passion and uncharitableness of the times

1660.J Declaration from Breda. 3
have produced several opinions in religion, by which men
are engaged in parties and animosities against each other ;
which, when they shall hereafter unite in a freedom of
conversation, will be composed, or better understood; we
do declare a liberty to tender consciences ; and that no
man shall be disquieted, or called in question, for differ
ences of opinion in matters of religion which do not
disturb the peace of the kingdom; and that we shall be
ready to consent to such an act of parliament, as, upon
mature deliberation, shall be offered to us, for the full
granting that indulgence.
And because in the continued distractions of so many
years, and so many and great revolutions, many grants
and purchases of estates have been made to and by many
officers, soldiers, and others, who are now possessed of
the same, and who may be liable to actions at law, upon
several titles; we are likewise willing that all such differ
ences, and all things relating to such grants, sales, and
purchases, shall be determined in parliament; which can
best provide for the just satisfaction of aU men who are
concerned. And we do farther declare, that we will be ready to
consent to any act or acts of parliament to the purposes
aforesaid, and for the full satisfaction of all arrears due
to the officers and soldiers of the army under the com
mand of General Monk; and that they shall be received
into our service upon as good pay and conditions as they
now enjoy. Given under our sign manual, and privy signet, at our
court at Breda, the -^th day of April, 1660, in the
twelfth year of our reign.

B 3

Interview at Breda. [1660.

II,

Interview of the Presbyterian Ministers with King Charles II
at Breda. — Clarendon's History of the RebeUion, bk. xvi,
§§ 343—4, Oxford, 1849, vol. vi, pp. 361—3.
With these committees from the parliament and from the
city, there came a company of clergymen, to the number of
eight or ten, who would not be looked upon as chaplains to
the rest, but being the popular preachers of the city,
(Reynolds, Calamy, Case, Manton, and others, were the most
eminent of the Presbyterians, and) desired to be thought to
represent that party. They [entreated] to be admitted all
together to have a formal audience from his majesty, where
they were tedious enough in presenting their duties, and
magnifying the affections of themselves and their friends,
who, they said, had always, according to the obligation of
their covenant, wished his majesty very well, and had lately,
upon the opportunity that God had put into their hands,
informed the people of their duty ; which they presumed his
majesty had heard had proved effectual, and been of great use
to him. They thanked God for his constancy to the
protestant religion, and professed that they were no enemies
to moderate episcopacy, only desired that such things might
not be pressed upon them in God's worship which, in their
judgment who used them, were acknowledged to be matters
indifferent, and by others were held unlawful.
The king spake very kindly to them, and said [that] he had
heard of their good behaviour towards him, and that he had
no purpose to impose hard conditions upon them with refer
ence to their conscience ; they well knew that he had referred
the settling all differences of that nature to the wisdom of the
parliament, which best knew what indulgence and toleration
was necessary for the peace and the quiet of the kingdom.
But his majesty could not be so rid of them; but they
desired several private audiences of him; which he never

1660.] Interview at Breda. 5
denied; wherein they told him, that the Book of Common
Prayer had been long discontinued in England, and the people
having been disused to it, and many of them having never
heard it in their lives, it would be much wondered at, if his
majesty should, at his first landing in the kingdom, revive
the use of it in his own chapel, whither all persons would
resort ; and therefore they besought him that he would not
use it so entirely and formally, and have some parts only of
it read, with mixture of other good prayers, which his
chaplains might use.
The king told them with some warmth, that whilst he
gave them liberty, he would not have his own taken from
him; that he had always used that form of service, which he
thought the best in the world, and [had never discontinued
it] in places where it was more disliked than he hoped it was
by them ; that when he came into England, he would not
much inquire how it was used in other churches, though he
doubted not he should find it used in many ; but he was sure
he would have no other used in his own chapel. Then they
besought him with more importunity, that the use of the
surplice might be discontinued by his chaplains, because the
sight of it would give great offence and scandal to the people.
They found the king as inexorable in that point as in the
other ; [he] told them plainly, that he would not be res
trained himself, when he gave others so much liberty ; that
it had been always held a decent habit in the church,
constantly practised in England till these late ill times ; that
it had been still retained by him ; and though he was bound
for the present to tolerate much disorder and undecency in
the exercise of God's worship, he would never in the least
degree discountenance the good old order of the church in
which he had been bred by his own practice. Though they
were very much unsatisfied with him, whom they thought to
have found more flexible, yet they ceased further troubling
him, in hope and presumption that they should find their im
portunity in England more effectual.

Discourse with the King. [1660.

III.
Discourse of the Ministers with King Charles II in London. —
Reliquiae Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp, 339 — 33.
For the gratifying and engaging some chief Presbyterians,
that had brought in the king ; by the Earl of Manchester's
means, (who then being Lord Chamberlain, it belongeth to
his place) above ten or twelve of them were designed to be
the king's Chaplains in Ordinary. Mr. Calamy, and Dr.
Reynolds were first put in ; and then Mr. Ash was impor
tuned to accept it, and then they put me in for one : (Mr.
Nath. Newcomen refused it) : and then Dr. Spurstow, Dr.
Wallis, Dr. Bates, Dr. Manton, Mr. Case, &c., were admitted.
But never any of them was called to preach at court, saving
Mr. Calamy, Dr. Reynolds, myself, and Dr. Spurstow, each
of us once : and I suppose never a man of them all ever
received or expected a penny for the salary of their places.
When I was invited by the Lord Broghill, (afterwards Earl
of Orrery) to meet him at the Lord Chamberlain's ; they both
persuaded me to accept the place, to be one of his majesty's
Chaplains in Ordinary. I desired to know whether it were
his majesty's desire, or only the effect of their favourable
request to him. They told me that it was his majesty's own
desire, and that he would take it as an acceptable furtherance
of his service. Whereupon I took an oath from the Lord
Chamberlain, as a household servant of his majesty's, to he
true and faithful to him, and discover any conspiracy I
should know of, &c. And I received this certificate from
him : —
These are to certify, that Richard Baxter, Cleric, hath been
sworn and admitted Chaplain to the king's majesty in Ordi
nary, to have and enjoy all rights, profits, and privileges

J 660.] Discourse with the King. 7
thereunto belonging. Given under my hand this 2Qth of
June, 1660, in the twelfth year of the reign of our sovereign
lord the king. Ed, Manchester,
When I was with these two lords on this occcasion, I told
them what conferences I had with several episcopal men
about the terms of an agreement or coalition, and how much
it concerned the interest, both of the king and of religion,
that we might be so united, and what unhappy consequences
else would follow, and how easy I thought an agreement
with moderate men would be, and on what terms Bishop
Ussher and I had agreed in a little space, A little after the
Lord Broghni was pleased to come to me ; and he told me,
that he had told the king of the business of a conference for
an agreement, and that the king took it very well, and was
resolved to further it. And about the same time the Earl of
Manchester signified as much to Mr. Calamy : so that Mr.
Calamy, Dr. Reynolds, Mr. Ash, and myself went about it to
the Earl of Manchester, Lord Chamberlain, and after con
sultations of the business with him, he determined of a day
to bring us to the king. Mr. Calamy (to whom both I, and
I think all the rest, did leave the nomination of the persons
to be employed) advised that all that were the king's chap
lains of us might be called to the consultation, and that we
four might Tiot seem to take so much upon us without others :
(if we did not go once without them to the king, which I well
remember not, that was all) : so Dr. Wallis, Dr. Manton,
and Dr. Spurstow, &c., went with us to the king : who with
the Lord Chancellor, and the Earl of St. Albans, &c., came
to us in the Lord Chamberlain's lodgings. We exercised
more boldness at first, than afterwards would have been
borne : when some of the rest had congratulated his majesty's
happy restoration, and declared the large hope which they
had of a happy union among all Dissenters by his means, &c.,
I presumed to speak to him of the concernments of religion,
and how far we were from desiring the continuance of any

8 Discourse with the King. [1660.
factions or parties in the church, and how much a happy
union would conduce to the good of the land, and to his
majesty's satisfaction; and though there were turbulent
fanatic persons in his dominions, yet that those ministers
and godly people, whose peace we humbly craved of him,
were no such persons, but such as longed after concord, and
were truly loyal to him, and desired no more than to live
under him a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and
honesty; and whereas there were differences between them
and their brethren about some ceremonies or discipline of
the Church, we humbly craved his majesty's favour for the
ending of those differences, it being easy for him to interpose,
that so the people might not be deprived of their faithful
pastors, nor ignorant, scandalous, unworthy ones obtruded on
them ! I presumed to tell him, that the people that we
spake for were such as were contented with an interest in
heaven, and the liberty and advantages of the gospel to pro
mote it ; and if this were taken from them, and they were
deprived of their faithful pastors, and liberty of worshipping
God, they would take themselves as undone in this world,
whatever plenty else they should enjoy : and the hearts of
his most faithful subjects, who hoped for his help, would even
be broken : and that we doubted not but his majesty desired
to govern a people made happy by him, and not a broken
hearted people, that took themselves to be undone, by the loss
of that which is dearer to them than all the riches of the
world ! And I presumed to teU him that, the late usurpers
that were over us so well understood their own»interest, that
to promote it, they had found the way of doing good to be the
most effectual means, and had placed and encouraged many
thousand faithful ministers in the Church, even such as de
tested their usurpation : and so far had they attained their
ends hereby, that it was the principal means of their interest
in the people, and the good opinion that any had conceived
of them; and those of them that had taken the contrary
course had thereby broken themselves to pieces. Wherefore I
humbly craved his majesty's patience, that we might have

1660.] Discourse with the King. 9
the freedom to request of him, that as he was our lawful
king, in whom aU his people (save a few inconsiderable
persons) were prepared to centre, as weary of their divisions,
and glad of the satisfactory means of union in him, so he
would be pleased to undertake this blessed work of promoting
their holiness and concord : (for it was not faction or disobe
dience which we desired him to indulge :) and that he would
never suffer himself to be tempted to undo the good
which Cromwell or any other had done, because they were
usurpers that did it, or discountenance a faithful ministry
because his enemies had set them up : but that he would
rather outgo them in doing good, and opposing and rejecting
the ignorant and ungodly of what opinion or party soever :
for the people whose cause we recommend [ed] to him had
their eyes on him as the officer of God, to defend them in the
possession of the helps of their salvation, which, if he were
pleased to vouchsafe them, their estates and lives would cheer
fully be offered to his service. And I humbly besought him
that he would never suffer his subjects to be tempted to have
favourable thoughts of the late usurper, by seeing the vice
indulged which they suppressed; or the godly ministers or
people discountenanced whom they encouraged. For the com
mon people are apt to judge of governors by the effects, even
by the good or evil which they feel : and they wiU take him
to be the best governor who doth them most good, and him
to be the worst who doth them most hurt : and all his enemies
cannot teach him a more effectual way to restore the reputa
tion and honour of the usurpers, than to do worse than they,
and destroy the good which they had done, that so he may
go contrary to his enemies ; and so to force the people to cry
out, we are undone in loss of the means of our salvation : it
being a hard matter ever to bring the people to love and
honour him by whom they think they are undone, in com
parison of those that they think made them happy, though
the one have a just title to be their governor, which the other
hath not.
And again I humbly craved, that no misrepresentations

10 Discourse with the King. [1660,
might cause him to believe that, because some fanatics have
been factious and disloyal, therefore the religious people in
his dominions, who are most careful of their souls, are such,
though some of them may be dissatisfied about some forms
and ceremonies in God's worship which others use : and that
none of them might go under so ill a character with him, by
misreports behind their backs, tiU it were proved of them
personally, or they had answered for themselves : for we that
better knew them than those that were like to be their
accusers, did confidently testify to his majesty on their behalf,
that they are resolved enemies of sedition, rebellion, dis
obedience, and divisions ; which the world shall see, and their
adversaries be convinced of, if his majesty's wisdom and
clemency do but remove those occasions of scruple, in some
points of discipline and worship of God, which give advantage
to others to call all dissenters factious and disobedient, how
loyal and peaceable soever. And I humbly craved that the
freedom and plainness of these expressions to his majesty
might be pardoned, as being extracted by the present necessity,
and encouraged by our revived hopes, I told him also, that it
was not for Presbyterians, or any party, as such, that we
were speaking, but for the religious part of his subjects,
as such ; than whom no prince on earth had better ; and how
considerable part of the kingdom he would find them to be;
and of what great advantage their union would be to his
majesty, to the people, and to the bishops themselves ; and
how easily it might be procured, — 1. By making only things
necessary to be the terms of union, 3. And by the true
exercise of church discipline against sin, 3. And not casting
out the faithful ministers that must exercise it, nor obtruding
unworthy men upon the people. And how easy it was to
avoid the violating of men's solemn vows and covenants,
without any hurt to any others. And finally, I requested
that we might but be heard speak for ourselves, when any
accusations were brought against us.
These, with some other such things, I then spake, when
some of my brethren had spoken first. Mr. Simeon Ash also

1660.] Discourse with the King. 11
spake much to the same purpose, and of all our desires of his
majesty's assistance in our desired union.
The .king gave us not only a free audience, but as gracious
an answer as we could expect : professing his gladness to hear
our inclinations to agreement, and his resolution to do his
part to bring us together ; and that it must not be by bringing
one party over to the other, but by abating somewhat on both
sides, and meeting in the midway ; and that if it were not
accomplished, it should belong of ourselves, and not of him.
Nay, that he was resolved to see it brought to pass, and that
he would draw us together himself: with some more to this
purpose. Insomuch that old Mr. Ash burst out into tears
with joy, and could not forbear expressing what gladness this
promise of his majesty had put into his heart.
Either at this time, or shortly after, the king required us
to draw up, and offer him such proposals as we thought meet,
in order to agreement about church government; for that
was the main difference : if that were agreed there would be
little danger of differing in the rest : and he desired us to set
down the most that we could yield to.
We told him, 1. That we were but a few men, and. had no
commission from any of our brethren to express their minds :
and therefore desired that his majesty would give us leave to
acquaint our brethren in the country with it, and take them
with us. The king answered, that that would be too long,
and make too much noise, and therefore we should do what
we would our selves only, with such of the city as we
would take with us. And when we then professed that we
presumed not to give the sense of others, nor oblige them ;
and that what we did must signify but the minds of so many
men as were present; he answered, that it should signify
no more ; and that he did not intend to call an assembly of
the other party, but would bring a few, such as he thought
meet : and that if he thought good to advise with a few of
each side, for his own satisfaction, none had cause to be
offended at it.
[3.] Also we craved that at the same time when we offered

13 First Address and [1660.
our concessions to the king, the brethren on the other side might
bring in theirs, containing also the uttermost that they could
abate and yield to us for concord, that seeing both together,
we might see what probability of success we had. And the
king promised that it should be so.
Hereupon we departed and appointed to meet from day to
day at Sion College, and to consult there openly with any of
our brethren that would please to join with us, that none
might say they were excluded : some city ministers came
among us, and some came not; and divers country ministers
who were in the city came also to us ; as Dr. Worth, since a
bishop in Ireland, Mr. Fulwood, since Archdeacon of Totnes,
&c. But Mr. Matthew Newcomen was most constant in
assisting us.

IV.

The first Address and Proposals of the Ministers.^ — Reliquise
Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 333 — 6; Card well's History
of Conferences, pp. 377—86, Oxford, 1849.
May it please your most excellent majesty.
We your majesty's most loyal subjects cannot but acknowledge
it as a very great mercy of God, that immediately after your
so wonderful and peaceable restoration unto your throne and
' Of the preparation of this paper, Baxter gives the following account :—
"Mr. Calamy drew up most with Dr. Reynolds; Dr. Reynolds and Dr.
" Worth drew up that which is against the ceremonies ; I only prevailed
" with them to premise the four first particulars, for the countenancing
" godliness, the ministry, personal profession, and the Lord's day : they were
" backward, because they were not the pomts in controversy ; but yielded at
"last on the reasons offered them  I also prevaUed with our brethren
" to offer an abstract of our larger papers, lest the reading of the larger
« should seem tedious to the king; which abstract verbatim, as foUoweth, at
" their desire I drew up."— Life, by Sylvester, p. 232.

1660.] Proposals of the Ministers. 13
government, (for which we bless his Name) he hath stirred
up your royal heart as to a zealous testimony against all
profaneness in the people, so to endeavour a happy compos
ing of the differences, and healing of the sad breaches which
are in the church. And we shall, according to our bounden
duty, become humble suitors at the throne of grace, that the
God of peace who hath put such a thing as this into your
majesty's heart, will by his heavenly wisdom and holy Spirit so
assist you therein, and bring your resolutions unto so perfect
an effect and issue, that aU the good people of these kingdoms
may have abundant cause to rise up and bless you, and to bless
God who hath delighted in you to make you his instrument
in so happy a work. That as your glorious progenitor Henry
VII was happy in uniting the houses of Lancaster and York,
and your grandfather. King James of blessed memory, in
uniting the kingdoms of England and Scotland, so this
honour may be reserved for your majesty as a radiant jewel
in your crown, that by your princely wisdom and Christian
moderation, the hearts of all your people may be united,
and the unhappy differences and mis-understandings amongst
brethren in matters ecclesiastical so composed, that the
Lord may be one, and his Name one in the midst of your
dominions. In an humble conformity to this your majesty's Christian
design, we, taking it for granted that there is a firm agreement
between our brethren and us in the doctrinal truths of the
reformed religion, and in the substantial parts of divine wor
ship, and that the differences are only in some various con
ceptions about the ancient form of church-government, and
some particulars about liturgy and ceremonies, do in all
humble obedience to your majesty represent, — that inasmuch
as the ultimate end of church-government and ministry is,
that holiness of life and salvation of souls may be effectually
promoted, we humbly desire in the first place, that we may
be secured of those things in practice, of which we seem to
be agreed in principles.
1. That those of our flocks who are serious and diligent

14 First Address and [1660-
about the matters of their salvation, may not by words of
scorn, or auy abusive usages, be suffered to be reproachfully
handled; but have liberty and encouragement in those
Christian duties of exhorting and provoking one another unto
love and good works, of building up one another in their most
holy faith, and by all religious and peaceful means of fur
thering one another in the ways of eternal life ; they being
not therein opposite to church-assembhes, nor refusing the
guidance and due inspection of their pastor.s, and being
responsible for what they do or say.
3. That each congregation may have a learned, orthodox,
and godly pastor residing amongst them, to the end that the
people may be publicly instructed and edified by preaching
every Lord's day, by catechising, and frequent administration
of the Lord's Supper, and of Baptism, and other ministerial
acts as the occasions and necessities of the people may re
quire both in health and sickness ; and that effectual provision
of law be made, that such as are insufficient, negligent, or
scandalous, may not be admitted to, or permitted in so sacred
a function and employment.
3. That none may be admitted to the Lord's Supper, till
they competently understand the principles of Christian re
ligion, and do personally and publicly own their baptismal
covenant, by a credible profession of faith and obedience ; not
contradicting the same by a contrary profession, or by a scan
dalous life : and that unto such only confirmation (if continued
in the church) may be administered : and that the approbation
of the pastors to whom the catechising and instructing of those
under their charge do appertain, may be produced before any
person receive confirmation; which course we humbly con
ceive will much conduce to the quieting of those sad disputes
and divisions which have greatly troubled the church of God
amongst us, touching church-members and communicants.
4. That an effectual course be taken for the sanctifi-
cation of the Lord's day, appropriating the same to holy
exercises both in public and private without unneces
sary divertisements ; it being certain and by long experience

1660.] Proposals of the Ministers. 15
found, that the observation thereof is a special means of
preserving and promoting the power of godliness, and ob
viating profaneness.
Then for matters in difference, viz., church-government,
liturgy, and ceremonies, we most humbly represent unto your
majesty :
1 . First, for church-government ; that although upon just
reasons we do dissent from that ecclesiastical hierarchy or
prelacy disclaimed in the covenant, as it was stated and exer
cised in these kingdoms; yet we do not, nor ever did
renounce the true ancient primitive episcopacy or presi
dency as it was balanced and managed by a due commixtion
of presbyters therewith, as a fit means to avoid corrup
tions, partiality, tyranny, and other evils which may be
incident to the administration of one single person : which
kind of attempered episcopacy or presidency, if it shall, by
your majesty's grave wisdom and gracious moderation, be in
such a manner constituted, as that the fore-mentioned, and
other like evils may be certainly prevented, we shall humbly
submit thereunto.
And in order to a happy accommodation in this weighty
business, we desire humbly to offer unto your majesty some
, of the particulars, which we conceive were amiss in the
episcopal government, as it was practised before the year 1640,
1. The great extent of the bishop's diocese, which was much
too large for his own personal inspection, wherein he undertook
a pastoral charge over the souls of all those within his
bishopric, which must needs be granted to be too heavy a
burthen for any one man's shoulders : the pastoral office being a
work of personal ministration and trust, and that of the
highest concernment to the souls of the people, for which
they are to give an account to Christ.
2, That by reason of this disability to discharge their
duty and trust personally, the bishops did depute the ad
ministration of much of their trust, even in matters of
spiritual cognizance, to commissaries, chancellors, and of
ficials, whereof some were secular persons, and could not

16 First Address and [1660,
administer that power which originally appertaineth to the
pastors of the church.
3. That those bishops who affirm the episcopal office to be
a distinct order by divine right from that of the presbyter,
did assume the sole power of ordination and jurisdiction to
themselves. 4. That some of the bishops exercised an arbitrary power,
as by sending forth their books of articles in their visitations,
and therein unwarrantably inquiring into several things, and
swearing the churchwardens to present accordingly. So also
by many innovations and ceremonies imposed upon ministers
and people not required by law^ ; and by suspending ministers
at their pleasure.
For reforming of which evils, we humbly crave leave to
offer unto your majesty,
1. The late most reverend primate of Ireland his "Reduction
of episcopacy unto the form of synodical government, re
ceived in the ancient church ;" as a ground-work towards an
accommodation and fraternal agreement in this point of
ecclesiastical government; which we the rather do, not only
in regard of his eminent piety and singular ability, as in all
other parts of learning, so in that especially of the antiquities
of the church ; but also, because therein expedients are offered
to the healing of these grievances.
3. And in order to the same end, we further humbly desire,
that the suffragans or chorepiscopi, mentioned in the primate's
"Reduction," be chosen by the respective synods, and by
that election may be sufficiently authorized to discharge their
trust. That the associations may not be so large as to
make the discipline impossible, or to take off the ministers
from the rest of their necessary employment.
3. That no oaths, or promises of obedience to the bishops,
nor any unnecessary subscriptions or engagements be made
necessary to ordination, institution, induction, ministration,
communion, or immunities of ministers, they being responsible
• This last clause is wanting in the MS. copy preserved in the Tanner
papers. — Cakbwell.

1660.] Proposals of the Ministers. 17
for any transgression of the law. And that no bishops, nor
any ecclesiastical governors, may at any time exercise their
government by their own private will or pleasure ; but only by
such rules, canons and constitutions, as shall be hereafter
by act of parliament ratified and established : and that suf
ficient provision of law may be made to secure both ministers
and people against the evils of arbitrary government in the
church. 3. CONCERNING THE LITURGY.
1, We are satisfied in our judgments concerning the law
fulness of a liturgy, or form of public worship; provided
that it be for the matter agreeable unto the word of God,
and fitly suited to the nature of the several ordinances, and
necessities of the church; neither too tedious in the whole,
nor composed of too short prayers, unmeet repetitions or
responsals: not to be dissonant from the liturgies of other
reformed churches; nor too rigorously imposed; nor the
minister so confined thereunto, but that he may also make
use of those gifts for prayer and exhortation which Christ
hath given him for the service and edification of the church.
2. That inasmuch as the Book of Common Prayer hath in
it many things that are justly offensive and need amendment,
hath been long discontinued, and very many, both ministers
and people, persons of pious, loyal, and peaceable minds, are
therein greatly dissatisfied; whereupon, if it be again im
posed, win inevitably follow sad divisions, and widening of
the breaches which your majesty is now endeavouring to heal;
we do most humbly offer to your majesty's wisdom, that for
preventing so great evil, and for settling the church in unity
and peace, some learned, godly, and moderate divines of both
persuasions, indifferently chosen, may be employed to compile
such a form as is before described, as much as may be in
Scripture words ; or at least to revise and effectually reform
the old, together with an addition or insertion of some other
varying forms in Scripture phrase, to be used at the minis
ter's choice; of which variety and liberty there be instances
in the Book of Common Prayer. c

18 First Address and [1660,
3. CONCERNING CEREMONIES.
We humbly represent that we hold ourselves obbged, in
every part of divine worship, to do all things decently, in
order, and to edification, and are willing therein to be deter
mined by authority in such things as being merely circum
stantial, are common to human actions and societies, and
are to be ordered by the hght of nature and Christian pru
dence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are
always to be observed.
And as to divers ceremonies formerly retained in the
Church of England, we do in all humility offer unto your
majesty these ensuing considerations :
That the worship of God is in itself perfect, without having
such ceremonies affixed thereto.^
That the Lord hath declared himself in the matters that
concern his worship to be " a jealous God ;" and this worship
of his is certainly then most pure, and most agreeable to the
simplicity of the gospel, and to his holy and jealous eyes, when
it hath least of human admixtures in things of themselves
confessedly unnecessary adjoined and appropriated thereunto;
upon which account many faithful servants of the Lord,
knowing his word to be the perfect rule of faith and worship,
by which they must judge of his acceptance of their services,
and must be themselves judged, have been exceeding
fearful of varying from his wiU, and of the danger of dis^
pleasing him by additions or detractions in such duties
wherein they must daily expect the communications of his
grace and comfort, especially seeing that these ceremonies
have been imposed and urged upon such considerations as
draw too near to the significancy and moral efficacy of sacra
ments themselves.
That they have, together with popery, been rejected by
• To this clause the Tanner MS. adds the following words : "for did they
" contribute anything to that necessary decency which the apostle requires, we
" might expect to meet with them in the apostles' time ; there being no reason
" to induce us to the use of them which might not have induced them."—
Caedwell.

1660.] Proposals of the Ministers. 19
many of the reformed churches abroad, amongst whom, not-
withstanding, we doubt not but the Lord is worshipped
decently, orderly, and in the beauty of holiness.
That ever since the reformation they have been matter of
contention and endless disputes in this church, and have been
a cause of depriving the church of the fruit and benefit which
might have been reaped from the labours of many learned
and godly ministers, some of whom judging them unlawful,
others unexpedient, were in conscience unwilling to be brought
under the power of them,
¦That they have occasioned, by the offence taken at them
hy many of the people heretofore, great separations from our
church, and so have rather prejudiced than promoted the
unity thereof; and at this time, by reason of their long
disuse, may be more likely than ever heretofore to produce
the same inconveniences.
That they are at best but indifferent, and in their nature
mutable; and that it is, especially in various exigencies of
the church, very needful and expedient that things in them
selves mutable be sometimes actually changed, lest they
should, by perpetual permanency and constant use, be judged
by the people as necessary as the substantials of worship
themselves. And though we do most heartily acknowledge your majesty
to be custos utriusque tabulee, and to be supreme governor
over all persons, and in all things and causes, as well ecclesi
astical as civil, in these your majesty's dominions, yet we
humbly crave leave to beseech your majesty to consider
whether, as a Christian magistrate, you be not as well obliged
by that doctrine of the apostle touching things indifferent, in
not occasioning an offence to weak brethren, as the apostle
himself (then one of the highest officers in the church of
Christ) judged himself to be obliged by; and whether the
great work wherewith the Lord hath intrusted your majesty
be not rather to provide by your sacred authority that the
things which are necessary, by virtue of divine command, in
his worship should be duly performed, than that things un-
c 3

30

First Address and [1660.

necessary should be made by human command necessary and
penal. And how greatly pleasing it will be to the Lord that
your majesty's heart is so tenderly and rehgiously com
passionate to such of his poor servants differing in some
small matters, who prefer the peace of their consciences in
God's worship above aU their civil concernments what
soever. May it therefore please your majesty out of your princely
care of healing our sad breaches, graciously to grant, that
kneeling at the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and such
holy days, as are but of human institution, may not be im
posed upon such as do conscientiously scruple the observation
of them; and that the use of the surplice, and cross
in baptism, and bowing at the name of Jesus rather
than the name of Christ, or Emmanuel, or other names
whereby that divine person, or either of th& other divine
persons is nominated, may be abolished; these things being,
in the judgment of the imposers themselves, but indifferent
and mutable; in the judgment of others, a rock of offence;
and, in the judgment of all, not to be valued with the peace of
the church.
We likewise humbly represent unto your most exceUent
majesty, that divers ceremonies which we conceive have no
foundation in the law of the land, as erecting altars, bowing
towards them, and such like, have been not only introduced,
but in some places imposed : whereby an arbitrary power
was usurped ; divers ministers of the gospel, though conform
able to the established ceremonies, troubled; some reverend
and learned bishops offended; the Protestants grieved; and
the Papists pleased, as hoping that those innovations might
make way for greater changes.
May it therefore please your majesty, by such ways as
your royal wisdom shall judge meet, effectually to prevent the
imposing and using of such innovations for the future, that so,
according to the pious intention of your rojal grandfather
king James of blessed memory, the public worship may be
free, not only from blame, but from suspicion.

1660.] Proposals of the Ministers. 31
In obedience to your majesty^s royal pleasure graciously
signified to us, we have tendered to your most
excellent majesty what we humbly conceive may most
conduce to the glory of God, to the peace and reforma
tion of the church, and to the taking away, not only of
our differences, but the roots and causes of them.
We humbly beg your majesty's favorable acceptance
of these our loyal and conscientious endeavours to
serve* your majesty and the church of Christ, and
your gracious pardon if in any thing or expression we
answer not your majesty's expectation; professing
before your majesty, and before the Lord, the searcher
of hearts, that we have done nothing out of strife, vain
glory, or emulation, but have sincerely offered what
we apprehend most seasonable, as conducing to that
happy end of unity and peace which your majesty doth
so piously prosecute.
We humbly lay ourselves, and these our addresses, at
your majesty's feet, professing our unfeigned resolu
tion to live and die your majesty's faithful, loyal, and
obedient subjects ; and humbly implore your gracious
majesty, according unto your princely wisdom and
fatherly compassion, so to lay your hand upon the
bleeding rents and divisions that are amongst us, that
there may be a heahng of them : so shall your throne
be greater than the throne of your fathers; in your
days the righteous shall flourish, peace shall run down
like a river, and the generations to come shall call you
blessed.

* The words "your majesty and" are wanting in the Tanner MS. —
Caedwell.

33 Archbishop Ussher's [1660

V,
Archbishop Ussher's Model of Church Government.'^—
Reliquiae Baxterianse, by Silvester, pp. 338 — 341,
By the order of the Church of England, all presbyters are
charged to minister the doctrine and sacraments and the
discipUne of Christ as the Lord hath commanded, and as this
realm hath received the same. And that we might the better
understand what the Lord had commanded therein, the ex
hortation of St. Paul to the elders of the church of Ephesus
is appointed to be read unto them at the time of their ordi
nation : " take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock, among
whom the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to rule the
congregation of God, which he hath purchased with his
blood." Of the many elders, who in common thus ruled the church
of Ephesus, there was one president, whom our Saviour, in his
epistle to the church, in a peculiar manner stUeth the angel
of the church of Ephesus ; and Ignatius, in another epistle,
written about twelve years after, to the same church, calleth
the bishop thereof: betwixt which bishop and the presby
tery of the church, what an harmonious consent there was in
the ordering of church government, the same Ignatius doth
fully there declare ; by the presbytery (with St. Paul) under
standing the company of the rest of the presbytery or elders
who then had a hand, not only in the delivery of the doctrine
' This reduction was pubhshed in 1658, after Archbishop Ussher's death, by
Dr. Bernard. An unfinished MS. on the same subject, had been stolen out
of his writing-desk, and printed early in 1641, with the foUowing title, " The
"Directions of the Archbishop of Armagh concerning the Liturgy and
" Episcopal Government," which, upon complaint being made to the House
of Commons by the Archbishop, that " it was most ingeniously fathered
"upon him," was suppressed by order of the House, dated 9th of February,
1640— 1.— Life of ... . Ussher, by 0. R. Elmgton, D.D., pp. 208—9.

1660.] Model of Church Government. 23
and sacraments, but also in the administration of the disci
pline of Christ, For further proof whereof we have that
known testimony of TertuUian in his general Apology for
Christians, In the church are used exhortations, chastise
ments and divine censures ; for judgment is given with great
advice as among those who are certain they are in the sight
of God, and it is the chiefest foreshewing of the judgment
that is to come, if any man hath so offended that he be
banished from the communion of prayer, and of the assembly,
and of aU holy fellowship.
The presidents that bear rule therein are certain approved
elders who have obtained this honour, and not by reward, but
by good report. Who were no other (as he himself else
where intimateth) but those from whose hands they used to
receive the sacrament of the eucharist.
For with the bishop, who was the chief president, (and
therefore styled by the same TertuUian in another place
Summits Sacerdos for distinction sake,) the rest of the dis
pensers of the word and sacraments were joined in the
common government of the church. And therefore in matters
of ecclesiastical judicature, Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, used
the received form of gathering together the presbytery.
Of what persons that did consist, Cyprian sufficiently de-
clareth, when he wished him to read his letters to the flourish
ing clergy that there did preside or rule with him.
The presence of the clergy being thought to be so requisite
in matters of episcopal audience that, in the fourth council of
Carthage, it was concluded that the bishop might hear no
man's cause without the presence of the clergy; which we
find also to be inserted into the canons of Egbert, who was
Archbishop of York in the Saxon times, and afterwards into
the body of the canon law itself.
True it is, that in our church this kind of presbyterian
government hath been long disused, yet, seeing it stUl pro.
fesseth that every pastor ^hath a right to rule the church
(from whence the name of rector also was given at first unto
him) and to administer the discipline of Christ, as well as to

34 Archbishop Ussher's [1660.
dispense the doctrine and sacraments :— and the restraint of
the exercise of that right proceedeth only from the custom
now received in this realm : — no man can doubt but by
another law of the land this hindrance may be weU removed.
And how easily this ancient form of government, by the
united sufirages of the clergy, might be revived again, and
with what httle show of alteration the synodical conventions
of the pastors of every parish might be accorded, with the
presidency of the bishops of each diocese and province, the
indifferent reader may quickly perceive by the perusal of the
ensuing propositions.
I. In every parish the rector or the incumbent pastor, to
gether with the churchwardens and sidemen, may every week
take notice of such as live scandalously in that congregation,
who are to receive such several admonitions and reproofs as
the quality of their offence shall deserve; and if by this
means they cannot be reclaimed, they may be presented unto
the next monthly synod, and in the meantime be debarred by
the pastor from access unto the Lord's table.
3. Whereas by a statute in the twenty-sixth of King
Henry VIII, (revived in the first year of Queen Elizabeth,)
suffragans are appointed to be erected in twenty-six several
places of this kingdom, the number of them might very weU
be conformed unto the number of the several rural deaneries
into which every diocese is subdivided, which being done, the
suffragan (supplying the place of those who in the ancient
church were called chorepiscopi) might every month assemble
a synod of all the rectors, or incumbent pastors within the
precinct, and according to the major part of their voices
conclude aU matters that should be brought into debate
before them.
To this synod the rector and churchwardens might present
such impenitent persons, as by admonition and suspension
from the sacrament, would note be reformed; who, if they
should still remain contumacious and incorrigible, the sentence
of excommunication might be decreed against them by the
synod, and accordingly be executed in the parish where they

1660.] Model of Church Government. 35
lived. Hitherto also all thmgs that concerned the parochial
ministers might be referred, whether they did touch their
doctrine or their conversation : — as also the censure of all
new opinions, heresies, and Schisms which did arise within
that circuit, with liberty of appeal if need so require unto
the diocesan synod,
3, The diocesan synod might be held once or twice in the
year as it should be thought most convenient ; therein all the
suffragans and the rest of the rectors or incumbent pastors
(or a certain select number out of every deanery within that
diocese) might meet : with whose consent, or the major part
of them, all things might be concluded by the bishop or
superintendent (call him whether you will) or in his absence
by one of the suffragans, whom he should depute in his stead
to be moderator of that assembly. Here all matters of
greater moment might be taken into consideration, and the
orders of the monthly synods revised and (if need be) re
formed. And if here also any matter of difficulty could not
receive a fuU determination, it might be referred to the next
provincial or national synod,
4, The provincial synod might consist of all the bishops
and suffragans, and such of the clergy aa should be elected
out of every diocese within the province. The primate of
either province might be the moderator of this meeting, (or
in his room some one of the bishops appointed by him) and
aU matters be ordered therein by common consent as in the
former assemblies. This synod might be held every third
year, and if the parliament do then sit, (according to the act
for a triennial parliament) both the primates and provincial
synods of the land might join together, and make up a
national council; wherein all appeals from inferior synods
might be received, aU their acts examined, and all eccle
siastical constitutions which concern the state of the church
of the whole nation estabUshed,
May it please your grace,
I would desire you to consider whether presentments are
fit to be made by the churchwardens alone, and not rather by

36 Requests verbally presented to King Charles II. [1660.
the rector and churchwardens. Then whether in the diocesan
synod the members of it be not too many, being all to judge,
and in their own cause, as it may fall out. Therefore, after
this clause, "and the rest of the rectors or incumbent
pastors," whether it be not fit to interline, "or four or six
out of every deanery." Rl. HOLDSWORTH.
We are of judgment, that the form of government here
proposed is not in any point repugnant to the Scripture, and
that the suffragans mentioned in the second proposition may
lawfully use the power both of jurisdiction and ordination,
according to the word of God, and the practice of the ancient
church.

VI.
Requests verbally presented to King Charles II in consequence
of the Act for restoring the English Clergy.^ — Reliquiae
Baxteriani3e, by Sylvester, p. 341.
1. That with all convenient speed we may see his majesty's
conclusions upon the proposals of the mutual condescencions,
before they pass into resolves, and if it be thought meet, our
brethrens proposals also.
3. That his majesty wiU publicly declare his pleasure for
the suspension of proceedings, upon the Act of Uniformity,
' By the Act 12, Oar. II, cap. 17, intituled "An act for confirming and
" restoring of ministers," it was enacted that every minister presented to a
benefice since the year 1642, (such benefice being then void) and being in
possession of the same on the 25th of December, 1659, shall be adjudged the
lawful incumbent ; and any minister, formerly ejected, not having declared
for the king's trial and execution, nor against infant-baptism, shall be
restored to his benefice before the 25th of December, 1660, upon taking the
oaths of aUegiance and supremacy.— Gibson's Codex, pp. 1070 — 4.

1660.] Answer to the First Proposals. 37
against Nonconformists in case of liturgy and ceremonies,
tUl our hoped for agreement.
3. That his majesty wUl be pleased to pubUsh his pleasure,
(at least to those that are concerned in the execution) that
(till the said expected settlement) no oath of canonical obe
dience, nor subscription to the Uturgy, discipline, ceremonies,
&c., nor renunciation of their ordination by mere presbyters,
or confessing it to be sinful, be imposed on, or required of
any, as necessary to their ordination, institution, induction,
or confirmation by the seals.
4. That his majesty wiU cause the revoking of the broad
seal that is granted to aU those persons that by it are put
into places where others have possession, to which none be
fore could claim a right ; that is, such as they call dead
places. 5. That his majesty will be pleased to provide some remedy
against the return or settlement of notoriously insufficient or
scandalous ministers, into the places from which they were
cast out, or into any other.

VII.
The Bishops' Answer to the first proposals of the London
Ministers, who attempted the work of reconcilement. —
ReUquise Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 343 — 7.
CONCERNING THE PREAMBLE.
§ " 1 . We first observe, that they take it for granted, that
there is a firm agreement between them and us in the doctrinal
¦ The § § are inserted, as the subsequent Defence of their proposals by the
Presbyterian divines refers to them.

38 Answer of the Bishops [1660.
truths of the reformed religion, and in the substantial parts of
divine worship; and that the differences are only in some
various conceptions about the ancient forms of church
government, and some particulars about liturgy and cere
monies ; which maketh all that foUows the less considerable
and less reasonable to be stood upon, to the hazard of the
disturbance and peace of the church.
§ 3. They seem to intimate as if we did discountenance the
practice of those things which, in principles, we allow; which
we utterly deny.
In sundry particulars therein proposed, we do not perceive
what farther security can be given, than is already provided
for by the established laws of this realm; whereunto such
persons as shall at any time find themselves aggrieved may
have recourse for remedy.
§ 3. 1 . We heartily desire (as weU as they) that all animosi
ties be laid aside; words of scorn, reproach, and provocation
might be mutually forborne; and that, to men of different per
suasions, such a liberty may be left of performing Christian
duties according to their own way, within their own private
famUies, as that yet uniformity in the public worship may
be preserved, and that a gap be not thereby opened to secta
ries for private conventicles : for the evil consequences whereof
none can be sufficiently responsible unto the state.
§ 4. 3. We likewise desire that every congregation may have
an able and godly minister to preach, catechise, administer
the sacraments, and perform other ministerial offices as need
shall require. But what they mean by residing, and how far
they will extend that word, and what effectual provision of
law can be made, more than is already done, concerning the
things here mentioned, we know not.
§ 5. 3. Confirmation (which for sundry ends we think ne
cessary to be continued in the church) if rightly and solemnly
performed, will alone be sufficient as to the point of instruc
tion. And for notorious and scandalous offenders, provision
is made in the rubric before the communion; which rules,
had they been carefuUy observed, the troubles of the church

1660.] to the First Proposals. 39
by the disputes and divisions here mentioned had been
prevented. § 6. 4, There cannot be taken a more effectual course in this
behalf than the execution of the laws already made for the
due observation of the Lord's day : which, in this particular,
are very much stricter than the laws of any foreign reformed
churches whatsoever. CONCERNING CHURCH GOVERNMENT.
§ 7, They do not suggest, nor did we ever hear, any just
reasons given for their dissent from the ecclesiastical Hierarchy
or Prelacy, as it was stated and established in this kingdom :
which we believe to be, for the main, the true ancient primi
tive episcopacy, and that to be more than a mere presidency of
order. Neither do we find that the same was in any time
balanced or managed by authoritative commixtion of Presby
ters therewith : though it hath been then, and in aU times
since, usuaUy exercised with the assistance and counsel
of Presbyters in subordination to the Bishops.
§ 8. And we cannot but wonder that the administration of
government by one single person, should by them be affirmed
to be so liable to corruption, partialities, tyrannies, and other
evils, that for the avoiding thereof it should be needful to
have others joined with him in the power of government;
which, if appUed to the civU state, is a most dangerous
insinuation. And we verily believe, what experience and the
constitutions of kingdoms, armies, and even private families,
sufficiently confirmeth (in aU which the government is ad
ministered by the authority of one single person, although
the advice of others may De requisite also ; but without any
share in the government) that the government of many is
not only most subject to aU the aforesaid evils and inconve
niences, but more likely also to breed and foment perpetual
factions both in Church and State, than the government by
one is, or can be. And since no government can certainly
prevent all evils, that which is liable to the least and fewest
is certainly to be preferred.

30 Answer of the Bishops [1660.
AS TO THE FOUR PARTICULAR INSTANCES OV THINGS
AMISS, &C.
§ 9. 1. We cannot grant that the extent of any diocese is so
great, but that a Bishop may well perform that, wherein the
proper office and duty of a bishop doth consist ; which is not
the personal inspection of every man's soul under his govern
ment, (which is the work of every parochial minister in his
cure) but the pastoral charge of overseeing, directing, and
taking care that the ministers and other ecclesiastical officers
within his diocese, do their several respective duties in their
several stations as they ought to do. And if some dioceses
shaU be thought of too large extent, the bishops may have
suffragan bishops to assist them, as the laws allow. It being
a great mistake, that the personal inspection of the bishop
is, in all places of his diocese, at all times necessary. For by
the same reason, neither princes, nor governors of provinces,
nor generals of armies, nor mayors of great cities, nor minis
ters of great parishes, could ever be able to discharge their
duties in their several places and charges.
§ 10. 3. We confess the bishops did (as by the law they were
enabled) depute part of the administration of their ecclesi
astical jurisdiction to chanceUors, commissaries, and officials,
as men better skilled in the civil and canon laws. But, as
for matters of more spiritual concernment, viz., the sentences
of excommunication, and absolution, with other censures of
the Church, we conceive they belong properly to the bishop
to decree and pronounce, either by himself, where for the
present he resideth, or by some grave ecclesiastical person by
him surrogated for that purpose, in such places where he can
not be personally present. Wherein, if many things have
been done amiss for the time past, or shall be seasonably
conceived inconvenient for the future, we shall be as willing
to have the same reformed and remedied, as any other
persons whatsoever.
§11.3. Whether a Bishop be a distinct order from Presbyter
or not, or whether they have power of sole ordination or no ? is

1660.] to the First Proposals. 31
not now the question. But we are firm that the bishops of
this realm have constantly (for aught we know, or have heard
to the contrary) ordained with the assistance of presbyters,
and the imposition of their hands, together with the bishops.
And we conceive it very fit, that in the exercise of that part
of their jurisdiction which appertaineth to the censures of the
Church, they should likewise have the advice and assistance
of some presbyters. And, for this purpose, the coUeges of
deans and chapters are thought to have been instituted, that
the bishops in their several dioceses might have their advice
and assistance in the administration of their weighty pastoral
charge. § 12. 4. This last dependeth upon matter of fact. Wherein
if any bishops have [done], or shall do, otherwise than accor
ding to law, they were and are to be answerable for the same.
And it is our desire (as weU as theirs) that nothing may be done
or imposed by the bishop, but according to the known laws.
FOB REFORMING OF WHICH EVILS, &C.
§ 13, 1, The primate's Reduction, though not published in
his lifetime, was formed many years before his death, and shewed
to some persons (ready to attest the same) in the year 1640 :
hut it is not consistent with two other discourses of the same
learned Primate, (viz., the one of the Original of Episcopacy,
and the other of the Original of Metropolitans,) both printed
in the year 1641, and written with great dUigence, and much
variety of ancient learning. In neither of which is to be
found any mention of the Reduction aforesaid. Neither is
there in either of them propounded any such model of church
government as in the said Reduction is contained; which
doubtless would have been done, had that platform been
according to his settled judgment in those matters.
In which Reduction there are sundry things (as, namely,
the conforming of suffiragans to the number of rural dean
eries) which are apparently private conceptions of his own,
accommodated, at that time, for the taking off some present

32 Answer of the Bishops [1660.
animosities ; but wholly destitute of any color of testimony or
precedent from antiquity; nor is any such by him offered
towards the proof thereof.
And it would be considered, whether the final resolution of
all ecclesiastical power and jurisdiction into a national synod,
where it seemeth to be placed in that Reduction without
naming the king, or without any dependence upon him, or
relation to him, be not destructive of the king's supremacy
in causes ecclesiastical.
It is observable, nevertheless, that even in the Reduction
Archi-Episcopacy is acknowledged.
AS TO THE SUPER- ADDED PARTICULARS.
§ 1 4. 1 . The appointment and election of suffragans, is hy the
law already vested in the king, whose power therein is, by the
course here proposed, taken way,
§ 15. 3. What they mean by association in this place, they
explain not; but we conceive it dangerous that any associ
ation (whatsoever is understood thereby) should be made or
entered into without the king's authority.
§ 16. 3. We do not take the oaths, promises, and subscriptions,
by law required, of ministers at their ordination, institution, &c.,
to be unnecessary, although they be responsible to the laws if
they do amiss ; it being thought requisite, as well by such
cautions to prevent offences, as to punish offenders afterwards.
Upon all which consideration it is, that officers in the court,
freemen in cities and corporate towns, masters and feUows of
colleges in the universities, &c., are required, at their admis
sion into their several respective places, to give oaths for weU
and truly performing their several respective duties, their
liableness to punishment in case of non-performance accord
ingly notwithstanding. Neither doth it seem reasonable that
such persons — as have themselves, with great severity,
prescribed and exacted antecedent conditions of their com
munion not warranted by law — should be exempted from the
tie of such oaths and subscriptions as the laws require.

1660.] to the First Proposals. 33
§ 17. 4. We agree that the Bishops, and aU ecclesiastical
governors, ought to exercise their government, not arbi-
trarUy, but according to law.
5. And for security against such arbitrary government and
innovations, the laws are, and from time to time will be,
sufficient provision.

CONCERNING LITURGY.
§ 18. A liturgy, or form of public worship, being not only
by them acknowledged lawful, hut by us also (for the preser
vation of unity and uniformity) deemed necessary, we esteem
the liturgy of the Church of England, contained in the Book
of Common Prayer, and by law established, to be such an one
as is by them desired ; according to the qualifications here
mentioned, viz. : —
1. For matter agreeable to the Word of God, which we
and aU other lawful ministers within the Church of England,
have, or, by the laws ought to have attested by our personal
subscription. 3. Fitly suited to the nature of the several ordinances, and
the necessities of the church.
3. Nor too tedious in the whole. It's weU known that
some men's prayers before and after sermon, have been
usually not much shorter, and sometimes much longer than
the whole church service.
4. Nor the prayers too short. The wisdom of the church,
both in ancient and modern times, hath thought it a fitter
means for relieving the infirmities of the meaner sort of
people (which are the major part of most congregations) to
contrive several petitions into sundry shorter coUects or
prayers, than to comprehend them aU together in a continued
style, or without interruption.
5. Nor the repetitions unmeet. There are examples of the
like repetition frequent in the Psalms, and other parts of
Scripture : not to mention the unhandsome tautologies
that oftentimes happen, and can scarce be avoided, in the
D

34 Answer of the Bishops [1660.
extemporary and undigested prayers that are made ; especiaUy
by persons of meaner gifts.
6. Nor the responsals. Which, if impartially considered,
are pious ejaculations fit to stir up devotion, and good symbols
of conformity betwixt the minister and people, and have been
of very ancient practice and continuance in the church.
7. Nor too dissonant from the liturgies of other reformed
churches. The nearer both their forms and ours come to the
liturgy of the ancient Greek and Latin chjirches, the less are
they liable to the objections of the common enemy. To
which liturgies, if the form used in our church be more
agreeable than those of other reformed churches, and that it
were at all needful to make a change in either, it seemeth to be
much more reasonable that their form should be endeavoured
to be brought to a nearer conformity with ours, than ours
with theirs ; especiaUy the form of our Uturgy having been
so signally approved by sundry of the most learned divines
of the reformed churches abroad, as by very many testimonies
in their writings may appear. And some of the compilers
thereof have sealed the Protestant religion with their blood,
and have been by the most eminent persons of those churches
esteemed as martyrs for the same.
§ 19. As for that which foUoweth : neither can we think
that too rigorously imposed which is imposed by law, and
that with no more rigour than is necessary to make the
imposition effectual (otherwise it could be of no use but to
beget and nourish factions) ; nor are ministers denied the
use and exercise of their gifts in praying before and after
sermon, although such praying be but the continuance of
a custom of no great antiquity, and grown into common use
by sufferance only, without any other foundation in the laws
or canons, and ought therefore to be used by all sober and
godly men with the greatest inoffensiveness and moderation
possible. § 30. If anything in the estabUshed liturgy shall be made
appear to be justly offensive to sober persons, we are not at
all unwilling that the same should be changed.

1660.] to the First Proposals. 35
The discontinuance thereof, we are sure was not our fault.
But we find by experience that the use of it is very much
desired, where it is not ; and the people generally are very
weU satisfied with it where it is used; which we believe to be
a great conservatory of the chief heads of Christian re
Ugion, and of piety, charity, and loyalty in the hearts of the
people. We believe that the disuse thereof for sundry late years,
hath been one of the great causes of the sad divisions in the
church ; and that the restoring the same, will be (by God's
blessing) a special means of making up the breach ; there
being (as we have great cause to believe) many thousands
more in the nation that desire it than disUke it.
Nevertheless, we are not against revising of the liturgy by
such discreet persons as his majesty shaU think fit to employ
therein. OF CEREMONIES.
§ 21. We conceive there needs no more to be said for
justifying the imposition of the ceremonies by law estab
lished, than what is contained in the beginning of this
section : which giveth a fuU and satisfactory answer to aU that
is aUeged or objected in the following discourse, which is for
the most part rather rhetorical than argumentative; inas
much as lawful authority hath afready determined the cere
monies in question to be decent and orderly, and to serve to
edification ; and consequently to be agreeable to the general
rules of the word.
We acknowledge the worship of God to be in itself per
fect in regard of essentials, which hindereth not but that it
may be capable of being improved to us by addition of cir
cumstantials in order to decency and edification.
As the Lord hath declared himself jealous in matters con
cerning the substance of his worship, so hath he left the
church at liberty for circumstantials to determine concerning
particulars according to prudence as occasion shall require, so
as the foresaid general rules be stiU observed : and, therefore,
D 3

36 Answer of the Bishops [1660,
the imposing and using indifferent ceremonies is not varying
from the will of God, nor is there made thereby any addition
to, or detraction from, the holy duties of God's worship. Nor
doth the same any way hinder the communication of God's
grace or comfort in the performance of such duties.
§ 33. The ceremonies were never esteemed sacraments, or
imposed as such ; nor was ever any moral efficacy ascribed to
them, nor doth the significancy (without which they could not
serve to edification) import or infer any such thing.
§ 33. Ceremonies have been retained by most of the pro
testant churches abroad, which have rejected popery, and have
been approved by the judgment of the most learned, even of
those churches that have not retained them. Every national
church being supposed to be the best and most proper judge
what is fittest for themselves to appoint in order to decency
and edification, without prescribing to other churches.
§ 34. That the ceremonies have been matter of contention in
this or any other church was not either from the nature of
the thing enjoined, or the enjoining of the same by lawful
authority : but partly from the weakness of some men's
judgments unable to search into the reason of things : and
partly from the unsubduedness of some men's spirits, more apt
to contend than wUling to submit their private opinions, to
the public judgment of the church.
§ 35. Of those who were obnoxious to the law, very few (in
comparison) have been deprived, and none of them (for aught
we know) but such as after admonition and long forbearance
finally refused to do, what not only the laws required to be
done, but themselves also formerly had solemnly, and (as they
professed) wilUngly promised to do.
§ 26. We do not see with what conscience any man could
leave the exercise of his ministry in his peculiar charge, for
not submitting to lawful authority in the using of such things
as were in his own judgment no more than inexpedient only.
And it is certainly a great mistake, at the least, to call the
submitting to authority in such things, a bringing the con
science under the power of them.

1660.] to the First Proposals. 37
§ 37. The separation that hath been made from the church,
was from the taking a scandal where none was given; — the
church having fully declared her sense touching the ceremo
nies imposed, as things not in their nature necessary, but
indifferent; — but was chiefly occasioned by the practice, and
descended from the principles of those that refused conformity
to the law, the just rule and measure of the churches unity.
§ 28. The nature of things being declared to be mutable,
sheweth that they may therefore be changed, as they that are
in authority shaU see it expedient ; but it is no proof at all
that it is therefore expedient that it should be actually
changed. Yet it is a sufficient caution against the opinion (or
objection rather) of their being held by the imposers either
necessary, or substantials of worship. Besides, this argument,
if it were of any force, would infer an expediency of the
often changing even of good laws, whereas the change of laws,
although liable to some inconveniences, without great and
evident necessity, hath been by wise men ever accounted a
thing not only imprudent, but of evil, and sometimes per
nicious consequence.
§ 29. We fuUy agree with them in the acknowledgment of
the king's supremacy, but we leave it to his majesty's pru
dence and goodness to consider, whether for the avoiding of
the offence of some of his weak subjects, he be any way
obhged to repeal the established laws ; the repealing whereof
woidd be probably dissatisfactory to many more, and those
(so far as we are able to judge) no less considerable a part of
his subjects. Nor do we conceive his majesty by the apostle's
either doctrine or example obliged to any farther condescen
sion to particular persons, than may be subservient to the
general and main ends of public government.
The Lord hath entrusted governors to provide, not only
that things necessary in God's worship be duly performed,
but also that things advisedly enjoined, though not otherwise
necessary, should be orderly and duly observed. The too great
neglect whereof would so cut the sinews of authority, that it
would become first infirm, and then contemptible.

38 Answer of the Bishops. [1660
As we are no way against such tender and religious com
passion in things of this nature, as his majesty's piety and
wisdom shall think fit to extend ; so we cannot think that the
satisfaction of some private persons is to be laid in the
balance against the public peace and uniformity of the
church. CONCERNING PARTICULAR CEREMONIES.
§ 30. It being most convenient that in the act of receiving
the Lord's supper one and the same gesture should be uni
formly used by aU the members of this church ; and kneeling
having been formerly enjoined and used therein, as a gesture
of greatest reverence and devotion, and so most agreeable to
that holy service; and holy-days of human institution
having been observed by the people of God in the Old Testa
ment, and by our blessed Saviour himself in the Gospel, and
by all the churches of Christ in primitive and foUowing times,
as apt means to preserve the memorials of the chief mysteries
of the Christian religion ; and such holy-days being also fit
times for the honest recreation of servants, labourers, and the
meaner sort of people : —
For these reasons, and the great satisfaction of far the
greatest part of the people, we humbly desire (as a thing in
our judgment very expedient) that they may both be stiU
continued in the church.
§ 31. As for the other three ceremonies, viz., the surplice,
cross after baptism, and bowing at the name of Jesus;
although we find not here any sufficient reason aUeged why
they should be utterly abolished : nevertheless, how far forth
in regard of tender consciences a liberty may be thought fit to
be indulged to any, his majesty, according to his great
wisdom and goodness, is best able to judge.
§ 32. But why they that confess that, in the judgment of all,
the things here mentioned are not to be valued with the peace
of the church, should yet, after they are established by law,
disturb the peace of the church about them, we understand
not.

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 39
§ 33. We heartUy desire that no innovations should be
brought into the church, or ceremonies which have no foun
dation in the laws of the land imposed, to the disturbance of
the peace thereof : but that aU men would use that liberty
that is allowed them in things indifferent, according to the
rules of Christian prudence, charity, and moderation.
§ 34. We are so far from believing that his majesty's conde
scending to these demands will take away not only differences,
but the roots and causes of them, that we are confident it
will prove the seminary of new differences, both by giving
dissatisfaction to those that are well pleased with what is
already established; who are much the greater part of his
majesty's subjects ; and by encouraging unquiet spirits when
these things shaU be granted, to make further demands.
There being no assurance by them given, what wUl content
all Dissenters : than which nothing is more necessary for the
settUng of a firm peace in the church.

VIII.
A Defence of our Proposals to His Majesty for Agreement
in Matters of Religion.^ — Reliquiae Baxterianse, by
Sylvester, pp. 348—58.
CONCERNING THE PREAMBLE.
1. We are not insensible of the great danger of the church,
through the doctrinal errors of many of those with whom we
' When the presbyterian divines had received from the bishops the fore
going answer to their proposals, instead of a statement of concessions which
.they were expecting, " the brethren," says Baxter, " at first desired me to
"write an answer to it. But afterwards they considered that this would
" but provoke them, and turn a treaty for concord into a sharp disputation,
" which would increase the discord ; and so what I had written was never seen
" by any man : lest it should hinder peace." — Rehquise Baxterianse, pp.241  2.

40 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
are at difference, also, about the points of government and
worship now before us. But yet we choose to say of the
party, that we are agreed in doctrinals, because they subscribe
the same Holy Scriptures, and Articles of Religion, and
Books of Homilies as we do. And the contradictions to
their own confessions, which too many are guilty of, we
thought not just to charge upon the party ; because it is but
personal guilt. As to the differences (which in charity and
for peace, we had rather extenuate than aggravate ;) it is of
objective conceptions that we speak, there being a difference
in the things, as well as in our apprehensions. And we con
ceive that the ancient form of church-government, and the
soundness of the liturgy, and freedom from corrupting unlaw
ful ceremonies, are matters that are worthy a conscionable
regard : and no such little inconsiderable things as to be
received without sufficient trial, or used against the dissua
sions of our consciences. No sin should seem so small as to
be wilfully committed; especially to divines. He that will
sin for little or nothing, is not to be trusted when he hath
great temptations. " Whosoever shall break one of these least
commandments, and shaU teach men so, he shaU be called the
least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do, and
teach them the same, shall be called great in the kingdom of
heaven :" Matt, v, 19. And whether the imposer or the for-
bearers do hazard and disturb the church, the nature of the
thing declareth. To you it is indifferent before your imposi
tion ; and therefore you may, without any regret of your own
consciences, forbear the imposition, or persuade the law-makers
to forbear it. But to many of those that dissent from you,
they are sinful ; and therefore cannot be yielded to by them
without the wilful violation of their duty to the absolute
Sovereign of the world. If, in the church of Rome, the con
science of a subject forbid the use of crucifixes, and images,
and chrism, and holy water, &c., is it therefore they, or is it
the pastors, that needlessly impose these things that are the
disturbers of the church ? The princes might have forborne
to make a law restraining Daniel three days from prayer ; but

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 41
Daniel could not forbear praying three days, though the law
commanded it : and which of them then was the disturber
of the peace? If you say thut we are wUful, and our con
sciences are peevish and misinformed ; charity and modesty
requireth you not to overvalue your own, or groundlessly
vUify the judgments and consciences of your brethren. We
study as hard as you ; and are ready to join with you in the
solemnest protestations, as before the Lord, that we are ear
nestly desirous to know the truth ; and we suppose we stand
on the calmer side the hedge, in point of temptation : for if
we err it is to our cost and loss, and have little but reproach
and suffering to entice us willingly to mistake. And we are
always ready to try by argument which side it is that is
mistaken. 2. May not we crave that necessary things may be secured
to us, without being interpreted to seem to insinuate accusa
tions against you ? As it is not the authors of this Answer
personaUy considered, that we could be imagined to accuse,
because we know them not ; so there are others, besides the
party with whom we are seeking a reconcUiation, that may be
averse to the practice of those things about which divines are
doctrinally agreed in, especially that part of the vulgar who
are, practically, of no religion. And it is very displeasing to
us to be called out to an accusation of others ; as being a
course that will tend more to exasperate than reconcile. Fain
we would have had leave to petition for our liberty and for
the security of religion, without accusing any of being injuri
ous to it. But it is the unhappy advantage of those that are
uppermost, that they can cut out at pleasure such work for
those that they would use as adversaries, that shall either
make them seem their adversaries, or appear to be really the
adversaries or betrayers of the truth, and cast them upon in
conveniences and odium which way soever they go. But to
be plain with you, if you would but agree with us in the
practising, and promoting the practice of, those things about
which you profess to be agreed in principles, our differences in
all other things would quickly be at an end. The great con-

42 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
troversy between the hypocrite and the true Christian, —
whether we should be serious in the practice of the religion
which we commonly profess ? — hath troubled England more
than any other : none being more hated and derided as
Puritans, than those that will make religion their business,
and make it predominant in their hearts and lives; while
others that hate them, take it up in custom, for fashion, or in
jest, and use it only in subserviency to the will of man and
their worldly ends, and honour it with compliments, and
paint the skin while they stab the heart. Reconcile this dif
ference, and most others wUl be reconciled.
3. Whether this signify any repentance for the voluminous
reproaches which many of you have written against those you
call Puritans, your amendment will interpret. That you wiU
give us Uberty in our family duties alone is a courtesy that
you cannot well deny a Papist or Mahometan, because you
have there no witnesses of what they do ; and yet we shall
take ourselves beholden for it, so low are our expectations.
But is there no duty that private Christians owe to one
another, for the furthering their salvation, but only for their
several famUies ? Why may not those that, on the Lord's day,
repeat a sermon in their families, admit a neighbour family
to be present, which is not able to help themselves ? A great
part of the famUies among the poor are composed of such as
can neither write nor read, and therefore know not how to
spend the Lord's day when they are out of the congregation :
and a sermon forgotten will hardly be so weU practised as if
it were remembered ; and the ignorant wUl hardly remember
it if they never hear it but once. At least, methinks, it should
be an encouragement to you, when you have studied what to
say to the people (rather than matter of offence) to see them
so far value it, as to desire to fasten it in their memories.
And if several families join also in the singing of psalms of
praise to God, and calling on him for a blessing on the min
ister and themselves, is this a crime : when perhaps most of
those families either cannot pray at all, or not with such
cheerful advantage, by themselves ? If you are against such

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 43
mutual helps as these, you are against the benefit of the
people's souls : the Lord pity the flocks that have such pastors !
If you are not against them, why are you against our desires
of encouragement in them? Have the laws of the land
secured any of these to us against your canons? If they
have, why have so many famUies formerly been undone, for
such exercises as these, and for fasting and praying together
for the pardon of their sins ? To deal freely with you, we
are constrained so well to know with whom we have to do,
that our business is to request you of the clergy, not to pro
voke the law-givers to make any law against this : that it
may not become a crime to men, to pray together, and pro
voke one another to love, and to good works ; when it is no
crime to talk, and play, and drink, and feast together. And
that it may be no crime to repeat a sermon together, unless
you resolve that they shall hear none which is worth their
repeating and remembering. And whereas you speak of
opening a gap to sectaries for private conventicles, and the
evU consequences to the state, we only desire you to avoid also
the cherishing of ignorance and profaneness, and suppress aU
sectaries, and spare not, in a way that will not suppress the
means of knowledge and godliness. As you will not forbid
aU praying or preaching, lest we should have sectarian prayers
or sermons, so let not all the people of the land be prohibited
such assistance to each other's souls, as nature and scripture
oblige them to, and all for fear of the meetings of sectaries.
We thought the cautions in our petition were sufficient, when
we confined it subjectively to those of our flocks, and objec
tively to their duties of exhorting and provoking one another
to love and to good works, and of building up one another in
their most holy faith, and, only by religious peaceable means,
of furthering each other in the ways of eternal life : and for
the order, they being not opposite to church assemblies (but
subordinate,) nor refusing the guidance and inspection of their
pastors (who may be sometime with them and prescribe them
their work and way, and direct their actions,) and being re
sponsible for what they do or say (their doors being open)

44 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660,
there wUl not want witnesses against them, if they do amiss ,
And is not aU this enough to secure you against the fear of
sectaries, unless aU such helps and mutual comforts he for
bidden to all that are no sectaries? This is but as the papists
do in another case, when they deny people Uberty to read the
Scriptures lest they make men heretics or sectaries. And for
the danger of the state, cannot men plot against it in ale
houses, or taverns, or fields, or under pretence of horse races,
hunting, bowls, or other occasions, but only under pretence
of worshipping God ? If they may, why are not all men for
bidden to feast, or bowl, or hunt, &c., lest sectaries make
advantage of such meetings, as well as to fast and pray ? God
and wise men know that there is something more in all such
jealousies of religious duties.
§ 4. Do you really desire that every congregation may have
an able, godly minister ? Then cast not out those many
hundreds or thousands that are approved such, for want of
re-ordination, or for doubting whether diocesans, with their
chancellors, &c., may be subscribed to ; and set not up igno
rant ungodly ones in their places. Otherwise the poor undone
churches of Christ will no more believe you in such profes
sions, than we believed that those men intended the king's
just power and greatness, who took away his life.
But you know not what we mean by residence, nor how far
we will extend that word. The word is so plain, that it is
easily understood by those that are willing : but he that would
not know, cannot understand, as King Charles told Mr.
Henderson. I doubt the people wiU quickly find that you did
not understand us. And yet I more fear lest many a parish
will be glad of non-residence, even if priest and curate and
all were far enough from them, through whose fault I say
not. § 5. Two remedies you give us instead of what we desired
for the reformation of church-communion :
1. You say, confirmation if rightfully and solemnly performed
will alone be sufficient as to the point of instruction. Answer ;
but what we desired was necessary to the right and solemn

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 45
performance of it. Doth not any man that knoweth what
hath been done in England, and what people dwell there,
know that there are not more ignorant people in this land
than such as have had, and such as desire episcopal confirma
tion ? Is it sufficient in point of instruction, for a bishop to
come among a company of little children and other people,
whom he never saw before, and of whom he never heard a
word, and of whom he never asketh a question which may in
form him of their knowledge or life : and presently to lay his
hands on them in order, and hastily say over a few lines of
prayer, and so dismiss them? I was confirmed by honest
Bishop Morton, with a multitude more, who all went to it as
a May-game, and kneeled down, and he dispatched us with
that short prayer so fast, that I scarce understood one word
he said ; much less did he receive any certificate concerning
us, or ask us any thing which might tell him whether we were
Christians; and I never saw nor heard of much more done by
any English bishop in his course of confirmation. If you
say that more is required in the rubric, I say then it is no
crime for us to desire it.
2. And for your provision in the other rubric against
scandalous communicants, it enableth not the minister to put
away any one of them aU, save only the malicious that will
not just then be reconciled. Be not angry with us, if in sor
row of heart, we pray to God that his churches may have
experienced pastors, who have spent much time in serious
deaUng with every one of their parishes personally, and know
what they are and what they need, instead of men that have
conversed only with books, and the houses of great men ; or,
when they do sometimes stoop to speak to the ignorant, do
but talk to them of the market or the weather, or ask them,
what is their name.
§ 6. To your Answer we reply — those laws may be well made
stricter. They hindered not the imposition of a book, to be
read by all ministers in the churches, for the people's liberty
for dancing, and other such sports, on the Lord's day; and
this in the king's name; to the ejecting or suspending of those

46 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660,
ministers that durst not read it. And those laws which we
have may be more carefuUy executed. If you are ignorant
how commonly the Lord's day is profaned in England by
sporting, drinking, reveUing, and idleness, you are sad pastors
that no better know the flock : if you know it, and desire not
the reformation of it, you are yet worse. Religion never
prospered anywhere so much, as where the Lord's days have
been most carefuUy spent in holy exercises.
CONCERNING CHURCH GOVERNMENT.
§ 7. Had you well read but Gersom, Bucer, Didoclavius,
Parker, Baynes, Salmasius, Blondell, &c., yea, of the few
lines in Bishop Ussher's Reduction which we have offered you,
or what I have written of it in Disp. 1, of Church Govern
ment ; you would have seen just reason given for our dissent
from the ecclesiastical hierarchy as stated in England; and
have known that it is unlike the primitive episcopacy. But
if that which must convince you, must be brought nearer
your eyes, by God's help we undertake to do that fuUy when
ever we are caUed to it,
§ 8. The words which you here except against, with admi
ration, of the corruptions, partialities, tyranny, which Church
Government by a single person is liable to, was taken by us
out of the book commonly ascribed to King Charles himself,
called Icon. Basil., but we purposely supprest his name to try
whether you would not be as bitter against his words, as
against ours; and did not esteem fidem per personas, non
personas per fidem.
And further we reply, it is one thing for a bishop to rule
alone when there are no presbyters, or to rule the presbyters
themselves alone ; and another thing when he hath presbyters
yet to rule all the flock alone ; for by this means, he quoad
exerciiium at least degradeth all the rest, or changeth their
office, which is to guide as weU as to teach ; as, if the general
of an army, or the colonel of a regiment should rule aU the
soldiers alone, doth he not then depose aU his captains.

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 47
Ueutenants, cornets, corporals, sergeants, &c.? But especially,
it is one thing for Ignatius his bishop of one church that
hath but one altar, to rule it alone, (though yet he command-
eth the people to obey their presbyters,) and another thing
for an English diocesan to rule a thousand such churches
alone ! And when all is done, do they rule alone indeed ?
Or doth not a lay -chancellor exercise the keys, so far as is
necessary to suppress private meetings for fasting and prayer,
&c., and to force aU to the sacrament, and enforce the cere
monies, and some such things? And for the great discipline it
is almost altogether left undone. We are sorry that you
should be able to be ignorant of this : or, if you know it, that
such camels stick not with you, but go down so easily.
INSTANCES OF THINGS AMISS.
§ 9. 1. That which you cannot grant (that the dioceses
are so great) you would quickly grant if you had ever con-
scionably tried the task which Dr. Hammond described as the
bishop's work; yea, but for one parish, or had ever believed
Ignatius and other ancient descriptions of a bishop's church.
But is it faithful dealing with your brethren, or your con
sciences (pardon our freedom in so weighty a case,) to dispute
as though you made a bishop but an archbishop to see by a
general inspection of the parish pastors that they do their
office, and as if they only ruled the rulers of the particular
flocks (which you know we never strove against,) when as no
knowing Englishman can be ignorant that our bishops have
the sole government of pastors and people, having taken all
jurisdiction or proper government (cr next all) from the par
ticular pastors of the parishes, to themselves alone ? Is not
the question rather as whether the king can rule all the king
dom by the chancellor, or a few such officers, without aU the
justices and mayors ; or whether one schoolmaster shall only
rule a thousand schools and aU the other schoolmasters only
teach them ? You know that the depriving of all the parish
pastors of the keys of government is the matter of our greatest

48 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
controversies : not as it is any hurt to them, but to the
church, and certain exclusion of all true discipline. And
whether the office of the bishops of particular churches
infimi ordinis, vel gradus, be not for personal inspection and
ministration, as well as the office of a schoolmaster or phy
sician, you will better know when you come to try it faith
fuUy, or answer fearfully for unfaithfulness. We know that
the knowing Lord Bacon, in his Considerations, saith so as
well as we.
And for what you say of suffragans, you know there are
none such.
§ 10. 2. We are glad that in so great a matter as lay-
chancellors' exercise of the keys in excommunications and
absolutions, you are forced plainly, and without any excuse,
to confess the errors of the way of government. And let
this stand on record before the world to justify us when we
shaU be silenced, and reproached as schismatics, for the desir
ing of the reformation of such abuses, and for not swearing
canonical obedience to such a government.
§ 11. 3. And you have almost as little to say in this case.
Mark, reader, that we must aU be silenced,' and cast out of our
offices, if we subscribe not to the book of ordination ex animo,
as having nothing contrary to the word of God ; and the very
preface of that beginneth with the affirmation of this distinc
tion of orders, offices, functions, from the apostles' days, and
one of the prayers ascribeth it to the Spirit of God ; and yet
now it is here said that, whether a bishop be a distinct order
from a presbyter or not, is none of the questions. That must
be none of the question when the king calleth them to treat
for a reconcUiation or unity, which wiU be out of question
against us when we are called to subscribe, or are to be for
bidden to preach the gospel !
And let what is here confessed for presbyters' assistance in
ordination, stand on record against them when it is neglected
or made an insignificant ceremony.
§ 12. 4. In the last also you give up your cause, and yet
it's well if you wUl amend it. Whether the canons be laws

] 660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 49
let the lawyers judge : and whether all the bishops' Books of
Articles (as against making Scripture our table talk, and
many such others) be either laws, or according to law, let the
world judge.

THE REMEDIES OFFERED FOR REFORMING THESE EVILS.
§ 13. 1. Whereas to avoid all exception, or frustrating
contentions or delays, we offered only Bishop Ussher's Plat
form (subscribed also by Dr. Holdsworth) that the world
might see that it is episcopacy itself that we plead for; you
tell us that it was formed many years before his death, and is
not consistent with two other of his discourses : in which
either you would intimate that he contradicteth himself, and
could not speak consistently, or that he afterward retracted
this Reduction. For the first, we must believe that many men
can reconcile their own writings, when some readers cannot,
as better understanding themselves than others do; and that
this reverend bishop was no such raw novice, as not to know
when he contradicted himself in so public and practical a
ease, as a frame of church government ; nor was he such a
hypocrite as to play fast and loose in the things of God : but
upon debate we undertake to vindicate his writings from this
aspersion of inconsistency; only you must not take him to
mean that all was weU done, which, as an historian, he saith
was done. And as to any retraction, one of us (myself) is
ready to witness that he owned it not long before his death,
as a coUection of fit terms to reconcile the moderate in
these points, and told him that he offered it the late
king. And whereas you tell us that the conforming of suffragans
to rural deaneries, and other such, are his private conceptions,
destitute of any testimony of antiquity, we answer — No
marvel, when rural deaneries were unknown to true antiquity,
and when in the ancientest church, every church had its
proper bishop, and every bishop but one church, that had also
but one altar. But surely the chorepiscopi were no strangers

50 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
to antiquity, as may appear (before the Council at Nice) in
Concil. Ancyran. Can. 13, and in Concil.Antiochin. Can. 10, &c.
It was unknown in, the days of Ignatius and Justin Martyr,
that a church should be as large as a rural deanery, con
taining a dozen churches with altars, that had none of them
peculiar bishops : but it was not strange then that every
church had a bishop ; and if it were rural, a chorepiscopus.
As also you may gather even from Clemens Romanus.
The quarrel which you pick with the archbishop's Reduction
for not naming the king, as if he destroyed his supremacy, is
such as a low degree of charity, with a little understanding,
might easily have prevented. Either you know that it is the
power of the keys, (called spiritual and proper ecclesiastical,)
and not the coercive power circa ecclesiastica, which the
archbishop speaketh of, and all our controversy is about, or
you do not know it. If you do know it, either you think
this power of the keys is resolved into the king, or not : if you
do think so, you differ from the king, and from all yourselves
that ever we talked with, and you contradict all protestant
princes, that have openly disclaimed any such power, and
published this to the world, to stop the mouths of calumniat
ing papists : and we have heard the king, and some of you
disclaim it : and how can you then fitly debate these contro
versies, that differ from all protestant kings, and from the
church ! But if you yourselves do not so think, had you a pen
that would charge the archbishop for destroying the king's
supremacy, for asserting nothing but what the king and you
maintain ? And if you knew not that this spiritual power of
the keys, as distinct from magistratical coercive power, is the
subject of our controversy, we dispute to good purpose indeed
with men that know not what subject it is that we are to
dispute about ! So that which way soever it go, you see
how it is like to fall ; and how men that are out of the dust
and noise will judge of our debates. And here we leave it to
the notice and observation of posterity, upon the perusal of
all your exceptions, how little the English bishops had to
say against the form of primitive episcopacy contained in

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 51
Archbishop Ussher's Reduction, in the day when they rather
choose the increase of our divisions, the silencing of many
hundred faithful ministers, the scattering of the flocks, the
affiicting of so many thousand godly Christians, than the
accepting of this primitive episcopacy ; which was the expe
dient which those caUed presbyterians offered, never once
speaking for the cause of presbytery; and what kind of
peacemakers and conciliators we met with, when both parties
were to meet at one time and place with their several conces
sions for peace and concord ready drawn up, and the presby
terians in their concessions laid by all their cause, and
proposed an archbishop's frame of episcopacy : and the other
side brought not in any of their concessions at all, but only
unpeaceably rejected all the moderation that was desired.
Lastly, they here desire it may be observed that in this
Reduction, archiepiscopacy is acknowledged : and we shall
also desire that it may be observed, that we never put in a
word to them against archbishops, metropolitans or primates,
and yet we are very far from attaining any peace with them.
And we desire that it may be observed also, that under
standing with whom we had to do, we offered them not that
which we approved ourselves as the best, but that which we
would submit to, as having some consistency with the disci
pline and order of the church, which was our end.
OF THE SUPER-ADDED PARTICULARS.
§ 14. 1 . This is scarce serious : the primate's suffragans
or chorepiscopi are rural deans, or as many for number : the
suffragans you talk of by law are other things, about sixteen
in all the land. The king's power is about the choice of
them as human officers; but, as pastors of the church or
bishops, the churches had the choice for a thousand years
after Christ, through most of the Christian world. And
what if it be in the king's power : is it not the more reason
able that the king be petitioned to in the business? The
king doth not choose every rural dean himself: and is it any
E 3

53 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
more destructive of his power to do it by the synods, than
by the diocesan ? This use the name and power of kings is
made of by some kind of men, to make a noise against all
that cross their domination, but all that is exercised by
themselves is no whit derogatory to royalty. And yet how
many men have been excommunicated for refusing to answer
in the Chancellors' courts, tiU they profess to sit there by
the king's authority ?
§ 15. We much doubt whether you designed to read the
archbishop's Reduction when you answered our papers. If
you did not, why would you choose to be ignorant of what
you answered, when so light a labour might have informed
you? If you did, how could you be ignorant of what we
meant by Associations, when you saw that such as our rural
deaneries was the thing spoken of, and proposed by the Reduc
tion ? And 1 . Are the rural deaneries, think you, without
the king's authority ? If not, what mean you by such inti
mations, unless you would make men believe that we breathe
treason, as oft as we breathe, as the soldier charged the
countryman for whistling treason, when he meant to plunder
him? 3. And what though associations may not be entered
into without the king's authority : do you mean that there
fore we may not thus desire his authority for them ? If you
do not, to what sense or purpose is this answer ? Sure we
are, that for three hundred years, when magistrates were not
Christian, there was preaching, prayers, and associating in
particular churches hereunto without the king's authority,
and also associating in synods : and after that, for many a
hundred year, the Christian magistrates confirmed and over
ruled such associations, but never overthrew them, or forbad
them. § 16. But the apostles of Christ, and all his churches for
many hundred years, thought all these subscriptions and
oaths unnecessary ; and never prescribed, nor required either
them or any such ; so unhappy is the present church in the
happy understandings of these men of yesterday, that are
wiser than Christ, his apostles, and universal church, and

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 53
have at last found out these necessary oaths and subscrip
tions. And you are not quite mistaken : necessary they are,
to set up those that shall rule by constraint as lords over
God's heritage, and necessary engines for the dividing and
persecuting of the church. But judge thou, O Lord, accord
ing to thy righteousness, in the day which is coming !
But the examples of corporations and colleges are brought
in, who prevent offences by subscriptions and oaths. And
even so hath Christ (whose spirit would impose nothing on
the churches but things necessary) appointed a vow and
solemn covenant to be the way of entrance into his church :
and the apish spirit which foUoweth him (to counterwork
him) by the addition of human churches, sacraments, and
ordinances, doth also imitate him in making their oaths and
promises necessary to engage men to their service and insti
tutions, as Christ hath made baptism necessary to engage us
to his service and institutions. And your arguments for
diocesans are so weak, that we wonder not that you think
both oaths, subscriptions, prisons, confiscations, and banish
ments, necessary to enforce them.
What you add of such persons as have themselves enacted
conditions of their communion not warranted by law, we
understand not : either the law warranteth men to own Christ
for their Saviour, and to own their own membership in the
particular church which they demand constant communion
with, or it doth not. If it do not, we have reason to desire
more than is warranted by that law. If it do, you should
have done well to instance what persons and what exactions
you mean. If you speak this of all the churches of the land
that dislike your prelacy, it is too gross an untruth to have
been uttered in the light. If you speak only of some
persons or parties, that is no reason why others should be
deprived of their liberty and ministry. Nor indeed is it
good arguing that such oaths and subscriptions as the church
of old did never know, may be imposed by the laws of men,
because some brethren have lately required such conditions
of their communion, as are imposed by the laws of God.

54 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
But let us prevail with you to drive this no further than the
persons, whoever they be, did drive it whom you blame:
their utmost penalty on the refusers of their conditions was
non-communion with them; a thing which many of you
voluntarily choose. Let this be all our penalty for refusing
your oaths and subscriptions (if we can get no better from
you :) but shall we be silenced, imprisoned, confiscated, banished,
for refusing your oaths and subscriptions, because somebody
imposed things which the law allowed not in order to their
own communion? These are no fit proportions of justice.
§ 17. Out of your own mouths then is your government con
demned. What act of parliament ratified your canons?
What law imposed altars, rails, and the forcing of ministers
to read the book for dancing on the Lord's days ? Or what
law did ratify many articles of your visitation books ? And
did the laws sufficiently provide for all those poor ministers
that were silenced or suspended for not reading the dancing
book, or any such things ? What the better were all those
for the laws that were silenced, or driven into foreign lands ?
But perhaps the laws will provide for us indeed as you desire.
CONCERNING THE LITURGY.
§ 18. 1. The doctrine is sound. But the apocryphal
matter of your lessons in Tobith, Judith, Bell and the Dragon,
&c., is scarce agreeable to the Word of God.^
3. Whether it be fitly suited, let our exceptions and other
papers be heard before your judgment go for infallible.
3. What men's prayers you take your measure or en
couragement from, we know not : but we are sure that if all
the common prayers be twice a day read, the time for psalms
and sermons will be short. And yet were they free from
disorder and defectiveness in matter, we could the better
bear with the length, though other prayers and sermons were
partly excluded by them.
' This is spoken of the old Common Prayer Book, and not of the new,
where the doctrine in point of infants' salvation is changed.

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 55
4. Though we live in the same country, we scarce differ
any where more than in our very experiences. Our experi
ence unresistably convinceth us, that a continued prayer doth
more to help most of the people and carry on their desires,
than turning almost every petition into a distinct prayer ; and
making prefaces and conclusions to be near half the prayers.
And if the way of prayer recorded in Scripture (even in the
Jews' church, where infirmity might be pleaded more than
now) were such as yours, we shall say no more in that
against it : but if it were not, be not wise then overmuch.
5. We are content that the Uturgy have such repetitions as
the scriptures have, so it may have no other ! And we are
content that aU extemporate prayer be restrained which is
guilty of as much tautology and vain repetition as the liturgy
is : if this much wiU satisfy you we are agreed.
6. Nor are we against any such responsals as are fit to the
ends you mention : if ours are all such (upon impartial exami
nation) let them stand.
7: But the question is, 1. Whether the Greek and Latin
Churches in the three first ages, or those of later ages, be
more imitable ? 2. And, whether the other reformed churches
have not more imitated the ancientest of those churches,
though we have more imitated the latter and more corrupt ?
3. And, whether our first work be to stop the papists' mouths
by pleasing them or coming top near them, when we know
they that are likest them in all their corruptions please them
best ? Yet are we not for any unnecessary difference from
them, or affectation of causeless singularity.
As to the reformed churches' testimony of our liturgy, shall
their very charity become our snare ? If they had liked our
form of prayers best, they would some of them have imitated us.
And our martyrs no doubt, they honoured as we do, not as
suffering for the modes and ceremonies of that book, as oppo
site to the reformed churches' mode (for so they suffered not);
but as suffering for the sound doctrine and true worship of
the Protestants, as opposite to Popery and the mass.
§ 19. Your reasons to prove your impositions not too

56 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
rigorous, are 1. Because they are by law : if we tell you that
so is the Spanish Inquisition, you'll say, we compare our law
givers to the Spaniards : if we say that your new mentioned
martyrs were burnt by law in England, you'll say that ve
compare them to Papists. But all these are laws : and so
are those in reformed countries which are against bishops and
ceremonies : do you therefore think them not too rigorous ?
3. Your other reason is that the rigour is no more than is
necessary to make the imposition effectual. You never spake
words more agreeable to your hearts, as far as by your prac
tices we can judge of them. Either you mean effectual to
change men's judgments, or effectual to make them go
against their judgments, or effectual to rid them out of the
land or world. The first you know they are unfit for ; if you
think otherwise, would you that your judgments should have
such kind of helps to have set them right ? The second way
they will be effectual with none but wicked men and hypo
crites, who dare sin against their consciences for fear of men :
and is it worth so much ado to bring the children of the
devil into your church ? The third way of efficacy, is but to
kiU or banish all the children of God that are not of your
opinion : for it is they that dare not sin against conscience
whatever they suffer : and this is but such an efficacy as the
Spanish Inquisition and Queen Mary's bonfires had, to send
those to God whom the world is not worthy of. You know
every man that is true to his God and his conscience, will
never do that which he taketh to be sin, tiU his judgment is
changed : and therefore, with such, it can be no lower than
blood, or banishment, or imprisonment at least, that is the
efficacy which you desire : and if no such rigour be too much, its
pity the French, that murdered 30,000 or 40,000 at their
Bartholomew days, or as Dr. Peter Moulin saith, 100,000
within a few weeks, and the Irish that murdered 300,000 had
not a better cause : for they took the most effectual way of
rigour. But when God maketh inquisition for the blood of his ser
vants, he will convince men that such rigour was too much.

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 57
and that their wrath did not fulfil his righteousness. You
shew your kindness to men's praying in the pulpit without
your book : make good what you say, that such praying is of
no great antiquity and we will never contradict you more !
Or if we prove it not the ancientest way of praying in the
Christian church, we will give you leave to hang, or banish us,
for not subscribing to the Common Prayer Book : which the
apostles used, and which was imposed on the church for some
hundred years. But it seems you think that we are beholden
to mere sufferance without law or canon for conceived pray ers-
How long then it will be suffered we know not, if we must
live by your patience.
§ 30. It seemeth that our converse and yours much differ :
the most that we know or meet with had rather be without the
liturgy : and you say, that the people are generally well satisfied
with it. By this time they are of another mind. If it were
so we take it for no great honour to it ; considering what the
greater number are in most places, and of what lives those
persons are (of our parishes and acquaintance generally or for
the most part) who are for it : or what those are that are
against it, and whom for its sake you desire your effectual
rigour may be exercised against. The Lord prepare them to
undergo it innocently !
§ 31. Doth there need no more to be said for the ceremo
nies ? How little will satisfy some men's consciences 1 Lawful
authority hath in other countries cast out the same bishops and
ceremonies which are here received. Doth it follow that they
are good in one country, and disorderly and undecent in another?
or that our authority only is infallible in judging of them ?
Is not God's worship perfect without our ceremonies, in its
integrals as weU as its essentials?
As for circumstantials when you saw us allow of them, you
need not plead for them as against us. But the question is,
whether our additions-be not more than circumstances.
§ 33. We suppose that you give all to the cross in baptism
which is necessary to a human sacrament : and this we are
J-eady to try by just dispute.

58 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660,
When you say that never ivas moral efficacy ascribed to
them, you seem to give up all your cause : for by denying
this ascribed efficacy, you seem to grant them unlawful if it
be so : and if it be not so let us bear the blame of wronging
them. The informing and exciting the dull mind of man in
its duty to God, is a moral effect from moral efficacy. But
the informing and exciting the dull mind of man, in its duty
to God, is an effect ascribed to our ceremonies,: ergo., a
moral effect from moral efficacy is ascribed to our ceremonies.
The major cannot be denied by any man that kroweth what
a moral effect and efficacy is : that which worketh not per modum
naturm in genere causce efficientis naturalis only, but per
modum objecti, vel in genere causa finalis, upon the mind of
man, doth work morally : but so do our ceremonies : ergo —
sure the Arminians that deny all proper physical operations
of God's Spirit, as well as his Word, and reduce all to moral
efficacy, will not say that ceremonies have such a physical
efficacy more than moral. And if not so, the good effects
here mentioned can be from no lower efficacy than moral.
And the minor which must be denied, is in the words of the
preface to the Common Prayer Book, and therefore undeni
able. The Word of God itself worketh but moraliter pro-
ponendo objectum, and so do our ceremonies.
§ .33. There is a great difference between sacramental cere
monies, and mere circumstances, which the reformed churches
keep. These we confound not, and could have wished you
would not. Our cross in baptism is a dedicating sign, (saith
the canon) or transient image, made in token that this child
shall not be ashamed of Christ crucified, but manly fight
under his banner against the fiesh, the world, and the devil,
and continue Christ's faithful servant and soldier to his life's
end. So that 1. It is a dedicating sign, performed by the
minister, and not by the person himself^ as a bare professing
sign is. 3. It engageth the party in a relation to Christ as
his soldier and servant. 3. And in the duties of this rela
tion against all our enemies, as the sacramentum militare doth
a soldier to his general ; and that in plainer and fuller words

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 59
than are annexed to baptism. 4. And it is no other than the
covenant of grace or of Christianity itself, which this sacra
ment of the cross doth enter us into, as baptism also doth.
It is not made a part of baptism, nor called a sacrament, but
as far as we can judge, made essentially a human sacrament
adjoined to baptism. The reformed churches which use the
cross, we mean the Lutherans, yet use it not in this manner.
§ 24. This is but your unproved assertion, that the fault
was not in the ceremonies, but in the contenders : we are ready
to prove the contrary : but if it had been true, how far are
you from Paul's mind, expressed Rom. xiv and xv; and 1 Cor.
viii. You will let your weak brother perish, and spare not,
so you can but charge the fault on himself; and lay
stumbling blocks before him, and then save him by your
effectual rigour, by imprisonment or punishment.
§ 25. Those seem a few to you that seem many to us. Had
it been but one hundred such as Cartwright, Amesius, Brad-
shaw, Parker, HUdersham, Dod, NicoUs, Langley, Paget,
Hering, Baynes, Bates, Davenport, Hooker, Wilson, Cotton,
Norton, Shephard, Cobbet, Ward, &c., they had been enough
to have grieved the souls of many thousand godly Christians ;
and enough for any one of the reformed churches, had they
possessed them, to have glorified in ; and many far meaner
are yet the glory of the ancient churches, and called, and
reverenced as fathers. But we doubt this same spirit will
make you think that many hundred more are but a few to be
sUenced ere long. And then your clemency will comfort the
poor people that have ignorant or deboist readers instead of
ministers (for too many such we have known,) that it was
their pastors' faults that obstinately refused to conform, when
they had promised it ; that is, that repented of the sin of
their subscription when they discerned it : and had they
never been ignorant enough to subscribe, they had never
entered : and 1;he many hundreds which you thus keep from
the ministry, you make nothing of.
§ 26. Whether diocesans be a lawful authority as claim
ing spiritual government, and how far men may own them

60 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
even in lawful things, are controversies to be elsewhere
managed. We justify no man's leaving his ministry upon the
refusal of anything but what he judged unlawful, yea, and
what was really so.
§ 37. Whether any offence were given (though not enough
to warrant separation) let our argumentations on both sides
declare. The said declaration of the church's sense is not
the smallest part of the scandal. Calling a human sacra
ment indifferent, or no sacrament, proveth it not to be as it is
called. That the Nonconformists were the cause of separation,
who did most against it, is easily said, and as easily proved as
the Arians proved that the Orthodox were the cause of the
schism of the Luciferans who separated from the church for
receiving the Arians too easily to communion.
§ 38. Church matters in this much differ from civil
matters ; and it is one thing to change a church custom when
it dangerously prevaileth to corrupt men's understandings,
and another thing when there is no such danger. So Heze-
kiah thought when he destroyed the brazen serpent, and Paul
(who before circumcised Timothy) when he said, if ye be
circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing. Could men
have foreseen that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the
imperial churches, would have been sublimated to such a
challenged supremacy over all the Christian world, we sup
pose the ancients would have held it their duty to have
removed the primacy to some other seat.
§ 39. According to your councils wiU you be judged of
God ? The not-abating of the impositions is the casting off
many hundreds of your brethren out of the ministry, and of
many thousand Christians out of your communion. But the
abating of the impositions, wUl so offend you, as to silence or
excommunicate none of you at all. For e.g. we think it a
sin to subscribe, or swear canonical obedience, or use the
transient image of the cross in baptism, and therefore these
must cast us out. But you think it no sin to forbear them,
if the magistrate abate them, and therefore none of you will
be cast out by the abatement. But it seemeth that your

1660.] A Defence of the Proposals. 61
charity judgeth the bare displeasing of your appetite to the
ceremonies, is a greater evil than the silencing and excom
municating aU us, your poor brethren, though our imprison
ment follow. Nay, this is not all ; for your displeasure will
be only that another man subscribeth not,- crosseth not, &c.,
whUe you may do it yourselves as much as you please.
Whether the casting out of so many ministers and Chris
tians, for such things, do more subserve the said ends of
public government, than the forbearance would do, if you
know not, we leave you to God's conviction. As also
whether these things be well imposed, and men's obedience to
authority, and the peace of the church, and its uniformity or
unity, be well and justly laid upon them. Such concessions
indeed might bear you out far.
CONCERNING PARTICULAR CEREMONIES.
§ 30. Why then is it not as meet that one gesture be used
by all in singing psalms or hearing sermons ? Why doth the
minister stand in prayer, even in the sacrament prayer, while
the people kneel? W^e speak against none of your liberty in
nsing either kneeling, or holy days, and perhaps some
of us mean to use both ourselves; but only beseech you
that they may be no more imposed than the ancient church
imposed them, and we desire no more ; and, if you reverence
antiquity, why wUl you not imitate it in point of imposition,
as weU as in the thing itself. But yet that antiquity was
against kneeling on the Lord's day at the sacrament, and that
they had but few of our holy days for many hundred years,
we suppose you are not ignorant,
§ 31. It's weU you have no more to say against liberty to
forbear the other three ceremonies. The more unexcusable will
you be, when you silence and excommunicate those that use
them not.
§ 33. And it's strange that meaner understandings than
yours cannot see why men should forbear that which is not
to be valued with the church's peace. A lie or a false sub-

62 A Defence of the Proposals. [1660.
scription, is not to be valued with the church's peace; and
is it therefore a wonder to you that men should scruple them ?
It is fitter matter for the wonder of good men, that after so
long experience, those that will needs be the lords and
governors in spiritual matters, should so resolvedly lay the
church's peace upon such things as these, where they know
beforehand, that men of no conscience will aU be peaceable,
and thousands of godly people are unsatisfied ; and that they
will needs take aU for disturbers of the peace, who jump not
with their humour in every ceremony, how willing soever to
be ruled by the laws of God.
§ 33. We are glad that you justify not innovation and
arbitrariness ; and yet desire not such a cure as some
do, by getting laws which may do their work.
§ 34. If your want of charity were not extraordinary, it
could not work effectually to the afflicting of your brethren
and the church ; when we tell you what will end your differ
ences, you know our minds so much better than ourselves,
that you will not believe us ; but you will be confident that
we will come on with new demands. This is your way of con
ciliation ! When you were to bring in your utmost concessions,
in order "to our unity, and it was promised by his majesty that
you should meet us half way, you bring in nothing, and per
suade his majesty also that he should not believe us in what
we offer, that it would be satisfactory if it were granted !
You say that it will give dissatisfaction to the greater part of
his majesty's subjects ! We are more charitable than to
believe that a quarter of his majesty's subjects are so un
charitable as to be dissatisfied if their brethren be not
silenced and excommunicated for not swearing, subscribing,
or using a ceremony, while they may do it as much as they
list themselves. And whereas you say, that there is no
assurance given that it wiU content all dissenters ; you know
that there are many dissenters, as papists, quakers, etc., for
whom we never meddled ; and we think this an unjust answer
to be given to them, who craved of his majesty that they might
send to their brethren through the land, to have the testi-

1660.] His Majesty's Declaration on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 63
mony of their common consent, and were denied it, and told
that it should be our work alone, and imputed to no others.
In conclusion, we perceive that your counsels against peace
are not likely to be frustrated ; your desires concerning us are
like to be accomplished ; you are like to be gratified with our
sUence and ejection, and the excommunication and consequent
sufferings of dissenters. And yet we wiU believe that blessed
are the peacemakers ; and, though deceit be in the heart of
them that imagine evil, yet there is joy to the counsellors of
peace : Prov. xii, 30. And though we are stopt by you in our
following of peace, and are never like thus publicly to seek it
more (because you think we must hold our tongues, that you
may hold your peace), yet are we resolved, by the help of
God, if it be possible, and as much as in us lieth, to live
peaceably with all men : Rom xii, 18.

IX,
His majesty's Declaration to all his loving subjects of his
kingdom of England and dominion of Wales concerning
ecclesiastical affairs.^ — Reliquiae Baxterianse, pp. 359 — 64;
Wilkin's Concilia Magnse Britannise, vol. iv, pp. 560 — 4;
CardweU's History of Conferences, &c., Oxford, 1849, pp.
386—98. Charles Rex.
How much the peace of the state is concerned in the peace
of the church, and how difficult a thing it is to preserve order
" A copy of this Declaration was, according to promise, sent by the Lord
ChanceUor to the Presbyterian Divines — Reynolds, Calamy, and Baxter — on
September the 4th, with "liberty to give notice of what [they] liked not."
Baxter drew up a lengthy " petition," which was delivered to the chancellor,
but was never presented to the king. The ministers were then desired " to
" make such alterations in the Declaration as were necessary to attain its
" ends ;" and on the 22nd of October " the Declaration, as it was drawn up
" by the Lord Chancellor," was read over in the presence of the king, who
hstened to a discussion of its various clauses, and finally determined its form.
The following notes indicate the alterations which were made in the original
draft.

64 His Majesty's Declaration [1660.
and government in civil, whilst there is no order or govern
ment in ecclesiastical affairs, is evident to the world ; and this
little part of the world, our own dominions, hath had so late
experience of it, that we may very well acquiesce in the con
clusion, without enlarging ourself in discourse upon it, it
being a subject we have had frequent occasion to contemplate
upon, and to lament, abroad as well as at home.
In our letter to the speaker of the house of commons from
Breda we declared how much we desired the advancement
and propagation of the protestant religion; that "neither
the unkindness of those of the same faith towards us, nor the
civilities and obligations from those of a contrary profession
(of both of which we have had abundant evidence) could in
the least degree startle us, or make us swerve from it, and that
nothing can be proposed to manifest our zeal and affection for
it, to which we will not readUy consent : " and we said then,
"that we did hope in due time, ourself to propose somewhat
for the propagation of it, that will satisfy the world, that we
have always made it both our care and our study, and have
enough observed what is most like to bring disadvantage to
it." And the truth is, we do think ourself the more com
petent to propose, and with God's assistance to determine
many, things now in difference, from the time we have spent,
and the experience we have had in most of the reformed
churches abroad, in France, in the Low Countries, and in
Germany, where we have had frequent conferences with the
most learned men, who have unanimously lamented the great
reproach the protestant religion undergoes from the distempers
and too notorious schisms in matters of religion in England :
and as the most learned amongst them have always with great
submission and reverence acknowledged and magnified the
established government of the Church of England, and the
great countenance and shelter the protestant religion received
from it, before these unhappy times; so many of them have
with great ingenuity and sorrow confessed, that they were too
easily misled by misinformation and prejudice into some dis-
esteem of it, as if it had too much compUed with the church
of Rome; whereas they now acknowledge it to be the best

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 65
fence God has yet raised against popery in the world ; and we
are persuaded they do with great zeal wish it restored to its
old dignity and veneration.
When we were in Holland, we were attended by many
grave and learned ministers from hence, who were looked
upon as the most able and principal assertors of the Pres
byterian opinions; with whom we had as much conference,
as the multitude of affairs which were then upon us would
permit us to have, and to our great satisfaction and comfort
found them persons full of affection to us, of zeal for the peace
of the church and state, and neither enemies, as they have
been given out to be, to episcopacy or liturgy, but modestly
to desire such alterations in either, as without shaking foun
dations, might best allay the present distempers, which the
indisposition of the time and the tenderness of some men's
consciences had contracted. For the better doing whereof,
we did intend, upon our first arrival in this kingdom, to call
a synod of divines, as the most proper expedient to provide a
proper remedy for aU those differences and dissatisfactions
which had or should arise in matters of religion ; and in the
mean time, we published in our Declaration from Breda, " a
liberty to tender consciences, and that no man should be
disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in
matters of reUgion, which do not disturb the peace of the
kingdom ; and that we shall be ready to consent to such an
act of parliament, as upon mature deliberation shaU be offered
to us, for the full granting that indulgence."
Whilst we continued in this temper of mind and resolution
and have so far complied with the persuasion of particular
persons, and the distemper of the time, as to be contented
with the exercise of our religion in our own chapel, according
to the constant practice and laws established, without enjoin
ing that practice, and the observation of those laws in the
churches of the kingdom ; in which we have undergone the
censure of many, as if we were without that zeal for the
church which we ought to have, and which, by God's grace
we shall always retain ; we have found ourself not so candidly
F

66 His Majesty's Declaration [1660.
dealt with as we have deserved, and that there are unquiet
and restless spirits, who, without abating any of their own
distemper in recompense of the moderation they find in us,
continue their bitterness against the church, and endeavour
to raise jealousies of us, and to lessen our reputation by their
reproaches, as if we were not true to the professions we have
made : and in order thereunto, they have very unseasonably
caused to be printed, published, and dispersed throughout the
kingdom a Declaration heretofore printed in our name during
the time of our being in Scotland, of which we shall say no
more than that the circumstances, by which we were enforced
to sign that Declaration, are enough known to the world ;^ and
that the worthiest and greatest part of that nation did even
then detest and abhor the ill usage of us in that particular,
when the same tyranny was exercised there by the power of
a few UI men, which at that time had spread itself over this
kingdom ; and therefore we had no reason to expect that we
should at this season, when we are doing all we can to wipe
out the memory of all that hath been done amiss by other
men, and, we thank God, have wiped it out of our own
remembrance, have been ourself assaulted with those re
proaches, which we will likewise forget.
Since the printing this Declaration, several seditious pamph
lets and queries have been published and scattered abroad to
infuse dislike and jealousies into the hearts of the people, and
of the army ; and some who ought rather to have repented
the former mischief they have wrought, than to have en
deavoured to improve it, have had the hardiness to publish,
that the doctrine of the church, against which no man, with
whom we have conferred, hath excepted, ought to be re
formed as well as the discipline.
' The draft added, " that we did, from the moment it passed our hand,
" ask God forgiveness for om' part in it, which we hope he wiU never lay to
" our charge." These words were " omitted by desire of the king." The
Declaration referred to, was issued in August 1650, at his coronation in
Scotland. In it the king embraced the covenant, disclaimed his father's wars
and actions, lamented his mother's idolatry, and abjured aU popery, prelacy,
superstition, heresy, schism, and profaneness.

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 67
This over passionate and turbulent way of proceeding, and
the impatience we find in many for some speedy determina
tion in these matters, whereby the minds of men may be
composed, and the peace of the church established, hath
prevailed with us to invert the method we had proposed to
ourself, and even in order to the better calling and composing
of a synod (which the present jealousies will hardly agree
upon) by the assistance of God's blessed Spirit which we
daily invoke and supplicate, to give some determination our
self to the matters in difference, until such a synod may be
caUed as may without passion or prejudice give us such
further assistance towards a perfect union of affections, as
well as submission to authority, as is necessary : and we are
the rather induced to take this upon us, by finding upon the
full conference we have had, with the learned men of several
persuasions, that the mischiefs, under which both the church
and state do at present suffer, do not result from any formed
doctrine or conclusion which either party maintains or avows,
but from the passion and appetite and interest of particular
persons, who contract greater prejudice to each other from
those affections, than would naturally rise from their opinions;
and those distempers must be in some degree allayed, before
the meeting in a synod can be attended with better success
than their meeting in other places, and their discourses in
pulpits have hitherto been; and tUl all thoughts of victory
are laid aside, the humble and necessary thoughts for the
vindication of truth cannot be enough entertained.
We must for the honour of all those of either persuasion,
with whom we have conferred, declare, that the professions
and desires of all for the advancement of piety and true
godliness are the same; their professions of zeal for the
peace of the church the same; of affection and duty to us
the same : they all approve episcopacy ; they aU approve a
set form of liturgy; and they all disprove and dislike the
sin of sacrilege, and the alienation of the revenue of the
church; and if upon these excellent foundations, in submis
sion to which there is such a harmony of affections, any
F 2

68 His Majesty's Declaration [1660.
superstructures should be raised, to the shaking those founda
tions, and to the contractins- and lessening the blessed gift of
charity, which is a vital part of Christian religion, we shaU
think ourself very xmfortuiiate, and even suspect that we are
defective in that administration of government with which
God hath intrusted us.
We need not profess the high affection and esteem we
have for the Church of England as it is estabUshed by law;
the reverence to which hath supported us with God's blessing
against many temptations; nor do we think that reverence
in the least degree diminished by our condescensions, not pe
remptorily to insist on some particulars of ceremony, which
however introduced by the piety, and devotion, and order of
former times, may not be so agreeable to the present, but
may even lessen that piety and devotion, for the improvement
whereof they might happfly be first introduced, and conse
quently mar weU be dispensed with; and we hope this
charitable compliance of ours wiU dispose the minds of all
men to a cheerful submission to that authority, the preser
vation whereof is so necessary for the unity and peace of the
church; and that they wiU acknowledge the support of the
episcopal authority to be the best support of religion, by
being the best means to contain the minds of men within the
rules of government : and they who would restrain the exer
cise of that holy function within the rules which were ob
served in the primitive times, must remember and consider
that the ecclesiastical power being in those blessed times
always subordinate and subject to the civil, it was likewise
proportioned to such an extent of jurisdiction, as was most
agreeable to that; and as the sanctity, and simpUdty, and
resignation of that age did then refer many things to the
bishops, which the policy of succeeding ages would not admit,
at least did otherwise provide for, so it can be no reproach to
primitive episcopacy, if wheie there have been great altera
tions in the civU government, from what was then, there have
been likewise some difference and alteration in the ecclesias
tical, the essence and foundation bdng stUl preserved. And

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 69
upon this ground, without taking upon us to censure the
government of the church in other countries, where the
government of the state is different from what it is here, or
enlarging ourself npon the reason why, whUst there was an
imagination of erecting a democratical government here in
the state, they should be willing to continue an aristocratical
government in the church, it shaU suffice to say, that since
by the wonderful blessing of God the hearts of this whole
nation are returned to an obedience to monarchic govern
ment in the state, it must be very reasonable to support that^
government in the chnrcli, which is estabUshed by law, and
with which the monarchy hath flourished through so many
ages, and whicJ is in truth as ancient in this island as the
Chrisrian monarchy thereof, and which hath always in some
respects or degrees been enlarged or restrained, as hath been
thought most condnciog to the peace and happiness of the
kingdom; and therefore we have not the least doubt, but
that the present bishops wiU think the present concessions
now made by us to aUay the present distempers, very just
and reasonable, and wUl very cheerfuUy conform themselves
thereunto. I. We do in the first place declare* our purpose and reso
lution is and shaU be to promote the power of godliness, to
encourage the exercises of religion both pubhc and private,
and to take care that the Lord's day be applied to holy
exercisra, without unnecessary divertisements ; and that in
sufficient, n^Ugent, and scandalous ministers be not per
mitted in the charch; and that as the present bishops are
known to be men of great and exemplary piety in their Uves,
which they have manifested in their notorious and unex
ampled sufferings during thesa late distempers, and of great
and known sufficiency of learning, so we shall take special
care, by the assistance of Grod, to prefer no men to that office
and charge, bat men of learning, virtue, and piety, who mav

» •' Onr purpc'se  church ; and/" not in the draft In^rted at
the request of the Presbyterians.

70 His Majesty's Declaration [1660
be themselves the best examnles to those who are to be
governed by them ; and we shall expect and provide the best
we can, that the bishops be frequent preachers, and that they
do very often preach themselves in some church of their
diocese, except they be hindered by sickness, or other bodily
infirmities, or some other justifiable occasion, which shall not
he thought justifiable if it be frequent.
II. Because the dioceses, especially some of them, are
thought to be of too large extent, we will appoint such a
number of suffragan bishops in every diocese,* as shall be
sufficient for the due performance of their work.
III. No bishop shall ordain, or exercise any part of juris
diction which appertains to the censures of the church,
without the advice ^ and assistance of the presbyters ; and no
chancellors,^ commissaries, or officials, as such, shall exercise
any act of spiritual jurisdiction' in these cases, viz. excommu
nication, absolution, or wherein any of the ministry are con
cerned, with reference to their pastoral charge. However
our intent and meaning is to uphold and maintain the profes
sion of the civil law so far and in such matters, as it hath
been of use and practice within our kingdoms and dominions;
albeit as to excommunication, our will and pleasure is, that
no chancellor, commissary, or official shall decree any sen
tence of excommunication, or absolution, or be judges in
those things wherein any of the ministry are concerned, as is
aforesaid. Nor shall the archdeacon exercise any jurisdiction
without the advice and assistance of six ministers of his arch
deaconry, whereof three to be nominated by the bishop, and
¦• In the draft this clause stood thus : — " If any diocese shall be thought
" of too large an extent, we wUl appoint suffragan bishops for their assist-
" ance." The present clause was proposed by the Presbyterians.
' The Presbyterians had proposed, " and consent ;" but " the king would
" by no means pass the word .... because it gave the ministers a negative
" voice."" " Commissaries, or officials, as such," inserted at the request of the
Presbyterians. ' The foUowing words " In these cases  archdeaconry," not in
original draft.

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 71
three by the election of the major part of the presbyters
within the archdeaconry.
IV. To the end that the deans and chapters may be the
better fitted to afford counsel and assistance to the bishops,
both in ordination and the other offices mentioned before, we
wiU take care that those preferments be given to the most
learned and pious presbyters of the diocese; and moreover,
that an equal number (to those of the chapter) of the most
learned, pious, and discreet presbyters of the same diocese,
annually chosen by the major vote of all the presbyters of
that diocese present at such elections, shall be always ad
vising and assisting, together with those of the chapter, in all
ordinations, and in every part of jurisdiction, which apper
tains to the censures of the church, and at all other solemn
and important actions in the exercise of the ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, wherein any of the ministry are concerned : pro
vided that at all such meetings the number of the ministers
so elected, and those present of the chapter shall be equal,
and not exceed one the other, and that to make the numbers
equal, the juniors of the exceeding number be withdrawn,
that the most ancient may take place ; nor shall any sufiragan
bishop ordain, or exercise the forementioned offices and acts
of spiritual jurisdiction, but with the advice and assistance of
a sufficient number of the most judicious and pious presbyters
annuaUy chosen as aforesaid within his precincts : and our
will is that the great work of ordination be constantly and
solemnly performed by the bishop and his aforesaid pres
bytery, at the four set times and seasons appointed by the
church for that purpose.^
' The clause originaUy stood thus :— " As the dean and chapters are the
" most proper councU and assistants of the Bishop, both in ordination and
" for the other offices mentioned before ; so we shaU take care that those
" preferments be given to the most learned and pious Presbyters of the
" diocese, that thereby they may be always at hand and ready to advise
" and assist the Bishop : and moreover, that some other of the most learned,
" pious, and discreet Presbyters of the same diocese (as namely the rural
" deans, or others, or so many of either as shaU be thought fit, and are
" nearest) be called by the Bishop to be present and assistant together with

72 His Majesty's Declaration [1660.
V. We will take care that confirmation be rightly and
solemnly performed, by the information and with the consent 9
of the minister of the place ; ^° who shall admit none to the
Lord's Supper, till they have made a credible profession of
t'leir faith, and promised obedience to the wUl of God,
according as is expressed in the considerations of the rubric
before the Catechism ; and that all possible dihgence be used
for the instruction and reformation of scandalous offenders,
whom the minister shall not suffer to partake of the Lord's
table, until they have openly declared themselves to have
truly repented and amended their former naughty lives, as is
partly expressed in the rubric, and more fully in the canons ;
provided there be place for due appeals to' superior powers.
But besides the suffragans and their presbytery, every rural
dean (those deans, as heretofore, to be nominated by the
bishop of the diocese) together with three or four ministers
of that deanery, chosen by the major part of aU the ministers
within the same, shall meet once in every month, to receive
such complaints as shall be presented to them by the minis
ters or churchwardens of the respective parishes ; and also to
compose all such differences betwixt party and party as shall
be referred unto them by way of arbitration, and to convince
offenders, and reform all such things as they find amiss, by
thfeir pastoral reproofs and admonitions, if they may be so
" those of the chapter, at aU ordinations, and at aU other solemn and im-
" portant actions in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, especially
" wherein any of the ministers are concerned. And our wiU is, that the
" great work of ordination be constantly and solemnly performed by the
" Bishop in the presence, and with the advice and assistance of his aforesaid
" Presbytery at the four set times and seasons appointed by the chiuch for
" that purpose." The paragraph, as adopted, was altered according to the
suggestion of the Presbyterians.
' "Advice'' in the draft; altered to "consent" at the request of the
Presbyterians. " The original draft ended with these words :— " and as great diligence
" used for the instruction and reformation of notorious and scandalous
" offenders as is possible ; towards which the rubric before the communion
" hath prescribed very wholesome rules." The clause—" who shaU 
" superior powers," was inserted upon the proposal of the Presbyterians.

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 73
reformed ; and such matters as they cannot by this pastoral
and persuasive way compose and reform, are by them to be
prepared for, and presented to the bishop ; at which meeting
any other ministers of that deanery may, if they please, be
present and assist. Moreover, the rural dean and his assist
ants are in their respective divisions to see, that the children
and younger sort be carefully instructed by the respective
ministers of every parish, in the grounds of Christian reUgion,
and be able to give a good account of their faith and know
ledge, and also of their Christian conversation conformable
thereunto, before they be confirmed by the bishop, or
admitted to the sacrament of the Lord's supper.
VI. No bishop shall exercise any arbitrary power, or do or
impose anything upon the clergy or the people, but what is
according to the known law of the land.
VII. We are very glad to find, that all with whom we have
conferred, do in their judgments approve a liturgy, or set
form of public worship to be lawful ; which in our judgment
for the preservation of unity and uniformity we conceive
to be very necessary : and though we do esteem the liturgy
of the Church of England, contained in the Book of Common
Prayer, and^by law established, to be the best we have seen ;
and we believe that we have seen all that are extant and used
in this part of the world, and well know what reverence most
of the reformed churches, or at least the most learned men in
those churches have for it ; yet since we find some exceptions
made'i against several things therein, we will appoint an equal
number of learned divines of both persuasions, to review the
" The draft was, "to many obsolete words, and other expressions used
" therein, which upon the reformation and improvement of the English
" language, may weU be altered. We will appoint some learned divines, of
" different persuasions, to revievr the same, and to make such alterations as
" shall be thought most necessary, and some such additional prayers as shall
" be thought fit for emergent occasions, and the improvement of devotion,
" the using of which may be left to the discretion of the ministers ; in the
" mean time, and tiU this be done, we do heartUy wish and desire  to
" remove." The alterations in the clause as adopted : — " against several
"things  at his discretion;" the insertion of "although" in the
foUowing sentence ; and the addition of the important promise, " yet in
" compassion  as aforesaid," were .suggested by the Presbyterians.

74 His Majesty's Declaration [1660.
same, and to make such alterations as shall be thought most
necessary, and some additional forms (in the Scripture phrase
as near as may be) suited unto the nature of the several parts
of worship, and that it be left to the minister's choice to use
one or other at his discretion. In the meantime, and till
this be done, although we do heartily wish and desire, that
the ministers in their several churches, because they disUke *
some clauses and expressions, would not totally lay aside the
use of the Book of Common Prayer, but read those parts,
against which there can be no exception; which would be the
best instance of declining those marks of distinction, which
we so much labour and desire to remove ; yet in compassion
to divers of our good subjects, who scruple the use of it as
now it is, our will and pleasure is, that none be punished or
troubled for not using it, until it be reviewed, and effectually
reformei?, as aforesaid.
VIII. Lastly, concerning ceremonies, which have adminis
tered so much matter of difference and contention, and which
have been introduced by the wisdom and authority of the
church, for edification, and the improvement of piety, we shall
say no more, but that we have the more esteem of all, and
reverence for many of them, by having been present in many
of those churches, where they are most abolished, or discoun
tenanced;^'^ and it cannot be doubted, but that as the universal
church cannot introduce one ceremony in the worship of
God, that is contrary to God's word expressed in the Scrip
ture, so every national church, with the approbation and
'^ The draft added, " and where we have observed so great and scan-
" dalous indecency, and to our understanding so much absence of devotion,
" that we heartily wish that those pious men, who think the Church of
" England overburthened with ceremonies, had some little experience, and
" made some observations in those churches abroad which are most without
" them. And we cannot but observe that those pious and learned men,
" with whom we have conferred upon this argument, and who are most
" solicitous for indulgence of this kind, are earnest for the same out of
" compassion to the weakness and tenderness of the conscience of their
" brethren, not that themselves, who are very zealous for order and decency,
" do, in their judgments, believe the practice of those particular ceremonies,
" which they except against, to be in itself unlawful." These words were
struck out by desire of the Presbyterians.

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 75
consent of the sovereign power, may, and hath always intro
duced such particular ceremonies, as in that conjuncture of
time are thought most proper for edification and the neces
sary improvement of piety and devotion in the people, though
the necessary practice thereof cannot be deduced from Scrips
ture ; and that which before was, and in itself is, indifferent,
ceases to be indifferent, after it is once established by law :
and therefore our present consideration and work is to
gratify the private consciences of those, who are grieved with
the use of some ceremonies, by indulging to and dispensing
with their omitting those ceremonies, not utterly to abolish
any which are established by law, (if any are practised con
trary to law, the same shall cease,) which would be unjust,
and of UI example; and to impose upon the conscience of
some," for the satisfaction of the conscience of others, which is
otherwise provided for. As it could not be reasonable that
men should expect, that we should ourself decline, or enjoin
others to do so, to receive the blessed sacrament upon our
knees, which in our conscience is the most humble, most
devout, and most agreeable posture for that holy duty,
because some other men, upon reasons best, if not only,
known to themselves, choose rather to do it sitting or stand
ing ; we shaU leave all decisions and determinations of that
kind, if they shall be thought necessary for a perfect and
entire unity and uniformity throughout the nation, to the
advice of a national synod, which shall be duly called after a
little time, and a mutual conversation between persons of
different persuasions hath mollified those distempers, abated
those sharpnesses, and extinguished those jealousies, which
make men unfit for those consultations; and upon such
advice, we shall use our best endeavour that such laws may
be established, as may best provide for the peace of the
church and state. ^* Provided that none shall be denied the
sacrament of the Lord's supper, though they do not use the
gesture of kneeling in the act of receiving.
i' The draft added, " and we believe much superior in number and quality.''
" " Provided  receiving," not in the draft.

76 His Majesty's Declaration [1660.
In the meantime, out of compassion and compliance to
wards those who would forbear the cross in baptism, we are
content that no man shall be compelled to use the same, or
suffer for not doing it ; but if any parent desire to have his
child christened according to the form used, and the minister
will not use the sign, it shall be lawful for that parent to
procure another minister to do it ; and if the proper minister
shall refuse to omit that ceremony of the cross, it shall be
lawful for the parent, who would not have his child so bap
tized, to procure another minister to do it, who will do it
according to his desire.
No man shall be compelled to bow at the name of Jesus,
or suffer in any degree for not doing it, without reproaching
those who out of their devotion continue that ancient cere
mony of the church.
For the use of the surplice,^' we are contented that all men
be left to their liberty to do as they shall think fit, without
suffering in the least degree for wearing or not wearing it ;
provided that this liberty do not extend to our own chapel,
cathedral, or collegiate churches, or to any college in either
of our universities,'^ but that the several statutes and customs
for the use thereof in the said places be there observed as
formerly. And" because some men, otherwise pious and learned, say

" The draft added, " which hath for so many ages been thought a most
" decent ornament for the clergy in the administration of divine service, and
" is in truth of a different fashion in the Church of England from what is
" used in the Church of Rome, we are, etc."
'* In the draft it was, " where we would have the several statutes and
" customs observed which have been formerly."
" The draft stood thus : — " And because some men (otherwise pious
" and learned) say they cannot conform to the subscription required by the
" canon at the time of their institution and admission into benefices, we are
" content (so they take the oaths of aUegiance and supremacy) that they
" shaU receive institution and induction, and shall be permitted to exercise
" their function, and to enjoy the profits of their Uvings, without any other
" subscription, until it shall be otherwise determined by a Synod caUed and
" confirmed by authority." It was adopted in its present form, " and
" because .... degrees," at the request of the Presbyterians.

1660.] on Ecclesiastical Affairs. 77
they cannot conform unto the subscription required by the
canon, nor take the oath of canonical obedience; we are
content, and it is our will and pleasure (so they take the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy) that they shall receive
ordination, institution, and induction, and shall be permitted
to exercise their function, and to enjoy the profits of their
livings, without the said subscription or oath of canonical
obedience ; and moreover, that no persons in the universities
shall for the want of such subscription be hindered in the
taking of their degrees. Lastly," that none be judged to
forfeit his presentation or benefice, or be deprived of it, upon
the statute of the thirteenth of queen Elizabeth, chapter the
twelfth, so he read and declare his assent to all the articles of
religion, which only concern the confession of the true
Christian faith, and the doctrine of the sacraments comprised
in the Book of Articles in the said statute mentioned. In a
word, we do again renew what we have formerly said in our
Declaration from Breda, for the liberty of tender consciences,
that no man shall be disquieted or called in question for dif
ferences of opinion in matters of religion, which do not
disturb the peace of the kingdom : and if any have been
disturbed in that kind since our arrival here, it hath not
proceeded from any direction of ours.
To conclude, and in this place to explain what we men
tioned before, and said in our letter to the house of commons
from Breda, that " we hoped in due time, ourself to propose
somewhat for the propagation of the protestant religion, that
will satisfy the world, that we have always made it both our
care and our study, and have enough observed what is most
" In the original draft were these words, which were now omitted : —
" Lastly, that such as have been ordained by Presbyters, be not required
" to renounce their ordination, or to be re-ordained, or denied institution
" and induction for want of ordination by bishops.
" And, moreover, that none be, judged to forfeit their presentation or bene-
" fice, or be deprived of it, for not reading of those of the thirty-nine
" articles that contain the controverted points of church government and
" ceremonies." The clause as it stands, " Lastly  mentioned," was
adopted in compliance with the proposal of the Presbyterians.

78 His Majesty's Declaration on Ecclesiastical Affairs. [1660.
like to bring disadvantage to it;" we do conjure all our
loving subjects to acquiesce in and submit to this our Declara
tion concerning those differences, which have so much dis
quieted the nation at home, and given such offence to the
protestant churches abroad, and brought such reproach upon
the protestant religion in general, from the enemies thereof;
as if upon obscure notions of faith and fancy, it did admit
the practice of Christian duties and obedience to be dis
countenanced and suspended, and introduce a license in
opinions and manners, to the prejudice of the Christian faith.
And let us all endeavour, and emulate eacli other in those
endeavours, to countenance and advance the protestant religion
abroad, which will be best done by supporting the dignity
and reverence due to the best reformed protestant church at
home; and which being once freed from the calumnies'^ and
reproaches it hath undergone from these late ill times, will be
the best shelter for those abroad, which will by that countenance
both be the better protected against their enemies, and be the
more easily induced to compose the differences amongst
themselves, which give their enemies more advantage against
them : and we hope and expect that all men wUl hence
forward forbear to vent any such doctrine in the pulpit, or to
endeavour to work in such manner upon the affections of the
people, as may dispose them to an ill opinion of us and the
government, and to disturb the peace of the kingdom ; which
if all men will in their several vocations endeavour to preserve
with the same affection and zeal we ourself will do, aU our
good subjects wUl by God's blessing upon us enjoy as great a
measure of felicity as this nation hath ever done, and which
we shall constantly labour to procure for them, as the greatest
blessing God can bestow upon us in this world. Given at
our court at Whitehall this twenty-fifth day of October,
MDCLX. '» " Calamities," in the draft.

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 79
X.
The Petition of the Ministers to the King upon the first draft
of his Declaration.^ — ReUquise Baxterianee, by Sylvester,
pp. 365—74.
May it please your Majesty,
So great was the comfort created in our minds by your majesty's
oft-expressed resolution to become the effectual moderator in
our differences, and yourself to bring us together by procuring
such mutual condescensions as are necessary thereto, and also
by your gracious acceptance of our Proposals, which your
majesty heard and received not only without blame, but with
acknowledgment of their moderation, and as such as would in
fer a reconcUiation between the differing parties, that we must
needs say, the least abatement of our hopes, is much the more
unwelcome and grievous to us. And it is no small grief that sur-
priseth our hearts, from the complaints of the students ejected
in the universities, and of faithful ministers removed from their
beloved flocks, and denied institution, for want of subscription,
re-ordination, or an oath of obedience to the bishop ; but espe
cially from many congregations in the land, that cry out they
are undone by the loss of those means of their spiritual welfare
which were dearer to them than all worldly riches, and by the
grievous burden of ignorant, or scandalous, or dead, unprofit
able ministers set over them, to whom they dare not commit
the guidance and care of their immortal souls, and whose
ministry they dare not own or countenance, lest they be
guilty of their sin. And it addeth to our grief and fear in
finding so much of the proposed necessary means of our
agreement, especially in the point of government, here passed
by in your majesty's Declaration, as if it were denied us.
But yet remembering the gracious and encouraging promises
of your majesty, and observing your majesty's clemency in
what is here granted us, and your great condescension in
' This paper was drawn up by Baxter. The alterations, marked in the notes,
were made by him, with much reluctance, at the instance of Mr. Calamy, Dr.
Eeignolds, the Earl of Manchester, the Earl of Anglesey, and Lord HoUis.^
ReUquise Baxterianse, by Sylvester, p. 266.

80 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
vouchsafing not only so graciously to hear us in these our
humble addresses and requests, but also to grant us the sight
of your Declaration before it is resolved on, with liberty of
returning our additional desires, and hope that they shall not
be rejected ; we re-assume our confidence, and comfortably
expect, that what is not granted in this Declaration that is
reasonable and necessary to our agreement, shall yet be
granted upon fuUer consideration of the equity of our
requests. As our designs and desires are not for any worldly advan
tages or dignities to ourselves, so have we not presumed to
intermeddle with any civil interest of your majesty, or any of
your officers ; nor in the matters of mere convenience to cast
our reason into the balance against your majesty's prudence ;
but merely to speak for the laws and worship and servants of
the Lord, and for the peace of our consciences, and the safety
of our own and brethren's souls. It lifts us up with joy to
think what happy consequences will ensue, if your majesty
shall entertain these healing motions ; how happily our
differences will be reconciled, and the exasperated minds of
men composed; how temptations to contention and un
charitableness will be removed ; how comfortably your
majesty will reign in the dearest affections of your subjects ;
and how firmly they will adhere to your interest as their own ;
how cheerfully and zealously the united parts and interests of
the nation will conspire to serve you ; what a strength and
honour a righteous magistracy, a learned, holy, loyal minis
try, and a faithful, praying people will be to your throne;
and how it will be your glory to be the king of the most
religious nation in the world, that hath no considerable
parties, but what are centred (under Christ) in you ; what a
comfort it wUl be for the bishops and pastors of the church,
to be honoured, and loved by all the most religious of their
flocks ; to see the success of their labours and the beauty of
the church promoted by our common concord, and brethren
to assemble and dwell together in unity, serving one God,
according to one rule, with one heart and mouth.

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 81
[And on the contrary, it astonisheth us to foresee the doleful
consequences that would follow, if (which God forbid) your
majesty should refuse the most necessary, moderate ways of
concord, and be engaged by a party to exalt them by the sup
pression of the rest ! How woful a day would it prove to
your majesty and your dominions, in which you should
thus espouse a cause and interest injurious to the interest of
Christ, and the cause of unity and love, and, contrary to your
majesty's gracious inclinations, be engaged unawares in a
seeming necessity to deal hardly with the ministers and ser
vants of the Lord ! How considerable a part of the three
nations for number, wisdom, piety, and interest, you would be
drawn to govern with a grievous hand ; and to lay them
under the greatest sorrow who restored and received your
majesty with joy ! How the dissent of ministers from the
government and ceremonies of the church, were it expressed
but by their groans and tears, and moderate complaints to
God, or not praying for that church government which they
dare not pray for, would be reckoned as discontent and
sedition; and it would be judged a crime to feel when they
are hurt ! What occasion this would give to irreligious
temporizers to arrogate the name of your majesty's best
subjects, and to let out their malice against the upright, and
make religion a reproach ! And then what a hindrance that
would be to the conversion and saving of the people's souls,
and what a fruitful nursery of all vice! How grievously
charity would be overthrown, while the people are engaged
in the hardest thoughts and speeches of each other ! What a
temptation it would be to the afflicted part to abate their honour
and due respect to those they suffer by, when they are deprived
of that which is dearest to them in the world ; and when the
groans and cries of afflicted innocents arrive at heaven, and
have awakened the justice of the King of kings, the greatest
cannot stand before him. And what a snare and grief will it
be to the bishops and pastors of the church to be esteemed
wolves, and to be engaged to suppress them as their adver
saries, that else might be the honour of their ministry, and
G

82 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
the comfort of their lives. And when divisions and separated
assemblies are thus multiplied (the people being driven from
the public congregations), either it will bring them under
trouble, or let in papists and others that are intolerable into
an equal toleration : and such discontents and distractions in
the church, will not be without their influence on the state.
And by all this how much will Satan and the enemies of our
religion be gratified, and God dishonoured and displeased.
And, seeing all this may safely and easily bs now prevented,
we humbly beseech the Lord, in mercy to vouchsafe to
your majesty a heart to discern of time and judgment.] '^
And as these are our general ends and motives, so we
are induced to insist upon the form of synodical government
conjunct with a fixed presidency or episcopacy, for these
reasons :
1 . We have reason to believe that no other terms will be so
generally agreed on. And it is no way injurious to episcopal
power ; but most firmly establisheth all in it that can pretend
to divine authority or true antiquity. It granteth them much
more than Reverend Bishop Hall (in his Peacemaker) and
many other of that judgment, do require; who would have
accepted the fixing of the president for life, as sufficient for
the reconciliation of the churches.
2. It being most agreeable to the Scripture and the
primitive government, is likest to be the way of a more
universal concord, if ever the churches arrive on earth at such
a blessing. However, it will be most acceptable to God, and
to well-informed consciences.
3. It will promote the practice of discipline and godliness

' " All this enclosed part was left out of the Petition as presented to his
"majesty, this only being inserted in the room of it.
" And on the contrary, should we lose the opportunity of our desired recon-
" ciliation and union, it astonisheth us to foresee what doleful effects our
" divisions would produce, which we wUl not so much as mention in particulars
" lest our words should be misunderstood. And, seeing aU this may safely and
" easily now be prevented, we humbly beseech the Lord in mercy to vouchsafe
" to your majesty an heart to discern a right of time and judgment."

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 83
without disorder, and promote order without the hindering of
discipline and godliness.
4. And it is not to be silenced (though in some respects we
are loath to mention it) that it will save the nation from the
violation of the Solemn Vow and Covenant, without wronging
the church at all, or breaking any other oath. And, whether
the Covenant were lawfuUy imposed or not, we are assured,
from the nature of a vow to God, and from the cases of Saul,
Zedekiah, and others, that it would be a terrible thing to us
to violate it on that pretence. Though we are far from think
ing that it obligeth us to any evil, or to go beyond our places
and callings to do good, much less to resist authority ; yet
doth it undoubtedly bind us to forbear our own consent to
those luxuriances of church government which we there re
nounced, and for which no divine institution can be pretended.
[It is not only the Presbyterians, but multitudes of the
episcopal party, 1^ and the nobility, gentry, and others that
adhered to his late majesty, in the late unhappy wars, that (at
their composition) took this Vow and Covenant. [[ *And God
forbid that ever the souls of so many thousands should be
driven upon the sin of perjury, and upon the wrath of God,
and the flames of heU: or, that under pretence of caUing
them to repent of what is evil, they should be urged to com
mit so great an evil. If once the consciences of the nation
should be so debauched, what good can be expected from
them? or what evil shall they ever after be thought to make
conscience of? or what bonds can be supposed to oblige them?
or how can your majesty place any confidence in them, not
withstanding the oaths of aUegiance and supremacy which
^ " This was thus expressed in the Petition that was presented : — [Not
" presuming to meddle with the consciences of those many of the nobiUty
"and gehtry, &c.]
' " What foUows in this double enclosure, was omitted in the copy presen-
" ted, this only being inserted in the room of it.
" We only crave your majesty's clemency to ourselves and others, who
" believe themselves to be under its obligations. And God forbid that we that
'¦ are ministers of the Word of truth, should do anything to encourage your
" majesty's subjects to cast off the conscience of an oath."
G 2

84 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
they take ? or how can they be taken for competent witnesses
in any cause, or persons meet for human converse ? or how
should those preachers be regarded by their auditors, that
dare wUfuUy violate their solemn vows ? and it would be no
comfort nor honour to your majesty, to be the king of a per
fidious nation. And, whatever palliation flattery might at
hand procure, undoubtedly at distance of time and place
(where flattery cannot silence truth) it would be the nation's
perpetual infamy ! And what matter of reconciliation would it
be to the guilty papists, when we blame their impious doctrines
that have such a tendency ? How loose would it leave your
majesty's subjects, that are once taught to break such sacred
bonds.]] Till the Covenant was decried as an almanack
out of date, and its obligation taken to be null, that odious
fact could never have been perpetrated against your royal
father; nor your majesty have been so long expiilsed from
your dominions. And the obligation of the Covenant upon
the consciences of the nation, was not the weakest instrument
of your return. We therefore humbly beseech your majesty
(with greater importunity than we think we should do for our
lives) that you will have mercy on the souls and consciences
of your people, [%nd will not urge or tempt them to this
grievous sin, nor drive them on the insupportable wrath of
the Almighty, whose judgment is at hand, where princes and
people must give that account, on which the irreversible
sentence will depend. For the honour of our religion, and of
your majesty's dominions and reign, we beseech you,] suffer
us not to be tempted to the violating of such solemn vows,
(and this for nothing !) when an expedient is before you, that
will avoid it without any detriment to the church ; nay to its
honour and advantage.
The prelacy which we disclaimed is that of diocesans — upon
the claim of a superior order to a presbyter — assuming the sole
power of public admonition of particular offenders, enjoining
penitence, excommunicating and absolving (besides confirma
tion) over so many churches, as necessitated the corruption or
' " This enclosed part was quite left out of the copy that was presented."

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 85
extirpation of discipline, and the using of human officers
(as chancellors, surrogates, officials, commissaries, archdeacons)
while the undoubted officers of Christ (the pastors of the
particular churches) were hindered from the exercise of their
office. The restoration of discipUne in the particular churches,
and of the pastors to the exercise of their office therein, and
of synods for necessary consultation and communion of
churches, and of the primitive presidency or episcopacy,
for the avoiding of all shew of innovation and disorder is
that which we humbly offer as the remedy : beseeching your
majesty, that if anything asserted seem unproved, an impar
tial conference in your majesty's hearing may be allowed us
in order to a just determination.

CONCERNING THE PREAMBLE IN YOUR MAJESTY S DECLARATION,
WE PRESUME ONLY TO TENDER THESE REQUESTS.
1. That as we are persuaded it is not in your majesty's
thoughts to intimate that we are guilty of the offences which
your majesty here reciteth, so we hope it will rather be a
motive to the hastening of the nation's cure, that our unity
may prevent men's temptations of that nature for the time to
come. 2. Though we have professed our willingness to submit to
the primitive episcopacy, and a reformed liturgy, hoping it
may prove an expedient to a happy union, yet have we ex
pressed our dislike of the prelacy and present liturgy, while
unreformed. And though sacrilege and unjust alienation of
church-lands is a sin that we detest, yet whether, in some
cases of true superfluities of revenues, or true necessity of
the church, there may not be an alienation which is no
sacrilege, and whether the kings and parliaments have been
guilty of that crime that have made some alienations, are
points of high concernment, of which we never had a call to
give our judgment : and therefore humbly beseech your

86 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
majesty, that concerning these matters, we may not, to our
prejudice, be otherwise understood, than as we have before
and here expressed.
3. That as your majesty hath here vouchsafed us your
gracious acknowledgment of our moderation, it might never
be said, that a ministry and people of such moderate prin
ciples, consenting to primitive episcopacy and liturgy, could
not yet be received into the settlement and countenanced
body of your people, nor possess their stations in the church,
and liberty in the public worship of God.
4. And whereas it is expressed by your majesty, that [the
essence and foundation of episcopacy might be preserved,
though the extent of the jurisdiction might be altered] , this
is to us a ground of hope, that seeing the greatning or the
lessening of episcopal power is in your majesty's judgment
but a matter of convenience, the Lord will put it into your
heart to make such an alteration in the alterable points, as
the satisfaction of the consciences of sober men, and the
healing and union of these nations, do require.
As to our plea for primitive episcopacy, the offices and
ordinances of Christ must be stUl distinguished from the
alterable accidents. Though we plead not for the primitive
poverty, persecution, or restraints, yet must we adhere to the
primitive order and worship, and administrations, in the
substance ; as believing that the circumstantiating of them
is much committed unto man, but to institute the ordinances
and offices is the high prerogative of Christ, the universal
King and Lawgiver of the church.

CONCERNING THE MATTER OF YOUR MAJESTY S CONCESSIONS,
AS RELATED TO OUR PROPOSALS.
1. We humbly renew our petition to your majesty, for the
effectual security of those premised necessaries, which are the
matter of our chiefest care, and whereunto the controverted
points subserve : viz. — 1 . That private exercises of piety

1060.J Petition of the Ministers. 87
might be encouraged. 2. That an able, faithful ministry
may be kept up, and the insufficient, negligent, scandalous,
and non-resident, cast out. 3. That a credible profession of
faith and obedience be pre-required of communicants. 4. That
the Lord's day be appropriated to holy exercises without un
necessary divertisements.
2. For church government. In this your majesty's Decla
ration, parish discipline is not sufficiently granted us. Inferior
synods, with their presidents, are passed by ; and the bishop
which your majesty declareth for is not episcopus prases, but
episcopus princeps, indued with sole power both of ordination
and jurisdiction. For though it be said, that the bishop
shall do nothing without the advice of the presbyters, yet
their consent is not made necessary, but he might go contrary
to the counsel of them all. And this advice is not to be
given by the diocesan synod, or any chosen representatives of
the clergy, but by the dean and chapter, and so many and
such others as he please to call. In aU which there being
nothing yielded us, which is sufficient to the desired accommo
dation and union, we humbly prosecute our petition to your
majesty, that the primitive presidency with the respective
synods described by the late reverend Primate of Ireland, may
be the form of church -government established among us : at
least in these three needful points —
1. That the pastors of the respective parishes may be
allowed, not only publicly to preach, but personally to
catechise or otherwise instruct the several families, admitting
none to the Lord's table that have not personally owned their
baptismal covenant by a credible profession of faith and
obedience; and to admonish and exhort the scandalous, in
order to their repentance; to hear the witnesses and the
accused party, and to appoint fit times and places for these
things; and to deny such persons the communion of the
church in the holy eucharist, that remain impenitent ; or that
wilfully refuse to come to their pastors to be instructed, or to
answer such probable accusations ; and to continue such ex
clusion of them tiU they have made a credible profession of

88 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
repentance, and then to receive them again to the communion
of the church : provided there be place for due appeals to
superior power.
All this we beseech your majesty to express under your
fifth concession, because it is to us of very great weight, and
the rubric is unsatisfactory to which we are referred.
3. That all the pastors of each rural deanery, having a
stated president chosen by themselves, (if your majesty please
to grant them that liberty,) may meet once a month, and may
receive presentments of all such persons as, notwithstanding
suspension from communion of the church, continue impeni
tent or unreformed ; and, having further admonished them,
may proceed to the sentence of solemn excommunication, if
after due patience they cannot prevail : and may receive the
appeals of those that conceive themselves injuriously sus
pended, and may decide the cause. Or if this cannot be
attained, at least that the pastors of each rural deanery with
their president, may have power to meet monthly, and receive
all such presentments and appeals, and judge whether they be
fit to be transmitted to the diocesan or not : and to call
before them and admonish the offenders so presented.
Yet if presentments against magistrates and ministers be
reserved only to the diocesan synod, and their appeals imme
diately there put in, we shall therein submit to your majesty's
pleasure. 3. That a diocesan synod, consisting of the delegates of
the several rural synods, be called as often as need requireth :
and that without the consent of the major part of them, the
diocesan may not ordain, or exercise any spiritual censures on
any of the ministers : nor excommunicate any of the people
but by consent of the synod, or of the pastors of the parti
cular parishes where they had communion. And that not
only chanceUors, but also archdeacons, commissaries, and
officials as such, may pass no censures, purely spiritual.
But for the exercise of civil government coercively by
mulcts or corporal penalties by power derived from your
majesty, as supreme over persons, and in things ecclesiastical.

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 89
we presume not at all to interpose : but shall submit to any
that act by your majesty's commission.

OUR REASONS FOR THE FIRST PART OF DISCIPLINE, VIZ.,
IN PARTICULAR PARISHES, ARE THESE :
It is necessary to the honour of the Christian profession, to
the integrity of worship, to the destruction of impiety and
vice, to the preservation of the sound, the raising them that
are fallen, the comforting of the penitent, the strengthening
of the weak ; the purity, order, strength, and beauty of our
churches, the vanity of believers, and tUe pleasing of Christ
who hath required it by his laws. And withal, it is agreeable
to the ancient canons and practice of the churches, and is
consented to by our reverend brethren, and so is no matter of
controversy now between us.
Yet is not the rubric satisfactory which we are referred to.
1. Because it leaves the people at their liberty, whether they
will let us know of their intention to communicate, tUl the
night or morning before ; and alloweth us then o ily to ad
monish them, when (in great parishes) it is impossible for
want of time.
3. Because it doth allow us to deny the sacrament to those
only that maliciously refuse reconciliation with their neigh
bours, and only admonish other scandalous sinners to forbear :
though the canons forbid us to deliver them the sacrament.
THE REASONS WHY WE INSIST ON THE SECOND PROPOSAL,
^ ARE THESE :
It being agreed on between us, that the younger less dis
creet sort of ministers are unfit to pass the sentence of ex
communication, without advice and moderation by others, and
every church is not like to be provided with grave, discreet,
judicious guides; the necessity of these frequent lesser
synods for such moderation, and advice, and guidance will
appear hy these two general evidences.

90 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
1 . It is the very nature and substance of the office of a
presbyter, to have the power of the keys for binding and loosing,
retaining or remitting sin ; which therefore together or apart,
as there is occasion, they are bound to exercise. And this
being the institution of Jesus Christ, cannot be altered by
man. In their ordination, according to the established order in
England, it is said. Whose sins thou dost remit, they are re
mitted : whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And
they are commanded to minister the doctrine, sacraments,
and discipline of Christ, as the Lord hath commanded, and as
this realm hath received the same, as expressly as the bishops
are. And as the late Primate of Ireland observeth in his
" Reduction," That they may the better understand what the
Lord hath commanded, the exhortation of St. Paul to the
elders of the church of Ephesus is appointed to be read to
them at the time of their ordination. Take heed to yourselves
and to all the fiocks, over which the Holy Ghost hath made
you overseers, to (feed or) rule the congregation of God which
he hath purchased with his blood. And it is apparent in
this, (Acts XX, 17, 18, 38; and xv, 33, 35; and xvi, 4;
1 Thess. V, 12, 13 ; 1 Tim. iii, 4, 5 ; and v, 17; Heb. xiii, 7,
17, 24;) and other places, that it is the office of a presbyter
to oversee, rule, and guide the flock (which [is] the ministerial
rule which consisteth in the exercise of the keys, or manage
ment and personal application of God's Word to the con
sciences and cases of particular persons, for their salvation,
and the order of the church ;) the coercive power belonging
to the magistrate. And this was the practice in the ancient
church, as appeareth undeniably in Ignatius, TertuUian,
Cyprian, Hierom, Chrysostom, &c., Concil. Carthag., 4, Can.
32, 23, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, as is confessed by the chiefest
defenders of episcopacy.
2. If all presentments and appeals be made to the bishop
and his consistory alone, it wUl take from us the parish dis
cipline which is granted us, and cast almost all discipline out
of the church; as is most apparent to them that by experi
ence are acquainted with the quality of our flocks, and with

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 91
the true nature o{ the pastoral work: considering 1. How
many hundred churches are in a diocese : 2. How many
thousand persons are in very many parishes; and of those
what a number are obstinate in wilful gross ignorance or
scandal, refusing to be instructed, or admonished by their
pastors : 3. How long, and earnestly, and tenderly sinners
must be dealt with, before they are cut off by solemn excom
munication : 4. How unsatisfactory it must be to the con
science of a bishop or synod, to cut off a man as impenitent
upon the bare report of a minister, before by full admonition
they have proved him impenitent themselves; especially when
too many ministers are (to say nothing of passion that might
cause partial accusations) unable so to manage a reproof and
exhortation, as is necessary to work on the consciences of the
people, and to convict resisters of flat impeniteucy : 5. What
abundance of work the bishop will have besides; constant
preaching wUl require time for preparation; visiting the
several churches ; confirming all the souls in so many hundred
parishes (which alone is more than any one man can do
aright, if he had nothing else to do); ordaining, instituting,
and examining the persons, so far as to satisfy a tender con
science that takes not all on trust from others, and is but an
executor of their judgments ; these, and much more, with
the care of church-buUdings, lands, and his own affairs and
family, and sicknesses, and necessary absence sometimes, will
make this great additional work, which must be constantly
performed for so many hundred of parishes, to be impossible :
6. Reproofs and suspension would so exasperate the scandal
ous, that they would vex the pastors with numerous appeals :
7. The pastors wiU be undone by travelling, and waiting, and
maintaining such a multitude of witnesses as is necessary for
the prosecuting of presentments, and arswering so many ap
peals : 8. The business will be so odious, chargeable, and
troublesome, that witnesses will not come in : 9. The minister
by these prosecutions and attendances, will be taken off the
rest of his ministerial work : 10. Bishops (being but men) will
be tempted by this intolerable burden to be weary of the work.

93 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
and slubber it over, and cast it upon others, and to discoun
tenance the most conscionable ministers that most trouble
them with presentments ; which when the offenders perceive,
they will the more insult and vex us with appeals.
So that the discouragements of ministers and the utter inca
pacity of the bishops to perform a quarter of this work, will
nullify discipline, as leaving it impossible. Experience hath
told us this too long.
And then when our communion is thus polluted with all
that are most incapable through utter ignorance, scandal,
and contempt of piety ; — 1 . Ministers will be deterred from
their administrations to subjects so incapable. 3. Bishops
that are tender conscienced, will be deterred from under
taking so impossible a work, and of so ill success. 3. And
men that have least tenderness of conscience, and care of
souls, and fear of God's displeasure, will seek for and intrude
into both places. 4. And the tender conscienced people wUl
be tempted to speak hardly of such undisciplined churches,
and of the officers; and to withdraw from them. 5, And
hereby they will fall under the displeasure of superiors, and
the scorn of the vulgar, that have no religion but what is
subservient to their flesh. 6. And so whUe the most pious
are brought under discountenance and reproach, and the most
impious get the reputation of being most regular and obedient
to their rulers, piety itself will grow into disesteem, and
impiety escape its due disgrace. And this hath been the
cause of our calamities.
3. As to the liturgy ; it is matter of great joy and thank
fulness to us, that we have heard your majesty more than
once so resolutely promising, that none shall suffer for not
using the Common Prayer and ceremonies, but you would
secure them from the penalties in the Act of Uniformity, as
that which your Declaration at Breda intended, and to find
here so much of your majesty's clemency in your gracious
concessions for a future emendation. But we humbly crave
leave to acquaint your majesty, (1 .) That it grieveth us after
all to hear that, yet it is given in charge, by the judges at the

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 93
assizes, to indict men upon that Art for not using the Com
mon Prayer. (3.) That it is not only some obsolete words
and other expressions that are offensive. (3.) That many
scruple using some part of the book as it is, lest they be
guilty of countenancing the whole, who yet would use it
when reformed.
Therefore we humbly crave that your majesty will here
declare that it is your majesty's pleasure that none be punished
or troubled for not using tie Bo ik of Con. mon Prayer, till it be
effectually reformed by divines of both persuasions equally
deputed thereunto.
And that your majesty would procure that moderation in
the imposition hereaft< r which we before desired.
4. Concerning ceremonies. Returning our humble thanks
for your majesty's gracious concessions (of which we are
assured you will never have cause to repent) we further crave,
1. That your majesty would leave out those words concerning
us, that we do not in our judgments believe the practice of
those particular ceremonies which we except against to be in
itself unlawful ; for we have not so declared bur judgments.
Indeed we have said, that treating in order to a happy uniting
of our brethren through the land, our work is not to say
what is our oivn opinion, or what will satisfy us ; but what
will satisfy so many as may procure the said union. And we
have said, that some think some of them unlawful in them
selves, and others but inconvenient. And while the imposers
think them but indifferent, we conceived they might reason
ably be entreated to let them go; for the saving of their
brethren's consciences and the church's peace. We are sure
that a Christian's conscience should be tender of adding to,
or diminishing from, the matter of God's worship in the
smallest point, the laws of God being herein the only perfect
rule, Deut. xii, 33 ; and' that a Synod infallibly guided by
the Holy Ghost, would "lay upon" the churches "no greater
burden than necessary things," Acts xv, 38 ; and that for
things indifferent. Christians should not despise or judge each
other, Rom. xiv; much less, by silencing' the able and faithful

94 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
ministers of the gospel, to punish the fiocks even in their
souls, for the tolerable differences and supposed mistakes of
ministers. We doubt not but Peter and Paul went to
heaven without the ceremonies in question.
And seeing your majesty well expresseth it, that the
universal church cannot introduce one ceremony in the worship
of God that is contrary to God's Word expressed in the
Scriptures, and multitudes of Protestants at home and
abroad, do think that all mystical sacramental rites of human
institution are contrary to the perfection of God's law, and to
Deut. xii, 33, &c., (though the determination of mere cir
cumstances necessary in genere, be not so,) and therefore
dare not use them, for fear of the displeasure of God the
universal sovereign ; it must needs be a great expression of
your majesty's wisdom and tenderness of God's honour and
the safety of your peoples' souls, to refuse in things unneces
sary to drive men upon (apprehended) sin, and upon the
wrath of God, and the terrors of a condemning conscience.
3. We beseech your majesty to understand, that it is not
our meaning by the word abolishing to crave a prohibition
against your own or other men's liberty in the things in
question; but it is a full liberty that we desire; such as
should be in unnecessary things; and such as wiU tend to
the concord of your people, viz., that there be no law or
canon for or against them, commanding, recommending, or
prohibiting them : as now there is none for any particular
gesture in singing of psalms, where liberty preserveth an
uninterrupted unity.

FOR THE PARTICULAR CEREMONIES.
1. We humbly crave as to kneeling in the act of receiv
ing, that your majesty will declare our liberty therein,
that none should be troubled for receiving it standing or
sitting. And your majesty's expressions upon reasons best known,

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 95
if not only, to themselves, command us to render some of our
reasons. 1 . We are sure that Christ and his apostles sinned not, by
not receiving it kneeling; and many are not sure that by
kneeling they should not sin ; and therefore for the better
security, though not for absolute necessity, we crave leave to
take the safer side.
3. We are sure that kneeling in any adoration at all, in
any worship, on any Lord's day in the year, or auy week-day
between Easter and Pentecost, was not only disused, but for
bidden by General Councils (as Concil. Nican., 1, Can. xx, and
Concil. Trull., etc.) and disclaimed by ancient writers, and
this as a general and uncontrolled tradition : and therefore
that kneeling in the act of receiving is a novelty contrary to
the decrees and practice of the church for many hundred
years after the apostles. And if we part with the venerable
examples of all antiquity where it agrees with Scripture, and
that for nothing, we shall depart from the terms which most
moderators think necessary for the reconciling of the churches.
And novelty is a dishonour to any part of religion : and if
antiquity be honourable, the most ancient, or nearest the
legislation and fountain, must be most honourable. And it is
not safe to intimate a charge of unreverence upon all
the apostles and primitive Christians, and the universal
church, for so many hundred years together of its purest
time. 3. Though our meaning be good, it is not good to shew a
needless countenance of the Papists' practice of adoring the
bread as God; when it is used by them round about us.
Saith Bishop Hall, in his life, p. 30 : — I had a dangerous con
fiict with a Sorbonist, who took occasion by our kneeling at the
receipt of the Eucharist, to persuade all the company of our
acknowledgment of a transubstantiation.
4. Some of us that could rather kneel than be deprived of
communion, should yet suffer much before we durst put all
others from the communion that durst not take it kneeling;
which therefore we crave we might not be put upon.

96 Petition of the Ministers. [1660.
3. We humbly crave also, that the religious observation of
holy-days of human institution may be declared to be left
indifferent, that no.e be troubled for not observing them.
3. We humbly tender your majesty our thanks for your
gracious concession of liberty as to the cross and surplice,
and bowing at the name Jesus, rather than Christ, or
God. But we farther humbly beseech your majesty —
1. That this liberty in forbearing the surplice, might extend
to the colleges and cathedrals also ; that it drive not thence
all those that scruple it, and make not those places receptive
only of a party ; and that the youth of the nation may have
just liberty as well as the elder. If they be engaged in the
universities, and their liberties there cut off in their begin
ning, they cannot afterwards be free ; many hopeful persons
will be else diverted from the service of the church. 3. That
your majesty will endeavour the repealing of all laws and
canons by which these ceremcnies are imposed, that they might
be left at full liberty.
4. We also humbly tender our thanks to your majesty for
your gracious concession of the forbearance of the subscrip
tion required by that canon. But (1) we humbly acquaint
your majesty, that we do not dissent from the doctrine of the
Church of England, expressed in the Articles and Homilies :
but it is the controverted passages about go ernment, litu gy,
and ceremonies, and some by-passages and ph: ases in the
doctrinal part, which are scrupled by those whose liberty is
desired. Not that we are against subscribing the proper rule
of our religion, or any meet confession of faith. Nor do we
scruple the oath of supremacy or allegiance. Nor would
we have the door left open for Papists or heretics to come in.
3. We take the, boldness to say that since we have had the
promises of your gracious indulgence herein, and, upon
divers addresses to your majesty and the Lord Chancellor,
had comfortable encouragement to expect our liberty, yet
cannot ministers procure institution without renouncing their
ordination by presbyters, or being re-ordained; nor with
out subscription, and the oath of canonical obedience.

1660.] Petition of the Ministers. 97
3. We must observe, with fear and grief, that your majesty's
indulgence and concessions of liberty in this Declaration
extendeth not either to the abatement of re-ordination, or
of subscriptional ordination, or of the oath of obedience to
the bishops. We therefore humbly and earnestly crave, that
your majesty will declare your pleasure: — 1. That ordination,
and institution, and induction, may be conferred without the
said subscription or oath ; and 3. That none be urged to be
re-ordained, or denied institution for want of ordination by
prelates, that was ordained by presbyters; 3. And that none
be judged to have forfeited his presentation or benefice, nor
be deprived of it for not reading those Articles of the thirty-
nine that contain the controverted points of government and
ceremonies. Lastly, We humbly crave, that your majesty will not only
grant us this liberty tUl the next synod, but will endeavour
that the synod be impartially chosen; and that your majesty
wUl be pleased to endeavour the procurement of such laws as
shall be necessary for our security till the synod, and for the
ratification of moderate and healing conclusions afterwards;
and that nothing by mere canon be imposed on us, without such
statute laws of parliament.
These favours (which will be injurious to none) if your
people may obtain of your majesty, it will revive their hearts
to daUy and earnest prayer for your prosperity, and to rejoice
in the thankful acknowledgment of that gracious Providence
of heaven, that hath blessed us in your restoration, and put
it into your heart to heal our breaches, and to have compas
sion on the faithful people in your dominions, who do not
petition you for liberty to be schismatical, factious, seditious,
or abusive to any, but only for leave to obey the Lord, who
created and redeemed them, according to that law by which
they must all be shortly judged to everlasting joy or misery.
And it will excite them to, and unite them in, the cheerful
service of your majesty, with their estates and lives, and to
transmit your deserved praises to posterity.

98 Alterations in the Declaration [1 660.
XI.
Alterations in the Declaration proposed by the Ministers.^ —
Reliquiae Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 375-6.
1. We do in the first place declare that our purpose and
resolution is, and shall be to promote the power of godliness,
to encourage the exercises of religion, both public and priv£ite,
and to take care that the Lord's day be appropriated to holy
exercises, without unnecessary divertisements; and that in
sufficient, negligent, non-resident, and scandalous ministers
be not permitted in the Church : and as the present
bishops are known to be men of great and exemplary piety, &c,
2. Because the dioceses, especially some of them, are
thought to be of too large extent, we will appoint such a
number of suffragan bishops in every diocese, as shall be
sufficient for the due performance of their work.
3. No bishops shall ordain, or exercise any part of juris
diction which appertains to the censures of the Church,
without the advice and consent of the presbyters; and no
chancellors, commissaries, archdeacons, or officials shaU
exercise any act of spiritual jurisdiction.
' " The Petition of the ministers being delivered to the Lord Chancellor,
" was so ungrateful," says Baxter, " that we were never called to present it
" to the king, bnt instead of that, it was offered us that we should make
" such alterations in the Declaration as were necessary to attain its ends ;
" but with these cautions : 1. That we put in nothing but what we
" judged of flat necessity ; and 2. That we altered not the preface or
" language of it, for it was to be the king's Declaration : and what he spake as
" expressing his own sense, was nothing to us ; but if we thought he imposed
" anything intolerable upon us, we had leave to express our desires for the
" altering of it. Whereupon we agreed to offer tliis foUowing paper of alte-
" rations, letting all the rest of- the Declaration alone ; but withal, by word
" to teU those we offered it to (which was the Lord Chancellor) that this was
" not the model of church-government which we at first offered, nor which
" we thought most expedient for the healing of the church ; but seeing that
" cannot be obtained, we shaU humbly submit, and thankfully acknowledge
" his Majesty's condescension, if we may obtain what now we offer, and shall
" faithfuUy endeavour to improve it to the church's peace, to the utmost of
" our power. Having declared this (with more) we deUvered in the fol-
" lowing paper." — Reliquise Baxterianse, p. 274.

1660.] proposed by the Ministers. 99
4. To the end that the deans and chapters may be the
better fitted to afford counsel and assistance to the bishops,
both in ordination, and in the other ordinances mentioned
before, we will take care that those preferments be given to
the most learned and pious presbyters of the diocese.
And moreover, that at least an equal number of the most
learned, pious, and discreet presbyters of the same diocese,
(annually chosen by the major vote of all the presbyters of
that diocese) shaU be assistant and consenting together with
those of the chapter at all ordinations, and all other acts of
spiritual jurisdiction.
Nor shall any suffragan bishops ordain, or exercise any
act of spiritual jurisdiction, but with the consent and assist
ance of a sufficient number of the most judicious and pious
presbyters, annually chosen by the major vote of all the
presbyters in his precincts.
And our will is, that the great work of ordination be con
stantly and solemnly performed at the four set times and
seasons appointed by the Church for that purpose.
5. We wiU take care that confirmation be rightly and
solemnly performed, by the information, and with the con
sent of the minister of that place, who shall admit none to
the Lord's supper, till they have made a credible profession
of their faith, and promised obedience to the will of God
according as is expressed in the consideration of the rubric
before the catechism ; and that all possible diligence be used
for the instruction and reformation of scandalous offenders,
whom the ministers shall not suffer to partake of the Lord's
table until they have openly declared themselves to have
truly repented, and amended their former naughty lives, as is
partly expressed in the rubric, and more fully in the canons.
Provided there be place for due appeals to superior powers.
6, No bishops, &c.
7. We are very glad to find that all with whom we have
conferred, do, in their judgments, approve a liturgy, or a set
form of public worship to be lawful, which in our judgments,
for the preservation of unity and uniformity, we conceive to
H 2

100 Alterations in the Declaration [1660.
be very necessary. And although we do esteem the liturgy
of the Church of England contained in the Book of Common
Prayer, and by law established, to be the best that we have
seen, (and we believe that we have seen all that are extant,
and used in this part of the world) and we know what rever
ence most of the reformed Churches, or at least the most
learned men in those Churches have for it ; yet since we find
some exceptions made against several things therein, we
vnll appoint an equal number of learned divines of both per
suasions to review the same, and to make such alterations as
shall be thought most necessary, and some additional forms
(in Scripture phrase as near as may be) suited unto the nature
of the several ordinances ; and that it be left to the minister's
choice to use one or the other at his discretion. In the mean
time, and till this be done, although we do heartily wish and
desire that the ministers in their several churches because
they dislike some clauses, and expressions, would not totally
lay aside the use of the Book of Common Prayer, but read
those parts against which there can be no exception, which
would be the best instance of declining those marks of dis
tinction, which we so much labour and desire to remove :
yet in compassion to divers of our good subjects who scruple
the use of it as now it is, our wiU and pleasure is that none
be punished or troubled for not using it, until it be reviewed
and effectuaUy reformed as aforesaid.
In the Preface concerning ceremonies, we desire that at
least these words he left out : — not that themselves do in their
judgments believe the practice of these particular ceremonies,
which they except against, to be in itsi If unlawful.
As concerning ceremonies, our wiU and pleasure is, 1,
that none shaU be required to kneel in the act of receiving
the Lord's supper; but left at liberty therein.
3. That the religious observation of holy days of human
institution be left indifferent, and that none be troubled for
not observing of them.
3, That no man shaU be compelled to use the cross in
baptism, or suffer for not using it.

1660.] proposed by the Ministers. 101
4. That no man shall be compelled to bow at the name of
Jesus. 5. For the use of the surplice, we are contented that all
men be left to their liberty to do as they shaU think fit,
without suffering in the least degree for wearing or not
wearing it.
And because some men, otherwise pious and learned, say
they cannot conform unto the subscription required by the
canons, nor take the oath of canonical obedience, we are
content, and it is our will and pleasure (so they take the
oath of aUegiance and supremacy) that they shaU receive
ordination, institution, and induction, and shall be permitted
to exercise their function, and to enjoy the profits of their
livings without the said subscription, or oath of canonical
obedience. And moreover, that no persons in the universities
shall, for the want of such subscription be hindered in taking
their degrees. Lastly, that such as have been ordained by
presbyters, be not required to renounce their ordination, or to
be re-ordained, or denied institution and induction for want of
ordination by bishops. And moreover, that none be judged to
forfeit their presentation or benefice, or be deprived of it, for
not reading of those of the XXXIX Articles that contain the
controverted points of Church government and ceremonies.

XII.
Humble and grateful acknowledgment of some Ministers of
London for the Declaration. — Reliquise Baxterianse, by
Sylvester, pp. 384 — 5.
To THE King's most excellent Majesty :
The humble and grateful acknowledgment of many minis
ters of the gospel in and about the city of London, to his
royal majesty for his gracious concessions in his majesty's
late Declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs.

103 Acknowledgment of some [1660.
Most dread Sovereign,
We your majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, ministers
of the gospel in your city of London, having perused your
majesty's late Declaration concerning ecclesiastical affairs, and
finding it, to the joy of our hearts, so full of indulgence and
gracious condescension, we cannot but judge ourselves highly
obliged, in the first place, to render our unfeigned thanks to
our good God, who hath so mercifully inclined your majesty's
royal heart to this moderation ; and next, our most humble
and hearty acknowledgments unto your sacred majesty, that
we may testify to your royal self, and all the world, our just
resentment of your majesty's great goodness and clemency
therein expressed.
May it please your Majesty,
The liberty of our consciences, and the free exercise of our
ministry in the work of our grsat Lord and Master, for the
conversion of souls, ought to be, and are, more dear to us
than all the profits and preferments of this world : and
therefore your majesty's tenderness, manifested in these
so high concernments, doth wonderfully affect us, and raise
up our hearts to a high pitch of gratitude.
We cannot but adore divine goodness for your majesty's
stedfast adherence to the protestant religion, notwithstanding
aU temptations and provocations to the contrary, and your
professed zeal for the advancement and propagation thereof,
declaring that nothing can be proposed to manifest your
zeal and affection for it, to which you wUl not readUy
consent. Your majesty has graciously declared, that your resolution
is, and shall be, to promote the power of godliness, to en
courage the exercises of religion, both public and private, to
take care that the Lord's day be applied to holy exercises,
without unnecessary divertisements; and that insufficient,
negligent, and scandalous ministers, be not permitted in the
church. Your majesty hath granted that no bishop shall
ordain, or exercise any part of jurisdiction which appertains
to the censures of the church, without the advice and assist-

1660.] Ministers of London for the Declaration. 103
ance of the presbyters, and neither do, nor impose anything,
but what is according to the known laws of the land ; exclu
ded chancellors, commissaries, and officials, from acts of
jurisdiction ; so happily restored the power of the pastors, in
their several congregations; and granted a liberty to all the
ministers to assemble monthly for the exercise of the pastoral
persuasive power, to the promoting of knowledge and godli
ness in their flocks. Your majesty hath graciously promised
a review, and effectual reformation of the liturgy, with ad
ditional forms to be used at choice : and in the meantime,
that none be punished or troubled for not using it. Your majesty
hath graciously freed us from subscription required by the
canon, and the oath of canonical obedience ; and granted us to
receive ordination, institution, and induction, and to exercise
our function, and enjoy the profit of our livings, without the
same. Your majesty hath gratified the consciences of many
who are grieved with the use of some ceremonies, by indulging
to and dispensing with their omitting those ceremonies,
viz., kneeling at the sacrament, the cross in baptism, bowing
at the name of Jesus, and wearing of the surplice.
All this your majesty's indulgence and tender compassion
(which with delight we have taken the boldness thus largely
to commemorate) we receive with all humility and thankful
ness, and, as the best expression thereof, shall never cease to
pray for your majesty's long and prosperous reign, and study
how in our several stations we may be most instrumental in your
majesty's service : and that we may not be defective in
ingenuity, we crave leave to profess, that though all things in
this frame of government be not exactly suited to our judg
ment, yet your majesty's moderation hath so great an influence
upon us, that we shall, to our utmost, endeavour the healing of
the breaches, and promoting the peace and union of the church.
There are some other things that have been propounded by
our reverend brethren, which, upon our knees, with all humble
importunity, we could beg of your majesty, especiaUy that
re-ordination, and the surplice in colleges may not be im
posed ; and we cannot lay aside our hopes, but that that God

104 Proclamation against [1660-1.
who hath thus far drawn out your majesty's bowels and
mercy, will further incline your majesty's heart to gratify us
in these our humble desires also.
That we be not further burthensome, we humbly beg leave
to thank your majesty for the liberty and respect vouchsafed
to our reverend brethren in this weighty affair of accomoda
tion. The God of heaven bless your majesty, and all the
royal family. Your Majesty's most loyal Subjects,
Sam. Clark. Wm. Cooper. Eli. Pledger.
Thos. Case. Wm. Whittaker. WiU. Bates.
Jno. Rawlinson. Thos. Jacomb. Jno. Gibbon.
Jno. Sheffield. Thos. Lye. Matt. Poole
Thos. Gouge. Jno. Jackson. With many
Gab. Sanger Jno. Meriton. others.
This address was presented to, his majesty at Whitehall,
November 16th, by some of these ministers, to whom he
was pleased to return a very gracious answer.

XIII.
A Proclamation prohibiting all unlawful and seditious meet
ings and conventicles under pretence of religious worship.^
— Wilkins' ConcUia, vol. iv, pp. 564 — 5 ; CardweU's Docu
mentary Annals, Oxford, 1844, vol. ii, pp. 303 — 4.
Charles R.
Although nothing can be more unwelcome to us, than the
necessity of restraining some part of that liberty, which was
' The insurrection of the Fifth-monarchy men under Venner, took place
on Sunday, 6th January, 1660-1, and was finally suppressed on the foUowing
Wednesday. It furnished a pretext for this Proclamation. All classes of dis
senters were eager to purge themselves of the suspicion of being accomphces

1660-1.] Seditious Meetings and Conventicles. 105
indulged to tender consciences by our late gracious Declaration ;
yet since divers persons (known by the name of Anabaptists,
Quakers, and Fifth-monarchy men, or some such like appella
tion, as a mark of distinction and separation) under pretence
of serving God, do daily meet in great numbers in secret
places, and at unusual times, by reason whereof they begin to
boast of their multitudes, and to increase in their confidences,
as having frequent opportunities to settle a perfect corre
spondency and confederacy between themselves, of which
some evil effects have already ensued, even to the disturbance
of the public peace by insurrection and murder, for which the
offenders must answer to the law, and far worse may be still
expected, unless some speedy course he taken to prevent their
further growth.
To the intent therefore that none of those persons, who
have presumed to make so ill an use of our indulgence, may
be strengthened in such their proceedings by any general
words or expressions in our late Declaration ; we have thoiight
fit by these presents to publish and declare our royal will and
pleasure, that no meeting whatsoever of the persons aforesaid,
under pretence of worshipping God, shall at any time here
after be permitted or allowed, unless it be in some parochial
church or chapel in this realm, or in private houses by the

of the rebels. The Anabaptists presented an address to the king, in which
they said, " we cannot imagine a reason why [the] bloody tenets, and tragical
" actions [of the Fifth-monarchy men] should reflect upon those of our persua-
" sion, the persons not being of our belief or practice about baptism ; but to
"the best of our information, they were aU, except one, assertors of infant
" baptism, and never had communion with us in our assemblies." The Inde
pendents, and Quakers, also, disowned aU connexion with the rebels. But as
the oath of aUegiance and supremacy was generaUy tendered to the Baptists
and Quakers when discovered in their several religious assemblies, and
as they could not conscientiously acknowledge the supremacy of the king
in ecclesiastical matters, great numbers of them were thrown into prison in
aU parts of the kingdom, and kept in close confinement until the coronation
of the king, 23rd AprU following. — Collier's Ecclesiastical History, London,
1714, vol. ii, p. 876 ; Rapin's History of England, London, 1743, vol. ii,
p. 623—5 ; Crosby's History of the Baptists, London, 1739, vol. ii, pp. 38
and 93 : Hanbuir's Memorials of the Independents, vol. ui, pp. 592—5.

106 Proclamation against Seditious Meetings. [1660-1.
persons there inhabiting. And that all meetings and assem
blies whatsoever in order to any spiritual exercise, or serving
of God by the persons aforesaid, unless in the places aforesaid,
shall be esteemed, and are hereby declared to be unlawful
assemblies, and shall be prosecuted accordingly, and the
persons therein assembled shall be proceeded against as
persons riotously and unlawfully assembled.
And for the better execution of this our proclamation, and
the prevention of all illegal and seditious meetings and con
venticles, we do hereby straightly charge and command all
mayors, sheriffs, justices of the peace, constables, head-
boroughs, commanders, and other our chief officers, and
ministers, whom it may concern, that they cause diligent
search to be made from time to time in all and every the
places, where any such meetings or conventicles, as aforesaid,
shall or may be suspected. And that they cause all and every
the persons therein assembled to be apprehended and brought
before one or more justices of the peace, and to be bound over
to appear at the next sessions within the respective precincts,
and in the mean time to find sureties for their good behaviour,
or in default thereof to be committed to the next gaol.
And further we do will and command our justices of the
peace, that they cause the oath of allegiance to be tendered
to every person so brought before them, and, upon his or their
refusal, to proceed according as, by the statute made in the
seventh year of the reign of our royal grandfather, of ever
blessed memory, they are directed and commanded. Given
at our court at Whitehall the tenth day of January, in the
twelfth year of our reign, mdclx. [mdclxi.]

1661.] Warrant for the Conference at Savoy. 107

XIV.
The King's Warrant for the Conference at the Savoy. — Wilkins'
Concilia, vol. iv, pp. 570 — 3; Reliquiae Baxterianse, 303 — 5 ;
CardweU's History of Conferences, Oxford, 1849, pp.
398-302.
Charles the Second, by the grace of God, King of England,
Scotland, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c. To
our trusty and well-beloved the most reverend father in
God Accepted archbishop of York, the right reverend
fathers in God Gilbert bishop of London, John bishop of
Durham, John bishop of Rochester, Henry bishop of Chi
chester, Humphrey bishop of Sarum, George bishop of Wor
cester, Robert bishop of Lincoln, Benjamin bishop of Peter
borough, Bryan bishop of Chester, Richard bishop of Carlisle,
John bishop of Exeter, Edward' bishop of Norwich; and to
our trusty and well-beloved the reverend Anthony Tuckney
Dr. in divinity, John Conant Dr. in divinity, William Spur
stow Dr. in divinity, John Wallis Dr. in divinity, Thomas
Manton Dr. in divinity, Edmund Calamy batchelor in
divinity, Richard Baxter clerk, Arthur Jackson clerk, Thomas
Case, Samuel Clark, Matthew Newcomen clerks : and to our
trusty and weU-beloved Dr. Earles dean of Westminister,
Peter Heylin Dr. in divinity, John Hacket Dr. in divinity,
John Barwick Dr. in divinity, Peter Gunning Dr. in divinity,
John Pearson Dr. in divinity, Thomas Pierce Dr, in divinity,
Anthony Sparrow Dr. in divinity, Herbert Thomdike bat
chelor in divinity, Thomas Horton Dr. in divinity, Thomas
Jacomb Dr. in divinity, WiUiam Bates, John Rawlinson
clerks, William Cooper clerk. Dr. John Lightfoot, Dr. John
ColUnges, Dr. Benjamin Woodbridge, and WUliam Drake clerk,
greeting. Whereas by our Declaration of the five and twen
tieth of October last concerning ecclesiastical affairs, we did
' Dr. Edward Reynolds was consecrated Bishop of Norwich on 6th
January, 1660-1, and by virtue of his bishopric became also Abbot of St.
Bennet in the Holme.

108 The King's Warrant [1661.
amongst other things, express our esteem of the liturgy of the
Church of England, contained in the Book of Common Prayer;
and yet, since we find some exceptions made against several
things therein, we did by our said Declaration declare we
would appoint an equal number of learned divines of both
persuasions, to review the same, and to make such altera
tions therein as should be thought most necessary, and some
additional forms in the Scripture phrase, as near as might
be, suited unto the nature of the several parts of worship ; we
therefore, in accomplishment of our said will and intent, and
of our continued and constant care and study for the peace
and unity of the churches within our dominions, and for the
removal of all exceptions and differences, and the occasions
of such differences and exceptions from amongst our good
subjects, for or concerning the said Book of Common Prayer,
or any thing therein contained, do by these our letters
patents require, authorize, constitute and appoint you the said
accepted archbishop of York, Gilbert bishop of Loudon, John
bishop of Durham, John bishop of Rochester, Henry bishop
of Chichester, Humphrey bishop of Sarum, George bishop of
Worcester, Robert bishop of Lincoln, Benjamin bishop of
Peterborough, Bryan bishop of Chester, Richard bishop of Car
lisle, John bishop of Exeter, Edward bishop of Norwich;
Anthony Tuckney, John Conant, William Spurstow, John
Wallis, Thomas Manton, Edmund Calamy, Richard Baxter,
Arthur Jackson, Thomas Case, Samuel Clark, and Matthew
Newcomen, to advise upon and review the said Book of Com
mon Prayer, comparing the same with the most ancient litur
gies which have been used in the church, in the primitive and
purest times : and, to that end, to assemble and meet together
from time to time, and at such times, within the space of four
calendar months now next ensuing, in the master's lodging
in the Savoy in the Strand, in the county of Middlesex, or in
such other place, or places, as to you shall be thought fit and
convenient, to take into your serious and grave considera
tions, the several directions and rules, forms of prayer, and
things in the said Book of Common Prayer contained, and to

1661. J for the Conference at Savoy. 109
advise and consult upon and about the same, and the several
objections and exceptions which shall now be raised against
the same. And if occasion be, to make such reasonable and
necessary alterations, corrections, and amendments therein, as
by and between you the said archbishop, bishops, doctorsj
and persons hereby required and authorized to meet and advise'
as aforesaid, shaU be agreed upon to be needful or expedient
for the giving satisfaction to tender consciences, and the
restoring and continuance of peace and unity, in the churches
under our protection and government ; but avoiding, as
much as may be, all unnecessary alterations^ of the forms
and liturgy wherewith the people are already acquainted,
and have so long received in the Church of England. And
our wUl and pleasure is, that when you the said archbishop,
bishops, doctors, and persons authorized and appointed by
these om: letters patents, to meet, advise, and consult upon
and about the premises, as aforesaid, shall have drawn your
consultations to any resolution and determination, which you
shall agree upon as needful or expedient to be done for the
altering, diminishing, or enlarging the said Book of Common
Prayer, or any part thereof, that then you forthwith certify
and present unto us in writing, under your several hands,
the matters and things whereupon you shall so determine,
for our approbation ; and to the end the same, or so
much thereof as shall be approved by us, may he established.
And forasmuch as the said archbishop and bishops, having
several great charges to attend, which we would not dispense
with, or that the same should be' neglected upon any great
occasion whatsoever, and some of them, being of great age
and infirmities, may not be able constantly to attend the
execution of the service and authority hereby given, and
required by us, in the meetings and consultations aforesaid; we
wiU therefore, and do hereby require and authorize you the
said Dr. Earles, Peter HeyUn, John Hacket, John Barwick,
= Wilkins, and CoUier (Eccles. Hist, Lend., 1714, vol. ii, p. 877) read
" abbreviations." CardweU follows the copy given in Reliquise Baxterianse,
where it is " alterations."

110 Warrant for the Conference at Savoy. [1661.
Peter Gunning, John Pearson, Thomas Pierce, Anthony
Sparrow, and Herbert Thorndike, to supply the place or
places of such of the said archbishop and bishops (other than
the said Edward bishop of Norwich) as shall by age, sickness,
infirmity, or other occasion, be hindered from attending the
said meetings or consultations, (that is to say,) that one of
you, the said Dr. Earles, Peter Heylin, John Hacket, John
Barwick, Peter Gunning, John Pearson, Thomas Pierce,
Anthony Sparrow, and Herbert Thorndike, shall from time to
time supply the place of each one of them, the said arch
bishop and bishops, other than the said Edward bishop of
Norwich, which shall happen to be hindered, or to be absent
from the said meetings or consultations ; and shaU and may
advise, consult, and determine, and also certify and execute
aU and singular the powers and authorities before mentioned,
in and about the premises, as fully and absolutely, as such
archbishop or bishops, which shall so happen to be absent,
should or might do by virtue of these our letters patents, or
any thing therein contained, in case he or they were personaUy
present. And whereas in regard of the distance of some, the
infirmities of others, the multitude of constant employments,
and other incidental impediments, some of you, the said
Edward bishop of Norwich, Anthony Tuckney, John Conant,
William Spurstow, John Wallis, Thomas Manton, Edmund
Calamy, Richard Baxter, Arthur Jackson, Thomas Case, Samuel
Clark, and Matthew Newcomen, may be hindered from the con
stant attendance in the execution of the service aforesaid;
we therefore will, and do hereby require and authorize you,
the said Thomas Horton, Thomas Jacomb, William Bates, John
Rawlinson, WiUiam Cooper, John Lightfoot, John ColUnges,
Benjamin Woodbridge, and William Drake to supply the
place or places of such the commissioners last above men
tioned, as shall by the means aforesaid, or any other occa
sion, be hindered'from the said meetings and consultations ;
(that is to say) that one of you, the said Thomas Horton,
Thomas Jacomb, William Bates, John Rawlinson, WiUiam
Cooper, Dr. Lightfoot, Dr. ColUnges, Mr. Woodbridge, and Mr,

1661 .] Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer. Ill
Drake shall from time to time supply the place of each one of
the said commissioners last mentioned, which shall happen to
be hindered, or be absent from the said meetings and consulta
tions; and shall and may advise, consult, and determine, and
also certify and execute all and singular the powers and
authorities before mentioned, in and about the premises, as
fully and absolutely, as such of the said last mentioned commis
sioners, which shall so happen to be absent, should or might
do, by virtue of these our letters patents, or any thing therein
contained, in case he or they were personaUy present.
In witness whereof we have caused these our letters to be
made patents. Witness our self at Westminster, the five and
twentieth day of March, in the thirteenth year of our reign.
[mdclxi. J Per ivsum Regem
BARKER.

. XY.
The Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer.^ —
Reliquise Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 316-33, CardweU's
History of Conferences, Oxford, 1849, pp. 303-35.
Acknowledging with all humility and thankfulness, his
majesty's most princely condescension and indulgence, to very
many of his loyal subjects, as well in his majesty's most
gracious Declaration, as particularly in this present commis
sion, issued forth in pursuance thereof; we doubt not but
the right reverend bishops, and aU the rest of his majesty's
commissioners intrusted in this work, wiU, in imitation of his
' The principal compilers of this paper were Bishop Reynolds, Dr. Wallis,
Mr. Calamy, Mr. Newcomen, Dr. Bates, Mr. Clarke, Dr. Jacomb, &c. —
ReUquise Baxterianse, p. 307.
" The fourth day of May, [1661] we had a meeting with the bishops, where
" we gave in our paper of Exceptions to them ; which they received." —
Reliquiae Baxterianse, p. 334.

112 The Exceptions against the [1661.
majesty's most prudent and Christian moderation and cle
mency, judge it their duty (what we find to be the apostles'
own practice) in a special manner to be tender of the churches
peace, to bear with the infirmities of the weak, and not to
please themselves, nor to measure the consciences of other
men hy the light and latitude of their own, but seriously and
readUy to consider and advise of such expedients, as may
most conduce to the healing of our breaches, and uniting
those that differ.
And albeit we have a high and honourable esteem of
those godly and learned bishops and others, who were the
first compilers of the public liturgy, and do look upon it as
an excellent and worthy work, for that time, when the Church
of England made her first step out of such a mist of popish
ignorance and superstition wherein it formerly was involved ;
yet, — considering that all human works do gradually arrive at
their maturity and peiifection, and this in particular, being a
work of that nature, hath already admitted several emenda
tions since the first compiling thereof: —
It cannot be thought any disparagement or derogation
either to the work itself, or to the compilers of it, or to those
who have hitherto used it, if after more than a hundred
years, since its first composure, such further emendations be
now made therein, as may be judged necessary for satisfying
the scruples of a multitude of sober persons, who cannot at
all (or very hardly) comply with the use of it, as now it is,
and may best suit with the present times after so long an
enjoyment of the glorious light of the gospel, and so happy a
reformation : especially considering that many godly and
learned men have from the beginning all along earnestly
desired the alteration of many things therein, and very many
of his majesty's pious, peaceable, and loyal subjects, after so
long a discontinuance of it, are more averse from it than
heretofore : the satisfying of whom (as far as may be) will
very much conduce to that peace and unity which is so much
desired by all good men, and so much endeavoured by his
most excellent majesty.

1661.] Book of Common Prayer. 113
And therefore in pursuance of this his majesty's most gra
cious commission, for the satisfaction of tender consciences,
and the procuring of peace and unity amongst ourselves, we
judge meet to propose,
iX First, that all the prayers, and other materials of the
liturgy may consist of nothing doubtful or questioned amongst
pious, learned, and orthodox persons, inasmuch as the pro
fessed end of composing them is for the declaring of the
unity and consent of all who join in the public worship ; it
being too evident that the limiting of church-communion to
things of doubtful disputation, hath been in all ages the
ground of schism and separation, according to the saying of a
learned person.*
" To load our public forms with the private fancies upon
which w.e differ, is the most sovereign way to perpetuate
schism to the world's end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving,
reading of the Scriptures, and administration of the sacra
ments in the plainest and simplest 'manner, were matter
enough to furnish out a sufficient liturgy, though nothing
either of private opinion, or of church-pomp, of garments, or
prescribed gestures, of imagery, of music, of matter concern
ing the dead, of many superfluities which creep into the
church under the name of order and decency, did interpose
itself. To charge churches and liturgies with things un
necessary, was the first beginning of aU superstition, and
when scruple of conscience begaii to be made or pretended,
then schism began to break in. If the special guides and
fathers of the church would be a little sparing of incumbering
churches with superfluities, or not over-rigid, either in re
viving obsolete customs, or imposing new, there would be far
less cause of schism or superstition; and all the inconveni
ence were likely to ensue would be but this, they should in so
doing yield a little to the imbecility of their inferiors ; a
thing which St. Paul would never have refused to do. Mean
while wheresoever false or suspected opinions are made a
piece of church-liturgy, he that separates is not the schis-
* Mr. Hales.

114 The Exceptions against the [1661.
matic ; for it is alike unlawful to make profession of known,
or suspected falsehood, as to put in practice unlawful or sus
pected action."
II. Further, we humbly desire that it may be seriously
considered, that as our first reformers out of their great
wisdom did at that time so compose the liturgy, as to win
upon the papists, and to draw them into their church-com
munion, by varying as little as they well could from the
Romish forrns before in use : so whether in the present con
stitution, and state of things amongst us, we should not
according to the same rule of prudence and charity, have our
liturgy so composed, as to gain upon the judgments and
affection of all those who in the substantials of the protestant
religion are of the same persuasions with our selves : inas
much as a more firm union and consent of all such, as well
in worship as in doctrine, would greatly strengthen the
protestant interest against all those dangers and temptations
which our intestine divisions and animosities do expose us
unto, from the common adversary.
III. That the repetitions, and responsals of the clerk and
people, and the alternate reading of the psalms and hymns
which cause a confused murmur in the congregation, whereby
what is read is less intelligible, and therefore unedifying, may
be omitted : the minister being appointed for the people in
all public services appertaining unto God, and the Holy
Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament, intimating
the people's part in public prayer to be only with silence
and reverence to attend thereunto, and to declare their con
sent in the close, by saying Amen.
IV. That in regard the litany (though otherwise contain
ing in it many holy petitions) is so framed, that the petitions
for a great part are uttered only by the people, which we
think not to be so consonant to Scripture, which makes the
minister the mouth of the people to God in prayer, the par
ticulars thereof may be composed into one solemn prayer to
be offered by the minister unto God for the people.
V. That there be nothing in the liturgy which may seem

1661.] Book of Common Prayer. 115
to countenance the observation of Lent as a religious fast ;
the example of Christ fasting forty days and nights being
no more imitable, nor intended for the imitation of a Christian,
than any other of his miraculous works were, or than Moses
his forty days fast was for the Jews : and the act of parlia
ment, 5 Eliz., forbidding abstinence from flesh to be observed
upon any other than a politic consideration, and punishing
all those who by preaching, teaching, writing, or open speeches,
shall notify that the forbearing of flesh is of any necessity
for the saving of the soul, or that it is the service of God,
otherwise than as other politic laws are.
VI. That the religious observation of saints-days appointed
to be kept as holy-days, and the vigils thereof, without any
foundation (as we conceive) in Scripture, may be omitted.
That if any be retained, they may be called festivals, and not
holy-days, nor made equal with the Lord's day, nor have any
peculiar service appointed for them, nor the people be upon
such days foi'ced wholly to abstain from work, and that the
names of all others now inserted in ihe Calender which are
not in the first and second books of Edward the Sixth, may
be left out.
VII. That the gift of prayer, being one special qualification
for the work of the ministry bestowed by Christ in order to
the edification of his church, and to be exercised for the
profit and benefit thereof, according to its various and
emergent necessity ; it is desired that there may be no such
imposition of the liturgy, as that the exercise of that gift be
thereby totally excluded in any part of public worship.
And further, considering the great age of some ministers
and infirmities of others, and the variety of several services
oft-times concurring upon the same day, whereby it may
be inexpedient to require every minister at all times to read
the whole ; it may be left to the discretion of the minister, to
omit part of it, as occasion shall require : which liberty we
find to be allowed even in the First Common Prayer Book of
Edward VI.
VIII. That in regard of the many defects which have been
I 3

116 The Exceptions against the [1661,
observed in that version of the Scriptures, which is used
throughout the liturgy (manifold instances whereof may be
produced, as in the epistle for the first Sunday after Epiphany,
taken out of Romans xii, I, "Be ye changed in your shape;"
and the epistle for the Sunday next before Easter, taken out
of Philippians ii, 5, " Found in his apparel as a man ;" as
also the epistle for the fourth Sunday in Lent, taken out of
the fourth of the Galatians, " Mount Sinai is Agar in Arabia,
and bordereth upon the city which is now called Jerusalem;"
the epistle for St. Matthew's day taken out of the second
epistle of Corinth, and the ivth, "We go not out of kind;"
the gospel for the second Sunday after Epiphany, taken out
of the second of John, "When men be drunk;" the gospel
for the third Sunday in Lent, taken out of the xith of Luke,
"One house doth fall upon another;" the gospel for the
Annunciation, taken out of the first of Luke, " This is the
sixth month which was called barren;" and many other
places) : we therefore desire instead thereof the new transla
tion allowed by authority may alone be used.
IX. That inasmuch as the holy Scriptures are able to make
us wise unto salvation^ to furnish us throughly unto all good
works, and contain in them all things necessary, either in
doctrine to be believed, or in duty to be practised ; whereas
divers chapters of the apocryphal books appointed to be read,
are charged to be in both respects of dubious and uncertain
credit : it is therefore desired, that nothing be read in the
church for lessons, but the holy Scriptures of the Old and
New Testament.
X. That the minister be not required to rehearse any part
of the liturgy at the communion-table, save only those parts
which properly belong to the Lord's supper; and that at
such times only when the said holy supper is administered.
XI. That as the word "minister," and not priest or curate,
is used in the Absolution, and in divers other places ; it may
throughout the whole book be so used instead of those two
words ; and *that instead of the word " Sunday," the word
" Lord's day" may be everywhere used.

1661.] Book of Common Prayer. 117
XII. Because singing of psalms is a considerable part of
public worship, we desire that the version set forth and
allowed to be sung in churches may be amended ; or that we
may have leave to make use of a purer version.
XIII. That all obsolete words in the Common Prayer, and
such whose use is changed from their first significancy, as
" aread" used in the gospel for the Monday and Wednesday
before Easter ; " Then opened he their wits," used in the
gospel for Easter Tuesday, Stc. ; may be altered unto other
words generaUy received and better understood.
XIV. That no portions of the Old Testament, or of the
Acts of the Apostles, be called " epistles," and read as such.
XV. That whereas throughout the several offices, the
phrase is such as presumes all persons (within the communion
of the church) to be regenerated, converted, and in an actual
state of grace, (which, had ecclesiastical discipline been truly
and vigorously executed, in the exclusion of scandalous and
obstinate sinners, might be better supposed ; but there having
been, and still being a confessed want of that, (as in the
liturgy is acknowledged,) it cannot be rationally admitted in the
utmost latitude of charity :) we desire that this may be reformed.
XVI. That whereas orderly connection of prayers, and of
particular petitions and expressions, together with a compe
tent length of the forms used, are tending much to edification,
and to gain the reverence of people to them ; there appears
to us too great a neglect of both, of this order, and of other
just laws, of method. particularly.
1. The coUects are generally short, many of them con
sisting but of one, or at most two sentences of petition ; and
these generally ushered in with a repeated mention of the
name and attributes of God, and presently concluding with
the name and merits of Christ; whence are caused many
unnecessary intercisions and abruptions, which when many
petitions are to be offered at the same time, are neither
agreeable to scriptural examples, nor suited to the gravity
and seriousness of that holy duty.

118 The Exceptions against the [1661.
3. The prefaces of many collects have not any clear and
special respect to the following petitions ; and particular
petitions are put together, which have not any due order,
nor evident connection one with another, nor suitableness
with the occasions upon which they are used, but seem to
have fallen in rather casually, than from an orderly contrivance.
It is desired, that instead of those various collects, there
may be one methodical and entire form of prayer composed
out of many of them.
XVII. That whereas the public liturgy of a church should
in reason comprehend the sum of aU such sins as are ordi
narUy to be confessed in prayer by the church, and of such
petitions and thanksgivings as are ordinarily by the church to
be put up to God, and the public catechisms or systems of
doctrine, should summarily comprehend all such doctrines as
are necessary to be believed, and these explicitly set down;
the present liturgy as to all these seems very defective.
particularly.
1. There is no preparatory prayer in our address to God
for assistance or acceptance; yet many collects in the midst
of the worship have little or nothing else.
3. The Confession is very defective, not clearly expressing
original sin, nor sufficiently enumerating actual sins, with
their aggravations, but consisting only of generals ; whereas
confession being the exercise of repentance, ought to be more
particular. 3. There is also a great defect as to such forms of public
praise and thanksgiving as are suitable to gospel-worship.
4. The whole body of the Common-prayer also consisteth
very much of mere generals: as, "to have our prayers
heard — to be kept from all evU, and from all enemies, and
all adversity, that we might do God's will;" without any
mention of the particulars in which these generals exist.
5. The Catechism is defective as to many necessary
doctrines of our religion ; some even of the essentials of
Christianity not mentioned except in the Creed, and there
not so explicit as ought to be in a catechism.

1661. J Book of Common Prayer. 119
XVIII. Because this liturgy containeth the imposition of
divers ceremonies which from the first reformation have by
sundry learned and pious men been judged unwarrantable, as,
1. That public worship may uot be celebrated by any
minister that dare not wear a surplice.
3. That none may baptize, nor be baptized, without the
transient image of the cross, which hath at least the sem
blance of a sacrament of human institution, being used as
an engaging sign in our first and solemn covenanting with
Christ; and the duties whereunto we are really obliged by
baptism being more expressly fixed to that airy sign than
to this holy sacrament.
3. That none may receive the Lord's Supper that dare not
kneel in the act of receiving ; but the minister must exclude
all such from the communion : although such kneeling not
only differs from the practice of Christ and of his apostles,
but (at least on the Lord's day) is contrary to the practice
of the catholic church for many hundred years after, and
forbidden by the most venerable councils that ever were in
the Christian world. All which impositions are made yet
more grievous by that subscription to their lawfulness which
the canon exacts, and by the heavy punishment upon the
non-observance of them which the act of uniformity inflicts.
And it being doubtful whether God hath given power unto
men, to institute in his worship such mystical teaching signs,
which not being necessary in genere, fall not under the rule
of " doing all things decently, orderly, and to edification," and
which once granted wiU, upon the same reason, open a door
to the arbitrary imposition of numerous ceremonies of which
St. Augustine complained in his days ; and the things in con
troversy being in the judgment of the imposers confessedly
indifferent, who do not so much as pretend any real good
ness in them of themselves, otherwise than what is derived
from their being imposed, and consequently the imposition
ceasing, that will cease also, and the worship of God not
become indecent without them :
Whereas, on the other hand, in the judgment of the

130 The Exceptions against the [1661.
opposers, they are by some held sinful, and unlawful in them
selves; by others very inconvenient and unsuitable to the
simplicity of gospel worship, and by all of them very grievous
and burthensome, and therefore not at all fit to he put in balance
with the peace of the church, which is more likely to be pro
moted by their removal than continuance : considering also
how tender our Lord and Saviour himself is of weak brethren,
declaring it much better for a man to have a " millstone
hanged about his neck, and be cast into the' depth of the sea,
than to offend one of his little ones:" and how the apostle
Paul (who had as great legislative power in the church as any
under Chiist) held himself obliged by that common rule of
charity, "not to lay a stumbling block, or an occasion of
offence before a weak brother, choosing rather not to eat flesh
whilst the world stands" (though in itself a thing lawful)
'¦'than offend his brother for whom Christ died : " we cannot
but desire that these ceremonies may not be imposed on them
who judge such impositions a violation of the royalty of
Christ, and an impeachment of his laws as insufficient, and
are under the holy^awe of that whichMs written, Deut. xii, 32 ;
"What thing soever I command you, observe to do it; thou
shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it ; " but that there
may be either a total abolition of them, or at least such a
liberty, that those who are unsatisfied concerning their law
fulness or expediency, may not be compelled to the practice
of them, or subscription to them ; but may be permitted to
enjoy their ministerial function, and communion with the
church, without them.
The rather because these ceremonies have for above an
hundred years been the fountain of manifold evils in this
church and nation, cccasioning^sad divisions between ministers
and ministers, as also between ministers and people; exposing
many orthodox, pious, and peaceable ministers to the dis
pleasure of their rulers, casting them on the edge of the penal
statutes, to the loss not only of their livings and liberties, but
also of their opportunities for the service of Christ and his
church ; and forcing people either to worship God in such a

1661.] Book of Common Prayer. 131
manner as their own consciences condemn, or doubt of, or else
to forsake our assemblies, as thousands have done. And no
better fruits than these can be looked for from the retaining
and imposing of these ceremonies, unless we could presume,
• that all his majesty's subjects should have the same subtilty
of judgment to discern even to a ceremony how far the power
of man extends in the things of God, which is not to be ex
pected; or should yield obedience to all the impositions of
men concerning them, without inquiring into the will of God,
which is not to be desired.
We do therefore most earnestly entreat the right reverend
fathers and brethren, to whom these papers are delivered, as
they tender the glory of God, the honour of religion, the
peace of the church, the service of his majesty in the accom
plishment of that happy union, which his majesty hath so
abundantly testified his desires of, to join with us in impor
tuning his most excellent majesty, that his most gracious
indulgence, as to these ceremonies, granted in his royal
Declaration, may be confirmed and continued to us and our
posterities, and extended to such as do not yet enjoy the
benefit thereof.
XIX, As to that passage in his majesty's Commission,
where we are authorized and required to compare the present
liturgy with the most ancient liturgies which have been used
in the church in the purest and most primitive times; we
have in obedience to his majesty's Commission, made enquiry,
but cannot find any records of known credit, concerning any
entire forms of Uturgy, within the first three hundred years,
which are confessed to be as the most primitive, so the purest
ages of the church; nor any impositions of liturgies upon
any national church for some hundreds of years after. We
find indeed some liturgical forms fathered upon St. Basil, St.
Chrysostom, and St. Ambrose, but we have not seen any
copies of them, but such as give us sufficient evidence to con
clude them either wholly spurious, or so interpolated, that
we cannot make a judgment which in them hath any
primitive authority.

123 The Exceptions against the [1661.
Having thus in general expressed our desires, we co-ne
now to particulars, which we find numerous and of a various
nature; some, we grant, are of inferior consideration, verbal
rather than material, (which, _were they not in the public
liturgy of so famous a church, we should not have men
tioned,) others dubious and disputable, as not having a clear
foundation in Scripture for their warrant : but some there be
that seem to be corrupt, and to carry in them a repugnancy
to the rule of the Gospel ; and therefore have administered
just matter of exception and offence to many, truly religious
and peaceable, — not of a private station only, but learned
and judicious divines, as well of other reformed churches as
of the church of England, — ever since the reformation.
We know much hath been spoken and written by way of
apology in answer to many things that have been objected ;
but yet the doubts and scruples 'of tender consciences still
continue or rather are increased. We do humbly conceive
it therefore a work worthy of those wonders of salvation,
which God hath wrought for his majesty now on the throne,
and for the whole kingdom, and exceedingly becoming the
ministers of |the gospel of peace, with all holy moderation
and tenderness to endeavour the removal of everything out
of the worship of God which may justly offend or grieve the
spirits of sober and godly people. The things themselves
that are desired to be removed, not being of the foundation
of religion, nor the essentials of public worship, nor the
removal of them any way tending to the prejudice of the
church or state : therefore their continuance and rigorous
imposition can no ways be able to countervail the laying
aside of so many pious and able ministers, and the uncon
ceivable grief that will arise to multitudes of his majesty's
most loyal and peaceable subjects, who upon all occasions
are ready to serve him with their prayers, estates, and lives.
For the preventing of which evils we humbly desire that
these particulars following may be taken into serious aud
tender consideration.

1661.]

Book of Common Prayer.

123

concerning morning and evening prayer.

Rubric.
That morning and
evening prayer shall be
used in the accustomed
place of the church,
chancel, or chapel, ex
cept it be otherwise de
termined hy the ordinary
of the place ; and the
chancel shall remain as
in times past.

Exception.
We desire that the words
of the first rubric may be
expressed as in the book
established by authority of
parliament 5 and 6 Edw. VI
thus ; " The morning and
evening prayer shall be used
in such place of the church,
chapel, or chancel, and the
minister shall so turn him, as
the people may best hear, and

if there he any controversy
therein, the matter shaU be referred to the ordinary."
Rubric.
And here is to be
noted, that the minister,
at the time of the com
munion, and at other
times, in his ministration
shall use such ornaments

in the church, as were in
use by authority of par
liament, in the second
year of the reign of Ed
ward the Sixth, according
to the act of parliament.
Rubric.
The Lord's Prayer after
the absolution ends thus,
" Deliver us from evil."

Exception.
Forasmuch as this rubric
seemeth to bring back the
cope, albe, &c., and other
vestments forbidden by the
Common Prayer book, 5 aud
6 Edw. VI and so our reasons
alleged against ceremonies
under our eighteenth general
exception, we desire it may
he wholly left out.

Exception.
We desire that these words,
"For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory, for
ever and ever. Amen," may

124

Tlie Exceptions against the

[1661.

be always added unto the Lord's prayer ; and that this prayer
may not be enjoined to be so often used in morning and
evening service.

Rubric.
And at the end of
every psalm throughout
the year, and likewise in
the end of Benedictus,
Benedicite, Magnificat,
and Nunc Dimittis, shall
be repeated, " Glory be
to the Father," &c.

Exception.
By this rubric, and other
places in the Common Prayer
books, - the Gloria Patri is
appointed to be said six times
ordinarily in every morning
and evening service, frequently
eight times in a morning,
sometimes ten; which we
think carries with it at least

an appearance of that vain
repetition which Christ forbids : for the avoiding of which
appearance of evil, we desire it may be used but once in the
morning, and once in the evening.

Rubric.
In such places where
they do sing, there shall
the Lessons be sung, in a
plain tune, and likewise
the Epistle and Gospel,

Exception. .
Tbe Lessons, and the Epis
tles, and Gospels, beiijg for
the most part neither psalms
nor hymns, we know no war
rant why they should be sung
in any place, and conceive

that the distinct reading of
them with an audible voice tends more to the edification of
the church.

Rubric.
Or this canticle, Bene-
dicite omnia opera.

Exception.
We desire that some psalm
or scripture hymn may be
appointed instead of that
apocryphal.

1661. J

Book of Common Prayer.

135

IN THE litany.

Rubric.
Erom all fornication,
and all other deadly sia.

Exception.
In regard that the wages
of sin is death; we desire
that this clause may he thus
altered ; " From fornication, and all other heinous, or grievous

Rubric. Exception.
Erom battle, and mur- Because this expression of
der, and sudden death. "sudden death" hath been so
often excepted against, we
desire, if it be thought fit, it may be thus read : " From
battle and murder, and from dying suddenly, and unpre
pared."

Rubric.
That it may please thee,
to preserve all that travel
by land or by water, all
women labouring with
child, all sick persons,
and young children, and
to shew thy pity upon all
prisoners and captives.

Exception.
We desire the term "all"
may be advised upon, as
seeming liable to just excep
tions; and that it may be
considered, whether it mav
not better be put indefinitely,
" those that travel," &c.,
rather than universally.

the collect on CHRISTMAS DAY.

Rubric.
Almighty God, which
hast given us thy only
begotten Son, to take our
nature upon him, and
this day to be born of a
pure virgin, &c.

Exception.
We desire that in both
collects the word "this day"
may be left out, it being
according to vulgar accepta
tion a contradiction.

126

The Exceptions against the

[1661,

Rubric.
Then shall follow the
collect of the Nativity,
which shall be said con
tinually unto new-years-
day.

THE COLLECT FOR WHITSUNDAY,

Rubric.
God which upon this
day, &c.
Rubric.
The same collect to
be read on Monday and
Tuesday in Whitsun-
week.

Rubric.
The two collects for
St, John's day, and In
nocent's, the collects for
the first day in Lent, for
the fourth Sunday after
Easter, for Trinity Sunday, for the sixth and twelfth
Sunday after Trinity, for St, Luke's day, and
Michaelmas day,
THE ORDER FOR THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE LORd's SUPPER.

Exception.
We desire that these col
lects maybe further considered
and abated, as having in them
divers things that we judge
fit to be altered.

Rubric.
So many as intend to
be partakers of the holy
communion shall signify
their names to the curate

Exception.
The time here assigned for
notice to be given to the min
ister is not sufficient.

1661. J

Book of Common Prayer.

127

over night, or else in the morning before the be
ginning of morning prayer, or immediately after.

Rubric.
And if any of these be
a notorious evil liver, the
curate, having knowledge
thereof, shall call him
and advertize him in any
wise not to presume to
the Lord's table.

Exception.
We desire the ministers'
power both to admit and
keep from the Lord's table,
may be according to his ma
jesty's Declaration, 25th Oct.,
1660, in these words ;— " The
minister shall admit none to
the Lord's supper till they

have made a credible profes
sion of their faith, and promised obedience to the will of
God, according as is expressed in the considerations of the
rubric before the catechism; and that all possible diligence
be used for the instruction and reformation of scandalous
offenders, whom the minister shall not suffer to partake of
the Lord's table until they have openly declared themselves
to have triUy repented and aniended their former naughty
lives, as is partly expressed in the rubric, and more fully in
the canons."

Rubric.
Then shall the priest
rehearse distinctly all the
ten commandments, and
the people kneeling, shall
after every commandment
ask God's mercy for trans
gressing the same.

Exception.
We desire,
1. That the preface pre
fixed by God himself to the
ten commandments may be
restored. 2. That the fourth com
mandment may be read as in
Exod. XX, Deut. v, "He

blessed the Sabbath-day."
3. That neither minister nor people may be enjoined to
kneel more at the reading of this than of other parts of
Scriptures, the rather because many ignorant persons are
thereby induced to use the ten commandments as a prayer.

128

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

4. That, instead of those short prayers of the people inter
mixed with the several commandments, the minister, after
the reading of all, may conclude with a suitable prayer.

Rubric.
After the Creed, if there
be no sermon, shall fol
low one of the homilies
already set forth, or here
after to be set forth by
common authority.

After such sermon, ho
mily, or exhortation, tbe
curate shall declare, &c.,
and earnestly exhortthem
to remember the poor,
saying one or more of
these sentences following.
Then shall the church
wardens, or some other by
them appointed, gather
the devotion of thepeople.

Exception.
We desire that the preach
ing of the word may be
strictly enjoined, and not left
so indifferent, at the adminis
tration of the sacraments ; as
also that ministers may not
be bound to those things
which are as yet but future
and not in being.
Two of the sentences here
cited are apocryphal, and four
of them more proper to draw
out the people's bounty to
their ministers, than their
charity to the poor.

Collection for the poor may
be better made at or a little
before the departing of the
communicants.

Exhortation.
We be come together
at this time to feed at the
Lord's supper, unto the
which in God's behalf I
bid you all that be here
present, and beseech you, for the Lord Jesus Christ's
sake, that ye will not refuse to come, &c.

If it be intended that these
exhortations should be read
at the communion, they seem
to us to be unseasonable.

1661.]

Book of Common Prayer.

129

The way and means thereto is first to examine
your Uves and conversation; and if ye shall per
ceive your offences to be such as be not only against
God, but also against your neighbours, then ye shall
reconcile yourselves unto them, and be ready to
make restitution and satisfaction.

And because it is requi
site that no man should
come to the holy com
munion but with a full
trust in God's mercy and
with a quiet conscience.

We fear this may discourage
many from coming to the
sacrament, who lie under a
doubting and troubled con
science.

[Rubr.'] Before the Confession.
Then shall this general We desire it may be made
confession be made in the by the minister only.
name of all those that are minded to receive the
holy communion either by one of them, or else by
one of the ministers, or by the priest himself.

\Rubr.] Before the Confession.
Then shall the priest or
the bishop (being present)
stand up, and turning
himself to the people,
say thus.
[Proper'] Preface on Christ
mas day, and seven days after.
Because thou didst give
Jesus Christ, thine only
Son, to be born as this
day for us, &c.

Exception.
The minister turning him
self to the people is most con
venient throughout the whole
ministration.

First, we cannot perempto
rily fix the nativity of our
Saviour to this or that day
particularly. Secondly, it

130

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

[Proper Preface] Upon Whit
sunday, and six days after.
According to whose
most true promise, the
Holy Ghost came down
this day from heaven.

seems incongruous to affirm
the birth of Christ and the
descending of the Holy Ghost
to be on this day for seven
or eight days together.

Prayer before that which is at
the consecration.
Grant us that our sin
ful bodies may be made
clean by his body, and
our souls washed through
his most precious blood.

Prayer at the consecration.
Hear us, 0 merciful
Eather, &c., who in the
same night that he was
betrayed took bread, and
when he had given
thanks, he brake it, and
gave to his disciples, say-
iug, Take, eat, &c.
Rubric.
Then shall the minister
flrst receive the commu
nion in both kinds, &c,,
and after deliver it to the

We desire that, whereas
these words seem to give a
greater efficacy to the blood
than to the body of Christ,
they may he altered thus,
"That our sinful souls and
bodies may be cleansed
through his precious body
and blood,"

We conceive that the man
ner of the consecrating of the
elements is not here explicit
and distinct enough, and the
minister's breaking of the
bread is not so much as men
tioned.

We desire, that at the dis
tribution of the bread and
wine to the communicants, we
may use the words of our
Saviour as near as may he.

1661. J

Book of Common Prayer.

131

people in their hands,
kneeling; and when he
delivereth the bread, he
shall say, "The body of
our Lord Jesus Christ,
which was given for thee,
preserve thy body and
soul unto everlasting life,
and take and eat this in
remembrance," &c,

and that the minister be not
required to deliver the bread
and wine into every particu
lar communicant's hand, and
to repeat the words to each
one in the singular number,
hut that it may suffice to
speak them to divers jointly,
according to our Saviour's ex
ample. We also desire that the
kneeling at the sacrament (it

being not that gesture which
the apostles used, though Christ was personaUy present
amongst them, nor that which was used in the purest and
primitive times of the church) may be left free, as it was
1 and 2 Edw. [VI,] " As touching kneeling, &c., they may be
used or left as every man's devotion serveth, without blame."

Rubric.
And note, that every
parishioner shall commu
nicate at the least three
times inthe year, of which
Easter to he one, and
shall also receive the sa
craments and other rites,
according to the order
in this book appointed.

Exception.
Forasmuch as every par
ishioner is not duly qualified
for the Lord's supper, and
those habitually prepared are
not at all times actuaUy dis
posed, but many may be hin
dered by the providence of
God, and some by the dis
temper of their own spirits,
we desire this rubric may be
either wholly omitted, or thus
altered :— -
"Every minister shall be hound to administer the sacra
ment of the Lord's supper at least thrice a year, provided
there be a due number of communicants manifesting their
desirei to receive." K i

133 Tlie Exceptions against the [1661
And we desire that the following rubric in the Common
Prayer book, in 5 and 6 Edw. [VI,] established by law as much
as any other part of the Common Prayer book, may be restored
for the vindicating of our church in the matter of kneeling
at the sacrament (although the gesture be left indifferent:)
"Although no order can be so perfectly devised but it may
be of some, either for their ignorance and infirmity, or else
of malice and obstinacy, misconstrued, depraved, and inter
preted in a wrong part; and yet, because brotherly charity
wUleth that, so much as conveniently may be, offences should
be taken away; therefore are we wUling to do the same.
Whereas it is ordained in the book of Common Prayer, in
the administration of the Lord's supper, that the communicants
kneeling should receive the holy communion, which thing
being well meant for a signification of the humble and grate
ful acknowledging of the benefits of Christ given unto the
worthy receivers, and to avoid the profanation and disorder
which about the holy communion might else ensue, lest yet
the same kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise, we
do declare, that it is not meant thereby that any adoration is
done, or ought to be done, either unto the sacramental bread
or wine there bodUy received, or unto any real and essential
presence there being of Christ's natural flesh and blood :
for as concerning the sacramental bread and wine, they re
main stUl in their very natural substances, and therefore may
not be adored ; for that were idolatry to be abhorred of aU
faithful Christians : and as concerning the natural body and
blood of our Saviour Christ, they are in heaven, and not here ;
for it is against the truth of Christ's natural body to be in
more places than in one at one time."
OF PUBLIC BAPTISM.
There being divers learned, pious, and peaceable ministers
who not only judge it unlawful to baptize children whose
parents both of them are atheists, infidels, heretics, or un-
baptized, but also such whose parents are excommunicate

1661.J

Book of Common Prayer.

133

persons, fornicators, or otherwise notorious and scandalous
sinners; we desire they may not be enforced to baptize the
children of such, until they have made due profession of their
repentance. Before Baptism.
Rubric. Exception.
Parents shall give no- We desire that more timely
tice over night, or in the notice may be given.
morning.

Rubric.
And the godfathers,
and the godmothers, and
the people with the chil
dren, &c.

Exception.
Here is no mention of the
parents, in whose right the
chUd is baptized, and who are
fittest both to dedicate it unto
God, and to covenant for it :
we do not know that any per
sons except the parents, or some others appointed by them,
have any power to consent for the children, or to enter them
into covenant. We desire it may be left free to parents,
whether they will have sureties to undertake for their children
in baptism or no.

Rubric.
Ready at the font.

In the first Prayer,
By the baptism of thy
wellrbeloved Son,&c.didst
sanctify the flood Jordan,
and all other waters, to
the mystical washing
away of sin, «fec.

Exception.
We desire it may be so
placed as all the congregation
may best see and hear the
whole administration.
- It being doubtful whether
either the flood Jordan or
any other waters were sancti
fied to a sacramental use, by
Christ's being baptized, and
not necessary to be asserted,
we desire this may be other
wise expressed.

134

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

The third Exhortation.
Do promise by you
that be their sureties.

The Questions.
Dost thou forsake, &c.
Dost thou believe, &c.
Wilt thou be baptized,
&c.

We know not by what right
the sureties do promise and
answer in the name of the
infant : it seemeth to us also
to countenance the Anabap-
tistical opinion of the neces
sity of an actual profession of
faith and repentance in order
to baptism. That such a pro
fession may be required of
parents in their own name,
and now solemnly renewed when they present their children
to baptism, we willingly grant : but the asking of one for
another is a practice whose warrant we doubt of: and there
fore we desire that the two first interrogatories may be put
to the parents to be answered in their own names, and the
last propounded to the parents or pro-parents thus, "WUl
you have this child baptized into this faith ?"
The second Prayer before
Baptism.
May receive remission
of [their] sins by spiritual
regeneration. In the Prayer after Baptism.
That it hath pleased
thee to regenerate this
infant by thy Holy Spirit.

[Rubric] After Baptism.
Then shall the priest
make a cross, &c.

This expression seeming in
convenient, we desire it may
be changed into this; "May
be regenerated and receive
the remission of sins."
We cannot in faith say,
that every child that is bap
tized is "regenerated by God's
Holy Spirit ;" at least it is a
disputable point, and there
fore we desire it may be other
wise expressed.
Concerning the cross in
baptism, we refer to our 18th
general.

1661 .]

Book of Common Prayer.

135

OF PRIVATE BAPTISM.
We desire that baptism may not be administered in a
private place at any time, unless by a lawful minister, and in
the presence of a competent number : that where it is evident
that any chUd hath been so baptized, no part of the adminis
tration may be reiterated in public, under any Umitations:
and therefore we see no need of any liturgy in that case.

OF THE CATECHISM,

Catechism.
1. Quest. What is your
name, &c,
2, Quest. Who gave
you that name ?
Ans. My godfathers
and my godmothers in
my baptism; whereiu I
was made a member of
Christ, the child of God,
and an inheritor of the
kingdom of heaven,
3, Quest. What did
your godfathers and god
mothers do for you in
baptism ?
\_Ans. They did promise
and vow three things in
my name, &c.]
Of the Rehearsal of the Ten
Commandments.
10. Ans. My duty to
wards God is to believe
in him, &c.

Exception.
We desire these three first
questions may be altered;
consideringthat the far greater
number of persons baptized
within these twenty years last
past, had no godfathers or
godmothers at their baptism.
The like to be done in the
seventh question.
We conceive it might be
more safely expressed thus;
"Wherein I was visibly ad
mitted into the number of
the members of Christ, the
children of God, and the
heirs (rather than 'mheritors')
of the kingdom of heaven."

We desire that the com
mandments be inserted ac
cording to the new translation
of the Bible,
In this answer there seems

136

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

to be particular respect to the several commandments of the
first table, as in the following answer to those of the second.
And therefore we desire it may be advised upon, whether to
the last word of this answer may not be added, " particularly
on the Lord's day," otherwise there being nothing in all this
answer that refers to the fourth commandment.
14. Quest. How many That these words may be

omitted, and answer thus
given; "Two only, baptism
and the Lord's supper."

sacraments hath Christ
ordained, &c. ?
Ans. Two only as gen
erally necessary to sal-
vation.l 19. Quest. What is re
quired of persons to be
baptized ?
Ans. Repentance,
whereby they forsake sin;
and faith, whereby they
stedfastly believe the
promises of God, &c,
20, Quest. Why then
are infants baptized when
by reason of their tender
age they cannot perform
them? Ans. Yes: they do per
form them by their sure
ties, who promise and vow
themboth in theirnames.
In the general we observe, that the doctrine of the sacra
ments which was added upon the conference at Hampton
Court, is much more fully and particularly delivered than the
other parts of the Catechism, in short answers fitted to the

We desire that the entering
infants into God's covenant
may be more warily expressed,
and that the words may not
seem to found their baptism
upon a really actual faith and
repentance of their own ; and
we desire that a promise may
not be taken for a perform
ance of such faith and repent
ance : and especially, that it
be not asserted that they per
form these by the promise of
their sureties, it being to the
seed of believers that the cove
nant of God is made; and not
(that we can find) to all that
have such believing sureties,
who are neither parents nor
pro-parents of the chUd.

1661.J

Book of Common Prayer.

137

memories of children, and thereupon we offer it to be con
sidered : —
First, Whether there should not be a more distinct and full
explication of the Creed, the Commandments and the Lord's
Prayer. Secondly, Whether it were not convenient to add (what
seems to be wanting) somewhat particularly concerning the
nature of faith, of repentance, the two covenants, of justifica
tion, sanctification, adoption, and regeneration.
OF CONFIRMATION.

The last Rubric before the
Catechism.
And that no man shall
think that any detriment
shall come to children by
deferring of their conflr-
mation, he shall know for
truth, that it is certain
by God's word that chil
dren, beingbap tized, have
all things necessary for
their salvation, and be
undoubtedly saved.
Rubric after the Catechism.
So soon as the children
can say in their mother-
tongue the Articles of the
Eaith, the Lord's Prayer,
and the Ten Command
ments, and can answer
such other questions of

Although we charitably sup
pose the meaning of these
words was only to exclude the
necessity of any other sacra
ments to baptized infants; yet
these words are dangerous as
to the misleading of the vul
gar, and therefore we desire
they may be expunged.

We conceive that it is not
a sufficient qualification ' for
confirmation, that children be
able memoriter to repeat the
Articles of the Faith, com
monly called the Apostles'
Creed, the Lord's Irayer, and
the Ten Commandments, and

138

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

this short Catechism, &c,, to answer to some questions
thenshall they be brought of this short Catechism; for
to the bishop, &c,, and ^* ^^ ^f^^"^ ^o™^ *^^* chMvery
X 1. 1 . 1 •!_ n ji are able to do all this at four
the bishop shall contirm „ u r. m -r
, '- or five years old, 3ndly, It
crosses what is said in the
third reason of the first rubric before confirmation, concern
ing the usage of the church in times past, ordaining that
confirmation should be ministered unto them that were of
perfect age, that they being instructed in the Christian
religion, should openly - profess their own faith, and promise
to he obedient to the wUl of God. And therefore, 3rdly, we
desire that none may be confirmed but according to his
majesty's Declaration, viz., "That confirmation be rightly
and solemnly performed by the information, and with the
consent of the minister of the place,"
Rubric after the Catechism.

Then shall they be
brought to the bishop by
one that shall be his god
father or godmother.
The Prayer before the Impo
sition of Hands.
Who hast vouchsafed
to regenerate these thy
servants by water and
the Holy Ghost, and hast
given unto them the for
giveness of all their sins.

This seems to bring in an
other sort of godfathers and
godmothers, besides those
made use of in baptism ; and
we see no need either of the
one or the other.

This supposeth that all the
children who are brought to
be confirmed have the Spirit
of Christ, and the forgiveness
of aU their sins; whereas a
great number of children at
that age, having committed

many sins since their baptism,
do show DO evidence of serious repentance, or of any special
saving grace ; and therefore this confirmation (if administered
to such) would be a perUous and gross abuse.

1661. J

Book of Common Prayer.

139

Rubric before the Imposition
of Hands.
Then the bishop shall This seems to put a higher
lay his hand on every value upon confirmation than
child severally. upon baptism or the Lord's
supper; for according to the
rubric and order in the
Common Prayer book, every deacon may baptize, and every
mimster may consecrate and administer the Lord's supper,
but the bishop only may confirm.

The Prayer after Imposition
of Hands.
We make our humble
supplications unto thee
for these children ; upon
whom, after the example
of thy holy apostles, we
have laid our hands, to
certify them, by this sign,
of thy favour and gracious
goodness towards them.

We desire that the prac
tice of the apostles may not
he alleged as a ground of
this imposition of hands for
the confirmation of children,
both because the apostles did
never use it in that case, as
also because the Articles of
the Church of England de
clare it to be a " corrupt imi
tation of the apostles' prac
tice," Acts xxv.
We desire that imposition of hands may not be made, as
here it is, a sign to certify children of God's grace and
favour towards them; because this seems to speak it a
sacrament, and is contrary to that fore-mentioned 35th
Article, which saith, that "confirmation hath no visible sign
appointed by God."

The last Rubric after Con
firmation.
None shall be admitted
to the holy communion,

We desire that confirma
tion may not be made so ne-

140

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

until such time as he can
say the Catechism, and
be conflrmed.

cessary to the holy commu
nion, as that none should be
admitted to it unless they be
confirmed.

OF THE FORM OF SOLEMNIZATION OF MATRIMONY.

The man shall give the
woman a ring, &c. 
shall surely perform and
keep the vow and cove
nant betwixt them made,
whereof this ring given
and received is a token
and pledge, &c.

The man shall
With my body I
worship.

say,
thee

In the name of the Fa
ther, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Ghost,

Seeing this ceremony of
the ring in marriage is made
necessary to it, and a signifi
cant sign of the vow and cove
nant betwixt the parties; and
Romish ritualists give such
reasons for the use and insti
tution of the ring, as are
either frivolous or supersti-
tibus; it is desired that this
ceremony of the ring in mar
riage may be left indifferent,
to be used or forborne.
This word " worship" being
much altered in the use of it
since this form was first drawn
up, we desire some other word
may be used instead of it.
These words being only
used in baptism, and here in
the solemnization of matri-
monv, and in the absolution

of the sick; we desire it may be considered, whether they
should not be here omitted, lest they should seem to favour
those who count matrimony a sacrament.

Till death us depart.

This word " depart " is here
improperly used.

1661,]

Book of Common Prayer.

141

Rubric.
Then the minister or
clerk going to the Lord's
table, shall say or sing
this psalm. Next Rubric.
The psalm ended, and
the man and the woman
kneeling before the Lord's
table, the priest standing
at the table, and turning
his face, &c.

Exception.
We conceive this change of
place and posture mentioned
in these two rubrics is need
less, and therefore desire it
may be omitted.

Exception.
Seeing the institution of
marriage was before the fall,
and so before the promise of
Christ, as also for that the
said passage in this collect seems to countenance the opinion
of making matrimony a sacrament, we desire that clause may
be altered or omitted.

Collect.
Consecrated the state
of matrimony to such an
excellent mystery.

Rubric.
Then shall begin the
communion, and after
the Gospel shall he said
a sermon, &c.
Last Rubric.
The new married per
sons the same day of their
marriage must receive
the holy communion.

Exception.
This rubric doth either
enforce all such as are unfit
for the sacrament to forbear
marriage, contrary to Scrip
ture, which approves the mar
riage of aU men ; or else com
pels aU that marry to come
to the Lord's table, though
never so unprepared : and
therefore we desire it may be
omitted, the rather because
that marriage festivals are too

143

The Exceptions against the

[1661.

often accompanied with such divertisements as are unsuitable
to those Christian duties, which ought to he before and foUow
after the receiving of that holy sacrament.
OF THE ORDER FOR THE VISITATION OF THE SICK.

Rubric before Absolution.
Here shall the sick
person make a special
confession, &c,, after
which confession the
priest shall absolve him
after this sort : Our Lord
Jesus Christ, &c,, and
by his authority com
mitted to me, I absolve
thee.

Exception.
Forasmuch as the condi
tions of sick persons be very
various and different, the min
ister may not only in the ex
hortation, but in the prayer
also be directed to apply
himself to the particular con
dition of the person, as he
shall find most suitable to the
present occasion, with due
regard had both to his spirit

ual condition and bodily weak
ness; and that the absolution may only be recommended to
the minister to be used or Omitted as he shall see occasion.
That the form of absolution be declarative and conditional,
as, "I pronounce thee absolved" — instead of, "I absolve
thee" — "if thou dost truly repent and beUeve."
OF THE COMMUNION OF THE SICK.

Rubric.
But if the sick person
be not able to come to the
church, and yet is desirous
to receive the communion
in his house, then he must
give knowledge over
night, or else early in
the morning, to the cu
rate : and having a con-

Consider, that many sick
persons, either by their igno
rance or vicious life, without
any evident manifestation of
repentance, or by the nature
of the disease disturbing their
intellectuals, he unfit for re
ceiving the sacrament. It is
proposed, that the minister
be not enjoined to administer

1661. J

Book of Common Prayer.

143

venient place in the sick
man's house, he shall
there administer the holy
communion.

the sacrament to every sick
person that shall desire it,
but only as he shaU judge ex
pedient.

OF THE ORDER FOR THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.
We desire it may be expressed in a rubric, that the
prayers and exhortations here used are not for the benefit of
the dead, but only for the instruction and comfort of the
living.

First Rubric.
The priest meeting the
corpse at the church-stile,
shall say, or else the priest
and clerk shall sing, &c.

We desire that ministers
may be left to use their dis
cretion in these circumstances,
and to perform the whole ser
vice in the church, if they
think fit, for the preventing of those inconveniences which
many times both ministers and people are exposed unto by
standing in the open air.
The second Rubric.
When they come to the
grave, the priest shall say,
&c.

These words cannot in tmth
be said of persons living and
dying in open and notorious
sins.

Eorasmuch as it hath
pleased Almighty God, of
his great mercy to take
imto himself the soul of
our dear brother here de
parted; we therefore commit his body to the ground
in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal
life.

144

TTie Exceptions against the

[1661.

These words may harden
the wicked, and are incon
sistent with the largest ra
tional charity.

The first Prayer.
We give thee heairty
thanks for that it hath
pleased thee to deliver
this our brother out of
the miseries of this sin
ful world, &c.
That we, with this our brother, and all other de
parted in the true faith of thy holy Name, may
have our perfect consummation and bliss.
The last Prayer.

That when we depart
this life, we may rest in
him, as our hope is this
our brother doth.

These words cannot be used
with respect to those persons
who have not by their actual
repentance given any ground
for the hope of their blessed
estate.

OF THE THANKSGIVING OP WOMEN AFTER CHILD-BIRTH,
COMMONLY CALLED CHURCHING OF WOMEN.

Rubric.
The woman shall come
unto the church, and
there shall kneel down
in some convenient place
nigh unto the place where
the table stands, and the
priest standing by her
shall say, &c.
Rubric.
Then the priest shall
say this Psalm cxxi.

In regard that the women's
kneeling near the table is in
many churches inconvenient,
we desire that these words
may be left out, and that the
minister may perform that
service either in the desk or
pulpit. Exception.
This Psalm seems not to be
so pertinent as some other,
viz., as Psalm cxiii, and
Psalm ex xviii.

1661.]

Bo6k of Common Prayer.

145

O Lord, save this wo
man thy servant.
Ans. Which putteth
her trust in thee.

Last Rubric.
The woman that comes
to give thanks, must offer
the accustomed offerings.
The same Rubric.
And if there be a com
munion, it is convenient
that she receive the holy
communion.

It may fall out that a wo
man may come to give thanks
for a child born in adultery or
fornication, and therefore we
desire that something may be
required of her by way of pro
fession of her humiliation, as
well as of her thanksgiving.

This may seem too like a
Jewish purification, rather
than a Christian thanksgiving.

We desire this may be inter
preted of the duly qualified;
for a scandalous sinner may
come to make thi^ thanks
giving.

Thus have we in aU humble pursuance of his majesty's
most gracious endeavours for the public weal of this church,
drawn up our thoughts and desires in this weighty affair,
which we humbly offer to his majesty's commissioners for
their serious and grave consideration; wherein we have not
the least thought of depraving or reproaching the Book of
Common Prayer, but a sincere desire to contribute our endea
vours towards the healing the distempers, and (as soon as
may be) reconciling the minds of brethren. And inasmuch as
his majesty hath in his gracious Declaration and Commission
mentioned new forms to be made and suited to the several
parts of worship; we have made a considerable progress
therein, and shaU (by God's assistance) offer them to the
reverend commissioners with aU convenient speed. And if
the Lord shall graciously please to give a blessing to these

146 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
our endeavours, we doubt not but the peace of the church
will be thereby settled, the hearts of ministers and people
comforted and composed, and the great mercy of unity and
stability (to the immortal honour of our most dear sove
reign) bestowed npon us and our posterity after us.

XVI,
The Answer of the Bishops to the Exceptions of the Ministers.
— CardweU's History of Conferences, Oxford, 1849,
pp. 335~— 63.
1. Before we eome to the proposals it will be perhaps
necessary to say a word or two to the preface, wherein they
begin with a thankful acknowledgment of his majesty's most
princely condescension ; to which we shaU only say, that we
conceive the most real expression of their thankfulness had
been a hearty compliance with his ma***' earnest and pas
sionate request for the use of the present Uturgy, at least
so much of it as they acknowledge by these papers to be
lawful : how far they have in this expressed their thankful
ness the world sees, we need not say.
2. It can be no just cause of offence to mind them of their
duty, as they do us of ours, telling us it is our duty to imitate
the apostles' practice in a special manner, to be tender of the
church's peace, and to advise of such expedients, as may
conduce to the healing of breaches, and uniting those that
differ. For preserving of the church's peace we know no
better nor more efficacious way than our set liturgy ; there
being no such way to keep us from schism, as to speak all the
same thing according to the apostle.
3. This experience of former and latter times hath taught
us; when the liturgy was duly observed we lived in peace;
since that was laid aside there have been as many modes

1661. J to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 147
and fashions of public worship, as fancies. We have had
continual dissensions, which variety of services must needs
produce, whUst everyone naturally desires and endeavours
not only to maintain, but to prefer his own way before all
others; whence we coijceive there is no such way to the
preservation of peace, as for aU to return to the strict use
and practice of the form,
4. And the best expedients to unite us to that again, and
so to peace, are, besides our prayers to the God of peace,
to make us all of one mind in a house, to labour to get true
humility, which would make us think our guides wiser and
fitter to order us than, we ourselves, and Christian charity,
which would teach us to think no evil of our superiors, but to
judge them rather careful guides and fathers to us; which
being obtained, nothing can be imagined justly to hinder us
from a ready compliance to this method of service appointed
by them, and so live in unity.
5, If it be objected that the liturgy is in any way sinful
and unlawful for us to join with, it is but reason that this
be first proved evidently before anything be altered; it is
no argument to say that multitudes of sober pious per
sons scruple the use of it, unless it be made to appear
by evident reasons that the liturgy gave the just grounds
to make such scruples. For if the bare pretence of scruples
be sufficient to exempt us from obedience, all law and order
is gone.
6. On the contrary, we judge that if the liturgy should be
altered, as is there required, not only a multitude, but the
generality of the soberest and most loyal children of the
Church of England would justly be offended, since such an
alteration would be a virtual confession that this liturgy were
an intolerable burden to tender consciences, a direct cause
of schism, a superstitious usage (upon which pretences it
is here desired to be altered) ; which would at once both
justify all those which have so obstinately separated from it,
as the only pious tender-conscienced men, and condemn all
those that have adhered to that, in conscience of their duty
L 2

148 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
and loyalty, with their loss or hazard of estates, lives, and
fortunes, as men superstitious, schismatical, and void of
religion and conscience. For this reason and those that
follow, we cannot consent to such an alteration as is desired,
till these pretences be proved ; which we conceive in no wise
to be done in these papers, and shall give reasons for this
our judgment.
Prop. 1. § 1. To the first general proposal we answer.
That as to that part of it which requires that the matter of
the liturgy may not be private opinion or fancy, that being
the way to perpetuate schism ; the church hath been careful
to put nothing into the liturgy, but that which is either
evidently the Word of God, or what hath been generaUy
received in the catholic church : neither of which can be
called private opinion, and if the contrary can be proved, we
wish it out of the liturgy.
§ 3. We heartily desire that, according to this proposal,
great care may he taken to suppress those private con-
, ceptions of prayers before and after sermon, lest private
opinions be made the matter of prayer in pubUc, as hath and
will be, if private persons take liberty to make pubUc prayers.
§ 3. To that part of the proposal that the prayers may
consist of nothing doubtful or questioned by pious, learned,
and orthodox persons, they not determining who be those
orthodox persons ; we must either take aU them for orthodox
persons, who shall confidently affirm themselves to be such,
and then we say first, the demand is unreasonable; for some
such as call themselves orthodox have questioned the prime'
article of our Creed, even the Divinity of the Son of God,
and yet there is no reason we should part with our Creed for
that. Besides, the proposal requires impossibility ; for there
never was, nor is, nor can be such prayers made, as have not
been, nor will be questioned by some who call themselves
pious, learned, and orthodox. If by orthodox be meant
those who adhere to Scripture and the catholic consent of
antiquity, we do not yet know that any part of our liturgy
hath been questioned by such.

1661.J to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 149
§ 4. To those generals "loading public forms with church
pomp, garments, imagery, and many superfluities that creep
into the church under the name of order and decency, in
cumbering churches with superfluities, over rigid reviving of
obsolete customs, &c.," we say that if these generals be
intended as applicable to our Uturgy in particular, they
are gross and foul slanders, contrary to their profession,
(page ult.) and so either that or this contrary to their con
science; if not, they signify nothing to the present business,
and so might with more prudence and candour have been
omitted. Prop. 3. It was the wisdom of our reformers to draw up
such a liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could justly
except against ; and therefore as the first never charged it
with any positive errors, but only the want of something
they conceived necessary, so it was never found fault with
by those to whom the name of protestants most properly
belongs, those that profess the Augustan confession : and
for those who unlawfully and sinfully brought it into dislike
with some people, to urge the present state of affairs as an
argument why the book should be altered, to give them
satisfaction, and so thart they should take advantage by their
own unwarrantable acts, is not reasonable.
Prop. 3, 4. The 3rd and 4th proposals may go together,
the demand in both being against responsals and alternate
readings, in hymns and psalms and litany, &c., and that
upon such reason as doth in truth enforce the necessity of
continuing them as they are, namely for edificatipn. They
would take these away, because they do not edify ; and v.pon
that very reason they should continue, because they do edify,
if not by informing of our reasons and understandings (the
prayers and hymns were never made for a catechism), yet by
quickening, continuing, and uniting our devotion, which is apt
to freeze or sleep, or flat in a long continued prayer or form :
it is necessary therefore for the edifying of us therein to be
often called upon and awakened by frequent Amens, to be
excited and stirred up by mutual exultations, provocations.

150 - The Answer of the Bishops [1661 .
petitions, holy contentions and strivings, which shall most
shew his own, and stir up others' zeal to the glory of God.
For this purpose alternate reading, repetitions, and responsals
are far better than a long tedious prayer. Nor is this our
opinion only, but the judgment of former ages, as appears by
the practice of ancient Christian churches, and of the Jews
also: (Socrat. 1. vi, c. 8 ; Theodor. 1. ii, c. 34 ; 3. Chron. vii, 1, 4;
Ezra iii, 11.) But it seems, they say, to be against the
Scripture, wherein the minister is appointed for the people in
public prayers, the people's part being to attend with sUence,
and to declare their assent in the close by saying Amen :
if they mean that the people in public services must only
say this word Amen, as they can no where prove it in the
Scriptures, so it doth certainly seem to them that it cannot
be proved ; for they directly practise the contrary in one
of their principal parts of worship, singing of psalms, where
the people bear as great a part as the minister. If this
way be done in Hopkins', why not in David's Psalms; if
in metre, why not in prose; if in a psalm, why not in a
litany ?
Prop. 5. § 1. It is desired that nothing should be in the
liturgy which so much as seems to countenance the observa
tion of Lent as a religious fast ; and this as an expedient to
peace ; which is in effect to desire that this our church may
be contentious for peace sake, and to divide from the church
catholic, that we may live at unity among ourselves. For
St. Paul reckons them amongst the lovers of contention, who
shall oppose themselves against the customs of the churches
of God. That the religious observation of Lent was a custom
of the churches of God, appears by the testimonies foUowing.
Chrys. Serm. xi, in Heb. x, CyriU. Catec. Myst. 5, St. Aug.
Ep. 119. ut 40 dies ante Pascha observentur, ecclesia con-
suetudo roboravit. And St. Hierom ad Marcel, says it was
secundum traditionem apostolorum: this demand then tends
not to peace but dissension. The fasting forty days may be
in imitation of our Saviour for all that is here said to the
contrary; for though we cannot arrive to his perfection, ab-

1661.] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 151
staining wholly from meat so long, yet we may fast 40 days
together, either Cornelius' fast, tiU 3 of the clock afternoon,
or St. Peter's fast till noon, or at least Daniel's fast, abstain
ing from meats and drinks of delight, and thus far imitate our
Lord. § 3. Nor does the act of parliament 5 Eliz. forbid it ; we
dare not think a parliament did intend to forbid that which
Christ's church hath commanded. Nor does the act deter
mine anything about Lent fast, but only provide for the
maintenance of the navy, and of fishing in order thereunto,
as is plain by the act. Besides we conceive that we must
not so interpret one act as to contradict another, being still
in force and unrepealed. Now the act of 1 Eliz. confirms the
whole liturgy, and in that the religious keeping of Lent,
with a severe penalty upon those who shall by open words
speak any thing in derogation of any part thereof: and
therefore that other act of 5 Eliz. must not be interpreted
to forbid the reUgious keeping of Lent,
Prop. 6. The observation of saints' days is not as of
divine but ecclesiastical institution, and therefore it is not
necessary that they should have any other ground in Scrip
ture than all other institutions of the same nature, so that
they be agreeable to the Scripture in the general end, for the
promoting piety. And the observation of them was an
cient, as appears by the rituals and liturgies, and by the joint
consent of antiquity, and by the ancient translation of the
Bible, as the Syriac and Ethiopic, where the lessons ap
pointed for holydays are noted and set down ; the former of
which was made near the apostles' times. Besides our Saviour
himself kept a feast of the church's institution, viz. the feast
of the dedication (St. John x, 33). The chief end of these
days being not feasting, but the exercise of holy duties,
they are fitter called holydays than festivals: and though
they be all of like nature, it doth not follow that they are
equal. The people may be dispensed with for their work
after the service, as authority pleaseth. The other names
are left in the calendar, not that they should be so kept

153 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
as holydays, but they are useful for the preservation of
their memories, and for other reasons, as for leases, law-
days, &c.
Prop. 7. § 1. This makes all the liturgy void, if every min
ister may put in and leave out at his discretion.
§ 3. The gift or rather spirit of prayer consists in the
inward graces of the spirit, not in extempore expressions,
which any man of natural parts, having a voluble tongue
and audacity, may attain to without any special gift.
§ 3. But if there be any such gift, as is pretended, it is to
be subject to the prophets and to the order of the church.
§ 4. The mischiefs that come by idle, impertinent, ridi
culous, sometimes seditious, impious, and blasphemous ex
pressions, under pretence of the gift, to the dishonour of God
and scorn of religion, being far greater than the pretended
good of exercising the gift, it is fit that they who desire
such liberty in public devotions, should first give the church
security, that no private opinions should be put into their
prayers, as is desired in the first proposal ; and that nothing
contrary to the faith should be uttered before God, or offered
up to him in the church.
§ 5, To prevent which mischief the former ages knew no
better way than to forbid any prayers in public, but such as
were prescribed by public authority. Con. Carthag. Can. 106,
Milev. Can. 13.^
Prop. 9. As they would have no saints' days observed by
the church, so no apocryphal chapter read in the church,
but upon such a reason as would exclude aU sermons as weU
as apocrypha; viz. because the holy Scriptures contain in
them all things necessary, either in doctrine to be believed,
or in duty to be practised. If so, why so many unnecessary
sermons ? why any more but reading of Scriptures? If not
withstanding their sufficiency sermons be necessary, there is
no reason why these apocryphal chapters should not be as
useful, most of them containing exceUent discourses, and rules
of morality. It is heartily to be wished that sermons were as
good. If their fear be that, by this mean, those books may

1661.] to the Exception of the Ministers. 153
come to be of equal esteem with the canon, they may be
secured against that by the title which the church hath put
upon them, caUing them apocryphal : and it is the church's
testimony which teacheth us this difference, and to leave
them out were to cross the practice of the church in former
ages. Prop, 10. That the minister should not read the com
munion service at the communion table, is not reasonable
to demand, since all the primitive church used it, and if we
do not observe that golden rule of the venerable council of
Nice, " Let ancient customs prevail, till reason plainly
requires the contrary," we shall give offence to sober Chris
tians by a causeless departure from catholic usage, and a
greater advantage to enemies of our church, than our bre
thren, I hope, would willingly grant. The priest standing at
the communion table seemeth to give us an invitation to the
holy sacrament, and minds us of our duty, viz. to receive
the holy communion, some at least every Sunday ; and though
we neglect our duty, it is fit the church should keep her
standing. Prop, 11. It is not reasonable that the word minister
should he only used in the liturgy. For since some parts
of the liturgy may be performed by a deacon, others by none
under the order of a priest, viz. absolution, consecration, it
is fit that some such word as priest should be used for those
officers, and not minister, which signifies at large every one
that ministers in that holy office, of what order soever he be;
the word curate signifying properly aU those who are trusted
by the bishops with cure of souls, as anciently it signified, is
a very fit word to be used, and can offend no sober person.
The word Sunday is ancient, (Just. Mart. Ap. 3,) and there
fore not to be left off.
Prop. 13. Singing of psalms in metre is no part of the
liturgy, and so no part of our commission.
Prop. 15. "The phrase is such, &c." The church in her
prayers useth no more offensive phrase than St. Paul uses,
when he writes to the Corinthians, Galatians, and others.

154 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
calling them in general the churches of God, sanctified in
Christ Jesus, by vocation saints, amongst whom notwith
standing there were many, who by their known sins (which
the apostle endeavoured to amend in them) were not properly
such, yet he gives the denomination to the whole from the
greater part, to whom in charity it was due, and puts the
rest in mind what they have by their baptism undertaken
to be, and what they profess themselves to he; and our
prayers and the phrase of them surely supposes no more than
that they are saints by calUng, sanctified in Christ Jesus, by
their baptism admitted into Christ's congregation, and so
to be reckoned members of that society, tUl either they shaU
separate themselves by wUful schism, or be separated by
legal excommunication ; which they seem earnestly to desire,
and so do we.
Prop. 16. § 1. The connection of the parts of our liturgy
is conformable to the example of the churches of God before
us, and have as much dependence as is usuaUy to be seen in
many petitions of the same psalm; and we conceive the
order and method to be exceUent, and must do so, till they
tell us what that order is which prayers ought to have, which
is not done here.
§ 3, The coUects are made short as being best for devo
tion, as we observed before, and cannot be accounted faulty
for being like those short but prevalent prayers in Scripture :
" Lord, be merciful to me a sinner :" " Son of David, have
mercy on us :" " Lord, increase our faith,"
§ 3, Why the repeated mention of the name and attributes
of God should not be most pleasing to any godly person, we
cannot imagine ; or what burden it should seem, when David
magnified one attribute of God's mercy twenty-six times
together, (Psa. cxxxvi.) Nor can we conceive why the name
and merits of Jesus "with which all our prayers should end,
should not be as sweet to us as to former saints and martyrs,
with which here they complain our prayers do so frequently
end. Since the attributes of God are the ground of our hope
of obtaining aU our petitions, such prefaces of prayers as are

1661.] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 155
taken from them, though they have no special respect to the
petitions following, are not to be termed unsuitable, or said
to have faUen rather casually than orderly.
Prop. 17. § 1. Exc. 1. There are besides a preparative
exhortation several preparatory prayers: "Despise not, O Lord,
humble and contrite hearts;" which is one of the sentences in
the preface : and this ; " That those things may please him,
which we do at this present ;" at the end of the Absolution.
And again immediately after the Lord's prayer before the
psalmody : " O Lord, open thou ojir lips, &c."
§ 3. Exc. 2. This which they call a defect, others think
they have reason to account the perfection of the liturgy,
the offices of which being intended for common and general
services, would cease to be such by descending to particulars,
as in confession of sin ; whUe it is general, all persons may
and must join in it, since in many things we offend all. But
if there he a particular enumeration of sins, it cannot be so
general a confession, because it may happen that some or
other may by God's grace have been preserved from some of
those sins enumerated, and therefore should by confessing
themselves guUty, teU God a lie ; which needs a new con
fession, § 3. As for original sin, though we think it an evil custom
springing from false doctrine, to use any such expressions as
may lead people to think that to the persons baptized (in
whose persons only our prayers are offered up) original sin is
not forgiven in their holy baptism ; yet for that there remains
in the regenerate some relics of that which are to be bewailed,
the church in her confession acknowledgeth such desires of
our own hearts as render us miserable by following them:
that there is no health in us : that without God's help our
frailty cannot but fall : that our mortal nature can do no
good thing without him : which is a clear acknowledgment of
original sin.
§ 4. Exc. 3. We know not what public prayers are
wanting, nor do they tell us; the usual complaint hath
been, that there were too many. Neither do we conceive any

156 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
want of public thanksgivings : there being in the Uturgy
Te Deum, Benedictus, Magnificat, Benedicite, Glory be to
God on high, Therefore with Angels and Archangels, The
doxology, Glory be to the Father, &c., all peculiar, as they
require, to gospel worship, and fit to express our thanks and
honour to God upon every particular occasion ; and occasional
thanksgivings after the litany, of the frequency whereof
themselves elsewhere complain, who here complain of de
fect. If there be any forms wanting, the church wUl
provide, § 5. Exc. 4. They complain that the liturgy contains too
many generals, without mention of the particulars ; and the
instances are such petitions as these : That we may do God's
will : to be kept from all evil : almost the very terms of
the petitions of the Lord's Prayer : so that they must reform
that, before they can pretend to mend our liturgy in these
petitions. § 6, Exc. 5. We have deferred this to the proper place,
as you might have done.
Prop. 18. § 1, We are now come to the main and prin
cipal demand as is pretended, viz., the abolishing the laws
which impose any ceremonies, especially three — the surplice,
the sign of the cross, and kneeling. These are the yoke,
which, if removed, there might be peace. It is to be sus
pected, and there is reason for it from their own words,
that somewhat else pinches, and that if these ceremonies
were laid aside, and these, or any other prayers, strictly
enjoined without them, it would be deemed a burden
intolerable : it seems so, by No. 7, where they desire that
when the liturgy is altered, according to the rest of their
proposals, the minister may have liberty to add and leave
out what he pleases. Yet because the imposition of these
ceremonies is pretended to be the insupportable grievance,
we must of necessity either yield that demand, or shew
reason why we do not ; and that we may proceed the better
in this undertaking, we shall reduce the sum of their com
plaint to these several heads, as we find them in their papers.

1661. J to the Exceptions of the Ministers, 157
The law for imposing these ceremonies they would have
abrogated for these reasons : —
1. § 2. It is doubtful whether God hath given power
to men to impose such signified signs, which though they caU
them significant, yet have in them no real goodness, in the
judgment of the imposers themselves, being called by them
things indifferent ; and therefore fall not under St. Paul's
rule of omnia decenter, nor are suitable to the siniplicity
of the Gospel worship,
3, § 3. Because it is a violation of the royalty of Christ,
and an impeachment of his laws as insufficient, and so those
that are under the law of Deut. xii, " Whatsoever I command
you, observe to do ; you shall take nothing from it, nor add
anything to it ; " you do not observe these.
3. § 4. Because sundry learned, pious, and orthodox
men have, ever since the reformation, judged them unwar
rantable; and we ought to be, as our Lord was, tender of
weak brethren, not to offend his little ones, nor to lay a
stumblingblock before a weak brother.
4. § 5. Because these ceremonies have been the fountain
of many evUs in this church and nation, occasioning sad
divisions betwixt minister and minister, betwixt minister and
people, exposing many orthodox preachers to the displeasure
of rulers. And no other fruits than these can be looked for
from the retaining these ceremonies.
§ 6. Rule 1. Before we give particular answer to these
several reasons, it will not be unnecessary to lay down some
certain general premises or rules, which will be useful in our
whole discourse. 1. That God hath not given a power only,
but a command also, of imposing whatsoever should be truly
decent and becoming his public service (1 Cor. xiv). After
St. Paul had ordered some particular rules for praying,
praising, prophesying, etc., he concludes with this general
canon. Let aU things be done iva-)(/i(ijOiioi)g, in a fit scheme,
habit, or fashion, decently ; and that there may be uniformity
in those decent performances, let there be a Tci^ig, rule or
canon, for that purpose.

158 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
§ 7, Rule 3, Not inferiors but superiors must judge what
is convenient and decent. They who must order that all be
done decently, must of necessity first judge what is convenient
and decent to be ordered.
§ 8. Rule 3. These rules and canons for decency made and
urged by superiors are to he obeyed by inferiors, tUl it be
made as clear that now they are not bound to obey, as it is
evident in general, that they ought to obey superiors. For if
the exemption from obedience be not as evident as the com
mand to obey, it must needs be sin not to obey.
§ 9. Rule 4. Pretence of conscience is no exemption from
obedience, for the law, as long as it is a law, certainly binds
to obedience. (Rom. xiii.) " Ye must needs be subject." And
this pretence of a tender gainsaying conscience cannot
abrogate the law, since it can neither take away the authority
of the law-maker, nor make the matter of the law in itself
unlawful. Besides, if pretence of conscience did exempt from
obedience, laws were useless ; whosoever had not list to obey,
might pretend tenderness of conscience, and be thereby set at
liberty; which if once granted, anarchy and confusion must
needs follow.
§ 10. Rule 5. Though charity will move to pity, and relieve
those that are truly perplexed or scrupulous, yet we must
not break God's command, in charity to them ; and therefore
we must not perform public services undecently or disorderly
for the ease of tender consciences.
§ 11. Ans. 1. These premised, we answer to your first
reason, that those things which we caU indifferent, because
neither expressly commanded nor forbidden by God, have in
them a real goodness, a fitness and decency, and for that
cause are imposed, and may be so by the rule of St. Paul
(1 Cor. xiv), by which rule, and many others in Scripture, a
power is given to men to impose signs, which are never the
worse, surely, because they signify something that is decent
and comely : and so it is not doubtful whether such power be
given. It would rather be doubtful whether the church could
impose such idle signs, if any such there be, as signify nothing.

1661. J to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 159
§ 13. Ans. 2. To the second, that it is not a violation of
Christ's royalty to make such laws for decency, but an exercise
of his power and authority, which he hath given to the
church ; and the disobedience to such commands of superiors
is plainly a violation of his royalty : as it is no violation of
the king's authority, when his magistrates command things
according to his laws ; hut disobedience to the command of
those injunctions of his deputies, is violation of his authority.
Again, it can be no impeachment of Christ's laws as insuffi
cient, to make such laws for decency, since our Saviour, as is
evident from the precepts themselves, did not intend by them
to determine every minute and circumstance of time, place,
manner of performance, and the like, but only to command
in general the substance of those duties, and the right ends
that should be aimed at in the performance, and then left
every man in particular (whom for that purpose he made
reasonable) to guide himself by rules of reason, for private
services ; and appointed governors of the church to determine
such particularities for the public. Thus our Lord com
manded prayers, fasting, etc. : for the times and places of
performance, he did not determine every of them, but left
them to be guided as we have said. So that it is no impeach
ment of his laws as insufficient, to make laws for determining
those particulars of decency, which himself did not, as is
plain by his precepts, intend to determine, but left us
governors for that purpose ; to whom he said, " As my Father
sent me, even so send I you ;" and " Let all things be done
decently and in order : " of whom he hath said to us, " Obey
those that have the oversight over you : " and told us that
if we will not hear his church, we must not be accounted as
Christians, but heathens and publicans. And yet nevertheless
they wiU not hear it and obey it in so small a matter as a
circumstance of time, place, habit, or the like, which she
thinks decent and fit, and yet will be accounted for the best
Christians, and tell us that it is the very awe of God's law
(Deut. xii, 32) that keeps them from obedience to the
church in these commands; not weU considering that it

160 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
cannot be any adding to the word of God, to command things
for order and decency which the word of God commands to
be done, so as they be not commanded as God's immediate
word, but as the laws of men; but that it is undeniably
adding to the Word of God to say that superiors may not
command such things, which God hath no where forbidden,
and taking from the Word of God to deny that power to men
which God's word hath given them.
§ 13. Ans. 3. The command for decent ceremonies may
still continue in the church notwithstanding the xii of Deut.,
and so it may too for aU the exceptions taken against them
by sundry learned, pious, and orthodox persons, who have
judged them, they say, unwarrantably. And if laws may be
abrogated as soon as those that list not to obey wUl except
against them, the world must run into confusion. But those
that except are weak brethren, whom, by Christ's precept and
example, we must not offend. If by weak we understand
ignorant, they would take it iU to be so accounted ; and it is
their own fault if they be, there having been much written as
may satisfy any that have a mind to be satisfied. And as
king James of blessed memory said at Hampton Court,
"If after so many years preaching of the Gospel, there he any
yet unsatisfied, I doubt it proceeds rather out of stubborn
ness of opinion than out of tenderness of conscience," If by
tenderness of conscience they mean a fearf ulness to sin, this
would make them most easy to be satisfied, because most
fearful to disobey superiors. But suppose there be any so
scrupulous, as not satisfied with what hath been written, the
church may stiU without sin urge her command for these
decent ceremonies, and not be guilty of offending her weak
brother ; for since the scandal is taken by him, not given by
her, it is he that by vain scrupulosity offends himself and
lays the stumblingblock in his own way.
§ 14. The case of St. Paul, not eating of flesh, if it offende'd
his brother, is nothing to the purpose ; who there speaks of
things not commanded either by God or by his church,
neither having in them anything of decency, or significancy

1661,] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 161
to serve in the church, St. Paul would deny himself his
own liberty, rather than offend his brother ; but if any man
breaks a just law or custom of the church, he brands him for
a lover of schism and sedition, 1 Cor. xi, 16.
§ 15. Ans. 4, That these ceremonies have occasioned many
divisions is no more fault of theirs, than it was of the gospel
that the preaching of it occasioned strife betwixt father and
son, &c. The true cause of. those divisions is the cause of
ours, which St. James teUs us is lust, and inordinate desires
of honours or wealth, or licentiousness, or the like. Were
these ceremonies laid aside, there would be the same divisions,
if some who think Moses and Aaron took too much upon
them, may be suffered to deceive the people, and to raise in
them vain fears and jealousies of their governors; but if all
men would, as they ought, study peace and quietness, they
would find other and better fruits of these laws of rites and
ceremonies, as edification, decency, order, and beauty, in the
service and worship of God.
§ 16. There hath been so much said not only of the
lawfulness, but also of the conveniency of those ceremonies
mentioned, that nothing can be added. This in brief may
here suffice for the surplice; that reasoh and experience
teach that decent ornaments and habits preserve reverence,
and are held therefore necessary to the solemnity of royal
acts, and -acts of justice, and why not as well to the solemnity
of religious worship. And in particular no habit more suit
able than white linen, which resembles purity and beauty,
wherein angels have appeared, (Rev. xv,) fit for those, whom
the Scripture calls angels : and this habit was ancient.
Chrys. Hom. 60, ad Antioch.
§ 17. The cross was always used in the church in immor-
tali lavacro, (TertuU.) and therefore to testify our communion
with them, as we are taught to do in our creed, as also in
token that we shaU not be ashamed of the cross of Christ, it
is fit to be used stiU, and we conceive cannot trouble the
conscience of any that have a mind to be satisfied.
§ 1 8. The posture of kneeling best suits at the communion M

163 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
as the most convenient, and so most decent for us, when
we are to receive as it were from God's hand the greatest of
seals of the kingdom of heaven. He that thinks he may do
this sitting, let him remember the prophet Malachi. Offer this
to the prince, to receive his seal from his own hand sitting,
see if he will accept of it. When the church did stand at
her prayers, the manner of receiving was more adorantium,
(S. Aug. Ps. xcviU, Cyril. Catech. Mystag. 5.) rather more
than at prayers. Since standing at prayer hath been generaUy
left, and kneeling used instead of that (as the church may
vary in such indifferent things), now to stand at communion,
when we kneel at prayers, were not decent, much less to sit,
which was never the use of the best times.
Prop. 19- That there were ancient liturgies in the church is
evident : S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, and others; and the Greeks
tell us of St, James, much elder than they. And though we
find not in all ages whole liturgies, yet it is certain that there
were such in the oldest times, by those parts which are
extant; as Sursum corda, ^c, Gloria Patri, ^c, Benedicite,
Hymnus Cherubinus, ^c, Vere dignum et justum, ifc, Domi-
nus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo, with divers others.
Though those that are extant may be interpolated, yet such
things as are found in them all consistent to catholic and
primitive doctrine, may weU be presumed to have been from
the first, especially since we find no original of these liturgies
from general councUs.
CONCERNING MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER.
§ 1, Rub, 1, We think it fit that the rubric stand as it is,
and all to' be left to the discretion of the ordinary.
§ 2. Rub. 2. For the reasons given in our answer to the
18th general, whither you refer us, we think it fit that the
rubric continue as it is.
§ 3. Lord's pr. " Deliver us from evil." These words,
" for thine is the kingdom," &c., are not in St. Luke, nor in
the ancient copies of St, Matthew, never mentioned in the

1661.] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 163
ancient comments, nor used in the Latin church, and there
fore questioned whether they be part of the gospel ; there is
no reason that they should be always used.
§ 4. Lord's pr. often used. It is used but twice in the
morning and twice in the evening service ; and twice cannot
be called often, much less so often. For the litany, commu
nion, baptism, &c., they are offices distinct from morning and
evening prayer, and it is not fit that any of them should
want the Lord's prayer,
§ 5. Gloria Patri. This doxology being a solemn confession
of the blessed Trinity, should not be thought a burden to any
Christian Uturgy, especiaUy being so short as it is ; neither is
the repetition of it to be thought a vain repetition, more than
" his mercy endureth for ever," so often repeated, Psa. cxxxvi.
We cannot give God too much glory, that being the end of
our creation, and should be the end of all our services.
§ 6. Rub. 2. " In such places where they do sing,"
&c. The rubric directs only such singing as is after the
manner of distinct reading, and we never heard of any incon
venience thereby, and therefore conceive this demand to be
needless. § 7, Benedicite. This hymn was used all the church over,
(Cone. Tolet. can. 13.) and therefore should be continued'
stiU as well as Te Deum (Ruffin. Apol. cont. Hieron.) or Veni
Creator, which they do not object against as apocryphal,
IN THE LITANY.
§ 1, The alterations here desired are so nice, as if they
that made them were given to change,
§ 2. "From aU other deadly sin," is better than "from
all other heinous sin," upon the reason here given, because
the wages of sin is death,
§ 3. "From sudden death," as good as "from dying
suddenly;" which therefore we pray against, that we may
not be unprepared.
§ 4. "AU that travel," as Uttle Uable to exceptions as
M 3

164 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
"those that travel," and more agreeable to the phrase of
Scripture, (1 Tim. ii, 1,) " I wiU that prayers be made for
all men."
§ 5. " The two collect [s for St. John's day and Innocents',
&c."] We do not find, nor do they say, what is to be amended
in these collects ; therefore to say anything particularly were
to answer to we know not what.
THE COMMUNION SERVICE.
§ 1, Kyries, To say, "Lord, have mercy upon us," after
every commandment is more quick and active than to
say it once at the close; and why Christian people should
not upon their knees ask their pardon for their Hfe forfeited
for the breach of every commandment, and pray for grace
to keep them for the time to come, they must be more than
ignorant that can scruple.
§ 3. HomUies. Some livings are so smaU that they
are not able to maintain a licensed preacher; and in such
and the like cases this provision is necessary. For can any
reason be given, why the minister's reading a homily, set
forth by common authority, should not be accounted preaching
of the word, as weU as his reading (or pronouncing hy heart)
a homily or sermon of his own or any other man's.
§ 3. Sentences. The sentences tend all to exhort the
people to pious liber aUty, whether the object be the minister
or the poor; and though some of the sentences be apocry
phal, they may be useful for that purpose. Why collection
for the poor should be made at another time, there is no
reason given, only change desired.
§ 4. 3 [rd] Exhort, The first and third exhortations are
very seasonable before the communion, to put men in mind
how they ought to be prepared, and in what danger they are
to come unprepared, that if they be not duly qualified, they
may depart, and be better prepared at another time.
§ 5. Exc. 1, " We fear this may discourage many." Cer
tainly themselves cannot desire that men should come to the

1661.J to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 165
holy communion with a troubled conscience, and therefore
have no reason to blame the church for saying, " it is requi
site that men come with a quiet conscience," and prescribing
means for quieting thereof. If this be to discourage men, it
is fit they should be discouraged, and deterred, and kept from
the communion, tUl they have done all that is here directed
by the church, which they may well do, considering that this
exhortation shall be read in the church the Sunday or holy-
day before,
§ 6, [Exc. 3,] Minister's turning. The minister's turning
to the people is not most convenient throughout the whole min-^
istration. When he speaks to them, as in Lessons, Absolution,
and Benedictions, it is convenient that he turn to them.
When he speaks for them to God, it is fit that they should
aU turn another way, as the ancient church ever did :
the reasons of which yon may see, Aug. lib, 3, de ser. Dom.
in monte.
§ 7. Exc. 4. It appears by the greatest evidences of anti
quity, that it was upon the 25th day of December. S, Aug,
in Psal. cxxxii.
§8. [Exc. 5.] " That our sinful bodies," &c. It can no more
be said those words do give greater efficacy to the blood than to
the body of Christ, than when our Lord saith, " This is my blood
which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins,"
etc., and saith not so explicitly of the body.
§ 9. [Exc. 7.] It is most requisite that the minister
deliver the bread and wine into every particular communi
cant's hand, and repeat the words in the singular number ;
for so much as it is the propriety of sacraments to make par
ticular obsignation to each believer, and it is our visible
profession that, by the grace of God, Christ tasted death for
every man.
§ 10. Kneel at sacr, [Exc, 8.] Concerning kneeling at the
sacrament we have given account already ; only thus much we
add, that we conceive it an error to say that the Scripture
affirms the apostles to have received not kneeUng. The
posture of the paschal supper we know ; but the institution

166 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
of the holy sacrament was after supper; and what posture
was then used, the Scripture is sUent. The rubric at the end
of the [first Book of Common Prayer, Edw. VI, 1549,] that
leaves kneeling, crossing, &c., indifferent, is meant only at
such times as they are not prescribed and required. But
at the eucharist kneeling is expressly required in the rubric
following. § II. Com [municate] three times a year. [Exc. 9.]
This desire to have the parishioners at liberty, whether they
will ever receive the communion or not, savours of too much
neglect and coldness of affection towards the holy sacrament.
It is more fitting that order should be taken to bring it into more
frequent use, as it was in the first and best times. Our rubric
is directly according to the ancient CouncU of Eliberis, can. 81,
(Gratian de Consecrat.) No man is to be accounted a good
catholic Christian that does not receive three times in the
year. The distempers which indispose men to it must be
corrected, not the receiving of the sacrament therefore
omitted. It is a pitiful pretence to say they are not fit, and
make their sin their excuse. Formerly our church was
quarrelled at for not compeUing men to the communion ; now
for urging men. How should she please ?
§ 13. This rubric is not in the Uturgy of Queen Elizabeth,
nor confirmed by law ; nor is there any great need of re
storing it, the world being now in more danger of profanation
than of idolatry. Besides, the sense of it is declared suffi
ciently in the 38th Article of the Church of England, The
time appointed we conceive sufficient.
PUBLIC BAPTISM.
§ 1. [Exc. 1.] "Until they have made due profession of
repentance," &c. We think this desire to be very hard and
uncharitable, punishing the poor infants for the parents'
sakes, and giving also too great and arbitrary a power to
the minister to judge which of his parishioners he pleaseth
atheists, infidels, heretics, &c., and then in that name to
reject their children from being baptized. Our church

1661.] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 167
concludes more charitably, that Christ wUl favorably ac
cept every infant to baptism, that is presented by the
church according to our present order. And this she con
cludes out of holy Scriptures (as you may see in the office of
baptism) according to the practice and doctrine of the catholic
church. (Cypr, Ep. 59, August. Ep, 28, et de verb, Apost,
Serm. 14.)
§ 3. [Exc. 3.] The time appointed we conceive sufficient.
§ 3. [Exc. 3.] "And the godfathers," &e. It is an
erroneous doctrine, and the ground of many others, and of
many of your exceptions, that children have no other right to
baptism, than in their parents' right. The church's primitive
practice (S, Aug. Ep. 33) forbids it to be left to the pleasure
of parents, whether there shall be other sureties or no. It is
fit we should observe carefully the practice of venerable anti
quity, as they desire. Prop, 18,
§ 4. [Ex.4.] Thefont usually stands, asitdidinprimitivetimes,
at or near the church door, to signify that baptism was the
entrance into the church mystical ; " we are all baptized into
one body" (1 Cor. xii, 13) ; and the people may hear weU
enough. If Jordan, and aU other waters, be not so far sancti
fied by Christ as to be the matter of baptism, what authority
have we to baptize? And sure his baptism was dedicatio
baptismi. § 5. [Ex. 5.] It hath been accounted reasonable, and allowed
by the best laws, that guardians should covenant and contract
for their minors to their benefit. By the same right the
church hath appointed sureties to undertake for chUdren,
when -^they enter into covenant with God by baptism. And
this general practice of the church is enough to satisfy those
that doubt.
§ 6. " Receive remission of sins by spiritual regeneration."
[Exc. 6.] Most proper, for baptism is our spiritual rege
neration, (St. John iii.) " Unless a man be born again of water
and the Spirit," &c. And by this is received remission of sins,
(Acts ii, 3.) " Repent and be baptized every one of you, for

168 Tfie Answer of the Bishops [1661.
the remission of sins." So the Creed : " One baptism for the
remission of sins."
§ 7. [Exc. 7,] " We cannot in faith say that every chUd that
is baptized is regenerate," &c. Seeing that God's sacraments
have their effects, where the receiver doth not ponere
obicem, put any bar against them (which children cannot
do); we may say in faith of every child that is baptized,
that it is regenerated by God's Holy Spirit; and the denial
of it tends to Anabaptism, and the contempt of this holy
sacrament, as nothing worthy, nor material whether it.be
administered to children or no. Concerning the cross we
refer to our answer to the same in general.
PRIVATE BAPTISM.
"We desire that baptism may not be administered in
a private place;" and so do we, where it may be brought
into the public congregation. But since our Lord hath said,
(St. John iii,) " Unless one be born of water and the Holy
Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven," we
think it fit that they should be baptized in private, rather
than not at all. It is appointed now to be done by the lawful
minister. Nor is any thing done in private, reiterated in public, but
the solemn reception into the congregation, with the prayers
for him, and the public declaration before the congregation,
of the infant, now made by the godfathers, that the whole
congregation may testify against him, if he does not perform
it ; which the ancients made great use of.
OF THE CATECHISM.
§ 1. [Exc. l.J Ans. 3. Though divers have been of late
baptized without godfathers, yet many have been baptized with
them; and those may answer the questions as they are; the
rest must answer according to truth. But there's no reason to
alter the rule of the Catechism for some men's irregidarities.
§ 3. Ans. 2. [" Wherein I was made a member of Christ,

1661. J to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 169
&c."] [Exc. 2.] We conceive this expression as safe as that
which they desire, and more fully expressing the efficacy of
the sacrament, according to St. Paul, the 36 and 37 Gal. ui,
where St. Paul proves them aU to be children of God, because
they were baptized, and in their baptism had put on Christ :
" if children, then heirs," or, which is all one, "inheritors,"
Rom. viii, 17.
§ 3. Ten com[mandments] [Exc. 3.] We conceive the
present translation to be agreeable to many ancient copies :
therefore the change to be needless.
§ 4. " My duty towards God," &c. [Exc. 4.] It is not true
that there is nothing in that answer which refers to the fourth
commandment : for the last words of the answer do orderly
relate to the last commandment of the first table, which is
the fourth.
§ 5. "Two only as generaUy necessary to salvation," &c.
[Exc. 5.] These words are a reason of the answer, that there
are two only, and therefore not to be left out.
§ 6. " We desire that the entering of infants," &c. [Exc. 6.]
The effect of chUdren's baptism depends neither upon their
own present actual faith and repentance (which the Catechism
says expressly they cannot perform,) nor upon the faith and
repentance of their natural parents or pro-parents, or of their
godfathers or godmothers; but upon the ordinance and in
stitution of Christ. But it is requisite that when they come
to age they should perform these conditions of faith and re
pentance, for which also their godfathers and godmothers
charitably undertook on their behalf. And what they do for
the infant in this case, the infant himself is truly said to do,
as in the courts of this kingdom daily the infant does answer
by his guardian : and it is usual for to do homage by proxy, and
for princes to marry by proxy. For the further justification
of this answer, see St. Aug. Ep. 33. ad Bonifac. Nihil
aliud credere, quam fidem habere ; ac per hoc cum responde-
tur parvulum credere, qui fidei nondum habet effectum, re-
spondetur fidem habere propter fidei sacramentum, et con-
vertere se ad Deum propter conversionis sacramentum. Quia

170 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
et ipsa responsio ad celebrationem pertinet sacramenti. Ita-
que parvulum,' etsi nondum fides ilia, qua in credentium
voluntate consistit, tamen ipsius fidei sacramentum, fidelem
facit. § 7. [Exc. 7.] The Catechism is not intended as a whole body
of divinity, but as a comprehension of the articles of faith,
and other doctrines most necessary to salvation; and being
short, is fittest for children and common people, and as it was
thought sufficient upon mature deliberation, and so is by us.
CONFIRMATION.
§ 1. Rub. 1. [Exc. 1.] It is evident that the meaning of these
words is, that children baptized, and dying before they commit
actual sin, are undoubtedly saved, though they be not con
firmed : wherein we see not what danger there can be of
misleading the vulgar by teaching them truth. But there
may he danger in this desire of having these words expunged,
as if they were false ; for St. Austin says he is an infidel that
denies them to be true. Ep. 33, ad Bonifac.
§ 3. " Rub. after the Catechism." [Ex. 3.] " We conceive that
it is not a sufficient qualification," &c. We conceive that this
qualification is required rather as necessary than as sufficient ;
and therefore it is the duty of the minister of the place (can. 61)
to prepare children in the best manner to be presented to the
bishop for confirmation, and to inform the bishop of their
fitness, but submitting the judgment to the bishop, both of
this and other qualifications ; and not that the bishop should
be tied to the minister's consent. Comp. this rub. to the
second rub. before the Catechism, and there is required what
is further necessary and sufficient.
§ 3. [Exc. 3.] " They see no need of godf." Here the com
pilers of the liturgy did, and so doth the church, that there
may be a witness of the confirmation.
§ 4. [Exc. 4.J " This supposeth that aU chUdren," &c. It
supposeth, and that truly, that aU children were at their
baptism regenerate by water, and the Holy Ghost, and had

1661.] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 171
given unto them the forgiveness of all their sins : and it is
charitably presumed that, notwithstanding the frailties and
slips of their childhood, they have not totally lost what was
in baptism conferred upon them ; and therefore adds,
" Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy
Ghost the Comforter, and daily increase in them their
manifold gifts of grace," &c. None that lives in open sin
ought to be confirmed.
§ 5. "Rub. before the imposition of hands." [Exc. 5.]
Confirmation is reserved to the bishop in honorem ordinis,
to bless being an act of authority. So it was of old : St.
Hierom, Dial. adv. Lucifer, says it was totius orbis con
sensu) in hanc partem : and St. Cyprian to the same pur
pose, Ep. 73 ; and our ¦ church doth everywhere profess, as
she ought, to conform to the catholic usages of the primitive
times, from which causelessly to depart argues rather love of
contention than of peace. The reserving of confirmation to
the bishop doth argue the digm'ty of the bishop above pres
byters, who are not allowed to confirm, but does not argue
any exceUency in confirmation above the sacraments. St.
Hierom argues the quite contrary (ad. Lucif. c. 4.): — That
because baptism was allowed to be performed by a deacon,
but confirmation only by a bishop, therefore baptism was
most necessary, and of the greatest value : the mercy of God
allowing the most necessary means of salvation to be admi
nistered by inferior orders, and restraining the less necessary
to the higher, for the honour of their order.
§ 6. [Exc. 6.] Prayer after the imposition of hands is
grounded upon the practice of the apostles (Heb. vi, 3; and
Acts viii, 17;) nor doth 35th article say that confirmation is
a corrupt imitation of the apostles' practice, but that the five
commonly caUed sacraments have ground partly of the corrupt
following the apostles, &c., which may be applied to some other
of these five, but cannot be applied to confirmation, unless
we make the church speak contradictions.
§ 7. [Exc. 7.] We know no harm in speaking the language
of Holy Scripture (Acts viii, 15,) "they laid their hands upon

173 The Answer of the Bishops [1661,
them, and they received the Holy Ghost." And though
imposition of hands be not a sacrament, yet it is a very fit
sign, to certify the persons what is then done for them, as
the prayer speaks,
[§ 8. Last rubric] after confirmation. [Exc. 8.] There
is no inconvenience that confirmation should be required
before the communion, when it may be ordinarUy obtained.
That which you here fault, you elsewhere desire.
[solemnization of matrimony.]
§ 1. [Exc. 1,] Thering is a significant sign, only of human
institution, and was always given as a pledge of fidelity and
constant love : and here is no reason given why it should be
taken away; nor are the reasons mentioned in the Roman
ritualists given in our Common Prayer book.
§ '3, Exc, 3. These words, "in the name of the
Father, Son, - and Holy Ghost," if they seem to make
matrimony a sacrament, may as weU make all sacred, yea
civil, actions of weight to be sacraments, they being usual at
the beginning and ending of all such. It was never heard
before now that those words make a sacrament.
§ 3. [Exc. 5 .] They go to the Lord's table because the com
munion is to follow.
§ 4. Col. " Consecrated the estate of matrimony to such an
excellent mystery," &c. [Exc. 6.] Though the institution of
marriage was before the fall, yet it may be now, and is, conse
crated by God to such an exeeUent mystery as the representation
of the spiritual marriage between Christ and his church (Eph.
V, 33.) We are sorry that the words of Scripture will not
please. The church, in the 35th article, hath taken away
the fear of making it a sacrament.
§ 5. Rub. "The new married persons the same day of their
marriage must receive the holy communion." [Exc. 7.] This
inforces none to forbear marriage, but presumes (as well it
may) that all persons marriageable ought to be also fit to
receive the holy sacrament; and marriage being so solemn
a covenant of God, they that undertake it in the fear of God

1661.] to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 173
wiU not stick to seal it by receiving the holy communion, and
accordingly prepare themselves for it. It were more Christian
to desire that those licentious festivities might be suppressed,
and the communion more generaUy used by those that marry :
the happiness would be greater than can easily be expressed,
Unde sufficiamus ad enarrandam felicitatem ejus matrimonii,
quod ecclesia conciliat, et confirmat oblatio. TertuU, lib. 3,
ad uxorem. VISITATION OF THE SICK.
§ 1. "Forasmuch as the conditions," &c. [Exc. 1.] AU
which is here desired is already presumed, namely, that the min
ister shaU apply himself to the particular condition of the
person ; but this must be done according to the rule of prudence
and justice, and not according to his pleasure. Therefore, if
the sick person shew himself truly penitent, it ought not to be
left to the minister's pleasure to deny him absolution, if he
desire it. Our church's direction is according to the 13th
canon of the venerable Council of Nice, both here and in the
next that follows.
§ 3. Exc. 2. The form of absolution in the liturgy is more
agreeable to the Scriptures than that which they desire, it being
said in St, John xx, " Whose sins you remit, they are re
mitted," not, whose sins you pronounce remitted ; and the
condition needs not to be expressed, being always necessarily
understood. COMMUNION OP THE SICK.
It is not fit the minister should have power to deny this
viation, or holy communion, to any that humbly desire it
according to the rubric ; which no man disturbed in his wits
can do, and whosoever does must in charity be presumed to be
penitent, and fit to receive.
THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.
§ 1. Rub. 1. [Exc. 2.] It is not fit so much should be left to
the discretion of every minister ; and the desire that aU may be
said in the church, being not pretended to be for the ease of

174 The Answer of the Bishops [1661.
tender consciences, but of tender heads, may be helped by a
cap better than a rubric.
§ 2. [Exc. 5.] We see not why these words may not be said
of any person whom we dare not say is damned, and it were
a breach of charity to say so even of those whose repentance
we do not see : for whether they do not inwardly and heartily
repent, even at the last act, who knows? and that God wiU
not even then pardon them upon such repentance, who dares
say? It is better to be charitable, and hope the best,
than rashly to condemn. CHURCHING WOMEN.
§ 1. Exc. 1. It is fit that the woman performing especial
service of thanksgiving should have a special place for it,
where she may be perspicuous to the whole congregation,
and near the holy table, in regard of the offering she is there
to make. They need not fear popery in this, since in the
Church of Rome she is to kneel at the church door.
§ 2. Exc. 3. The psalm cxxi is more fit and pertinent than
those others named, as cxiii, cxxviii, and therefore not to be
changed. § 3. Exc. 3, If the woman be such as is here mentioned, she
is to do her penance before she is churched.
§ 4. Exc. 4. Offerings are required as well under the gospel
as the law; and amongst other times most fit it is, that
oblations should be when we come to give thanks for some
special blessing. Psa, Ixxvi, 10, 11. Such is the deUverance
in childbearing.
§ 4, Exc. 5, This is needless, since the rubric and common
sense require that no notorious person be admitted,
THE CONCESSIONS,
§ 1. We are willing that aU the epistles and gospels be
used according to the last translation.
§ 2. That when anything is read for an epistle which is
not in the epistles, the superscription shall be, "For the epistle."

1661. J to the Exceptions of the Ministers. 175
§ 3. That the Psalms be collated with the former transla
tion, mentioned in rubric, and printed according to it.
§ 4. That the words " this day," both in the collects and
prefaces, be used only upon the day itself; and for the
following days it be said, " as about this time."
§ 5. That a longer time be required for signification of the
names of the communicants : and the words of the rubric be
changed into these, " at least some time the day before."
§ 6. That the power of keeping scandalous sinners from
the communion may be expressed in the rubric according to
the 26th and 27th canons; so the minister be obliged to
give an account of the same immediately after to the
ordinary. § 7. That "the whole preface be prefixed to the com
mandments. § 8. That the second exhortation be read some Sunday or
holyday before the celebration of the communion, at the
discretion of the minister.
§ 9. That the general confession at the communion he
pronounced by one of the ministers, the people saying after
him, all kneeUng humbly upon their knees.
§ 10. That the manner of consecrating the elements be
made more explicit and express, and to that purpose these
words be put into the rubric, "Then shall he put his hand
upon the bread and break it," " then shall he put his hand
unto the cup."
§ 11. That if the font be so placed as the congregation
cannot hear, it may be referred to the ordinary to place it
more conveniently.
§ 12. That those words, " Yes, they do perform those,"
&c., may be altered thus, " Because they promise them both
by their sureties," &c,
§ 13. That the words of the last rubric before the catechism
may be thus altered, " that chUdren being baptized have all
things necessary for their salvation, and dying before they
commit any actual sins, be undoubtedly saved, though they
be not confirmed."

176 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661,
§ 14, That to the rubric after confirmation these words may
be added, " or be ready and desirous to be confirmed,"
§ 15, That those words, " with my body I thee worship,"
may be altered thus, " with my body I thee honour."
§ 16. That those words, " tUl death us depart," be thus
altered, " till death us do part."
§ 17. That the words " sure and certain" may be left out.

XVII.
The Petition for peace and concord presented to the Bishops
with the proposed Reformation of the Liturgy.^ — A Petition
for Peace with the Reformation of the Liturgy as it was
presented to the Rt. Rev. Bishops, London, 1661.
Most Reverend Fathers and Reverend Brethren,
The special providence of God, and his majesty's tender
regard for the peace and consciences of his subjects, and his
desire of their concord in the things of God, hath put into
our hands this opportunity of speaking to you as humble
petitioners, as weU as commissioners, on the behalf of these
yet troubled and unhealed churches, and of many thousand
souls that are dear to Christ; on whose behalf, we are pressed
in spirit in the sense of our duty, most earnestly to beseech
you, as you tender the peace and prosperity of these churches,
the comfort of his majesty in the union of his subjects, and
the peace of your souls in the great day of your accounts,
that laying by aU former and present exasperating and
alienating differences, you wiU not now deny us your consent
and assistance to those means that shaU he proved honest and
cheap, and needful to those great, desirable ends, for which
we all profess to have our offices, and our Uves.
t
' This paper was drawn up by Baxter.— Reliquise Baxterianae, p. 334.

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 177
The things which we humbly beg of you are these.
1. That you will grant what we have here proposed and
craved of you in our preface ; even your charitable interpreta
tion, acceptance of, and consent unto the alterations and
additions to the liturgy now tendered unto you, that being
inserted, as we have expressed, it may be left to the minister's
choice to use one or other at his discretion upon his majesty's
approbation, according to his gracious Declaration concerning
ecclesiastical affairs. And that (seeing we cannot obtain the
form of episcopal government, described by the late reverend
primate of Ireland, and approved by many episcopal divines)
we may at least enjoy those benefits of reformation in disci
pline, and that freedom from subscription, oaths, and cere
monies, which are granted in the said Declaration, by the
means of your charitable mediation and request.
3. Seeing some hundreds of able, holy, faithful ministers
are of late cast out, and not only very many of their families
in great distress, but (which is of far greater moment)
abundance of congregations in England, Ireland, and Wales,
are overspread with lamentable ignorance, and are destitute
of able, faithful teachers : and seeing too many that are in
sufficient, negligent, or scandalous, are over the flocks (not
meaning this as an accusation of any that are not guilty, nor
a dishonourable reflection on any party, much less on the
whole church) we take this opportunity earnestly to beseech
you, that you wUl contribute your endeavours to the removal
of those that are the shame and burdens of the churches;
and to the restoration of such as may be an honour and
blessing to them. And to that end, that it be not imputed
to them as their unpardonable crime, that they were born in
an age and country which required ordination by parochial
pastors, without diocesans : and that re-ordination (whether
absolute or hypothetical) be not made necessary to the future
exercise of their ministry. But that an universal confirmation
may be granted of those ordained as aforesaid, they being stiU
responsible for any personal insufficiency or crime. Were
these two granted (the confirmation of the grants in his

178 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
majesty's Declaration, with the liberty of the reformed liturgy
offered you, and the restoring of able, faithful ministers to a
capacity to be serviceable in the church of God, without
forcing them against their consciences to be re-ordained) how
great would be the benefits to this unworthy nation ! How
glad would you make the people's hearts ! How thankful
should we be (for the cause of Christ, and the souls of men)
to those that grant them, and procure them ! Being conscious
that we seek not great things for ourselves, or for our
brethren; that we are ambitious of no greater wealth, or
honour, than our daily bread, with such freedom and advan
tage for the labours of our ministry, as may most conduce to
the success, the increase of holiness and peace ; we shall take
the boldness to second these requests, with many of our
reasons, which we think should prevail for your consent :
choosing rather to incur whatsoever censures or offence may
by any be taken against our necessary freedom of expression,
than to be silent at such a time as this, when thousands of
the servants of the Lord, that are either deprived of their
faithful teachers, or in fears of losing them, together with the
freedom of their consciences in God's worship, do cry day
and night to heaven for help, and would cry also in your ears
with more importunate requests, if they had but the oppor
tunity as now we have.
And 1. ^e beseech you bear with us while we remember
you, that you are pastors of the flock of Christ, who are
bound to feed them, and to preach in season and out of sea
son, and to he laborious in the word and doctrine ; hut are
not bound to hinder all others from this blessed work, that
dare not use a cross or surplice, or worship God in a form
which they judge disorderly, defective, or corrupt, when they
have better to offer him, (Mal. i, 13, 14.) Is it not for mat
ter and phrase at least as agreeable to the holy Scriptures?
If so, we beseech you suffer us to use it, who seek nothing
by it, but to worship God as near we can, according to his
wiU, who is jealous in the matters of his worship. If indeed
yours have more of strength, and ours of weakness, yet let not

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 179
fathers cast the children from the house of God, because they
are sick or weak, and need the more compassion ; let not our
physicians resolve their patients shall all be famished, or cast
off, whose temperature and appetites cannot agree to feed on
the same dish, with the same preparation and sauce. He
that thrice charged Peter as he loved him, to feed his lambs
and sheep, did never think of charging him to deny them
food or turn them out of his fold, or forbid all others to feed
them, unless they could digest such forms and ceremonies,
and superscriptions as ours.
3. May we presume to mind you, that the Lord of the
harvest hath commanded us to pray that more labourers may
be sent into the harvest, (for still proportion ably the har
vest is great, and the labourers are few. Matt, ix, 37,) and
that the Lord hath not furnished them with his gifts in vain,
nor lighted these candles to put under a bushel, but to be
set on a candlestick, that they may give light to all that are
in the house. Matt, v, 15 ; and that there are few nations
under the heavens of God, as far as we can learn, that have
more able, holy, faithful, laborious, and truly peaceable
preachers of the gospel, (proportion ably) than those are that
are now cast out in England, and are like in England, Scot
land, and Ireland, to be cast out, if the old conformity be
urged. This witness is true, which in judgment we bear,
and must record against all the reproaches of uncharitable
ness, which the justifier of the righteous at his day will
effectually confute. We therefore beseech you, that when
thousands of souls are ready to famish for want of the bread
of life, and thousands more are grieved for the ejection of
their faithful guides, the labourers may not be kept out, upon
the account of such forms or ceremonies, or re-ordination ;
at least till you have enow as fit as they to supply their
places, and then we shall never petition you for them more.
3. And we beseech you consider when you should promote
the joy and thankfulness of his majesty's subjects for his
happy restoration, whether it be equal and seasonable to
bring upon so many of them so great calamities as the
N 3

180 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
change of able, faithful ministers, for such as they cannot
comfortably commit the conduct of their souls to, and the
depriving them of the liberty of the public worship ; calami
ties far greater than the mere loss of all their worldly sub
stance can amount to. In a day of common joy to bring
this causelessly on so many of his majesty's subjects, and to
force them to lie down in heart-breaking sorrows, as being
almost as far undone, as man can do it; this is not a due
requital of the Lord for so great deliverances. EspeciaUy
considering, that if it were never so certain, that it is the sin
of the ministers that dare not be re-ordained, or conform;
it's hard that so many thousand innocent people should suffer
even in their souls for the faults of others.
4. And if we thought it would not be misinterpreted, we
would here remember you, how great and considerable a part
of the three nations they are, that must either incur these
sufferings, or condole them that undergo them; and how
great a grief it will be to his majesty, to see his grieved
subjects; and how great a joy it will be to him, to have
their hearty thanks and prayers, and see them live in
prosperity, peace, and comfort, under his most happy
government. 5. And we may plead the nature of their cause, to move
you to compassionate your poor affiicted brethren in their
sufferings. It is, in your own account, but for refusing
conformity to things indifferent, or at the most, of no neces
sity to salvation. It is in their account for the sake of
Christ, because they dare not consent to that which they
^ judge to be an usurpation of his kingly power, and an accu
sation of his laws as insufficient, and because they dare not
be guilty of addition to, or diminution of his worship, or of
worshipping him after any other law, than that by which
they must be judged, or such as is merely subordinate to
that. Suppose they be mistaken in thinking the things to
be so displeasing to God ; yet it is commendable in them to
be fearful of displeasing him, and careful to obey him; a
disposition necessary to aU that wiU be saved, and therefore

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 181
to be loved and cherished in them by the pastors of the
Church ; who should be very tender of putting them to
suffering, or casting them out of the church, because they
dare not do that which they judge to be so great a sin against
the Lord, deserving damnation to themselves. Should not
the love of Christ command us to be tender of those that are
so tender of his honour, and to take heed what we do to men
for taking heed of sin, and being afraid to offend the Lord ;
and should not the special love of Christians, and the com
mon love of men, command us, to be loth to drive men by
penalties, upon that which they judge doth tend to their
everlasting damnation, and which indeed doth tend to it,
because they judge it so to do? For he that will do that
which he thinks to be so great a sin as is before described, to
please men, or to escape their punishment, no doubt deserveth
the wrath of God; and should we not be loth to drive men
upon sin and condemnation, though we were sure that their
own infirmity is the occasion? If it be said that, by this
rule, nothing shall be commanded if men will but scruple it,
we answer — things in themselves necessary, or commanded
by God, must be commanded by man, because scruples make
them not unnecessary, and make not void the laws of God,
and it will be a sin even to the scrupulous to disobey. But
things dispensable, and of themselves unnecessary, should not
be rigorously urged upon him, to whom they would be a sin,
and cause of condemnation. It is in case of things indifferent
in your own judgment, that we now speak. If it be said,
that it is humour, pride, or singularity, or peevishness, or
faction, and not true tenderness of conscience that causeth
the doubts, or nonconformity of these men, we answer, —
such crimes must be fastened only on the individuals, that
are first proved guilty of them; and not upon multitudes
unnamed and unknown, and without proof; and you know it
is the prerogative of God to search the heart, and that he
hath said, " Judge uot, that ye be not judged : for with what
judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged ; and with what
measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again :" Matt.

183 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
vU, 1, 2. " And who art thou that judgest another man's
servant ? to his own master, he standeth or falleth ; yea, he
shall he holden up, for God is able to make him stand:"
Rom. xiv, 4. And who can pretend to be better acquainted
with their hearts, than they are themselves? "For what
man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man,
which is in him :" 1 Cor. ii, 11. And they are ready to
appeal to the dreadful God, the searcher of hearts, and the
hater of hypocrisy, that if it were not for fear of sinning
against him, and wounding their consciences, and hazarding,
and hindering their salvation, they would readUy obey you
in all these things. That it is their fear of sin and damna
tion that is their impediment, they are ready to give you aU
the assurance, that man can give by the solemnest professions,
or by oath if justly called to it.
And one would think that a little charity might suffice to
enable you to believe them, when their non-compliance
brings them under suffering, and their compliance, is the
visible way to favour, safety, and prosperity m the world.
And if men that thus appeal to God concerning the intention
of their own hearts, cannot be believed, even when the state
of their worldly interest bears witness to their professions,
but another shall step into the throne of the heart-searching
God, and say it is not as they say, or swear, it is not con
science, but obstinacy or singularity, aU human converse
npon these terms will be overthrown. And what remedy
have they, hut patiently to wait, till God, that they have
appealed to, shall decide the doubt, and shew who were the
assertors of truth or falsehood ?
6. And we crave leave to represent to you the great dis
proportion iu necessity and worth, between the things in
question, and the salvation of so many, as may be obtained
by the free and faithful exercise of the ministry of those that
now are, and that are yet like to be laid aside. Do you
think the Lord that died for souls, and hath sent us to learn
what that meaneth, " I will have mercy and not sacrifice :"
Matt, ix, 13, is better pleased wiLh re-ordination, subscrip-

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 183
tion, and ceremonies, than with the saving of souls, by the
means of his own appointment ? If it be said that public
order, and peace, and concord, do promote the salvation of
many, and therefore are to be preferred before the salvation
of fewer, we answer — concord in holy obedience to God
doth indeed promote the salvation of all that entertain it ;
but concord in ceremonies, or re-ordination, or oaths of
obedience to diocesans, or in your questioned particular
forms of prayer, do neither in their nature, or by virtue of
any promise of God, so much conduce to men's salvation
as the preaching of the gospel doth, by able, faithful, and
laborious ministers. And how comes it to pass that unity,
concord, and order, must be placed in those things which
are no way necessary thereto ? Will there not be order and
concord in holy obedience, and acceptable worshipping of
God, on the terms which we now propose and crave, without
the foresaid matter of offence ? We here shew you that we are
no enemies to order ; and our long importunity for the means
of concord, doth shew that we are not enemies to concord.
If it be said, that other men that will conform to the things
in question may convert and save souls better than those that
are factious and disobedient, — we first humbly crave that
reproach may not be added to affliction, and that none may
be called factious that are not proved such; and that laws
imposing things indifferent in your judgment, and sinful in
thefrs, may not be made the rule to judge of faction : but
that men who live inoffensively under civU government, and
in matters of faith and worship, subscribe to all contained in
the holy Scriptures, and endeavour to promote universal
peace and charity on these terms, may not be made offenders
by the making of laws and canons, that must force them to
be such; consequently, Daniel was an offender, that would
not forbear praying openly by the space of thirty days. But
antecedently to that law, he was confessed just by them that
said " We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, ex
cept we find it against him concerning the law of his God :"
Dan. vi, 5, 7, 10. The law which he must break was made

184 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661 .
to make him a breaker of that law : take away that law, and
take away his fault. We accuse none of the like intentions,
but we must say that, it is easy to make any man an offender,
by making laws which his conscience wUl not allow him to
obs'erve ; and it's as easy to make that same man cease to seem
disobedient, obstinate, or factious, without any change at all
in him, by taking down such needless laws. We may again
remember you what Christ a second time doth press, Matt, xii, 7.
" But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy,
and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless."
And next, to the rest of the objection, we answer — that
sad experience tells the world, that if the ministers that we
are pleading for, be laid aside, there are not competent men
enough to supply their rooms, and equally to promote the
salvation of the fiocks. This is acknowledged by them who
still give it as the reason why ministers are not to be .trusted
with the expressing of their desires in their own words, nor
so much as to choose which chapter to read, as well as which
text to preach on to their auditors, because we shall have
ministers so weak, as to be unfit for such a trust ; and men
that are not wise enough for so easy a part of their duty, as
to choose fit portions of Scripture to read, are unlikely to
afford an equal assistance to the salvation of the people,
instead of the labours of such as we are speaking for.
7. And it must be remembered, that in our ordination we
must profess that we are persuaded that the holy Scriptures
contain sufficiently all doctrine required of necessity for
eternal salvation, etc., and that we will teach or maintain
nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salvation, but that
which we are persuaded may be concluded and proved by the
same, and that one of the Articles of the church" containeth
the same doctrine of the Scripture's sufficiency; and to these
we are called to subscribe; and the persons that we now
speak for, are ready to subscribe to all contained in the
holy Scriptures, and willing to be obliged, by the laws of
men, to practise it. And he that hath all things necessary to
salvation, is received of God, and should therefore be re-

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 185
ceived by the church, if the apostle's argument be good,
Rom. xiv, 1, 3. "For God hath received him." Seeing then
you do profess that none of your impositions that can
not be concluded from the Scripture, are necessary to
salvation, let them not consequentially be made necessary
to it, and more necessary than that which is ordinarily
necessary. If you say, that so many men shall be forbidden to preach,
unless they dare subscribe and use these things, you will
tempt them to infer, that preaching being ordinarily ne
cessary to salvation, Rom. x, 14, and these things, called
indifferent, being made necessary to preaching, and preferred
before it, therefore they are made necessary to salvation,
and preferred before that which God hath made necessary.
If it be said that this will as much follow the making of
any other indifferent thing to be necessary to preaching,
and so the church shall make no orders, we answer —
1. That smaUer things must not be imposed by unpropor-
tionable penalties.
3. That though the church may prefer a sober, peaceable
preacher, before one that is schismatical and unpeaceable
(which is not at all to exclude preaching), yet the church
may not make anything necessary to preaching itself, that,
is of itself unnecessary, and not antecedently necessary, at
least by accident.
8. And if our religion be laid upon your particular liturgy,
we shall ieach the papists further to insult, by asking us,
where was our religion two hundred years ago? The
Common Prayer Book, as differing from the Mass Book,
being not so old; and that which might then be the matter
of a change, is not so unchangeable itself, but that those
alterations may he accepted for ends so desirable as are now
before us.
9. And we humbly crave that we may not in this be
more rigorously dealt with than the pastors and people of
the ancient churches were. If we may not have the liberty
of the primitive times, when, for aught that can be proved.

186 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
no liturgical forms were imposed upon any church, yet at
least let us have the liberty of the following ages, when
under the same prince there were diversity of liturgies, and
particular pastors had the power of making and altering them
for their particular churches.
10. And if you should reject (which God forbid) the
moderate proposals which now and formerly we have made,
we humbly crave leave to offer it to your consideration, what
judgment all the protestant churches are likely to pass on
your proceedings, and how your cause and ours will stand
represented to them, and to all succeeding ages. Though we
earnestly desire the toleration of those that are tolerable, and
the peaceable liberties of all that agree on the catholic terirs
of primitive simplicity in doctrine, worship, and discipline,
yet have we ourselves so far drawn near you, as that the
world will say, you reject those that are for episcopacy itself,
and set forms of liturgy, and are not so much as charged by
you at all, as disagreeing in any point of faith, if you shall
reject us. If after our submission to his majesty's Declara
tion, and after our own proposals of the primitive episcopacy,
and of such a liturgy as here we tender, we may not he per
mitted to exercise our ministry, or enjoy the public worship
of God, the pens of those learned, moderate bishops wiU
bear witness against you, that were once employed as the
chief defenders of that cause (we mean such as Reverend
Bishop Hall, and Ussher), who have published to the world
that much less than this might have served to our fraternal
unity and peace. If you would not grant this Uberty and
communion to others, with whom Christ will hold communion
in grace and glory ; yet it will appear more strange to the
world, that you should cast out the episcopal also, that dare
not go beyond the rule of Holy Scripture, and the example of
primitive simplicity.
And we doubt not but you know, how new and strange a
thing it is that you require in the point of re-ordination.
When a canon amongst those called the Apostles', deposeth
those that re-ordain, and that are re-ordained ; and when it

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 187
is a thing that both papists and protestants condemn ; when
not only the former bishops of England, that were more
moderate, were against it, but even the most fervent adversa
ries of the presbyterian way, such as Bishop Bancroft himself;
how strange must it needs seem to the reformed churches, to
the whole Christian world, and to future generations, that so
many able, faithful ministers should be laid by as broken
vessels, because they dare not be re-ordained, and that so
many have been put upon so new and so generaUy disrelished
a thing ?
11. And we crave leave to remember you, that the Holy
Ghost hath commanded you to oversee the fiock, not hy con
straint, but wilUngly, not as being lords over God's heritage,
but as ensamples to the flock ; and that it is not only more
comfortable to yourselves to be loved as the fathers than to be
esteemed the afflicters of the church, but that it is needful to
the ends of your ministry for the people. When you are
loved, your doctrine will more easily be received ; but when
men think that their souls or liberties are endangered by
you, it's easy to judge how much they are like to profit by
you. 13. And you know if we are not in point of ceremonies or
forms in everything of your mind, it is no more strange to
havQ variety of inteUectual apprehensions in the same
kingdom and church, than variety of temperatures and
degrees of age and strength. If his majesty should expel all
those from his dominions, that are not so wise as solidly to
judge, whether the liturgy as before, or as thus reformed, be
the best, yea, whether this be intolerable in comparison of
yours, and whether God be pleased or displeased with your
ceremonies, it would be too great a diminution of his subjects ;
and if you should turn all such out of the kingdom of Christ,
it would be liker a dissipating than a gathering, and a des
troying than an edifying of his church ; and you have not
your power to destruction, hut to edification, 3 Cor. x, 8 ;
xiii, 10. You must do all things for the people's edifying,
3 Cor. xii, 19; Eph. iv, 13.

188 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
13. And how Christ wiU take it of you, to east out from
the ministry or communion of the church, or to grieve and
punish all those that dare not conform to you in these mat
ters, for fear of displeasing the law-giver of the church, we
beseech you to judge (when your souls are most seriously
thinking of the day of your accounts), by such passages of
holy Scripture as may fully acquaint you with his mind. He
is himself a merciful High-Priest, a gracious Saviour, a ten
der governor. He despiseth not the day of small things,
Zech. iv, 10. " He feedeth his flock like a shepherd ; he
gathereth his lambs with his arm, and carrieth them in his
bosom ; and gently leadeth those that are with young."
Isa. xl, 11. "A bruised reed will he not break, and the
smoking flax will he not quench ::" Isa. xiii, 3 ; Matt, xii, 30.
God doth instruct the ploughman to discretion, and teacheth
him not to thresh the fetches with a threshing-instrument,
nor to turn the cart-wheel upon the cummin, but the fetches
are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod,
Isa. xxviii, 36, 37. God's servants are his jewels, Mal. iii, 17.
He will spare them as a man spareth his son that serves him,
and he that toucheth them, toucheth the apple of his eye,
Zech. ii, 8. Remember the near relation they stand in to
God in Christ, that they are the children of God, co-heirs
with Christ, Rom. viii, 17; the members of his body, his
flesh and bone, which he cannot hate, whoever hate them,
Eph. V, 39, 30. Remember how dear they cost him, and to
what honour he will advance them, and that these same per
sons that love him in sincerity must be where he is, to behold
his glory, John xn, 36; xvii, 24; and shall be like the
angels of God, Luke xx, 36; and shall judge t"he world,
1 Cor. vi, 3, 3 ; and that Christ will come to be glorified
and admired in them, 3 Thess. i, 10; and they shall shine
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father, Matt, xni, 43.
Remember with what tender usage he treated his weak, im
perfect members upon earth ; and when he was ascending to
prepare a place for them, that they might be with him where
he is, how affectionately he bespeaketh them, John xx, 17.

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 189
" Go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend up to my
Father and your Father, and to my God and your God."
And lest you should say that he will not own those little
ones that (whether for truth's sake, or for their infirmities)
do bear disgraceful titles in the world, remember that at the
day of judgment he will say, " Inasmuch as you did it not,
or did it, to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it
not, or did it, unto me : " Matt, xxv, 40 — 45. If his elect
cry to him day and night, though he bear long, he will
avenge them, and that speedUy, Luke xviii, 7, 8. Bear with
us while we add this terrible passage, which we once before
made mention of : — " Whoso shall receive one such little child
in my name, receiveth me : hut whoso shall offend one of
these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that
a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were
drowned in the depth of the sea :" Matt, xviii, 5, 6. Un
doubtedly, if you consider duly by such passages, how Christ
wiU take it, to have his servants not only not visited, not re
lieved, but to be afflicted, not only in body, but in soul, with
that great affliction to be cast out of the ministry, or church,
for an unavoidable dissent in things indifferent, you will never
join with those that shaU stretch forth a hand against them
for such a cause as this. If yet the old pretence be made,
that they suffer as schismatics, and disobedient, we must say
again, if any shall make men disobedient by imposing things
unnecessary, which they know are by learned, pious, peace
able men, esteemed sins against the Lord, and then shaU thus
heavily afflict them for the disobedience which they may
easUy cure by the forbearance of those impositions ; let not
our souls come into their secret, nor our honour be united to
their assembly. If they shall smite or cast out a supposed
schismatic, and Christ shall find an able, holy, peaceable
minister, or other Christian, wounded, or mourning,
out of doors, let us not be found among the actors, not stand
among them in the day of their accounts, when tribula
tion shall be recompeaced to the troublers of believers,.
3 Thess. i, 6..

190 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
14, We beseech you also to consider, that men have not
their understandings attheir own command, much less can they
be commanded by others. If they were never so wiUing to
believe all that is imposed on them to be lawful, they cannot
therefore believe it, because they would ; the intellect being uot
free. And to dissemble, and say, and swear, and do, the
things which they believe not, is such an aggravated hypo
crisy (being in the matters of God, and joined with perfidi-
ousness) as we may suppose cannot render them acceptable to
any that have not renounced religion and humanity ; much
less should they be constrained to it. And when it is known
that men's judgments are against the things imposed, and that
penalties are no means adapted to the informing and chang
ing of the judgment, but to force men to do the things they
know, we conceive they should not be used, and so used, in
the case of things indifferent, where they are not necessary to
the common good, and where the sufferers, have never had
sufficient means to change their judgments.
If it be said that, it is their own fault that their judgments
are not changed, and that the means have been sufficient —
we answer, that it is their fault, is the point in question;
which the sword can easier take for granted, than the tongue
or pen can prove : but if it be so, it is their fault, as it is that
they are the sons of Adam, partakers of the common corrup
tion of human nature ; and as it is their fault that they are
not all of the highest form in the school of Christ, above the
common ignorance and frailties of believers; and that they
are not all the most judicious divines of the most subtle
wits; and had not the same education and society to advance
your opinions, and represent things to their understandings,
just as they are represented unto yours. And if men must
be cast out of the church, or ministry, because they are not
wiser than such learned men as the pastors of the most of
the reformed churches, and as HUdersham, Bayne, Parker,
Ames, Dod, Ball, Nichols, and many such others as have
here taken this conformity to be a sin, how few, alas, how
very few wUl there be left !

166 l.J Petition for Peace and Concord. 191
And if it be said, that men do wilUngly keep out the light,
— we must say, that few men are obstinate against the opinions
that tend to their ease and advancement in the world, and to
save them from being vUified as schismatics, and undone ;
and when men profess before the Lord, that they do impar
tially study and pray for knowledge, and would gladly know
the will of God at the dearest rate ; we must again say, that
those men must prove that they know the dissenters' hearts
better than they are known to themselves, that expect to be
believed by charitable Christians, when they charge them
with wilful ignorance, or obstinate resisting of the truth.
15. And we crave leave to ask whether you do not your
selves in some things mistake, or may not do so for aught
you know; and whether your understandings are not still
imperfect, and all men differ not in some opinions or other ?
And if you may mistake in any thing, may it not be in as
great things as these ? Can it be expected, that we should all
be past erring about the smallest ceremonies and circum
stances of worship ? And then should not the consciousness
of your own infirmity, provoke you rather to compassionate
human frailty, than to cast out your brethren, for as smaU
failings as your own ?
16. And we further offer to your consideration, whether
this be doing as you would be done by ? Would you be cast out
for every fault that is as bad as this? and doth this shew that
you love your neighbour as yourselves ? Put yourselves in
their case, and suppose that you had studied, conferred, and
prayed, and done your best to know whether God would have
you to be re-ordained, to use these forms or ceremonies, or
subscriptions, or not; and having done all, you think that
God would be displeased if you should use them ; would you
then be used yourselves, as your dissenting brethren are now
used, or are like to be? Love them as yourselves, and we will
crave no further favour for them,
17. But nothing more affecteth us, than to think of the
lamentable divisions, that have been caused and are still Uke
to be, whilst things unnecessary are so imposed : and on the

192 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
contrary, how blessed an unity and peace we might enjoy if
these occasions of division were removed, and we might but
have leave to serve God as his apostles did. As in doctrinals,
ten thousand wiU sooner agree in an explicit belief of the
creed, than an hundred in an expUcit belief of all that Ockam
or Scotus bave determined ; so, in the m.itters of government
and worship, it is easier to agree upon few things, than
upon many ; upon great,, and certain, and necessary things, than
upon small, uncertain, and unnecessary things; and upon
things that God himself hath revealed or appointed, than
upon things that proceed from no surer an original than the
wit or wUl of man. The strict prohibition of adding to, or
diminishing from the things commanded by the lawgiver of
the church, Deut. xu, 33, doth put such a fear in the minds
of multitudes of the loyal subjects of Christ — lest by such
additions or diminutions in the matters of his worship, they
should provoke him to displeasure — as will be a certain per
petual hindrance to any common unity or concord in such
human impositions, of which many of the servants of the
jealous God will have a continual jealousy.
With grieved hearts we now renew the lamentable divisions
occasioned already by these impositions ever since the refor
mation in the days of King Edward VI, and the grievous
fruits of those divisions ! How they destroyed charity (the
character of Christ's disciples) and exasperated men's miuds
against each other ; how they corrupted men's prayers and
other exercises of devotions, and made them pray and preach
against one another ; how their tongues were emboldened to
the censuring of each other, one party caUing the other
factious, schismatical, singular, and disobedient; and the
other caUing them antichristian, proud, tyrannical, supersti
tious, persecutors, and formaUsts ; and such language still in
creasing the uncharitableness and divisions ; tiU the increase
of imposing rigour on the one side, and of impatience
under sufferings on the other side, was too great a prepara
tion to those greater calamities which are yet bitter to the
remembrance of all whose interests or passions have not con-

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 193
quered their humanity. And the continuance of so much of
the causes and effects, doth infallibly prove, that if the same
impositions be settled upon us, the same heart divisions will
be still continued : brethren will disdain the name and love of
brethren to each other ; which yet Christ himself by conde
scending and reproving love, vouchsafeth to them all. In
stead of loving one another with a pure heart, fervently, there
will be, if not hating, yet grudging at one another, censuring
and despising one another; which effects will still increase
their cause, and make one side think that they are necessi
tated to be more rigorous in their coercions, and the other
think that they are allowed to be more censorious against
those by whom they suffer.
And how many thousands on both sides, by such a stream
of temptations, will undoubtedly be carried on in a course of
sin from day to day, and by heart sin, and tongue sin, by
pulpit sins, or sins in other parts of worship, will dishonour
God and provoke him to indignation against them and the
land, we may not without astonishment and grief of heart
foresee or foretell.
And it is easy to foresee how the innocent will be numbered
with the faulty ; and those that do but feel their sufferings, and
the sufferings of the church on these occasions, and do but
groan and sigh to God, and pray for succour and deliverance,
wUl be thought to be guilty of discontent and faction, and
bringing the government of the church, and consequently of
the kingdom, into hatred or dislike, and so their sufferings
will be increased : and he that is commanded by the laws of
humanity to be compassionately sensible of the calamities of
others, shall be thought an offender for being sensible of his
own. It is easy to foresee, how those expressions in men's
sermons, or prayers, or familiar conference, which seem to any
misunderstanding, or suspicious, or malicious hearers, to
intimate any sense of sufferings, will be carried to the ears of
rulers, and represented as a crime. And nature having
planted in all men an unwillingness to suffer, and denied to
all men a love of calamity, and necessitated men to feel when

194 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
they are hurt, and made the tongue and countenance the
index of our sense; these effects will be unavoidable, while
such impositions are continued, and whUe a fear of sinning
will not suffer men to swallow and digest them. And what
¦wrong such divisions about religion will be to the kingdom,
and to his majesty, we shaU not mention, because our gover
nors themselves may better understand it.
On the other side, what universal ease, and peace, and joy
would be the fruits of that happy unity and concord, which
the reasonable forbearances which we humbly petition for,
would certainly produce ; how comfortable would our minis
terial labours be, when we had no such temptations, burdens,
or disquietments ; when we lay not under the reproofs of
conscience, nor the suspicions or displeasure of our superiors,
but might serve the Lord without distraction, and he among
his servants without such fears! (PhU, i, 14; 1 Cor, xvi, 10.)
How much would the hands of the builders he strengthened
for the work of God, when they speak the same things, and
there are no divisions among them, but they are perfectly
joined together in the same mind and judgment, (1 Cor. i, 10,)
when they are like-minded, having the same love, being of
one accord, of one mind, doing nothing through strife or vain
glory, which will never be whUe the one calls the other
factious and schismatical, and, the other calleth him super
stitious and tyrannical ; but when Christ hath taught us in
lowliness of mind to esteem others better than ourselves, and
not to look every man on his own things (his own gifts, and
virtues, and worth, and interest) but every man also on the
things of others ; and till the same mind be in us, that was in
Christ Jesus, that humbled himself, and took upon himthe
form of a servant, and made himself of no reputation. (Phil,
ii, 5 — 8.) How much should we honour the body, the spirit,
the hope, the Lord, the faith, the baptism, the God and
father of all believers, which are one, if we were one among
ourselves ; which wiU never be, tiU with lowliness, and meek
ness, and long-suffering, we forbear one another in love,
instead of bating, reviling, and persecuting one another ; and

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 195
tiU we. endeavour to keep the unity of the Spirit (though given
in various degrees) rather than an unity in unnecessary
things, in the bond of peace, (Ephes. iv, 3—7,) and tiU the
weU-jointed and compacted body do edify itself in love, by a
due contribution of mutual supply, and grow in Christ the
proper head, instead of contending with itself, and dis -joint
ing and tearing itself into pieces, because of our different
measure of understanding, and our unavoidable differences
about some small unnecessary things 1 (verses 13 — 16.) How
beautiful would our holy assemblies be, and how delightful
the worship of God there celebrated, if we had all laid by
the unchristian spirit of hatred, envy, emulation, murmuring,
wrath, variance, strife, heresies, seditions, and all uncharitable
ness, and with one mind, and one mouth did glorify God,
(Gal. V, 19 — 31 ; Rom. xv, 16,) which will never be done,
till those that are strong do bear the infirmities of the weak,
and please not themselves, hut every one of us please his
neighbour, for his good to edification, instead of vilifying him,
or undoing him ; and tiU instead of casting each other out
of the church or ministry, on account of things indif
ferent, we received one another, as Christ received us to the
glory of God, (Rom. xv, 1, 3, 6, 7,) and till we are thus like-
minded one towards another according to Christ Jesus, (verse
5,) instead of being selfishly-minded as men, or maliciously as
enemies ! (1 Cor. iii, 8 ; 1 Cor. xiv, 30 ; Col. iii, 8 ; Titus iii,
3.) If the vpry babes were fed with the sincere mUk of the
word, and all malice, and guile, and hypocrisy, and envies,
and evil speaking, were laid aside it would prove the best way
to their growth, and a surer way to your present and eternal
peace, than casting thefn out because they cannot bear your
burdens, or digest some unneccessary things. (1 Pet. ii, 1 — 3.)'
How good and how happy a thing it would be for brethren to
dwell together in unity, (Psa. cxxxiii, 1,) and as those
that by one spirit are baptized into one body, and know they
have need of one another, to contribute honour to the parts
that lack it; yea to bestow more abundant honour upon those
members which we think to be less honourable, and more
o 3

196 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661
abundant comeliness, on the uncomely parts, as knowing those
members are necessary that seem to be more feeble. If
indeed we would have no schism in the body, the natural way
is, for the members to have the same care one for another, as
suffering all with one that suffereth, and rejoicing aU with
one that's honoured. (1 Cor. xii, 13, 13, 31—36.) Take
their sufferings as your own, and you will not be hasty
to bring them unto suffering. It must be the primitive sim
plicity of faith, worship, and discipline, that must restore the
primitive charity, unity, and peace, and make the multitude
of believers to be of one heart, and of one soul, and to con
verse with gladness and singleness of heart, as having aU
things common. (Acts iv, 33, and ii, 46.) No such things as
our controverted impositions were then made necessary to
the unity and concord of the members of the church.
18. And we humbly offer to your consideration, which
way will most gratify Satan in his cause and servants, and
which will most promote the work and interest of Jesus
Christ. The ungodly that have an inbred enmity to holiness,
and to the holy seed, will be glad to see so many of them
suffer, and glad under the shelter of your displeasure and
afflictings, to find opportunity to reproach them, and add
affliction to affliction. The common adversaries of our re
ligion, and of the king and kingdom, wiU rejoice to see us
weakened by our divisions, and employed in afflicting or
censuring one another, and to see so many able ministers
laid aside, that might do much displeasure to Satan, hy the
weakening of his kingdom, and by promoting the gospel and
kingdom of the Lord. And whether this will tend to the
edification of the saints, and the pleasing of Christ, we have
inquired before.
19. And if what you stand for, be indeed of God, this
course of unmerciful imposition, is the greatest wrong to it,
that you can easily be drawn to, unawares; while so many
truly fearing God, are cast out or trodden down, and tempted
to think ill of that which themselves and the church thus
suffer by, and when so many of the worst befriend this way

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 197
because it gratifieth them, it tendeth to make your cause
judged of according to the quality of its friends and adver
saries. And how great a hand this very thing hath had
already in the dislike of (that has befallen,) diocesans, cere
monies, and the liturgy, is a thing too generally known to
need proof.
30. Lastly we repeat what formerly we have said, that the
Holy Ghost hath already so plainly decided the point in
controversy, in the instance of meats and days, Rom. xiv, 15,
that it seemeth strange to us that yet it should remain a
controversy. A weak brother that maketh an unnecessary
difference of meats and days, is not to be cast out, but so to
be received and'not to be troubled with such doubtful dispu
tations. Despising and judging the servants of the Lord,
whom he receiveth and can make to stand, and that upon
such small occasion, is unbeseeming true believers, (verses
1 — 5.) AU should be here left to the full persuasion of
their own mind, (verse 5.) Both pai-ties here acknowledge
the sovereignty of Christ, and in observing, or not ob
serving such things, they do it all to him, (verses 6 — 9 ;) his
judgment should 'affright us from despising or judging one
another, (verses 10 — 13;) instead of judging others we
should judge it our duty, that none of us put a stumbling-
block, or occasion to faU in his brother's way. (verse 13.) If
we grieve those that esteem that unclean which we do not,
we walk not charitably ; destroy not the work of God, nor
him for whom Christ died, by your indifferent things, (verses
14, 15, 20.) It is evil to him that judgeth it to be evil, (verses
14, 20.) Do you believe these things to be indifferent, have
this belief to yourself before God, and condemn not your
selves in that which you allow, (verse 22 ;) your brother is
damned if he practice doubtingly, for whatsoever is not of
faith is sin, (verse 23 ; ) and you drive him upon damnation !
We may well conclude then, that it is good, even yourselves
to avoid such things unnecessary, by which your brother
stumbleth, is offended, or made weak, (verse 21.) Much more

198 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661
to forbear the forcing them upon him, which those that the
apostle reproveth did not attempt. It is the kingdom of God
that we must all promote; and that kingdom consisteth not
in meat or drink, but in righteousness, and peace, and joy in
the Holy Ghost. And he that in these things serveth Christ,
is acceptable to God, and should be approved of men. (verses
17, 18.) Let us therefore follow after the things which make
for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another.
(verse 19.)
If you say, rulers' imposition maketh indifferent things
cease to be indifferent ; we answer,
1 . They are not indifferent, in the judgment of dissenters,
though they be so in yours.
2. Paul was a ruler of the Church himself, and yet would
deny his own liberty, rather than offend the weak, so far was
he from taking away the liberty of others. (1 Ccr, viii, 13.)
And it is to the Church of Rome and Corinth, and so to the
pastors as well as the rest, that Paul thus writeth. We beseech
you therefore plead not law against us, when our request is
that you will join with us in petitioning to his majesty, and
the parliament, that there may be no such law.
The apostles and elders (Acts xv, 28) declare unto the
churches, that it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and them,
to lay upon them no greater burden than necessary things ;
imposing them because antecedently necessary (for that is
given as the reason of their selection and imposition;) and
only not making unnecessary things necessary by imposition,
for then the imposition had been unnecessary. Though it was
not a simple, unchangeable necessity, yet it was a necessity
by accident, pro tempore et loco, antecedent to the imposition
of that assembly. Seeing then snch things commend us not
to God, and, if you use them, at least you are not the better;
sin not against Christ, by sinning against your brethren
(1 Cor. viii, 8 — 12) ; much more take heed of forcing them
to sin.
We have presumed to be thus plain and large, in shewing

1661.] Petition for Peace and Concord. 199
you some of our reasons, for your consent, to the necessary
abatement of things unnecessary to the consciences of your
brethren. In the conclusion we beseech you to compare with these
the reasons that can move you to deny us these requests. If
you will needs use such things yourselves, will it gain you so
much to force them upon others as will answer all the afore
said inconveniences ? Will it cost you as dear to grant this
liberty, or abate these things, as the imposition wUl cost your
brethren and you ? O how easily, how safely, how cheaply,
yea, with what commodity and delight, may you now make
this nation happy, in granting your brethren these requests !
If you say that others will be still unsatisfied, and you
shall never know when you have done, we answer —
1. The cause of the nonconformists hath been long ago
stated, at the troubles at Frankford; and having continued
still the same, you have no reason to suspect them of any
considerable change.
2. Grant us but the freedom that Christ and his apostles
left unto the churches ; use necessary things as necessary,
and unnecessary as unnecessary, and charitably bear with
the infirmities of the weak, and tolerate the tolerable, while
they Uve peaceably, and then you will know when you have
done. And for the intolerable, we beg not your toleration :
we intercede for those that have Christ for their Intercessor in
the highest. We know when all's done, there wUl be heresies,
(1 Cor, xi, 19.) "There will be self-lovers, covetous, boast
ers, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful,
unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers,
incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors,
heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than of God,
having a form of godliness, whUe they deny the power :"
2 Tim. iii, 2 — 4. There will be " filthy dreamers, that defile
the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities :"
Jude 8. " And many will follow their pernicious ways, by
reason of whom the way of truth will be evil spoken of :"
3 Pet, u, 3. It is not these for whom we are petitioners ; but

300 Petition for Peace and Concord. [1661.
for those that are faithful to God and the king ; that fear
offending; that agree with you in all things necessary to
salvation, and the common union of believers ; and that you
are like to see at Christ's right hand, who will flnally justify
them, and take them to his glory. If you suppose us in aU
this to have pleaded our own cause, we hope we are not such
as are intolerable in the ministry or communion of the
church ; if you suppose us to plead the cause of others, we hope
you will accept our desires as impartial, when it is supposed the
persons differ from us as well as from you. We have now
faithfully, and not unnecessarily, or unreasonably, spread
before you the case of thousands of the upright of the land.
We have proposed honest and safe remedies for our present
distractions, and the preventing of the feared increase. We
humbly beg your favourable interpretation of our plain and
earnest language, which the urgency of the cause commands,
and your consent to these our necessary requests ; which if
you grant us, you will engage us to thankfulness to God and
you, and to employ our faculties and interests with alacrity to
assist you for the common peace. But if you reject our suit
(which God forbid), we shall commit all to him that judgeth
righteously, and wait in hope for the blessed day of universal
judgment, when the Lord of Hosts, their strong Redeemer,
shall thoroughly plead his people's cause, and execute judg
ment for them, and bring them forth into the light, and they
shall behold his righteousness. In the meantime, we wUl
bear the indignation of the Lord, because we have sinned
against him. Come, Lord Jesus 1 Come quickly 1 Amen.

1661.] Rejoinder of the Ministers. 201

XVIII.
The Rejoinder of the Ministers to the Answer of the Bishops.
— The Grand Debate between the most Reverend the
Bishops, and the Presbyterian Divines, appointed by his
sacred Majesty, as Commissioners for the Review and
Alteration of the Book of Common Prayer, &c., being an
exact account of their whole proceedings. The most per
fect copy. London, 1661. pp. 1 — 148.
To the most Reverend Archbishop and Bishops, and the
Reverend their Assistants, commissioned by his Majesty to
treat about the alteration of the Book of Common Prayer.'
Most Reverend Father and Reverend Brethren,
When we received your papers, and were told that they
contained not only an Answer to our Exceptions against the
present liturgy; but also several concessions, wherein you
seem willing to join with us in the alteration and reformation
of it ; our expectations were so far raised, as that we promised
ourselves, to find your concessions so considerable, as would
have greatly conduced to the healing of our much to be
lamented divisions, the settling of the nation in peace, and
the satisfaction of tender consciences, according to his
majesty's most gracious Declaration, and his royal Com
mission in pursuance thereof: but having taken a survey of
them, we find ourselves exceedingly disappointed, and that
they will fall far short of attaining those happy ends, for
which this meeting was first designed ; as may appear both
by the paucity of the concessions, and the inconsiderableness
of them, they being for the most part verbal and literal,
rather than real and substantial. For in them you aUow
not the laying aside of the reading of the apocrypha for
lessons, though it shut out some hundreds of chapters of
holy Scripture, and sometimes the Scripture itself is made
' This preface was drawn up by Mr. Calamy.— Reliquise BaxteriauEe, p. 357.

303 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
to give way to the apocryphal chapters; you plead against
the addition of the doxology unto the Lord's prayer; you
give no liberty to omit the too frequent repetitions of Gloria
Patri, nor of the Lord's prayer in the same public service ;
nor do you yield that the psalms be read in the new translation;
nor the word priest to be changed for minister or presbyter,
though both have been yielded unto in the Scottish liturgy;
you grant not the omission of the responsals, no, not in the
litany itself, though the petitions be so framed, as the people
make the prayer, and not the minister ; nor to read the com
munion service in the desk, when there is no communion ; but
in the late form, instead thereof, it is enjoined to be done at
the table, though there be no rubric in the Common Prayer
book requiring it. You plead for the holiness of Lent, con
trary to the statute ; you indulge not the omission of any
one ceremony; you will force men to kneel at the sacrament,
and yet not put in that excellent rubric in the 5 and 6 of
Edward VI, which would much conduce to the satisfaction of
many that scruple it. And whereas divers reverend bishops
and doctors, in a paper in print before these unhappy wars
began,' yielded to the laying aside of the cross, and the
making many material alterations, you, after twenty years
sad calamities and divisions, seem unwilling to grant what
they of their own accord then offered ; you seem not to grant
that the clause of the fourth commandment in the Common
Prayer book (the Lord blessed the seventh day) should be
¦altered according to the Hebrew, (Exodus xx,) the Lord blessed
the Sabbath day ; you will not change the word Sunday into
the Lord's day, nor add anything to make a difference be
tween holydays that are of human institution, and the Lord's
day, that is questionless of apostolical practice ; you wUl not
alter deadly sin in the litany into heinous sin, though it hints
to us that some sins are in their own nature venial; nor that
answer in the catechism of two sacraments only generally
necessary to salvation, although it intimates that there are other
New Testament sacraments, though two only necessary to
salvation; you speak of singing David's psalms, allowed by

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 203
authority, by way of contempt, calling them Hopkins' psalms;
and though singing of psalms be an ordinance of God, yet
you call it one of our principal parts of worship, as if it were
disclaimed by you; and are so far from countenancing the
use of conceived prayer in the public worship of God (though
we never intended thereby the excluding of set forms) as that
you seem to dislike the use of it even in the pulpit, and
heartily desire a total restraint of it in the church ; you will
not allow the omission of the Benedicite, nor a psalm to be
read instead of it ; nor so much as abate the reading of the
chapters out of the Old Testament and the Acts, for the
Epistles. But rather than you will gratify us therein, you
have found out a new device, that the minister shall say, " for
the epistle." You will not so much as leave out in the collect
for Christmas Day these words {this day) though at least, it
must be a great uncertainty, and cannot be true stylo veteri
et novo. In public baptism you are so far from giving a
Uberty to the parent to answer for his own child (which
seems most reasonable,) as that you force him to the use of
sureties, and cause them to answer in the name of the infant,
that he doth beUeve, and repent, and forsake the devil and
all his works: which doth much favour the Anabaptistical
opinion for the necessity of an actual profession of faith and
repentance in order to baptism. You will not leave the
minister, in the visitation of the sick, to use his judgment or
discretion in absolving the sick person, or giving the sacra
ment to him, but enjoin both of them, though the person to
his own judgment seem never so unfit; neither do you allow
the minister to pronounce the absolution in a declarative and
conditional way, but absolutiely and inconditionately. And
even in one of your concessions, in which we suppose you
intend to accommodate with us, you rather widen than heal
the breach ; for in your last rubric before the catechism you
would have the words thus altered. That children being bap
tized, have all things, necessary for salvation; and dying be
fore they commit any actual sin, be undoubtedly saved, though
they be not confirmed. Which assertion, if understood of aU
infants, even of heathen, is certainly false; and if only of

304 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
the infants of Christians, is doubtful, and contrary to the
judgment of many learned Protestants, and will give little
satisfaction to us or others. Some more we might name,
which for brevity sake we omit. All which considered, we
altogether despair of that happy success which thousands
hope and wait for from this his Majesty's commission; unless
God shall incline your hearts for the peace and union of the
nation, to a more considerable and satisfactory alteration of
the liturgy. In which, that we may the better prevail, we
here tender a reply to your answer, both against our general
and particular exceptions; of which we desire a serious
perusal, and candid interpretation. We have divided both
your preface and answer into several sections, that so you
might more easily understand to which of the particulars
both in the one and in the other our reply doth refer.

REPLY.2
The strain of these papers we fear is like to persuade
many that your design is not the same with ours.
Being assured, that it is our duty to do what we can to the
peace and concord of believers, especiaUy when we had the
past and present calamities of these nations to urge us, and
his majesty's commands and gracious promises to encourage
us, we judged the fittest means to be by making known the
hindrances of our concord, and without reviving the remem
brance of those things that tend to exasperate, to apply our
selves with due submission to those that may contribute
much to our recovery; and without personal reflections, to
propose the remedies which we knew would be most effectual,
and humbly and earnestly to petition you for your consent.
But instead of consent, or amicable debates in order to the
removal of our differences, "we have received from you a paper
abounding with" sharp accusations, as if your work were to
prove us bad, and make us odious ; which, as it is attempted
upon mistake, by unrighteous means, so, were it accomplished,
we know not how it will conduce to the concord which ought
2 This reply was dra.ivn up by Baxter.— Reliquise Baxterianse, p. 334.

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 205
to be our common end. If we understand Christ's commis
sion, or the king's, and our duty as Christians, or as
ministers, our work now assigned us, was not to search after,
and aggravate the faults of one. another, (though of our own
in season we are willing to hear) but to review the liturgy,
and agree upon such alterations, diminutions, and enlarge
ments, as are needful to our common unity and peace. What
is amiss in us, we shall thankfully accept your charitable
assistance to discover ; but we take not that for the question
which his majesty called us to debate, nor do our judgments
or dispositions lead us to recriminations, nor to cast such
impediments in the way of our desired accord. And were it
not that our calling, and our master's work, are concerned
somewhat in our just vindication, we should not trouble you
with so low, so private, and unnecessary a work, but leave
such causes to the righteous judge, who will quickly, impar-
tiaUy, infaUibly, and finally decide them.
PREFACE.
§ 1. Ans. Before we come to the proposals, it will be per
haps necessary to say a word or two to the Preface, wherein
they begin with a thankful acknowledgment of his majesty's
most princely condescension; to which we shall only say,
that we conceive the most real expression of their thankful
ness had been an hearty compliance with his majesty's
earnest and passionate request for the use of the present
liturgy, at least so much of it as they acknowledge by these
papers to be lawful: how far they have in this expressed
their thankfulness, the world sees, we need not say.
Reply. 1, As we hope it is no matter of offence to acknow
ledge his majesty's gracious condescension; so when his
majesty by his Declaration hath granted us some liberty as ,to
the use of the liturgy before the alteration, and hath by his
commission engaged us in a consultation for the alteration of
it; we conceive our brethren (or the world, to whose obser
vation they appeal) had no warrant to censure us as unthank
ful to his majesty, because of our present forbearance to use

306 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
it, or part of it, before the intended alteration ; at least tiU
they had heard us speak for ourselves, and render an account
of the reasons of our forbearance, and they had gone before
us more exemplarily in their. own obedience to his majesty's
Declaration, As to our own consciences, if we thought not
the Common Prayer book to be guilty of the general and
particular faults which we have laid open to you, we durst
not have found fault with it : and while we took it to be a
defective, disorderly, and inconvenient mode of worship, it
would be our sin to use it of choice, while we may prefer a
more convenient way, whatever we ought to do in case of
necessity, when we must worship God inconveniently, or not
at all. And as to our people, for whose edification, and not
destruction, we have our power or offices, we have taken that
course, as far as we are able to understand, which most pro
bably tended to their good, and to prevent their hurt and
separation from the Church : and consequently that course
which did most conduce to his majesty's ends, and to his real
service, and the church's peace : none of which would be
promoted by our obtruding that upon our people, which we
know them unable to digest, or by our hasty offending them
with the use of that, which we are forced to blame, and are
endeavouring to correct and alter. And we see not how it
can be justly intimated that we use no part of it, when we
use the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Commandments, the
Psalms, the Chapters, and some other parts. And how much
more you expect we should have used, that we might have
escaped this brand of ingratitude, we know not. But we
know that charity suffereth long and thinketh no evil, (1 Cor.
xiii, 4, 5,) and that we have not attempted to obtrude any
mode of worship on our brethren, but desired the liberty to
use things of that nature as may conduce to the benefit of
our flocks. And as we leave them to judge what is most
beneficial to their own flocks, who know'^them, and are upon
the place ; so it is but the like freedom which we desire : we
are loth to hurt our people knowingly. The time is short;
if you wiU answer our reasonable proposals, it will not be too

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 207
late at the expiration of our commission, or the date of the
reformed liturgy to use it : greater liberty hath been used
about liturgies in purer times of the Church, with less offence
and accusation.
§ 2. Ans. It can be no just cause of offence to mind them
of their duty as they do us of ours, telling us it is our duty
to imitate the apostles' practice in a special manner, to be
tender of the church's peace, and to advise of such expedients,
as may conduce to the healing of breaches, and uniting those
that differ. For preserving of the church's peace we know
no better nor more efficacious way than our set liturgy, there
being no such way to keep us from schism as to speak all the
same thing according to the apostle.
Reply. If you look to the time past, by our duties we
suppose you mean our faults. For it is not duty when it is
past. If you in these words respect only the time present
and to come, we reply, 1. The liturgy we are assured will not
be a less, but a more probable means of concord after the
desired reformation than before; the defects and inconve
niences make it less flt to attain the end. 2. Whether the
apostle by speaking the same thing did mean either, all
using this liturgy of ours, or all using any one form of
liturgy as to the words, may easily be determined. This is
of much later date, unless you will denominate the whole
form of the Lord's prayer, and some little parts. And those
that affirm, that the apostles then had any other, must
undertake the task of proving it, and excusing the churches
for losing and disusing so precious a relict, which if pre
served would have prevented all our strifes about these things ;
and, in the meantime, they must satisfy our arguments for
the negative. As 1. If a liturgy had been indited by the
apostles for the churches, being by universal officers inspired
by the Holy Ghost, and so of universal use, it would have
been used and preserved by the Church as the Holy Scrip
tures were. But so it was not. Ergo no such liturgy was
indited by them for the churches. 2. If a prescript form of
words had been delivered them, there would have been no

208 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
such need of exhorting them to speak the same thing, for the
liturgy would have held them close enough to that. And if
the meaning had been, see that you use the same liturgy,
some word or other to some of the churches would have
acquainted us with the existence of such a thing, and some
reproofs we should have found of those that used various
liturgies, or formed liturgies of their own, or used extempo
rary prayers : and some express exhortations to use the same
liturgy or forms. But the holy Scripture is silent in all
those matters. It is apparent, therefore, that the churches
then had no liturgy, but took liberty of extemporate expres
sions, and spoke in the things of God, as men do in other
matters, with a natural plainness and seriousness, suiting
their expressions to the subjects and occasions. And though
divisions began to disturb their peace and holy order, the
apostles instead of prescribing them a form of divine services
for their unity and concord, do exhort them to use their gifts
and liberties aright, and speak the same thing for matter,
avoiding disagreements, though they used not the same
words. 3. Justin Martyr, TertuUian, an.d others, sufficiently
intimate to us that the churches, quickly after the apostles,
did use the personal abilities of their pastors in prayer ; and
give us no hint of any such liturgy of apostolical fabrication
and imposition ; and therefore doubtless there was nothing :
for it could not have been so soon lost or neglected. 4. It
is ordinary with those of the contrary judgment, to tell us
that the extraordinary gifts of the primitive Christians were
the reason why there were no prescribed forms in those times,
and that such liturgies came in upon the ceasing of those
gifts. And 1 Cor. xiv, describeth a way of public worshipping
unlike to prescript forms of liturgy. So that the matter of
fact is proved and confessed. And then how fairly the words
of the apostle, exhorting them to speak the same thing, are
used to prove that he would have them use the same forms
or liturgy ; we shall not tell you by any provoking aggrava
tions of such abuse of Scripture. And indeed for all the
miraculous gifts of those times, if prescript forms had been

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 209
judged by the apostles to be the fittest means for the concord
of the churches, it is most probable that they would have
prescribed such. Considering — 1, That the said miraculous
gifts were extraordinary, and belonged not to all, nor to any
at all times, and therefore could not suffice for the ordinary
public worship ; 2. And those gifts began even betimes to be
abused, and need the apostles' canons for their regulation,
which he giveth them in that 1 Cor. xiv, without a prescript
liturgy ; 3. Because even then divisions had made not only
an entrance, but an unhappy progress in the churches, to
cure which the apostle exhorts them oft to unanimity and
concord, without exhorting them to read the same or any
Common Prayer book; 4. Because that the apostles knew
that perUous times would come, in which men would have
itching ears, and would have heaps of teachers, and would be
self-wUled, and unruly, and divisions, and offences, and
heresies would increase; and ergo, as upon such foresight
they indited the holy Scriptures to keep the church, in all
generations, from error and divisions in points of doctrine, so
the same reason and care would have moved them to do the
same to keep the churches in unity in point of worship, if
indeed they had taken prescribed forms to be needful to such
a unity : they knew that after their departure the church
would never have the Uke advantage, infallible, authorized,
and enabled for delivering the universal law of Christ. And
seeing in those parts of worship, which are of stated use, and
stUl the same, forms might have suited aU ages as this age,
and aU countries as this country: (in the substance) there
can no reason be given, why the apostles should leave this
undone, and not have performed it themselves, if they had
judged such forms to be necessary, or the most desirable
means of unity. If they had prescribed them, 1 . The church
had been secured from error in them, 2. Believers had been
preserved from divisions, about the lawfulness and fitness of
them, as receiving them from God. 3, All churches and
countries might have had one liturgy, as they have one Scrip
ture, and so have all spoke the same things, 4. All ages would
p

210 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
have had the same without innovation, (in all tiie parts that
require not alteration) whereas now on the contrary, 1 . Our
liturgies being the writings of faUible men, are liable to error,
and we have cause to fear subscribing to them, as having
nothing contrary to the Word of God. 2. And matters of
human institution have become the matter of scruple and
contention. 3. Aud the churches have had great diversity
of liturgies. 4. And one age hath been mending what they
supposed they received from the former faulty and imperfect.
So that our own, which you are so loth to change, hath not
continued yet three generations. And it is most evident
that the apostles, being intrusted with the delivery of the
entire rule of faith and worship, and having such great
advantages for our unity and peace, would never have omitted
the forming of a liturgy of universal usefulness, to avoid aU
the foresaid inconveniences, if they had taken this course of
unity to be so needful or desirable as you seem to do.
Whereas, therefore, you say you know no better or more
efficacious way than our liturgy, &c. — We reply, 1. The
apostles knew the best way of tmity, and of speaking the
same thing in the matters of God. But the apostles knew
not our liturgy, (nor any Common Prayer book, for aught
hath yet been proved) ergo the said liturgy is not the best
way of unity, or speaking the same thing, &c. 2. The
primitive church in the next ages after the apostles, knew
the best way of unity, &c. But they knew not our liturgy,
ergo our liturgy (not known till lately) is not the best way of
unity. If it be said that our liturgy is ancient, because the
Sursum Corda, the Gloria Patri, &c., are ancient; we
answer, if indeed it be those ancient sentences that denomi
nate our liturgy, we crave the justice to be esteemed users of
the liturgy, and not to suffer as refusers of it, as long as we
use all that is found in it of such true antiquity.
§ 3. Ans. This experience of former and latter times hath
taught us, when the liturgy was duly observed we lived in
peace; since that was laid aside, there have been as many
modes and fashions of public worship as fancies. We have had

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 211
continual dissensions, which variety of services must needs pro
duce, whilst everyone naturally desires and endeavours not
only to maintain, but to prefer his own way before all others ;
whence we conceive there is no such way for the preservation
of peace, as for all to return to the strict use and practice of
the form.
Reply. Pardon us while we desire you to examine whether
you speak as members that suffer with those that suffer, or
rather as insensible of the calamities of your brethren, that
is, as uncharitable. You say you lived in peace, but so did not
the many thousands that were fain to seek them peaceable
habitations in Holland and in the deserts of America, nor the
many thousands that lived in danger of the High Commis
sion, or Bishops' Courts at home, and so in danger of every
malicious neighbour that would accuse them of hearing ser
mons abroad, when they had none at home, or of meeting in a
neighbour's house to pray, or of not kneeling in the receiving
of the sacrament, &c. We would not have remembered you
of these things, but that you necessitate us by pleading your
peace in those days as an argument for the imposing of the
liturgy. 3. Might not Scotland as strongly argue from this
medium against the Uturgy, and say, before the liturgy was
imposed on us, we had peace, but since then we have had no
peace? 3. When the strict imposing of the strict use and
practice of these forms was the very thing that disquieted
this nation (taking in the concomitant ceremonies and sub
scription), when this was it that bred the divisions which you
complain of, and caused the separations from the churches,
and the troubles in the churches ; it is no better arguing to
say we must return to the strict use of that form if we wUl
have peace, than it was in the Israelites to say, we will wor
ship the queen of heaven, because then we had peace and
plenty, when that was it that deprived them of peace and
plenty (we compare not the causes, but the arguments) ; nor
is it any better an argument, than if a man in a dropsy, or
ague, that caught it with voracity or intemperance, should
say, whUe I did eat and drink Uberally, I had no dropsy or
p 3

312 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
ague, but since my appetite is gone, and I have lived temper
ately, I have had no health, ergo, I must return to my
intemperance, as the only way to health, Alas, is this the
use that is made of all our experiences of the causes and
progress of our calamities ? What ! have you, and we, and
aU, smarted as we have done, and are you so speedUy ready to
return to the way that wiU engage you in violence against
them that should be suffered to live in peace ? If the furnace
that should have refined us, and purified us aU to a greater
height of love, have but inflamed us to greater wrath, woe to
us, and to the land that beareth us 1 What doleful things
doth this prognosticate you, that prisons, or other penalties,
will not change men's judgments ! And if it drive some to
comply against their consciences, and destroy their souls, and
drive the more conscientious out of the land, or destroy their
bodies, and breed in the minds of men a rooted opinion, that
bishops that are still hurting and affiicting them (even for the
things in which they exercise the best of their understanding,
and cautiously to avoid sin against God), are no fathers,
friends, or edifyers, but destroyers ! Alas 1 who wUl have the
gain of this ? O let us no more bite and devour one another,
lest we be devoured one of another (Gal. v, 15), or Christ be
provoked to decide the controversy more sharply than we
desire or expect. 4. But really hath liberty to forbear the
liturgy produced such divisions as you mention ? The licence
or connivance that was granted to heretics, apostates, and
foul-mouthed railers against the Scripture, ministry, and aU
God's ordinances, indeed bred confusions in the land; but
it is to us matter of admiration to observe (clean contrary to
your intimation) how Uttle discord there was in prayer, and
other parts of worship, among all the churches throughout
the three nations that agreed in doctrine and that forbore the
Uturgy, It is wonderful to us, in the review, to consider with
what love, and peace, and concord, they all spoke the same
things, that were tied to no form of words ; even those that
differed in some points of discipUne, even to a withdrawing
from local communion with us, yet strangely agreed with

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 213
us in worship. And where have there been less heresies,
schisms, than in Scotland, where there was no such liturgy to
unite them ? If you tell us of those that differ from us in
doctrine, and are not of us, it is as impertinent to the
point of our own agreement in worship, as to tell us of the
papists. § 4. Ans. And the best expedients to unite us to that
again, and so to peace, are, besides our prayers to the God of
peace, to make us all of one mind in a house, to labour to
get true humility, which would make us think our guides
wiser and fitter to order us than we ourselves, and Christian
charity, which would teach us to think no evil of our superi
ors, but to judge them rather careful guides and fathers to us ;
which being obtained, nothing can be imagined justly to
hinder us from a ready compUance to this method of service
appointed by them, and so live in unity.
Reply. Prayer and humility are indeed the necessary means
of peace : but if you wiU let us pray for peace in no words
but what are in the Common Prayer book, their brevity and
unaptness, and the customariness, that will take off the edge
of fervour with human nature, will not give leave (or help
sufficient) to our souls to work towards God, upon this sub
ject, with that enlargedness, copiousness, and freedom as is
necessary to due fervour. A brief, transient touch and away,
is not enough to warm the heart aright ; and cold prayers are
like to have a cold return, and therefore, even for peace sake,
let us pray more copiously and heartily than the Common
Prayer book will help us to do. And whether this be that
cause, or whether it be that the Common Prayer book hath
never a prayer for itself, we find that its prayers prevail not to
reconcile many sober, serious persons to it that live in faith-
ful, fervent prayer. 2. And for humility, we humbly conceive
it would most effectually heal us, and by causing the pastors
of the church to know that they are not to rule the flocks as
lords, but as ensamples, not by constraint, but wUlingly
(1 Pet. V, 2, 3); and it would cause them not to think so
highly of themselves, and so meanly of their brethren, as to

214 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
judge no words fit to be used to God in the public worship,
but what they prescribe, and put into our mouths, and that
other men are generally unable to speak sensibly, or suitably,
unless they tell us what to say ; or, that all others are unfit
to be trusted with the expressing of their own desires.
Humility would persuade the pastors of the church at least to
undertake no more than the apostles did, and no more io ob
trude or impose their own words upon all others in the public
worship. If they found any unfit to be trusted with the ex
pression of their minds in public prayer, they would do what
they could to get meeter men in their places, and till then
they would restrain and help such as need it, and not upon
that pretence as much restrain all the ablest ministers, as if
the whole church were to be nominated, measured, or used
according to the quality of the most unworthy. And it is
also true, that humility in private persons and inferiors would
do much to our peace, by keeping them in due submission,
and obedience, and keeping them from all contentions and
divisions which proceed from self-conceitedness and pride.
But yet, 1. — The humblest, surest subjects may stumble upon
the scruple, whether bishops differ not from presbyters only
in degree, and not in order or office (it being a controversy,
and no resolved point of faith even among the papists, whose
faith is too extensive, and favour too ecclesiastical, ambition
too great) , and consequently they may doubt whether men in
the same order do, by divine appointment, owe obedience unto
those that gradually go before them. 2. And they may
scruple whether such, making themselves the governors of
their brethren, make not themselves indeed of a different
order or office, and so encroach not on the authority of
Christ, who only maketh officers purely ecclesiastical; and
whether it be no disloyalty to Christ to own such officers.
3. And among those divines that are for a threefold episco
pacy (besides that of presbyters, who are episcopi gregis), viz.,
general, unfixed bishops, like the evangelists or apostles (in
their measure), and the fixed bishops of parochial churches,
that have presbyters to assist them, to whom they do preside,

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 215
and also the presidents of larger synods, yet is it a matter of
very great doubt, whether a fixed diocesan being the pastor of
many hundred churches, having none under him that hath
the power of jurisdiction or ordination, be indeed a governor
of Christ's appointment or approbation, and whether Christ
will give us any more thanks for owning them as such, than
the king will give us for owning a usurper. Humility alone
will not seem to subject these men to such a government,
4. And though their coercive magistratical power be easily
submitted to, as being from the king (how unfit subjects
soever churchmen are of such a power), yet he that knoweth
his superiors best, doth honour God more, and supposeth God
more infallible than man, and will feel himself most in
dispensably bound by God's commands, and bound not to
obey man against the Lord. And whereas there is much
said against the peoples taking on them to judge of the lawful
ness of things commanded them by superiors, we add — ¦
5. That humble men may believe that their superiors are
fallible ; that it is no impossibility to command things that
God forbids ; that, in such cases, if we have sufficient means
to discern the sinfulness of such commands, we must make
use of them, and must obey God rather than men ; that when
the apostles acted according to such a resolution (Acts iv, 19),
and Daniel and the three witnesses (Dan. vi, 3), they all exer
cised a judgment of discerning upon the matter of their
superiors' commands; that not to do so at all, is to make
subjects^brutes, and so no subjects, because not rational, free
agents, or to make all governors to be gods. And, lastly —
That it wUl not save us from hell, nor justify us at judgment,
for sinning against God, to say, that superiors commanded us ;
nor will it prove all the martyrs to be sinners and condemned,
because they judged of their superiors' commands, and dis
obeyed them. All which we say to shew the insufficiency of
the remedy here by you propounded (the humility of inferiors),
unless you will also add your help. Without obedience there
is no order or lasting concord to be expected; and by
abasing the eternal God, so far as to set him and his laws

316 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
below a creature, under pretence of obedience to the creature,
DO good can be expected, because no peace with heaven; with
out which, peace with men is but a confederacy hastening
each party to destruction : and therefore, absolute obedience
must be given only to God, the absolute Sovereign. In aU
this we suppose that we are aU agreed. And therefore —
6, and lastly. We must say, that the way to make us think
the bishops to be so wise, and careful guides and fathers to us,
is not for them to seem wiser than the apostles, and make
those things of standing necessity to the churches unity,
which the apostles never made so, nor to forbid aU to preach
the gospel, or to hold communion with the church, that dare
not conform to things unnecessary. Love and tenderness are
not used to -express themselves by hurting and destroying men
for nothing; and to silence and reject from church com
munion for a ceremony, and in the meantime to persuade
men, that they love them, is but to stab or famish aU the sick
persons in the hospital or family, whose stomachs cannot take
down the dish we offer them, or whose throats are too narrow
to swallow so big a morsel as we send them ; and when we
have done, to tell them, the only remedy is for them to believe
we love them, and are tender of them. And who knows not
that a man may think weU of his superiors, that yet may
question whether all that he teacheth or commandeth him be
lawful. § 5. Ans. If it be objected that the liturgy is in any way
sinful and unlawful for us to join with, it is but reason that
,this be first proved evidently, before anything be altered : it
is no argument to say that multitudes of sober pious persons
scruple the use of it, unless it be made to appear by evident
reasons that the liturgy gave the just grounds to make such
scruples. For if the bare pretence of scruples be sufficient to
exempt us from obedience, all law and order is gone.
Reply. To this passage we humbly crave your consideration
of these answers; 1. We have not only said, (that sober
pious persons scruple the liturgy,) but we have opened to you
those defects, and disorders, and corruptions, which must

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 317
needs make the imposing of it unlawful, when God might be
more fitly served. 3. It is strange, that you must see it first
evidently proved unlawful for men to join with the liturgy
(you mean, we supposfe, to join with you in the using of it, or
when you use it,) before you will see reason to alter anything
in it. What if it be only proved unlawful for you to impose it,
though not for others to join with you when you do impose
it, is this, no reason to alter it ? Should you not have some
care to avoid sin yourselves, as weU as to preserve others from
it ? An inconvenient mode of worship is a sin in the imposer,
and in the chooser, and voluntary user, that might offer God
better, and wUl not, (Mal. i, 13, 14.) And yet it may not be
only lawful, but a duty, to him that by violence is necessitated
to offer up that or none. And yet we suppose the imposers
should see cause to make an alteration. If you lived where
you must receive the Lord's Supper sitting, or not at all, it's
like you would be of this mind yourselves. 3. Why should
it be called a bare pretence of scruples, as if you searched
the hearts, and knew (not only that they are upon mistake,
but) that they are not real, when the persons not only profess
them real, but are wiUing to use aU just means that tend to
their satisfaction? they study, read, pray, and wUl be glad of
conference with you, at any time, upon equal terms, if they
may be themselves believed. 4. Even groundless scruples
about the matter of an unnecessary law, which hath that
which to the weak both is and will be an appearance of evU,
may be sufficient to make it the duty of rulers to reverse
their impositions, though they be not sufficient to justify the
scrupulous. 5. If a man should think that he ought not to
obey man, even when he thinketh it is against the commands
of God, though he be uncertain, (as in case of going on an
unquestioned warfare, or doing Doeg's execution, &c.,) yet it
foUoweth not, that all law and order is gone, as long as all
laws and orders stand that are visibly subservient to the laws
of God, and to his sovereignty, or consistent with them ; and
when the subject submitteth to suffering where he dare not
obey.

318 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
§ 6. Ans. On the contrary, we judge that if the liturgy
should be altered as is there required, not only a multitude,
but the generality of the soberest and most loyal children of
the church of England would justly be offended, since such an
alteration would be a virtual confession that this Uturgy were
an intolerable burden to tender consciences, a direct cause of
schism, a superstitious usage (upon which pretences it is here
desired to be altered ;) which would at once both justify all
those which have so obstinately separated from it, as the only
pious, tender-conscienced men, and condemn all those that
have adhered to that, in conscience of their duty and loyalty,
with their loss or hazard of estates, lives, and fortunes, as men
superstitious, schismatical, and void of religion and conscience.
For this reason and those that follow, we cannot consent to
such an alteration as is desired, till these pretences be proved ;
' which we conceive in no wise to be done in these papers, and
shall give reasons for this our judgment.
Reply. If the liturgy should be altered, as is here required,
and desired by us, that it could be no just offence to the
generality (or any) of the soberest and most loyal children of
the church (as you speak) is easy to be proved, by laying to
gether the considerations following : — 1. Because it is by them
selves confessed to be alterable, as not having itself its former
constitution, till less than 300 years ago. 3. And them
selves affirm it to be not necessary to salvation, but a thing
indifferent, while they exclude aU higher institutions from the
power of the church, 3. They confess it lawful to serve God
without this lifurgy, without which he was served by other
churches above 1460 years, and without which he is now
served by other churches, when the contrary-minded doubt
whether with it he be lawfully served. 4. Those that desire
the alteration, desire no more than to serve God as the
churches did in the days of the apostles, that had their most
infallible conduct. 5. And they offer also such forms as are
more unquestionable as to their congruency to the Word of
God, and to the nature of the several parts of worship. 6.
And yet, though they desfre the surest concord and a uni-

1661.J to the Answer of the Bishops. 219
versal reformation, they desire not to impose on others what
they offer, but can thankfully accept a liberty to use what is
to their own consciences most unquestionably safe, while other
men use that which they like better. So that set all this
together, with the consideration of the necessity of the
preaching the word, and communion that is hereupon denied,
and you may see it proved, that to have such a liturgy so altered,
that is confessed alterable, for so desirable an end, to the use
only of those that cannot well use it, without urging others
to anything that they do themselves account unlawful, cannot
be a matter of just offence to the generality of sober children
of the'' church, nor to any one. And as to the reason given,
it is apparently none. For, 1. Of those that scruple the un
lawfulness of it, there are many that wiU not peremptorily
affirm it unlawful, and condemn all that use it, but they^dare
not use it doubtingly themselves. 2. When our papers were
before you, we think it not just that you should say, that it is
here desired to be altered, on the pretence that it is a direct
cause of schism and a superstitious usage : have we any such
expressions ? If we have, let them be recited ; if not, it is
hard that this should even by you be thus affirmed, as is said
by us, which we have not said. We have said that the cere
monies have been the fountain of much evil, occasioning
divisions, but not what you charge us to have said in words or
sense. 3. And may not you alter them without approving,
or seeming to approve the reason upon which the alteration is
desired, when you have so great store of other reasons ? The
king in his Declaration is far enough from seeming to own the
charge against the things which he was pleased graciously to
alter so far as is there expressed. If a patient have a conceit
that some one thing would kill him, if he took it, the phy
sician may well forbear him in that one thing, when it is not
necessary to his health, without owning his reasons against it :
if his majesty have subjects so weak as to contend about
things indifferent, and if both sides err, one thinking them
necessary, and the other sinful, may he not gratify either of
them, without seeming to approve their error ? By this reason

220 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
of yours he is by other men in such a case necessitated to sin;
for if he settle those things which some count necessary, he
seems to approve of their opinion, that they are necessary : if
he take them down when others caU them sinful, he seems to
own their charge of the sinfulness. But indeed he needeth
not to do either, he may take them down, or leave them indif
ferent, professedly for unity and peace, and professedly disown
the errors on both sides. We are sorry if any did esteem
these forms and ceremonies any better than mutable indif
ferent modes and circumstances of worship ; and did hazard
estate or life for them as any otherwise esteemed : and we are
sorry, that, by our divisions, the adversary of peace hath gotten
so great an advantage against us as that the argument
against necessary charitable forbearance is fetched from the
interest of the reputation of the contending parties, that
things may not be abated to others which you confess are in
different and alterable, and which many of them durst not
use, though to save their lives : and this because it wiU make
them thought the pious, tender-conscienced men, and make
others thought worse of. But with whom will it have these
effects ? Those that you call the generality of the sober loyal
children of the church, will think never the worse of them
selves, because others have Uberty to live by them, without
these things : and the rest, whose liberties you deny, wiU
think rather the worse of you, than the better, for denying
them their liberty in the worshipping of God. You un
doubtedly argue here against the interest of reputation, which
you stand for : your prefaces to your indulgencies, and your
open professions, and (if you wiU needs have it so) your own
practices, will tell the world loud enough, that the things
which you adhered to with so great hazards, are still lawful
in your judgment; and it will be your honour, and add to
your reputation, to abate them to others, when it is in your
power to be more severe. And if you refuse it, their suffer
ings will tell the world loud enough that, for their parts, they
stUl take them to be things unlawful. As for the reasons by
them produced to prove them sinful, they have been pubUcly

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 221
made known in the writings of many of them ; in Ames his
Fresh Sute against the ceremonies, and in the Abridgment, &c.,
and in Bradshaw's, Nicols', and other men's writings.
Prop. 1. § 1. Ans. To the first general proposal we answer,
that as to that part of it which requires that the matter of the
liturgy may not be private opinion or fancy, that being the
way to perpetuate schism ; the church hath been careful to
put nothing into the liturgy, but that which is either evi
dently the Word of God, or what hath been generally
received in the catholic church; neither of which can be
called private opinion : and if the contrary can be proved,
we wish it out of the liturgy.
Reply. We call those opinions which are not determined
certainties ; and, though the greater number should hold them
as opinions, they are not therefore the doctrines of the
church, and therefore might be called private opinions; but
indeed we used not the word (that we can find) : the thing
we desired was, that the materials of the liturgy may consist
of nothing doubtful, or questioned among pious, learned, and
orthodox persons. We said also, that the limiting church
communion to things of doubtful disputation, hath been in
all ages the ground of schism and separation; which is not
to say, that the liturgy itself is a superstitious usage, or
a direct cause of schism. And we cited the words of a
learned man (Mr. Hales), not as making every word our
own, but as a testimony ad hominem, because he was so
highly valued by yourselves, as we suppose, and therefore
we thought his words might be more regarded by you than
our own. 2. Where you say that the church hath been
careful to put nothing in the liturgy but that which is
either evidently the Word of God, or that which had been
generaUy received in the catholic church: — we reply, 1,
We suppose there is little or nothing now controverted
between us, which you will say is evidently the Word of
God, either the forms or ceremonies, or any of the rest.
3, If by in the church you mean, not by the church
but by any part in the church, how shall we know that

333 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
they did weU? And if by the generality you mean, not
all, but the greater part, you undertake the proof of that
which is not easy to be proved ; it being so hard to judge
of the majority of persons in the catholic church in any
notable differences. We do take it for granted, that you
limit not the catholic church, as the papists do, to
the confines of the Roman empire; but indeed we can
only wish that your assertion were true, while we must
show it to be untrue. If you speak of the primitive
church, or of a universality of time, as well as place,
(if not, it is more against you that the primitive catholic
church was against you,) the very thing in question that
containeth the rest (that it is needful to the peace of the
church, that all the churches under one prince should
use one form of liturgy) was not received by the catholic
church, nor by the generality in it, when it is so well known
that they used diversity of liturgies and customs in the
Roman empire. The generality in the catholic church
received not the Lord's supper kneeling, at least on any
Lord's days, when it was forbidden by divers general
councUs, and when this prohibition was generally received
as an apostolical tradition. We have not heard it proved that
the surplice or cross, as used with us, were received by
the universal church. It is a private opinion not received
by the catholic church, that it is requisite that no man
should come to the holy communion but with a full trust
in God's mercy, and with a quiet conscience. Though it
be every man's duty to be perfect pro statu viatoris, yet
it is not requisite that no man come till he be perfect.
He that hath but a weak faith (though not a full trust)
must come to have it strengthened; and he that hath an
unquiet conscience, must come to receive that mercy which
may quiet it. It is a private opinion, and not generaUy
received in the cathoUc church, that one of [the people
may make the public confession at the sacrament in the
name of all those that are minded to receive the holy
communion. It is a private, and not generally received

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 323
distinction, that the body of Christ makes clean our bodies,
and his blood washeth our souls. It is a doubtful opinion,
to speak easily, that when the Lord's supper is delivered
with a prayer not made in the receiver's name, but thus
directed to him by the minister (the body of our Lord
Jesus Christ, &c., preserve thy body and soul), it is so in
tolerable a thing for the receiver not to kneel in hearing
the prayer, that he must else be thrust from the commu
nion of the church, and yet that no minister shall kneel
that indeed doth pray : but he may pray standing, and
the hearers be cast out for standing at the same words. It
is not a generally received, but a private opinion, that every
parishioner (though impenitent, and conscious of his utter
unfitness, and though he be in despair, and think he shall
take his own damnation) must be forced to receive thrice a
year; when yet even those that have not a full trust in God's
mercy, or have not a quiet conscience, were before pronounced
so incapable, as that none such should come to the commu
nion. Abundance more such instances may be given, to
show how far from truth the assertion is, that the church
hath been careful to put nothing into the liturgy but that
which is either evidently the Word of God, or which hath
been generally received in the catholic church, unless you
speak of some unhappy unsuccessful carefulness. But we
thankfuUy accept of your following words, (and if the con
trary can be proved, we wish it out of the liturgy,) which
we entreat you to perform, and impartially receive our proofs.
But then we must also entreat you, — 1. That the primitive
church's judgment and practice may be preferred before the
present declined, much corrupted state. And 2. If God's
law, rather than the sinful practices of men breaking that
law, may be the church's rule for worship ; — for you call us to
subscribe to Article 19, that as the church of Jerusalem,
Alexandria, and Antioch hath erred, so also the church of
Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of
ceremonies, but also in matters of faith; and, saith Rogers,
in Article 30, they are out of the way which think that either

334 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
one man, as the pope, or any certain calling of men, as the
clergy, hath power to decree and appoint rites or ceremonies,
though of themselves good, unto the whole church of God,
dispersed over the universal world : — and, indeed, if you would
have all that corruption brought into our liturgy, and dis
cipline, and doctrine, which the papists, Greeks, and others,
that undoubtedly make up the far greater number/ of the
now universal church, do use;- you would deserve no more
thanks of God or man than he that would have all kings,
and nobles, and gentry levelled with the poor commons,
because the latter are the greater number ; or than he that
would have the healthful conformed to the sick, when an
epidemical disease hath made them the majority; or than he
that would teach us to follow a multitude to do evU, and to
break more than the least commands, because the greater
number break them : we pray you, therefore, to take it for
no justification of any uncertain or faulty passage in our
liturgy, though the greater number now are guilty of it.
3. And we must beseech you, if the church's judgment or
practice must be urged, that you woidd do us the justice as
to imitate the ancient churches in your sense of the quality,
and the mode and measure of using and imposing things, as
weU as in the materials used and imposed. Consider not
only .whether you find such things received by the ancient
churches, but also consider how they were received, esteemed,
and used — whether as necessary or indifferent, as points of
faith or doubtful opinions, whether forced on others or left to
their free choice. If you find that the generality of the
ancient churches received the white -garment after baptism
and the tasting of mUk and honey as ceremonies, freely,
though generally used, you should not, therefore, force men
to use them : if you find that the doctrine of the mUlennium
or of angels' corporeity was generally received as an opinion,
it will not warrant you to receive either of them as a certain
necessary truth. If you find that the general councils
forbade kneeling in any adoration on the Lord's days, but
without force against dissenters, you may not go deny the

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 335
sacrament to all that kneel, nor yet forbid them to kneel in
praying. So if you find some little parcels of our liturgy, or
some of our ceremonies used as things indifferent, left to
choice, forced upon none, but one church differing from
another in such usages or observances, this will not warrant
you to use the same things as necessary to order, unity, or
peace, and to be forced upon all. Use them no otherwise than
the churches used them.
Prop. 1. §3. Ans. We heartily desire that, according to this
proposal, great care may be taken to suppress those private
conceptions of prayers before and after sermon, lest private
opinions be made the matter of prayer in public, as hath, and
wiU be, if private persons take liberty to make public
prayers. Reply. The desire of your hearts is the grief of our hearts ;'
the conceptions of prayer by a public person, according to a
public rule, for a public use, are not to be rejected as private
conceptions : we had hoped you had designed no such
innovation as this in the church. When we have heard any
say that it would come to this, and that you designed the sup
pression of the free prayers of ministers in the pulpit, suited
to the variety of subjects and occasions, we have rebuked
them as uncharitable in passing so heavy a censure on you.
And what would have been said of us a year ago, if we should
have said that this was in your hearts ? Nothing wUl more
alienate the hearts of many holy, prudent persons from the
Common Prayer, than to perceive that it is framed and used
as an instrument to shut out all other prayers, as the minis
ters' private conceptions. Such an end and design will make
it, under the notion of a means, another thing than else it
would be, and afford men such an argument against it as we
desire them not to have : but we hope you speak not the
public sense. As the apostles desired (as aforesaid) that all
would speak the same things, without giving them (that ever
was proved) a form of words to speak them in, so might we
propose to you that uncertain opinions be made no part of
our liturgy, without putting all their words into their mouths
Q

336 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
in which their desires must be uttered. Your hearty desire,
and the reason of it, makes not only against extemporary
prayer, but all prepared, or written forms, or liturgies, that
were indited only by one man, and have not the consent
antecedently of others. And do you think this was the
course of the primitive times ? Basil thus used his private
conceptions at Csesarea, and Gregory Thaumaturgus, before
him, at Neocsesarea, and aU pastors in Justin Martyr's and Ter-
tuUian's days. And how injurious is it to the public officers
of Christ, the bishops and pastors of the churches, to be
called private men ! Who are public persons in the church, if
they be not ? Every single person is not a private person,
else kings and judges would be so. And have you not better
means to shut out private opinions, than the forbidding
ministers praying in the pulpit, according to the variety of
subjects and occasions? You have first the examination of
persons to be ordained, and may see that they be able to speak
sense, and fit to manage their proper works with judgment
and discretion, before you ordain them ; and some confidence
may be put in a man in his proper caUing and work, to which
he is admitted with so great care as we hope (or desire) you
vfUI admit them. If you are necessitated to admit some few
that are injudicious, or unmeet, we beseech you, not only to
restore the many hundred worthy men laid by, to a capacity,
but that you wiU not so dishonour the whole church, as to
suppose all such, and to use aU as such, but restrain those
that deserve restraint, and not all others for their sakes. And
next, you have a public rule (the holy Scripture) for these
men to pray by ; and if any of them be intolerably guilty of
weaknesses or rashness, or other miscarriages, the words being
spoken in pubUc, you have witness enow ; and sure there is
power enough in magistrates and bishops to punish them, and
if they prove incorrigible, to cast them out. In all other
professions, these means are thought sufficient to regulate the
professors. His majesty thinks it enough to regulate his
judges, that he may choose able men, and fit to be trusted in
their proper work, and that they are responsible for aU their

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 337
maladministrations, without prescribing them forms, beyond
which they may not speak anything in their charge. Physi
cians being first tried, and responsible for their doings, are
constantly trusted with the lives of high and low, without
tying them to give no counsel or medicine, but by the pre
script of a book, or determination of a college. And it is so
undeniable that your reason makes more against preaching,
and for only reading homilies, as that we must like it the
worse, if not fear what wUl become of preaching also. For,
1. It is known that in preaching a man hath far greater op
portunity and liberty to vent a false or private opinion, than
in prayer. 3. It is known, de eventu, that it is much more
ordinary. And if you say, that he speaks not the words of
the church, but his own, nor unto God, but man, and there
fore it is less matter ; we answer — It is as considerable, if not
much more, from whom he speaks, than to whom he speaks,
as the minister of Christ, in his stead and name, (3 Cor. v,
19, 30.) And it is as a higher, so a more reverend thing, to
speak in God's name to the people, than in the people's name
to God; and to speak that which we call God's word, or
truth, or message, than that which we call but our own
desire. We make God a liar, or corrupt in his words, if we
speak a falsehood in his name ; we make but ourselves liars,
if we speak a falsehood to him in our own names ; the former,
therefore, is the more heinous and dreadful abuse, and more
to be avoided; or if but equally, it shews the tendency of
your reason, for we wiU not say of your design, as hoping
you intend not to make us ruffians. We do, therefore, for
the sake of the poor threatened church, beseech you that you
will be pleased to repent of these desires, and not to prosecute
them, considering that to avoid a lesser evU (avoidable by
safer means), you wUl bring a far greater evil on the churches,
and such as is like to strip these nations of the glory in
which they have excelled the rest of the world, even a
learned, able, holy ministry, and a people sincere and
serious, and understanding in the matters of their sal
vation. Q 2

228 Rejoinder of he Ministers [1661.
For, 1. As it is well known that an ignorant man may
read a prayer and homUy as distinctly and laudably as a
learned divine, and so may do the work of a minister, if this
be it ; so it is known that man's nature is so addicted to ease
and sensual diversions, as that multitudes wiU make no better
preparations when they find that no more is necessary. When
they are as capable of their places and maintenance if they
can but read, and are forced upon no exercise of their parts,
which may detect and shame their ignorance, hut the same
words are to be read by the ablest and the ignorantest man ;
it is certain that this wiU make multitudes idle in their
academical studies, and multitudes to spend their time idly
all the year, in the course of their ministry : and when they
have no necessity that they are sensible of, of dUigent studies,
it wUl let loose their fleshly, voluptuous inclinations, and they
will spend their time in sports, and drinking, and prating, and
idleness, and this wiU be a seminary of lust: or they wiU
foUow the world, and drown themselves in covetousness and
ambition, and their hearts will be like their studies. As it is
the way to have a holy, able ministry, to engage them to
holy studies, to meditate on God's law day and night, so it is
the way to have an ignorant, profane, and scandalous ministry
(and consequently enemies to serious godliness in others,) to
impose upon them but such a work as in ignorance and idle
ness they may perform as weU as the judicious and the
dUigent. If it be said that their parts may be tried and
exercised some other way, we answer, where should a minis
ter's parts be exercised, if not in the pulpit, or the church,
and in catechising, in private baptism, and communion, and
in the visitation of the sick? Their work also is such as a
schoolboy may do as well as they, their ignorance having the
same cloak, in public. If it be said that a minister'a
work is not to shew his parts, we answer, but his ministerial
work is, to shew men their sins, and to preach the wonderful
mysteries of the gospel ; to help men to search and understand
the Scriptures, and to search and to know their hearts, and
to know God in Christ, and to hope for the glory that is to be

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 229
revealed; and fervently to pray for the success of his en
deavours, and the blessings of the gospel on the people, and
cheerfully to praise God for his various benefits, which cannot
be well done without abilities. A physician's work is not to
shew his parts ultimately, but it is to do that for the cure of
diseases which vrithout parts he cannot do ; and in the exercise
of his parts, on which the issue much depends, to save men's
lives. The ostentation of his good works is not the work of
a good Christian : and yet he must so let his light shine
before men, that they may see his good works, and glorify
God. And undeniable experience tells us, that God ordinarily
proportioneth the success and blessing to the skill, and holi
ness, and diUgence of the instruments, and blesseth not the
labours of ignorant, ungodly drones, as he doth the labours
of able, faithfiU ministers : and also that the readiest way to
bring the gospel into contempt with the world, and cause all
religion to dwindle away into formality first, and then to
barbarism and brutishness, is to let in an ignorant, idle,
vicious ministry, that wiU become the people's scorn. Yea,
this is the way to extirpate Christianity out of any country
in the world, which is decaying apace when men grow ignorant
of the nature and reasons of it, and unexperienced in its
power and delightful fruits, and when the teachers themselves
grow -unable to defend it. And we must add that, whatsoever
can be expected duly to affect the heart, must keep the
intellect, and aU the faculties awake in diUgent attention and
exercise : and in the use of a form which we have frequently
heard and read, the faculties are not so necessitated and
urged to attention, and serious exercise, as they be when
from our own understanding we are set about the natural
work of representing to others -what we discern and feel-
Man's mind is naturaUy slothful, and will take its ease, and
remit its seriousness longer than it is urged by necessity, or
drawn out by delight. When we know beforehand that we
have no more to do but read a prayer or homily, we shall
ordinarUy be in danger of letting our minds go another way,
and think of other matters, and be senseless of the work in

230 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
hand. Though he is but an hypocrite that is carried on by
no greater motive than man's observation and approbation;
yet is it a help not to be despised, when even a necessity of
avoiding just shame with men, shall necessarUy awake our
invention, and all our faculties to the work, and be a con
current help with spiritual motives. And common experience
teUs us, that the best are apt to lose a great deal of their
affection by the constant use of the same words or forms.
Let the same sermon be preached a hundred times over,
and try whether a hundred for one wUl not be much less
moved by it, than they were at first. It is not only the
common corruption of our nature, but somewhat of innocent
infirmity that is the cause of this. And man must cease to
be man, or to be mortal, before it wiU be otherwise; so that
the nature of the thing, and the common experience of our
own dispositions, and of the effect on others, assureth us, that
understanding serious godliness is like to be extinguished, if
only forms be allowed in the church, on pretence of ex
tinguishing errors and divisions. And though we have con
curred to offer you our more corrected Nepenthes, yet must
we, before God and men, protest against the dose of opium
which you here prescribe or wish for, as that which plainly
tendeth to cure the disease by the extinguishing of life, and
to unite us all in a dead religion. And when the prayers
that avail must be effectual and fervent, James v, 16, and
God will be worshipped in spirit and truth, and more regard-
eth the frame of the heart than the comeliness of expression ;
we have no reason to be taken with anything that pretends to
help the tongue, while we are sure it ordinarUy hurts the
heart. And it is not the affirmations of any men in the
world, persuading us of the harmlessness of such a course>
that can so far unman us, as to make us disbelieve both our
own experience, and common observation of the effect on
others. Yet we confess that some forms have their laudable
use, to cure that error and vice, that lieth on the other
extreme. And might we but sometimes have the Uberty to
interpose such words as are needful to call home and quicken

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 331
attention and affection, W'C should think that a convenient
conjunction of both might be a well-tempered means to the
common constitutions of most. But still we see the world
will run into extremes, whatever be said or done to hinder it.
It is but lately that we were put to it, against one extreme, to
defend the lawfulness of a form of liturgy; now the other
extreme it troubleth us, that we are forced against you, even
such as you, to defend the use of such prayers of the pastors
of the churches, as are necessarily varied according to subjects
and occasions, while you would have no prayer at aU in the
church, but such prescribed forms. And why may we not
add, that whoever maketh the forms imposed on us, if he use
them, is guUty as well as we of praying according to his
private conceptions; and that we never said it proved from
Scripture, that Christ appointed any to such an office, as to
make prayers for other pastors and churches to offer up to
God ; and that this being none of the work of the apostolic,
or common ministerial office in the primitive church, is no
work of any office of divine institution ?
Prop. 1. § 3, Ans. To that part of the proposal, that the
prayers may consist of nothing doubtful or questioned by pious,
learned, and orthodox persons ; they not determining who be
those orthodox persons; we must either take aU them for ortho
dox persons, who shall confidently affirm themselves to be such,
and then we say, first, the demand is unreasonable ; for some
such as call themselves orthodox, have questioned the prime
article of our creed, even the divinity of the Son of God, and
yet there is no reason we should part with our creed for that.
Besides, the proposal requires impossibility; for there never
was, nor is, nor can be such prayers made, as have not been,
nor wUl be questioned by some who caU themselves pious,
learned, and orthodox. If by orthodox be meant those who
adhere to Scripture and the catholic consent of antiquity, we
do not yet know that any part of our Uturgy hath been
questioned by such.
Reply. And may we not thus mention orthodox persons to
men that profess they agree with us in doctrinals, unless we

333 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
digress to tell you who they be ? What if we were pleading
for civil concord among all that are loyal to the king, must
we needs digress to tell you who are loyal ? We are agreed
in one rule of faith, in one holy Scripture, and one creed,
and differ not (you say) ahout the doctrinal part of the
thirty-nine Articles. And will not aU this seem to teU you
who are orthodox ? If you are resolved to make aU that a
matter of contention which we desire to make a means of
peace, there is no remedy while you have the ball before you,
and have the wind and sun, and the power of contending
without control. But we perceive, that the cathoUc consent
of antiquity must go into your definition of the orthodox ;
but how hard it is to get a reconcUing determination, what
ages shall go with you, and us, for the true antiquity, and
what is necessary to that consent that must be called catholic,
is unknown to none but the inexperienced. And indeed we
think a man that searcheth the holy Scripture, and sincerely
and unreservedly gives up his soul to understand, love, and
obey it, may be orthodox, without the knowledge of church
history; we know no universal lawgiver, nor law to the
church, but one, and that law is the sufficient rule of faith,
and consequently the test of the truly orthodox, though we
refuse not church history, or other means that may help us to
understand it. And to acquaint you with what you do not
know, we ourselves (after many pastors of the reformed
churches) do question your liturgy, as far as is expressed in
our papers ; and we profess to adhere to Scripture and the
catholic consent of antiquity, as described by Vicentius
Lirinensis. If you will say, that our pretence and claim is
unjust, we call for your authority to judge our hearts, or
depose us from the number of the orthodox, or else for your
proofs to make good your accusation. But however you
judge, we rejoice iu the expectation of the righteous judgment,
that shall finally decide the controversy ; to which, from this
aspersion, we appeal. •
Prop. 1. § 4. Ans. To those generals, " loading public forms
with church pomp, garments, imagery, and many superfluities

A

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 333
that creep into the church under the name of order and decency,
encumbering churches with superfluities, over rigid reviving
of obsolete customs, &c.," we say, that if these generals be
intended as applicable to our liturgy in particular, they are
gross and foul slanders, contrary to their profession, (page ult,,)
and so either that or this contrary to their conscience; if not
they signify nothing to the present business, and so might
with more prudence and candour have been omitted.
Reply. You needed not go a fishing for our charge; what
we had to say against the liturgy, which we now desired you
to observe, was here plainly laid before you ; answer to this,
and suppose us not to say, what we do not, to make yourselves
matter of reproaching us with gross and foul slanders. Only
we pray you answer Mr. Hales, as Mr. Hales, (whom we
took to be a person of much esteem with you,) especiaUy that
passage of his which you take no notice of, as not being so
easy to be answered, for the weight and strength which it
carries with it ; viz., that the limiting of the church commu
nion to things of doubtful disputation, hath been in all ages
the ground of schism and separation, and that he that sepa
rates from suspected opinions is not the separatist. And
may we not cite such words of one that we thought you
honoured, and would hear, without contradicting our profes
sion of not intending depravation or reproach against the
book without going against our consciences ? If we cite the
words of an author for a particular use (as to persuade you of
the evU of laying the church's unity upon unnecessary things)
must we be responsible therefore for all that you can say
against his words in other respects? We suppose you would be
loth your words should have such interpretations, and that
you should be under such a law for all your citations. Do as
you would be done by.
Prop. 3. Ans. It was the wisdom of our reformers to draw up
such a liturgy as neither Romanist nor Protestant could
justly except against ; and therefore as the first never charged
it with any positive errors, but only the want of something
they conceived necessary, so it was never found fault with by

234 Rejoinder of the Ministers " [1661.
those to whom the name of Protestants most properly
belongs, those that profess the Augustan confession : and for
those, who unlawfully and sinfully brought it into dislike with
some people, to urge the present state of affairs, as an argu
ment why the book should be altered, to give them satisfac
tion, and so that they should take advantage by their own
unwarrantable acts, is not reasonable.
Reply. If it be blameless, no man can justly except against
it : but, de facto, the Romanists never charged it with any
positive errors, is an assertion that maketh them reformed,
and reconcUable to us, beyond all belief: is not the verv
using it in our own tongue a positive error in their account?
Is it no positive error in the papists' account, that we profess
to receive these creatures of bread and wine ? Do they think
we have no positive error in our catechism about the sacra
ment, that afBrmeth it to be bread and wine after the conse
cration, and makes but two sacraments necessary? &c, 3.
And unless we were nearlier agreed than we are, it seemeth
to us no commendation of a liturgy, that the papists charge
it with no positive error. 3. That" no divines, or private men
at home, or of foreign churches that ever found fault with the
liturgy, are such to whom the name of Protestant properly be
longeth, is an assertion that proveth not what authority of judg.-
ing your brethren you have, but what you assume and com-
mendeth your charity no more than it commendeth the
papists, that they deny us to be catholics. Calvin and Bucer
subscribed the Augustan confession, and so have others that
have found fault with our liturgy. 4. If any of us have
blamed it to the people, it is but with such a sort of blame,
as we have here expressed against it to yourselves; and
whether it be unlawful and sinful, the impartial comparing of
your words with ours, will help the willing reader to discern.
But if we prove indeed that it is defective and faulty, that you
bring it for an offering to God when you or your neighbours
have a better, which you will not bring, nor suffer them that
would (Mal. i, 13,) and that you call evil good in justifying
its blemishes, which in humble modesty we besought you to

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 335
amend, or excuse us from offering, then God will better judge
of the unlawful act than you have done. But you have not
proved, that all, or most of us, have caused the people at all
to dislike it ; if any of us have, yet weigh our argument,
though from the present state of affairs : or, if you will not
hear us, we beseech you hear the many ministers in England,
that never meddled against the liturgy, and the many moderate
episcopal divines that have used it, and can do still, and
yet would earnestly entreat you to alter it, partly becauseof
what in it needs alteration, and partly in respect to the com
modity of others; or at least we beseech you recant, and
obliterate such passages as would hinder all yourselves^from
any act of reformation hereabout; that if any man among
you would find fault with some of the grosser things, which
we laid open to you, tenderly and sparingly, and would
reform them, he may not presently forfeit the reputation of
being a Protestant. And lastly, we beseech you - deny not
again the name of Protestants to the Primate of Ireland, the
Archbishop of York, and the many others that had divers
meetings for the reformation of the liturgy, and who drew up
that catalogue of faults, or points, that needed mending,
which is yet to be seen in print; they took not advantage of
their own unwarrantable acts for the attempting of that
alteration. Prop. 3, 4. Ans. The third and fourth proposals may go to
gether, the demand in both being against responsals and alter
nate readings in hymns, and psalms, and litany, &c,, aud that
upon such reason as doth in truth enforce the necessity of
continuing them as they are, namely, for edification. They
would take these away, because they do not edify ; and upon
that very reason they should continue, because they do edify,
if not by informing of our reasons and understandings (the
prayers and hymns were never made for a catechism,) yet by
quickening, continuing, and uniting our devotion, which is
apt to freeze, or sleep, or flat in a long continued prayer, or
form : it is necessary therefore for the edifying of us therein,
to be often called upon and awakened by frequent Amens, to

336 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
be excited and stirred up by mutual exultations, provocations,
petitions, holy contentions, and striArings, which shall most
shew his own, and stir up others' zeal to the glory of God.
For this purpose alternate reading, repetitions, and responsals,
are far better than a long tedious prayer. Nor is this our
opinion only, but the judgment of former ages, as appears by
the practice of ancient Christian churches, and of the Jews
also. But it seems, they say, to be against the Scripture,
wherein the minister is appointed for the people in pubhc
prayers, the people's part being to attend with sUence, and to
declare their assent in the close by saying Amen ; if they
mean that the people in public services must only say this
word Amen, as they can no more prove it in the Scriptures, so it
doth certainly seem to them that it cannot be proved ; for
the^ff directly practice the contrary in one of their principal
parts of worship, singing of psalms, where the people bear as
great a part as the minister. If this way be done in
Hopkins', why not in David's psalms ? If in metre, why not
in prose ? If in a psalm, why not in a litany ?
Reply. What is most for edification, is best known by ex
perience, and by the reason of the thing. For the former, you
are not the masters of all men's experience, but of your own,
and others that have acquainted you with the same, as theirs.
We also may warrantably profess in the name of ourselves,
and many thousands of sober, pious persons, that we expe
rience that these things are against our edification, and we
beseech you- do not by us, what you would not do by the
poor labouring servants of your family, to measure them aU
their diet for quality or quantity, according to your own
appetites, which they think are diseased, and would be better
if you worked as hard as they. And we gave y du some of
the reasons of our judgment. 1. Though we have not said
that the people may not in psalms to God concur in voice,
(we speak of prayer which you should have observed) and
though we only concluded it agreeable to the Scripture
practice, for the people in prayer to say but their Amen; yet
knowing not from whom to understand the will of God, and

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 337
what is pleasing to him, better than from himself, we con
sidered what the Scripture saith of the ordinary way of public
worship ; and finding ordinarUy that the people spoke uo
more in prayer (as distinct from psalms and praise) than
their Amen, or mere consent, we desired to imitate the
surest pattern. '3. As we find that the minister is the mouth
of the people to God in public (which Scripture, and the
necessity of order do require), so we were loth to countenance
the people's invading of that sacred office, so far as they seem
to us to do ;— 1 . By reading half the psalms and hymns ; —
3, By saying half the prayers, as the minister doth the other
half; — 3. By being one of them the mouth of aU the rest in
the confession at the Lord's Supper ; — 4. By being the only
petitioners, in the far greatest part of aU the Utany, by their
good Lord deliver us, and we beseech thee to hear us good
Lord. WhUe the minister only reciteth the matter of the
prayer, and maketh none of the request at all, we fear lest, by
parity of reason, the people will claim the work of preaching,
and other parts of the ministerial office. 3. And we men
tioned that which all our ears are witnesses of, that while
half the psalms, and hymns, &c., are said by such of the
people as can say them, the murmur of their voices in most
congregations, is so unintelUgible and confused, as must hinder
the edification of aU the rest. For who is edified by that
which he cannot understand ? We know -not what you mean
by citing 3 Chron, vii, 1,4; Ezra iii, 11, where there is not
a word of public prayer, but in one place of an acclamation,
upon an extraordinary sight of the glory of the Lord, which
made them praise the Lord, and say, he is good, for his
mercy is for ever; when the prayer that went before was
such as you caU a long tedious prayer uttered by Solomon
alone, without such breaks, and descants. And in the other
places is no mention of prayer at aU, but of singing praise,
and that not by the people, but by the priests, and Levites,
saying the same words, for he is good, for his mercy endures
for ever towards Israel. The people are said to do no more
than shout with a great shout, because the foundation of the

338 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
house was laid : and if shouting be it that you would prove,
it is not the thing in question. Let the ordinary mode of
praying in Scripture be observed, in the prayers of David,
Solomon, Ezra, Daniel, or any other, and if they were by
breaks, and frequent beginnings and endings, and alternate
interlocutions of the people, as yours are, then we wiU con
form to your mode, which now offends us. But if they were
not, we beseech you reduce yours to the examples in the
Scripture : we desire no other rule to decide the controversy
by. As to your citation, 1. Socrates there tells us of the
alternate singing of the Arians in the reproach of the ortho
dox, and that Chrysostom (not a synod) compiled hymns to
be sung in opposition to them in the streets, which came in
the end to a tumidt and bloodshed. And hereupon he teUs
us of the original of alternate singing, viz., a pretended vision
of Ignatius, that heard angels sing in that order. And what
is all this to alternate reading, and praying, or to a divine
institution, when here is no mention of reading, or praying,
but of singing hymns; and that not upon pretence of
apostolical tradition, but a vision of uncertain credit? Theo-
doret also speaketh only of singing psalms alternately, and not
a word of -reading or praying so. And he fetcheth that way
of singing also, as Socrates doth, but from the Church at
Antioch, and not from any pretended doctrine, or practice of
the apostles. And neither of them speaks a word of the neces
sity of it, or of forcing any to it : so that all these your cita
tions, speaking not a word so much as of the very subjects in
question, are marvellously impertinent. The words — their
worship — seem to intimate, that singing psalms is part (of
our worship) and not of yours ; we hope you disown it not :
for our parts we are not ashamed of it. Your distinction be
tween Hopkins' and David's psalms, as if the metre aUowed
by authority to be sung in churches made them to be no
more David's psalms, seemeth to us a very hard saying. If
it be because it is a translation, then the prose should he
none of David's psalms neither, nor any translation be the
Scripture. If it be because it is in metre, then the exactest

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 339
translation in metre should be none of the Scripture. If
because it is done imperfectly, then the old translation of the
Bible, used by the Common Prayer book, should not be
Scripture. As to your reason for the supposed priority, — 1.
Scripture examples teUing us that the people had more part
in the psalms, than in the prayers or readings, satisfy us that
God and his church then saw a disparity of reason. 3. Com
mon observation tells us, that there is more order and less
hinderanee of edification in the people's singing, than in their
reading and praying together vocally.
Prop. 5. § 1. Ans. It is desired that nothing should be in the
liturgy which so much as seems to countenance the observa
tion of Lent as a religious fast ; and this as an expedient to
peace; which is, in effect, to desire that this our church may
be contentious for peace sake, and to divide from the church
catholic, that we may live at unity among ourselves. For
Saint Paul reckons them amongst the lovers of contention,
who shall oppose themselves against the customs of the
churches of God. That the religious observation of Lent
was a custom of the churches of God, appears by the testi
monies following. Chrysost. Ser. 11, in Heb. x, CyriU. Catec.
Myst. 5, St. August., Ep. 119, ut 40 dies ante Pascha obser
ventur, ecclesia consuetudo, roboravit; and St. Hierom ad
Marcell. says, it was secundum traditionem apostolorum. This
demand then tends not to peace, but dissension. The fasting
forty days may be in imitation of our Saviour, for all that is
here said to the contrary ; for though we cannot arrive to his
perfection, abstaining wholly from meat so long, yet we may
fast forty days together, either Cornelius' fast, till three of
the clock afternoon, or Saint Peter's fast till noon, or at
least Daniel's fast, abstaining from meats and drinks of
delight, and thns far imitate our Lord.
Reply. If we had said, that the church is contentious if it
adore God in kneeling on the Lord's days, or use not the
white garment, [and] milk and honey after baptism, which had
more pretence of apostolical tradition, and were generally
used more anciently than Lent, would you not have thought

240 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
we wronged the church ? If the purer times of the church
have one custom, and later times a contrary, which must we
follow ? Or must we necessarily be contentious for not follow
ing both ; or, rather, may we not, by the example of the
church that changeth them, be allowed to take such things to
be matters of liberty, and not necessity? If we must needs
conform to the custom of other churches in such things, or
be contentious, it is either because God hath so commanded,
or because he hath given those churches authorify to com
mand it. If the former, then what churches or what ages
must we conform to ? If all must concur to be our pattern,
it will be hard for us to be acquainted with them, so far as to
know of such concurrences ; and in our case we know that
many do it not. If it must be the most, we would know
where God commandeth us to imitate the greater number,
though the worse ; or hath secured us that they shall not be
the worst;, or why we are not tied rather to imitate the
purer ages than the more corrupt ? If it be said, that the
church hath authority to command us, we desire to know
what church that is, and where to be found and heard, that
may command England and all the churches of his majesty's
dominions. If it be said to be a general councU — 1. No
general council can pretend to more authority than that of
Nicoea, whose 30th canon, backed with tradition and common
practice, now binds not us, and was laid by without any repeal
by foUowing councils. 3. We know of no such things as
general councils, at least that have bound us to the religious
observation of Lent. The bishops of one empire could not
make a general council. 3. Nor do we know of any such
power that they have over the universal church ; there being
no visible head of it, or governors, to make universal laws,
but Christ, as Rogers, on the 30th Article fore-cited, shews.
Our 31st Article saith, that general councils may not be
gathered together without the commandment and wUl of
princes; and doubtless, all the heathen, and Mahometans,
and all the contending Christian princes, will never agree
together (nor never did) to let all their Christian subjects

1661 .] to the Answer of the Bishops. 341
concur to hold a general councU. It saith also — " And when
they be gathered together, forasmuch as they be an assembly
of men, whereof all be not governed with the Spirit and
Word of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred, even
in things pertaining unto God ; therefore, things ordained by
them, as necessary to salvation, have neither strength nor
authority unless it may be declared that they be taken out of
holy Scripture." And if they may err in things pertaining
unto God, and ordained by them as necessary to salvation,
much more in lesser things. And are we contentious if we
err not with them? Our 34th Article determineth this
controversy, saying — " It is not necessary that traditions and
ceremonies be in aU places one, or utterly like; for at all
times they have been diverse, and changed according to the
diversity of coimtries, times, and men's manners, so that
nothing be ordained against God's word :" and after — " every
particular, or national church, hath authority to ordain,
change, and abolish ceremonies, or rites of the church, or
dained only by man's authority, so that all things be done to
edifying." They that believe not this should not subscribe it,
nor require it of others. As for the testimonies cited by you,
they are to little purpose. We deny not that the custom of
observing Lent, either fewer days or more, was as ancient as
those authors. But — 1. That Lent was not known or kept in
the second or third ages, you may see as foUoweth ; — TertuU.
de jejun. 1. 3, cap. 14, pleading to the Montanists. — Si omnem
in totum devotionem temporum, et dierum, et mensium, et
annorum erasit apostolus, cur pascha celebramus annuo circulo
in mense primo ? cur quadraginta inde diebus in omni eoeulta-
tione decurrimus ? cur stationibus quartam et sextam, sabbati
dicamus? et jejuniis Parascevem? quamquam vos etiam sabba-
tum, si quando continuatis, nunquam nisi in pascha jejunandum,
etc. And cap. 15, excusing that rigor of their fasts. —
Quantula est apud nos interdictio ciborum ? Duas in anno
hebdomadas xerophagiarum, nee tolas, exceptis scilicet sabbatis
et dominicis, offerimus Deo. The old general fast at that time
was only the voluntary, unconstrained fasting on Good Friday,

242 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
and after that, on one or two days more, and then on six,
Irseneus, in a fragment of an epistle in Euseb. Hist., lib. 5,
cap. 26, Gr. Lat. 23, saith, " The controversy is not only of
the day of Easter, but of the kind of fast itself; for some
think they should fast one day, some two, others more ; some
measure their day by forty hours of day and night ; and this
variety of those that observe the fasts, began not now in our
age, but long before us with our ancestors, who, as is most
Uke, propagated to posterity the custom which they retain, as
brought in by a certain simplicity and private wUl. And yet
aU these lived peaceably among themselves, and we keep
peace among ourselves, and the difference of fasting is so far
from violating the consonancy of faith, as that it even com
mendeth it," Thus Irseneus. Read the rest of the chap
ter. Thus is the true reading confessed by BeUarmine,
Rigaltius, &c., and Dionys, Alexand., Ep. Can. ad BasU.,
p. 881. Balsamo saith, " Nor do aU equaUy and alike sus
tain those six days of fasting; but some pass them aU
fasting, some two, some three, some four, some more."
And the Catholics in Tertull. de jejun, cap. 2, say; — Itaque de
catero differenter jejunandum ex arbitrio, non ex imperio
nova disciplina, pro temporibus et causis uniuscujusque. Sicet
apostolos observasse, nullum aliud imponentes jugum certorum,
et in commune omnibus obeundorum jejuniorum. And Socrates
admireth at many countries, that aU differed about the
number of days, and yet called it quadragesima, lib. 5, c. 23,
Lat. Gr. 21. So Sozomen lib. 7, c. 19, Gr.; et Niceph. lib.
12, cap. 34, which may help you to expound Hierom, and
the rest cited by you, as Rigaltius doth ad TertuU., de jejun,
cap. 2, as shewing that they did it with respect to Christ's forty
days' fast, but not as intending any such thing themselves as
any fast of forty days. It is against the Montanists, that
the Quadragesima was but once a year that Hierom useth the
title of apostolic tradition. And how to expound him, see
Epist. ad Lucin, unaquaque provincia abundet in sua sensu,
et precepta majorum leges apostolicas arbitretur. But saith
August, ad Casulan, Ep. 86. In evangelicis et apostolicis

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 243
Uteris, totoque instrumento quod appellatur testamentum
novum, animo id revolvens video preceptum esse jejuniuni:
quibus autem diebus non oportet jejunare, et quibus oporteat,
precept 0 domini vel apostolorum non invenio definitum. And
that Christians' abstinence in Lent was voluntary, — quanto
magis quisque vel minus vohterit, vel potuerit, — August,
affirmeth, cont, Faustum Manich, lib. 30, cap. 5. And
Socrates ubi supr, saith. Ac quoniam nemo de care pra-
ceptum literarum monumentis proditum potest ostendere,
perspicuum est apostolos liberam potestatem in eadem cujusque
mente, ac arbitrio permississe : ut quisque nee metu, nee
necessitate inductus quod bonum sit ageret. And Prosper de
vit. Contempl. lib, 2, c. 24, veruntamen sic jejunare, vel
abstinere debemus ut nos non jejunandi, vel abstinendi neces
sitate subdamus, ne jam devoti, sed inviti, rem voluntariam
faciamus. And Cassianus, lib. 2, col. 21, cap. 30, saith— m
primitivd ecclesid equate fuisse jejunium per totum annum :
ac frigescente devotione, cum negligerentur jejunia, inductum
quadrag. a sacerdotibus. But when you come to describe
your fast, you make amends for the length by making it
indeed no fast ; to abstain from meats and drinks of delight,
where neither the thing nor the deUght is profitable to
further us in our duty to God, is that which we take to be
the duty of every Christian aU the year, as being a part of
our mortification and self-denial, who are commanded to
crucify the flesh, and to make no provision to satisfy the
lusts of it, and to subdue our bodies ; but when those meats
and drinks do more help than hinder us in the service of
God, we take it to be our duty to use them, unless, when
some other accident forbids it, that would make it otherwise
more hurtful ; and for fasting till noon, we suppose it is the
ordinary way of diet to multitudes of sedentary persons,
both students and tradesmen, that find one meal a day suffi
cient for nature ; if you call this fasting, your poor brethren
fast aU their Ufetime, and never knew that it was fasting;
but to command hard labourers to do so, is but to make it a
fault to have health, or to do their necessary work. We
R 3

344 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
beseech you bring not the clergy under the suspicion of
gluttony, by calling our ordinary, wholesome temperance by
the name of fasting : sure princes may feed as fully and
delightfully as we; yet Solomon saith, "woe to thee, 0 land,
when thy king is a chUd and thy princes eat in the morning;
blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles
and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for
drunkenness." For mere sensual delight it is never lawful;
and when it is for strength it is not to be forbidden, unless,
when by accident, it wUl infer a greater good to abstain,
Eccles. X, 16, 17 : so Prov, xxxi, 4, 6, — "it is not for kings to
drink wine, nor for princes strong drink : give strong drink
to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that he of
heavy hearts."
Prop. 5. § 3. Ans. Nor does the act of parhament 5 EUzabeth
forbid it ; we dare not think a parliament did intend to forbid
that which Christ's church hath commanded. Nor does the
act determine anything about Lent fast, but only provide for
the maintenance of the navy, and of fishing in order thereunto,
as is plain by the act. Besides we conceive that we must not
so interpret one act as to contradict another, being stUl in
force and unrepealed. Now the act of 1 Elizabeth confirms the
whole liturgy, and in that the religious keeping of Lent, with
a severe penalty upon all those who shall by open words
speak anything in derogation of any part thereof; and
therefore that other act of 5 Elizabeth must not be inter
preted to forbid' the religious keeping of Lent.
Reply. If when the express words of a statute are cited,
you can so easUy put it off, by saying it does not forbid it,
and you dare not think that a parliament did intend to forbid
that which Christ's church hath commanded, and you
must not interpret it as contradicting that act which confirms
the liturgy, we must think that indeed we are no less regard
ful of the laws of the governors than you. But first, we
understand not what authority this is that you set against the
king and parliament, as supposing they wUl not forbid what
it commands? You caU it Christ's church, we suppose you

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 245
mean not Christ himself, by his apostles infaUibly directed
and inspired. If it be the national Church of England, they
are the king's subjects; and why may he not forbid a cere
mony which they command ; or why should they command it
if he forbid it? If it be any foreign church, there is none
bath power over us. If it be any pretended head of the
church universal, whether pope or general councU, having
power to make laws that bind the whole church, it is a thing
so copiously disproved by Protestants against both the Italian
and French Papists, that we think it needless to confute it,
nor indeed dare imagine that you intend it. We know not
therefore what you mean ; but whatever you mean you seem to
contradict the fore-cited Article of the church of England, that
makes all human laws about rites and ceremonies of the church
to be unchangeable, by each particular national church ; and
that it is not necessary that ceremonies or traditions be in aU
places one, or utterly like. We most earnestly beseech you be
cautious how you obtrude upon us a foreign power, under the
name of Christ's church, that may command ceremonies
which king and parliament may not forbid. Whether it be one
man or a thousand, we fear it is against our oaths of allegiance
and supremacy for us to own any such power.. And (not
presuming upon any immodest challenge) we are ready in the
defence of those oaths and the protestant religion, to prove
against any in an equal conference, that there is no such
power; and for the statute, let the words themselves decide
the controversy, which are these : — Be it enacted, that whoso
ever shall by preaching, teaching, writing, or open speech,
notify that any eating of fish, or forbearing of flesh, men
tioned in this statute, is of any necessity for the saving of
the soul of man, or that it is the service of God, otherwise
than as other political laws are and be, that then such persons
are and shaU be punished, as the spreaders of false news are;
and ought to be. And whereas you say the act determines
not anything about Lent fast, it speaks against eating flesh
on any days now usually observed as flsh days : and Lent is
such, and the sense of the act for the Uturgy may better be

246 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661-
tried by this, which is plain, than this reduced to that which
is more obscure.
Prop. 6. Ans. The observation of saints' days is not as of divme
but ecclesiastical institution, and therefore it is not necessary
that they should have any other ground in Scripture than aU
other institutions of the same nature, so that they be agreeable
to the Scripture in the genei-al end, for the promoting piety.
And the observation of them was ancient, as appears by the
rituals and liturgies, and by the joint consent of antiquity and by
the ancient translations of the Bible, as the Syriac and Ethiopic,
where the lessons appointed for holydays are noted and set
down, the former of which was made near the apostles' times.
Besides our Saviour himself kept a feast of the church's
institution, viz , the feast of the dedication, (St. John x, 33.)
The chief end of these days being not feasting, but the
exercise of holy duties, they are fitter called holydays than
festivals; and though they be all of like nature, it doth not
follow that they are equal. The people may be dispensed
with for their work, after the service, as authority pleaseth.
The other names are left in the calendar, not that they should
be so kept as holydays, but they are useful for the preserva
tion of their memories, and for other reasons, as for leases,
law days, &c.
Reply. The antiquity of the translations mentioned is far
from being of determinate certainty; we rather wish than
hope that the Syriac could be proved to be made near the
apostles' times. But, however, the things being confessed of
human institution, and no foreign power having any authority
to command his majesty's subjects, and so the imposition
being only by our own governors, we humbly crave that they
may be left indifferent, and the unity or peace of the churcb,
or liberty of the ministers not laid upon them.
Prop. 7. § 1. An^. This makes all the liturgy void, if every
minister may put in and leave out at his discretion.
Reply. You mistake us : we speak not of putting in and
leaving out of the liturgy, but of having leave to intermix
some exhortations or prayers besides, to take off the dead-

1661,] to the Answer of the Bishops. 247
ness which wiU follow, if there be nothing hut the stinted
forms; we would avoid both the extreme that would have
no forms, and the contrary extreme that woiUd have no
thing but forms. But if we can have nothing but extremes,
there is no remedy ; it is not our fault. And this moderation
and mixture which we move for is so far from making all the
liturgy void, that it will do very much to make it attain its
end, and would heal much of the distemper which it occa-
sioneth, and consequently would do much to preserve the
reputation of it; as for instance, if besides the forms in
the liturgy, the minister might at baptism, the Lord's
supper, marriage, &c., interpose some suitable exhortation
or prayer upon special occasion when he finds it needful.
Should you deny this at the visitation of the sick, it would
seem strange, and why may it not be granted at other
times? It is a matter of far greater trouble to us, that
you would deny us and aU ministers the liberty of using
sny other prayers besides the Uturgy, than that you im
pose these.
Prop. 7. § 3. Ans. The gift or rather spirit of prayer
consists in the inward graces of the spirit, not in ex tem
pore expressions, which any man of natural parts, having
a voluble tongue, and audacity, may attain to without
any special gift.
Reply. All inward graces of the spirit are not properly
called the spirit of prayer, nor is the spirit of prayer that
gift of prayer which we speak of. Nor did we call it by the
name of a special gift, nor did we deny that ordinary men of
natural parts and voluble tongues may attain it. But yet
we humbly conceive that as there is a gift of preaching, so
also of prayer, which God bestows in the use of means, di
versified much according to men's natural parts, and their
diligence, as other acquired abilities are; but also much de
pending on that grace that is indeed special, which maketh
men love and relish the holy subjects of such spiritual studies,
and the holy exercise of those graces that are the soul of
prayer; and consequently making men foUow on such exercises

248 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
with deUght and diUgence, and therefore with success. And
also God is free in giving or denying his blessing to man's
endeavours. If you think there be no gift of preachmg, you
wiU too dishonourably level the ministry. If reading be aU
the gift of prayer or preaching, there needs no great under
standing or learning to it. Nor should cobblers and tinkers
be so unfit men for ministers as they are thought; nor would
the reason be very apparent, why a woman might not speak
by preaching or praying in the church.
Prop, 7, § 3, Ans. But if there be any such gift, as is pre
tended, it is to be subject to the prophets, and to the order
of the church.
Reply. The text speaks (as Dr. Hammond well shews) of a
subjection to that prophet himself, who was the speaker. In
spiration excluded not the prudent exercise of reason ; but it
is a strange ordering, that totally excludeth the thing ordered.
The gift of preaching (as distinct from reading) is to he
orderly and with due subjection exercised ; but not to be on
that pretence extinguished and cast out of the church : and
indeed if you should command it, you are not to be obeyed,
whatever we suffer; and why then should the gift of prayer
(distinct from reading) be cast out ?
Prop. 7. § 4!. Ans. The mischiefs that come by idle, imperti
nent, ridiculous, sometimes seditious, impious, and blasphe
mous expressions under pretence of the gift, to the dishonour of
God, and scorn of religion, being far greater than the pre
tended good of exercising the gift : it is fit that they who
desire such liberty in public devotions, should first give the
church security that no private opinions should be put into
their prayers, as is desired in the first proposal; and that
nothing contrary to the faith should be uttered before God,
or offered up to him in the church.
Reply. The mischiefs which you pretend, are inconvenien-
cies attending human imperfection, which you would cure
with a mischief; your argument from the abuse against the
use is a palpable fallacy, which cast out physicians in some
countries, and rooted up vines in others, and condemneth the

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 249
reading of the scriptures in a known tongue among the
Papists. If the apostles (that complained then so much of
divisions, and preaching false doctrines, and in envy and strife,
&c.) had thought the way of cure had been, in sending min
isters about the world, with a prayer book, aud sermon book,
and to have tied them only to read either one or both of
these, no doubt hut they would have been so regardful of the
church, as to have composed such a prayer book, or sermon
book themselves, and not left us to the uncertainties of an au
thority not infallible, nor to the divisions that follow the imposi
tions of a questionable power, or that which unquestionably is
not universal, and therefore can procure no universal concord.
If one man among you draw up a form of prayer, it is his
single conception : and why a man as learned and able may
not be trusted to conceive a prayer, for the use of a single
congregation, without the dangers mentioned by you, as one
man to conceive a prayer for all the churches in a diocese or
nation, we know not. These words — that the mischief is
greater than the pretended good — seem to express an unjust
accusation, of ordinary conceived prayer, and a great under
valuing of the benefits. If you intimate that the crimes
expressed by you are ordinarily found in ministers' prayers, we
that hear such, much more frequently than you, must profess
we have not found it so, aUowing men their different measures
of exactness; as you have even in writing. Nay, to the
praise of God we must say, that multitudes of private men
can ordinarily pray without any such imperfection, as should
nauseate a sober person ; and with such seriousness, and apt
ness of expression as is greatly to the benefit and comfort of
ourselves, when we join with them : and if such general accu
sations may serve in a matter of public, and common fact,
there is no way for the justification of the innocent. And
that it is no such common guilt, vriU seem more probable to
them that consider that, such conceived prayers, both pre
pared and extemporate, have been ordinarily used in the
pulpits in England and Scotland, before our days tUl now ;
and there hath been power enough in the bishops and others.

350 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
before the wars, to punish those that speak ridiculously, sedi-
tiously, impiously, or blasphemously ; and yet so few are the
instances (even when jealousy was most busy) of ministers
punished, or once accused of any such fault in prayer, as that
we find it not easy to remember any considerable number of
them : there being great numbers punished for not reading
the book, for playing on the Lord's days, or for preaching too
oft, and such like, for one that was ever questioned for such
kind of praying. And the former showed that it was not for
want of will to be severe, that they spared them as to the
latter. And if it be but few that are guilty of any intoler
able faults of that nature iu their prayers, we hope you wUl
not go on to believe, that the mischiefs that come by the fail
ings of those few are far greater than the benefit of conceived
prayer by all others. We presume not to make our experi
ences the measure of yours, or of other men's. You may
tell us what doth most good, or hurt to yourselves, and those
that have so communicated their experiences to you; hut we
also may speak our own, and theirs that have discovered them
to us. And we must seriously profess, that we have found far
more benefit to ourselves, and to our congregations (as far as
our conference, and converse with them, and our observation
of the effects alloweth us to discern) by conceived prayers,
than by the Common Prayer book. We find that the benefit
of conceived prayer is to keep the mind in serious employ
ment, and to awaken the affections, and to make us fervent,
and importunate. And the inconvenience is that some weak
men are apt, as in preaching and conference, so in prayer, to
shew their weakness by some unapt expressions, or disorder,
which is an evil no way to be compared with the fore-mentioned
good, considering that it is but in the weak, and that if that
weakness be so great as to require it, forms may be imposed
on those few, without imposing them on all for their sakes (as
we force not all to use spectacles, or crutches, because some
are purblind or lame) ; and considering that God heareth not
prayers, for the rhetoric, and handsome cadences, and neat
ness of expressions, but will bear more with some incuriosify

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 351
of words (which yet we plead not for) than with an hypo
critical, formal, heartless, lip service : for he knoweth the
meaning of the spirit even in the groans, which are not
uttered in words. And for the Common Prayer our observa
tion teUeth us, that though some can use it judiciously,
seriously, and we doubt not profitably, yet as to the most of
the vulgar, it occasioneth a relaxing of their attention, and
intention, and a lazy taking up with a corpse, or image of
devotion, even the service of the lips, while the heart is
little sensible of what is said. And had we not known it we
should have thought it incredible, how utterly ignorant
abundance are of the sense of the words which they hear,
and repeat themselves from day to day even about Christ
himself, and the essentials of Christianity. It is wonderful
to us to observe that rational creatures can so commonly
separate the words from all the sense and life, so great a help
or hinderanee even to the understanding, is the awakening or
not awakening of the affections about the things of God.
And we have already shewed you many unfit expressions in
the Common Prayer book, especiaUy in the Epistles and
Gospels, through the faultiness of your translations :— as Eph,
iii, 15. "Father of aU that is caUed father in heaven and
earth;" " and that Christ was found in his apparel as a man ;"
"that mount Sinai is Agar in Arabia, and bordereth upon
the city, now caUed Jerusalem:" Gal. iv, 25. "This is
the sixth month which is caUed barren :" Luke i. " And
when men be drunk :" John ii, with many such Uke, which
are parts of your pubUc worship : and would you have us
hence conclude, that the mischiefs of such expressions are
worse, than aU the benefits of that worship ? And yet there is
this difference in the cases, that weak and rash ministers were
hut here and there one; but the Common Prayer is the ser
vice of every church, and every day had we heard any in
extemporary prayer use such unmeet expressions, we should
have thought him worthy of sharp reprehension, yea though
he had been of the younger or weaker sort. Divers other unfit
expressions, are mentioned in the exceptions of the late arch-

353 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
bishop of York, and Primate of Ireland, and others (before
spoken of,) and there is much in the prejudice or diseased
curiosity of some hearers to make words seem idle, imperti-
nent, or ridiculous which are not so, and which perhaps they
understand not. Some thought so of the inserting in the late
Prayer book, the private opinion of the souls departed praying
for us ; and our praying for the benefit of their prayers. As
for the security which you call for (though as is shewed,) you
have given us none at all against such errors in your forms,
yet we have before shewed you, that you have as much as
among imperfect men can be expected ; the same that you
have that physicians shaU not murder men, and that lawyers
and judges shall not undo men, and that your pilot shaU not
cast away the ship. You have the power in your hands of
taking or refusing as they please or displease you, and of
judging them by a known law for their proved miscarriages,
according to the quality of them : and what would you have
more? Prop, 7, § 5, Ans. To prevent which mischiefthe former ages
knew no better way than to forbid any prayers in pubhc, but
such as were prescribed by public authority. Con, Carthag,
Can. 106, MUev, Can, 13,
Reply. To what you allege out of two councUs, we answer,
I, The acts of more venerable councils are not now at aU
observed (as Nicsen 1, Can. ult., &c.,) nor many of these same
which you cite, 3. The Scripture, and the constant practice
of the more ancient church allowed what they forbid. 3.
Even these canons shew that then the churches thought not
our liturgy to be necessary to their concord, nor indeed
had then any such form imposed on all, or many churches to
that end. For the Can. of Counc. Carth., (we suppose you
meant Council 3. Can, 33.) mentioneth prayers even at the
altar, and aUoweth any man to describe and use his own
prayers, so he do but first cum instructioribus fratribus eas
conferre, take advice about them with the abler brethren. If
there had been a stated form before imposed on the churches,
what room could there be for this course? And even this

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 253
much seems but a caution, made newly upon some late abuse
of prayer. The same we may say de Concil, Milevit Can. 12,
If they were but a prudentioribus tractata, vel comprobata in
Synodo, new prayers might by any man at any time be
brought in, which sheweth they had no such stated public
liturgy as is now pleaded for. And even this seemeth occa
sioned by Pelagianism ; which by this caution they would
keep out.
We hope your omission of our 8th desire (for the use of
the new translation) intimateth your grant that it shall be
so. But we marvel then that we find, among your conces
sions, the alteration of no part but the Epistles and Gospels,
Prop. 9. Ans. As they would have no saints' days observed by
the church, so no apocryphal chapter read in the church, but
upon such a reason, as would exclude all sermons, as well as
apocrypha, viz., because the holy Scriptures contain in them
aU things necessary either in doctrine to be believed, or in
duty to be practised. If so, why so many unnecessary ser
mons ? Why any more but reading of Scriptures ? If not
withstanding their suflciency, sermons he necessary, there is
no reason why these apocryphal chapters should not be as
useful, most of them containing exceUent discourses, and
rules of moralify. It is heartily to be wished that sermons
were as good. If their fear be that by this means those books
may come to he of equal esteem with the canon, they may be
secured against that hy the title which the church hath put
upon them, caUing them apocryphal : and it is the church's
testimony which teaches us this difference; and to leave them
out, were to cross the practice of the church in former ages.
Reply. We hoped when our desfres were deUvered in
writing they would have been better observed and under
stood. We asked not that no apocryphal chapter may be
read in the church, but that none may be read as lessons;
for so the chapters of holy Scripture there read, are caUed in
the book; and to read them in the same place under the same
title, without any sufficient note of distinction, or notice
given to the people that they are not canonical Scripture,

254 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
(they being also bound with our Bibles) is such a temptation
to the vulgar to take them for God's word, as doth much
prevail, and is like to do so still. And when papists second
it with their confident affirmations, that the apocryphal books
are canonical, well refelled by one of you, the Rt. Reverend
Bishop of Durham, we should not needlessly help on their
success. If you cite the apocrypha as you do other human
writings, or read them as homilies, (when and where there is
reason to read such) we speak not against it. To say that the
people are secured by the church's caUing them apocrypha, is
of no force till experience be proved to be disregard able ; and
till you have proved that the minister is to teU the people at
the reading of every such chapter that it is but apocryphal;
and that the people all understand Greek so well as to know
what apocrypha signifieth. The more sacred and honourable
are these dictates of the Holy Ghost recorded in Scripture,
the greater is the sin, by reading the apocrypha without
sufficient distinction, to make the people believe that the
writings of man are the revelation and laws of God. And
also we speak against the reading of the apocrypha, as it
excludeth much of the canonical Scriptures, and taketh in
such books in their stead, as are commonly reputed fabulous.
By this much you may see how you lost your answer by
mistaking us, and how much you wUl sin against God, and
the church, by denying our desire.
Prop. 10. Ans. That the minister should not read the commu
nion service at the communion table, is not reasonable to
demand, since all the primitive church used it, and if we do no*
observe that golden rule, of the venerable CouncU of Nicsea,
let ancient customs prevail, tUl reason plainly requires the
contrary, we shall give offence to sober Christians by a
causeless departure from cathoUc usage, and a greater advan
tage to enemies of our church, than our brethren, I hope,
would wUlingly grant. The priest standing at the commu
nion table seemeth to give us an invitation to the holy
sacrament, and minds us of our duty, viz., to receive the holy
communion, some at least every Sunday; and though we

1.661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 255
neglect our duty, it is fit the church should keep her
standing. Reply. We doubt not but one place in itself is as lawful as
another, but when you make such differences as have mis
leading intimations, we desire it may be forborne. That all
the primitive church used, when there was no communion in
the sacrament, to say service at the communion table, is a
crude assertion, that must have better proof before we take it
for convincing ; and it is not probable, because they had a
communion every Lord's day. And if this be not your
meaning, you say nothing to the purpose. To prove that
they used it when there was a communion, is no proof that
they used it when there was none. And you yourselves
disuse many things more universally practised than this can
at all be fairly pretended to have been. The Council of
Nicsea gives no such golden rule as you mention. A rule is a
general appliable to particular cases, the council only speaks
of one particular ; — " let the ancient custom continue in Egypt,
Lybia, and Pentapolis, that the Bishop of Alexandria have
the power of them aU." The council here confirmeth this
particular custom, but doth not determine in general of the
authority of custom. That this should be called a catholic
usage shews us how partially the word (cathoUc) is some
times taken. And that this much cannot be granted us,
lest we advantage the enemies of the church, doth make us
wonder whom you take for its enemies, and what is that
advantage which this wiU give them. But we thank you
that here we find ourselves called brethren, when before we
are not so much as spoken to, but your speech is directed to
some other (we know not whom) concerning us. Your reason
is that which is our reason to the contrary. You say the
priest standing at the communion table seems to give us an
invitation to the holy communion, &c. What, when there is
no sacrament by himseK or us intended ; no warning of any
given ; no bread and wine prepared ? Be not deceived, God
is not mocked. Therefore we desire that there may be no
such service at the table when no communion is intended.

356 The Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
because we would not have such gross dissimulation used in
so holy things, as thereby to seem (as you say) to invite
guests when the feast is not prepared, and if they came we
would turn them empty away. Indeed if it were to be a
private mass, and the priest were to receive alone for want of
company, and it were really desired that the people should
come, it were another matter. Moreover there is no rubric re
quiring this service at the table [when there is no communion.]
Prop. 11. Ans. It is not reasonable that the word minister
should be only used in the liturgy. For since some parts of the
liturgy may be performed by a deacon, others bynone under the
order of a priest, viz., absolution, consecration, it is fit that
some such word as priest, should be used for those offices, and
not mimster, which signifies at large everyone that ministers
in that holy office, of what order soever he be; the word
curate signifying properly all those who are trusted by the
bishops with cure of souls, as anciently it signified, is a very
fit word to be used, and can offend no sober person. The
word Sunday is ancient. Just, Mart., Ap. 3, and therefore not
to he left off.
Reply. The word minister may well be used instead of
priest and curates, though the word deacon, for necessary dis
tinction, stand ; yet we doubt not but priest, as it is but the
English of presbyter, is lawful. But it is from the common dan
ger of mistake [and abuse] that we argue. That all pastors
else are but the bishops' curates, is a doctrine that declares the
heavy charge and account of the bishops, and tends much to
the ease of the presbyters' minds, if it could be proved ; if by
curates you mean such as have not, directly by divine obUga-
tion, the cure of souls, but only by the bishop's delegation.
But if the office of a presbyter be not of divine right, and so
if they be not the curates of Christ, and pastors of the
church, none are. And for the ancient use of it, we find not
that it was so from the beginning. And as there is difference
between the ancient bishops of one single church and a
diocesan that hath many hundred, so is there between theur
curates. But why wUl you not yield so much as to change

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 357
the word Sunday into the Lord's day, when you know that
the latter is the name used by the Holy Ghost in Scripture,
and commonly by the ancient writers of the church, and more
becoming Christians. Justin Martyr, speaking to infidels, tells
how they caUed the day, and not how Christians called it.
AU he saith is, that on Sunday, that is so called by heathens,
the Christians hold thefr meetings. See the usage of the
church in this pomt in August, cont. Faustum Manichseum,
lib. 18, cap. 5.
Prop, 13. Ans. Singing of psalms in metre is no part of
the liturgy, and so no part of our commission.
Reply. If the word liturgy signify the pubUc worship, God
forbid we should exclude the singing of psalms; and
sure you have no fitter way of singing than in metre. When
these, and all prayers conceived by private men (as you call
the pastors), whether prepared or extemporate (and, by parity
of reason, preaching), are cast out, what will your liturgy be?
We hope you make no question whether singing psalms and
hymns were part of the primitive liturgy i and seeing they are
set forth and aUowed tb be sung in all churches, of all the
people together, why should they be denied to be part of
the liturgy. We understand not the reason of this.
Prop. 13 and 14 we suppose you gra&t, by passing
them by.
Prop. 15. Ans. [The phrase is such, &c,] The church in her
prayers useth no more offensive phrase than St, Paul uses, when
he writes to the Corinthians, Galatians, and others, caUing them
in general the Churches of God, sanctified in Christ Jesus, by
vocation saints ; amongst whom, notwithstanding, there were
many who by their known sins (which the apostle endeavoured
to amend in them) were Dot properly such, yet he gives the
denomination to the whole, from the greater part to whom in
charity it was due ; and puts the rest in mind what they have
by their baptism mrdertaken tb be, and what they profess
themselves to be ; and our prayers, and the phrase of them,
surely supposes no more thaii that they are saints by caUing,
sanctified in Christ Jesus, by their baptism admitted into
s

358 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
Christ's congregation, and so to be reckoned members of that
society, tiU either they shall separate themselves by wilful
schism, or be separated by legal excommunication, which they
seem earnestly to desire, and so do we.
Reply. But is there not a very great difference between the
titles given to the whole church (as you say, from the greater
part, as the truth is from the better part, though it were the
less), and the titles given to individual members, where there
is no such reason ? We caU the field a corn-field, though
there be much tares in it, because of the better part, which
denominateth ; but we wUl not call every one of these tares
by the name of corn. When we speak of the church, we
will caU it holy, as Paul doth ; but when we speak to Simon
Magnus, we will not caU him holy, but say, " Thou art in the
gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity, and hast no part
or lot in the matter," &c. W^e will not persuade the people
that every notorious drtmkard, fornicator, worldling, &c., that
is buried is a brother, of whose resurrection to life eternal
we have sure and certain hope, and all because you will not
excommunicate them. We are glad to hear of your desire of
such discipline ; but when shall we see more than desire, and
the edge of it be turned from those that fear sinning, to those
that fear it not ?
Prop. 16. § 1. Ans. The connection of the parts of our liturgy
is conformable to the example of the churches of God before
us, and has as much dependence as is usually to be seen in
many petitions of the same Psalm; and we conceive the order
and method to be excellent, and must do so, till they tell us
what that order is which prayers ought to have, which is not
done here.
Reply. There are two rules of prayer ; one is the nature of
the things, compared (in matter and order) with nature and
necessity ; the other is the revealed will of God in his Word ;
in general, the holy Scripture, more especially the Lord's
prayer. The liturgy (for the greatest part of the prayers for
daily use) is confused, by which soever of those you measure
it. You seem much to honour the Lord's prayer, by your

1661,] to the Answer (f the Bishops. 359
frequent use of it (or part of it) ; we beseech you dishonour it
not practically by denying it for matter and order to be the
only ordinary and perfect rule we know about particular ad
ministrations ; where it is but certain select requests that we are
to put up, suited to the particular subject and occasion, we can
not foUow the whole method of the Lord's prayer, which
containeth the heads of aU the parts; where we are not to
take in all the parts, we cannot take them in that order.
But that none of aU your prayers should be formed to that
perfect rule, that your litany, which is the comprehensive
prayer, and that the body of your daily prayers (broken into
several coUects) should not (as set together) have any con
siderable respect unto that order, nor yet to the order which
reason and the nature of the thing requireth, which is observed
in all things else, and yet that you should so admire this, and be
so tenacious of that which, in conceived prayer, you would call
by worse names than confusions — this shows us the wonderful
power of prejudice. We are thus brief in this exception, lest
we should offend by instances. But seeing you conceive the
order and method to be excellent, and to be willing to hear
more, as to this and the following exception, we shall, when
you desire it, annex a catalogue of defects and disorders,
which we before forbore to give you. The Psalms have
ordinarily an observable method. If you find any whose
parts you cannot so well set together, as to see the beauty
of method, will you turn your eye from the rest, and from
the Lord's prayer, and choose that one to be your prece
dent, or excuse disorder on that pretence ?
Prop. 16 § 3. Ans. The collects are made short as being best
for devotion, as we observed before, and cannot be accounted
faulty for being like those short but prevalent prayers in
Scripture — " Lord, be merciful to me a sinner." " Son of
David, have mercy on us." " Lord, increase our faith."
Reply. We do, in common speech, call that a prayer which
containeth all the substance of what in that business and
address we have to say unto God, and that a petition which
containeth one single request ; usually, a prayer hath many
s 3

3tO Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
petitions. Now if you intend in your address to God, to
do no more than speak a transient request or ejaculation
(which we may do in the midst of other business), then, in
deed, your instances are pertinent. But why then do you not
give over when you seem to have done, but Come again and
again, and offer as many prayers, almost, as petitions ? This
is to make the prayers short (as a sermon is that is cut into
single sentences, every sentence having an exordium and
epUogue as a sermon) ; but it is to make the prayers much
longer than is needful or suitable to the matter. Do you
find this the way of the saints in Scripture ? Indeed, Abra
ham did so, when God's interlocution answering the first
prayer, called him to vary his request. (Gen. xviii.) But
that's not our case. The Psalms and Prayers of Darid,
Solomon, Hezekiah, Asa, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, and
the other prophets, of Christ himself (John xvii), are
usually one continued speech, and- not like yours, as we
said before.
Prop. 17. ^Z. Ans. Why the repeated mention of the name
and attributes of God should not be more pleasing to any godly
person we cannot imagine ; or what burden it should seem,
when David magnified one attribute of God's mercy twenty-
six times together, (Psa. cxxxvi.) Nor can we conceive why
the name and merits of Jesus, with which aU our prayers
should end, should not be as sweet to us as to former saints
and martyrs, with which here they complain our prayers do
so frequently end : since the attributes of God are the ground
of our hope of obtaining all our petitions, such prefaces of
prayers as are taken from them, though they have no special
respect to the petitions following, are not to be termed un
suitable or said to have fallen rather casually than orderly.
Reply. As we took it to be no controversy between us,
whether the mention of God's name is deservedly sweet to
all his servants ; so we thought it was none, that this reve
rend name is reverently to be used, and not too lightly, and
therefore not with a causeless frequency tossed in men's
mouths even in prayer itself; aud that tautologies and vain

1661.] to the AnsuKr of the Bishops. 361
repetitions are not the better but the worse, because God's
name is made the matter of them. Is it not you that have
expressed your offence (as well as we) against those weak
ministers that repeat, too frequently, the name and attributes
of God in their extemporate prayers ? And is it ill in them,
and is the same, and much more, well in the Common Prayer ?
O have not, the faith or worship of our glorious God in
respect of persons. Let not that be called ridiculous, idle,
impertinent, or worse in one which is accounted commend
able in others. Do you think it were not a faulty crossing of
the mind and method of Jesus Christ, if you should make
six prayers of the six petitions of the Lord's prayer, and set
the preface and conclusion unto each, as. Our Father,
which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, for thine is the
kingdom, &c., and so over aU the rest ? Yet we know that the
same words may be oft repeated (as David doth God's
enduring mercy,) without such tautological vanity, when it
is not from emptiness, or neglect of order, or affectation ; but
in psalms or hymns, where affections are to be elevated by
such figurative elegancies and strains as are best beseeming
poetry or rapture, we are not against such repetitions. But if
we may (according to the Common Prayer book) begin and
end, and begin and seem to withdraw again, and make a
prayer of every petition or two, and begin and end every
such petition with God's name and Christ's merits, as
making up half the form or near, nothing is an affected
empty tossing of God's name in prayer if this be not. We
are persuaded, if you should hear a man in a known extem
porate prayer do thus, it would seem strange and harsh even
to yourselves.
Prop. 17. § 1. Ans, There are, besides a preparative exhorta
tion, several preparatory prayers,— "Despise not, O Lord,
humble and contrite hearts," — which is one of the sentences in
the preface; and this— " that those things may please him
which we do at this present"— at the end of the absolu
tion : and again, immediately after the Lord's prayer, before
the psalmody, — " 0 Lord open thou our Ups," &c.

'262 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
Reply. " Despise not, O Lord, humble and contrite hearts,"
is not a prayer, for assistance and acceptance in that worship,
suited to the duty of a people addressing themselves to God,
but it is recited as a scripture invitation to repentance; and
" that those things may please him which we do at this
present " are no words of prayer, but part of an exhortation
to the people ; and " O Lord open thou our lips " comes after
the exhortation, confession, absolution, and Lord's prayer,
and ergo is not in the place of such an address as we are
speaking of. What will not serve to justify that which we have
a mind to justify ; and to condemn that which we have a mind
to condemn?
Prop. 17. § 2. Ans. This which they call a defect, others think
they have reason to account the perfection of the liturgy, the
offices of which -being intended for common and general
services, would cease to be such, by descending to particulars ;
as in confession of sin, while it is general, aU persons may
and must join in it, since in many things we offend all ; but
if there be a particular enumeration of sins, it cannot be so
general a confession, because it may happen that some or
other may by God's grace have been preserved from some of
those sins enumerated, and therefore should by confessing
themselves guUty, tell God a lie, which needs a new con
fession. Reply. If general words be its perfection, it is very culpable
in tediousness and vain repetitions ; for what need you more
than, " Lord, be merciful to us sinners"? There is together
a general confession of sin, and a general prayer for mercy,
which comprehend all the particulars of the people's sins and
wants. We gave you our reason, which you answer not;
confession is the exercise of repentance, and also the helper
of it; and it is no true repentance which is not particular,
but only general. If you say that you repent that you have
sinned, and know not wherein, or do not repent of any par
ticular sin, you do not indeed repent, for sin is not existent
but in the individuals. And if you ask for grace, and know
not what grace, or desire no particular graces; indeed you

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 263
desire not grace at aU. We know there is time and use for
general confessions aud requests; but stUl as implying par-
ticulars, as having gone before, or foUowing ; or at least it
must be supposed that the people understand the particulars
included, and have inward confessions and' desires of them :
which cannot here be supposed, when they are not at aU men
tioned, nor can the people generally be supposed to have such
quick and comprehensive minds; nor is there leisure to
exercise such particular repentance or desire, while a general
is named. And we beseech you let Scripture be judge,
whether the confessions and prayers of the servants of God
have not been particular. As to your objection or reason, we
answer: 1. There are general prayers with the particular, or
without them, 2. There are particular confessions and
prayers proper to some few Christians, and there are others
common to aU ; it is these that we expect, and not the former.
3. The church's prayers must be suited to the body of the
assembly, though perhaps some one, or few may be in a state
not fit for such expressions. What a lamentable liturgy will
you have, if you have nothing in it, but what every one in
the congregation may say as true of and suitable to them
selves 1 Then you must leave out all thanksgiving for our
justification and forgiveness of sins, and adoption, and title to
glory, &c., because many in the assembly are hypocrites, and
have no such mercies, and many more that are sincere, are
mistaken in their own condition, and know not that they
have the mercies which they have, and therefore dare not
give thanks for them, lest they speak an untruth. Then the
liturgy that now speaks as in the persons of the sanctified
must be changed, that the two fore-mentioned sorts (or the
latter at least), may consent ; and when you have done, it will
be unsuitable to those that are in a better state, and haye the
knowledge of their justification. This is the argument which
the sectaries used against singing of David's Psalms in the
congregations, because there is much in them that many
cannot truly say of themselves. But the church must not go
out of that way of worship prescribed by God, and suited to

264 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
the state of the ordinary sort of the spiritual worshippers,
because of the distempers, or the super-eminent excellencies
of some few. It were easy to go over David's Psalms, and
your own liturgy, and shew you very much that by this
argument must be cast out ; he that finds any passage un
suitable to himself, is not to speak it of himself.
Prop, 17. §3. Ans. As for original sin, though we think it an
evil custom springing froin false doctrine, to use any such ex
pressions as m£^y lead people to think that to the persons
baptized (in whose persons only our prayers are offered up),
original sin is not forgiven in their holy baptism; yet for
that there remains in the regenerate some relics of that which
are to be bewailed, the church in her confession acknowledgeth
such desires of our own hearts as reader us miserable by
following them : — that there is no health in us ; that without
God's help our frailty cannot but fall : that our mortal
nature can do no good thing without him ; which is a clear
acknowledgment of original sin.
Reply 1 . He that hath his original sin forgiven him, may
well confess that he was born in iniquity and conceived in sin,
and was by nature a child of wrath, and that by one man sin
entered into the world, and that judgment came on all men
to condemnation, &c. The pardoned may confess what once
they were, and from what rock they were hewn ; even actual
sins must be confessed, after they are forgiven, unless the
antinomians hold the truth against us in such points? 2.
All is not false doctrine that crosseth men's private opinions,
which you seem here to obtrude upon us. We know that
the papists, and perhaps some others, hold that aU the bap
tized are delivered from the guilt of original sin. But, as
they are in the dark, and disagreed in the explication of it,
so we have more reason to incline to either of the ordinary
opinions of the protestants, than to this of theirs. 3. Some
learned protestants hold that visibly all the baptized are
church members, pardoned, and justified, which is but that
they are probably justified indeed, and are to be used by the
church, upon a judgment of charity, as those that are really

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 265
justified, but that we have indeed no certainty that they
are so ; God keeping that as a secret to himself concerning
individuals, tUl by actual faith and repentance it be manifest
to themselves. Another opinion of many protestants is, that
aU persons that are children of the promise, or that have the
conditions of pardon and justification in the covenant men
tioned, are to receive that pardon by baptism : and all such
are pardoned, and certainly in a state of justification and
salvation thereupon ; and that the promise of pardon is made
to the faithful and to their, seed ; and therefore that all the
faithful and their seed in infancy have this pardon given them
by the promise, and solemnly delivered them, and sealed to
them by baptism, which investeth them in the benefits of the
covenant. But, withaU that, first, the professed infidel and
his seed, as such, are not the children of the promise, and
therefore if the parent ludicrously or forcedly, or the child
by error be baptized, they have not thereby the pardon of
their sin before God. 2. That the hypocrite that is not a
true believer at the heart, though he profess it, hath no
pardon by baptism before God, as being not an heir of the
promise, nor yet any infant of his as such : but though such
are not pardoned, the church that judgeth by profession,
taking professors for believers, must accordingly use them
and their seed. 3. But though the church judge thus chari
tably of each professor in particular, tiU his hypocrisy be
detected, yet doth it understand that hypocrites there are and
stiU wUl be in the church, though we know them not by
name ; and that, therefore, there are many externally bap
tized and in communion that never had the pardon of sin,
indeed, before God, as not having the condition of the promise
of pardon : such as Simon Magus was. We have less reason
to take this doctrine for false, than that which pronounceth
certain pardon and salvation to aU baptized infants whatso
ever. And were we of their judgment, we should think it
the most charitable act in the world to take the infants of
heathens and baptize them. And if any should then dis-

266 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
patch them all to prevent their lapse, they were all certainly
saved. We hope by " some relics " you mean that which is
truly and properly sin. For our parts we believe according
to the ninth article, that original sin standeth in the cor
ruption of the nature of every man, whereby man is far gone
from original righteousness, and inclined to evU; and that
this infection of nature doth remain in the regenerate. And
though there is no condemnation for them that believe and
are baptized, yet concupiscence and lust hath of itseU the
nature of sin. You say, the church acknowledgeth such
desires, &c. Devices and desires are actual sins, and not
original, which consisteth in privation and corrupt inclination.
The next words — "there is no health in us," it seems the
translators that put it into the Uturgy misunderstood; but
however you seem here plainly by your misinterpretation to
misunderstand it. Nulla salus in nobis is spoken actively and
not possessively or passively; the plain sense is, that there is
no help, deliverance, and salvation in ourselves; we cannot
help ourselves out of this misery, but must have a better
Saviour; as Christ is oft called our salvation, so we are
denied to be our own : so that yet here is no confession at
all of original sin, but of the effects. The two next sentences
confess a debility and privation, but not that it was ab origine,
but may for anything that is there said be taken to be since
contracted. Nor are the words in this confession, but in
some other collects elsewhere, which proves not that this
confession saith anything of original sin.
Prop. 17. § 4, Ans. We know not what public prayers are
wantin g, nor do they tell us ; the usual complaint hath been that
there were too many. Neither do we conceive any want of pubhc
thanksgivings ; there being in the liturgy, Te Deum, Benedic
tus, Magnificat, Benedicite, "Glory be to God on high,"
"Therefore with angels and archangels," the Doxology,
" Glory be to the Father," &c., aU peculiar, as they require,
to gospel worship, and fit to express our thanks and honour
to God upon every particular occasion ; and occasional thanks-

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 267
givings after the litany, of the frequency whereof then- selves
elsewhere complain, who here complain of defect. If there
be any forms wanting, the church will provide.
Reply. We have shewn you, in the forms which we offered
you, what we judge wantmg; the Right Reverend Bishop of
Exeter hath taken notice of the same want, and proposed a
supply. Those you name are either but general sentences, or
extend but to some few particulars, as being suited to the
persons and particular occasions of them, and none, save the
Te Deum, designed to be the distinct praise of the church for
the benefits of redemption, as the suitable and sufficient per
formance of this great part of the liturgy. However, it wUl
do you no harm that your brethren be gratified with fuller
expressions and variety. They that have complained of too
many (because you shred your petitions into almost as many
prayers, and so the thanksgivings into such briefs), yet com
plained not of too much; but that too many (by the
multitudes of prefaces and epilogues) was the cause of too
little. Prop. 17. § 5. Ans. They complain that the liturgy contains
too many generals, without mention of the particulars, and the
instances are such petitions as these — "That we may do
God's wiU ; " " To be kept from all evU ; " almost the very
terms of the petitions of the Lord's prayer; so that they
must reform that, before they can pretend to mend our
liturgy in these petitions.
Reply. We complain not that there are generals, but that
there is nothing but generals in so great a part of your
prayers, and therefore they are very defective. And if really
these generals suffice you, a few lines may serve instead of
your whole book. Instead of all your confessions, it may
serve to say, that we have greatly sinned, and no more. In
stead of all your litany or deprecations, it is enough to say,
" Deliver us from all evU." Instead of all your petitions for
grace, peace, rain, fair weather, health, &c., it is enough to
say. Give us the good we want. Indeed, the Lord's Prayer
hath general requests, because it is the design of it to be the

268 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
rule of prayer, and so contains but the heads to which all
prayers are to be reduced. But if, therefore, you wfll have
no more partictUars, why do you use any prayer but the
Lord's prayer? We hope you do not think to supply any
defects pretended to be found in its generals, nor to correct
the order of i^. If it be but because you would not, on every
particular occasion, be so long as to say the whole, you may
take that head which suiteth that occasion ; and so, ^' Give us
this day our daily bread," may serve instead of aU the coUects
for temporal supplies; and all your offices may be blotted
out, and one of the petitions of the Lord's prayer placed in
the stead of each of them.
Prop. 17. § 6. Ans. We have deferred this to the
proper place, as you might have done.
Reply. It was the proper place under the head of defective
ness, to instance in this as well as other defects.
Prop. 18. § 1. Ans. We are now come to the main and
principal demand, as is pretended, viz., the abolishing the
laws which impose any ceremonies, especially three — the sur
plice, the sign of the cross, and kneeling ; these are the yoke,
which if removed, there might be peace. It is to be suspected,
and there is reason for it, from their own words, that some
what else pinches, and that if these ceremonies were laid
aside, and these, or any other prayers, strictly enjoined with
out them, it would be deemed a burden intolerable. It seems
so, by No. 7, where they desire that when the liturgy is altered,
according to the rest of their proposals, the minister may
have liberty to add and to leave out what he pleases ; yet
because the imposition of these ceremonies is pretended to be
the insupportable grievance, we must of necessity either yield
that demand, or shew reason why we do not ; and that we
may proceed the better in this undertaking, we shaU reduce
the sum of their complaint to these several heads, as we find
them in their papers. The law for imposing these ceremonies
they would have abrogated for these reasons.
Reply. To what you object (to intimate your suspicion of
us) from No. 7, we have before answered. We must confess.

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 269
the abatement of ceremonies, with the exclusion of all pray
ers and exhortations, besides what is read, will not satisfy us.
The liberty which we desired in all the parts of worship, not
to add to the liturgy,nor take from it; but to interpose upon
just occasion, such words of prayer or exhortation, as are
reqiusite, and not to be tied at every time to read the whole,
we are assured will do much to preserve the liturgy, and
bring it into more profitable use, and take off much of men's
offence. And pardon us whUe we tell you this certain truth,
that if once it be known that you have a design to work out
aU prayei's (even those of the pulpit) except such as you pre
scribe, it wiU make many thousand people, fearing God, to be
averse to that which else they would have submitted to, and
to distaste both your endeavours and ours; as if we were
about drawing them into so great a snare. And, as the pro
verb is, you may as well think to make a coat for the moon,
as to make a liturgy that shaU be sufficiently suited to the
variety of places, times, subjects, accidents, without the
liberty of intermixing such prayers or exhortations as altera
tions and diversities require.
Prop. 18. § 3. Ans. 1st, It is doubtful whether God hath
given power to men to impose such signified signs, which
though they caU them significant, yet have in them no real
goodness, in the judgment of the imposers themselves, being
called by them things indifferent, and therefbre faU not under
St. Paul's rule of omnia decenter, nor are suitable to the sim^
plicity of gospel worship.
Prop. 18. § 2. Ans. 2ndly. Because it is a violation of the
royalty of Christy and an impeachment of his laws as insuf
ficient; and so those that are under the law of Deut. xn.
Whatsoever I command you, observe to do, you shaU take
nothing from it, nor add anything to it; you do not observe
these, -See Hooker, Bk. Hi, § 4.
Prop. 18. § 2. Ans. 3rdfy, Because sundry learned, pious,
and orthodox men have, ever since the reformation, judged
them unwarrantable, and we ought to be, as our Lord was,
tender of weak brethren, not to offend his Uttle ones, nor to

370 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
lay a stumbling block before a weak brother. See Hooker,
Bk. iv,^l.
Prop. 18. § 3. Ans. 4thly. Because these ceremonies have
been the fountain of many evils in this church and nation,
occasioning sad divisions betwixt minister and minister; be
twixt minister and people exposing many orthodox preachers
to the displeasure of rulers ; and no other fruits than these
can be looked for from the retaining these ceremonies.
Reply. We had rather you had taken our reasons as we
laid them down, than to have so altered them ; ergo having
told you that some hold them unlawful, and others incon
venient. Sec, and desired that they may not be imposed on
such, who judge such impositions a violation of the royalty
of Christ, &c., you seem to take this as our own sense, and
that of all the ceremonies, of which we there made no men
tion. You refer us to Hooker; since whose writings, Ames in
his Fresh Suit, and Bradshaw, and Parker, and many others
have written that against the ceremonies, that never was
answered, that we know of, but deserves your consideration.
Prop. IJ. § 3, Ans. Before we give particular answer to
these several reasons, it will not be unnecessary to lay down
some certain general premises, or rules, which wiU be useful
in our whole discourse. 1. That God hath not given a power
only, but a command also of imposing whatsoever should be
truly decent, and becoming his public service, 1 Cor. xiv.
After St. Paul had ordered some particular rules for praying,
praising, prophesying, &c., he concludes with this general
canon, let aU things be done iua-x/li^ovug in a fit scheme, habit,
or fashion, decently, and that there may be uniformity in
those decent performances, let there be a ralig, rule, or canon
for that purpose.
Reply. As to your first rule we answer. 1. It is one thing
to impose in general, that all be done decently and in order;
this God himself hath imposed by his apostle : and it is
another thing to impose in particular, that this or that be
used, as decent and orderly. Concerning this we add, it is in
the text said let it be done, but not let it be imposed; yet

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 271
from other Scriptures we doubt not but circumstances of mere
decency and order, as determined time, place, utensUs, &c.,
which are common to thmgs civil, and sacred, though not
the symboUcal ceremonies, which afterwards we confute, may
be imposed with the necessary cautions and limitations after
ward laid down. But 1. that if any usurpers wUl pretend a
power from Christ, to impose such things on the church
though the things be lawful, we must take heed how we
acknowledge a usurped power by formal obedience. 2. A
just power may impose them but to just ends, as the preser
vation and success of the modified worship or ordinances.
And if they really conduce not to those ends, they sin in im
posing them. 3. Yet the subjects are bound to obey a true
authority in such impositions, where the matter belongs to
the cognizance and office of the ruler, and where the mistake
is not so great as to bring greater mischiefs to the church
than the suspending of our active obedience would do. 4.
But if these things be determined under pretence of order
and decency, to the plain destruction of the ordinances
modified, and of the intended end, they cease to be means;
and we must not use them. 5. Or if under the names of
things decent, and of order, men wiU meddle with things that
belong not to their office, as to institute a new worship for
God, new sacraments, or anything forbidden in the general
prohibition of adding or diminishing, this is a usurpation,
and not an act of authority; and we are bound in obedience
to God to disobey them. 6. Where governors may com
mand at set times, and by proportionable penalties enforce,
if they command when it wiU destroy the end, or enforce by
such penalties as destroy or cross it, they greatly sin, by such
commands. Thus we have more distinctly given you our
sense, about the matter of your first rule.
Prop. 18. § 4. Ans, Rule 2. Not inferiors but superiors
must judge what is convenient and decent; they who must
order that all be done decently, must, of necessity, first judge
what is convenient and decent to be ordered.
Reply. Your second rule, also, is too crudely deUvered, and,
therefore, we must add:— 1, A judgment is a sentence, in

273 Rejoinder of the Ministers. [I66I,
order to some execution, and judgments are specified from
the ends to which they are such means. When the question is
either, — what law shall be made ? — or, what penalty shaU be
exercised? — the magistrate is the only judge and not the
bishop or other subject. In the first he exercises his
judicium discretionis in order to a public act; in the second,
he exerciseth a public judgment. When the question is, — what
order pro tempore is fittest, in circumstantials, for this present
congregation ? the proper presbyters, or pastors, of that con
gregation are the directive judges by God's appointment.
3. The magistrate is ruler of these pastors, as he is of
physicians, philosophers, and other subjects. He may make
them such general rules, especially for restraint, to go by, as
may not destroy the exercise of their own pastoral power:
as he may forbid a physician to use some dangerbus medicine
on his subjects, and may punish him when he wUfuUy killeth
any of them; but may not, on that pretence, appoint him
what, and how, and when, and to whom he shall administer,
and so become physician himself alone. 4. When the
question is, ^- who shall be excluded from the communion of a
particular church? — the pastors of the church (or Congre
gation) are the first proper judges. 5. When the question is, —
who shall be excluded from (or received into) the communion
of all the associated churches, of which we are naturaUy
capable of communion? — the associated pastors or bishops
of these churches, in synods, are judges : beyond this there
are no judges. 6. When the question is, — whether the laws
of magistrates, or canons of bishops, are agreeable or not to
the Word of God, and so the obedience is lawful or unlawful?
— the conscience of each individual subject is the judge, per
judicium discretionis, as to his own practice ; and if men had
not this judgment of discerning, but must act upon absolute
implicit obedience, then first, man were ruled as unreasonable ;
secondly, the magistrates were made a God, or such a levia
than as Hobbes describeth him; thirdly, and then all sin
might lawfully be committed, if commanded. But we are
assured none of this is your sense.
Prop. 18, § 5, Ans. Rule 3. These rules and canons, for

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 373
decency made and urged by superiors, are to be obeyed by in
feriors, tUl it he made as clear that now they are not bound to
obey, as it is evident in general, that they ought to obey supe
riors ; for if the exemption from obedience be not as evident
as the command to obey, it must needs be sin not to obey.
Reply. To your thurd rule we add; it is first considerable
what the thing is and then how it is apprehended. If it be
really lawful, and well commanded, and to be obeyed, it is no
ignorance, doubt, or error of the subject that can exempt
him from the duty of obeying ; but it may ensnare him in a
certainty of sinning, whether he obey or disobey ; for as God
commandeth him to obey, and also not to do that which man
commandeth, when God forbiddeth it, so he obligeth the
erroneous, first to lay down his errors, and so to obey. But
if a thing be forbidden of God, and commanded of men, and
one man erroneously thinks it lawful and that he should
obey, and another is in doubt between both, it is neither a
duty nor lawful for either of them here to obey. For man's
error changeth not God's law nor disobligeth himself from
obedience; but this man's duty is both to lay by that error
and to refuse obedience. But if the question be only of the
order of such a person's duty, we answer : — If the thing be
really lawful, and obedience a duty, then he that doubteth or
erreth should, if possible, suddenly lay by his errors or doubt,
and so obey; but if that cannot be, he should first go about
the fittest means for his better information tUl he be re
solved, and so obey. And so, on the contrary, if reaUy the
thing commanded be unlawful, if he be sure of it, he must
resolve against it; if he hesitate, he is not, therefore, aUowed
to do a thing forbidden, because he is ignorant, for his
ignorance is supposed culpable itself; but he is first to consult
and use the best means for his instruction tiU he know the
truth, and in the meantime to suspend his act. But yet
because of human fraUty, between several faults, we must
consider, when we cannot avoid aU as we would, in what order
most safely to watch, and to avoid them. And so when I
have done my best, and cannot discern whether a command

374 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
be just and the thing lawful or not ; if it have the face of
idolatry, blasphemy, or some heinous sin, that is com
manded ; aud our disobedience have the appearance but of an
effect of involuntary ignorance ; it is more excusable in us to
fear the greater sin and so to suspend till we are better
satisfied, than to do that which we suspect to be so heinous
a sin, though, indeed, it prove no sin : so, on the contrary, if
our disobedience be like to bring infamy or calamity on the
church, and our obedience appear to be but about a very
small sin, if we doubt of it, it is more excusable to obey
than to disobey, though both be faulty, supposing the thing
to be indeed unlawful, and we discern it not. So that your
rule of obeying, where you are not as sure, &c., is an un
sure rule, unless as we have fuUier cautioned it.
Prop. 18. § 6. Ans. Rule 4. Pretence of conscience is no
exemption from obedience, for the law as long as it is a law,
certainly binds to obedience : Rom. xiU. Ye must needs he
subject. And this pretence of a tender or gainsaying con
science cannot abrogate the law, since it can neither take
away the authority of the lawmaker, nor make the matter
of the law in itself unlawful. Besides, if pretence of con
science did exempt from obedience, laws were useless;
whosoever had not list to obey might pretend tenderness of
conscience, and be thereby set at liberty, which if once
granted, anarchy and confusion must needs follow.
Reply. Neither pretence of conscience, nor real error of
conscience exempteth from the obligation to obey: though
sometime it may so ensnare as that obeying shall become of
the two the greater sin; so also real errors, or pretence of
conscience, wUl justify no man for obeying when it is by God
forbidden. Prop, 18, § 7. Ans. Rule 5, Though charity will move
to pity, and relieve those that are truly perplexed or scrupu
lous : yet we must not break God's command, in charity to
them, and therefore we must not perform pubhc services
undecently or disorderly, for the ease of tender consciences.
Reply. O that you would but do all that God alloweth you.

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 275
yea that he hath commanded you, for these ends ! How happy
would you make yourselves, and these poor affiicted churches.
But as to the instance of your rule we answer :—l. When
the indecency and disorder is so smaU as that it will not
cross the ends, so much as our disobedience would, we are
here so far more conformable, and peaceable than you, as
that we would, even in God's worship, do some things inde
cent and disorderly, rather than disobey: and so should
you do rather than destroy your brethren, or hinder that
peace, and healing of the church. For order is for the
thing ordered, and not contrarUy. For example, there is
much disorder lies in the Common Prayer book, yet we
would obey it, as far as the ends of our calling do require.
It would be indecent to come without a band, or other
handsome raiment into the assembly : yet, rather than not
worship God at all, we would obey if that were commanded
us. We are as confident that surplices, and copes are inde
cent, and kneeling at the Lord's table is disorderly, as you
are of the contrary: and yet if the magistrate would be
advised by us (supposing himself addicted against you), we
would advise him to be more charitable to you, than you here
advise him to be to us. We would have him, if your con
science reqiure it, to forbear you in this indecent and dis
orderly way. But to speak more distinctly : — 1, There are
some things decent and orderly, when the opposite species is
not indecent or disorderly, 3, There are some things
indecent and disorderly, in a small and tolerable degree;
and some things in a degree intolerable, 1, When things
decent are commanded, whose opposites would not be at all
indecent, there charity, and peace, and edification, may
command a relaxation; or rather should at first restrain
from too severe impositions : — as it is decent to wear either a
cloak or a gown, a cassock buttoned or unbuttoned, with a
girdle or without, to sit, stand, or kneel in singing of a psalm,
to sit or stand in hearing the word read, or preached, &c,
3, When a circumstance is indecent or disorderly, but in a
tolerable degree, to an inconvenience ; obedience, or charity,
T 3

376 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
or edification, may commaud us to do it, and make it not
only lawful, but a duty pro hie, et nunc, whUe the preponder
ating accident prevaileth, Christ's instances go at least as
far as this, about the priests in the temple breaking the
sabbath blamelessly, and David's eating the shewbread, which
was lawful for none to eat ordinarily, but the priests, and
the disciples rubbing the ears of com, I wiU have mercy
and not sacrifice is a lesson that he sets us to learn, when
two duties come together, to prefer the greater, if we would
escape sin. And sure to keep an able preacher in the church,
or a private Christian in communion, is a greater duty cateris
paribus than to use a ceremony which we conceive to he
decent. It is more orderly to use the better translation of
the Scripture, than the worse, as the Common Prayer book
doth; and yet we would have no man cast out, for using the
worse. It is more orderly, decent, and edifying, for the
minister to read all the psalms, than for the people to read
each second verse; and yet we would not cast out men
from the church or ministry merely for that disorder. It is
more orderly and decent to be imcovered in divine worship,
than covered ; and yet rather than a man should take cold,
we could allow him to hear a chapter or sermon covered:
why not, much more rather than he should be cast out?
But let us come to the application. It is no indecent dis
orderly worshipping of God, to worship him vrithout our cross,
surplice, and kneeling in the reception of the sacrament. 1.
If it were, then Christ and his apostles had worshipped inde
cently and disorderly ; and the primitive church that used
not the surplice, nor the transient image of the cross in bap
tism (but in an unguent) ; yea the church for many hundred
years that received the sacrament without kneeling. 3.
Then if the king, parliament, and convocation should change
these ceremonies, it seems you would take yourselves bound
to retain them; for you say you must not worship God
indecently. But that they may be changed by authority
our Articles determine, and therefore charity may well require
the magistrate to change them without any wrong to the

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 277
worship of God, 3, We appeal to the common judgment of
the impartial, whether, in the nature of the thing, there be
anything that tells them that it is indecent to pray without
a surplice in the reading place, and not indecent to pray
without in the pulpit; and that it is indecent to baptize
without crossing, and not to receive the Lord's supper with
out; and that it is indecent for the receiver to take the
Lord's supper vrithout kneeling, and not for the minister to
give it him standing that prayeth in the delivery.
Prop, 18, § 8, Ans. These premised we answer to your
first reason, — that those things which we call indifferent,
because neither expressly commanded nor forbidden by God,
have in them a real goodness, a fitness, and decency, and for
that cause, are imposed, and may be so by the rule of St,
Paul ; by which rule and many others in Scripture, a power is
given to men to impose signs, which are never the worse
surely, because they signify something that is decent and
comely, and so it is not doubtful whether such power be
given. It would rather be doubtful, whether the church
could impose such idle signs, if any such there be, as signify
nothing. Reply. To your first answer we reply : — 1, We suppose
you speak of a moral goodness ; and if they are such indeed
as are within their power, and really good, that is of their
own nature fitter than their opposites, they may be imposed by
just authority by equal means, though not by usurpers, nor
by penalties that wiU do more harm than the things will do
good, 3, Signs that signify nothing, we understand not. It
is one thing to be decent, and another to signify something
that is decent : what you mean by that we know not. The
cross signifieth our not being ashamed to profess the faith of
Christ crucified, &c., do you call that something that is
decent? It is something necessary to salvation, 3, Signs
are exceeding various : at present we use but two distinc
tions, 1. Some are signs, ex primaria intentione instituentis,
purposed, and primarily instituted to signify, as an escut
cheon, or a sign at an inn door, in common matters ; and as

278 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
the sacrament and cross in sacred matters: and some are
signs but consequently, secondarily, and not essentiaUy as
intended by the- institutor ; so hills and trees may shew us
what o'clock it is. And so every creature signifieth some
good of mercy or duty, and may be an object of holy medita
tion : so the colour and shape of our clothes may mind us of
some good, which yet was none of the primary or proper end
of the maker or wearer. 3. Signs are either arbitrary
expressions of a man's own mind in a matter, where he is left
free, or they are covenanting signs between us and God in
the covenant of grace, to work grace on us as moral causes,
and to engage us sacramentally to him; such we conceive
the cross in baptism to be. The preface to the Common
Prayer book saith, " They are apt to teach and excite, &c.,"
which is a moral operation of grace; and the canon saith,
" it is an honourable badge, whereby the infant is dedicated
to him that died on the cross; we are signed with it in
token that hereafter we shall not be ashamed to confess the
faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight, &c." Now if
a thing may be commanded merely as a decent circumsta,nce
of worship, yet it is unproved that a thing that in its nature
as instituted, and in the primary intention, is thus sacra
mentally to dedicate and engage us in covenant to God by
signifying the grace and duty of the covenant, be lawfully
commanded by man. 1. Decent circumstances are necessary
in genere. There must be some fit time, place, gesture,
vesture (as such), utensils, &c. But that there be some such
dedicating, engaging signs, in our covenanting with God,
signifying the grace of the covenant, and our state and duty
as soldiers under Christ (besides God's sacraments) this is
not necessary in genere, and therefore it is not left to man to
determine de specie. 2. If there be any reason for this use
of the cross, it must be such as was in the apostles' days, and
concerueth the universal church in all ages and places; and
then the apostles would have taken care of it. Thus much
here in brief of signs ; and more anon when you again call
us to it.

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 279
Prbp. 18. § 9. Ans. Tb the second, that it is not a
violation of Christ's royalty to make such laws for decency,
but an exercise of his power and authority, which he hath
given to the church, and the disobedience to such commands
of superiors is plainly a violation of his royalty : as it is no
violation of the king's authority, when his magistrates command
things according to his laws, but disobedience to the command
of those injunctions of his deputies, is violation of his authority.
Again, it can be no impeachment of Christ's laws, as insuffi
cient, to make such laws for decency, since our Saviour, as is
evident by the precepts themselves, did not intend by them
to determine every minute and circumstance of time, place,
manner of performance, and the like, but only to command
in general thc substance of those duties, and the right ends
that should be aimed at in the performance, and then left
every man in particular (whom for that purpose he made
reasonable) to guide himself by rules of reason, for private
services ; and appointed governors of the church to determine
such particularities for the public. Thus our Lord com
manded prayers, fasting, etc. : for the times and places of
performance, he did not determine every of them, but left
them to be guided as we have said. So that it is no impeach
ment of his laws as insufficient, to make laws for determining
those particulars of decency, which himself did not, as is
plain by his precepts, intend to determine, but left us
governors for that purpose; to whom he said, "As my Father
sent me, even so send I you ;" and " Let aU things be done
decently and in order :" of whom he hath said to us, " Obey
those that have the oversight over you :" and told us that
if we will not hear his church, we must not be accounted as
Christians, but heathens and publicans. And yet nevertheless
they wUl not hear it and obey it in so small a matter as a
circumstance of time, place, habit, or the like, which she
thinks decent and fit, and yet wiU be accounted for the best
Christians, and teU us that it is the very awe of God's law
(Deut. xii, 33) that keeps them from obedience to the
church in these commands; not well considering that it

280 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
cannot be any adding to the Word of God, to command things
for order and decency which the Word of God commands to
be done, so as they be not commanded as God's immediate
Word, but as the laws of men; but that it is undeniably
adding to the Word of God to say that superiors may not
command such things, which God hath nowhere forbidden,
and taking from the Word of God to deny that power to men
which God's Word hath given them.
Reply. To make laws, to determine of undetermined cir
cumstance, necessary in genere, to be some way determined
and left to magistrates, or ministers de specie, and to do this
according to the general rule of Scripture, and in order
to the main end, and not against it, is not against the
royalty or wiU of Christ; but to make new dedicating,
covenanting symbols to signify the doctrine of the covenant
of grace,''and solemnly engage us unto God, and place these
in the public worship which are not mere circumstances, but
substantial institutions, not necessary, in genere, (that there
should be any such at aU, besides God's sacraments,) we fear
this is a violation of the royalty of Christ, and a reflection on
his laws as insufficient. For, first, if it belong to the power
proper to Christ, then it is a violation of his royalty for any
man to exercise it ; but it belongeth to the power proper to
Christ ; ergo, &c. The minor is proved thus — If it belong to
the universal head, or ruler of the church as such, then it
belongs to the power proper to Christ (for we are ready to
prove there is none under him, no universal head or ruler,
personally, or collectively, and civUly one) ; but, &c. If, in
the reason of it, it should he the matter of an universal law,
if of any, then it should be the work of the universal law
giver, if any ; but, &c. If, in the reason of it, it be equally
useful to the church universal as to any particular church or
age, then it should, according to the reason of it, be the
matter of an universal law, if of any ; but, &c., it hath the
same aptitude to engage us to a duty of universal necessity,
and hath no reason proper to this age or place for it, but
common to all. Moreover, it is nowhere committed to the

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 381
power or care of man — ergo, it is proper to the care and
power of Christ. No text is shewed that giveth man power
in such things. To do aU things decently and orderly, and to
edification, is no giving of power, on that pretence, to make
new covenanting, dedicating signs: to do God's work de
cently, &c., is not to make more such of our own heads ; it is
but the right modifying of the work already set us. And to
do aU decently, orderly, and to edification, was a duty in
Moses' time, when yet such things as these in question might
not be added by any but God. When we say by God, we
mean by his inspired instruments ; and when we say by Christ,
we mean by his inspired instruments. If we should make laws
that everyone is publicly to taste vinegar and gall, as a sign
that we are not ashamed of, but resolved, through all flesh-
displeasing difficulties, to follow Christ, that did so, and thus
to engage and dedicate ourselves to him — this were to do
more than to do all things decently and orderly which he ap
pointed. If mUk were to be publicly sucked or drank by all,
in profession that we will feed on the sincere milk of his
word, and so dedicate us to him by covenant ; or if we were
to put on an helmet and other armour, in token that we will
be his soldiers to the death, and manfully fight under, &c, —
these engagements, by such public signs, are sacraments in the
sense as the word was used -of old, when it signified a soldier's
solemn listing, or covenanting with his commander. Thus
by distinguishing decent and orderly modes, and circumstances
necessary in genere, from new ordinances, even solemn dedicat
ing, covenanting, or such like mystical signs, we have shewed you
what we grant, and where you fail, and what is indeed a
wrong to Christ, and an accusation of his laws, and what not ;
and how unjust your following accusation of us is, who never
yet told you we would be accounted the best Christians : but
to desire to please Christ as near as we can, is not blame-
Tvorthy. Abundance of things, of lesser moment than these,
are commanded by God in the law, to which he added that
sanction, Deut. xii, 33: "Whatever tilings I command
thee," &c. And we conceive that the words, " As my father

383 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
sent me, so," &c., had somewhat proper to the extraordinary
mission. "And if he hear not the church," &c., is neither
spoken of a church universal, nor of magistrates making laws
for such ceremonies or signs. But if he hear not the church
with which he was in communion, and which admonisheth him
for his sin, let that church reject him from their communion.
Prop. 10. § 10, Ans. The command for decent ceremonies
may still continue in the church, notwithstanding the xii of
Deut., and so it may too for all the exceptions taken against
them by sundry learned, pious, and orthodox persons, who
have judged them, they say, unwarrantable. And if laws
may be abrogated as soon as those that list not to obey wiU
except against them, the world must needs run into confusion.
But those that except are weak brethren, whom, by Christ's
precept and example, we must not offend. If by weak we
understand ignorant, they would take it ill to be so accounted;
and it is their own fault if they be, there having been so very
much written as may satisfy any that have a mind to be satis
fied. And as king James of blessed memory said at Hampton
Court, " If after so many years preaching of the Gospel,
there be any yet unsatisfied, I doubt it proceeds rather out of
stubbornness of opinion than out of tenderness of conscience."
If by tenderness of conscience they mean a fearfulness
to sin, this would make them most easy to be satisfied,
because most fearful to disobey superiors. But suppose
there be any so scrupulous, as not satisfied with what hath
been written, the church may still, without sin, urge her
command for these decent ceremonies, and not be guilt/
of offending her weak brother; for since the scandal is
taken by him, not given by her, it is he that by vain
scrupulosity offends himself, and lays the stumblingblock
in his own way.
Reply. But the command for man's institution of a new
worship of God, or of rites sacramental, or so like to sacra
ments as the cross is; or for the unnecessary imposition of
unnecessary things, which should be left to every prudent
minister's discretion ; and this upon pain of being cast out of

1661. J to the Answer of the Bishops. 283
the church or ministry; and the law for subscribing that all
these are lawful, and for swearing obedience to the bishops;
all these laws are not to be found in Scripture. If you should
but command your servant to do what you bid him decently
and orderly, you would think he mistook you, if upon that
pretence he would do any other work, which he could but say
tended to the decency of yours. And we would gladly hear
what you think yourselves is forbidden in Deut. xii, 32, if
not such human ordinances, and why you forbear gi-ving
the truer sense of the text ? It is a sad case with the poor
church, when God's wisdom, that made a few and necessary
things the matter of his church's concord, is no more valued.
But we wUl be wiser : and when the experience of the church
that hath been torn into pieces fourteen hundred years, by
men's inventions, and needless usages, and impositions, is yet
of no more force with us that come after them, but whatever
can be said, or done, or seen, we will still make laws, that all
men shall be tantum non, unchristened, and damned (that is,
cast out of the ministry or church communion), that will not
wear this or that, or bow thus or thus, or look this way or
that way, or say this word or that word ; and, when we have
laid such a needless snare, we will uncharitably cry out the
world will be brought into confusion, because men that list
not to obey, would have the laws abrogated, where hath
Christ set you to make such laws? Is it not work enough
for us and you to obey the laws that he hath made? Why
made he none for postures, and vestures, and words, and
teaching signs of this nature, if he would have had them?
If he had not told us that there is one lawgiver, one Lord,
and that his word is able to make us wise unto salvation, and
that he would lay no greater burden on us than necessary
things, and would not have us despise or judge each other on
such occasions : if he had but told us that he left any officers,
after his inspired apostles, for the making of ceremonies, or
new laws of worship, or teaching engaging signs for the
church, we would as gladly understand and obey his wUl in
these things as you. What hurt is it to us to use a cross or

284 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
other ceremony, if it were not for fear of disobeying God?
Enforce God's laws upon us zealously if you will, and see if
we wUl disobey. But that the world shall run into confusion
rather than we shall have leave to serve God as Peter and
Paul did, -without crossing, surplices, and . kneeling at the
sacrament, and then that we shall be reproached as the cause
of all by our disobedience, God hath told the world by his
word, and will tell them by his judgments, that this is not his
way to unity and peace. As to the argument from your
brethren's weakness, we say, first, it is not your strength to
slight it or them ; nor is it their weakness that they are wilhng
to be esteemed weak. The apostle called those weak that
placed a necessity in indifferent things, (Rom, xiv,) and not
those that understood their indifferency. But the truth is, the
nature of things indifferent is not weU understood by aU on
either side; some may think evU of some things that deserve
it not, and in this they are weak, though in other matters
they may be strong. And for the rest, we speak according to
the worst that you yourselves can charitably suppose, you
can say no more of them, but that they are weaker, that is,
in this know less than you, though perhaps we may take them
to be stronger, that is, to be more in the right ; yet are we not
so confident as to censure you or others ; but speak of things
difficult and doubtful as they are. But how prove you that
we would take it UI to be ourselves, or have those we speak of
accounted ignorant in such things as these ? Use us no worse
than the ignorant should be used ; and till you would turn a
man out of the ministry or church for being ignorant of the
nature of a ceremony, (which never was in his creed, the
decalogue, or Scripture,) deal not so by us, that would be
wiser if we knew how. That all our ignorance is our own
fault we deny not, but it is an excess of confidence and un
charitableness to tell us that there is so very much written
as may satisfy any man that hath a mind to be satisfied,
when we profess in his sight that knoweth the hearts, that we
have a mind to be satisfied, and would know the truth at
what rate soever if we knew how. What would you have us do

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops, 285
that we do not, to be satisfied? Do we not read as much for
ceremonies as the dissenters used to do against them ? Many
books against them are yet unanswered, and we never shunned
any public or private conference with any of you ; and such
reasonings as these are not like to convince us. If you wiU
be the judges of your brethren's hearts, and say it is not ten
derness of conscience, but stubbornness, we shaU refer that
to the day when your hearts, and ours, shall be opened.
Must none be tender conscienced that dare not venture to
obey you in such things ? When you may with undoubted
safety forbear the imposing of your ceremonies, and so for
bear the casting out of your brethren, if you will not, who
shows less tenderness of conscience? That the scandal is
taken and not given is stiU the thing in question, as to many
things ; and if it were not just occasion of offence, you ought
not to lay that which another's weakness will turn into a
stumbUng block unnecessarily before them. If the apostle's
argument be good, (Rom, xiv,) the church may not urge
unlawful things, nor things merely lawful upon such penalties
as -wiU exclude things necessary. If an idle word be to be
accounted for, an idle law 'is not laudable, much less when
all men must be excluded the ministry or communion- that
scruple it; when yet a man may be a profane swearer for
twelve pence an oath, and may swear an hundred times be
fore he pays that twelve pence, A papist shall pay twelve
pence for not coming to church ; and a protestant be thrust
out of your communion for not kneeling at the sacrament;
and a minister suspended, imprisoned, undone, for not crossing
a child or wearing a surplice. May magistrates or the church
thus urge their commands ? Can anything be spoken plainer
than the Scripture speaks against this course? And would
you make the world beUeve that the brethren that do not aU
that you bid them are so unreasonably and obstinately scru
pulous, as to have no matter of offence, but what they lay
before themselves, when they have the practice of the apostles
and the custom of the primitive church for many hundred
years against you, and this called by them an apostolical tra-

286 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
dition, and decreed by the most uncharitable councils that
ever were ? If you had but one of these (the decree of a
general council, or practice of all the purest churches alone)
for one of your ceremonies, you would think him uncharitable
that so reproached you for pretending conscience ?
Prop. 18. § 11. Ans. The case of St. Paul, not eating of
flesh, if it offended his brother, is nothing to the purpose;
who there speaks of things not commanded either by God or
by his church, neither having in them anything of decency, or
significancy to serve in the church. St. Paul would deny
himself his own liberty, rather than offend his brother; but
if any man breaks a just law or custom of the church, he
brands him for a lover of schism and sedition. (1 Cor. xi, 16.)
Reply. But because, at our last meeting, it was said with so
much confldence by one, that the case in Rom. xiv and xv
was nothing to ours, we shall here say the more to what you
say, that St. Paul's not eating flesh is nothing to the purpose :
your reasons are, first, because he speaks of nothing com
manded by God or his church; secondly, nor of anything
of decency or significancy to serve in the church. To the
first we have often told you, that which is undeniable ; First,
that Paul was a governor of that church himself, that had no
superior to control him. If you say that he then wrote not as a
governor ; we answer. Yes : for he then wrote as an apostle,
and wrote the epistle that was to be a standing law or canon
to them : if this be not an act of his office and authority,
there was none such ; and then you must say the like of all
the rest of the epistles. Secondly. Moreover, as Paul the
apostle excludeth all such impositions ; so he wrote to all the
resident pastors that were at Rome, for he wrote to the whole
church : and therefore these commands extend to the gover
nors, that they make not such things the matter of contempt
or censures, or any other uncharitable course, but bear with
one another in them. Will you call men obstinate self-
offenders, that differ from you, when you have no better
answers than these, to the plain decisions of the Holy Ghost ?
What we speak of Rom. xiv, xv, we speak also of 1 Cor. viii.

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 287
And, Thirdly. It is to the rulers of the church that we are
speaking, and it is they that answer us : and shall the rulers
say, " If it were not a thing commanded, we might bear with
you," when it is themselves that command them ecclesiastically;
and we intreat them but to forbear that, and to concur with
us in petitioning the king to forbear commanding them
coercively, who no doubt wiU easily forbear it, if they do
their part. Fourthly. Yea, a fortiori, it layeth a heavier charge
on such governors, than others. If it be so heinous a sin as
Paul maketh it, to censure or despise one another, for meats,
and days, and such like things; how much more to excom
municate, silence, and undo one another, and deprive thou
sands of souls of the preaching of the gospel that consented
not to their pastors' nonconformity? Fifthly. Paul letteth
you know that these things are not the centre or matter of
our necessary concord, but of mutual forbearance, and there
fore condemneth all that wUl make them necessary to our
unity, ministry, or communion. Sixthly. And the difference
is wholly to the advantage of our cause. For those that Paul
spake to, were not come so high as to go about to force others
to do as they did ; but only to despise them for not doing it.
2. And therefore to your second reason we answer : — 1. If the
things had been different, yet so was Paul's injunction differ
ent from our request ; for Paul goeth so high as to command
them to deny their own Uberty in not eating lawful meats
themselves, lest they offend and hurt their brethren : whereas
we are now desiring you, that you would not force others to
do that which they take to be a sin, and that with penalties
that fall heavier on the church than on them. They had on
both sides fairer pretences than you have. The cases before
us to be compared, are four; the case of the refusers of
meats, and observers of days then; the case of the users of
those meats and non-observers of those days ; the case of our
imposers; and the case of nonconformists. The pretence of
their refusers of meats had in 1 Cor. viU, was that, being
offered to idols, they thought it made them partakers of the
idolatry; and so they sinned through weakness in being

288 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
offended at others, and censuring them that used their liberty.
And had they not here a fairer pretence, for their offence and
censures, than you for your impositions ? You cannot shew
half so great an appearance of good in the things commanded,
as they could do of evU in the things for which they were
offended. And the offended censurer in Rom. xiv, had this
pretence, that the thing was forbidden in God's own law, even
the meats, which he refused ; and the days commanded which
he observed : and he knew not that the law in these matters
of order and ceremony was abrogated, which Peter was
ignorant of, when he refused to eat things common and
unclean : but you have no pretence of God's own command,
for the matter of your impositions, as these men had for the
matter of their offence and censure, so that here you are on
the worser side. And for the other party that in 1 Cor. viii
abused their liberty, and Rom. xiv, despised their brethren,
they had a double pretence : one was that it was their liberty;
and if every scrupulous party should drive them from their
lawful meat and drink, they knew not whither they might
drive them : another was, that the law was abrogated by
Christ; and therefore if they complied in practice with the
scrupulous, or did not shew their diflerence, they might seem
to be guUty of the restoring of the law, and complying with
the Jews, and the heretics, that both then were enemies to the
church, and agreed in this. Had not these men now a far fairer
pretence for eating, (1 Cor. viii,) and for the dissent shewed,
(Rom xiv,) than you ever yet produced for forcing others from
ministry and church into sin and hell, if they will not obey
you against their consciences; and all for that whfch you
never pretended to shew a command of God for, and others
shew you, as they think. Scripture, and councils, and customs
against? To tell us then that Paul spake of things not
decent and significant, is (pardon our plainness) to say much
less than nothing : for it was not against imposing that Paul
spake, but using and not using, censuring and despising;
and their arguments were suitable to their cause, of another
kind of moment, than decency or indecency, significancy or

1661 .] to the Answer of the Bishops. 289
insignificancy, even from supposed idolatry, rejecting God's
law, and complying with the Jews and heretics, in restoring
the law, and casting away the liberties purchased by Christ,
even in their private eating and drinking.
To be no more tedibus now, -we humbly offer in any way
convenient to try it out with that reverend brother that so con
fidently asserted the disparity of the cases, and to prove that
these scriptures most plainly condemn your impositions now
in question; though we should have thought that one impartial
reading of them might end the controversy, and save the
church and you from the sad effects. As to that 1 Cor. xi,
16 we answer, first, it is uncertain whether the word custom
refer to the matter of hair, or to contention; so many ex
positors judge q. d. the churches of God are not contentious.
Secondly. Here is no institution, much less by fallible men,
of new covenanting, dedicating, or teaching symbols or cere
monies, nor is here any unnecessary thing enjoined, but that
which nature, and the custom of the country, had made so
decent as that the opposite would have been abusively in
decent. This is not your case. A cross or surplice is not
decent by nature or common reputation, but by institution;
(that is not all : for if it be not instituted because decent, it
it wUl not be decent because instituted;) nor are these so
decent as the opposite to be indecent. The apostles wor
shipped God as decently without them, as you do with them ;
the minister prayeth in the pulpit as decently without the
surplice as in the reading place with it. Thirdly. Paul doth
but exhort them to this undoubted comeUness, (as you may
well do, if men wiU do anything which nature or common
reputation makes to be slovenly, unmannerly, or indecent, as
being covered in prayer or singing psalms, or any such Uke,
about which we wUl never differ with you,) but even here he
talks not of force, or such penalties as tend to the greater
hurt of the church, and the ruin of the person.
Prop. 18. § 12. Ans. That these ceremonies have occa
sioned many divisions is no more fault of theirs, than it was
of the gospel that the preaching of it occasioned strife betwixt

290 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661
father and son, &c. The true cause of those divisions is the
cause of ours, which St. James tells us is lust, and inordinate
desires of honour, or wealth, or licentiousness, or the like.
Were these ceremonies laid aside, there would be the same
divisions, if some, who think Moses and Aaron took too much
upon them, may be suffered to deceive the people, and to raise
in them vain fears and jealousies of their governors; but if
all men would, as they ought, study peace and quietness, they
would find other and better fruits of these laws of rites and
ceremonies, as edification, decency, order, and beauty, in the
service and worship of God.
Reply. Whether the ceremonies be as innocent, as to
divisions, as the gospel, (a strange assertion) wiU better
appear when what we have said, and what is more fuUy said
by Dr, Ames, Bradshaw, and others, is well answered. If
the true cause of our divisions be, as you say, lust and inor
dinate desires of honour, or wealth, or licentiousness, then
the party that is most lustful, ambitious, covetous, and licen
tious, are Ukest to be most the cause. And for lust, and
licentiousness, we should take it for a great attainment of our
ends, if you will be entreated to turn the edge of your severity
against the lustful, and licentious : O that you wotdd keep
them out of the pulpits, and out of the communion of the
-church, tiU they reform ! And for ourselves, we shall take
your admonitions, or severities, thankfuUy, whenever we are
convicted by you of any such sins ; we are loth to enter upon
such comparison, between the ministers ejected (for the most
part), and those that are in their rooms, as tends to shew by
this rule who are likest to be the dividers. And for inordi
nate desire of honour and wealth, between your lord^ships
and us; we are contented that this cause be decided by aU
England, even by our enemies, at the first hearing, without
any further vindication of ourselves ; and so let it be judged
who are the dividers': only we must say, that your intimation
of this charge on us that seek not for bishoprics, deaneries,
archdeaconries, or any of your preferments; that desire not,
nor could accept pluraUties of benefices, with cure of souls ;

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 291
that never sought for more than food or raiment with the
liberty of our ministry, even one place with a tolerable main
tenance; whose provoking cause hath been our constant oppo
sition to the honours, wealth, lordships, and pluralities of the
clergy; yea who would be glad, on the behalf of the poor con
gregations, if many of our brethren might have leave to
preach to their flocks for nothing ; we say, your intimation
maketh us lift up our hearts and hands to heaven, and think.
Oh what is man 1 What may not by some history be told
the world! Oh how desirable is the blessed day of the
righteous universal judgment of the Lord! How small a
matter, till then, should it be to us to be judged of man ! We
hope, upon pretence of not suffering us to deceive the people,
you wiU not deny us liberty to preach the necessary saving
truths of the gospel, considering how terrible a symptom
and prognostic this was in the Jews, 1 Thes. ii, 15, 16,
"who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and
persecuted the apostles ; and God they pleased not, and were
contrary to aU men, forbidding to preach to the Gentiles, that
they might be saved, to fiU up their sins always : for wrath
was come upon them to the utmost," We can as easily bear
whatever you can inflict upon us, as the hinderers of the
gospel, and silencers of faithful ministers, and troublers of
the churches, can bear what God wiU inflict on them. And
BO the will of the Lord be done.
Prop. 18. § 13. Ans. There hath been so much said not
only of the lawfulness, but also of the conveniency of those
ceremonies mentioned, that nothing can be added : this in
brief may here suffice for the surplice, that reason and expe
rience teach that decent ornaments and habits preserve
reverence, and are held therefore necessary to the solemnity of
royal acts, and acts of justice, and why not as well to the
solemnity of religious worship. And in particular no habit
more suitable than white linen, which resembles purity and
beauty, wherein angels have appeared (Rev. xv), fit for those,
whom the Scripture calls angels : and this habit was ancient.
Chrys, Hom, 60, ad Antioch,
V 2

593 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
Reply. First, if nothing can be added, then we doubt the
unanswered writings extant against these impositions wUl
never be well answered. Secondly, We are desirous that no
indecent vestures or habits be used in God's service. Those
that scruple the surplice do it not as it is a habit determined
of, as decent ; but as they think it is made a holy vestment,
and so part of external worship, as Aaron's vestments were ;
as may be seen in the arguments of Cotton and NichoUs
lately printed together.
Prop. 18. § 14. Ans. The cross was always used in the
church in immortali lavacro, (Tertull.) and therefore to testify
our communion with them, as we are taught to do in our
creed, as also in token that we shaU not be ashamed of the
cross of Christ, it is fit to be used still; and we conceive cannot
trouble the conscience of any that have a mind to be satisfied.
Reply. That the cross was always used in the church in
baptism is an assertion certainly untrue, and such as we never
heard or read tUl now. Do you believe it was used in the
baptism of the eunuch, Lydia, the jailor, CorneUus, the three
thousand Acts ii, or in those times ? And when it did come
up, it was with Chrism, and not our airy, transient image;
and therefore you so far differ from the users. Secondly.
The condemnation of genuflection on the Lord's days in
adoration was at least as ancient and universal, and com
manded by councils when the cross was not ; and yet you can
dispense with that, and many such usages. And if you wiU
yourselves fall in with custom, yet every ancient common
custom was never intended to be a matter of necessity to
union or toleration of our brethren. Use no other force
about the cross than the church then did. Thirdly. Your
saying that you conceive it cannot trouble the conscience of
any that have a mind to be satisfied, doth but express your
uncharitable censoriousness, whUe your brethren have studied
and prayed, and conferred for satisfaction (its like as much
as you), and profess their earnest desire of it, and their
readiness to hear or read anything that you have to say in
order to their satisfaction.

661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 293
Prop. 18. § 15, Ans, The posture of kneeling best suits
at the communion as the most convenient, and so most decent
for us, when we are to receive as it were from God's hand
the greatest of seals of the kingdom of heaven. He that
thinks he may do this sitting, let him remember the prophet
Malachi : — " offer this to the prince," to receive his seal from
his o-wn hand, sitting, " see if he will accept 6f it," When the
church did stand at her prayers, the manner of recei-ving
was more adorantium, (S. Aug. Psa. xcviii, CyrU, Catech,
Mystag. 5.) rather more than at prayers. Since standing at
prayer hath been generaUy left, and kneeling used instead of
that (as the church may vary in such indifferent things), now
to stand at communion, when we kneel at prayers, were not
decent, much less to sit, which was never the use of the best
times. Reply. To aU this about kneeling, we say, first, we have
considered the text in Malachi, and what you say; and yet, first,
we find that our betters, even Christ's apostles, and the uni
versal church, for many hundred years, thought not kneeling
more decent; nor did the church in the first age think sitting
unmeet in that service to the King of the church : and we
hope you reprehend them not. Secondly. You require not
the adults that are baptized, to receive that seal or sacrament
kneeling. Thirdly. When kneeling at prayers was in use in
the apostles' times, yet kneeling in the reception of the sacra
ment was not. Fourthly. Why can you so lightly put off
both the practice and canons of the church, in this, more
than in other such things ? However, you cannot here deny,
de facto, but that kneeling on the Lord's day in the receiving
of the sacrament -was, for many hundred years of the purer
times of the church, disused and condemned. And why do
you not tell us what other general council repealed this, that
we may see whether it be such as we are any way bound by ?
When you say the church may vary in such indifferent things :
first, if kneeUng or standing at prayer be an indifferent
thing, then so are they at this sacrament. Secondly. Then
you foUow the changes, and we the old pattern. Thirdly,

294 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
Then the canons of general councils and customs, pretended
to be from apostolical tradition, may be changed. Fourthly.
What is it that you call the church, that changeth, or may
change these ? A council, or a popular custom ? Bring us
not under a foreign power. Fifthly. The thing then being so
indifferent and changeable, you may change it, if you please,
for ends that are not indifferent. Sixthly. And if now the
ministers may pray standing, why may not the people receive
standing ? Seventhly. When you say that to sit was never
the use of the best times, you deny the apostles' and pri
mitive times to be the best. As to the extent of the church
they were not the best, but as to purity of administrations
they were.
Prop. 18. §16. Ans. That there were ancient liturgies in
the church is evident : S. Chrysostom, S. BasU, and others;
and the Greeks tell us of St. James, much elder than they.
And though we find not in all ages whole Uturgies, yet it is
certain that there were such in the oldest times, by those
parts which are extant; as Sursum corda, ^c,. Gloria
Patri, S^c, Benedicite, Hymnus Cherubinus, ^c, Vere dig
num et justum, ^c, Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo,
with divers others. Though those that are extant may
be interpolated, yet such things as are found in them aU
consistent to catholic and primitive doctrine may well be
presumed to have been from the first; especially since we find
no original of these liturgies from general councils.
Reply. We know there wanteth not a Lindanus, a Coccius,
to tell the world of St. Peter's Liturgy, which yet prayeth
that by the intercession of St. Peter, and Paul, we may be
defended, &c., and mentioneth Linus, Cletus, Clemens, Cor
nelius, Cyprian, Lucia, Barbara, and abundance such : shall
we therefore conclude, that there were liturgies from the
first, and that what is here consentient to antiquity, was in
it ? There wants not a Marg. de la Eigne, a Greg, de Valent,
a Coccius to< commend to us the Uturgy of Mark, that pray
eth. Protege civitatem islam proper martyrem tuum et
evangelistam Marcum, etc., and teUs us that the king

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 295
where the author lived was an orthodox Christian, and pray
eth for the pope, subdeacons, lectors, cantors, monks, &c.
Must we therefore beUeve that all that is orthodox in it is
ancient? So there wants not a Eigne, BeUarmine, &c,, to tell
us of St, James' liturgy, that mentions the confessors, the
Deiparam, the anchorets, &c., which made BeUarmine himself
say de Liturgia Jacobi sic sentio, cam aut non esse ejus, aut
multa a posterioribus eidem addita sunt. And must we
prove the antiquity of liturgies by this, or try ours by it?
There wants not a Sainctius, a BeUarmine, a Valentia, a
Paresius to predicate the liturgy of S. Basil, as bearing wit
ness to transubstantiation, for the sacrifice of the mass, for
praying to saints, &c., when yet the exceeding disagreement
of copies, the difference of some forms from Basil's ordinary
forms, the prayers for the most pious and faithful emperors,
shew it unlikely to have been BasU's. Many predicate Chry-
sostom's mass or liturgy, as making for praying to the dead,
and for them, the propitiatory sacrifice of the mass, &c.,
when, in one edition, Chrysostom is prayed to in it, saith
Cook : in another, Nicolaus, and Alexius, that lived 1080, is
mentioned: in another, doctrines are contained (as de con-
taminata Maria, &,c.J clean contrary to Chrysostom's doc
trine : must we now conclude that all is ancient, that is
orthodox, when one copy is scarce like another ? Or can we
try our liturgy by such as this? The shreds cited by you
prove a liturgy indeed, such as we have used while the Com
mon Prayer book was not used, where the psalms, the words
of baptism, and the words of consecration, commemoration,
and delivery of the Lord's Supper, and many other, were
used in a constant form, when other parts were used as the
minister found most meet; so Sursum Corda was hut a warn
ing before, or in the midst of devotion, such as our " Let us
pray," and will no more prove that the substance of prayer
was not left to the minister's present or prepared conceptions,
than Ite missa est will prove it. The Gloria patri BeUarmine
himself saith, according to the common opinion, was formed
in the CouncU of Nicsea, which was in the 4th century. And

296 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
even then such a particular testimony against the Arians
might well stand with a body of unimposed prayers; and
rather shews that in other things they were left at liberty.
If the Benedicite, the hymns, or other passages here men
tioned, wiU prove such a liturgy as pleaseth you, we pray you
bear with our way of worship, which hath more of hymns
and other forms than these come to. That these liturgies
had no original from general Councils adds nothing with us
to their authority, but sheweth that they had an arbitrary
original : and aU set together, shews that then they had many
Uturgies in one prince's dominion, and those alterable, and
not forced; and that they took not one Uturgy to be auy
necessary means to the church's unity or peace, but bore
with those that used various at discretion. We well remem
ber that TertuUian teUs the heathens that Christians shewed by
their conceived hymns, that they were sober at their religious
feasts, it being their custom ut quisque de Scripturis Sanctis,
vel de proprio ingenio potest, provocetur in medium Deo
canere, Apol, cap, 39, Note here 1. that though there be
more need of forms for singing than for praying, yet even in
this, the Chiistians in public had then a liberty of doing it
de proprio ingenio, and by their own wit or parts, 3, That
those that did not de proprio ingenio, did it de Scripturis
Sanctis, and that there is no mention of any other liturgy,
from which they fetch so much as their hymns. And the
same TertuUian, Apol. cap. 30, describing the Christians' public
prayers saith sine monitore, -quia de pectore, oramus, we
pray without a monitor or prompter, because we do it from the
heart, or from our own breast. And before him Justin Martyr,
Ap. 3, p. 77, saith, o xpos^aig sy%a? 6(/,oi&ig xcci ii-)(i^^i?iag
offf] thvu^/jig avroj KvaTifJbTrsi, kou 6 Xccog 'iTSvpiJiJjsi Xsyajv to
'Auj^v. But if all these words seem not plain enough to
some, it is no wonder when they rest not in the greater
plainness of the holy Scriptures, where prayer is so frequently
mentioned, as much of the employment of believers ; and so
many directions, encouragements, and exhortations given

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 397
about it: and yet no liturgy or stinted forms, except the
Lord's prayer, is prescribed to them, or once made mention
of; no man directed here to use such, no man exhorted to get
him a Prayer book, or to read or learn it, or to beware that
he add or diminish not: whereas the holy Scriptures that
were then given to the church, men are exhorted to read,
and study, and meditate in, and discourse of, and make it
their continual delight : and it is a wonder that Da-vid, that
mentions it so oft in the cxixth Psalm, doth never mention
the liturgy, or Common Prayer book, if they had any ; and
that Solomon, when he dedicated the house of prayer without
a Prayer book, would only beg of God to hear what prayers
or what supplication soever, shaU be made of any man, or of
all the people of Israel, when every one shall know his own
sore, and his own grief, and shall spread forth his hands in
that house, (3 Chron. vi, 39,) and that he giveth no hint of
any Uturgy or form, so much as in those common calamities ;
and talks of no other book than the knowledge of their own
sores, and their own griefs. And in the case of psalms, or
singing unto God ; where it is certain, that they had a liturgy
or form, (as we have,) they are carefully collected, preserved,
and deUvered to us, as a choice part of the holy Scripture.
And would it not have been so with the prayers ? or would
they have been altogether unmentioned, if they also had been
there prescribed to, and used by the church, as the psalms
were ? Would Christ and his apostles, even where they were
purposely giving rules for prayer, and correcting its abuse, as
Matt, vi; 1 Cor. xiv, &c., have never mentioned any forms
but the Lord's prayer, if they had appointed such, or desired
such to be imposed, and observed? These things are in
credible to us when we most impartially consider them. For
our own parts, as we think it uncharitable to forbid the use
of spectacles to them that have weak eyes, or of crutches to
them that have weak limbs ; and as uncharitable to undo all
that will not use them, whether they need them or not : so
we can think no better of them, that will suffer none to use
such forms, that need them ; or that will suffer none to pray

298 Rejoinder of tlie Ministers [1661.
but in the words of other men's prescribing, though they are
at least as able as the prescribers.
And to conclude, we humbly crave, that ancient customs
may not be used against themselves, and us ; and that you
wUl not innovate, under the shelter of the name of antiquity.
Let those things be freely used among us, that were so used
in the purest primitive times. Let unity and peace be laid
on nothing, on which they laid them not; let diversity of
liturgies, and ceremonies be allowed, where they allowed it.
May we but have love and peace, on the terms as the ancient
church enjoyed them, we shall then hope we may yet escape
the hands of uncharitable destroying zeal. We therefore
humbly recommend to your observation the concurrent testi
mony of the best histories of the church concerning the
diversity of liturgies, ceremonies, and model observances, in
the several churches under one and the same civil govern
ment : and how they then took it to be their duty to forbear
each other in these matters, and how they made them not the
test of their communion, or centre of their peace. Concern
ing the observation of Easter itself, when other holy-days
and ceremonies were urged, were less stood upon, you have
the j udgment of Irenseus, and the French bishops, in whose
name he wrote, in Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 1. 5. c. 23, where
they reprehend Victor for breaking peace with the churches,
that differed about the day, and the antecedent time of fast
ing, and tell him that the variety began before their tifnes,
when yet they nevertheless retained peace, and yet retain it :
and the discord in their fasting declared, or commended the
concord of their faith, that no man was rejected from com
munion by Victor's predecessors on that account, but they
gave them the sacrament, and maintained peace with them,
and particularly Polycarp, and Anicetus, held communion in
the eucharist, notwithstanding this difference. Basil Epist. 63,
doth plead his cause with the presbyters, and whole clergy of
Neccsesarea, that were offended at his new psalmody, and his
new order of Monastics : but he only defendeth himself, and
urgeth none of them to imitate him, but telleth them also of

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 299
the novelty of their own liturgy, that it was pot known in the
time of their own late renowned Ep. Gregory Thaumaturgus;
telling them that they had kept nothing unchanged to that
day of all that he was used to (so great alterations in forty
years were made in the same congregation) ; and he professeth
to pardon all such things, so be it the principal things be kept
safe. Socrat. Hist. Eccl. 1. 51. c. 21., about the Easter differ
ence saith that, neither the apostles, nor the gospels, do
impose a yoke of bondage on those that betake themselves to
the doctrine of Christ, but left the feast of Easter, and other
festivals, to the observation of the free and equal judgment
of them that had received the benefits. And therefore
because men used to keep some festivals, for the relax
ing themselves from labour, several persons, in several places,
do celebrate, of custom, the memorials of Christ's passion
arbitrarily, or at their own choice. For neither our Saviour,
nor the apostles commanded the keeping of them by any law,
nor threaten any mulct, or penalty, &c. It was the purpose
of the apostles not to make laws for the keeping of festivals,
but to be authors to us of the reason of right living, and of
piety. And having shewed that it came up by private custom,
and not by law, and having cited Irenseus, as before, he
addeth, that those that agree in the same faith, do differ in
point of rites and ceremonies, and instancing in divers, he
concludeth that because no man can shew, in the monuments
of writings, any command concerning this, it is plain, that
the apostles herein permitted free power to every one's mind
and will ; that every man might do that which was good,
without being induced by fear, or by necessity. And having
spoken of the diversity of customs, about the assemblies,
marriage, baptism, &c., he tells us that, even among the
Novatians themselves, there is a diversity in their manner of
their praying; and that among all the forms of religions and
parties, you can nowhere find two, that consent among them
selves in the manner of their praying. And repeating the
decree of the Holy Ghost, Acts 15, "to impose no other
burden but things necessary," he reprehendeth them that.

300 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
neglecting this, will take fornication as a thing indifferent,
but strive about festivals, as if it were a matter of life; over
turning God's laws, and making laws to themselves, &c. And
Sozomen Hist. Eccles. 1. 7. c. 18 and 19, speaketh to the
same purpose, and tells us that the Novatians themselves
determined in a synod at Sangar in Bythinia, that the differ
ence about Easter being not a sufficient cause for breach of
communion, aU should abide in the same concord, and m the
same assembly, and every one should celebrate this feast as
pleased himself : and this canon they caUed aS/a^opoj', And,
c, 19, he saith of Victor and Polycarp, that they deservedly
judged it frivolous, or absurd, that those should be separated,
on account of a custom, that consented in the principal heads
of religion : for you cannot find the same traditions in aU
things alike, in aU churches, though they agree among them
selves ; and, instancing in some countries, where there is but
one bishop in many cities, and in others bishops are ordained
in the villages, after many other instances, he adds, that
they use not the same prayers, singings, or readings, nor
observe the same time of using them. And what liturgy was
imposed upon Constantino the Emperor, or what bishops or
synods, were then the makers of liturgies, when he himself
made public prayers for himself and auditory, and for his
soldiers? Euseb. de vit. Constantini, lib. iv, c. 18, 20, &c. But
the diversity, liberty, and change of liturgies in the churches
under the same prince, are things so well known, as that we
may suppose any further proof of it to be needless.
In the conclusion, therefore, we humbly beseech you, that
as antiquity and the custom of the churches in the first ages
is that which is most commonly and confidently pleaded
against us, that your mistake of antiquity may not be to our
cost, or paid so dear for as the loss of our freedom for the
serving of God in the work of the ministry to which we are
called. We beseech you let us not be silenced, or cast out of
the ministry or church, for not using the Uturgy, cross, sur
plice, kneeUng at the sacrament, tUl ye have either shewed
the world that the practice or canons of the catholic church

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 301
have led you the way, as doing it, or requiring it to be done.
And make not that so necessary as to force men to it on such
dreadful terms, which the ancient churches used with diversity
and indifferency of liberty. We beseech you, shew the world
some proof that the ancient churches did ever use to force or
require ministers to subscribe to their liturgies, as ha-ving
nothing in them contrary to the Word of God, or to swear
obedience to their bishops, before you impose such things on
us, whUe yet you pretend to imitate antiquity. And have
but that moderation towards yoflr brethren, as in suffering, or
at death, or judgment, you would most approve. Remember
how unpleasing the remembrance of such differences about
ceremonies was to Bishop Ridley, as towards Bishop Hooper,
when they were in prison ; and how the Arians' fury made
the orthodox gladly to go to the churches of the Novatians, and
meet with them, and join -with them in prayer, and had
almost been united with them in the bond of concord, if the
Novatians, in the stiff maintaining of their old customs, had
not utterly refused it. But yet in other matters they em
braced each other with so singular a benevolence and love,
that they would wUlingly have died for each other, as Socrat,
teUs us. Hist. lib. U, c. 30. And may we not all here see our
duty ? When Atticus was urged to deny to the Novatians
the Uberty of their meetings within the city, he refused it,
because they had suffered for the faith in the Arians' persecu
tion, and changed nothing in the faith, though they separated
from the church; and was so far from violence against
dissenters, as that he gave large reUef to them that differed
from him in religion, Socrat. Hist. lib. vii, c. 25. It was
the much praised saying of Theodosius, to him that asked
him why he put none to death that wronged him — " I would
I could rather make them that are dead, alive:" Socrat.
lib. vii, c. 23, Much more should Christian bishops be
enemies to cruelty, who know that charity is more essential to
Christianity than this or that form of Uturgy or ceremonies.
If you think it unsufferable that we should have differences
about such things, remember that there wUl be no perfect

303 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
unity till there is perfect charity and sanctity ; and that des
troying one another, and consequently destroying charity, is
an unhappy way to unity; and that unity is to be held in
things necessary, and Uberty in things unnecessary, and
charity in both. Remember that it was in a far greater
difference, where Constantine persuadeth the Christians to
mutual forbearance, by the example of the philosophers, that
suffered differences in abundance of their opinions. Euseb. de
vita Constant., lib. ii, c. 67; and that Valens, the Arian,
was made more moderate, and abated his persecution of the
orthodox, by the oration of Themistius, who bade him not
wonder at the dissensions of Christians, for they were small, if
compared with the multitude and crowd of opinions that are
among the heathen philosophers, as being more than three
hundred; and that God will, by this diversity of opinions,
manifest his glory, and make men the more reverence him,
who is so hardly known : Socrat. lib. iv, c. 37. Those that
dissent from you in these tolerable cases, cannot change their
own opinions; but you can, if you will, forbear hurting of
your brethren. Do that which you can do, rather than urge
them by unsuitable means to that which they cannot do.
These are not matters sufficient to justify contention and un
charitable usage of your brethren. When many of the
Macedonian faction petitioned the good emperor Jovianus to
depose those that affirmed the Son to be unlike the Father,
and to put their party in their places, he gave them no answer,
but this, " I hate contentions, and I love and honour them
that are addicted to concord : " Socrat. lib. iv, c. 31. " Then,"
saith .Euseb. Hist., lib. viii, c. 1, " did the Lord obscure the
daughter of Sion, and cast down the glory of Israel, &c.,
when those that seemed our pastors, rejecting the rule of
godliness, were enflamed among themselves with mutual con
tentions, and drov6 on only those contentions, threatenings,
emulations, mutual hatred, and enmity, and the like, tyrants
prosecuted their ambition."
We thought it no impertinent digression here to take
this occasion again to crave your exercise of the ancient

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 303
charity, and our enjoyment of the ancient liberty, instead
of forcing the anciently free liturgy and ceremonies, and that
by unproportionable penalties. And if yet we cannot
prevail with you, we shall still beg for peace of the Gcd
of peace, where we have better hopes to be heard ; and shall
hold on in seeking it, how ill soever our endeavours may be
interpreted or succeed. And as the good man wept, Socrat.
lib. iv, c. 18., when he saw a woman pompously adorned, be
cause he was not so careful to please God as she was to allure
men ; so we shall confess we ought to weep that we cannot
be more charitable and laborious in building up the church in
holiness and peace, than others are by uncharitable courses to
affiict it. And it shaU be our hope that, whether by their
labours or their sufferings, God will serve and honor himself
by those many faithful servants of his, whom he hath called
into his work, and whose cause we plead; and that however
they are used they shall not be unuseful to the ends of their
vocation : as Theodoret observes. Hist., lib. iv, c. 30, that in
a calamitous time, "the moderator of the universe raised up
such guides as were sufficient in so great a fluctuation, and
opposed the valour of the leaders to the greatness of the
enemy's incursion, and gave the best remedies in the hardest
times of pestilence, so that the banished pastors did, from the
uttermost parts of the earth, corroborate their own, and refute
the adversaries by their writings." And for ourselves, as we
were truly desirous to do our parts to preserve your reputa
tion with the flocks, in order to the success of your govern
ment for their good, and never envied you even that worldly
honor or revenue which yet some have thought unsuitable
to the simplicity and employment of Christ's ministers; so if
you will neither suffer us quietly to serve God or con-
scionably to serve you, we shall be the less solicitous for
that part of our task, from Vvhich you have power to discharge
us. And as Basil said to Valens the emperor, that would
have him pray for the life of his son, " If thou wUt receive the
true faith, and restore the churches to concord, thy son shall
live," which, when he refused, he said, "The wUl of God,

304 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
then, be done with thy son ; " so we say to you. If you wiU
put on charity, and promote your brethren's and the church's
peace, God will honor you, and good men will honor you,
and your calling will have advantage by it. But if you will
do contrary, the wUl of the Lord be done with your honors.
But know that them that honor him he will honor, and those
that despise him shall be lightly esteemed ; and that by the
course of uncharitable violence, which we deprecate, you wiU
most deeply wound the cause of your pre-eminence, even
more than its adversaries could have done. And if it be the
wUl of God that suffering at home where we have served him
must be our lot, we doubt not but he will furnish us -with
strength and patience, and we shaU remember such examples
as Ruffin recordeth. Hist,, lib, u, c. 3. When a mUitary
bishop sent his soldiers to assault three thousand scattered
Christians, there appeared a strange kind of warfare when
the assaulted offered their necks, saying only. Amice, ad quid
venisti ? Friend, why earnest thou thither ? Or if we must
be removed from the land of our nativity, as Maris told
Julian, " he thanked God that had deprived him of his sight,
that he might not see the face of such a man," Socrates, Hist.
lib, iu, c. 10; so we shall take it as a little abatement of
our affiiction, that we see not the sins and calamities of the
people, whose peace and welfare we so much desire. Having
taken this opportunity here to conclude this part with these
requests and warnings, we now proceed to the second part,
containing the particulars of our Exceptions and your Answers.
CONCERNING MORNING AND EVENING PRAYER.
§ 1, Rub. 1. Ans. We think it fit that the rubric stand
as it is, and aU to be left to the discretion of the ordinary.
Reply. We thought the end and use more considerable
than custom, and that the ordinary himself should be under
the rule of doing all to edification.
§ 3. Rub. 3. Ans. For the reasons given in our Answer to
the 18th general, whither you refer us, we think it fit that
the rubric continue as it is.

1061.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 305
Reply. We have given you reason enough against the
imposition of the usual ceremonies; and would you draw
forth those absolute ones to increase the burden ?
§ 3. Lord's prayer. "Deliver us from evU." Ans. These
words, " for thine is the kingdom," &c., are not in St. Luke,
nor in the ancient copies of St. Matthew, never mentioned in
the ancient comments, nor used in the Latin church, and
therefore questioned whether they be part of the gospel;
there is no reason that they should be always used.
Reply. We shaU not be so over-credulous as to believe you,
that these words are not in the ancient copies. It is enough
that we believe that seme few ancient copies have them not,
but that the most, even the generality (except those few) have
them. The judgment of our English translators, and almost
all other translators of Matthew, and of the reverend Ep,
of Chester among yourselves, putting the copy that hath it
in his Bible, (as that which is most received and approved by
the church,) do shew on which side is the chief authority : if
the few copies that want it had been thought more authentic
and credible, the church of England and most other
churches, would not have preferred the copies that have this
doxology. And why wUl you in this contradict the later
judgment of the church, expressed in the translation allowed
and imposed ? The Syriac, Ethiopic, and Persian translations
also have it : and if the Syriac be as ancient as you your
selves even now asserted, then the antiquity of the doxology
is there evident; and it is not altogether to be neglected,
which by Chemnitius and others is conjectured, that Paul's
words, in 3 Tim, iv, 18, were spoken as in reference to this
doxology. And as Parseus and other protestants conclude, it
is more probable the Latins neglected, than that the Greeks
inserted, of their own heads, this sentence. The Socinians
and Arians have as fair a pretence for their exception against
1 John V, 6, 7. Musculus saith, non cogitant vero similius
esse, ut Gracorum ecclesia magis quam Latina, quod ab
evangelistis Graca scriptum est, integrum servarit, nihilque
de suo adjecerit. Quid de Graca ecclesia dico ? vidi ipse

306 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
vetustissimum evangelium secundum Matthaum, codicem
Chaldais et dementis, et verbis conscriptum, in quo coronis
ista perinde atque in Gracis legebatur. Nee Chaldmi solum,
sed et Arabes Christiani pariformiter cum Gracis orant, et
exemplar Hebraum a docto et celebri D. Sebast, Munstero
vulgatum, hanc ipsam coronidem habet ; cum ergo consentiant
hdc in re Hebrseorum, Chaldseorum, Arabum, et Grsecorum
ecclesia valde inconsideratum videtur, quod uni Latinorum
ecclesia, contra omnes reliquas, tantum tribuitur authoritatis,
ut quod sola diversum legit, ab evangelistis traditum esse
credatur : quod vero reliqua omnes concorditer habent et
orant, pro addititio et peregrino habeatur. And that Luke
hath it not, will no more prove that it was not a part of the
Lord's prayer, than all other omissions of one evangelist will
prove that such words are corruptions in the other that have
them. All set together give us the gospel fully, and from all
we must gather it,
§ 4, Lord's prayer often used, Ans. It is used but twice in
the morning and twice in the evening service; and twice
cannot be called often, much less so often. For the litany,
communion, baptism, &c., they are offices distinct from
morning and evening prayer, and it is not fit that any of
them should want the Lord's prayer.
Reply. We may better say we are required to use it six times
every morning than but twice ; for it is twice in the common
morning prayer, and once in the litany, and once in the
communion service, and once at baptism, (which in great
parishes is usual every day) and once to be used by the
preacher in the pulpit. And, if you caU these distinct offices,
that maketh not the Lord's prayer the seldomer used. Sure
we are, the apostles thought it fit that many of their prayers
should be without the Lord's prayer,
§5, Gloria Patri, Ans. This doxology being a solemn con
fession of the blessed Trinity, should not be thought a
burden to any Christian liturgy, especially being so short as
it is ; neither is the repetition of it to be thought a vain
repetition, more than "his mercy endureth for ever," so

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 307
often repeated, Psa. cxxxvi. We cannot give God too much
glory, that being the end of our creation, and should be the
end of aU our ser-vices.
Reply. Though we cannot give God too much glory, we
may too often repeat a form of words wherein his name and
glory is mentioned; there is great difference between a
psalm of praise and the praise in our ordinary prayers : more
liberty of repetition may be taken in psalms, and be an
ornament; and there is difference between that which is
unusual (in one Psalm of one hundred and fifty,) and that
which is our daUy course of worship. When you have well
proved that Christ's prohibition of battology extendeth not
to this (Matt, vi) ; we shaU acquiesce,
§ 6, Rub, 3, "In such places where they do sing," &c,
Ans. The rubric directs only such singing as is after the
manner of distinct reading, and we never heard of any incon
venience thereby, and therefore conceive this demand to be
needless. Reply. It tempteth men to think they should read in a
singing tone: and to turn reading scripture into singing,
hath the inconvenience of turning the edifying simpUcity
and plainness of God's service into such affected, unnatural
strains and tones, as is used by the mimical and ludicrous,
or such as feign themselves in raptures : and the highest
things (such as words and modes that signify raptures) are
most loathsome when forced, feigned, and hypocriticaUy
affected; and, therefore, not fit for congregations that cannot
be supposed to be in such raptures ; this we apply, also, to
the sententious mode of prayers,
§ 7, Benedicite. Ans. This hymn was used aU the church
over, (Cone. Tolet. can, 13,) and therefore should be con
tinued stiU as well as Te Deum (Ruffin, Apol, cont, Hieron,)
or Veni Creator, which they do not object against as apoc
ryphal. Reply. You much discourage us in these great straits of
time, to give as such loose and troublesome citations ; you
turn us to Ruffin Apol, in gross, and tell us not which of the
X 2

308 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661
councils of Tolet. (among at least thirteen) you mean : hut
we find the words in council 4. But that provincial, Spanish
council, was no meet judge of the affairs of the universal
church unto the universal church : nor is it certain by their
words whether quern refer not to Deum rather than to
hymnum : but if you so regard that council, remember that.
Can. 9, it is but once a day that the Lord's prayer is en
joined, against them that used it on the Lord's day only;
and that, Can. 17, it is implied, that it was said but once on
that day. The Benedicite is somewhat more cautiously to be
used than human compositions that profess to be but
human; when the apocryphal writings, that are pretended
by the papists to be canonical, and used so like the canon
in our church, we have the more cause to desire that a
sufficient distinction be still made.

IN THE LITANY,
§ 1. Ans. The alterations here desired are so nice, as if
they that made them were given to change.
Reply. We bear your censure : but profess, that if you wUl
desert the products of changers, and stick to the unchange
able rule delivered by the Holy Ghost, we shall joyfully
agree with you. Let them that prove most given to change,
from the unchangeable rule and example, be taken for the
hinderers of our unity and peace.
§ 2, Ans. "From all other deadly sin," is better than
"from aU other heinous sin," upon the reason here given ;
because the wages of sin is death.
Reply. There is so much mortal poison in the Popish
distinction of mortal and venial sin, (by which abundance of
sins are denied to be sins at aU properly, but only analogi
cally,) that the stomach that feareth it, is not to be charged
with niceness. The words here seem to be used by way of
distinction, and all " deadly sin " seemeth not to be spoken of
" all sin." And if so, your reason from Rom. -vi, 23, is vain,
and ours firm.

168 l.J to the Answer of the Bishops. 309
§ 3. Ans. "From sudden death," as good as "from dying
suddenly;" which therefore we pray against, that we may
not be unprepared.
Reply. We added " unprepared " as expository, or hinting
to shew the reason why sudden death is prayed against, and
so to limit our prayers to that sudden death, which we are
unprepared for ; there being some ways of sudden death no
more to be prayed against, than death itself simply considered
may. When you say "from sudden death" is as good as
" from dying suddenly " we confess it is. But not so good as
"from dying suddenly and unpreparedly." We hope you
intend not to make any believe, that our turning the adjec
tive to an adverb was our reformation. And yet we won
dered to hear this made a common jest upon us, as from
those that had seen our papers. Would you have had us
say "from sudden and unprepared death?" You would then
have had more matter of just exception against the words
" unprepared death " than now you have against " dying sud
denly." A man may be weU prepared to die suddenly by
martyrdom for Christ, or by war for his prince, and many
other ways.
§ 4. Ans. "AU that travel," as little liable to exceptions
as " those that travel," and more agreeable to the phrase of
Scripture, (1 Tim. U, 1,) "I wUl that prayers be made for all
men." Reply, An universal is to be understood properly, as com
prehending all the individuals, and so is not an indefinite.
And we know not that we are bound to pray for thieves, and
pirates, and traitors that travel by land, or water, on such
errands as Faux, or the other powder plotters, or the Spanish
Armada, in 1588, or as Parry, or any that should travel on
the errand as Clement or RavUiac did to the two King
Henrys of France, Are these niceties with you ?
^ 5. Ans. "The two collect[s for St, John's day and
Innocents', Sec,"] We do not find, nor do they say, what is
to be amended in these coUects ; therefore to say anything
particularly were to answer tb we kubw nbt what.

310 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
Reply. We are glad that one word in the proper collects,
hath appeared such to you as needs a reformation, especiaUy
when you told us before that the liturgy was never found
fault with by those to whom the name of Protestant most
properly belongs ; which looked upon our hopes of reforma
tion, almost as destructively as the papists' doctrine of infaUi-
bUity doth, when we dealt with them. As for the coUects
mentioned by us, you should not wonder that we brought
not in a particular charge against them. For first, we had a
conceit that it was best for us to deal as gently and tenderly
as we could with the faults of the liturgy, and therefore we
have under our generals, hid abundance of particulars, which
you may find in the Abridgment of the Lincolnshire minis
ters, and in many other books. And secondly, we had a con
ceit, that you would have vouchsafed to have treated -with us
personally in presence, according to the sense of his majesty's
commission, and then we thought to have told you parti
cularly of such matters : but you have forced us to confejs,
that we find ourselves deceived.
THE COMMUNION SERVICE.
§ 1. Kyries. Ans. To say, "Lord, have mercy upon us,"
after every commandment is more quick and active than to
say it once at the close ; and why Christian people should
not upon their knees ask their pardon for their life forfeited
for the breach of every commandment, and pray for grace to
keep them for the time to come, they must be more than
ignorant that can scruple.
Reply. We thank you for saying nothing against our four
first requests; though we are thought more than ignorant for our
scruple, we can truly say, we are willing to learn. But your
bare opinion is not enough to cure ignorance, and more. By
your reason, you may make kneeling the gesture for hearing
the Scriptm'es read, and hearing sermons, and all. If you
will but interweave prayers, he must be more than ignorant
that will not kneel. The universal church of Christ was
more than ignorant for many hundred years, that not only

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 311
neglected, but prohibited genuflexion in all adoration each
Lord's day; when now, the xx Exodus or v Deut. may
not be heard or read without kneeling, save only by the
clergy, § 2, Homilies, Ans, Some livings are so smaU that
they are not able to maintain a licensed preacher ; and in
such and the like cases this provision is necessary. For
can any reason be given, why the minister's reading a
homUy, set forth by common authority, should not be
accounted preachmg of the Word, as weU as his reading
(or pronouncing by heart) a homUy or sermon of his own, or
any other man's.
Reply. When the Usurper would quickly have brought
livings to that competency, as would have maintained able
preachers, we may not question whether just authority will
do it. Secondly. When abundance of able ministers, cast
out, would be glad of liberty to preach for nothing, this pre
tence hath no taste or sense in it. Thirdly. When we may
not, without the imputation of uncharitableness, once imagine
that your lordships, with your deans, and other officers, do not
value the saving of souls above money, we may conclude that
you wiU voluntarUy allow so much out of your ample revenues as
will supply such places, or many of them ; the rather because
we find you charging them as desiring inordinately the
honours and wealth of the world, that would have had all
ministers to have had lOOZ. or 80/. per annum a piece;
and therefore may conclude that you will take no more, if
you hate that sin more than they do that are accused of it.
But the next part of your answer frighteth us more; to
which we say, that we wiU not differ with you for the name,
whether reading homilies may be called preaching. But we
take the boldness to say, that it is another manner of preach
ing that Christ and his apostles sent men to perform, and
which the church hath gloried in, and been edified by, to this
day, and which thousands of souls have been brought to
heaven by, and which we again desire may be enjoined, and
not left so indifferent.

312 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661
§ 3. Sentences. Ans, The sentences tend all to exhort the
people to pious liberality, whether the object be the minister,
or the poor, and though some of the sentences be apocryphal,
they may be useful for that purpose. Why collection for the
poor should be made at another time, there is no reason given,
only change desired.
Reply. 1. We have oft told you why the Apocrypha should
be cautiously used in the church. That usurper that should
pretend to the crown, and have a more numerous party than
the king (that hath the undoubted right), wUl he looked on
more suspiciously than ordinary subjects. 2. It is a sordid
thing for ministers to love money ; and it is sordid, unless in
extraordinary necessities, to have them beg, and beg for them
selves, and beg under pretence of serving God, even in times
when the clergy seem advanced. 3. We confess ourselves
deceived in thinking we should have free, personal debates
with you, which made us reserve many of our reasons. Our
reasons are, 1, for less disturbance. 2. Because the people's
affections are much more raised usually, and so fitter for
returns, when they have received. 3, Because especiaUy it is
most seasonable to do the acts of gratitude, when we have
received the obliging benefits; and so say, "What shall I
give the Lord for all his benefits?" when we have partaken
of them ; and to offer ourselves first, and, with ourselves, what
he giveth us, unto him, when we have received him, and his
grace offered to us.
These are the resisons that brought us under your censure
of desiring a change.
§ 4. 3 [rd] Exhort. Ans. The first and third exhortations
are very seasonable before the communion, to put men in
mind how they ought to be prepared, and in what danger
they are to come unprepared; that if they be not duly
quaUfied, they may depart, and be better prepared another
time. Reply. But is it not more seasonable, that, in so great
business, such warning go a considerable time before? Is
there then leisure of self-examination, and making restitution.

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 313
and satisfaction, and going to the minister for councU to
quiet his conscience. Sec, in order to the present sacrament ?
We yet desire these things may be sooner told them.
§ 5. Exc. 1. Ans. We fear this may discourage many.
Certainly themselves cannot desire that men should come to
the holy communion with a troubled conscience, and there
fore have no reason to blame the church for saying, it is
requisite that men come with a quiet conscience, and pre
scribing means for quieting thereof. If this be to discourage
men, it is fit they should be discouraged and deterred, and
kept from the communion, till they have done all that is here
directed by the church, which they may weU do, considering
that this exhortation shall be read in the church the Sunday
or holyday before.
Reply. But we can and do desire that many that have
a troubled conscience, and cannot otherwise quiet it, should
come to the communion for remedy, and not be discouraged
or kept away.
§ 6. [Exc. 3.] Minister's turning. Atis. The minister's
turning to the people is not most convenient throughout the
whole ministration. When he speaks to them, as in Lessons,
Absolution, and Benedictions, it is convenient that he turn
to them. When he speaks for them to God, it is fit that
they should all turn another way, as the ancient church ever
did : the reasons of which you may see, Aug. lib. 2, de Ser.
Dom. in Monte.
Reply, It is not yet understood by us why the ministers or
people (for which you mean by "they all" we know not)
should turn another way in prayer : for we think the people
should hear the prayers of the minister, if not, Latin prayers
may serve ; and then you need not except against extemporate
prayers, because the people cannot own them, for how can
most of them own what they hear not, whatever it be?- As
for Augustine's reason for looking towards the east when we
pray, Ut admoneatur animus ad naturam excellentiorem se con-
vertere, id est, ad Dominum; cum ipsum corpus ejus, quod
est terrenum, ad corpus excellentius, id est, ad corpus cosleste

314 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
convertitur, -we suppose you will not expect that" we should
be much moved by it; if we should, why should not we
worship towards any of the creatures visible, when we can
pretend such reasons for it as minding us of superior things ?
And why should we not look southward when the sun is in
the south ?
And we fear the worshipping towards the sun, as represent
ing or minding us of Christ's heavenly body, is too like
to the prohibited worshipping before an image, and too like
that worshipping before the host of heaven, in which the old
idolatry consisted, or at least which was the introduction of
it ; of which our Protestant -writers treat at large against the
papists, on the point of image-worship. See also Vossius de
Idolatria, Ub, ii, cap, 33, Sec,
§ 7. Exc. 4, Ans. It appears by the greatest evidences of
antiquity, that it was upon the 35th day of December, S,
Aug, in Psa, cxxxii.
Reply. It is not Aug. alone in Psa. cxxxii that must tell
us which way the greatest evidences of antiquity go; and his
reasoning that John must decrease, and Christ must increase,
as proved by John's being born when the days decrease, and
Christ's being born when the days increase, doth not much
invite us to receive his testimony. We conceive the ancient
opinion of Jerusalem, and other eastern churches that were
nearest to the place, is a greater argument for the contrary
than you have here given us for what you thus affirm. We
might set Epiphanius against Augustine, and caU the Greek
churches, till in the midst of Chrysostom's time, when they
changed their opinion. And in our time the judgment of
the famous chronologers, Scaliger, Berraldus, Broughton,
Calvisius, Capellus, Clopenburgius, with many others, are not
contemptible, as set against such an unproved assertion
as this,
§ 8, [Exc, 5.] "That our sinful bodies," Sec, Ans. It
can no more be said those words do give greater efficacy to
the blood than to the body of Christ, than when our Lord
saith, " This is my blood which is shed for you and for many

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 315
for the remission of sins," etc., and saith not so explicitly of
the body.
Reply. Sure Christ there intimateth no such distinction as
is here intimated : there his body is said to be broken for us^
and not only for our bodies.
§ 9. [Exc. 7.] To every communicant kneeling. Ans. It
is most requisite that the minister deliver the bread and wine
into every particular communicant's hand, and repeat the
words in the singular number; for so much as it is the
propriety of sacraments to make particular obsignation to
each believer, and it is our visible profession that, by the
grace of God, Christ tasted death for every man.
Reply. 1. Did not Christ know the propriety of sacraments
better than we, and yet he delivered it in the plural number
to all at once, with a take ye, eat ye, drink ye all of it ; we
had rather study to be obedient to our Master, than to be
-wiser than he. 3. As God maketh the general offer, which
giveth to no man a personal interest, tUl his own acceptance
first appropriate it ; so it is fit that the minister that is God's
agent imitate him, when his example and the reason of it so con
cur to engage us to it; Clemens Alexandr. Stromat.,lib.i,Prope,
in it giveth a reason, as we understand him, for the contrary ;
that man being a free agent, must be the chooser or refuser
for himself,  avrov h' sxusov rov "kaou Xa^sTv rrjv (Jbol^uv
'sTitTTgiTeiv. Quemadmodum eucharistiam cum quidem, ut
mos est diviserint, permittunt unicuique ex populo ejus partem
sumere: and after rendereth this reason, kpistj ya,§ Tgog rijv
a«p//3^ ai§riaiv zoci pvytjii rj avvii^ntjig: ad accurate enim per-
fecteque eligendum ac fugiendum, optima est conscientia.
And that thing is so agreeable to yomr own doctrinal prin
ciples, that we fear you disrelish it, because it comes from us.
§ 10. Kneel at sacr. [Exc. 8.] Ans. Concerning kneeling
at the sacrament we have given account already; only thus
much we add, that we conceive it an error to say that the
Scripture affirms the apostles to have received not kneeUng.
The posture of the paschal supper we know ; but the institu
tion of the holy sacrament was after supper ; and what posture

316 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
was then used, the Scripture is silent. The rubric at the end
of the [first Book of Common Prayer, Edw. VI, 1549,] that
leaves kneeling, crossing, Sec, indifferent, is meant only at
such times as they are not prescribed and required. But
at the eucharist kneeling is expressly required in the rubric
following. Reply. Doubtless, when Matthew and Mark say it was as
they did eat, to which before it is said, that they sat down ;
and when interpreters generaUy agree upon it, this would
easily have satisfied you, if you had been as wiUing to beUeve
it, as to believe the contrary. Matt, xxvi, 30, 31, 36 : the same
phrase is used verse 36, as in verse 31, where it sheweth, they
were still sitting. For the sense of the rubric if you prove
that the makers so interpret it, we shall not deny it; but
the reason of both seems the same.
§ 11, Com [municate] three times a year. [Exc. 9.] Ans.
This desire to have the parishioners at liberty, whether they
will ever receive the communion or not, savours of too much
neglect and coldness of affection towards the holy sacrament.
It is more fitting that order should be taken to bring it into more
frequent use, as it was in the first and best times. Our rubric
is directly according to the ancient Council of Eliberis, can. 81.
(Gratian de Consecrat.) No man is to be accounted a good
catholic Christian that does not receive three times in the
year. The distempers which indispose men to it must be
corrected, not the recei-ring of the sacrament therefore
omitted. It is a pitiful pretence to say they are not fit, and
make their sin their excuse. Formerly our church was
quarrelled at for not compelling men to the communion; now
for urging men. How should she please ?
Reply. We confess it is desirable that all our distempers
and unfitnesses should be healed ; and we desire with you
that sacraments may be oftener : but that every person in the
parish that is unfit, be forced to receive, is that which we
cannot concur with you to be guUty of. Two sorts we think
unfit, to be so forced at least. First, abundance of people,
grossly ignorant and scandalous, that wiU eat and drink

1661,] to the Answer of the Bishops. 317
judgment to themselves, not discerning the Lord's body.
Secondly, many melancholy, and otherwise troubled^doubting
souls, that if they should receive the sacrament before they
find themselves more fit, would be in danger to go out of their
wits, with fear, lest it would seal them to destruction, and as
the liturgy saith, lest the de-vil enter into them as into Judas :
or at least it would grievously deject them. As formerly, so
now, there is great reason at once to desire, that the unpre
pared he not forced to the sacrament, ard yet that so great a
part of the body of the church may not be let alone in your
communion, without due admonition and discipline, that
ordinarily neglect or refuse the church's communion in this
sacrament : those that are so profane should be kept away,
but -withal they should be proceeded with by discipline, tiU
they repent, or are cast out of the church,
§ 12. Ans, This rubric is not the liturgy of Queen
EUzabeth, nor confirmed by law ; nor is there any great need of
restoring it, the world being now in more danger of profa
nation than of idolatry. Besides, the sense of it is declared
sufficiently in the 28th Article of the Church of England.
The time appointed we conceive sufficient.
Reply. Can there be any hurt or danger in the people's
being taught to understand the church aright ? Hath not
Bishop Hall taught you in his life of a Romanist beyond sea,
that would have faced him down, that the church of England
is for transubstantiation, because of our kneeling, p. 20 ? And
the same bishop (greatly differing from you) saith in the same
book, p. 294, " hut to put all scruples out of the mind of any
reader concerning this point, let that serve for the upshot of
aU, which is expressly set down in the fifth rubric in the end
of the communion set forth, as the judgment of the church
of England, both in King Edward and Queen EUzabeth's
times (note that) though lately upon negligence (note upon
negligence) omitted in the impression;" and so recites the
words. ' Where you say, there is no great need. Sec. We
reply, 1. Profaneness may be opposed nevertheless for our
instructing the people against idolatry. 2. The abounding of

318 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
papists, who in this point seem to us idolatrous, sheweth that
there is danger of it, 3, The commonness of idolatry
throughout the world, and the case of the Israelites of old,
shew that man's nature is prone to it, 4, Profaneness and
idolatry befriend each other; as God is jealous against
idolatry, so should all faithful pastors of the church be, and
not refuse such a caution to the people and say, there is no
great need of it, PUBLIC BAPTISM,
§ 1, [Exc, 1,] "UntU they have made due profession
of repentance," Sec, Ans. We think this desire to be very
hard and uncharitable, punishing the poor infants for the
parents' sakes, and giving also too great and arbitrary a power
to the minister to judge which of his parishioners he pleaseth
atheists, infidels, heretics. Sec, and then in that name to
reject their chUdren from being baptized. Our church
concludes more charitably, that Christ wiU favourably ac
cept every infant to baptism, that is presented by the
church according to our present order. And this she con
cludes out of holy Scripture (as you may see in the office of
baptism) according to the practice and doctrine of the catholic
church, (Cypr, Ep, 59, August. Ep. 38, et de verb. Apost,
Serm. 14,)
Reply. We perceive you wiU stick with us in more than
ceremonies. To your reasons we reply, 1, By that reason, all
the children of aU heathens or infidels in the world should be
admitted to baptism; because they should not be punished
for the parents' sakes, 3, But we deny that it is (among
Christians that beUeve original sin) any absurdity to say,
that children are punished for their parents' sakes, 3, But
yet we deny this to be any such punishment at all, unless
you wiU call their non-deliverance a punishment. They are
the chUdren of wrath by nature, and have original sin. The
covenant of grace that giveth the saving benefits of Christ, is
made to none but the faithful, and their seed, WUl you call

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 319
this a punishing them for their fathers' sakes, that God hath
extended his covenant to uo more ? Their parents' infidelity
doth but leave them in their original sin and misery, and is
not further itself imputed to them. If you know of any
covenant or promise of salvation made to all without condi
tion, or to infants, or on any other condition or quaUfication,
but that they be the seed of the faithful dedicated to God ;
you should do well to shew it us, and not so slightly pass over
things of so great moment, in which you might much help
the world out of darkness, if you can make good what you
intimate. If indeed you mean as you seem to speak, that it
is uncharitableness to punish any infants for the parent's
faults, and that a non-liberation is such a punishment ; then
you must suppose that aU the infants of heathens, Jews, and
Turks are saved (that die in infancy,) or else Christ is
uncharitable. And if they are aU saved without baptism,
then baptism is of no such use, or necessity, as you seem
to think. What then is the pri-vUege of the seed of the
faithful, that they are holy, and that the covenant is made
with them, and God vriU be their God ? We fear you wiU
again revive the opinion of the Anabaptists among the people,
when they observe that you have no more to say for the
baptizing of the children of the faithful, than of infidels,
heathens, and atheists. To your second objection we answer,
you will drive many a faithful labourer from the work of
Christ, if he may not be in the ministry unless he wiU bap
tize the chUdren of heathens, infidels, and excommunicate
ones, before their parents do repent. And the first question
is not, who shall be the judge? But, whether we must be aU
thus forced? Is not the question as great, who shaU be the
judge of the unfitness of persons for the Lord's supper?
And yet, there, you think it not a taking too much upbn us
to keep away the scandalous, if they have their appeals
to you? And is it indeed a power too great and arbitrary
to \iaye a judicium discretionis about our own acts; and not
to be forced to baptize the children of heathens against our
consciences ? Who judged for the baptizers in the primitive

330 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
church, what persons they should baptize ? We act but as
engines under you, not as men, if we must not use our
reason ; and we are more miserable than brutes or men, if
we must be forced to go against our consciences, unless you
will save us harmless before God, O that in a fair debate
you would prove to us that such children as are described are
to be baptized, and that the ministers that baptize them,
must not have power to discern whom to baptize. But who
mean you by the churches, that must present every infant
that Christ may accept them ? Is every infant first in the
promise of pardon ? If so, shew us that promise, and then
sure God will make good that promise, though heathen
parents present not their children to him, as your grounds
suppose; if not, then will the sign save those that are not
in the promise ? But is it the godfathers that are the church ?
Who ever called them so ? And if by the church you mean
the minister, and by presenting, you mean baptizing them,
then any heathen's chUd that a minister can catch up and
baptize shall be saved : which, if it could be proved, would
persuade us to go hunt for children in Turkey, Tartary,
or America, and secretly baptize them, in a habit that should
not make us known. But there is more of fancy than charity
in this ; and Christ never invited any to him but the chUdren
of the promise to be thus presented and baptized,
§ 3, [Exc, 3.] The time appointed we conceive sufficient.
Reply. We conjecture the words that conclude your former
subject being misplaced, are intended as your answer to
this: and if all the children of any sort in the world that
are brought to us, must by us be baptized without dis
tinction, indeed it is no great matter what time we have
notice of it.
§ 3. [Exc. 3.] "And the godfathers," Sec. Ans. It is an
erroneous doctrine, and the ground of many others, and of
many of your exceptions, that children have no other right to
baptism, than in their parents' right. The church's primitive
practice forbids it to be left to the pleasure of parents, whether
there shall be other sureties or no, (S, Aug, Ep. 33.) It is

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 331
fit we should observe carefully the practice of venerable anti
quity, as they desire. Prop. 18,
Reply. It seems we differ in doctrine, though we subscribe the
same articles. We earnestly desire you distinctly to tell us,
what is the infant's title to baptism, if it be not to be found
in the parent? Assign it, and prove it when you have done,
as weU as we prove their right, as they are the seed of
believers, dedicated by them to God, and then we promise to
consent. It is strange to us to hear so much of the churches'
primitive practice, where so little evidence of it is produced.
Aug., Ep. 33, talketh not of primitive practice : ab initio non
fuit sic. Was it so in the apostles' days ? And afterwards
you prove not that it was the judgment of the catholic
church, that bare sponsors instead of parents. Pro-parents,
or owners of the children, might procure to the children of
all infidels, a title to baptism and its benefits. Such suscep-
tors as became the owners or adopters of the children, are to
be distinguished from those that pro forma stand by for an
hour during the baptizing of the children, and ever after
leave them to their parents; who, as they have the
natural interest in them, and power of their disposal, and
the education of them, so are fittest to covenant in their
names. § 4. [Exc. 4.] Ans. The font usuaUy stands, as it did in
primitive times, at or near the church door, to signify that
baptism was the entrance into the church mystical ; " we are
all baptized into one body " (1 Cor. xii, 13) ; and the people
may hear well enough. If Jordan, and all other waters, be
not so far sanctified by Christ as to be the matter of baptism,
what authority have we to baptize ? And sure his baptism
was dedicatio baptismi.
Reply. Our less difference of the font and flood Jordan, is
almost drowned in the greater before going. But to the flrst
we say that we conceive the usual situation for the people's
hearing is to be preferred before your ceremonious position of
it. And to the second we say, that dedicatio baptismi is an
unfitting phrase ; and yet, if it were not, what is that to the

333 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
sanctification of Jordan, and all other waters? Did Christ
sanctify all corn or bread, or grapes or wine, to an holy use,
when he administered the Lord's supper? Sanctifying is
separating to an holy use. But the flood Jordan, and all
other water, is not separated to this holy use, in any proper
sense, no more than all mankind is sanctified to the priestly
office, because men were made priests.
§ 5. [Exc. 5.J Ans. It hath been accounted reasonable, and
allowed by the best laws, that guardians should covenant and
contract for their minors to their benefit. By the same
right, the church hath appointed sureties to undertake for
children, when they enter into covenant with God by bap
tism. And this general practice of the church is enough to
satisfy those that doubt.
Reply. 1. Who made those sureties guardians of the
infants, that are neither parents nor pro-parents, nor owners
of them ? We are not now speaking against sponsors; but
you know that the very original of those sponsors is a great
controversy : and whether they were not at first most properly
sponsors for the parents that they should perform that part
they undertook, because many parents were deserters, and
many proved negligent. Sponsors then excluded not parents
from their proper undertaking, but joined with them. God
fathers are not the infants' guardians with us, and therefore
have not power thus to covenant and vow in their name. We
intreat you to take heed of leaving any children, indeed, out
of the mutual covenant that are baptized. How are those in
the covenant, that cannot consent themselves, and do it not by
any that truly represent them, nor have any authority to act
as in their names ? The authority of parents being most un
questionable (who by nature, and the word of God, have the
power of disposing of their children, and consequently of
choosing and covenanting for them), why should it not be
preferred ? At least you may give leave to those parents that
desire it, to be the dedicators of and covenanters for their
own children, and not force others on them, whether they
wUl or no. 3. But the question is not of covenanting, but

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 323
professing present, actual beUeving, forsaking, &c., in which
though we believe the church's sense was sound, yet we desire
that all things that may render it liable to misunderstanding
may be avoided,
& 6. [Exc. 6.] " Receive remission of sins by spiritual re
generation." Ans. Most proper, for baptism is our spiritual
regeneration, St. John iii, " Unless a man be born again
of water and the Spirit," Sec. And by this is received re
mission of sins, Acts ii, 38. " Repent and be baptized every
one of vou, for the remission of sins." So the creed : " One
baptism for the remission of sins."
Reply. Baptism, as an outward administration, is our
visible sacramental regeneration : baptism, as containing,
with the sign, the thing signified, is our spiritual, real regene
ration. As we are regenerated before baptism (as you know
adult believers are) , so we cannot pray to receive remission of
sins by that same regeneration renewed. As we are regener
ated really in baptism, that regeneration and remission are
conjunct benefits. But if baptism at once give regeneration
and remission, it follows not that it gives remission by re
generation : but as regeneration comprehendeth the whole
change, real or physical, and relative ; so we acknowledge,
that, as the part is given by the whole, you may say that re
mission is given by regeneration, but more fitly in it than by
it. But we are not willing to make more ado about words
than needs.
§ 7. [Exc. 7.] " We cannot in faith say that every chUd
that is baptized is regenerate," Sec. Ans. Seeing that
God's sacraments have their effects, where the receiver
doth not ponere obicem, put any bar against them (which
children cannot do) ; we may say in faith of every child
that is baptized, that it is regenerated by God's Holy
Spirit; and the denial of it tends to anabaptism, and the
contempt of this holy sacrament, as nothing worthy, nor
material, whether it be administered tb chUdren or no.
Concerning the cross, we refer to our answer to the same
in general.
T 3

334 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
Reply. All God's sacraments attain their proper end. But
whether the infants of infidels be the due subjects, and
whether their end be to seal up grace and salvation to them
that have no promise of it, or whether it be only to seal the
covenant to believers and their seed, are questions yet unde
cided, wherein we must intreat you not to expect that we
should implicitly believe you ; and it is as easy for us to
teU you, that you are promoting anabaptism, and much
more easy to prove it. We take those but for words of
course, PRIVATE BAPTISM,
"We desire that baptism may not be administered in a
private place." Ans. And so do we, where it may be brought
into the public congregation. But since our Lord hath said,-
St. John iii, "Unless one be born of water and the Holy
Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven," we
think it fit that they should be baptized in private, rather
than not at all. It is appointed now to be done by the lawful
minister. Reply. We must needs suppose you are disputing with
Protestants, who ordinarily shew the Papists, that that text,
John iii, asserteth no absolute necessity of baptism to salvation.
But we believe as well as you, that it is the regular way of
solemn initiation into the covenant and church of Christ,
which none that indeed are the children of the promise should
neglect. As coronation solemnizeth his entrance upon the
kingdom, that had before the title ; and as marriage solem
nizeth that which before was done by consent; so baptism
solemnizeth the mutual covenant, which before had a mutual
consent : and none is authorised to consent for infants but
those that by nature, and God's law, have the power of dis
posing of them, and whose will is in sensu forensi, the
children's will : it solemnly investeth us in what we had an
antecedent right to, and therefore belongs to none but those
that have that right ; and this we are ready to make good by-
any fair debate that you wiU allow us.

166] .] to the Answer of the Bishops. 335
Ans. Nor is anything done in private, reiterated in public,
but the solemn reception into the congregation, with the
prayers for him, and the public declaration before the congre
gation, of the infant, now made by the godfathers, that the
whole congregation may testify against him, if he does not
perform it, which the ancients made great use of.
Reply. Do you not say in the rubric " and let them not
doubt, but the chUd so baptized is lawfully and sufficiently
baptized, and ought not to be baptized again." And after, " I
certify you that in this case all is well done. Sec." And yet
you do not renew all the baptismal covenant, renouncing the
flesh, &c., and engaging into the Christian belief; and that
you may see that the church of England taketh not all infants
infallibly to be regenerated by baptism (unless you grant that
they repent to the substance of baptism) the baptismal prayer
is here used, for the fore-baptized, that God will give his
Holy Spirit to this infant, that he being born again, and
made heir of everlasting salvation, Sec, which sheweth that
he is now supposed to be regenerandus, non regeneratus. Do
they pray for his regeneration, whom they account regenerate
already? You must either confess that there they repeat
much of the substance of baptism, and take the child as not
baptized, or else that they take the baptized child to be not
regenerate. And then we may well take them for unregene-
rate, that shew no signs of it, at years of discretion, but live
a carnal and ungodly life, though they can say the Catechism,
and seek confirmation.

OF THE CATECHISM.
§ 1. [Exc 1.] Ans. 2. Though divers have been of late
baptized without godfathers, yet many have been baptized with
them ; and those may answer the questions as they are ; the
rest must answer according to truth. But there is no reason
to alter the rule of the Catechism for some men's irregu
larities. Reply. If you wiU have a Catechism proper to those that

326 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
had godfathers, give leave to others to use one that will teach
them, as you say, to answer according to truth : and let us,
in the same, have that liberty of leaving out the doubtful
opinion of godfathers and godmothers, and that which we
think too childish a beginning, — "what is your name?" and
let us use one that speaks more of the necessary doctrines of
salvation, and nothing but necessaries.
§ 2. Ans. 2. [" Wherein I was made a member of Christ,"
Sec. Exc. 2. J We conceive this expression as safe as that
which they desire, and more fully expressing the efficacy of
the sacrament, according to St. Paul, the 26 and 27, Gal iii,
where St. Paul proves them all to be children of God, because
they were baptized, and in their baptism had put on Christ;
"if children, then heirs," or, which is all one, "inheritors,"
Rom. viii, 17.
Reply. By baptism Paul means not the carcase of baptism,
but the baptismal dedication, and covenanting with God;
they that do this by themselves, if at age, or by parents or
pro-parents authorized (if infants) sincerely, are truly mem
bers of Christ and children of God, and heirs of heaven;
they that do this but hypocritically, and verbally, as Simon
Magus did, are visibly such as the others are really : but
really are still in the gall of bitterness, and bond of iniquity,
and have no part or lot in this business, their hearts being
not right in the sight of God. This is that truth which we
are ready to make good.
§ 3. Ten com [mandments] [Exc. 3.] An^. We conceive
the present translation to be agreeable to many ancient
copies : therefore the change to be needless.
Reply. What ancient copy hath the seventh day in the
end of the fourth commandment, instead of the sabbath day?
Did King James cause the Bible to be new translated to so
little purpose? W^e must bear you witness that, in some
cases, you are not given to change.
§ 4. [Exc. 4.] " My duty towards God," Sec Ans. It is
not true that there is nothing in that answer which refers to
the fourth commandment : for the last words of the answer

1 661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 327
do orderly relate to the last commandment of the first table,
which is the fourth.
Reply. And think you, indeed, that the 4th commandment
obligeth you no more to one day in seven, than equally to
aU the days of your life ? This exposition may make us think
that some are more serious, than else we could have imagined,
in praying after that commandment, Lord have mercy upon
us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
§ 5. [Exc. 5.] "Two only as generally necessary to sal
vation," Sec. Ans. These words are a reason of the answer,
that there are two only, and therefore not to be left out.
Reply. The words seem to imply by distinction, that there
may be others not so necessary : and the Lord's supper was
not by the ancients taken to be necessary to the salvation of all.
§ 6. [Exc. 6.] " We desire that the entering of infants,"
&c. Ans. The effect of children's baptism depends neither
upon their own present actual faith and repentance (which
the Catechism says expressly they cannot perform) , nor upon
the faith and repentance of their natural parents or pro-
parents, or of their godfathers or godmothers ; but upon the
ordinance and institution ot Christ. But it is requisite that
when they come to age they should perform these conditions
of faith and repentance, for which also their godfathers and
godmothers charitably undertook on their behalf. And what
they do for the infant in this case, the infant himself is truly
said to do, as in the courts of this kingdom daily the infant
does answer hy his guardian : and it is usual for to do
homage by proxy, and for princes to marry by proxy. For
the further justification of this answer, see St. Aug. Ep. 23.
ad. Bonifac. Nihil aliud credere, quam fidem habere : ac per
hoc cum respondetur parvulum credere, qui fidei nondum habet
efectum, respondetur fidem habere propter fidei sacramentum,
et convertere se ad Deum propter conversionis sacramentum.
Quia et ipsa responsio ad celebrationem pertinet sacramenti.
Itaque parvulum etsi nondum fides ilia, qua in credentium
voluntate consistit, tamen ipsius fidei sacramentum, fidelem
facit.

328 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
Reply. 1. You remove not at all the inconvenience of
the words, that seem to import what you yourselves disclaim.
3, We know that the effects of baptism do depend on all the
necessary con-causes, on God's mercy, or Christ's merits, on
the institution, and on baptism itself according to its use, as
a delivering investing sign and seal ; and they depend upon
the promise sealed by baptism ; and the promise supposeth
the qualified subject, or requisite condition in him, that shaU
have the benefit of it. To tell us therefore of a common
cause, on which the effect depends, viz., the institution of
baptism itself, when we are inquiring after the special con
dition that proveth the person to be the due subject, to whom
both promise and baptism doth belong; this is but to seem
to make an answer. Either all baptized absolutely are justi
fied and saved, or not. If yea, then Christianity is another
kind of thing than Peter or Paul understood, that thought it
was not the washing of water, but the answer of a good con
science to God. Then let us catch heathens and dip them,
and save them in despite of them. But if any condition be
requisite (as we are sure there is) our question is, what it is ?
and you tell us of baptism itself. Did ever Augustine
[teach that every one baptized] jure, vel injuria, was to be
esteemed a believer ? We grant with Austin, that infants of
believers, propter sacramentum fidei, are -visibly and pro
fessedly to be numbered with believers ; but neither Austin,
nor we, will ever grant you that this is true of all that you
can catch, and use this form of baptism over. The seal wUl
not save them that have no part in the promise.
§ 7. [Exc. 7.] Ans. The Catechism is not intended as a
whole body of divinity, but as a comprehension of the articles
of faith, and other doctrines most necessary to salvation;
and being short, is fittest for children and common people,
and, as it was thought, sufficient upon mature deliberation,
and so is by us.
Reply. The creed, the decalogue, and the Lord's prayer,
contain all that is absolutely necessary to salvation at least.
If you intended no more, what need you make a Catechism ?

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 329
If you intend more, why have you no more? But, except in
the very words of the creed, the essentials of Christianity are
left out. If no explication be necessary, trouble them with
no more than the text of the creed, Sec. If expUcation be
necessary, let them have it; at least in a larger Catechism,
fitter for the riper. CONFIRMATION,
§ 1. Rub, 1. [Exc. 1.] Ans. It is evident that the mean
ing of these words is, that chUdren baptized, and dying before
they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved, though they
be not confirmed : wherein we see not what danger there
can be of misleading the vulgar by teaching them truth.
But there may be danger in this desire of having these words
expunged, as if they were false ; for St. Austin says he is an
infidel that denies them to be true. Ep. 33, ad Bonifac
Reply. What? all children saved, whether they be chUdren
of the promise or no ? Or can you shew us a text that saith
whoever is baptized shaU be saved? The Common Prayer
book plainly speaks of the non-necessity of unction, confir
mation, and other popish ceremonies and sacraments, and
meaneth that ex parte ecclesia, they have all things necessary
to salvation, and are undoubtedly saved, supposing them the
due subjects, and that nothing be wanting ex parte sui ; which
certainly is not the case of such as are not children of the
promise and covenant. The child of an heathen doth not
ponere obicem actually, quo minus baptizetur, and yet being
baptized is not saved, on your own reckoning (as we under
stand you) ; therefore the parent can ponere obicem, and
either hinder the baptism, or effect, to his infant. Austin
speaks not there of all children whatever, but those that are
offered per aliorum spiritualem voluntatem, by the parents
usually, or by those that own them after the parents be dead,
or they [be] exposed, or become theirs. He speaks also of
what may be done, et de eo quod fieri non posse arbitratur.
But our question is, what is done? and not, what God can

330 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
do. Our great question is, what children they he that
baptism belongeth to ?
§ 3. " Rub. after the Catechism," [Ex, 3,] " We con
ceive that it is not a sufficient qualification," Sec, Ans. We
conceive that this qualification is required rather as necessary
than as sufficient ; and therefore it is the duty of the minister
of the place (can. 61) to prepare children in the best manner
to be presented to the bishop for confirmation, and to inform
the bishop of their fitness ; but submitting the judgment to
the bishop, both of this, and other qualifications, and not
that the bishop should be tied to the minister's consent.
Compare this rubric to the second rubric before the cate
chism, and there is required what is further necessary and
sufficient. Reply, 1. If we have all necessary ordinarily, we have that
which is sufficient ad esse : there is more ordinarily necessary
than to say those words. 3. Do you owe the king no more
obedience? Already do you contradict his Declaration, which
saith, confirmation shall be performed by the information,
and with the consent of the minister of the place ! But if
the minister's consent shall not be necessary, take all the
charge upon your own souls, and let your souls be answerable
for all.
§ 3. [Exc. 3.] " They see no need of godfathers." Ans. Here
the compilers of the liturgy did, and so doth the church, that
there may be a witness of the confirmation.
Reply. It is like to be your own work as you wiU use it,
and we cannot hinder you from doing it in your own way.
But are godfathers no more than witnesses ? Sec
§ 4. [Exc. 4.] "This supposeth that all children," &c
Ans. It supposeth, and that truly, that all children were
at their baptism regenerate by water and tbe Holy Ghost,
and had given unto them the forgiveness of all their sins:
and it is charitably presumed that, notwithstanding the
frailties and slips of their chUdhood, they have not totally
lost what was in baptism conferred upon them ; and therefore
adds, " Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 331
Holy Ghost the Comforter, and daUy increase in them their
manifold gifts of grace," Sec None that Uves in open sin
ought to be confirmed.
Reply. 1. ChUdren, baptized without right, cannot be
presumed to be reaUy regenerate and pardoned, 3. We
speak only of those that, by Uving in open sin, do show them
selves to be unjustified, and these you confess should not be
confirmed. 0 that you would but practise that : if not, this
confession wUl witness against you.
& 5. [Exc. 5.] " Rubric before the imposition of hands."
Ans, Confirmation is reserved to the bishop in honorem
ordinis, to bless being an act of authority. So it was of
old : St. Hierom, Dial, adv, Lucifer, says it was totius
orbis consensio in hanc partem : and St. Cyprian to the
same purpose, Ep. 73 ; and our church doth everywhere
profess, as she ought, to conform to the catholic usages
of the primitive times, from which causelessly to depart,
argues rather love of contention than of peace. The re
serving of confirmation to the bishop doth argue the dignity
of the bishop above presbyters, who are not allowed to con
firm, but does not argue any excellency in confirmation above
the sacraments. St. Hierom argues the quite contrary
(ad Lucif. c. 4.) : — That because baptism was allowed to
be performed by a deacon, but confirmation only by a bishop,
therefore baptism was most necessary, and of the greatest
value : the mercy of God aUowing the most necessary means
of salvation to be administered by inferior orders, and res
training the less necessary to the higher, for the honour of
their order.
Reply. 0 that we had the primitive episcopacy, and that
bishops had no more churches to oversee than in the primitive
times they had ; and then we would never speak against this
reservation of confirmation to the honour of the bishop.
But when that bishop of one church is turned into that
bishop of many hundred churches ; and when he is now a
bishop of the lowest rank, that was an archbishop, when
archbishops first came up, and so we have not reaUy existent

333 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
any mere bishops (such as the ancients Knew) at all, but only
archbishops and their curates, marvel not, if we would not
have confirmation proper to archbishops, nor one man
undertake more than a hundred can perform ! But if
you wUl do it, there is no remedy. We have to acquit
ourselves. § 6. [Exc, 6.] Ans. Prayer after the imposition of hands
is grounded upon the practice of the apostles (Heb. vi, 3; and
Acts viii, 17;) nor doth 35th article say that confirmation is
a corrupt imitation of the apostles' practice, but that the five
commonly called sacraments have ground partly of the corrupt
following the apostles. Sec, which may be applied to some other
of these five, but cannot be applied to confirmation, unless
we make the church speak contradictions.
Reply. But the question is not of imposition of hands in
general, but this imposition in particular; and you have
never proved, that this sort of imposition, called confirma
tion, is mentioned in those texts : and the 35th article cannot
more probably be thought to speak of any one of the five as
proceeding from the corrupt imitation of the apostles, than of
confirmation as a supposed sacrament.
§ 7. [Exc. 7.] Ans. We know no harm in speaking the
language of holy Scripture (Acts viii, 15,) "they laid their hands
upon them, and they received the Holy Ghost." And though
mposition of hands be not a sacrament, yet it is a very fit
sign, to certify the persons what is then done for them, as
the prayer speaks.
Reply. It is fit to speak the Scripture language in Scrip
ture sense ; but if those that have no such power to give the
Holy Ghost will say, receive the Holy Ghost, it were better
for them to abuse other language than Scripture language.
§ 8. [Last rubric] after confirmation. [Exc. 8.] Ans. There
is no inconvenience that confirmation should be required
before the communion, when it may be ordinarily obtained.
That which you here fault, you elsewhere desire.
Reply. We desire that the credible approved profession of
faith, and repentance, be made necessaries : but not that aU

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 333
the thousands in England that never yet came under the
bishops' hands (as not one of many ever did, even when they
were at the highest) may be kept from the Lord's supper :
for some cannot have that imposition, and others will not,
that yet are fit for communion with the church.
[solemnization of MATRIMONY.]
§ 1. [Exc. 1.] Ans. The ring is a significant sign, only of
human institution, and was always given as a pledge of fidelity
and constant love : and here is no reason given why it should
be taken away ; nor are the reasons mentioned in the Roman
rituaUsts given in our Common Prayer book.
Reply. We crave not your own forbearance of the ring;
but the indifferency in our use of a thing so mis-used, and
unnecessary. § 3. Exc. 3. Ans. These words, "in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," if they seem to make
matrimony a sacrament, may as weU make all sacred, yea
civU actions of weight to be sacraments, they being usual at
the beginning and ending of all such. It was never heard
before now that those words make a sacrament.
Reply. Is there no force in an argument drawn from the
appearance of evil, the offence and the danger of abuses,
when other words enow may serve turn ?
§ 3. [Exc 5.] Ans, They go to the Lord's table because
the communion is to follow.
Reply. They must go to the table, whether there be a com
munion or not.
§ 4. Col. [Exc. 6.] " Consecrated the estate of matrimony
to such an exceUent mystery," Sec, Ans, Though the institu
tion of marriage was before the fall, yet it may be now, and
is, consecrated by God to such an excellent mystery as the
representation of the spiritual marriage between Christ and
his church, Eph, v, 33. We are sorry that the words of
Scripture wiU not please. The church, in the 35th article,
hath taken away the fear of making it a sacraiment.

334 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661,
Reply. When was marriage thus consecrated? If all
things, used to set forth Christ's offices, or benefits, by way of
similitude, be consecrated ; then a judge, a father, a friend, a
vine, a door, a way, Sec, are all consecrated things : Scripture
phrase pleaseth us, in Scripture sense.
§ 5. Rub. [Exc. 7.] " The new married persons the same
day of their marriage must receive the holy communion." Ans.
This inforces none to forbear marriage, but presumes (as well
it may) that all persons marriageable ought to be also fit to
receive the holy sacrament ; and marriage being so solemn
a covenant of God, they that undertake it in the fear of God
wiU not stick to seal it by receiving the holy communion, and
accordingly prepare themselves for it. It were more Christian
to desire that those licentious festivities might be suppressed,
and the communion more generally used by those that marry:
the happiness would be greater than can easily be expressed.
Unde sufficiamus ad enarrandam felicitatem ejus matrimonii,
quod ecclesia conciliat, et confirmat oblatio. Tertull. lib. 3,
ad Uxorem.
Reply. Indeed ! -will you phrase and modify your adminis
trations upon such a supposition, that all men are such as
they ought to be, and do what they ought to do ? Then take
all the world for saints, and use them accordingly, and blot
out the doctrine of reproof, excommunication, and damnation
from your Bibles ! Is it not most certain that very many
married persons are unfit for the Lord's supper, and wiU be
when you and we have done our best ? And is it fit then to
compel them to it? But the more unexpected the more wel
come is your motion, of that more Christian course of sup
pressing of licentious festivities. When shall we see such
reformation undertaken ?
VISITATION OF THE SICK.
§ 1. [Exc, 1.] "Forasmuch as the condition," Sec. Ans,
All which is here desired is already presumed, namely, that
the minister shall apply himself to the particular condition of

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 335
the person ; but this must be done according to the rule of
prudence and justice, and not according to his pleasure.
Therefore, if the sick person shew himself truly penitent, it
ought not to be left to the minister's pleasure to deny him
absolution, if he desire it. Our church's direction is accord
ing to the 13th canon of the venerable council of Nicsea, both
here and in the next that follows.
Reply. But the question is, whether he shew himself truly
penitent or not. If we have not, here neither, a judgment of
discretion for the conduct of our own actions, what do we
with reason ? Why are we trusted in the office, and whose
judgment must we foUow ? The bishop cannot have leisure
to become the judge whether this man be penitent. It must,
then, be the minister or the man himself. And must we
absolve every man that saith he rep'uteth ? Then we must
believe an incredible profession, which is against reason.
Some are known infidels, and in their health profess that
they believe not the Scripture to be true, and make a mock
at Jesus Christ; and perhaps, in a sickness that they appre
hend no danger in, wUl send for the minister in scorn, to say
I repent, and force him to absolve them, that they may deride
him and the gospel. Some of us have known, too, many of
those that have for twenty or thirty years been common
drunkards, seldom sober a week together, and still say, when
they came to themselves, that they were sorry for it, and did
unfeignedly repent; and as they said in health, so they said
in sickness, dying within a few days or weeks after they were
last drunk. Must we absolve all these ? Some die with a
manifest hatred of an holy life, reviling at those that are
careful to please God; yet saying they hate them not as
holy, but because they are aU hypocrites, or the like : and
yet wiU they say they repent of their sins. Some forbear
not their accustomed swearing and cursing whUe they profess
repentance. Some make no restitution for the wrong which
they say they repent of. And must we take all these for
truly penitent ? If not, the minister must judge. What
you mean by your saying, " Our church's dfrection is accord-

336 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
ing to the 1 3th canon of the venerable council of Nicsea, both
here and in the next that foUows," we know not : the second
council of Nicsea you cannot mean (its canon being uncertain),
and the 13th is of no such sense. And the 13th can. of the
first council of Nicsea, is only that lapsed catechumens shall be
three years inter and ientes before they pray again with the
catechumens. This shews they then took not up with every
word of seeming penitence as true repentance ; but what it is
to your purpose we know not, nor is there any other canon in
that council for you. The 11th canon is sufficiently against
you. The lapsed, that truly repented, were to remain among
the penitent for three years, and seven years more if they were
fideles, Sec. Ab omnibus vero illud pracipue observetur, ut
animus eorum, et fructus poenitentia attendatur : quicunque
enim cum omni timore, et lacrimis perseverantibus, et operibus
bonis, conversationem suam, non verbis solis sed opere et veri-
tate demonstrant, cum tempus statutum etiam ab his fuerit im-
pletum, et orationibus jam caperint communicare, licebit etiam
episcopo humnnius circa res aliquot cogitare. We know this
rigor as to time was unjust, and that to the dying it was
abated : but you see here that bare words (that were not hy
seriousness and by deeds made credible) were not to be taken
as sufficient marks of penitence, of which it was not the
person himself that was to be the judge.
§ 2. Exc. 2. Ans. The form of absolution in the liturgy is
more agreeable to the Scriptures than that which they desire,
it being said in St. John xx, " Whose sins you remit, they are
remitted," not whose sins ybu pronounce remitted ; and the
condition needs not to be expressed, being always necessarUy
understood. Reply. It is a controversy among the learnedest expositors,
how much that of John xx was proper to the apostles, and
such others as were then to have the spirit in an extraordinary
manner, who did remit sin effectively by remitting the
punishment of it, by casting out devils, healing the sick, &c.,
according to that of James v, 14, 15. "Is any sick among
you, let him caU for the elders of the church, and let them

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 337
pray for him, and anoint him with oU in the name of the
Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the
Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins,
they shall be forgiven him." If, besides this remitting them
effectually, the rest be no other than a ministerial pronouncing
them forgiven by God according to his covenant in the gospel,
then you cannot plead the phrase of a text, which respecteth
another way of remission than we pretend to; but must
phrase it according to the nature of the thing, and the sense
ef other Scriptures also that fullier open it. There are three
Ways of pardoning. 1. By grant or gift, whether by a
general act of pardon or a particular. 3. By sentence.
3, By execution, that is, preventing or taking off the penalty.
The first of these is done already by God in the gospel. The
second God doth prineipaUy, and his ministers instrumentaUy
as his messengers. The third (the taking off the penalty)
they can do no otherwise, in the case before us, than by
praying that God wUl take it off, and using his ordinary
means. So that it is most evident that this absolution, that
ministers are to perform, can be no other than to pronounce
the penitent beUever to be absolved by God, according to his
covenant. And if there be no other, should we not speak as
inteUigibly as we can ? Indeed there is more in absolving the
excommunicate; for then the church, both judiciously and
executively, remitteth the penalty of excommunication (to
which also the text, John xx, may have much respect), but
the penalty of damnation can be no otherwise remitted by us,
than as is expressed. And indeed the thing is of such ex
ceeding weight, that it behoveth us to deal as intelligibly and
openly in it as we can. And therefore we admire that you
should say "the condition needs not be expressed, being
always necessarUy understood." By necessarily do you mean
necessitate naturali et irresistibili, so that all the wicked men
in the world cannot choose but understand us to speak con-
ditionaUy? Surely this is none of your meaning; if it were,
it were far from truth. Or do you mean not de necessitate
vel aetitudine eventus, but de debito ex obligatione? No

838 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
doubt but it is necessary as a duty, and also, adfinem, as a
means ; and therefore it is that we desire it may be expressed.
And doubtless you think not that all men do their duties, and
understand all that they ought to understand — no, not in this
particular. If you mean that all sick men may be rationaUy
supposed to understand it ; this can never be believed by us
that are acquainted personaUy (and have been) with so many
of whom it is not true. How many think the minister's
absolution, and the sacrament, will serve turn with their
unsound, hypocritical repentance ! How easily is that
understood absolutely, or as bad, while they take you to take
it for granted that they have the condition which is absolutely
expressed. COMMUNION OF THE SICK,
Ans. It is not fit the minister should have power to deny
this viation, or holy communion, to any that humbly desire it
according to the rubric ; which no man disturbed in his wits
can do, and whosoever does must in charity be presumed to
be penitent, and fit to receive.
Reply. There is no condition mentioned in the rubric, but
that he be desirous to receive the communion in his house:
" humbly " is not there. And why may not a man disturbed in
his wits desire the communion? You deny things that ordi
narUy fall out, and yet lay the weight of your cause on that
denial. But why must we give the sacrament to those that
have lived in gross ignorance, infidelity, and profaneness, and
never manifested, credibly, that they repent ? You say that
whosoever desireth the sacrament, according to the rubric,
must in charity be presumed to be penitent. But where
hath God commanded or approved so blind and dangerous an
act as this, under the name of charity ? The ordinary observa
tion of our lives, is not to be confuted by men's assertions :
we know by sad experience, that there is abundance of the
worst of men among us, that are desirous to receive the
sacrament when they are sick, that give no credible evidence
of true repentance ; but some in the ignorance, and deceit of
their hearts; and some as conscious of their impiety, for

ggl 1 to the Answer of the Bishops. 339
which they seek any shifting remedy to quiet their con
sciences, for the time, are much more eager for this sacra
ment in their sickness, than many better and more penitent
persons. And must we judge all these penitent, and give
them the sacrament as such ? We must needs profess that
we think this course would not be the least effectual service
unto Satan, to deceive poor sinners, and keep them from
knowing their misery, and seeking aright after the true
remedy in time. Pardon us, whUe we lay together the parts
of your doctrine, as we understand it here delivered; and
leave it to your consideration, what a church, and what a
ministty it would make. 1. AU infants of any parents in
the world that we can baptize, are undoubtedly regenerate,
and in a state of life, and shall be saved, if they so die. 3.
The Holy Ghost, and forgiveness of sin, being then given
them, it is charitably presumed that they have not totally
lost this, notwithstanding the frailties and slips of their child
hood ; and so when they can say the Catechism, they are to
be confirmed. 3. Being confirmed, they are to be admitted
to the Lord's supper. 4. All that marry, and others, thrice
a year must receive the Lord's supper, though unfit. 5.
The minister must absolve aU the sick that say they repent
(if we understand you) : for we suppose you allow not the
minister to be judge. 6. This absolution must be absolutely
expressed — I absolve thee from all thy sins — without the con
dition — if thou repent and believe. 7. Whosoever desireth
the communion in his sickness, must in charity be presumed
to be penitent, and fit to receive. 8. The minister must not
have power to forbear such baptizing, absolving, or delivering
the communion as aforesaid. We now omit what is said of
the dead at burial. And if this be not the ready way to
hinder thousands from the necessary knowledge of their un
renewed hearts and Uves, and from true repentance, and from
valuing Christ as the remedy, and from making a necessary
preparation for death ; and also the way to lay by abundance
of faithful and conscionable ministers, that dare not take
such a deceiving dangerous course ; we must confess ourselves
z 2

340 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
much mistaken in the nature of man's corruption, and misety,
and the use of God's ordinances for his recovery.

THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD.
§ 1. Rub. 1. [Exc. 2.] Ans. It is not fit so much should
be left to the discretion of every minister; and the desire
that aU may be said in the church, being not pretended to be
for the ease of tender consciences, but of tender head8,>may
be helped by a cap better than a rubric.
Reply. We marvel that you say nothing at all to our desire
that it be expressed in a rubric, that prayers and exhortations
there used, be not for the benefit of the dead, but only for the
instruction and comfort of the living. You intend to have
a very indiscreet ministry, if such a needless chrcumstance
may not be left to their discretion. The contrivance of a cap
instead of a rubric sheweth that you are all unacquainted
with the subject of which you speak : and if you speak for
want of experience of the case of souls, as you now do about
the case of men's bodies, we could wish you some of our ex
perience of one sort (by more converse with all the members
of the flock) though not of the other. But we would here
put these three or four questions to you.
1. Whether snch of ourselves as cannot stand still, in the
cold winter, at the grave, half so long as the office of burial
requireth, without the certain hazard of our Uves, (though
while we are in motion, we can stay out longer,) are bound to
believe your lordships, that a cap will cure this better than a
rubric, though we have proved the contrary to our cost, and
know it as well as we know that cold is cold ? Do you think
no place but that which a cap or clothes do cover, is capable
of letting in the excessively refrigerating air ?
3. Whether a man that hath the most rational probabUity,
if not a moral certainty, that it would be his death, or
dangerous sickness (though he wore twenty caps), is bound
to obey you in this case ?
, 3. Whether usually the most studious laborious ministers,

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 341
be not the most invaletudinary and infirm ? And,
4. Whether the health of such should be made the jest of,
by the more healthful ; and be made so Ught of, as to be cast
away, rather than a ceremony sometime be left to their dis
cretion? And whether it be a sign of the right and genuine
spirit of religion, to subject to such a ceremony, both the
lUe of godUness, and the lives of ministers, and the people's
souls? Much of this concerneth the people also : as well as
the ministers.
§ 2. [Exc. 5.] Ans. We see not why these words may not
he said of any person whom we dare not say is damned, and
it were a breach of charity to say so even of those whose re
pentance we do not see : for whether they do not inwardly
and heartUy repent, even at the last act, who knows ? and
that God wiU not even then pardon them upon such repent
ance, who dares say ? It is better to be charitable, and hope
the best, than rashly to condemn.
Reply, We spoke of persons living and dying in notorious
sins; suppose they were whoredom, perjury, oppression, yea
infidelity, or atheism. Sec But suppose we cannot be infaUi
bly certain that the man is damned, because it is possible
that he may repent, though he never did express it t will you
therefore take him for a brother whose soul is taken to God
in mercy? You are not sure that an excommunicate person,
or a heathen, doth not truly repent after he is speechless:
but wfll you therefore say, that all such die thus happily ?
This is a most delusory principle. The church judgeth not of
things undiscovered: non esse et non apparere, are all one
as to our judgment ; we conclude not peremptorUy, because
we pretend not here to infaUibility. As we are not sure that
any man is truly penitent, that we give the sacrament to ; so
we are not sure that any man dieth impenitently. But yet
we must use those as penitent, that seem so to reason, judg
ing by ordinaty means ; and so must we judge those as impe
nitent, that have declared their sin, and never declared their
repentance. It seems by you, that you will form your liturgy,
so as to say, that every man is saved that you are not sure

343 Rejoinder of the Ministers [1661.
is damned, though he shew you no repentance : and so the
church shall say, that all things are, that are but possible, if
they conceit that charity requireth it. But if the living by
this be kept from conversion, and flattered into hell, will they
there caU it charity, that brought them thither? 0 lament-
able charity, that smoothes men's way to hell, and keepeth
them ignorant of their danger, tiU they are past remedy!
MUlions are now suffering for such a sort of charity ! Lay
this to the formentioned propositions, and the world will see
that indeed we differ in greater things than ceremonies, and
forms of prayer. CHURCHING WOMEN.
§ 1. Exc. 1. Ans. It is fit that the woman performing
especial service of thanksgiving should have a special place
for it, where she may be perspicuous to the whole congrega
tion, and near the holy table, in regard of the offering she is
there to make. They need not fear popery in this, since in
the church of Rome she is to kneel at the church door.
Reply. Those that are delivered from impenitency, from
sickness. Sec, perform a special service of thanksgiring, Sec,
yet need not stand in a special place : but if you will have all
your ceremonies, why must all others be forced to imitate
you ? We mentioned not the church of Rome.
§ 3. Exc. 3. Ans. The Psalm cxxi is more fit and pertinent
than those others named, as cxUi, cxxviii, and therefore not
to be changed.
Reply. We have proposed to you what we think meetest in
our last pages; if you like your own better, we pray you
give us leave to think otherwise, and to use what we pro
pounded, § 3, Exc, 3, Ans. If the woman be such as is here
mentioned, she is to do her penance before she is churched.
Reply. That is, if she be accused, prosecuted, and judged
by the bishop's court to do penance first, which happeneth
not to one of a multitude ; and what shall the minister do

1661.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 343
with aU the rest? AU tends to take away the difference
between the precious aud the vile, between those that fear
God, and that fear him not,
§ 4, Exc, 4, Ans. Offerings are required as well under the
gospel as the law ; and, amongst other times, most fit it is
that oblations should be when we come to give thanks for
some special blessing, Psa. Ixxvi, 10, 11, Such is the deli
verance in childbearing.
Reply. Oblations should be free, and not forced : to some
special use, and not to ostentation,
§ 4, Exc, Z. Ans. This is needless, since the rubric and
Common Prayer require that no notorious person be admitted.
Reply. We gladly accept so fair an interpretation, as
freeth the hook from self-contradiction, and us from trouble ;
but we think it would do no hurt, but good, to be more
express. THE CONCESSIONS.
§ 1. Ans. We are wUling that all the epistles and gospels
be used according to the last translation.
Reply. We still beseech you, that all the Psalms, and other
Scriptures in the liturgy recited, may (for the same reason)
be used according to the last translation.
§ 3. Ans. That when anything is read for an epistle which
is not in the epistles, the superscription shall be, " For the
epistle." Reply. We beseech you, speak as the vulgar may under
stand you : " for the epistle " signifieth not plain enough to
such, that is indeed none of the epistles.
§ 3. Ans, That the Psalms be collated with the former
translation, mentioned in rubric, and printed according to it.
Reply. We understand not what translation, or rubric, you
mean. § 4. Ans. That the words " this day," both in the collects
and prefaces, be used only upon the day itself; and for the
foUowing days it be said, " as about this time,"
Reply, And yet there is no certainty, which was the day
itself.

344 Rejoinder cf the Ministers [1661.
§ 5, Ans. That a longer time be required for signification
of the names of the communicants : and the words of the
rubric be changed into these, "at least some time the day
before," Reply. "Some time the day before" may be near or at
night, which will not allow any leisure at all to take notice
of the proofs of people's scandals, or to help them in pre
paration. § 6. Ans. That the power of keeping scandalous sinners
from the communion may be expressed in the rubric accord
ing to the 26th and 27th canons ; so the minister be obliged
to give an account of the same immediately after to the
ordinary. Reply. We were about returning you our vety great
thanks, for granting us the benefit of the 36th canon, as that
which exceedeth all the rest of your concessions. But we see
you will not make us too much beholden to you : and poor
Christians that will not receive the sacrament confrary to
the example of Christ and his apostles, and the custom of the
catholic primitive church, and the canons of general councUs,
must be also used as the notorious impenitent sinners. But
the canon requireth us not to signify the cause, but upon
complaint, or being required by the ordinary,
§ 7, Ans. That the whole preface be prefixed to the com
mandments. Reply. And why not the word " sabbath day" be put for
the "seventh day" in the end. Must not such a falsifica
tion be amended?
§ 8. Ans. That the second exhortation be read some
Sunday or holyday before the celebration of the communion,
at the discretion of the minister,
§ 9. Ans. That the general confession at the communion
be pronounced by one of the ministers, the people saying
after him, all kneeling humbly upon their knees.
§ 10. Ans. That the manner of consecrating the elements
be made more explicit and express, and to that purpose these
words oe put into the rubric, " Then shall he put his hand

IQQl.] to the Answer of the Bishops. 345
upon the bread and break it," " then shall he put his hand
unto the cup,"
§11, Ans. That if the font be so placed as the congrega
tion cannot hear, it may be referred to the ordinary to place
it more conveniently,
§ 12. Ans. That those words, "Yes, they do perform
those," Sec, may be altered thus, "Because they promise
them both by their sureties," Sec,
§ 13, Ans. That the words of the last rubric before the
catechism may be thus altered, " that children being baptized
have all things necessary for their salvation, and dying before
they commit any actual sin, be undoubtedly saved, though
they be not confirmed."
§J4, Ans. That to the rubric after confirmation these
words may be added, " or be ready and desirous to be con
firmed," §15, Ans. That those words, "with my bbdy I thee
worship," may be altered thus, "with my bbdy I thee
honour," § 16, Ans. That those words, "till death us depart," be
thus altered, " till death us do part."
§ 17, Ans. That the words "sure and certain" may be
left out.
Reply. For all the rest we thank you, but have given our
reasons against your sense expressed in sect. 13, before, and
for satisfactoriness of the last. And we must say, in the
conclusion, that, if these be all the abatements and amend
ments you will admit, you sell your innocency, and the
church's peace for nothing.

346 Paper offered by Bishop Cosins, [1661,
XIX.
Paper offered by Bishop Cosins, and Answer thereto. —
Reliquiae Baxterianae, by Sylvester, pp, 341 — 3.
A WAT humbly proposed to end that unhappy controversy
which is now managed in the church, that the sore may
no longer rankle under the debate, nor advantages be got
by those that love division,
1, That the question may be put to the managers of the
division, whether there be anything in the doctrine, or
discipline, or the Common Prayer, or ceremonies, contraty to
the word of God ; and if they can make any such appear, let
them be satisfied,
3, If not, let them then propose what they desire in
point of expediency, and acknowledge it to be no more,
3, Let that then be received from them, and speedily taken
into the consideration and judgment of the convocation, who
are the proper and authentic representatives of the ministty,
in whose judgment they ought to acquiesce in such matters;
and not only so, but to let the people that follow them, know
that they ought not to disturb the peace of the church, under
the pretence of the prosecution of expediency, since the
division of the church is the great inexpedient,
THE ANSWER TO THE FORESAID PAPER.'
Right Reverend, Sec,
As it was your desire that we should return an answer to
these three proposals only in our own names, who are but
three, so we must here profess, therefore, that it is not to be
taken as the act of the rest of our brethren the commission
ers, but as part of the conference to which we are deputed.
And though we are the managers of the treaty for pacifica
tion or agreement, and not the managers of the division, and
therefore cannot take ourselves to be the persons meant by
' Drawn up by Baxter, and presented in the names of Dr. Bates, Dr.
Jacomb, and himself. — Eeliciuise Baxterianse, p. 340.

Iggl 1 and Answer thereto. 347
the author of the proposals, yet we are glad to take the
opportunity of your invitation, to profess that the principal
part of these proposals is so rational, regular, and Christian.
like, that we not only approve of, but should be fully satisfied
(as to the debates before us) with the real grant of the first
alone, and not be wanting in our duty, according to our
understanding and ability, in endeavoming to accomplish
the ends of your desires in the rest. More particularly —
Ad !""¦ Though we find by your papers and conference
that in your own personal doctrines there is something that
we take to he against the Word of God, and perceive that we
understand not the doctrine of the church in all things alike,
yet we find nothing contrary to the Word of God in that
which is indeed the dbctrine of the church, as it comprehend
eth the matters of faith, distinct from matter of discipUne,
ceremonies, and modes of worship.
As to discipUne — there was given unto his majesty, before
his Declaration came forth, a summary of what we think to
be contrary to the Word of God, which we shall more fuUy
give in to you, or any others, whenever we are again caUed
to it.
For the Common Prayer and ceremonies we have, in our
Exceptions and Reply, delivered you an account of what we
take to he unlawful and inconvenient ; and we humbly crave
that our reasons may be yet impartially considered. At
present we shall humbly ofler you our judgment concern
ing the foUowing particulars, and profess our readiness to
make it good when we are called to it. It is contrary to the
Word of God—
1, That no minister be admitted to baptize -without the
prescribed use of the transient image of the cross.
3. That no minister be permitted to read or pray, or
exercise the other parts of his office, that dare not wear
a surplice. 3, That none be admitted in communion to the Lord's
supper, that dare not receive it kneeUng; and that all
ministers be enjoined to deny it to such.

348 Paper offered by Bishop Cosins, [1661"
4^, That ministers be forced to pronounce all baptized
infants to he regenerate by the Holy Ghost, whether they be
the children of Christians or not.
5. That ministers he forced to deliver the sacrament of the
body and blood of Christ unto the unfit, both in their health
and sickness, and that with personal application, putting
it into their hands ; and that such are forced to receive it,
though against their own wUls, in the conscience of their
impenitency. 6. That ministers deforced to absolve the unfit ; and that
in absolute expressions.
7, That they are forced to give thanks for all whom they-
bury, as " brethren whom God in mercy hath delivered and
taken to himself,"
8. That none may be a preacher that dare not subscribe
that there is nothing in the Common Prayer book, the Book
of Ordination, and the nine and thirty articles, that is con
trary to the Word of God,
These are most of the things which we judge contrary to
the Word of God, which at present come to our remem
brance. So we humbly desire that whenever you would have
us give you a fuU enumeration of such, we may have leave to
consult with the rest of our brethren, and deliver it to you hy
our common consent. And we humbly crave that all these
points may be taken into serious consideration, and those of
them which we have not yet debated, we are ready to debate,
and give in our arguments, whenever we are caUed to it,
to prove them all contrary to the Word of God. And may
we be so happy as to have this proposal granted us, we shall
undoubtedly have unity and peace.
Ad 2'°- We suppose, according to the laws of distinguish
ing, you speak, in this second proposal, of aU things so
inexpedient as not to be contrary to the Word of God, Other
wise the greatest sins may be committed by inexpediences :
as a physician may murder a man by giving him inexpedient
medicines ; and a general may destroy his army by inexpedi
ent ways of conduct and defence. And the pastor may be

jggl 1 and Answer thereto. 349
guilty of the damnation of his people by doctrines and appU-
cations inexpedient and unsuitable to their state ; and a way
of worship may be so inexpedient as to be sinful and loathsome
unto God ; such is the battology, or thinking to be heard for
affected repetitions or babblings, pharisaical thanksgivings
that men are better than indeed they are, with abundance
such like. But supposing that you here speak of no such
inexpedient things, but such as are nbt cbntrary to the Word
of God, we add —
Ad S""- We are thankful that in such matters we may
have leave to make any such proposals as are here mentioned.
But we shaU not be forward to busy ourselves, and trouble
others, about such Uttle things, without a special call. If the
convocation at any time desire an account of our thoughts
ahout such matters, we shall readUy produce them.
And for " acquiescing in their judgments in such matters "
what -vre three do in that point, is but of small consequence.
And for others, seeing the ministers that we speak for were,
many hundreds of them, displaced or removed before the
advice of the convocation; and others denied their votes
because not ordained by diocesans ; and others, not approving
the constitution of our convocations, durst not meddle in the
choice ; we cannot tell how far they wUl think themselves
obliged by the determination of this convocation. But this
can be no matter of impediment to your satisfaction or ours ;
for we are commonly agreed that we are bound in conscience
to obey the king and aU his magistrates in all lawful things ;
and with Christian patience to suffer what he inflicteth on us
for not obeying in things unlawful ; and therefore, while we
acquiesce thus far in the judgment of those who must make
the decrees of the convocation to be civilly obligatory, and
the king intendeth to take their advice before he determine of
such matters, it is aU one as to the end, as if we directly did
thus far acquiesce in the judgment of the convocation, if the
king approve it. But if the king and parliament dissent or
disaUow the. convocation's judgment (as it is possible they

350 Answer to Paper offered by Bp, Cosins, [1661.
may have cause to do) would you have us acquiesce in it,
when king and parliament do not ?
And for the last part of the proposal, by God's assistance
(if you do not silence or disable us), we are resolved faithfully
to teach the people, that the division of the church is worse
than inexpedient, and the peace of it not to be disturbed for
the avoiding of any such inexpediences as are not contrary to
the Word of God. We conclude with the repetition of our
more earnest request, that these wise and moderate proposals
may be prosecuted, and aU things be abated us which we have
proved, or shall prove to be, contrary to the Word of God.
But if we agree not on those things among ourselves, accord
ing to his majesty's commission, the world may know we did
our parts.
When the liberty of using the alterations and additional
forms which were offered to you, according to his majesty's
Declaration, would end aU our differences about matters of
worship ; and when you have had them in your hands so long
since you called for them, and have not, notwithstanding the
importunity of our requests, vouchsafed us any debates upon
them, or exceptions against them, but are pleased to lay them
by in silence ; we once more propose to you, whether the
granting of what you cannot blame, be not now the shortest
and the surest way to a general satisfaction.''
' "I offered to my brethren two more particulars as contrary to the
" Word of God ; which were —
" 1. That none may have leave in public -worship to use a more suitable
i' orderly -way ; but all are confined to this liturgy, -which is so defective
"and disorderly, which we are even notr ready to manifest, if you will
" receive it.
" 2. That none may be a minister of the gospel that dare not subject him-
" self, by an oath of obedience, to the diocesans in that state of govem-
" ment which they exercised in this land, contrary to the practice of all
" antiquity. " These ten things I offered as contrary to the Word of God, but the two
"brethren, with me, thought these two last were better left out, lest they
"occasion new debates, though they judged them true."— Reliquias Bax
terianse, p. 343.

1661.1 Discussion on Kneeling at the Lord's Supper. 351

XX.
The Discussion on Kneeling at the Lord's Supper. — Reliquiae
Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 346 — 349.
In our unprofitable disputes aU was to be managed in writing
em tempore, by Dr. Pearson, Dr. Gunning, and Dr. Sparrow,
with Dr. Pierce on one side; and Dr. Bates, Dr. Jacomb,
and myself on the other side ; we withdrawing into the next
room, and leaving the bishops and them together, while we
wrote our part. And we began -with the imposition of kneel-
mg, upon two accounts (though I took the gesture itself as
lawful), 1. Because I knew I had the fuUest evidence, and
the greatest authority of antiquity, or church law and custom,
against them. 2. Because the penalty is so immediate and
great to put all that kneel not, from the communion. And
it was only the penalty, and so the imposition on that penalty,
which we disputed against.
Our Arguments. Oppon. Arg. 1. To enjoin all ministers
to deny the communion to all that dare not kneel in the
reception of the sacrament on the Lord's days, is sinful.
But the Common Prayer book and canons enjoin all
ministers to deny the communion to all that dare not kneel
in the reception of the sacrament on the Lord's days.
Ergo, the Common Prayer book and canons do (or contain)
that which is sinful.
Their Answer. Resp, Not granting nor denying the major,
in the first place prove the minor.
Oppon. We prove both. 1. Prob. major. To enjoin
ministers to deny the communion to men, because they dare
not go against the practice of the apostles, and the universal
church for many hundred years after them, and the canons of
the most venerable councUs, is sinful.
But to enjoin ministers to deny the communion to all that
dare not kneel in the reception of the sacrament on the

352 Discussion on Kneeling [1661.
Lord's days, is to enjoin them to deny communion to them,
because they dare not go against the practice of the apostles,
and the universal church for many hundred years after them,
and the canons of the most venerable councils.
Ergo, to enjoin all ministers to deny communion to aU
that dare not kneel in the reception of the sacrament on the
Lbrd's day is sinful.
Prbb. miubr. The words of the Common Prayer book and
canons prove it.
. Resp. The minor (viz. as to the Common Prayer book, of
which the proof must proceed) is not yet proved.
But the major (which we had not then spoke to, but now
do, clearly denying that major also of the first syllogism) you
prove by the syUogism brought; in which we deny the
minor. Here we told them, that for the proof of both propositions
denied, the presence of the books is necessary, which we
desired them to procure us ; but they were not fetched. And
first we had a large debate about the words of the Common
Prayer, " he shall deliver it them kneeling on their knees."
Dr. Pearson confessed, that the canons did reject theni that
kneel not, from the communion; but these words of the
Common Prayer book do not. But they only include
kneelers, but exclude not others. We answered them, that
either the Common Prayer book doth exclude them that
kneel not, or it doth not. If it doth, the proposition is true.
If it do not, then we shall willingly let faU this argument
against it, and proceed to another. Therefore I desired them
but to tell us openly their own judgment of the sense of the
book ; for we professed to argue against it only on supposition
ef the exclusive sense.
Hereupon unavoidably they feU into discord among them
selves. Dr. Pearson, who was to defend the book, told us his
judgment was, that the sense was not exclusive. Bishop
Morley, who was to offend the Nonconfornaists, gave his
judgment for the exclusive sense; viz. — That the minister is
to give it to kneelers, and no others. So that we professed

Iggl 1 at the Lord's Supper. 353
to them, that we could not go any further, till they agreed
among themselves, of their sense.
And for the other minor denied, though the books were
not present, I aUeged the 20th Canon Concil. Nicsen. and
ConeU. TruU. and TertuUian oft, and Epiphanius, with the
common consent of ancient writers, who teU us, it was the
tradition and custom of the universal church, not to adore by
genuflexion on any Lord's day, or on any day between Easter
and Whitsuntide. Ergo, not so to adore in taking the
sacrament. Bishop Morley answered, that this was the custom but
only between Easter and Whitsuntide, and therefore it being
otherwise the rest of the year, was more against us. I
answered him that he mistook, where a multitude of evidences
might rectify him ; it was on every Lord's day through the
year that this adoration by genuflexion was forbidden :
though on other week-days it was only between Easter and
Whitsuntide. Next he and the rest insisted on it, that these canons and
customs extended only to prayer. To which I answered,
that 1. The plain words are against them, where some speak
of aU adoration, and others more largely of the public wor
ship, and offered to bring them full proof from the books, as
soon as they would give me time. 2. And if it were only in
prayer, it is aU one to our case. For the liturgy giveth the
sacrament with words of prayer ; and it is the common argu
ment brought for kneeUng, that it is suitable to the conjunct
prayer. And I told them over and over, that antiquity was
so clear m the point, that I desired aU might be laid on that,
and I might have time to bring them in my testimonies.
But thus that argument was turned off, and the evening
broke off that part of the dispute.
THE NEXT day's ARGUMENT.
Oppon. To enjoin ministers to deny the communion to
such as the Holy Ghost hath required us to receive to the
communion is sinful. A A

354 Discussion an Kneeling [1661.
But to enjoin ministers to deny the communion to all that
dare not kneel in the reception of the sacrament, is to enjoin
them to deny the communion to such as the Holy Ghost
hath required us to receive to the communion.
Ergo, to enjoin ministers to deny the communion to aU
that dare not kneel in the reception of the sacrament, is
a sin. Resp. We deny the minor.
Oppon. The Holy Ghost hath required us to receive to the
communion, even aU the weak in the faith, who are charged
vrith no greater fault than erroneously refusing things lavrful
as unlawful.
But many of those who dare not kneel in the reception of
the sacrament are (at the worst) but weak in the faith, and
charged with no greater fault than, erroneously, refiising
things lawful as unlawful.
Ergo, to enjoin ministers to deny the communion to aU
who dare not kneel in the reception of the' sacrament, is to
enjoin them to deny the communion to such as the Holy
Ghost hath required us to receive to the communion.
Resp. We say, this is no true but a fallacious syllogism, of
no due form; for this reason, that whereas both subject
and predicate of the conclusion ought to be somewhere in the
premisses, here neither subject of the conclusion (viz. to enjoin
ministers to deny, Stc) nor the predicate of the conclusion
(viz. is to enjoin them to deny. Sec) are anywhere found in
any part of either of the premisses ; so that here are not only
quatuor, but quinque termini.
Oppon. You have both subject and predicate in the pre
misses as to the sense. If you wUl have each syUable, take it
thus. If to enjoin ministers to deny the communion to men for
no greater fault than being weak in the faith, and refusing
things lawful as unlawful, be to enjoin them to deny the
communion to such as the Holy Ghost hath required us to
receive to the communion, then to enjoin ministers to deny
the communion to aU, &c.

Iggl 1 at the Lord's Supper. 355
But to enjoin ministers to deny the communion to men for
no greater fault than being weak in the faith, and refusing
things lawful as unlawful, is to enjoin them to deny the
communion to such as the Holy Ghost hath required them to
receive to the communion.
Ergo, to enjoin. Sec (as in the minor.)
Eesp. We distinguish to that term " things lawful :" for
both things lawful, and by no lawfiU power commanded to be
done, are caUed such: and also things lawful, and by a
lawM power also commanded to be done, are called such.
If you take " things lawful " in the former sense, we deny
your major. If you take " things lawful " in the latter sense,
we deny your minor.
Oppon. In Rom. xiv, 1 — 3, and xv, 1, the apostle, by
the Holy Ghost, speaking of things lawful and not com
manded, yet, being himself a church governor, commandeth
them not; but requireth even church governors as well as
others to receive the dissenters and forbear them, and not to
make these the matter bf censure br cbntempt. Ergo, the
minor (er ccnsequence) is good.
Resp, We answer four things:
1. We deny the consequence of the enthymeme,
2. Our discom'se proceeding wholly about things lawful
and commanded by a lawful power, they profess to proceed
only upon thmgs lawful and not commanded by a lawful
power (in which sense only, of things lawfiU and not com
manded also, we denied your major.) For they that prove
the major, which was not denied by us but in such a sense,
profess to proceed in that sense.
3. Rom. xiv, 1 — 3, speaks of things lawful and not
commanded by your acknowledgment. And we aU along
have professed to debate about things lawful and also com
manded. So that the text, brought by you, is manifestly not
to the purpose of this debate.
4. To receive them in Rom, xiv, is not forthwith to be
understood of immediately receiving to the holy communion,
A A 3

356 Discussion on Kneeling [1661,
And for this reason again that text makes nothing to prove
for their receiving to the holy communion.
When this Answer was given in, it was almost night, and
the company brake up. And because I perceived that it was
hard (especially among such disturbances) to reduce aU in a
moral subject (that must have many words) to an exact
syllogistical form to the last, without confusion; and that
the oidy advantage they could hope for was to trifle pedanti
cally about the form of arguments, I resolved to imitate them
in their last answer, and to take the Uberty of more (explica
tory) words.
The next day I brought in our Reply to their Answer at
large, as here foUoweth.
Oppon. The syUogisms necessarily growing so long, as
that the parts denied cannot be put verbatim into the conclu
sions, without offence to those that are loth to read that
which is pedantic and obscure, we must contract the sense,
and divide our proofs.
The sense of your Answer to the hypothetical syUogism
was, that if we speak of things lawful and not commanded,
then you deny " that those that we must deny communion to
are such as the Holy Ghost commandeth us to receive,
though those were such that are described in the antecedent."
But if we mean such lawful things as are commanded by
lawful power, then you "deny that these are such as the
Holy Ghost requireth us to receive."
To take away this Answer  If your distinction be
frivolous or fallacious, as applied by you in your answer, and
one branch of it, but a begging of the question, then your
answer is vain, and our argument standeth good. But the
antecedent is true. Ergo, so is the consequence.
1. It is frivolous and obscure, and rather making than
removing ambiguity, and ergo useless. 1. It is obscure.
For we know not whether you mean "commanded simply
without any penalty," or " commanded with the enforcement

1661.] at the Lord's Supper. 357
of a penalty." If the latter, whether you mean it of " a
command with such a penalty as we speak against," or " some
other penalty." And whether you meau "commanded by
such as have a lawful power ad hoc," or " only ad aliud."
Your distinction must necessarily be distinguished of before
it can be pertinent, and applied to our case. Ergo, it is
frivolous through obscurity.
If you speak of a command without penalty, or with no
other penalty than such as is consistent with " receiving, not
despising, not judging, and aU the indulgence mentioned in
the text," then your vety distinction granteth us the cause.
But if you speak of "a command with such penalty as is
inconsistent with the said recei-ving and other indulgences,"
then this branch of your distinction, as appUed by you, Resp.
3, is but the begging of the question, it being such com
manding that we are proving to be forbidden by the text 
If there be no power that may command such things any
farther than may'stand with the reception and other indul
gences of the text, then must you not suppose that any power
may otherwise command them. But the antecedent is true.
Ergo, so is the consequent.  For the minor, if Paul and
the resident pastors of the church of Rome had no power to
command such things, further than may stand with the said
reception and indulgences, then no others have such power.
But Paul and the resident pastors of the church of Rome
had no such power. Ergo, there are no others that have
such. And so your distinction being frivolous and fallacious,
the argument stands good.
The sense of our enthymeme was, that " these things being
therefore not commanded, because they ought not to be
commanded any farther than may stand with the said recep
tion and indulgences in the text, God having there forbidden
men any otherwise to command them ; therefore the conse
quence stands good, your distinction being either impertinent,
or granting us the postulatum, or begging the question."
And so we have repUed to your first Answer.
Ad 2"^ Again if you speak of a simple command, enforcing

858 Discussion on Kneeling. [1661.
no farther than consisteth with the foresaid reception and
forbearance, 1. You grant the thing in question. Or thus
3. If there be no such disparity of the cases as may warrant
your disparity of penalty against your brethren, then our
argument stUl stands good. But there is no such disparity
of the cases as may warrant your disparity of penalty against
your brethren. Ergo 
For the minor. If those that Paul speaks of that must be
received and forebome, did sin against the command of God,
in the weakness of their faith, and their erroneous refusal of
things as sinful that were not so to be refused, then there is
no such disparity in the cases, as, Stc For you suppose
those that refuse to kneel, to break the command of man,
and those that Paul spake of brake the command of God,
and yet were to be received and forebome.
But if you here also speak of "a command enforced hy
penalties inconsistent with the said receiving and forbearance,"
we reply.
If our present work be to prove that God hath forbidden
aU such commands, then our proceeding (in proving it) is
regular, and our supposing the things not so commanded
(having proved it) ; and your discourse wholly proceeding of
things so commanded (before you answer our proof that they
ought not to be commanded) is an irregular supposition, and
begging of the question  But our. Sec Ergo  Sec.
Ad Resp. 3'"- If Rom. xiv, 1—3. and xv, 1, Sec, speak
of things lawful, and no farther commanded than may con
sist with " receiving and forbearing ;" forbidding any other
commanding of such things, then the text is most pertinent
to prove that there ought to be no such commands, and that
they are sinful. But the antecedent is true  Ergo 
Ad Resp. 4'"- " Immediately" was no term in our question.
But that Rom. xiv, 1, speaketh of recei-ring to the holy com
munion we prove. If the Holy Ghost command the receiring
of men to that church-communion in whole or in general
without exception, wherof the communion in the holy sacra
ment is a most eminent part, then he thereby commandeth

1661.] Sinfulness of the Liturgy. 359
the receiving them to the holy communion in the sacrament,
as a principal part. But the antecedent is true. Ergo, so is
the consequent.
The sum of our reply is, that when we are proving from
Rom. xiv and xv, that God hath forbidden men to command
such things indifferent on pain of exclusion from communion ;
for you now "to distinguish of things commanded by
authority, and things not commanded," and then to say,
" that if they be not so commanded, then we grant that they
should not be so commanded ; but if they be so commanded,
then God hath not forbidden so to command them," this is
to make the fact of man antecedent to the law of God, or
the law to forbid the fact, in case no man wiU do it, but not
to forbid it if it be done. As if you had said, " God forbade
Darid to commit adultery in case it be not committed by
him, but not in case it be committed."

XXI,
The Discussion on the Sinfulness of the Liturgy.^ — Reliquiae
Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 358-60, CardweU's History
of Conferences, Oxford, 1849, pp. 364-368.
Oppon. [Dr. Pearson, Dr. Gunning, Dr. Sparrow, and Dr.
Pierce.] My assertion is. Nothing contained in the Uturgy
is sinful.This general assertion I am ready to make good in all
particulars, in which our brethren shaU think fit to charge
the liturgy with sinfulness.
J " When we [Dr. Bates, Dr. Jacomb, and Mr. Baxter] were going to our
" disputation. Dr. Pierce asked whether he, that was none of the three deputed
' by them to that service, [i.e. Dr. Pearson, Dr. Gunning, and Dr. Sparrow,]
might join -with the rest : and we told that we cared not how many joined ;
the more the better : for if any one of them could see any evidence of truth
" which the rest did overlook, it would redound to our benefit, who desired
" nothing but the victory of truth."— Reliquise Baxterianse, p. 344.

360 Discussion on the [1661,
And because our brethren have, as yet, by way of disputa
tion charged no other part of it with the imputation of sinful
ness, but that which concerneth kneeUng at the communion,
therefore my first assertion as to that particular is this ; — The
command contained in the liturgy concerning kneeling at the
communion is not sinful.
This truth I am ready to prove by several arguments.
First, This only command " The minister shaU deUver the
communion to the people in their hands kneeUng" is not
sinful : The command contained in the liturgy concerning
kneeling at the communion is this only conimand "The
minister," Sec — Ergo, The command contained in the liturgy
concerning kneeling at the communion is not sinful,
Resp, [Dr. Bates, Dr. Jacomb, and Mr, Baxter] Neg. major.
Oppon. Prob. major.
That command which commandeth only an act in itself
lawful, is not sinful : This only command " The minister shaU
deliver. Sec," commandeth only an act in itself lawful : Ergo,
This only command " The minister shaU deliver," Sec. is not
sinful. Resp. Neg. major et minor,
Oppon, Prob, major.
That command which commandeth an act in itself lawful and
no other act or circumstance unlawful, is not sinful : That
command which commandeth only an act in itself lawful, com
mands an act in itself lawful, and no other act or circumstance
unlawful : Ergo, That command which commandeth only an
act in itself lawful, is not sinful.
Resp. 1 . We deny the major ; and for brevity give a double
reason of our denial : one is, because that may be a sin per
accidens which is not so in itself, and may be unlawfully
commanded, though that accident be not in the command.
Another is, that it may be commanded under an unjust
penalty. 3, We deny the minor for both the same reasons.
Oppon. Prob. minor.
The delivery of the communion to persons kneeUng is an

1661,] Sinfulness of the Liturgy. 361
act in itself lawful : This only command " The minister shaU
dehver. Sec" commandeth only the delivery of the communion
to persons kneeUng: Ergo, This only command " The minister
shaU deliver. Sec," commandeth only an act in itself lawful,
Resp, We distinguish of delivering to persons kneeling : it
signifieth either exclusively (to those and no other,) or not
exclusively, (to others,) In the first sense we deny the major;
in the second sense we deny the minor,
Oppon, You deny both our propositions for two reasons,
both the same : we make good both our propositions, not
withstanding both your reasons.
The major first. That command which commandeth an act
in itself lawfiU, and no other act, whereby any unjust penalty
is enjoined, nor any circumstance, whence, directly or per
accidens, any sin is consequent, which the commander ought
to proride against, is not sinful: that command which
commandeth an act in itself lawfiU, and no other act or
circumstance unlawful, commandeth an act in itself lawful,
and no other act, whereby any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor
any circumstance whence, directly or per accidens, any sin is
consequent, which the commander ought to provide against:
Ergo, That command which commandeth an act in itself lawful,
and no other act or circumstance unlawful, is not sinfiil,
Resp, 1, The proposition denied is not in the conclusion.
The major is denied, because the first act commanded
may be per accidens unlawful, and be commanded by an
unjust penalty, though no other act or circumstance be
such, Oppon. The minor next. That command which com
mandeth an act in itself lawful, and no other act whereby
any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor any circumstance whence,
directly or per accidens, any sin is consequent, which the
commander ought to provide against, commands an act in
itself lawful, and no other act or circumstance unlawful:
That command which commands only an act in itself lawful,
commandeth an act in itself lawful, and no other act whereby
any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor any circumstance whence,

363 Discussion on the [1661,
directly or per accidens, any sin is consequent, which the
commander ought to provide against : Ergo, That command
which commands only an act in itself lawful, commands an act
in itself lawful, and no other act or circumstance unlawful.
Oppon. We prove our major, notwithstanding your reason
aUeged. That command which hath in it all things requisite to the
lawfulness of a command, and particularly cannot be guUty
of commanding an act per accidens unlawful, nor of com
manding an act under an unjust penalty, is not sinful,
notwithstanding your reason alleged : That command which
commandeth an act in itself lawful, and no other act whereby
any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor any circumstance whence,
directly or per accidens, any sin is consequent which the
commander ought to provide against, hath in it aU things
requisite to the lawfulness of a command, and particularly
cannot be guUty of commanding an act per accidens unlawful,
nor of commandmg an act under an unjust penalty : Ergo,
That command which commandeth an act in itself lawful, and
no other act whereby any unjust penalty is enjoined, nor any
circumstance whence, directly or per accidens, any sin is
consequent, which the commander ought to provide against,
is not sinful, notwithstanding your reasons aUeged.
Resp. The minor is denied upon the same reasons, which
you do nothing to remove. Such a command hath not in it
all things requisite to the lawfulness of a command, because
though no other act be commanded, whereby an unjust penalty
is enjoined, yet stiU the first act may be commanded sub
poena injusta : and though no other act or circumstance be
commanded that is a sin per accidens, yet the first act
itself commanded may be a sin per accidens,
Oppon. Either our minor is true, notwithstanding your
reason, or else the first act may be a command commandmg
an unjust punishment, and be an act lawful : or the first act
itself being lawful in itself and all circumstances, may yet
be a sin per accidens, against which the commander ought
to provide: Posterius utrumque falsum, both the latter

Iggl.] Sinfulness of the Liturgy, 363
members are false: Ergo, prius verum, therefore the first
is true. Resp. Neg. major. Because 1. The subject is changed :
you were to have spoken of the first act commanded, and
you speak of the first act commanding, in the first member ;
you should have said " else the first act may be commanded
sub poena injusta, and yet be in itself lawful ; " which is true.
2. Because in the second member, where you should have
spoken only of the commanded circumstances of the act,
you now speak of aU its circumstances, whether commanded
or not.
3. We undertook not to give you aU our reasons ; the minor
may be false upon many other reasons. And were your major
reduced in the points excepted against, we shotUd deny the
minor as to both members.
And we should add our reasons : —
1, That command which commandeth an act in itself lawful
and only such, may yet be sinful privately, by omission of
something necessary, some mode or circumstance.
3. It may sinfuUy restrain, though it sinfuUy command not.
3. It may be sinful in modis, commanding that universally,
or indefinitely, or particularly, or singularly, that should be
otherwise ; though in the circumstances, properly so called, of
the act, nothing were commanded that is sinful.
4. It may through culpable ignorance be appUed to undue
subjects, who are not circumstances : as if a people that have
the plague be commanded to keep assemblies for worship, the
lawgiver being culpably ignorant that they had the plague.
Many more reasons may be given,
Oppon. We make good our major by shewing that the
subject is not changed, thus : If whensoever the first act is
commanded sub poena injusta, and no other act is com
manded whereby any unjust penalty is enjoined (which were
your words), the first act commanding must command an
unjust punishment (which were ours), then we have not
changed the subject : But the antecedent is true, therefore
the consequent.

364 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661.

XXII.
The Reply to the Bishops' Disputants, which was not
answered.^ — Reliquise Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp, 350 — 6,
Whether it be our arguing or your answering that is " lax,
declamatory, pedantic," (as you call it,) and whether your
confident insulting arise from your advantages, or infirmity of
mind, and want of matter for more pertinent answers, are
questions that we shall leave to impartial judges. And we
shall crave pardon if we rather seem to neglect your words,
than to foUow you in these strange vagaries, any further
than mere necessity for saving your readers from the
error into which they are fitted to mislead them doth
require. To prove the consequence of an hypothetical argument by
an enthymeme hath not been used to be accounted culpable.
The proof you shall not want.
That we removed your Answer, by showing your distinction
frivolous, deserved not to be caUed " a popular insinuation,
superfluous," Sec We had two things here to do : the first
was, if we had been at hand with you, to have called on you
for the necessary explanation of your distinction, whether by
" commanded by lawful power," you mean commanded under
no penalty, or commanded under a penalty, consistent with
the receiidng and forbearing mentioned in the text, or com
manding under a penalty inconsistent with this receiving and
forbearance. And whether you mean by "lawful power,"
that which is indeed lawful power ad hoc or only ad aliud ?
As far as we can find in these your papers, you stiU forbear
to explain your distinction. But this we must yet insist
upon, and desire of you, notwithstanding all your excla
mations. ' This paper was dra-wn up by Baxter, and given in on the last day of the
king's commission. — Reliquise Baxterianse, p. 356.

1661.] Reply to the Bishops' Disputants, 365
And then our next work must be to show you that, indeed
your distinction is useless as to the shaking of our argument.
The latter branch of your distinction, " if we speak of things
lawful and commanded," you apply to the denial of our
antecedent or minor, which we prove stands good, notwith
standing this your Answer. Indeed we speak of things lawful
as such, abstracting from command : but we speak of things
which materiaUy were partly not commanded, and partly
commanded. It was not commanded to eat or not eat the
meats in question, to keep the days or not keep them : in
these they went against no law. But to be weak in the faith,
and erroneously to take things lawful to be unlawful, and
things indifferent to be necessary, and to offend a brother by
the use of liberty on the other side, were against the com
mands of God. Now the scope of our argument was to
shew that, if you speak of a command upon the penalty of the
question, your distinction helps you not to shake our argu
ment ; because as it is true that the text speaketh not of things
so commanded, so the thing that we are proving is, that it is
the sense of the text to forbid all such commands. If it be
the sense of the text to forbid such commands, then your
distinction is ftivolous, and the use of it here prevented, and
our argument stands good. But it is the sense of the text to
forbid all such commands- — ergo, the minor we are to prove
hereafter, when we are further called to it by your answers.
But if by "command " you mean any other "command without
penalty," or without the penalty forbidden, we argue — If it be
all one, as to our case, whether it be so commanded or not,
then your distinction is frivolous, and our argument stands
good : but it is all one to our case, whether it be so com
manded or not : ergo, this was the sum of our rejection of
your Answer, which we cannot prosecute tiU you will be per
suaded, as we have required, to explain your distinction ; and
then we shall know what to speak to.
But perhaps you take your vety refusal to explain it, to be
an explanation ; and your words may seem to allow us to
understand you of any command, with this penalty or with-

366 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661.
out, where you say, " That text which speaks of things under
no command at all, is brought nothing to the purpose of the
things which we debate of, being under some command of
lawful authority." But still that text which forbiddeth any
such command, and so taketh away the authority of so com
manding, is something to the purpose, as proving that no
human authority should so command. But this text forbid
deth any such command, and so taketh away the authority of
so commanding : ergo, and as it is a command consistent
with "receiving, forbearing," Sec, that you may be understood
to speak of — 1. If you speak de facto et dejure, and suppose
that there be, and ought to be, no other command, then you
grant us the cause that there should be no command, upon
penalty of being " not received, not forborne," Sec 3. If your
supposition be de facto only, then that commanding which
consisteth vrith God's command " to receive and forbear. Sec,"
altereth not the case. But such is the commanding that now
you are supposed to speak of: ergo, so still your distinguish
ing toucheth not our argument, no more than if you had
distinguished of the instructed and uninstructed, and said
Paul speaketh of those that were uninstructed only ; ergo, he
is not aUeged to the purpose.
Whereas you say " That this penalty, that the minister he
enjoined not to administer the communion to those that dis
obey such command, is no ways inconsistent with the receiving
and all the indulgences of that truth," we shaU prove the
contrary anon in due place.
For appellation to indifferent persons, we also are -willing
such shall judge whether, if your distinction speak of no
commanding but such as is consistent with this " receiring,
forbearing," Sec, it leave us not in possession of the force
of our argument? And if it speak, de jure, that there should
be no other, whether it yield not up the cause ?
It seems our very phrase of " begging the question," bemg
misunderstood by you, hath been taken as your greatest
occasion of insulting. But if we used an unusual phrase, if
that occasioned your mistake, we can beg your pardon, and

1661.] Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. 367
explain it, with less wrong to our cause or ourselves than you
can make such use of it as to yours. We did not dream of
charo-ing you with that begging of the question which is the
faUacy and fault, of the opponent, as it is the begging of a
principle undertaken to be proved : we know this is not inci
dent to the respondent, nor to be imputed to him. We
charged you with no such thing, though we confess our
phrase was Uable to your misinterpretation. But we crave
your wiUingness to understand that we were proving that
such things may not be by rulers enjoined or commanded
under the penalty of exclusion from communion; and that the
latter branch of your distinction hath the nature of a reason
of your denial of the proposition denied, viz., because the
things are commanded; and that by our telling you of
begging the question, we mean but this much : — 1. That you
give us a reason implied in a distinction, which is but equal to
a simple negation, and is not (we say not the giring a suffici
ent reason, but) the giving of a reason indeed at all.
2. That it is but equal to an unsavory denial of the
mere conclusion. 3. Yea, that it is a preposterous re
duction of the rule to the action, and of the former to the
latter. Suppose we had thus phrased our proposition.
" Rulers themselves are here forbidden to enjoin or command
the rejecting of such as are only weak in the faith. Sec. ; " and
you should distinguish and say — "either rulers have com-
have, manded the rejecting them for such things, or not ; if they
then we deny the proposition," that is, " if they have done
it, they may do it, and the text that forbids it, is to be under
stood of such rulers as have not already forbidden it : " teU
us how you will call such distinguishing yourselves, and you
may understand our meaning. It is all one if you put your
exception into the description of the fault : and when we say
God here forbiddeth governors themselves to make any com
mands or injunctions for rejecting such as are only weak in
the faith, and mistake about indifferent things ; and you dis
tinguish thus — " either the weak offend against such commands
or not; if they do sin against such commands, then the text

368 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661,
forbiddeth not the making of such commands : " give this
kind of distinguishing and answering a proper name yourselves.
Or if to our proposition you say, " the indifferent things are
commanded by the governors, or not ; if they be, then. God
forbiddeth not the governor to command the rejection of the
persons from communion; " that is, "though God forbidgovem-
ors to make laws for rejecting such as err about indifferent
things only, yet that is on supposition that the said governors
do not first command those indifferent things; for if once
they command them, they may then command the rejection
of those that break them : " but, on the contraty, he that for
biddeth the rejection of such, simply and antecedently to the
laws of men, forbiddeth the rejecting of them, mediately or
immediately, and forbiddeth the framing of such commands
as shall be means of the prohibited rejection. But God in
the text forbiddeth the rejection of such, simply and antece
dently to the laws of men : ergo, he forbiddeth the rejecting
of them, mediately or immediately, and forbiddeth the
framing of such commands as shall be means of the pro
hibited rejection.
Though we have thus taken off your Answer, we shall
give you fuller proof in the end of what you can reason
ably expect.
You next answer this argument of ours. — " If there be no
power that may command such things, any further than may
stand with the reception and other indulgences of the text,
then must you not suppose that any power may otherwise
command them. But the antecedent is true: ergo  "
Here you deny the minor, which I prove thus : —
If none have power to break the laws of God, then there is
no power that may command such things, any further than
may stand with the reception, and other indulgences, of the
text. But none have power to break the laws of God : ergo,
there is no power that may commaud such things, any
further than may stand with the reception, and other in
dulgences of the text.
We had used before another argument to prove the minor,

1661.] Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. 369
thus — "If Paul, and the resident pastors of the church of
Rome, had no power to command such things, farther than
may stand with the said reception and indulgence, then no
others have such power : but Paul, and the resident pastors
of the church of Rome, had no such power— erjco, there are
no others that have such." Here you deny the assumption,
which is proved by the foregoing medium. If Paul, and the
resident pastors of the church of Rome, had no power to
cross the will of God, then they had no power to command
such things, farther than may stand with the said reception
and indulgence: but Paul, and the resident pastors of the
church of Rome, had no power to cross the will of God : ergo —
You vainly call the explication of our enthymeme, in
plainer words, " the proving of its obscure consequence by the
more obscure consequence of another," and hereupon insult.
But we shall take leave to leave you to your humour, in such
things. If it offend you, blot out the enthymeme, seeing you
have reply enough without it ; or if you will be still tempted
to insult tiU you are delivered from the enthymeme, you have
our sense in this argument.
If the things spoken of by the apostle were not only not
commanded, but forbidden to be commanded, any further
than may stand with the reception and indulgence of the
text, then there is no such disparity in the cases as may
shake our consequence, though with us such things are
commanded. But the antecedent is true; ergo, so is the
consequent. To your second Answer, we first again endeavoured to
bring you to explain your distinction, what commanding you
mean ; but have no return to that but silence, which we take
to be tergiversation.
Then we argued thus — "If there be no such disparity
of the cases as may warrant your disparity of penalty against
your brethren, then our argument still stands good. But
there is no such disparity of the case as may warrant your
disparity of penalty against your brethren;" ergo —
You deny the minor, which we proved thus. — "If those that
B B

370 Reply of the Bishops' Disputants. [1661.
Paul speaks of, that must be received and forborne, did sin
against the command of God, iii the weakness of their faith,
and their erroneous refusing of things as sinful, that were not
to be so refused, then there is no such disparity in the cases
as," Sec. " But," Sec, ergo—
Here you deny the consequence, which we prove thus — If
the sin of those that dare not kneel be no greater than theirs
that were weak in the faith, and refused things lawful as un
lawful, and took things indifferent as necessary, and hereby
gratified the Jews and other enemies of the church, and tres
passed on the church's liberties purchased by Christ, and yet
became the censurers of the strong ; and if the scruple of
kneeling have as fair excuses as the other, then the con
sequence is good, and there is no such disparity in the cases
as may warrant your penalty. But the antecedent is true;
ergo so is the consequent.
We shall prosecute the comparison further anon.
We added here this reason in brief. " For you suppose
those that refuse to kneel to break the command of man, and
those that Paul spoke of broke the command of God, and
yet were to be received and forborne;" ergo there is no such
disparity as may warrant your penalty. Here you add to our
words, " the command of man," the word " only," and say,
that else we do but trifle. We reply, that by adding your
own words, and then persuading us to own them lest we
trifle, you do worse than trifle, and your gross injustice hath
no fair pretence, being against the light of our conclusion and
undertaking ; we were but to prove that there was no such
disparity, i.e., that the fault of those that kneel not, was not
greater, and so much greater as might warrant your penalty.
Therefore as you will acknowledge kneeling at the sacrament
to be immediately but the command of man, and weakness of
faith, error, censuring, Sec, to be immediately against a
command of God, (which yet we spoke of but for just de
nomination, and not to prove a disparity to our advantage,)
so if we prove no disparity against us, we do what we under
take. And that a sin against the command of God immedi-

1661.] Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. 371
ately, is as well worthy of punishment as a sin againt the
command of man immediately cateris paribus is true, and all
that we affirmed, and aU that we were bound to prove.
Yet you importune us to answer you a question — " Whether
is not the erroneous refusing of lawful things commanded by
lawful authority, as sinful as the refusing of things as sinful
that were not to be so refused?" W^e answer you — 1. But
with them and you it is the thing in controversy, whether they
are lawful things or not? 3. If they be, what then ? Why
you say, " If so, then, even according to your own reasoning,
if you reason at all, these refusers to kneel sin against God,
and the rule yourselves lay down thereof, as well as those
Rom. xiv." And what then ? Is there therefore a disparity
because they do alike ? Are such as these the occasions of
your insulting? We shall then suspect you have some gross
mistake, whenever we flnd you thus insulting. But you say,
" That ergo we did fallaciously insinuate the one to break the
command of God, and the other to break the command of
men." But really is it not so ? If you allow not the distinc
tion inter leges divinas et humanas, you know how singular
you are, and what consequences will foUow. If you do, why
may we not use such denominations ? But you say of the
sinfulness, " It is most evidently common to the former with
the latter." 1. If the controversy be yielded you, it is so,
2. And what then? Because it is common, ergo there is
such a disparity as may warrant your grievous penalty. We
only prove no such disparity, and we are notably confuted by
your proof that the sinfulness is common, that is, by yielding
what we prove.
Next, in many words you tell us of a disparity. 1. Because
in our case kneeling is commanded. 3. Because the things
are antecedently helps to piety. To which we have before
answered: — 1. God hath forbidden all commands of such
things, inconsistent with the reception and -forbearance in
question. 3. Their sin of weakness in faith and error, were
also against commands. 3. We shall show greater reasons
of disparity on the other side. 4. The thing in question
B B 3

373 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661,
(kneeling) hath nothing antecedent to the command to make
the refusal of it sinful, no, nor [more] meet than other
gestures. Of which after.
To your third Answer we replied — " If Rom. xiv and xv
speak of things lawful and no further commanded than may
consist with ' receiving and forbearing,' forbidding any other
commanding of such things ; then the text is most pertinent
to prove that there ought to be no such commands, and that
they are sinful. But the antecedent is true ; " ergo —
Here you tell us of " manifest fallacy," of " advantageous
equivocation," or else a " gross ignoratio elenchi," in the con
clusion; words easy to be uttered by you. But if you will
" profess all along," as you say, " to proceed or debate only
of things lawful and commanded by lawful power ; " that is,
. lawfully, when our very question is, " Whether such things
can be so commanded ? " and we are proving that they cannot ;
and you will call it an ignoratio elenchi if we will not grant
you aU in question, but will endeavour to prove the contrary
to what you would have granted ; this is that which we before
called even the respondents' begging of the question, when he
accuseth the opponent for pro-ring what he denieth, and would
put that into the subject as not to be questioned, which is in
the predicate, and we are disproving, 3. And remember that
in your first paper we were not called to dispute the parity or
disparity of the offences : ergo, by " such things," we mean
such things as are mentioned Rom. xiv and xv. And our
conclusion there goeth no further, that matter being further
to be carried on in its proper place.
To your fourth answer we replied — " That immediately was
no term in our question," You say you may distinguish;
true, but you cannot bind us to prove that the men that we
prove are to be received to communion, must be immediately
received, when we never affirmed it, as long as you teU us not
whether you speak de immediatione temporis, vel conditionis
vel status, or what you mean by immediately. In regard of
time, no man in the church is immediately to be received to
the sacrament, till the very time come.

1661.] Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. 373
3, We argued — " If the Holy Ghost command the receiv
ing of men to that church-communion in general without
exception, whereof the communion in the holy sacrament is a
most eminent part, then he thereby commandeth the receiving
them to the communion in the sacrament. But, Sec. Ergo," Sec
Your Answer signifieth that it is a receiving first to instruc
tion, and not to the sacrament, till some change be made ;
you teU us not what: or that it is such a receiving as
may consist with denying them the communion. We shall
now, therefore, prove in order these two propositions, which
are to be next proved.
1. That the reception that Paul speaketh of is such
as is not consistent with denial of the sacrament for those
faults. 2. That there is no such disparity between their faults and
those that refuse to kneel at the sacrament, as may warrant
your disparity of penalty or usages.
The first we shall prove — 1. From the text before us.
2. By other Scriptures. 3. By testimony of expositors,
especially those of your own way in other things.
I. So to receive one another as Christ received us to the
glory of God the Father, and this not to doubtful disputation
(or not to judge their doubtful thoughts), and not to despise
or judge one another, but to take each other for such as do
what we do to the Lord ; and let every man be fully per
suaded in his own mind ; and so as to distinguish the points
that we differ about from those in which God's kingdom doth
consist, in which whosoever serveth Christ is acceptable to
God, and should be approved of men ; and so as to follow the
things that edify and make for peace, and not lay a stumbling-
block or occasion of falling in our brother's way, or destroy
him by the uncharitable use of our liberty, knowing it is sin
to him that esteemeth it sin ; but to forbear ourselves to use
those things in controversy whereby our brother stumbleth
or is offended, because he is damned if he use them doubt
ingly ; and therefore to have the belief of their lawfulness to
ourselves before God, and to bear with the infirmities of the

374 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661.
weak, and please them to their edification, and not to please
ourselves, that so being like-minded one towards another, that
with one mind and one mouth we may glorify God : we say
thus to receive is not consistent with the denial of communion
in the sacrament for those faults. But such was the receiving
required by the apostle, Rom xiv and xv. Ergo -
He that can seriously ponder all these expressions, and the
scope of the Holy Ghost, and yet can believe that aU this
receiring is but such as consisteth with forbidding them com
munion in the Lord's supper, which then was so great a part
of the daily communion of the church ; and also may consist
with the further process against people and ministers to ex
communication, and prohibition to preach the gospel, which
is now pleaded for in our case ; is of so strange a temperature
of understanding, as that we can have Uttle hope by any
Scripture evidence to convince him.
3. When the Holy Ghost requireth men in general to
receive others as church members into church-communion,
with^the affection and tenderness here expressed, and doth
not except any ordinary part of church communion, it is not
lawful for us to interpret it of such a receiring as excludeth
the principal part of ordinary church-communion.
But in Rom. xiv and xv, the Holy Ghost requireth men
in general to receive others as church members into church-
communion, with the affection and tenderness here ex
pressed, and doth not except any ordinary part of church-
communion. Ergo, it is not lawful for us to interpret it of such
a receiving as excludeth the principal part of ordinary
communion. The reason of the major is, because as the whole containeth
aU the parts, so when the whole or general is commanded, if
men may take liberty to except the v^ery principal part, where
the law doth not except it, then no commands can be in
telligible, or such interpreters may have liberty to make void
the law at their own pleasure. As when it is said, " Honour
the king," and "Let every soul be subject to the higher

1661.] Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. 375
powers," and "resist not," Sec, if men may take liberty, by
interpreting, to except the very principal part of honour, and
the principal persons from subjection, and the principal case
from "resist not," it will be no just interpretation. If these
same persons had a command in general, to " worship God,"
or "hold communion with the church," if they themselves
should interpret it so as to exclude worshipping God in the
sacrament of the eucharist, or holding communion with the
church therein, we doubt not but they would be judged unjust
distinguishers. The minor is granted us by our reverend brethren, who
here openly confess that the text speaketh of church mem
bers, and of receiving them to church-communion, though
they unwarrantably interpret it of such a communion as ex
tendeth not to the sacrament of the eucharist.
3. If the text, Rom. xiv and xv, forbid not one part to put
away others from communion in the sacrament of the
eucharist, then it forbiddeth not the other party to separate
fi'om their brethren in the sacrament of the eucharist.
But the consequent is false : ergo so is the antecedent.
The reason of the consequence of the major is, because if
it speak not of that part of communion to one party, it can
not speak of it to the other, it being plainly the same
communion that it speaketh of to both.
The minor is ordinarily granted us by the dissenters, when
they apply this text against separatists, that upon the account
of ceremonies and things indifferent, condemn the church,
and judge their brethren, and separate from their communion
in the eucharist.
II. From other Scriptures. If in aU the Word of God
there be no mention of such a receiving into church-com
munion (much less with all these prohibitions of judging,
despising, offending. Sec), as consisteth with rejecting from
communion in the eucharist, of any person naturally
capable, then the word " receiving " is not to be so expounded
here. But in aU the word of God there is no mention of such a

376 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661,
receiving into church-communion (much less with all these
prohibitions. Sec.) as consisteth with rejecting from com
munion in the eucharist, of any person naturally capable.
Ergo, the word " receiving," is not to be so expounded
here. The reason of the consequence of the major is, because
here is no apparent ground in this text for us to understand
the receiving spoken of, as different from what is mentioned
in all other places of the Holy Scripture : and if without
any such ground we should allow ourselves a singular interpre
tation, we should open a way to men to make what they
please of Scripture.
The minor being to be proved by an induction of all
particular texts, it will be the briefer way for the re
spondent to instance in any one which he thinks hath
such a sense, and then we shall be ready to prove the
contrary. III. For the sense of expositors we shall begin vrith the
learned Dr. Hammond, who expounded the text of church-
communion, and such communion as cannot exist with ex
communicating from the sacrament of the eucharist, or the
other heavy penalties upon ministers and people which we now
plead against, as may be seen in these his plain expressions.
"Verse 1. And for the preserving of that Christian charity
among all, mentioned solemnly, chap, xiii, 8, 9, 10 {vid. loc).
I shall enlarge to give these rules. The Jewish believers — on
the other side, the Gentile believers seeing the Jewish stand
upon such things — are apt to separate ; and so, betwixt one
and other, the communion is like to be broken. The scrupu
lous or erroneous Judaizer do the Gentiles not reject, but
receive to your communion; yet not so that he thereby
thinks himself encouraged or authorised to quarrel with other
men's resolutions, and to condemn others. Verse 3. The
scrupulous Judaizer must not reject and cast out of his com
munion the Gentile Christian, for God hath admitted him
into his church (without laying that yoke upon him), as a
servant iuto his family, and he is not to be excluded by the

1661.J Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. 377
Judaizer for such things as these. Verse 4. What commis
sion hast thou, O Jewish Christian, to judge God's servant,
received and owned by him, to exclude him out of the
church? God is able to clear him, if he please, and he
certainly wUl, haring, by receiving him into his family, given
him this liberty. Verse 5. In such things every man must
act by his own, and not by another man's judgment or con
science, what he is verUy persuaded he ought to do ; and
therefore unity and charity ought not to be broken by you
for such things. Verses 6, 7. And this sure is well done on
both sides ; for no man of us is to do what he himself likes
best, but what he thinks is most acceptable to God. Verse 9.
And aU the fruit of Christ's death, and suffering, and resur-.
rection, which accrues to him, is only this — that he may have
power and dominion over us all, to command or give what
liberty he pleaseth. Verse 10. But why dost thou Jewish
condemn the Gentile Christian, or exclude him from thy
communion, because he useth his Christian liberty ? Sec. Or
thou, GentUe Christian, why dost thou think it a piece of
senseless stupidity in the Jew to abstain, and thereupon des
pise and vilify him, which also is a kind of judging him?
Whereas, indeed, neither of you is to be the judge of the
other, but Christ of you both. Verse 13. Do not any longer
censure and separate from one another's communion for such
things as these. Verse 14. The persuasion of its being for
bidden him is, as long as he is so persuaded, sufficient to
make it to him unlawful to use that liberty : see ver. 15, 16.
Verse 17. For Christianity consists not in such external
matters, but in mercifulness, and peaceableness, and delight
to do good one to another ; not dividing, and hating, and ex
communicating one another. Verse 19. Lotus most zealously
attend to those things which may thus preserve peace among
all sorts of Christians, though of different persuasions.
Verse 30. Do not thou, for so inconsiderable a matter as
eating is, or because another will not, or dares not, make use
of that Christian liberty, disturb that peace, that unity which
God hath wrought. Verse 31. It is not charitable to make

378 Reply to the Bishops' Disputants. [1661,
use of any part of Christian liberty, when by this so doing any
other man is kept from receiving the faith, or any way
wounded or hurt, i. e. brought to any kind of sin. Verse 33,
And, indeed, for the scrupulous Jew, there is little reason he
should be so ill-used for his daring [not] to eat, when he thinks
himself otherwise obliged; for it were a damning sin, for
which his own conscience already condemns him, should he
eat or do any indifferent thing, as long as he thinks in
conscience that it is not so. Chap, xv, 5, 6, 7. And that
God, for whom we ought to suffer, give you the grace of
unity and charity, such as Christ commanded and expects
from you, that ye may join unanimously Jews and GentUes
into one, and assembling together, worship and serve the
Lord, in all unity of affections and form of words. Where
fore, in all humility of condescension and kindness, embrace
and succour one another, help them up when they are fallen,
instead of despising and driring them from your communion,
after the example of Christ's usage towards men, who came
from heaven and laid down his life to relieve us — and
there is nothing by which God is more glorified than this."
If all this may consist with rejecting from all com
munion in the eucharist, and afterwards excommunicating,
suspending, silencing, imprisoning. Sec, we understand not
English. 3. In like manner Grotius, in loc. cap. xiv. 1. Contra
vocati e Gentibus, conscii data per Christum libertatis, Judaos
Judaice viventes a sua communione volebant excludere, (ii, 18,
31) unde secuturum eral schisma  Huic malo ut occurrat
Paulus, medium institit viam, et Judaos qui in Christum cre-
diderant, monet ita suam sequantur opinionem, ut a damnandis
crimine impietatis qui aliter sentiebant, abstineant. Ex genti
bus vero vocatos, ne illorum quamvis Judaice viventium
communionem defugiant, et ut imperitos spernant. Ylooc'ktx.yii-
Q,avia^i. Societate Ecclesia, sicut qui hospitio aliquem
excipiunt, dicuniur turn Tpo(TKu[/jQdi>eii/, (Acts xriii, 36;
xxviii, 3.) Ecclesia enim domui comparatur supra (xi, 35.)
Sumitur hac admonitio ex iis qua de Christo dicta;

1661. J Petition to the King. 379
(Matt, xii, 20.) 2. Tolerandi sunt ii qui ab omnibus animatis
abstinendum putant, quod quidam faciebant religione quddam.
Cap. XV, 6. "Ifa o^/jo^iv^alov 'm m sopjuri Soga^^jrs rov
Qeoi/, id est, ut cum Deum laudatis, eique preces. funditis
facialis id non tantum eodem verborum sono — sed et animo
plena mulua delectionis, sine contemptu, sine odio. Habes hanc
vocem 0(Jt0^viJbuhov (Act. ii, 46), ubi forma est ecclesia perfectis-
sima, Adde ad ejus vocis explicationem id quod est. Act. iv, 32,
(aU which includeth communion in the eucharist.) — Verse 7.
Nolite ob res tales, alii alios a fraternitate abscindere.

XXIII.
Petition to the King at the Close of the Conference. — Reliquise
Baxterianse, by Sylvester, pp. 366 — 8.'
To the King's most excellent Majesty. The due account
and humble Petition of us Ministers of the Gospel lately
Commissioned for the Review and Alteration of the
Liturgy. May it please your Majesty ;
When this distempered nation, wearied with its own
contentions and divisions, did groan for unity and peace, the
wonderful proridence of the most righteous God appearing
for the removal of impediments, their eyes were upon your
majesty, as the person bom to be, under God, the centre of
their concord, and taught by affliction to break the bonds of
the afflicted, and by experience of the sad effects of men's
uncharitableness and passions, to restrain all from violence
and extremities, and keeping moderation and mediocrity, the
oil of charity and peace. And when these your subjects'
desires were accomplished in your majesty's peaceable posses
sion of your throne, it was the joy and encouragement of the
sober and religious, that you began the exercise of your
' Printed as originally drawn up by Baxter. — Reliquise Baxterianse, p. 365.

330 Petition to the King. [1661.
government with a proclamation full of Christian zeal against
debauchery and profaneness, declaring also your dislike of
"those who under pretence of affection to your majesty and
your service, assume to themselves the liberty of revUing,
threatening, and reproaching others, to prevent that recon
ciliation and union of hearts and affections, which can only
with God's blessing, make us rejoice in each other." Our
comforts also were carried on by your majesty's early and
ready entertainment of motions for accommodation in these
points of discipline and worship in which we were disagreed,
and your professed resolutions to draw us together by mutual
approaches, and publishing your healing Declaration, which
was received with the thanks of your House of Commons, and
the applause of the people, and the special joy of those that
longed for concord and tranquiUity in the church. In which
your majesty declareth so much satisfaction in the founda
tions of agreement already laid, as that you "should think
yourself very unfortunate, and suspect that you are defective
in the administration of government, if any superstructures
should shake these foundations, and contract or lessen the
blessed gift of charity, which is a vital part of Christian
religion." And as in the said gracious Declaration, your
majesty resolved to "appoint an equal number of learned
divines of both persuasions to review the liturgy, and to
make such alterations as shaU be thought most necessary,
and some additional forms (in the Scripture phrase as near as
may be) suited unto the nature of the several parts of wor
ship ; and that it be left to the minister's choice, to use one
or other at his discretion;" so in accomplishment thereof,
your majesty among others, directed your commission unto
us for the review of "the several directions, rules, and forms
of prayer, and things in the said Book of Common Prayer
contained :" and " if occasion be, to make such reasonable
and necessary alterations, corrections, and amendments
therein, as by and between us shall be agreed upon to he
needful or expedient for the giving of satisfaction to tender
consciences, and the restoring and continuance of peace and

1661.] Petition to the King. 3gl
unity in the churches under your protection and government,"
 and what we " agree upon as needful or expedient to be
done, for the altering, diminishing, or enlarging the said
Book of Common Prayer, or any part thereof, forthwith to
certify and present it in writing" to your majesty.
In obedience to this your majesty's commission, we met
with the Right Reverend Bishops, who required of us, that
before any personal debates, we should " bring in writing, all
our Exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer, and all
the additional forms which we desired," Both which we
performed; and received from them an Answer to the first,
and returned them our full Reply. The last week of our
time, being designed to personal conference, was at the will
of the Right Reverend Bishops spent in a particular dispute
by three of each part, about the sinfulness of one of the
injunctions, from which we desired to be free ; and in some
other conference on the by. .And though the account which
we are forced to give your majesty of the issue of our con
sultations is that, no agreements are subscribed by us, to be
offered your majesty, according to your expectation; and
though it be none of our intent to cast the least unmeet
reflections upon the Right Reverend Bishops and learned
brethren who think not meet to yield to any considerable
alterations to the ends expressed in your majesty's commis
sion ; yet we must say, that it is some quiet to our minds that
we have not been guUty of your majesty's and your subjects'
disappointments, and that we account not your majesty's
gracious commission, nor our labour lost, having peace of
conscience in the discharge of our duties to God and you :
that we have been the seekers and followers of peace, and
have earnestly pleaded, and humbly petitioned for it; [and
offered for it any price below the offence of God Almighty,
and the wounding or hazard of our own, or of the people's
souls; and that we have in season borne our testimony
against those extremes, which at last will appear to those
that do not now discern it, to have proceeded from uncharit
able mistake, and tended to the division and trouble of the

383 Petition to the King. [1661,
church : that whatever shall become of charity, unity, and
concord, our life, our beauty, and our bands, our consciences
tell us we have not deserted them, nor left any probable
means unattempted, which we could discern within our
power.] 2 And we humbly beseech your majesty to believe,
that we own no principles of faction or disobedience, nor
patronize the errors or obstinacy of any. It is granted us by
all, that nothing should be commanded us by man, which is
contrary to the Word of God : that if it be, and we know it,
we are bound not to perform it, God being the absolute
universal sovereign; that we must use all just means to dis
cern the wiU of God, and whether the commands of man be
contrary to it: that if the command be sinful, and any,
through the neglect of sufflcient search, shall judge it lawful,
his culpable error excuseth not his doing of it from being
sin ; and therefore as a reasonable creature must needs have
a judgment of discerning, that he may rationally obey, so are
we with the greatest care and diligence to exercise it in the
greatest things, even the obeying of God and the saving of
our souls; and that where a strong probabUity of great sin
and danger lieth before us, we must not rashly run on with
out search ; and that to go against conscience, even where it
is mistaken, is sin and danger to him that erreth. And on
the other side we are agreed that, in things no way against
the laws of God, the commands of our governors must be
obeyed : that if they command what God forbids, we must
patiently submit to suffering; and every soul must be subject
to the higher powers, for conscience sake, and not resist :
that public judgment, civil, or ecclesiastical, belongeth only
to public persons, and not to any private man : that no man
must be causelessly and pragraaticaUy inquisitive into the
reasons of his superior's commands ; nor by pride and self-
conceitedness exalt his own understanding above its worth
and office; but all to be modestly and humbly self- suspicious:

" This passage between brackets was left out in the Address as presented
to the king.

1661 j Petition to the King. 383
that none must erroneously pretend God's law against the
just command of his superior, nor pretend the doing of his
duty to be sin : that he who suspecteth his superior's com
mands to be against God's laws, must use all means for full
information, before he settle in a course of disobeying them :
and that he who indeed discovereth anything commanded to
be sin, though he must not do it, must manage his opinion
with very great tenderness and care of the public peace, and
the honour of his governors. These are our principles. If
we are otherwise represented to your majesty we are misre
presented. If we are accused of contradicting them, we
humbly crave that we may never be condemned till we are
heard. It is the desire of our souls to contribute our parts
and interests to the utmost, for the promoting of holiness,
charity, unity, and obedience to rulers in all lawful things.
But if we should sin against God, because we are com
manded, who shall answer for us, or save us from his justice ?
And we humbly crave, that it may be no unjust grievance of
our dissent, that thereby we suppose superiors to err ; seeing
it is but supposing them to be men not yet in heaven ; and
this may be imputed to every one that differeth in opinion
from another. And we beseech your majesty to believe that,
as we seek no greater matters in the world than our daily
bread, with liberty to preach the gospel, and worship God
according to his Word and the practice of the primitive
purest church, so we hope it is not through pusillanimity and
overmuch tenderness of suffering that we have pleaded so
much for the avoiding of suffering to ourselves or others.
May none of our sufferings hinder the prosperity of the
church, and the good of souls [of men ! May not our dread
sovereign, the breath of our nostrils, be tempted by mis
representations to distaste such as are faithful, and unawares
to wrong the interest of Christ, and put forth his hand to
afflict those that Christ would have him cherish, lest their
head should be provoked to jealousy and offence ! May not
the land of our nativity languish in divisions, nor be filled with
the groans of those that are shut out of the holy assemblies.

384 Petition to the King. [1661.
and those that want the necessary breaking of the bread of
life, nor be disappointed of its expected peace and joy !
Let not these things befall us,J ' and we have enough. And
we suppose those that think the persons inconsiderable in
number and quality for whom we plead, will not themselves
believe that we have done this for popular applause. This
were not so much to seek the reward of hypocrites, as to
play the game of fools ; seeing the applause of inconsiderable
men can be but inconsiderable ; and we know ourselves that
we are like thus to offend those that are not inconsiderable.
The Lord, that searcheth hearts, doth know that it is not so
much the avoiding of suffering to ourselves or any particular
persons that is the end of our endeavours (though this were
no ambitious end,) as the peace and welfare of the church and
kingdoms under your majesty's government. We know that,
supposing them that are for the ceremonies to be as pious
and charitable as the rest, it cannot so much offend them
that another man forbeareth them, as it must offend that
other to be forced to use them : and we know that conscien
tious men wUl not consent to the practice of things in their
judgments unlawful, when those may yield that count the
matters but indifferent.
And for the management of this treaty, it being agreed at
our first meeting, that nothing be reported as the words or
sense of either part, but what is by them delivered in writing,
we humbly crave that your majesty receive no more as ours;
and that what is charged on any particular person, he may
be answerable for himself. And though the reverend bishops
have not had time to consider of our Additions to the liturgy,
and of our Reply, that yet they may be considered before a
determination be made. And though we seem to have
laboured in vain, we shall yet lay this wbrk of reconcUiation
and peace at the feet of your majesty, beseeching you to
prosecute such a blessed resolution till it attain success. We
^ This passage between brackets was left out in the Address as presented
to the king.

1661.] Petition to the King. 385
must needs believe, that when your majesty took our consent
to a liturgy, to be a foundation that would infer our concord,
you meant not that we should have no concord, but by con
senting to this Uturgy without any considerable alteration.
And when you comforted us with your resolution to draw us
together, by yielding on both sides in what we could, you
meant not that we should be the boat, and they the bank
that must not stir. And when your majesty commanded us
by your letters patents to treat about such alteratibns as are
"needful or expedient for giving satisfaction to tender con
sciences, and the restoring and continuance of peace and
unity," we rest assured that it was not your sense, that those
tender consciences were to be forced to practise all which
they judged unlawful, and not so much as a ceremony abated
them. Or that our treaty was only to convert either part to
the opinion of the other ; and that aU our hopes of concord
or liberty consisted only in disputing the bishops into non
conformity, or coming in evety ceremony to their minds.
FinaUy, as your majesty, under God, is the protection
whereto your people fly, and as the same necessities still
remain, which drew forth your gracious Declaration, we most
humbly and earnestly beseech your majesty, that the benefits
of the said Declaration may be continued to your people, and
in particular, "that none be punished or troubled for not
using the Common Prayer, tUl it be effectuaUy reformed,"
and the additions made as there expressed.
We crave your majesty's pardon for the tediousness of this
Address, and shaU wait in hope, that so great a calamity of
your people, as would foUow the loss of so many able faithful
ministers as rigorous impositions would cast out, shaU never
be recorded in the histoty of your reign : but that these
impediments of concord being forborne, your kingdoms may
flourish in piety and peace, and this may be the signal honour
of your happy government, and your joy in the day of your
accounts. Which is the prayer of
Your majesty's faithful and obedient subjects.

c c

386 Act of Uniformity. [1662,
XXIV.
The Act of Uniformity.
An Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers and Administra
tion of Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies : and
for establishing the form of making, ordaining, and conse
crating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in the Church of
England,
Whereas, in the first year of the late Queen Elizabeth, there
was one uniform order of common service and prayer, and of
the administration of sacraments, rites, and ceremonies of the
Church of England (agreeable to the Word of God, and
usage of the primitive church) compUed by the reverend
bishops and clergy, set forth in one book, entitled " The Book
of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments,
and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England,"
and enjoined to be used by Act of Parliament, holden in the
said first year of the said late queen, entitled An Act for
Uniformity of Common Prayer and serrice in the Church,
and administration of the sacraments, very comfortable to all
good people desirous to live in Christian conversation, and
most profitable to the estate of this realm, upon the which
the mercy, favour, and blessing of Almighty God is in no
wise so readily and plentifully poured as by common prayers,
due using of the sacraments, and often preaching of the gospel,
with devotion of the hearers. And yet this, notwith
standing, a great number of people in divers parts of this
realm, following their own sensuality, and living without
knowledge, and due fear of God, do wUfuUy and schismati-
cally abstain and refuse to come to their parish churches,
and other public places where common prayer, administra
tion of the sacraments, and preaching of the Word of God is
used upon the Sundays and other days ordained and appointed
to be kept and observed as holy days : And whereas, by

1662.] ^ct of Uniformify. ZS7
the great and scandalous neglect of the ministers in using the
said order or liturgy so set forth and enjoined as aforesaid,
great mischiefs and inconveniences, during the time of the
late unhappy troubles, have arisen and grown, and many
people have been led into factions and schisms, to the great
decay and scandal of the reformed religion of the Church of
liliigland, and to the hazard of many souls. For prevention
whereof in time to come, for settling the peace of the church,
and for aUaying the present distempers which the indisposition
flf the time hath contracted, the king's majesty (according
to his declaration of the five-and-twentieth of October, one
thousand six himdred and sixty,) granted his commission,
under the great seal of England, to several bishops and other
dirines, to review the Book of Common Prayer, and to prepare
such alterations and additions as they thought fit to offer. And
afterwards the convocations of both the provinces of Canter
bury and York, being by his majesty called and assembled,
(and now sitting) his majesty hath been pleased to authorize
and require the presidents of the said convocation, and other
the bishops and clergy of the same, to review the said Book
of Common Prayer, and the book of the form and manner of
the making and consecrating of bishops, priests, and deacons :
and that, after mature consideration, they should make such
additions and alterations in the said books respectively, as to
them should seem meet and convenient ; and should exhibit
and present the same to his majesty in writing, for his
further allowance or confirmation; since which time, upon
fuU and mature deliberation, they the said presidents, bishops,
and clergy of both prorinces, have accordingly reriewed the
said books, and have made some alterations which they think
fit to be inserted to the same ; and some additional prayers
to the said Book of Common Prayer, to be used upon proper
and emergent occasions; and have exhibited and presented
the same unto his majesty in writing, in one book, entitled
"The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the
Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,
according to the use of the Church of England, together
c c 2

^88 Act of Uniformity. [1663
with the Psalter or Psalms of David, pointed as they are to
be sung or said in churches ; and the form and manner of
making, ordaining, and consecrating of bishops, priests, and
deacons." All which his majesty having duly considered,
hath fully approved and allowed the same, and recommended
to this present parliament, that the said Books of Common
Prayer, and of the form of ordination and consecration of
bishops, priests, and deacons, with the alterations and additions
which have been so made and presented to his majesty by the
said convocations, be the book which shaU be appointed to be
used by all that officiate in aU cathedral and coUegiate
churches and chapels, and in all chapels or colleges, and halls
in both the Universities, and the colleges of Eton and Win
chester, and in all parish churches and chapels within the
kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, and town of Ber
wick-upon-Tweed, and by all that make or consecrate bishops,
priests, or deacons, in any of the said places, under such
sanctions and penalties as the Houses of Parliament shall
think fit.
II. Now in regard that nothing conduceth more to the
settling of the peace of this nation (which is desired of all
good men) nor to the honour of our reUgion, and the propa
gation thereof, than a universal agreement in the public wor
ship of Almighty God, and to the intent that every person
within this realm, may certainly know the rule to which he is
to conform in public worship, and administration of sacra
ments, and other rites and ceremonies of the church of
England, and the manner how, and by whom bishops, priests,
and deacons are, and ought to be made, ordained, and conse
crated. Be it enacted by the king's most excellent majesty,
by the advice and with the consent of the lords spiritual and
temporal, and of the commons in this present parliament as
sembled, and by the authority of the same, that aU and
singular ministers in any cathedral, coUegiate, or parish
church or chapel, or other place of public worship within this
realm of England, dominion of Wales, and town of Berwick-
upon-Tweed, shaU be bound to say and use the morning

1662.] Act of Uniformity. 389
prayer, evening prayer, celebration and administration of
both the sacraments, and aU other the public and common
prayer, in such order and form as is mentioned in the said
hook annexed, and joined to this present Act, and entitled,
"The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the
Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,
according to the use of the Church of England, together
with the Psalter or Psalms of David : pointed as they are
to be sung or said in churches : and the form or manner of
making, ordaining, and consecrating of bishops, priests, and
deacons :" and that the morning and evening prayers therein
contained, shaU, upon every Lord's day, and upon all other
days and occasions, and at the times therein appointed, be
openly and solemnly read by all and every minister or curate
in every church, chapel, or other place of public worship,
within this realm bf England, and places aforesaid,
III. And to the end that uniformity in the public worship
of God, (which is so much desired may be speedily effected,)
Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that every
parson, ricar, or other minister whatsoever, who nbw hath and
enjoyeth any ecclesiastical benefice or prombtibn within this
realm of England, or places aforesaid, shall in the church,
chapel, or place of public worship belonging to his said bene
fice or promotion, upon some Lord's day before the feast of
St. Bartholomew, which shall be in the year of our Lord
God, one thousand six hundred and sixty two, openly, pub-
Hcly, and solemnly read the morning and evening prayer
appointed to be read by and according to the said Book of
Common Prayer, at the times thereby appointed ; and after
such readmg thereof, shall openly and publicly, before the
congregation there assembled, declare his unfeigned assent
and consent to the use of all things in the said book contained
and prescribed in these words and no other.
IV. I, A. B., do here declare my unfeigned assent and
consent to all and evetything contained and prescribed in
and by the book intituled, "The Book of Common Prayer,
and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and

390 Ad of Uniformity. [1662,
Ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the Church
of England, together with the Psalter or Psalms of David,
pointed as they are to be sung or said in churches : and the
form or manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating of
bishops, priests, and deacons."
V. And that all and every such person who shall (without
some lawful impediment, to be allowed and approved of by
the ordinary of the place) neglect or refuse tb do the same
within the time aforesaid (or in case of such impediment),
within one month after such impediment removed, shaU,
ipso facto, be deprived of all his spiritual promotions.
And that from thenceforth it shall be lawful to, and for aU
patrons and donors of all and singular the said spiritual
promotions, or of any of them, according to their respective
rights and titles, to present or collate to the same, as
though the person or persons so offending or neglecting
were dead.
VL And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that every person who shaU hereafter be presented or coUated,
or put into any ecclesiastical benefice or promotion within
this realm of England, and places aforesaid, shall, in the
church, chapel, or place of public worship belonging to his
said benefice or promotion, within two months next after that
he shall be in the actual possession of the said ecclesiastical
benefice or promotion, upon some Lord's day, openly,
publicly, and solemnly, read the morning and evening prayers
appointed to be read by and according to the said Book of
Common Prayer, at the times thereby appointed, or to be
appointed, and after such reading thereof, shall openly and
publicly, before the congregation there assembled, declare his
unfeigned assent and consent to the use of all things therein
contained and prescribed, according to the form before ap
pointed. And that all and every such person, who shall
(without some lawful impediment, to be aUowed and approved
by the ordinary of the place) neglect or refuse to do the same
within the time aforesaid, (or in the case of such impediment,
within one month after such impediment removed;) shall.

1663.] -^'^^ 0/ Uniformity. 391
ipso facto, be deprived of all his said ecclesiastical benefices
and promotions. And that from thenceforth it shall and may
he lawful to and for all patrons and donors of aU and singular
the said ecclesiastical benefices and promotions, or any of
them, according to their respective rights and titles, to present
or collate to the same, as though the person or persons so
offending or neglecting were dead,
VII. And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid,
that in aU places where the proper incumbent of any parson
age, or vicarage, or benefice with cure, doth reside on his
liring and keep a curate, the incumbent himself in person
(not having some lawful impediment, to be allowed by the
ordinaty of the place), shaU once (at the least) in every
month, openly and publicly, read the common prayers and
serrice, in and by the said book prescribed, and (if there be
occasion) administer each of the sacraments, and other rites
of the church, in the parish church or chapel of, or belonging
to the same parsonage, ricarage, or benefice, in such order,
manner, and form, as in and by the said book is appointed ;
upon pain to forfeit the sum of five pounds to the use of
the poor of the parish, for every offence, upon conviction by
confession, or proof of two credible witnessess upon oath,
before two justices of the peace of the county, city, or town
corporate where the offence shall be committed (which oath
the said justices aife hereby empowered to administer), and in
default of payment within ten days, to be levied by distress
and sale of the goods and chattels of the offender by the
warrant of the said justices, by the churchwardens, or over
seers of the poor of the said parish, rendering the surplusage
to the party,
VIII. And be it further enacted by the authority afore
said, that evety dean, canon, and prebendary of every
cathedral or coUegiate church, and all masters, and other
heads, feUows, chaplains, and tutors of or in any college,
hall, house of learning, or hospital, and every public pro
fessor and reader in either of the universities, and in every
college elsewhere, and every parson, vicar, curate, lecturer.

393 Act of Uniformity. [1663,
and every other person in holy orders, and every school
master keeping any public or private school, and every person
instructing or teaching any youth in any house or private
family as a tutor or schoolmaster, who upon the first day of
May which shaU be in the year of our Lord God one thou
sand six hundred and sixty-two, or at any time thereafter
shall be incumbent or have possession of any deanery,
canonry, prebend, mastership, headship, fellowship, pro
fessor's place, or reader's place, parsonage, vicarage, or any
other ecclesiastical dignity or promotion, or of any curate's
place, lecture or school; or shaU instruct or teach any
youth as tutor or schoolmaster, shaU before the feast day
of St, Bartholomew which shaU be in the year of our
Lord one thousand six hundred and sixty-two, or at or
before his or their respective admission to be incumbent or
have possession aforesaid, subscribe the declaration or ac
knowledgment following : — scilicet.
IX, I, A, B,, do declare, that it is not lawful, upon any
pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king : and that
I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his
authority against his person, or against those that are com
missioned by him : and that I wiU conform to the liturgy of
the church of England as it is now by law established : and
I do declare, that I do hold there lies no obligation upon me,
or any other person, from the oath commonly caUed, The
Solemn League and Covenant, to endeavour any change or alte
ration of government either in church or state ; and that the
same was in itself an unlawful . oath, and imposed upon the
subjects of this realm against the known laws and liberties of
this kingdom,
X, Which said declaration and acknowledgment shall be
subscribed by evety of the said masters, and other heads,
fellows, chaplains, and tutors of, or in any college, hall, or
house of learning, and by every public professor and reader
in either of the universities, before the vice chanceUor of
the respective universities for the time being, or his deputy :
and the said declaration or acknowledgment shall be sub-

1663.] Ad of Uniformity. 393
scribed before the respective archbishop, bishop, or ordinary
of the diocese, by every other person hereby enjoined to sub
scribe the same ; upon pain that all and every of the persons
aforesaid .failing in such subscription, shall lose and forfeit
such respective deanery, canonry, prebend, mastership, head
ship, fellowship, professor's place, reader's place, parsonage,
ricarage, ecclesiastical dignity or promotion, curate's place,
lecture, and school, and shall be utterly disabled, and ipso
facto deprived of the same : and that every such respective
deanery, canonry, prebend, mastership, headship, feUowship,
professor's place, reader's place, parsonage, vicarage, ecclesias
tical dignity or promotion, curate's place, lecture and school,
shaU be void, as if such person so failing were naturaUy dead,
XI. And if any schoolmaster or other person instructing
or teaching youth in any private house or family as a tutor
or schoolmaster shaU instruct or teach any youth as a tutor
or schoolmaster, before license obtained from his respective
archbishop, bishop, or ordinary of the diocese, according to
the laws and statutes of this realm, (for which he shaU pay
twelvepence only,) and before such subscription or acknow
ledgment made as aforesaid : then every such schoolmaster,
and other instructing and teaching as aforesaid shall, for the
first offence, suffer three months' imprisonment, without baU
or mainprize; and for every second and other such offence
shaU suffer three months' imprisonment without bail or
mainprize, and also forfeit to his majesty the sum of five
pounds: and after such subscription made, every such
parson, vicar, curate, and lecturer, shaU procure a certificate,
under the hand and seal of the respective archbishop, bishop,
or ordinary of the diocese, (who are hereby enjoined and re
quired upon demand to make aiid deliver the same,) and
shaU publicly and openly read the same, together with the
declaration or acknowledgment aforesaid, upon some Lord's
day within three months then next foUowing in his parish
church where he is to officiate, in the presence of the con
gregation there assembled in the time of divine serrice;
upon pain that every person faiUng therein shall lose such

894 Ad of Uniformity. [1662.
parsonage,, vicarage, or benefice, curate's place or lectiu-er's
place respectively, and shall be utterly disabled and ipso facto
deprived of the same ; and that the said parsonage, vicarage,
or benefice, curate's place or lecturer's place, shall be void as
if he was naturally dead.
XII. Provided always, that from and after the twenty-fifth
day of March, which shall be in the year of our Lord God
one thousand six hundred and eighty-two, there shall be
omitted in the said declaration or acknowledgment so to be
subscribed and read, these words following, scilicet :
And I do declare, that I do hold there lies no obliga
tion on me or any other person, from the oath commonly
called The Solemn League and Covenant, to endeavour any
change or alteration of government either in church or
state, and that the same was in itself an unlawful oath, and
imposed upon the subjects of this realm, against the known
laws and liberties of this kingdom.
So as none of the persons aforesaid shaU from thence
forth be at all obliged to subscribe or read that part of the
said declaration or acknowledgment.
XIIL Provided always and be it enacted, that from and
after the feast of St, Bartholomew which shaU be in the year
of our Lord one thousand six hundred and sixty-two, no
person who now is incumbent and in possession of any par
sonage, vicarage, or benefice, and who is not already in holy
orders by episcopal ordination, or shall not before the said
feast-day of St. Bartholomew be ordained priest or deacon
according to the form of episcopal ordination, shall have,
hold, or enjoy the said parsonage, ricarage, benefice, -with
cure or other ecclesiastical promotion within this kingdom of
England, or the dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick-
upon-Tweed, but shall be utterly disabled and ipso facto
deprived of the same, and aU his ecclesiastical promotions
shall be void as if he was naturally dead,
XIV, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,,
that no person whatsoever shaU thenceforth be capable to be
admitted to any parsonage, vicarage, benefice, or other eccle-

1663.] Act of Uniformity. 395
siastical promotion or dignity whatsoever, nor shall presume
to consecrate and administer the holy sacrament of the
Lord's supper before such time as he shall be ordained priest
according to the form and manner in and by the said book
prescribed, unless he have formerly been made priest
by episcopal ordination; upon pain to forfeit for every
offence the sum of one hundred pounds, one moiety thereof
to the king's majesty, the other moiety thereof to be equally
divided between the poor of the parish where the offence
shaU be committed; and svch person or persons as shall
sue for the same by action of debt, biU, plaint, or informa
tion in any of his majesty's courts of record, wherein no
essoin, protection, or wager of law shall be allowed, and to be
disabled from taking or being admitted into the order of
priest by the space of one whole year then next following,
XV. Provided, that the penalties in this act shall not
extend to the foreigners or aliens of the foreign reformed
churches, allowed or to be aUowed by the king's majesty,
his heirs and successors, in England.
XVI. Prorided always, that no title to confer or present
by lapse, shaU accrue by any avoidance or deprivation ipso
facto by rirtue of this statute, and after six months after
notice of such avoidance or deprivation given by the ordinary
to the patron, or such sentence of deprivation openly and
pubUcly read in the parish church of the benefice, parsonage,
or ricarage becoming void, or whereof the incumbent shall
be deprived by virtue of this act.
XVII, And be it further enacted by the authority afore
said, that no form or order of common prayers, administra
tion of sacraments, rites or ceremonies, shall be openly used
in any church, chapel, or other public place of, or in any college
or hall in either of the universities, the coUeges of West
minster, Winchester, or Eaton, or any of them, other than
what is prescribed and appointed to be used in and by the
said book; and that the present governor or head of
every college and hall in the said universities, and of the
said colleges of Westminster, Winchester, and Eaton,

Act of Uniformity. [1662,
within bue month after the feast of St. Bartholomew which
shall be in the year of our Lord one thbusand six hundred
and sixty-twb; and evety governor or head of any of the
said colleges or halls hereafter to be elected or appointed,
within one month next after his election or coUatibn and
admission into the same government or headship, shaU
openly and publicly in the church, chapel, or other public
place of the same college or hall, and in the presence of
the feUows and scholars of the same, or the greater part
of them then resident, subscribe unto the Nine-and-Thirty
Articles of religion mentioned in the statute made in the
thirteenth year of the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth,
and unto the said book, and declare his unfeigned assent
and consent unto and approbation of the said articles, aud
of the same book, and to the use of aU the prayers, rites,
and ceremonies, forms and brders, in the said book pre
scribed and contained, according to the fbrm aforesaid;
and that all such governors or heads of the said col
leges and halls, or any of them, as are, or shaU be, in
holy orders, shall once (at least) in every quarter of
the year (not having a lawful impediment) openly and
publicly read the morning prayer and serrice in and by
the said book appointed to be read in the church, chapel,
or other public place of the same college or hall; upon
pain to lose and be suspended of and from all the benefits
and profits belonging to the same government or headship,
by the space of six months, by the visitor or visitors of
the same coUege or haU; and if any governor or head of
any college or haU, suspended for not subscribing unto
the said articles and book, or for not reading of the
morning prayer and service as aforesaid, shall not, at or
before the end of six months next after such suspension,
subscribe unto the said articles and book, and declare his
consent thereunto as aforesaid, or read the morning prayer
and service as aforesaid, then such government or headship
shall be ipso facto void,
XVIII, Provided always, that it shall and may be lawful

1663,] Ad of Uniformily. 3Q7
to use the morning and evening prayer, and aU other prayers
and service prescribed in and by the said book, in the chapels
or other pubUc places of the respective colleges and halls in
both the universities, in the colleges of Westminster,
Winchester, and Eton, and in the convocations of the
clergies of either province, in Latin; anything in this Act to
the contrary notwithstanding.
XIX. And be it further enacted, by the authority afore
said, that no person shaU be, or be received as a lecturer, or
permitted, suffered, or allowed to preach as a lecturer, or to
preach or read any sermon, or lecture in any church, chapel,
or other place of pubUc worship, within this realm of
England, or the dominion of Wales, and town of Berwick-
upon-Tweed, unless he be first approved, and thereunto
licensed by the archbishop of the prorince, or bishop of the
diocese, or (in case the see be void) by the guardian of the
spiritualities, under his seal, and shaU, in the presence of the
same archbishop, or bishop, or guardian, read the Nine-and-
Thirty Articles of religion mentioned in the statute of the
thirteenth year of the late queen Elizabeth, with declaration
of his unfeigned assent to the same ; and that every
person and persons who now is, or hereafter shall be licensed,
assigned, and appointed, or received as a lecturer, to preach
upon any day of the week, in any church, chapel, or place of
public worship within this realm of England, or places afore
said, the first time he preacheth (before his sermon) shall
openly, publicly, and solemnly read the common prayers and
serrice in and hy the said book appointed to be read for that
time of the day, and then and there publicly and openly
declare his assent unto and approbation of the said book, and
to the use of all the prayers, rites and ceremonies, forms and
orders therein contained and prescribed, according to the
form before appointed in this Act; and also shall, upon
the first lecture day of every month afterwards, so long as he
contmues lecturer or preacher there, at the place appointed
for his said lecture or sermon, before his said lecture or
sermon, openly, publicly, and solemnly read the common

898 ji^ct of Uniformity. [1662,
prayers and service in and by the said book appointed to be
read for that time of the day at which the said lecture or
sermon is to be preached, and after such reading thereof,
shall, openly and publicly, before the congregation there
assembled, declare his unfeigned assent and consent unto and
approbation of the said book and to the use of aU the
prayers, rites and ceremonies, forms and orders, therein con
tained and prescribed, according to the form aforesaid;
and that all and every such person and persons who shaU
neglect or refuse to do the same, shall from thenceforth be
disabled to preach the said or any other lecture or sermon in
the said or any other church, chapel, or place of public wor
ship, until such time as he and they shaU openly, pubUcly,
and solemnly read the common prayers and service appointed
by the said book, and conform in all points to the things
therein appointed and prescribed, according to the purpose,
true intent, and meaning of this Act,
XX. Provided always, that if ihe said sermon or lecture
be to be preached or read in any cathedral or collegiate
church or chapel, it shall be sufficient for the said lecturer,
openly, at the time aforesaid, to declare his assent and con
sent to all things contained in the said book, according to the
form aforesaid.
XXI. And be it further enacted, by the authority afore
said, that if any person who is by this Act disabled to preach
any lecture or sermon, shall, during the time that he shaU
continue and remain so disabled, preach any sermon or
lecture; that then, for every such offence, the person and
persons so offending shall suffer three months' imprisonment
in the common gaol, without baU or mainprize.; and that
any two justices of the peace of any county of this kingdom
and places aforesaid, and the mayor or other chief magistiate
of any city or town corporate within the same, upon certifi
cate from the ordinary of the place made to him or them, of
the offence committed, shall, and are hereby required to com
mit the person or persons so offending, to the gaol of
the same county, city, or town corporate accordingly.

1663.] ^^^ °/ Uniformity. 399
XXII. Provided always, and be it further enacted, by the
authority aforesaid, that at aU and every time and times when
any sermon or lecture is to be preached, the common prayers
and service in and by the said book appointed to be read for
that time of the day, shaU be openly, pubUcly, and solemnly
read by some priest or deacon, in the church, chapel, or place
of public worship where the said sermon or lecture is to be
preached, before such sermon or lecture be preached ; and
that the lecturer then to preach shall be present at the
reading thereof.
XXIII. Prorided nevertheless, that this Act shall not
extend to the university churches in the universities of
this realm, or either of them, when or at such times as
any sermon or lecture is preached or read in the said
churches, or any of them, for or as the public university
sermon or lecture ; but that the same sermons and lectures
may be preached or read in such sort and manner as the
same have been heretofore preached or read, this Act or
anything herein contained to the contrary thereof in any
wise notwithstanding,
XXIV, And be it further enacted, by the authority afore
said, that the several good laws and statutes of this realm,
which have been formerly made, and are now in force for the
uniformity of prayer, and administration of the sacraments
within this realm of England, and places aforesaid, shall stand
in fuU force and strength to all intents and purposes whatso
ever, for the estabUshing and confirming of the said book,
entitled " The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of
the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church
accordmg to the use of the Church of England, together with
the Psalter or Psalms of Darid, pointed as they are to be said
or sung in churches, and the form or manner of making,
ordaming, and consecrating of bishops, priests, and deacons,"
herein before mentioned, to be joined and annexed to this Act,
And shaU be applied, practised, and put in use for the punish
ing of aU offences contrary to the said laws, with relation to
the book aforesaid, and no other.

^^ Act of Uniformity. [1663,
XXV, Provided always, and be it further enacted, by the
authority aforesaid, that in all those prayers, Utanies, and
coUects which do any way relate to the king, queen, or royal
progeny, the names be altered and changed from time to
time, and fitted to the present occasion according to the
direction of lawful authority,
XXVI, Prorided also, and be it enacted by the authority
aforesaid, that a true printed copy of the said hook, entitled
" The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the
Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church,
according to the use of the Church of England, together with
the Psalter or Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be
sung or said in churches, and the form and manner of
making, ordaining, and consecrating of bishops, priests, and
deacons" shaU at the costs and charges of the parishioners of
every parish church and chapel, cathedral, church, coUege,
and haU, be attained and gotten before the feast day of St,
Bartholomew, in the year of our Lord, one thousand sis
hundred sixty and two, upon pain of forfeiture of three
pounds, by the month, for so long time as they shaU then-
after be unprovided thereof, by every parish or chapehy,
cathedral, church, college, and haU making default therein,
XXVII, Prorided always, and be it enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that the Bishops of Hereford, St, David's,
Asaph, Bangor, and Landaff, and their successors, shall take
such order among themselves, for the souls' health of the
flock committed to their charge, within Wales, that the book
hereunto annexed be truly and exactly translated intb the
British br Welsh tbugue ; and that the same so translated,
and being by them, or any three of them at the least, riewed,
perused, and allowed, be imprinted to such number at least,
so that one of the said books, so translated and imprinted,
may be had for every cathedral, coUegiate and parish church,
and chapel of ease, in the said respective dioceses and places
in Wales, where the Vi'elsh is commonly spoken or used,
before the first day of May, one thousand six hundred and
sixty-five : and that from and after the imprinting aud pub-

1663.] -^«^ °/ Uniformity. 401
lishing of the said book so translated, the whole divine ser
vice shaU be used and said by the ministers and curates
throughout aU Wales, within the said ], dioceses where the
Welsh tongue is commonly used, in the British or Welsh
tongue, in such manner and form as is prescribed according
to the book hereunto annexed to be used in the English
tongue, differing nothing in any order or form from the said
English book, for which book, so translated and imprinted,
the churchwardens of evety the'said parishes shall pay out of
the parish money in their hands for the use of the respective
churches, and be aUowed the same on their account; and
that the said bishops and their successors, or any three of
them at the least, shaU set and appoint the price for which
the said book shaU be sold. And one other Book of Com
mon Prayer, in the EngUsh tongue, shall be bought and had
in every church throughout Wales, in which the Book of
Common Prayer in Welsh is to had by force of this Act,
before the first day of May, one thousand six hundred and
sixty-four; and the same books to remain in such convenient
places within the said churches, that such as understand
them may resort at aU convenient times to read and peruse
the same; and also such as do not understand the said
language, may, by conferring both tongues together, the
sooner attain to the knowledge of the English tongue, any-
thiog in this Act to the contrary notwithstanding. And
untU printed cbpies of the said book so to be translated, may
be had and prorided, the form of Common Prayer estab
lished by parliament before the making of this Act, shall be
used as formerly in such parts of Wales where the EngUsh
tongue is not commonly understood,
XXVIII, And to the end that the true and perfect copies of
this Act and the said book hereunto annexed may be safely
kept and perpetuaUy preserved, and for the avoiding of all
disputes for the time to come, be it therefore enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that the respective deans and chapters of
evety cathedral or coUegiate church within England and
Wales shall, at their proper costs and charges, before the
D D

402 Ad of Uniformity. [1662
twenty-fifth day of December, one thousand six hundred and
sixty-two, obtain under the great seal of England, a true and
perfect printed copy of this Act, and of the said book
annexed hereunto, to be by the said deans and chapters
and their successors, kept and preserved in safety for
ever, and to be also produced and shewed forth in any
court of record as often as they shall be thereunto
lawfully required ; and also there shall be delivered true and
perfect copies of this Act, and of the same book into the re
spective courts at Westminster, and into the tower of Lon
don, to be kept and preserved for ever among the records of
the said courts, and the records of the tower, to be also pro
duced and shewed forth in any court as need shall require;
which said books, so to be exemplified under the great seal of
England, shall be examined by such persons as the king's
majesty shall appoint under the great seal of England for
that purpose, and shall be compared with the original book
hereunto annexed, and shall have power to correct and amend
in writing any error committed by the printer in the printing
of the same book, or of anything therein contained, and shall
certify in vrriting, under their hands and seals, or the hands and
seals of any three of them, at the end of the same book, that
they have examined and compared the same book, and find it
to be a true and. perfect copy, which said books, and every
one of them, so exemplified under the great seal of England,
as aforesaid, shall be deemed, taken, adjudged, and expounded
to be good and available in the law to all intents and pur*
poses whatsoever, and shall be accounted as good records as
this book itself hereunto annexed ; any law or custom to the
contrary in any wise notwithstanding,
XXIX, Prorided also, that this Act, or anything therein
contained, shall not be prejudicial or hurtful unto the king's
professor of the law within the University of Oxford, for or
concerning the prebend of Shipton, within the cathedral
church of Sarum, united and annexed unto the place of the
same king's professor for the time being by the late king
James of blessed memory.

1663.] Ad of Uniformity. 403
XXX. Prorided always, that whereas the Six-and-Thirtieth
Article of the Nine-and-Thirty Articles, agreed upon by the
archbishops and bishops of both prorinees, and the whole
clergy in the convocation holden at London, in the year of
our Lord, one thousand five hundred and sixty-two, for the
avoiding of diversities of opinions, and for establishing of con
sent touching true religion, is in these words following, riz. :
"That the book of consecration of archbishops and
bishops, and ordaining of priests and deacons, lately set forth
in the time of king Edward VI, and confirmed at the same
time by authority of parliament, doth contain all things
necessary to such consecration and ordaining. Neither hath
it anything that of itself is superstitious and ungodly : and
therefore whosoever are consecrated or ordered according to
the rites of that book, since the second year of the afore
named king Edward, unto this time or hereafter shaU be con
secrated or ordered according to the same rites. We decree
ail such to be rightly, orderly, and lawfuUy consecrated and
ordered." XXXI. It be enacted, and be it therefore enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that all subscriptions hereafter to be had
or made unto the said Articles, by any deacon, priest, or
ecclesiastical person, or other person whatsoever, who by this
Act, or any other law now in force, is required to subscribe
unto the said Articles, shaU be construed and taken to extend
and shaU be applied (for and touching the said Six-and-
Thirtieth Article) unto the book containing the form and
manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating of bishops,
priests, and deacons in this Act mentioned, in such sort and
manner as the same did heretofore extend unto the book set
forth in the time of king Edward VI, mentioned in the said
Six-and-Thirtieth Article, anything in the said Article, or in
any statute, act, or canon heretofore had or made to the con
trary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.
XXXII, Prorided also, that " The Book of Common Prayer,
and Administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and
Ceremonies of the Church of England, together with the form
D D 2

401 Efforts of Presbyterian Ministers [1662.
and Manner of Ordaining and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests,
and Deacons " heretofore in use, an d respectively estabUshed by
Act of Parliament, in, the first and eighth years of queen
EUzabeth shaU be stiU used and observed in the church of
England untU the feast of St. Bartholomew, which shaU be
in the year of our Lord God, bue thbusand six hundred sixty
and twb.

XXV,
Efforts of Presbyterian Ministers to have the King's Decla
ration of October, 1660, enacted. — ReUquise Baxterianse,
by Sylvester, and Calamy's Continuation, &c,, London,
1727, vol, i.
All this while [i.e. from the close of the Savoy Conference,
to the passing of the Act of Uniformity] Mr, Calamy and
some other ministers had been endeavouring with those that
they had interest in, and to try if the parliament would pass
the King's Declaration into a law ; and sometimes they had
some hope from the Lord ChanceUor and others : but when
it came to the trial, their hopes all failed them ; and the con
formity imposed was made ten times more burdensome than
it ever was before. For besides that the Convocation had
made the Common Prayer book more grievous than before,
the parliament made a new Act of Uniformity, with a new
form of subscription, and a new declaration to be made
against the obligation of the Covenant ; of which more anon.
So that the King's Declaration did not only die before it came
to execution, and all hopes, and treaties, and petitions were
not only disappointed, but a weight more grievous than a
thousand ceremonies was added to the old conformity, with a
grievous penalty.
By this means there was a great unanimity in the ministers,

1663.] to have the Declaration of 1660 enacted. 405
and the greater number were cast out. And as far as I could
perceive, it was by some designed that it might be so. Many
a time did we beseech them that they would have so much
regard to the souls of men, and to t£e honour of England,
and of the protestant reUgion, as that without any necessity
at aU, they would not impose feared perjury upon them, nor
that which conscience, and common esteem, and popish
adversaries would all caU perjury; that papists might not
have this to cast in our teeth, and call the protestants a per
jured people, nor England or Scotland perjured lands. Oft
have we proved to them that their cause and interest required
no such thing. But aU was but casting oU upon the flames,
and forcing us to think of that monster of Milan, that made
his enemy renounce God to save his life, before he stabbed
him, that he might murder soul and body at a stroke. It
seemed to be accounted the one thing necessary, which no
reason must be heard against, that the Presbyterians must be
forced to do that which they accounted public perjury, or to
he cast ont of trust and office, in church and commonwealth.
And by this means a far greater number were laid by, than
otherwise would have been ; and the few that yielded to con
formity they thought would be despicable and contemptible
as long as they lived. A noble revenge, and worthy of the
actors. — [Reliquise Baxterianse, p. 387.]
*********
When I was absent (resolving to meddle in such businesses
there no more) Mr, Calamy and the other ministers of Lbu-
don, who had acquaintance at the court, were put in hope
that the king would grant that by way of Indulgence, which
was before denied them; and that, before the Act was
past, it might be provided that the king should have power
to dispense with such as deserved weU of him in ^his restora
tion, or whom he pleased. But that was frustrate, ^ And
' "If I should at length recite the story of this business, and what
" peremptory promises they had, and how all was turned to their rebuke and
"scorn, it would more increase the reader's astonishment." — Reliquise
Baxterianse, p. 429,

406 Efforts of Presbyterian Ministers. [1663
after that, they were told that that the king had power him
self to dispense in such cases, as he did with the Dutch and
French churches. And some kind of Petition (I have not a
copy of it) they drew up to offer the king. But when they
had done it, they were so far from procuring their desires,
that there fled abroad grievous threatenings against them,
that they should incur a praemunire for such a bold attempt :
when they were drawn to it at first, they did it with much
hesitancy (through former experience) and they worded it so
cautiously, that it extended not to the papists. Some of the
Independents presumed to say, that the reason why all our
addresses for liberty had not succeeded was because we did
not extend it to the papists ; and that, for their parts, they saw
no reason why the papists should not have liberty of worship
as well as others ; and that it was better for them to have it,
than for all us to go without it. But the Presbyterians still
answered to that motion, that the king might himself do
what he pleased : and if his wisdom thought meet to give
liberty to the papists, let the papists petition for it, as they
did for theirs. But if it be expected by any that it shall be
forced upon them, to become petitioners for liberty for
popery, they should never do it, whatever be the issue. Nor
shall it be said to be their work. [Reliquise Baxterianse,
pp. 429—30. '*********
[Mr. Calamy] advising with his great friends at court, a
petition was drawn up to his majesty, and signed by a good
number of the ministers in and about the city, who were
affected with that Act [of Uniformity.] It was in the words
following: — To the King's Most ExceUent Majesty.
The humble Petition of several Ministers in your City of
London. May it please your most Excellent Majesty.
"Upon former experience of your majesty's tenderness
and indulgence to your obedient and loyal subjects, in which
number we can with all clearness reckon ourselves, we, some

1661,] to have the Declaration of 1660 enacted. 407
of the ministers within your City of London, who are likely
by the late Act of Uniformity to be cast out of all public
service in the ministry, because we cannot in conscience
conform to all things required in the said Act, have taken
the boldness humbly to cast ourselves and concernments at
your majesty's feet, desiring that of your princely wisdom
and compassion, you would take some effectual course
whereby we may be continued in the exercise of our ministry,
to teach your people obedience to God and your majesty.
And we doubt not but, by our dutiful and peaceable carriage
therein, we shaU render ourselves not altogether unworthy of
so great a favour."
This petition was presented to his majesty August 27th,
three days after the Act took place, by Mr. Calamy, Dr.
Manton, Dr. Bates, and others; and Mr. Calamy made a
speech on the occasion, intimating that those of his persua
sion were ready to enter the list with any, for their fidelity to
his majesty, and did Uttle expect to be dealt with as they had
been, and they were now come to his majesty's feet, as the
last application they should make, &c. His majesty promised
he would consider of their business.
And the vety next day the matter was fully debated in
councU, his majesty himself being present, who was pleased
to declare that he intended an Indulgence, if it were at all

The great friends of the silenced ministers, who had
encouraged their hopes by a variety of specious promises,
were allowed upon this occasion freely to suggest their
reasons against putting the Act in execution; and they
argued very strenuously. But Dr. Sheldon, Bishop of Lon
don, in a warm speech declared that it was now too late to
think of suspending that law : for that he had already, in
obedience to it, ejected such of his clergy as would not com
ply with it on the Sunday before; and should they now be
restored, after they were thus exasperated, he must expect to
feel the effects of their resentment, and should never be able
to maintain his episcopal authority among such a clergy, who

408 Proceedings in Parliament [1661.
would nbt faU tb insult him as their enemy, being coun
tenanced by the court. Nor could the resolutions of the
councU-board justify his contempt of a law which had
passed with such an unanimous cbnsent, and upon such
mature deliberation of both houses. Should the sacred
authority of this law be now suspended, it would render the
legislature ridiculous and contemptible. And if the impor
tunity of such disaffected people were a sufficient reason to
humour them, neither the Church nor State would ever be
free from distractions and convulsions.
And upon the whole it was carried that no Indulgence at
aU should be granted. — [Calamy's Continuation, &c., vbl. i,
pp. 9—11.

XXVI.
Extracts from Journals of Parliament relating to the passing
of the Ad of Uniformity. — Journals of the House of
Lords, vol. xi; Journals of the Hbuse of Commons,
vol, viii.
Martis, 35° Junii, [1661], 13° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
vUi, 379 6— 380 a.]
Ordered — That a cbmmittee be appbinted to view the
several laws for confirming the liturgy of the Church of
England; and to make search, whether the original book
of the liturgy, annexed to the Act passed in the fifth
and sixth years of the reign of King Edward the Sixth,
be yet extant ; and to bring in a compendious bill to supply
any defect in the former laws; and to provide for an
effectual conformity to the liturgy of the church, for the
time to come,

1661.] on the Act of Uniformity. 409
And a committee was accordingly appointed, of all the
members of this house that are of the long robe ; and the
preparing the bUl was especially recommended to the care of
Mr, Serjeant KeeUng,
Sabbati, 39° Junii, [1661], 13° Car, Regis, [Journ, H, C,
vUi, 285 b.]
A BiU for the Uniformity of Public Prayers, and Adminis
tration of Sacraments, was this day read the first time.
Ordered — That the same be read again, the second time,
on Wednesday next, the first public bill,
Mercurii, 3° Julu, [1661], 13° Car, Regis, Journ, H, C,
vui, 388 6— 389 a,
Resolved — That the BUl for Uniformity of PubUc Prayers,
and Administration of Sacraments, together with the printed
Book of Common Prayer, now brought in, intituled, "The
Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacra
ments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of
England," annexed thereunto, be committed to Sir Tho,
Fanshaw, Mr, Fane, Mr, Solicitor, Mr. Ashburnham, Mr.
CHfford, Sfr Rich. Ford, Lord Bruce, Mr. ChurchiU, Doctor
Birkenhead, Mr. Potter, Sir Solomon Swale, Serjeant Keeling,
Mr. Gierke, Sir Cha, Herbert, Lord St, John, Mr, Lowther,
Mr, Knight, Sir Justin Isham, Mr, Walderon, Mr, Jo,
Newton, Sir ' PhU. Musgrave, Sir Tho, Fanshall, junior.
Sir GUbert Gerrard, Sfr Jo, Talbot, Mr, Orme, Sir Tho,
Littleton, Sir Courtney Poole, Sir Hen, North, Sir Edw,
WaUpoole, Sir Bayne Throgmorton, Sir, Hen, Newton, Sir
Geo, Reeves, Mr, Comptroller, Lord Le De Spencer, Mr,
Geffety Palmer, Lord Ossery, Sir, Wm, Compton, Mr, Giles
Strangwayes, Mr, Edward Seymor, Mr, Stanley, Sir, Tho,
Strickland, Mr, Stricklany, Sir Tho, Ingram, Mr. Rigby,
Sir Wm. Lewes, Doctor BirweU, Mr. Weld, Sir PhUl.
Warwick, Sir Tho, Hebblethwaite, Sir Edm, Boyer, Mr,
WaUer, Mr, Bishop, Mr, Glascock, Mr, Vice-chamber-

410 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
lain. Sir Edw. Seamour, Sir Ben, Ayloffe, Sir Jo, Strangwayes,
Mr, Taylor, Mr. Thompson, Baron of Kinderton, Sir Tho.
Leigh, Sir Tho. Lee, Mr. Spencer, Mr. Lovelace, Sir Tho.
Smith, Sir John Shaw, Sir Rob, BoUe, Sir Antho, Irby, Sir
Allen Apsley, Mr, Crouch, Mr, Lewis Palmer, Sir Robert
Howard, Mr, Coventry, Mr, Milward, Mr. Kent, Sir Tho.
Peyton, Sir Chichester Wray, Sir Edward Walgrave, Sir
Hugh Windham, Sir Edm, Peirce, Mr, Aldworth, Lord
Buekhurst, Sir Edw. Smith, Mr. Manwaring, Sir Wm. Hay-
ward, Mr. Bennet, Mr. Secretary Morice, Mr, Ashburnham,
Sir Allen Brodrick, Sir Jo. Goodrick, Sir Geo. Sands,
Colonel Kyrkby, Lord Rich. Butler, Sir Wm, Hickman, Sir
Fran, Clerke, Mr. Coriton, Mr. Wm. Coventrey, Mr, Plead-
well, Mr. Thomas, Sir Edm. Pooley, Sir Hump. Bennet,
Sir Tho. Stukley, Colonel Windham, Mr. Swinfen, Mr.
Phillips, Sir Roger Bradshaw, Mr. Hender Roberts, Mr.
Chetwind, Mr. Tanner, Mr. Montague, Mr. Stewart, Mr,
Shaw, Sir Lane. Lake, Serjeant Charleton, Colonel Legg,
Mr. Goodrick, Sir John HoUand, Mr. Puckering, Sir Hen.
Williams, Mr. Vaughan, Sir Nich. Crisp, Colonel FretchviU,
Mr. Morton, Sir Tho. Coventrey, Mr. Clerke, Mr. Andrews,
Mr. Wren, Mr. Wm. Sandys, Mr. Sandys, Sir Hen. North, Sir
Jo. Harrison, Mr. Tho. Jones, Sir Ben. Ayloff, Sir Cha. Har-
bord, Mr. Harbert, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Yorke, Sir Jo. Nicholas,
Lord Cornbury, Sir Jos. Craddock, Mr. Lau. Hyde, Mr.
Whorwood, Colonel Shakerley, Sir Wm. Gawdy, Sir PhUlip
Howard, Mr. Font, Lord Richardson, Mr. Robinson, Sir
Hen. Wroth, Sir Rich. Oatley, Mr. Nicholas, Mr. Trelawney,
Mr. Bulteele, Sir Geo, Reeve, Sir Rich, Breham, Mr,
PhiUips, Mr. PhUlips, Mr. Whittaker, Lord Cavendish,
Sir Adrian Scrope, Mr, Dolman, Mr, Attorney of the
Duchy, Mr. Taylor, Mr, MaUet, Sir Clem, Throgmorton,
Sir Robert Atkins; and they are to meet this afternoon,
at four of the clock, in the Star-Chamber, And if the
original Book of Common Prayer cannot be found, then
to report the said printed book, and their opinion touching
the same ; and to send for persons, papers, and records.

]66].] on the Act of Uniformity. 41 1
Veneris, 5° Julii, [1661], 13° Car, Regis, [Journ, H. C,
vui, 391 b.}
Resolved — That . , , . aU the members of this House
who are of both robes, be added to the said committee, [to
whom the BUl for Uniformity of Public Prayer and Adminis
tration of Sacraments, is committed,]
Lunse, 8° Julii, [1661], 13° Car, Regis, [Journ, H. C,
vui, 394 6-395 6.]
Mr. Pryn haring made report from the committee, to
whom it was referred to see which of the bUls depending
in the House, and which were committed to committees,
were of most necessity to be proceeded in before the ad
journment —
*********
A BiU for Uniformity to Common Prayer and Admistra-
tion of the Sacraments.
*********
Sir Edmund Peirce reports, from the committee to whom
the BUl for Uniformity of Public Prayers and Administration
of Sacraments, was committed, several amendments, and an
addition and proviso, to be added to the said bill, which he
read, with the coherence, in his place, and delivered in at the
clerk's table, with the bUl ; which said amendments were
twice read.
Resolved — That this House doth agree to the said
amendments and addition. And, upon reading of the
said proviso, the same was ordered to be amended at the
clerk's table; and, being so amended, was afterwards twice
read. Resolved — That this House doth agree to the said proriso ;
and that the same be made part of the bill,
Resolved-^That the said bill, with the said amendments,
addition, and proriso, added thereunto, be ingrossed,
*********
Ordered — That the annexing the Book of Common Prayer

413 Proceedings in Parliament [1661 — 2.
to the BUl for Uniformity, and the obliterating the two
prayers inserted before the reading psalms, be taken into
consideration to-morrow morning.
Martis, 9° Julii, [1661], 13° Car. Regis. [Journ, H, C,
viii, 296 a.]
A Bill for the Uniformity of Public Prayers and Adminis
tration of Sacraments, being ingrossed, was this day read the
third time.
And a Book of Common Prayer, intituled, "The Book
of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacra
ments; and other rites and ceremonies of the Church
of England," which was imprinted at London in the year
1604, was, at the clerk's table, annexed to the said hUl,
part of the two prayers, inserted therein before the read
ing psalms being first taken out, and the other part thereof
obliterated. And a proriso, tendered to be added to the said bUl, being
twice read, was upon the question, laid aside.
Resolved — That the said biU, with the said Book of Com
mon Prayer so annexed, do pass.
Resolved — That the title of the said bill shall be. An Act
for the Uniformity of Public Prayers, and Administration of
Sacraments,
Die Mercurii, 10° die Julii, [1661], 13 Car, II, [Journ,
H, L,, xi, 305 a,]
A message was brought from the House of Commons, by
Sir Thomas Fanshaw and others ; who brought up an act,
passed their house, intituled. An Act for the Uniformity of
Public Prayers, and Administration of Sacraments; wherein
they desire their lordships' concurrence.
Die Martis, 14° die Januarii, [1661—2], 13 Car, II, [Jburn.
H, L., xi, 3646.]
Hodie 1" vice leda est billa. An Act for the Uniformity
of PubUc Prayers, and Administration of Sacraments,

l66i-2.]

on the Ad of Uniformity.

413

Die Veneris, 17° die Januarii, [1661—2], 13 Car. ll, [Journ.
H, L,, xi, 366 a-6.]
Hodie 2" vice leda est Billa, An Act for the Uniformity
of Public Prayers, and Administration of Sacraments.
Ordered — That the cbnsideratibu of this BiU is committed
to these Lords following :

L. Privy Seal,
Dux Albemarle,
L, Chamberlain,
Comes Derby,
Comes Dorsett,
Comes Bridgwater,
Comes North'ton,
Comes BoUing-
brooke.
Comes Portland,
Comes Anglesey,
Comes CarlUe,

Archbp, Eborac,
Bp, Lbndon,
Bp, Durham,
Bp, Sarum,
Bp, Worcester,
Bp, Lincoln,
Bp. Exbu,
Bp, Nbrwich,

Ds, Berkeley
Berk,
Ds, Windsbr.
Ds, Pagett,
Ds, Hunsdbn,
Ds, Hbward
Charlt,
Ds, Craven.
Ds. Mohun.
Ds. Byron.
Ds. Lucas,
Ds. Lexingtbn.
Ds. Delamer.
Ds. Tbwnsend,
Ds, Crewe,

de

de

Their brdships, br any five to meet on Thursday next,
[inthe afternoon], in the Prince's lodgings, at three of the
clock,
Martis, 28° Januarii, [1661—2], 13° Car, 11, [Journ, H. C,
vui, 353 6,]
Ordered— That a message be sent to the Lbrds tb desire
them tb give dispatch to the Bill of Uniformity; and that
Lord Falkland is to carty up this message to the Lords.
Die Martis, 38° die Januarii, [1661—3], 13° Car. II, [Jburn.
H. L., xi, 373 6.]
A message was brought from the House of Commons, by
the Lord Viscount Falkland and others :

414 Proceedings in Parliament [1661-3,
To put their Lordships in mind of Two BiUs brought
from the House of Commons ; one, concerning Uniformity
of Worship ; the other, concerning Ministers ; wherein they
desire their Lordships would please to give what convenient
expedition may be.
Die Joris, 13o die FebruarU, [1661—2], 14° Car, II, [Journ.
H, L,, xi, 383 0-6.]
The Earl of Dorsett reported, "That the Committee for
the BiU for Uniformity of Worship have met oftentimes, and
expected a book of Uniformity to be brought in ; but, that
not being done, their Lordships have made no progress
therein ; therefore the Committee desires to know the plea
sure of the house, whether they shaU proceed upon the Book
brought from the House of Commons, or stay untU the other
Book be brought in."
Upon this, the Bishop of London signified to the House,
" That the Book wiU very shortly be brought in."
Die Joris, 20° die FebruarU, [1661—2], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H. L., xi, 390 a.]
Ordered — That the Committee for the BUl for Uniformity
 [be] put off untU Tuesday
next, in the afternoon.
Die Martis, 25° die FebruarU, [1661—2], 14° Car, II, [Journ,
H, L,, xi, 392 6—393 a.\
The Lord Chancellor acquainted the House, " That he was
commanded by the King to deUver a message unto their
Lordships," Which his Lordship read, as foUoweth ; videlicet,
"Charles R,
" His majesty haring, according to his Declaration of the
35th of October, 1660, granted his commission under the
great seal, to several bishops and other divines, to reriew the
Book of Common Prayer, and to prepare such alterations and
additions as they thought fit to offer : afterwards the convoca-

1661-3,] on the Act of Uniformity, 415
tions of the clergy of both the provinces of Canterbury and
York were by his majesty called and assembled, and are now
sitting. And his Majesty hath been pleased to authorize and
require the presidents of the said convocations, and other the
bishops and clergy of the same, to review the said Book of
Common Prayer, and the book of the form and manner of
making and consecrating of bishops, priests, and deacons;
and that, after mature consideration, they should make such
additions or alterations in the said books respectively as to
them should seem meet and convenient ; and should exhibit
and present the same to his majesty in writing, for his
majesty's further consideration, aUowance, or confirmation.
Since which time, upon full and mature deliberation, they
the said presidents, bishops, and clergy of both provinces,
have accordingly reriewed the said books, and have made,
exhibited, and presented to his majesty in writing, some
alterations, which they think fit to be inserted in the same,
and some additional prayers to the said Book of Common
Prayer, to be used upon proper and emergent occasions.
"All which his majesty having didy considered, doth, with
the adrice of his councU, fully approve and allow the same ;
and doth recommend it to the House of Peers, that the said
Books of Common Prayer, and of the form of ordination
and consecration of bishops, priests, and deacons, with those
alterations and additions, be the book which, in and by the
intended Act of Uniformity, shaU be appointed to be used,
by all that officiate in all cathedral and coUegiate churches
and chapels, and in all chapels of colleges and haUs in both
the universities, and the colleges of Eton and Winchester,
and in aU parish churches and chapels within the kingdom of
England, Dominion of Wales, and town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, and by aU that make or consecrate bishops, priests,
or deacons, in any of the said places, under such sanctions
and penalties as the parliament shaU think fit.
"Given at our court, at Whitehall, the 34th day of
February, 1661"— 3.
The book mentioned in his majesty's message was brought

416 Proceedings in Parliament [1661 — 2.
into this House ; which is ordered to be referred to the com
mittee for the Act of Uniformity.
Die Joris, 27° die Februarii, [1661—2], 14o Car. II, [Journ,
H, L,, xi, 396 a.]
Ordered — That the Duke of Bucks and the Earl of Pem
broke are added to the committee for Uniformity,
Ordered — That Mr, Justice Hyde and Mr, Attorney
General have notice to attend the committee for Uniformity
this afternoon,
Lunse, 3° die Martii, [1661—2], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
riii, 377 6,]
[The king having commanded the Cbmmbns tb attend him
in the banqueting hbuse, WhitehaU, on Saturday, 1st March,
they did so ; and the speaker read his majesty's speech to the
house, on the foUowing Monday, In the course of it his
majesty said :]
" Gentlemen, I hear you are vety zealous for the church,
and very solicitous, and even jealous, that there is not expe
dition enough used in that affair, I thank you for it, since,
I presume, it proceeds from a good root of piety and devotion:
but I must tell you I have the worst luck in the world, if,
after all the reproaches of being a papist, whUst I was abroad,
I am suspected of being a presbyterian now I am come home, I
know you will not take it unkindly, if I teU you, that I am
as zealous for the church of England, as any of you can be ;
and am enough acquainted with the enemies of it, on all
sides ; that I am as much in love with the Book of Common
Prayer, as you can wish, and have prejudice enough to those
that do not love it ; who, I hope, in time wiU be better in
formed, and change their minds : and you may be confident,
I do as much desire to see a uniformity settled, as any
amongst you : I pray, trust me, in that affair ; I promise you
to hasten the despatch of it, with aU convenient speed; you
may rely upon me in it.

1661-2.] on the Act of Uniformity. 417
" I have transmitted the Book of Common Prayer, with
those alterations and additions which have been presented to
me by the Convocation, to the House of Peers with my
approbation, that the Act of Uniformity may relate to it : so
that I presume it wUl be shortly dispatched there ; and when
vre have done all we can, the well settling that affair will
require great prudence and discretion, and the absence of all
passion and precipitation."
Die MercurU, 5° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car, II, [Journ,
H, L., xi, 400 a,]
Ordered — That the Lord Lovelace and the Lord Widdring-
ton are added to the committee for Uniformity,
Die Joris, 6° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car. II, [Journ,
H, L,, xi, 4006.]
Ordered — That the Lord Wharton is added to the com
mittee for the BiU of Unifornuty,
Die Veneris, 7° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car, II, [Journ,
H, L,, xi, 402a,]
Ordered — That the Lord Berkley, of Straton, is added to
the committee for the BUl of Uniformity,
Die Joris, 13° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H, L,, xi, 406 6.]
The Earl of Bridgwater reported, "That the committee
have considered of the Bill concerning Uniformity of Wor
ship; wherein the committee have made divers amendments
and alterations, which are offered to the consideration of this
House; and that the committee, in their amendments and
alterations, have made the bUl relate to the book recom
mended hy the king to this House, and not to the book
brought with the biU from the House of Commons."
Next, it was moved, "That the alterations and additions in

418 Proceedings in Parliament [1661-3.
the Book of Common Prayer, as it came recommended from
his majesty, might be read, before the alterations and amend
ments in the bUl were read;" which was accordingly ordered,
and read : but, having made little progress therein, and it
being now late, and the business will require longer time, it
is ordered, that this House will proceed in the reading the
rest of the alterations and additions to-morrow morning at
nine of the clock.
Die Veneris, 14° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H, L., xi, 407 a.]
Then this House proceeded in the reading of the altera
tions and additions in the Book of Common Prayers; and
ordered, to proceed further in the reading of it to-morrow
morning.
Die Satumi, 15° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car. II, [Jom-n.
H. L., xi, 408 b,]
Next, the House proceeded in the further reading of the
alterations and additions in the Book of Common Prayers ;
which being ended, the Lord Chancellor, in the name, and
by the directions of the House, gave the lords the bishops
thanks, for their care in this business ; and desired their
lordships to give the like thanks, from this House, to the
other House of Convocation, for their pains herein.
Ordered — That this House will take into consideration the
alterations and amendments in the Bill concerning Unifor
mity of PubUc Worship, as it was lately reported; and this
to be on Monday morning next.
Die Lunse, 17° die Martii, [1661— 3], 14° Car, II, [Journ.
H, L., xi, 409 a-6.]
Next, this House took into consideration the Bill concern
ing Uniformity in Public Worship, formerly reported from
the committee. And, upon the second reading of the altera
tions and provisos, and considerations thereof, it is ordered.

1661-3.] on the Act of Uniformity. 419
that this House agrees to the preamble, as it is now brought
in by the committee.
And the question being put, " Whether this book that
hath been transmitted to this House from the king shall be
the book to which the Act of Uniformity shall relate?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Then the Lord Chancellor acquainted the House with a
proriso recommended from the king, to be inserted in this
Bin of Uniformity ; which his lordship read.
And it was commanded that the same should be read
ao'ain: and it is ordered, that the further debate of this
business is deferred until to-morrow morning.
Die Martis, 18° die Martii, [1661—3], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H. L., xi, 410 a.]
Next, this House tbok into consideration the business of
presenting the proviso yesterday from the king to this House;
for debate whereof, the House was adjourned into a com
mittee during pleasure.
And the House being resumed :
This question was put, " Whether a salvo shall be entered
into the book, to save the privilege of this House, upon the
occasion of this proviso from the king ?"
And it was resolved in the negative.
Ordered — That to-morrow morning the debate concerning
the matter of this proviso shaU be resumed.
Die Mercurii, 19° die Martii, [1661—2], 14° Car. IT, [Journ.
H, L., xi, 411a.]
Next, the House took into consideration the matter in the
king's proriso to the BiU for Uniformity of Worship.
And the proviso was read again and debated.
And there being another proviso offered to the Hbuse,
which was read.
The question being put, " Whether this proriso shall be
rejected ?"

420 Proceedings in Parliament [1662.
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Ordered — That the Bill for Uniformity is re-committed;
also the proriso sent from the king is referred to the con
sideration of the same committee, who are to meet to-morrow
in the afternoon ; and the Duke of Richmond is added to the
said committee.
Die Jovis, 20° die MartU, [1661—2], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H. L., xi, 412 6.]
Ordered — That the Earl of Bristol and the Lord Herbert
of Cherbury are added to the committee for the BUl of Uni
formity. Die Veneris, 31° die Martii, [1661-2], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H, L., xi, 413 6.]
Ordered — That the Lord Newport is added to the com
mittee for the BUl of Uniformity.
Die Veneris, 4° die AprUis, [1662], 14° Car, II, [Journ,
H, L,, xi, 431a.]
Next, the Earl of Bridgwater reported from the committee,
the alterations and provisos in the BUl concerning Uniformity
of Worship.
The said alterations and prorisos were read twice, and
debated. The question being put, "Whether these words 'though
indifferent in their own nature' shall stand in the proviso,
as they are brought in by the committee ?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Ordered — That this House will resume the further debate
of this business to-morrow morning.
Die Satumi, 5° die Aprilis, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Joura.
H. L., xi, 433 a.J
Next, the House resumed the debate as was yesterday,
Upon report of the Bill concerning Uniformity of Worship.

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity. 421
The point now in consideration was, the clause of ministers
declaring against the covenant.
And, after a long debate, the question was put, " WTiether
this clause, videlicit, ' I do declare that I hold that there is
no obUgation upon me, or any other person, from the oath
commonly called The Solemn League and Covenant' shall
stand in the bUl, as it is brought in by the committee?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Ordered — That this bill shall be taken into further debate
on Monday morning next.
Die Lunse, 7° die AprUis, [1662], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H. L.,
xi, 433 a,]
This day being appointed to consider further of the Act bf
Uniformity; the Lord Bishop of Worcester offered to the
consideration of this House an explanation, in a paper, of the
vote of this House on Saturday last, concerning the words in
the Act of Uniformity, which declared against the solemn
league and covenant ; which he first opened, and afterwards,
by permission of the House read the same : which afterwards
the House commanded to be read by the clerk.
And, after debate thereof, the question being put,
"Whether that the proceeding of the debate of this paper,
thus brought in, be against the orders of this House ?"
It was resolved in the negative.
Ordered — That this House will take into debate this paper
to-morrow morning.
Memorandum — That, before the putting of the aforesaid
question, these Lords whose names are subscribed, desired
leave to enter their dissents, if the question was carried in the
negative, [No names given.]
Die Martis, 8° die ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car II, [Journ. H. L.,
xi, 434 a-6,]
Next, the House took into consideration the paper brought
in yesterday, for an explanation of the clause in the Act of

433 Proceedings in Parliament [1663,
Uniformity concerning the declaring against the covenant;
and, after a long debate, it is ordered, that this paper be laid
aside. Ordered — That these Lords following are appointed to con
sider and draw up a clause, or proviso, whereby it may be left
to the king to make such provision for those of the clergy as
his majesty shall think fit, who shall be deprived of their
livings by the Act of Uniformity ; and afterwards to make
report thereof to this House :
Dux Bucks. Bp. Worcester. Ds. Wharton.
Comes Bristol. Bp. Exon. Ds. Mohun
Comes Anglesey. Bp. Hereford. Ds. Lucas.
Ds. Holies.
Their Lordships, or any two, to meet in the Prince's Lodg
ings, to-morrow morning, at eight of the clock.
Die Mercurii, 9° die AprUis, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ.
H, L., xi, 435 a.]
The Earl of Anglesey reported, " That the committee have
considered of a proviso, that such persons as are put out of
their livings by virtue of the Act of Uniformity, may have
such allowances out of their livings, for their subsistence, as
his majesty shall think fit."
The said proviso was read ; and, after some debate, a few
alterations made therein.
And the question being put, " Whether this proviso, with
the alterations, shall stand in the bill ?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Hodie 3" vice leda est Billa, An Act for the Uniformity
of Public Prayers, and Administration of Sacraments, and
other Rites and Ceremonies, and for establishing the Form of
making, ordaining, and consecrating Bishops, Priests, and
Deacons, in the church of England.
Ths question being put, " Whether this bUl, with the
alterations and amendments, shall pass?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.

2663.] on the Ad of Uniformity. 433
Ordered — To send for a conference with the House of
Commons to-morrow morning, and communicate this bill
with the alterations and amendments to them.
Die Joris, 10° die Aprilis, [1662], 14° Car. II, [Journ. H. L.,
xi, 436a-6.J
A message was sent to the House of Commons, by Sir
Moundeford Brampston and Sir Nathimiell Hobart :
To desire a present conference, in the painted chamber,
concerning the Act of Uniformity.
The Lord Chancellor, the Earl of Bridgwater, and the
Bishop of London, were appointed to manage this conference-
The House directed that the Book of Common Prayers,
recommended from the king, shall be delivered to the House
of Commons, as that being the Book to which the Act of
Uniformity is to relate ; and also to deliver the book wherein
the alterations are made, out of which the other book was
fairly written; and likewise to communicate to them the
king's message, recommending the said book; and lastly, to
let the Commons know, " That the Lords, upon consideration
had of the Act of Uniformity, have thought fit to make some
alterations, and add certain provisos, to which the concur
rence of the House of Commons is desired."
******
The messengers sent to the House of Commons return with
this answer :
That they wUl give a conference, as is desired.
******
The House was adjourned during pleasure, and the Lords
went to the free conference ; which being ended, the House
was resumed.
Joris, 10° AprUis, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
viii, 403 a-6.]
A message from the Lords, by Sir Moundeford Brampston
and Sir Nathaniell Hobart :

434 Proceedings in Parliament [1663,
Mr, Speaker — "The Lords desire a present conference
with this House upon the BiU for Uniformity, in the painted
chamber," The messengers being withdrawn —
Resolved — That this House doth agree to a present con
ference; and that Serjeant Keeling, Serjeant Charlton, Sir
Robert Howard, Sir Robert Atkins, Sir Tho. Meres, and
Dr. Birkinhead, do make report from the Conference,
The messengers being called in, Mr. Speaker does
acquaint them, that the House had agreed to a present
conference, ******
Serjeant Keeling reports, from the Conference had with
the Lords, upon the Bill for Uniformity, that the reason
of the delay of the said bill was, that the Bobk of Com
mon Prayer had, by reference from his majesty, been
under the consideration of the Convocation, who had
made some alterations and additions thereunto; and that
the Lords had perused the same, as also the biU sent
from this House; and had returned the same, together
with the Book of Common Prayer, as the same is amended
and, by them, agreed to, and some amendments and
provisos to the biU ; to which they desired the concurrence
of this House ; and delivered the same in at the clerk's table.
Resolved, upon the question — That this House wUl enter
upon the consideration and debate of this matter to-morrow
morning.
Veneris, 11° die ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H. C,
viii, 403 6.]
Ordered — That the House do proceed upon the Bill for
I^niformity to-morrow morning.
Sabbati, 13° AprUis, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ, H, C,
riU, 404 6.]
Amendments and additions, sent from the Lords,' to the
Bill of Uniformity, were this day read.

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity. 435
Resolved — That the amendments in the Book of Common
Prayer, sent down from the Lords, be read on Monday next,
Lun«, 14° Aprilis, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
viii, 405 6.J
The amendments in "The Book of Common Prayer, and
Admmistration of the Sacraments and other Rites and
Ceremonies of the Church of England," sent from the
Lords; the transcript of which book, so amended, there
with sent, they desire to be added to the Bill of Uniformity,
instead of the book sent up therewith, was, in part, read.
And then the House adjourned for two hours.
Post Merid.
The rest of the amendments in the said book were then
read throughout.
Resolved, upon the question — That the amendments to the
said bUl, with the additions sent by the Lords, be read the
second time, and proceeded in, to-morrow morning, at nine of
the clock,
Martis, 15° Aprilis, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
viii, 406 a-6.
The House then resumed the debate upon the amendments
sent down from the Lords, to the Bill of Uniformity ; which
were begun to be read the second time.
Resolved, upon the question — That the first amendment, as
to the title of the bUl, be postponed.
The question being put, " To] agree with the Lords, as to
the .amendment to the compiling of the Book of Common
Prayer by the bishops, and the Act of primo EUz. fbr enjbin-
ingit to be used" —
It was resolved in the affirmative. >
The rest of the amendments, unto the amendment in the
twenty-fifth Une, were read the secbud time, and; upon the
question, agreed to.

4'26 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
The question being put, "That the paragraph of the
amendment, in relation to the recital of the progress of the
proceedings, till that amendment which does concern the
book, annexed to the bUl, be postponed " —
The House was dirided.
The yeas went out.
Sir Robert Howard, f Tellers for the yeas, "1 „ .
Mr. Hungerford, \ With the yeas, J
Sir Tho, Gower, f TeUers for the noes, 1 , ,q
Sir Robert Brooke L With the noes, J
And so it passed in the negative.
Resolved, upon the question— That Mr. Vaughan, Mr.
Knight, Mr. Crouch, Dr. Birkinhead, Lord Fanshaw, Sir
Edm. Peirce, Dr, Burwell, Sir Tho. Gower, and Mr. Waller,
or any six of them, be appointed a committee, to compare
the Books of Common Prayer, sent down from the Lords,
with the book sent up, from this House; and to see
whether they differ in anything besides the amendments,
sent from the Lords, and already read in this House
and wherein; and to make their report therein, with
all the speed they can. And, for that puipose, they are to
meet this afternoon, at two of the clock, in the Speaker's
chamber.Mercurii, 16° ApriUs, [1662], 14° Car. II, [Journ. H. C,
viii, 407 6— 408 a.]
Mr, Vaughan reports, from the committee appointed to
compare the Books of Common Prayer, sent down from the
Lords, with the book sent up from this house; and to see
whether they differ in anything besides the amendments sent
from the Lords, and already read in this House, and wherein :
that the said committee had met yesterday, and sat till eight
at night, and had met early this morning, and taken great
care and pains in comparing and examining the said
books * * * *
Resolved — That the thanks of this House be returned to
the said committee, for their great care and pains in compar-

1663.] on the Ad of Uniformity. 437
ing and examining the Book of Common Prayer, according
to the order and direction of this House,
And Mr. Speaker did return them the thanks of the House
accordingly. The House then resumed the debate upon the amendments,
sent down from the Lords, to the Bill of Uniformity,
And the seventh amendment, at ttie twenty-fourth line of
the bill, being again read —
Resolved, upon the question — That this House doth dis
agree to these words, in the twenty-fifth line of the said
amendment, "and tenderness of some men's consciences;"
and doth think fit, that the word "have," be made
"hath." The question being propounded, " Whether debate shall
be admitted to the amendments made by the Convocation in
the Book of Common Prayer, and sent down by the Lords to
this House : "
And the question being put, " Whether that question shall
be now put?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
And the main question being put, " Whether debate shall
he admitted to the amendments made by the Convocation in
the Book of Common Prayer, and sent down by the Lords to
this House?"
The House was divided.
The Noes went out.
Mr. WUUams, f Tellers for the yeas, ~\ g^
Mr. Boscowen, L With the yeas, J
Sir Edm. Peirce, f Tellers for the noes, \ q^
Mr. Spencer, \ With the noes, J
And so it passed in the negative.
The question being put, "That the amendments made
by the Convocation, and sent down by the Lords to this
House, might, by the order of this House, have been
debated"— It was resolved in the affirmative.
The question being put, "To agree to the said seventh

438 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
amendment, sent down from the Lords, at the twenty-fourth
line in the BUl of Uniformity, with the alteration made by
this House, and before expressed " —
It was resolved in the afiSrmative,
Ordered — That this House do proceed, to-morrow morn
ing, to the further consideration of the residue of the
amendments, sent down from the Lords, to the BUl of
Uniformity, Jovis, 17° ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ. H, C,
viU, 408 6— 409 a,
The House then resumed the consideration of the residue
of the amendments, sent from the Lords, to the BUl of
Uniformity, And the several amendments, from the thirtieth line
in the first skin, to the fortieth line, being read the
second time, were, upon the question, severaUy agreed to.
The question being put, "To agree to that part of the
amendment, to the fortieth line of the bill, to put in the
words 'the said,' instead of ' a'" —
It was resolved in the affirmative.
The question being put, "To adhere to these words,
'annexed and joined to this present Act, and;' which the
Lords, in the same amendment, would have omitted " —
It was resolved in the affirmative.
The amendment to the forty-second line in the bill was
read the second time ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the forty-third line was read the second
time, and, in part, agreed to, tUl these words, " appointed to
be annexed to this present Act."
The question being put, " To agree to that part of the
amendment for inserting the said words, 'appointed to be
annexed to this present Act'" —
It passed in the negative.
The amendment to the eighth line of the second skin,
being read the second time ; and the same being, instead of
" Michael, the archangel," to read " Bartholomew " —

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity. 439
The Question being put, " To adhere to the biU as to the
words, 'Michael the archangel '" —
The House was divided. -
The noes went out.
Sir Tho. Gower, / Tellers for the yeas, \ „_,
Mr. Boscowen, 1. With tbe yeas, J
Sir Robert Holt, f TeUers for the noes, \ _„
Mr. PhiUips, L With the noes, J
And so it passed in the negative.
And the amendment of the Lords, as to that point, was
agreed to.
The question being put, " To agree to the amendment to
the ninth Une of the second skin, to read, ' two,' instead of
'one'"— It was resolved in the affirmative.
The question being put, " To agree tb the amendment to
the fifteenth line of the second skin, to read, ' in the said
book,' instead of 'therein'" —
It was resolved in the affirmative.
The next paragraph of the said amendment, for the
ministers' subscription of their consent, being read the
second time —
Resolved, upon the question — ^That this House doth agree
to that paragraph of the said amendment.
Resolved — That this House wUl proceed upon the rest
of the amendments to the BiU of Uniformity to-morrow
morning.
Veneris, 18° ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
vui, 409 6— 410 a.]
The Hbuse then proceeded to the reading of the re
maining amendments, sent down from the Lords, to the
Bill for Uniformity, from the place where they left yes-
terday. The last paragraph of the amendment, in the twenty-fifth
line of the second skin, being read the second time —
iJeso&erf— That the said paragraph be postponed.

430 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
The three next amendments to the thirteenth, thirty-ninth,
and forty-first lines of the second skin, were read the second
time ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the seventh line of the second sldn was
read the second time : and the amendment being, that after
the word " dead," to add the clauses contained in the parch
ment marked with No. 1 —
The said parchment was read the second time.
The first paragraph in the said parchment was read the
third time.
Ordered — That Mr. Vaughan, Serjeant Seis, and Mr.
Thurland, do peruse the statutes^ and bring in a proviso for
translating the Book of Common Prayer into Welsh, if it
may consist with the laws in force.
Resolved, upon the question — That an amendment be made
to the said paragraph, by reading " one month," instead of
" three months."
Resolved — That the said paragraph, with the amendment,
be agreed to.
******
The House then proceeded to the reading of the second
paragraph of the parchment marked No. 1.
Ordered— Ta.at Mr. Crouch, Sir Tho. Meers, Serjeant
Charlton, Dr. Birkinhead, Sir Edmund Peirce, Sir John
Brampton, and Dr. Burwell, do withdraw, and pen a para
graph upon the present debate.
The next paragraph of the parchment, as to ordina
tion, was read the second time; and, upon the question,
agreed to.
The next paragraph, as to the administration of the
sacraments, was read the second time ; and, upon the
question, agreed to.
Sabbati, 19° Aprilis, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ. H. C,
riii, 410 6— 411a.]
The amendments to the addition in parchment, sent from
the Lords, to the Act of Uniformity, No. 1, being brought

1662;] on the Ad of Uniformity. 431
in by the members of this House directed to prepare the
same were this day read the first time.
And the first amendment being, first skin, line twenty-two,
after the word " aforesaid," leave out all the words, unto the
word "subscribe," in the twenty-ninth line; and, instead
thereof, insert these words following: "That every dean,
canon, and prebendary, of every cathedral or collegiate
church, and aU masters, and other heads, fellows, chaplains,
and tutors, of or in any college, hall, house of learning, or
hospital ; and every public professor and reader, in either of
the universities, and in every college elsewhere; and every
parson, vicar, curate, lecturer, and evety other person in holy
orders ; and every schoolmaster, keeping any public or private
school, and every person instructing or teaching any youth,
in any house or private family, as a tutor or schoolmaster,
who, upon the first day of May, which shall be in the year of
our Lord God one thousand six hundred and sixty-two ; or,
at any time thereafter, shaU be incumbent, or have possession
of any deanery, canonry, prebend, mastership, headship,
feUowship, professor's place, or reader's place, parsonage,
vicarage, or any other ecclesiastical dignity or promotion ; or
of any curate's place, lecture, or school ; or shall instruct or
teach any youth, or tutor, or schoolmaster; shall, before the
Feast Day of St. Bartholomew, which shall be in the year of
our Lord one thousand six hundred and sixty-two, at or
before his or their respective admission to be incumbent, or
to have possession aforesaid " —
The same was read the second time.
And the question being put, " That the time for declaring
against the Covenant be twenty years " —
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Resolved, upon the question — That this House doth agree
to the said first amendment : and
Ordered — That the persons formerly appointed to prepare
the amendments upon the former debate, do now prepare
and bring in a clause, by way of proviso, or otherwise,
that none of the persons enjoined to make the declara-

433 Proceedings in Parliament [1662,
tion and acknowledgment now under debate, be obliged
to that part which concerns the covenant, after twenty
years. And then were read the words in the said parchment, here
after following, line twenty-nine, viz., " subscribe the declara
tion and acknowledgment following; scilicet: 'I, A. B., do
declare, that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to
take arms against the king ; and that I do abhor that traitorous
position of taking arms, by his authority, against his person,
or against those who are commissioned by him ; and that I
wUl conform to the liturgy of the church of England, as it is
now by law established. And I do declare, that I do hold
there lies no obligation upon me, or on any other person,
from the oath commonly called The Solemn League and
Covenant; and that the same was in itself an unlawful
oath, and imposed upon the subjects of this realm against
the known laws and liberties of this kingdom.'"
Resolved — That after the word " covenant," and before the
word " and," in the thirty-eighth line, these words be added,
" to endeavour any change or alteration of government, either
in Church or State."
Resolved, upon the question — That this House doth agree
to that part of the said additional amendment in parch
ment, sent from the Lords, with the said addition last agreed
unto. And the second amendment, being in the fortieth Une,
after the word " kingdom," leave out aU the words to the
first word in the forty-fifth line; and instead thereof, in
sert the words, "particularly mentioned in the said
amendment." The first paragraph thereof being in these words," which
said declaration and acknowledgment shaU be subscribed by
every of the said masters, and other heads, follows, chaplains,
and tutors, of or in any college, hall, or house of learning,
and evety public professor and reader in either of the univer
sities, before the vice-chancellor of the respective universities
for the time being, or his deputy. And the said declaration

1663.] "** ^^^ -^^^ "/ Uniformity. 433
or acknowledgment shall be subscribed before the respective
bishop, or ordinary of the diocese, by every other person
hereby enjoined to subscribe the same, upon pain that all
and evety of the persons faUing in such subscription, shall
lose and forfeit such respective deanery, canonry, prebend,
mastership, headship, feUowship, professor's place, reader's
place, parsonage, ricarage, ecclesiastical dignity or promotion,
curate's place, lecture, and school; and shall be utterly
disabled, and ipso facto be deprived of the same. And that
every such respective deanery, canonry, prebend, mastership,
headship, feUowship, professor's place, reader's place, parson
age, ricarage, ecclesiastical dignity or promotion, curate's
place, lecture, and school, shaU be void, as if such person, so
failing, were naturaUy dead,"
The same was read the second time.
Resolved, upon the question — That this House doth agree
to the said paragraph.
And then the House adjourned the further debate of the
said amendment tiU Monday next, at ten of the clock,
LunK, 31° ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ, H. C,
viii, 4116— 413 a,]
The House did then proceed upon the rest of the
amendments to the BUl of Uniformity, And, in the first
place, on that part of the paragraph brought in by the
committee, which concerns schoolmasters, appointed for
that purpose. —
Resolved, upon the question — That aU the wbrds after the
word " aforesaid," in the seventeenth line of the third page of
the said amendment, to the word " and," in the one-and-
twentieth line of the same page, be left out : and that these
words, "shall, fbr the first bffence, suffer three months'
imprisonment, without bail or mainprize; and for every
second offence, shall suffer three months' imprisonment, with
out baU or mainprize ; and also forfeit to his majesty the
sum of five pounds," be inserted in the said paragraph,
instead of the said words to be omitted.

434 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
Resolved— That after the word " realm," in the fourteenth
line of the said page, these words, " for which he shaU pay
twelve pence only," be inserted.
The question being put, " That the words ' for the fee of
two shUlings and sixpence,' in the twenty-seventh line of the
third page of the said amendment, brought in by the com
mittee, be omitted ; and that the certificate for evety parson,
vicar, curate, and lecturer, shall be without fee?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Resolved — That the said paragraph, so amended, be agreed
to. The third amendment, brought in by the committee,
being twice read, was, upon the question, agreed unto.
The fourth amendment, by them brought in, being also
twice read, was, upon the question, agreed unto.
A proriso in relation to the Covenant for twenty years, this
day brought in by the said committee, was twice read, and,
upon the question, agreed to.
Resolved — That these words, "now is incumbent, and in
possession of any parsonage, ricarage, or benefice, and,"
be inserted after the word "parson who," in the fifty-
third line of the first parchment addition, sent from the
Lords. Resolved — That these words, "the said," be inserted,
instead of the word " any," after the word " enjoy," in the
fifty-seventh Une of the said first parchment addition, sent
from the Lords.
The question being put, "Whether the words 'ac
cording to . the form of the church of England,' be
inserted after the word 'ordination,' in the fifty-seventh
line of said first addition in parchment, sent from the
Lords?" It passed in the negative.
Resolved — That these words, "thenceforth be capable to be
admitted to any parsonage, ricarage, benefice, or any ecclesi
astical promotion or dignity; nor shaU any person," be
inserted after the word " shall," in the sixty-third Une of the

1663.] on the Ad of Uniformity. 435
said first addition in parchment, sent from the Lords : and that
the words " or do " be omitted.

Martis, 33° AprUis, [1663,] 14° Car. II. [Journ, H, C,
riii, 413 6— 413 a.]
The House then proceeded upon the amendments to the
Bill of Uniformity.
The paragraph in the parchment marked No. 1, as to
the penalties not to extend to foreigners, or aliens of the
foreign reformed churches, was read the second time, and
agreed to.
The rest of the paragraphs and provisos, to the end of the
said parchment, were read the second time ; and, upbn the
question, agreed to.
The House then proceeded to the reading of the second
sheet of the amendments, sent from the Lords, to the Bill of
Uniformity. And the amendment to the eighth line of the third skin
being twice read —
Resolved — That these words, "Archbishop of the pro
vince," be inserted in the said amendment, after the words
"hy the," in the eighth line; and the word " archbishop,"
after the word " said," in the eleventh line.
And the said amendment, with the additions aforesaid, was
agreed to.
The amendment to the ninth line was twice read ; and,
npon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the thirteenth line of the third skin,
was twice read ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The next amendment to the twenty-sixth line was twice
read ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the twenty-seventh line was twice read ;
and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the twenty-eighth line, and the proviso
directed by way of amendment, marked No, 3, were twice
read; and, upon the question, agreed to, F p 3

436 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
The amendment to the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth lines
was twice read ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the thirty-seventh line being twice
read; was, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the fortieth line was read.
Ordered — That the word "are," be inserted betwixt
the word "and," and the word "hereby," in that amend
ment. Resolved — That the amendment, so altered, be agreed to.
The next amendment, to the one-and-fortieth line, was
read the second time ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The next amendment to the forty-second line was read the
second time ; and the provisos, marked No. 3, directed, by
way of amendment, to be inserted instead of the words
" which are to be omitted," were read the second and third
time ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the twenty-seventh line of the
fourth skin was read the second time ; and, on the question,
agreed to.
The amendment to the twenty-eighth line of the fourth
skin was twice read ; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the twenty-ninth line of the fourth
skin was read the second time; and, upon the question,
agreed to.
The amendment to the one-and-thirtieth line was twice
read; and, upon the question, agreed to.
The amendment to the thirty-seventh line being, after the
word "authority," to leave out the rest of the bill; and add
the prorisos beginning, " Provided also, and be it enacted,"
and marked No. 4.
The rest of the biU, after the word " authority," being
twice read —
Resolved, upon the question — That the same be left out of
the biU.
The said provisos in the parchment No. 4 were read the
second time.
The first paragraph of the said provisos in parchment,

1662.] on the Act of Uniformity, 437
"for proriding the Book of Common Prayer in every
parish," &c., being read the third time —
Resolved, upon the question— That this House doth agree
to the said paragraph.
A proviso, by way of amendment, touching the prices to
he set on the Book of Common Prayer, was read.
' Ordered — That liberty be given to bring in a proviso, such
as shall be fit for setting the rates on the quires of the Book
of Common Prayer in folio, to be used in churches and public
places : and Mr. Pryn, Dr. Birkinhead, Sir Edmund Peirse,
and Dr. BurweU, to bring it in.
The next paragraph, touching the king's professor of the
law in the university of Oxford, was read the third- time ; and,
upon the question, agreed to.
The fourth paragraph, touching the subscription to the
Thirty-Sixth Article of the Thirty-Nine Articles, was read the
third time ; and, upon the questibn, agreed to.
The proriso, as to the dispensation with deprivation for not
using the cross and surplice, was read the second and third time.
The question being put, whether the question cbuceming
amendments tb be made tb this proviso, should be now put :
It passed in the negative.
The main question being put, for agreeing with the Lords
as to this proriso concerning the cross and surplice :
It passed in the negative.
Joris, 34 ApriUs, [1663], 14o Car. II, [Journ. H. C,
viii, 4136.]
The House then proceeded upon the remaining amendments
to the Bill for Uniformity ; and that part of the paragraph
concerning the allowance to such as are in livings, and wUl
be outed by this Act.
Ordered — That the debate be adjourned till Saturday.
Sabbati, 36° ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Jburn, H, C,
viii, 414 a-6.]
The Hbuse then resumed tbe debate upbn the amendment

438 Proceedings in Parliament [1663
to the BiU of Uniformity, as to the last paragraph of the
parchment marked No. 4, touching an allowance of fifths to
such as shall not conform, but lose their brings.
The question being propounded, that amendments be made
to the proviso, touching the allowance of fifths, to such as
shall not conform ;
The question being put, " Whether the question shall be now
put ? "
The House was divided.
The Noes went forth, .
Sfr Richard Temple, f TeUers for the yeas : "\
Sir John Talbot, \ With the yeas, J ^^•
Sir Robert Holt, f TeUers for the noes : \
Mr. Puckering, \ With the noes. ] ^^^
And so it passed in the negative.
The main queston being put, to agree to the amendment,
sent from the Lords, as to that paragraph of the parchment
touching aUowance of fifths to such as shaU not conform :
It passed in the negative.
The House then resumed the amendment, as to the title of
the Bill, sent from the Lords ; which was, by order, post
poned. And the same, being twice read, was, upon the question,
agreed. The next amendment, beginning with the word "never
theless," in the sixteenth amendment of the first paper, sent
from the Lords, which was also postponed, was read the
second time.
The question being put, to agree to the said amendment :
It passed Jn the negative.
Lunse, 38° AprUis, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ. H. C,
viii, 415a-6.]
The House then resumed the matter upon the Bill of
Uniformity. An amendment, to be added to the amendment sent from
the Lords, for the preserving of the Book of Common Prayer,

1662.] on the Act of Uniformity. 439
by having it recorded, aud kept in cathedral churches, in the
courts at Westminster, and in the tbwer, was twice read.
Besolved — That those words, which concern the heads of
colleges, be struck'out of the amendment.
Besolved — That the amendment be agreed to : and that
the same be added to the parchment amendment, sent from
the Lords, No. 4, after the word " therein," in the fifteenth
line of the said amendment.
Another amendment, for translating the Bible into Welsh,
was twice read; and some additions, upon the question,
agreed to be made thereto :
Which was done at the table.
Resolved — That the said amendment be agreed to : and
that the same be added to the parchment, sent from the
Lords, marked No. 4, after the word "therein," in the
fifteenth line of the parchment.
A proriso, for being uncovered, and for using reverent
gestures, at the time of divine serrice, was twice read.
But the matter being held proper for the convocation ;
Ordered — That such persons, as shall be employed to
manage the conference with the Lords, do intimate the desire
of this House, that it be recommended to the Convocation, to
take order for reverent and uniform gestures and demeanors
to be enjoined at the time of divine service and preaching.
Ordered — That it be referred to Mr. Solicitor General, the
Lord Fanshaw, Serjeant Charlton, Mr, Vaughan, Dr,
Birkinhead, Mr, Knight, Sir Tho. Meres, Mr. Clifford, Sir
Tho. Gower, Sir Edm. Peirse, Sir Tho. Littleton, Sir Francis
Goodrick, Mr. Crouch, and Sir Rich. Temple, or any three of
them, to see the amendments and^additions, to be made aud
added to the amendments sent from the Lords to the Bill of
Uniformity, so placed and ordered, that they may cohere;
and to prepare and draw up instructions and reasons in writ
ing; for the conference to be had with the Lords, upon the
BiU of Uniformity, against to-morrow; and to report it to
the House : and they are to meet in the speaker's chamber
this afternoon, at two of the clock.

440 Proceedings in Parliament [1663,
Martis, -39° ApriUs, [1662], 14° Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
viii, 4166.]
Ordered — That the report from the committee upon the
BiU of Uniformity be heard to-morrow morning.
Mercurii, 30° Aprilis, [1662], 140 Car, II, [Journ, H, C,
viii, 41 7a, J
Serjeant Charlton reports, from the committee which were
appointed to peruse the amendments, made by this House to
the amendments and provisos sent from the Lords, to the
BUl of Uniformity, and to draw up instructions and reasons,
to be insisted on at the conference to be had with the Lords
upon the said amendments : the several reasons which were
agreed by the committee to be insisted on, which were allowed
by this House,
Ordered — That Mr. Herbert do go up to the Lords, to
desire a conference upon the amendments to the Bill for Uni
formity. Die Mercurii,, 30° die ApriUs, [1663], 14° Car, II, [Journ,
H,L.,xi, 4416— 443 a.J
A message was brought from the House of Commons, by
James Herbert, Esquire, and others :
To desire a conference concerning the BUl for Uniformity.
The answer returned was :
That this House wiU give the House of Commons a present
conference, in the painted chamber.
******
The Lord Chancellor, the Lord Treasurer, the Lord Privy
Seal, the Earl of Bridgwater, and the Earl of Portiand,
are appointed to report the matter of the next conference
with the House of Commons, concerning the BiU fbr Uni
formity, ******
Next, the House was adjourned during pleasure, and the
Lords went to the conference with the House of Commons :
which being ended, the House was resumed,

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity, 441
Ordered — That the report of this conference shall be made
on Friday morning next.
Die Martis, 6° die Mail, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ, H, L,,
xi, 445 6,]
A message was brought from the House of Commons, by
Sir Thomas Meares and others :
To put their Lordships in mind of giving dispatch to the
BiU for Uniformity, as conceiring it to be of great conse-
ijuence : and the rather, because they believe they shaU not
sit long.
Die Mercurii, 7° Mali, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ, H, C,
viii, 433 6.]
Ordered — That a message be sent to the Lords, by Colonel
FretchvUe, to desire them to expedite the bill for restoring
impropriations to the loyal party.
Die MercurU, 7° die MaU, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ.
H.L.,xi, 446 6— 450 a.J
A message was brought from the House of Commons, by
Mr. FretsweU and others :
To put their Lordships in mind of a bill concerning the
restoring of impropriations to his majesty's loyal subjects.
Next, the Lord Privy Seal made a long report of the effect
of the conference with the House of Commons : " That Mr.
Seijeant Charlton managed the conference ; who, in the
name of the House of Commons, acquainted their Lordships,
that this conference was desired concerning the amendments
to the BUl of Uniformity.
" He said, they did agree in most of them with their Lord
ships. And wherein they differ, will appear by what follows.
"The first difference was in omitting these words, 'Ten
derness of some men's conscience,' being in the fifth line of
the seventh amendment, and instead thereof insert the word
'hath'; and then it runs thus, 'which the indisposition of

442 Proceedings in Parliament • [1662.
the time hath contracted,' turning the word 'have' into
'hath.' He said these words might well be omitted, in
respect there were causes enough besides mentioned ; and the
phrase of 'tenderness of conscience' having been much
abused, the Commons were loth to give so much countenance
to an abused phrase as to insert it.
" He proceeded to the eleventh amendment ; unto which he
said, the House agreed in part ; as, instead of ' a,' to read
the word ' said :' but disagreed in the other part thereof,
that is, to leave out these words ' annexed and joined to this
present Act, and,' adhering to the biU in that particular;
and then it goeth thus, ' in such order and form as in the
said book, entitled, the Book of Common Prayer, &c.,' and
so put it in the present tense, upon which, he said, two or
three more differences depend.
"To the thirteenth amendment, they agreed in all except
these words, ' which book is appointed to be annexed and
joined to this present Act.'
" The sixteenth amendment they agreed to, till it come to
the word 'nevertheless' in the first line of the, fourth part
of the paper amendment ; after which word, they disagree to
all that follows in that amendment concerning the cross in
baptism ; the reasons whereof he deferred till he came to the
proviso. And this was all he offered to their Lordships' paper
amendments; and so descended to those additions sent by
their Lordships to the Commons in parchment.
" To the first of those, in the sixth line, instead of ' three
months,' insert ' month ;' the reason is, that it was thought
heretofore too slight a work for the chief minister to read
Common Prayer, which was usually performed by the inferior
sort of clergy ; and, therefore, to meet with that inconveni
ence, they desired the chief minister might read it once a
month. " The next alteration was in the twenty-second line : from
the word 'aforesaid' leave out all to the word 'subscribed'
in the twenty-ninth line, and instead thereof insert these
words following, ' That every dean, canon, and prebendary.

1663.J on the Ad of Uniformity. 443
of every cathedral or collegiate church, and all masters and
other heads, fellows, chaplains, and tutors, of or in any
coUege, haU, house of learning, or hospital, and every public
professor and reader in either of the universities, and in every
college elsewhere, and every parson, vicar, curate, clerk,
lecturer, and every other person in holy orders, and every
schoolmaster keeping any public or private school, and every
person instructing or teaching any youth in any house or pri
vate family as a tutor or schoolmaster, who, upon the first
day of March, which wUl be in the year of our Lord God
1663, or at any time thereafter, shall be incumbent, or have
possession of any deanery, canonry, prebend, mastership,
headship, feUowship, professor's place, or reader's place, par
sonage, vicarage, or any other ecclesiastical dignity or promo
tion, or of auy curate's place, lecture, or school, or shall
instruct or teach any youth as tutor, or schoolmaster, shall,
before the feast day of St. Bartholomew which shall be in
the year of our Lord 1662, or at or before his or their respec
tive admission to be incumbent, to have possession aforesaid.'
The reason of this addition was, in extending it so far as
schoolmasters, in that the Commons observed the force of
education was great, so as the Commons thought they ought
to take care for the education of youth : for so many, he said,
of the gentty and nobUity found in the long parliament dif-
ferring from the Church of England did (as was conceived)
arise from this root.
" He observed, it was an oversight in the usurped powers,
that they took no care in this particular, whereby many
young persons were weU seasoned in their judgments as to
the king. This made the Commons take care that school
masters as well as ministers should subscribe, and rather
more. " The next amendment was in the thirty-eighth line ; after
the word 'covenant,' add these words 'to endeavour any
change or alteration of government either in church or
state :"
The reason of this alteration was in respect the added

444 Proceedings in Parliament [1662.
words were the very same which were used in the Act for the
safety of the king's person.
"The next alteration is in the fortieth Une ; after the word
'kingdom,' leave out all the words to the first word in the
forty-fifth line, and instead thereof insert these words 'which
said declaration and acknowledgment shall be subscribed by
every of the said masters, and other heads, fellows, chaplains,
and tutors, of or in any college, hall, or house of learning,
and every public professor and reader in either of the Univer
sities, before the vice-ch ancellor of the respective Universi
ties for the time being, or his deputy ; and the said declara
tion or acknowledgment shall be subscribed before the respec
tive archbishop, or ordinary of the diocese, or every other
person hereby enjoined to subscribe the same, upon pain that
all and every of the persons aforesaid, failing in such subscrip
tion, shall lose and forfeit such respective deanery, canonry,
prebend, mastership, headship, fellowship, professor's place,
reader's place, parsonage, ricarage, ecclesiastical dignity or
promotion, curate's place, lecture, and school, and shall be
utterly disabled, and ipso facto deprived of the same ; and
that every such respective deanery, canonry, prebend, master
ship, headship, fellowship, professor's place, reader's place,
parsonage, vicarage, ecclesiastical dignity or promotion,
curate's place, lecture, and school,^shaU be void, as if such
person so failing were naturally dead : and if any school
master, or other person instructing'or teaching youths in any
private house or family as a tutor or schoolmaster, shall in
struct or teach any youth, as a tutor or schoolmaster, before
license obtained from his respective archbishop, or ordinary of
the diocese, according to the laws and statutes of this realm,
for which he shall pay twelve pence only, and before such sub
scription and acknowledgment made as afore, shall for the
first offence suffer three months' imprisonment, without bail
or mainprize; and for every second and other such offence
shall suffer three months' imprisonment, without bail or main-
prize, and also forfeit|to his majesty the sum of five pounds :
and, after such subscriptions made, every parson, vicar, curate.

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity. 445
and lecturer, shall procure a certificate, under the hand and
seal of the respective archbishop, bishop, or ordinary of the
diocese, who are hereby enjoined and required, upon demand,
to make and deliver the same, and shall publicly and openly
read the same, together with the declaration or acknowledg
ment aforesaid, upon some Lord's day within thi'ee months
then next foUowing, in his parish church where he is to
officiate. " The clause of three months' imprisonment is added, to
meet with those men who have no livings to lose ; and there
fore the Commons thought this addition necessary.
"Then he descended to an amendment in the forty-ninth
line: after the word 'benefice,' leave out the word 'with
cure,' and insert these words 'curate's place, or lecturer's
place respectively,' In the disabling clause, livings with
cure were only included ; but the Commons think not fit to
leave sinecures to nonconformists; for therein he thinketh
more favour would be shewn them, than to permit them to
have brings with cure ; wherefore they have inserted these
words 'curate's place or lecturer's place.'
"In the fiftieth Une, after the word 'dead,' insert the
words foUowing, ' Provided always, that, from and after the
35th day of March, which shall be in the year of our Lord
1683, there shaU be omitted in the said declaration or
acknowledgment so to be subscribed and read, these words
foUowing, videlicit, ' And I do declare, that I do hold there lies
no obUgation upon me, or any other person, from the bath
commonly called The Solemn League and Covenant, to endea
vour any change or alteration of government, either in church
or state ; and that the same was in itself an unlawful oath,
and impbsed upbn the subjects bf this realm against the
known laws and liberties of this kingdom ; so as none of the
persons aforesaid shall -from thenceforth be at all obliged to
subscribe or read that part of the said declaration or acknow
ledgment,' " The reason of this provisb was, that the Cbmmons would
not perpetuate the memory of the covenant, vyhich a common

446 Proceedings in Parliament [1662,
medium of twenty years may probably determine the lives of
such as took it,
"The next was in the fifty-third Une : after the word ' who,'
insert these words ' now is incumbent, and in possession of
any parsonage, vicarage, or benefice, and who ; ' and leave
out the word ' who ' in the fifty-fourth line,
" The reason of this alteration was, they would not exclude
such as hereafter might be wiUing to conform from other
livings, though they disabled them as to such as for the pre
sent they enjoyed; whereas, in their Lordships' alteration,
there was no limitation of time, and so none capable of livings,
who were capable hereafter to conform,
" The next alteration was in the fifty-seventh line : after
the word ' enjoyed,' insert the words 'the said,' instead of the
word ' any ;' and then it goeth thus, ' shaU have, hold, or
enjoy, the said parsonage, ricarage, benefice, or other ecclesi
astical promotion,'
" The next amendment is in the sixty-third line : after the
word ' shall ' leave out the words ' or do,' and instead thereof
insert the words ' thenceforth be capable to be admitted to
any parsonage, vicarage, benefice, or other ecclesiastical pro
motion or dignity whatsoever, nor shall presume to consecrate
or administer the Lord's supper.'
"The Commons think every incumbent should, before
his admission, give testimony of his conformity, and ought
before such admission to be in full orders.
"The next amendment is in the sixty -third skin, where
the fifth line of that skin as omitted. Tbe line is, ' or that
the same avoidance be openly and publicly declared.' Now
it doth not appear by that clause what is meant by ' openly,'
and there being certainty enough in the former words, the
Commons were not willing to leave in a clause which might
raise disputes.
" And then the gentlemen came to the amendments in the
second paper, which they agreed to with this addition of the
words, 'archbishop, bishop of the province, or,' after the
words ' by the '' in the fourth line ; and the words " arch-

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity, 447
bishop or,' after the word ' same ' in the eleventh line of the
said amendment, the Commons inserted the archbishop, as
being unfit to omit him in that affair. The same reason is
for the amendment in the eleventh line.
"The next amendment is in the fortieth line. Agreed,
with the addition of the word ' are ' between the word ' and '
and ' hereby ' in the amendment.
" The next is the thirty-seventh line. Agreed to leave out
the rest of the bUl, after the word ' authority.'
" Then he came to the provisos in parchment No. 4.
"The first paragraph for providing the book, unto the word
'provided' in the fifteenth line in the first skin: agreed,
with the addition following, videlicit, after the word ' therein '
add the words foUowing, ' provided always, and be it enacted,
by the authority aforesaid, that the Bishops of Hereford, St,
Darid's, Asaph, Bangor, and Llandaff, and their successors,
shall take such order amongst themselves, for the souls'
health of the flocks committed to their charge in Wales, that
the book hereunto annexed be truly and exactly translated
into the British or Welsh tongue ; and that the same being
translated, and being by them, or any three of them at the
least, riewed, perused, and aUowed to be imprinted, to such
number at least so that one of the said books so translated
and imprinted may be had for every cathedral, coUegiate, and
parish church, and chapel of ease in the said respective
dioceses and places in Wales, where the Welsh is commonly
spoken or used, before the 1st day of May, 1665 ; and that,
from and after the imprinting and publishing of the said
hook so tianslated, the whole divine service shall be used and
said by the ministers and curates throughout all Wales,
within the diocese where the Welsh tongue is commonly
used, in the British or Welsh tongue, in such manner and form
as is prescribed, according to the book hereunto annexed, to
be used in the English tongue, differing nothing in any order
or form from the said EngUsh book, for which book so trans
lated and imprinted, the churchwardens of every the said
parishes shaU pay out of the parish money in their hands

448 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
for the use of the respective churches, and be aUowed the
same in their accompt ; and the said bishops and their suc
cessors, or any three of them at the least, shall set and
appoint the price for which the said book shall be sold : and
another Book of Common Prayer, in the English tongue,
shall be bought and had in every church throughout Wales,
in which the Book of Common Prayer, in Welsh, is to be
had by force of this Act, before the 1st day of May, 1664;
and the same book to remain in such convenient places
within the said churches, that such as understand them may
resort, at all convenient times, to read and peruse the same;
and also such as do not understand the said language may, by
conferring both tongues together, the sooner attain to the
knowledge of the English tongue, anything in this Act to the
contrary notwithstanding: and, until printed copies of the
said book, so to be translated, may be had, provided, the
form of Common Prayer, established by parliament, before
the making of this Act, shall be used as formerly, in such
part of Wales where the English tongue is not commonly
understood : and, to the end that the true and perfect
copies of this Act, and the said book hereunto annexed,
may be safely kept and perpetually preserved, and for
the avoiding of all disputes for the time to come, be it
enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that the respective
deans and chapters of every cathedral or coUegiate church
within England and Wales, shall, at their proper costs
and charges, before the five-and-twentieth day of December,
1663, obtain, under the great seal of England, a true
and perfect copy of this said Act, and of the said hook
annexed hereunto, to be, by the said deans and chapters and
their successors, kept and preserved in safety for ever, and to
be also produced and shewed forth in any court of record as
often as they shall be thereuntb lawfuUy required; and also
there shall be delivered true and perfect copies of this Act, and
of the same book, in the respective courts at Westminster, and
into the Tower of London, to be kept and preserved for ever
amongst the records of the said courts, and records of the

663,] on the Act of Uniformity, 449
Tower, to be produced and shewed forth in any court as need
shall require; which said books, so to be exemplified under
the great seal of England, > shaU be examined by such
persons as the king's majesty shaU appoint under the
great seal of England for that purpose, and shaU be com
pared with the original book hereunto annexed, and shaU
have power to correct and amend in writing, any error com
mitted by the printer in the printing of the same book, or of
anything therein contained; and shall certify in writing
under their hands and seals, or the hands and seals of any
three of them, at the end of the same book, that they have
examined and compared the same book, and find it to be a
true and perfect copy ; which said books, and every of them,
so exempUfied under the great seal of England as aforesaid,
shall be deemed, taken, adjudged, and expounded, to be good
and available in the law to all intents and purposes whatso
ever, and shall be accounted ^as good records as this book
itself hereunto annexed, any law or custom to the contrary
in any wise notwithstanding,
"The second and third paragraphs, touching the king's
professor of law, and touching the subscription to the thirty-
sixth Article: agreed, unto the word, 'prorided,' in the
seventeenth line, in the second skin ; all which proriso they
reject, for these reasons :
"1, It is a proriso without precedent,
"3, That it would establish schism.
"3. That it would not gratify such for whom it was in
tended, "To the first, he said. It was very apparent in England,
that it was without precedent; and, as he thought, in the
world also, for they never heard that ever any national church
did the like,
"It was one thing, he said, to aUow a differing reUgion in
a nation; another thing to allow men to receive profits for
that church unto which men would not conform,
" Secondly, though there were dissenters in the particulars
of the proviso in the time of queen EUzabeth and king James,
G G

450 Proceedings in Parliament [1663
yet in those days those opinions stayed there, and went no
further, " To the second head. That" it would unavoidably estabUsh
schism, AU persons of different inclinations would apply to
such as should have this liberty, and that necessarUy make
parties, especially in great cities. He did observe these two
ceremonies of the cross and surplice were long in use in the
church; and he found a high commendation of the use of
the cross in baptism, in the book sent to the Commons from
the Lords, wherein it is so clearly explained, as there can be
no suspicion of popety in it. It was used, he said, to quicken
the memory, as to the benefits of baptism ; and if that were
omitted, much of the serrice belonging to baptism must be
omitted also, many passages depending upon the use of that
ceremony. " The gentleman added, that he thought it better to impose
no ceremonies, than to dispense with any ; and he thought it
very incongruous, at the same time when you are settUng
uniformity, to establish schism,
" To the third head. It would not satisfy those for whom it
was intended; for such chiefly reject it upon these grounds,
that things indifferent ought not to be enjoined; which
opinion, he said, took away all the weight of human authority,
which consists in commanding things otherwise indifferent;
so as, when this shaU be yielded, you give them nothing, they
opposing for the imposition sake,
"He added, these were reasons as to the nature of the
thing ; and as to the reasons given by their lordships to the
Commons, he answered to as foUoweth :
" The king's engagement at Breda as to tender consciences ;
unto which he said, that his majesty could not understand the
misleaders of the people, but the misled. It woidd be vety
strange to call a schismatical conscience a tender conscience.
He said a tender conscience denoted an impression from
without, received from another, and that upon which another
strikes, "Secondly, suppose these had been meant, yet he said

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity. 451
there could be no inference of any breach of promise in his
majesty, because that Declaration had these two limitations :
"First, a reference to parliament.
"Secondly, such liberties to be granted only as consisted
with the peace of the kingdom.
"Then he came to the second proviso, touching allowing
fifths to such incumbents as should be excluded their Uvings ;
which, he observed, was no seasonable proviso, at least at this
time; and if it were, yet not fit to allow such persons any
things out of ecclesiastical livings.
"He said, what could be more repugnant, at the same
time, to enact uniformity, and to allow the fifth of an eccle
siastical Uring to a nonconformist, for not conforming ; which,
he said, joined with the pity of their party, would amount to
more than the value of the whole living ?
" He said, such a course was too jealous a reflection upon
the Act, when you say some godly people would not submit ;
and it can signify nothing but fear, in making such a con
cession. " He added, this would make the Act contradictoty ; to say
in one part of the biU that it was an equal Act, and in another
part to allow dissenters to it.
"There was another reason of the Commons' dissent : that
divers wives and chUdren of orthodox ministers were made
miserable by some of these men ; it may be, for not paying
unto them those fifths which were aUowed unto them in the
late times,
"He added, that none that make laws ought to suppose
that any would break them,
" He said further, that it was not reasonable to aUow the
fifths of ecclesiastical livings ; because generally such livings
were too small, not able to maintain a learned man with
books ; and by lessening livings thus, it would gratify uncon
formable men, who desire livings in such hands should be
made small, whereby the reputation of the conformable
clergy would be lessened,
" Secondly, he said, such a concession is not only against
G G 3

463 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
reason, but justice also. It was a divine canon which said,
he that served at the altar should live at the altar ; therefore
the profit of the living ought to go to the labourer.
" He said, that unity was so precious, that it served not
only for the peace of the church, but of the kingdom also;
for to give occasions for multitudes to meet which would
certainly follow the dissenters, what danger that might carry
with it, was worthy your Lordships' consideration,
"He did from the House of Commons desire their Lordships
that they would recommend to the Convocation the directing
of such decent gestures to be used in time of divine service
as was fit. He found one mistake in the rubric of baptism,
which he conceived was a mistake of the writer, 'persons'
being put instead of 'chUdren.' And having thus far dis
sented from their Lordships in decimo sexto, he came to an
argument in folio ; giving the Commons' consent, that their
Lordships should annex to the bill that book sent to the
Commons by your Lordships; and so at length came to a
final concord by his silence, which put an end to that
conference," Ordered, That the alterations, and the matter of this
conference, shall be read and taken into consideration to
morrow in the afternoon.
Die Jovis, 8° Die Maii, [1663], 14° Car. II, post meridiem,
[Journ. H, L., xi, 450 6—451 a,]
The amendments and alterations in the BUl of Uniformity,
brought from the House of Commons at a conference, and
reported yesterday, were now read twice.
And, for the better consideration hereof, the House was
adjourned into a committee during pleasure.
And being resumed ;
The questibn being put, " Whether this Hbuse agrees with
the Hbuse of Commons in the clause concerning schoolmas
ters, with the alterations and amendments ? "
It was resolved in the affirmative.

1663.] on the Act of Uniformity. 453
The next question put was, " Whether this House agrees
to aU the rest of the alterations and amendments as came up
from the House of Commons?"
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Then the alterations and amendments in the said BiU of
Uniformity were read the third time.
And the question being put, " Whether this House agrees
to these alterations and amendments ? "
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Whereas it was signified by the House of Commons, at the
conference yesterday, " That they found one mistake in the
rubric of baptism, which they conceived was a mistake of the
writer, 'persons' being put instead of ' chUdren:' "
The Lord Bishop of Durham acquainted the House, that
himself, and the Lord Bishop of St, Asaph, and the Lerd
Bishop of CarlUe, had authority from the Convocation to
mend the said word, averring it was only a mistake of the
scribe. And accordingly they came to the clerk's table, and
amended the same.
Whereas it was intimated at the conference yesterday, as
the desire of the House of Commons, "That it be recom
mended to the Convocation, to take order for reverend and
uniform gestures and demeanors to be enjoined at the time
of dirine serrice and preaching :"
It is ordered by this House, and hereby recommended to
the Lords, the Bishops, and the rest of the Convocation of
the Clergy, to prepare some canon or rule for that purpose, to
be humbly presented unto his majesty for his assent.
Die Veneris, 9° die Maii, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ.H. L.,
xi, 451 6.]
A message was sent to the House of Commons, by Sir
Justinian Lewin and Sir Toby Woofridge :
******
To let them know, that the Lords do agree with them
m the alteratibns, amendments, and prbrisos, in the BUl
concermng Uniformity,

454 Proceedings in Parliament [1663.
Veneris, 9° Maii, [1663], 14o Car. II, [Journ. H. C, riU,
434 6.J
A message from the Lords, by Sir Justinian Lewin and Sir
Toby Woolrich;
Mr. Speaker, the Lords have returned you two bills : . . .
And they do further command us to give you notice, that
they have agreed to the Bill of Uniformity, with the amend
ments and alterations sent from this House.
Die Lunse, 19° die Maii, [1663], 14° Car. II, [Journ. H. L.,
xi, 470 a— 473 a.]
Then his majesty came and sat in his throne arrayed with
his royal robes ; the peers likewise sitting in their robes un
covered. The king gave command to the gentleman usher of the
black rod, to let the House of Commons know, " It is his
majesty's pleasure, they should attend him forthwith."
Who, in obedience, came presently, attended with their
speaker; who, after low obeisance made to his majesty, made
this speech foUowing : videlicit,
" May it please your most exceUent majesty,
" The glorious body of the sun doth exhilarate the soul of
man with its light, and fructify the earth by its heat. In like
manner, we, the knights, citizens, and burgesses of the Com
mons House of Parliament, do with all humility and thank
fulness acknowledge, these frequent accessions to your royal
presence do both comfort our hearts, and influence our
actions. ******
" Great Sir,
"We know, the strongest building must fall, if the coup
ling pins be pulled out : therefore our care hath been, to pre
pare such constitutions, that the prerogative of the crown and
the propriety of the people may, like squared stones in a
well built arch, each support the other, and grow the closer
and stronger for any weight or force that shaU be laid upon
them.

1663.] on the Ad of Uniformity. 455
"We cannot forget the late disputing age, wherein most
persons took a Uberty, and some men made it their delight,
to trample upon the discipline and government of the church.
The hedge being trod down, the foxes and the wolves did
enter; the swine and other unclean beasts defiled the temple.
At length it was discerned, the smectymnian plot did not only
hend itself to reform ceremonies, but sought to erect a
popular authority of elders, and to root out episcopal jurisdic
tion. In order to this work, church ornaments were first
taken away ; then the means whereby distinction or inequality
might be upheld amongst ecclesiastical governors ; then the
forms of common prayer, which as members of the public
body of Christ's church were enjoined us, were decried as
superstitious, and in lieu thereof nothing, or worse than
nothing, introduced.
" Your majesty haring already restored the governors and
government of the church, the patrimony and privileges of
our churchmen ; we held it now our duty, for the reformation
of aU abuses in the public worship of God, humbly to present
unto your majesty, a BiU for the Uniformity of Public
Prayers and Administration of Sacraments.
" We hope the God of order and unity will conform the
hearts of aU the people in this nation, to serve him in this
order and uniformity."
******
Then the clerk of the crown read the titles of these biUs
following : —
"1. An Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers, and
Administration of Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremo
nies; and for establishing the form of making, ordaining,
and consecrating Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, in the
Church of England."
******
To aU these bUls severally the royal assent was pronounced,
by the clerk of the parUaments, in these words,]
"Le Roy le veult."

456 The Six hundred Alterations [1663.

XXVII.
TTte Six Hundred Alterations made in the Book of Common
Prayer by Convocation, and adopted by Parliament. —
CardweU's History of Conferences, Oxford, 1849, pp,
380—6,
Op the alterations made at this time in the Prayer Book
the foUowing are the most important. The Sentences, the
Epistles and Gospels, and other extracts from the Bible
(except the Psalter, the Ten Commandments, and other por
tions of the Communion Service) were taken generaUy frOm
the version of 1611, The Absolution was ordered to be pro
nounced by the " priest" alone, instead of the " minister,"
The book of Bel and the Dragon was re-inserted in the
Calendar of Lessons, The prayers for the king, the royal
family, the clergy, and people, together with the prayers of
St, Chrysostom and the Benediction, were printed in the
order both of Morning and Evening Service, instead of being
left, as formerly, at the end of the litany. The Evening
Service, which previously began with the Lord's prayer, was
now. opened with the sentences, the exhortation, the con
fession, and absolution, printed as in the Morning Serrice,
In the litany the words "rebellion" and "schism" were
added to the petition respecting " sedition, privy conspiracy,"
&c. In a subsequent petition the words " bishops, priests,
and deacons" were employed instead of "bishops, pastors,
and ministers of the church," Among the occasional prayers
and thanksgivings were now introduced a second prayer for
fair weather, the two prayers for the ember weeks, the
prayers for the parliament and for aU conditions of men, a
thanksgiving for restoring public peace at home, and the
general thanksgiving. New collects were appointed for the
third Sunday in Advent, and for St, Stephen's day. The
Genealogy, which previously made part of the gospel for the
Sunday after Christmas, was now omitted, A distinct col-

1663.] made in the Book of Common Prayer. 457
lect, epistle, and gbspel, were provided for a sixth Sunday
after the Epiphany, The gospels for the Sunday next before
Easter and for Good Friday were shortened, having formerly
contained within them respectively the second lesson for the
day. In several places, as in one of the coUects for Good
Friday, in those for the fifth and sixteenth Sundays after
Trinity, for St, Simon and St, Jude, and in other places, the
word "church" was used for "congregation," A distinct
coUect was supplied for Easter even. The first of the anthems
used on Easter day was added, A distinct epistle was pro
rided for the day of the purification. The last clause
respecting saints departed was added to the prayer for the
church mUitant. The rubric was added as to "covering
what remaineth of the elements with a fair linen cloth,"
The order in councU respecting kneeling at the Lord's supper,
which had been introduced in 1553 and removed by queen
Elizabeth, was restored, with this alteration; instead of
"any real and essential presence there being of Christ's
natural flesh and blood," it is now read, " any corporal pre
sence of Christ's natural flesh and blood," A new office was
appointed for the "baptism of such as are of riper years;"
and some alterations made in the other offices of baptism.
The preface to confirmation was curtaUed, and the clause
respecting the undoubted salvation of baptized infants dying
before the commission of actual sin, was placed after the
office for infant baptism. Some changes were made in the
offices for confirmation and matrimony ; and in the rubric at
the end of the latter, the receiring the communion on the
day of marriage was no Ibnger made imperative. In the
risitatibu bf the sick the words "if he humbly and heartily
desire it" were added to the rubric respecting absolution :
the benediction also and the prayers that follow, appear now
for the first time. In the order for burial the first rubric
respecting persons unbaptized or excommunicate was added.
Forms of prayer were supplied to be used at sea : and, lastly,
offices were provided for the 30th of January and 39th of
May, and the old service fbr the 5th of November was cor-

458 The Publication of the [1663,
rected. These and many other minor alterations, amounting,
as Dr, Tenison computed, to about six hundred in number,
were made in the Book of Common Prayer by the Convo
cation of 1663, and were finally ratified by the Act of
Uniformity,

XXVIII,
The Publication of the Book of Common Prayer.
London, August 6th, [1662. J
In pursuance of the late Act for Uniformity of Publique
Prayers in the Church of England, the same itself is now
perfectly and exactly printed, and by the great care and
prudence of the most Reverend Archbishops and Bishops,
books in folio are prorided for all churches and chapels
in this kingdom ; the price of which book (though it contains
one hundred and sixty-five sheets) is ordered to be but six
shillings ready bound, '
A Certificate given by the Lord Bishop of Peterborough,
allowing a lawful impediment for persons not reading the
Book of Common Prayer, &c., within the time prescribed
by the late Act of Uniformity.
" Whereas, by an Act of Parliament, made and printed in
this present year, 1662, for the Uniformity of Public Prayer,
^c, it is enacted, among other things, &c., 'and that every
such person who shall (without some lawful impediment, to
be allowed and approved of by the ordinary of the place,)
neglect or refuse to do the same within the time aforesaid,
shall ipso facto be deprived of his spiritual promotions.'
And forasmuch as the Books of Common Prayer appointed
' Merewrius Publictis. Published by Authority. Prom Thursday, July
31st, to Thursday, August 7th, 1662. p. 514.

1663.] Book of Common Prayer. 459
hy the said Act to be read, could not be gotten by the dean
and prebendaries of the cathedral church of Peterborough (so
that they might read the same in the said cathedral) before
the 17th of this instant, August, being the Sunday imme
diately preceding the Feast of St. Bartholomew, upon which
day it is not possible that all the members of the said
cathedral church should read the said service in manner and
form as is by the said Act directed. We, therefore, by the
power given to us by the said Act, do allow and approve of
the said impediment, and do hereby declare it so to be for
the not reading of the said service as directed, and for not
declaring of their contents as required in and by the said Act.
Sealed and signed this 17th of August, 1663.
"B. Peterborough."^
"A complaint was made' [says Dr. Calamy in his Life of
Mr. Baxter, p. 301] that very few of them [the clergy] could
see the book, to all things in which they were to declare
their assent and consent before the time limited by the Act
expired. For the Common Prayer book with the alterations
_jd amendments (for so they are called, how deservedly I
inquire not) made by the Convocation, did not come out of
the press tiU a few days before the 34th of August. So that
of the seven thousand ministers in England who kept their
Hvings, few, except those who were in or near London, could
possibly have a sight of the book with its alterations, till
after they had declared their assent and consent to it.
" Mr. OUiffe, in his ' Defence of Ministerial Conformity,'
to take this off, reports, from an aged minister in their parts,
that he and his neighbours sent to London, and had the
amendments and alterations copied out ; and adds, that it is
to be hoped, that the charge here brought is groundless
against so many thousand ministers, &c.
"The return made by Dr. Calamy, in his Defence of
Moderate Nonconformity, part ii, pp. 100, 101, is this, that
' Kennett's Kegister and Chronicle, Ecclesiastical and Civil. London,
1728, p. 743.

460 The King's Declaration. [1663,
perhaps that might be a peculiar favour, because I have it
under the hand of another worthy ejected minister (who is
since dead) that this was true in fact; and that several
ministers now in London never read it before they gave their
assent and consent, and that in Middlesex few parishes had
the book tUl a week, fortnight, three weeks, or a month after.
But as for written copies of the amendments, they were so
Uable to abuses and mistakes, that 'tis dubious how far they
might be safely depended on,"*

XXIX.
TTie King's Declaration.

Charles R.
As it hath pleased Almighty God so wonderfuUy to restore
us to the throne of our ancestors, and our subjects to
happy peace and tranquillity without the least bloodshed by
the military sword; so having still earnestly wished that
both might be secured and maintained with the least effusion
possible of the same by the sword of justice, as desiring
much rather to cure the ill intentions of the disaffected by
our clemency, than to punish the effects by rigour of
law : we cannot but express our great grief and trouble, that
the unpardonable as weU as incurable malignity of some
should have carried them anew to such traitorous practices
against our person and government, as have necessitated us
to make fresh examples by the death of any more of our
subjects. But as the publicness of their trial in the ordi
nary course of law, hath by their conriction sufficiently
' Kennett's Kegister and Chronicle, Ecclesiastical and Civil. London,
1728, p. 837,

1562.] The King's Declaration, 461
gjitisfied the world of the enormity of their crimes, so we
have thought fit, at the same time that we are forced to
punish, to endeavour, as much as in us lieth, the preventing
all occasions of the Uke for the future by this Declaration ;
wherein our principal aim is, to apply proper antidotes to all
those venomous insinuations, by which (as we are certainly
mformed) some of our subjects of inveterate and unalterable
ill principles, do daily endeavour to pbisbn the affectibns bf
our good people, by misleading their understandings, and
that prineipaUy, by four sorts of most false and malicious
scandals, which we do look upon as the grounds of those
traitorous attempts.
The first. By suggesting unto them, that having attained
our ends in re-establishing our regal authority, and gaining
the power into our own hands by a specious condescension
to a general act of indemnity, we intend nothing less than
the observation of it; but on the contrary, by degrees to
subject the persons and estates of aU such who stood in need
of that law, to future revenge, and to give them up to the
spoU of those who had lost their fortunes in our service.
Secondly, That upon pretence of plots and practices
j^ainst us, we intend to introduce a military way of govern
ment in this kingdom.
Thirdly, That having made use of such solemn promises
from Breda, and in several declarations since, of ease and
liberty to tender consciences, instead of performing any
part of them, we have added straiter fetters than ever, and
new rocks of scandal to the scruprdous, by the Act of Uni
formity, Fourthly and lastly. We find it as artificially as maliciously
divulged throughout tbe whole kingdom. That at the same
time we deny a fitting liberty to those other sects of our
subjects, whose consciences will nbt allow them to conform
to the reUgion estabUshed by law : we are highly indulgent
to papists, not only in exempting them from the penalties
of the law, but even to such a degree of countenance and
encouragement, as may even endanger the protestant religibn.

463 The King's Declaration, [1663,
Upon occasion of aU which wicked and malicious sug
gestions, although we are confident that the innate loyalty
and good affections of the generality of our people,
strengthened by a due sense of the late calamities brought
upon them by the same arts, wiU hinder seeds of so detes
table a nature from taking root, and bringing forth the
fruits aimed at by the sowers of them : yet we think that
in our fatherly care to prevent any misleading of those who
are so dear to us, we owe unto them and to ourselves this
publication of our steadfast resolutions in all these particulars.
As to the first point, concerning the Act of indemnity;
certainly there can be no greater eridence that the passing
it proceeded from the clemency of our nature, as weU as
from the present conjuncture of that parliament wherein it
was first framed, than that we have been pleased to make it
our especial care to have it confirmed by a new Act in this,
a parliament composed of members so full of affections to
our person, and of zeal for the public good, as we could
never have cause to apprehend their exacting from us a
confirmation of anything that had been extorted, or had at
present been judged by us prejudicial to either : and, there
fore, as we not only consented unto, but most earnestly
desired the passing that Act at first, and confirming it since,
as being no less conformable to our nature, than conducible
to a happy settlement; so we do hereby most solemnly
renew unto all our subjects concerned in it, this engagement,
on the word of a king, — That it shall never be in the power
of any person or interest whatsoever, to make us decline
from the religious observance of it : it haring been always a
constant profession of ours, — That we do and shall ever
think our royal dignity and greatness much more happily
and securely founded on our own clemency and our subjects'
loves, than in their fears, and our power.
Which most sincere profession of ours may suffice also to
expose the wickedness and falsehood of the other malice con
cerning the design of introducing a way of government by
military power.

1663.] The King's Declaration, 463
It is true, we should not think that we discharged
rightly what we owe to the public peace, and to the freedom
and security of parliaments, as well as to the safety of our
person, if, whilst we daily discover such multitudes of dis
tempered minds, and such dangerous practices issuing from
them, we should, from want of sufficient guards, put it in
the power of those rebellious spirits to undertake, probably,
at any time, what they have at several times so madly
attempted for the ruin and destruction of us all. Of which
certainly, besides the present occasion of new precaution as
weU as new severity, we suppose all our good subjects need
not a Uvelier nor more moving instance, than what their
memories can furnish them with, from the desperate under
taking of Venner aud his crew, which (as mad as it was) we
leave to aU the world to judge of how dangerous a conse
quence it might have been, without that little strength
remaining of those forces, which (to give our people a
testimony of our founding aU our security rather in their
affections than in any military power) we had so frankly
disbanded, and which afterwards, by advice of our council
merely upon motives of the public safety, we consented to
increase to that moderate proportion, which was, indeed,
absolutely necessaty, and hath since been sufficiently proved
to be so, by the security which we owe to them from the late
dangerous practices.
But the reasons of such precautions once ceasing, we are
vety sure that what guards soever may be found necessary
for us to continue, as in former times, for the dignity and
honour of our crown; the sole strength and security we
shaU ever confide in shaU be the hearts and affections of our
subjects, endeared and confirmed to us by our gracious and
steady manner of government, according to the ancient
known laws of the land ; there being not any one of our
subjects who doth more from his heart abhor, than we our
selves, all sort of militaty and arbitrary rule.
As for the third, concerning the non-performance of our
promises, we remember weU the vety words of those from

464 The King's Declaration, [1663.
Breda; viz.. We do declare a Uberty to tender consciences,
and that no man shall be disquieted or called in question
for differences of opinion in matters of religion, which do
not disturb the peace of the kingdom : and that we shall be
ready to consent to such an act of parliament, as upon
mature deliberation shaU be offered to us for the full grant
ing that indulgence.
We remember well the confirmations we have made of
them since upon several occasions in parliament : and as aU
these things are stUl fresh in our memory, so are we still
firm in the resolution of performing them to the full. But
it must not be wondered at, since that parliament, to which
those promises were made in relation to an act, never thought
fit to offer us any to that purpose, and being so zealous as
we are (and by the grace of God shall ever be) for the main
tenance of the true protestant religion, finding it so shaken
(not to say overthrown) as we did, we should give its estab-
Ushment the precedency before matters of indulgence to
dissenters from it. But that once done, (as we hope it is
sufficiently by the bUl of uniformity,) we are glad to lay hold
on this occasion to renew unto all our subjects concerned in
those promises of indulgence by a true tenderness of con
science, this assurance :
That, as in the first place, we have been zealous to settle
the unifornuty of the church of England, in discipline,
ceremony, and government, and shaU ever constantly main
tain it ;
So as for what concerns the penalties upon thbse who
(living peaceable) do not conform thereunto through scruple
and tenderness of misguided conscience, but modestly and
without scandal perform their devotions in their own way,
we shall make it our special care so far forth as in us lies,
without invading the freedom of parliament, to incline their
wisdom at this next approaching sessions, to concur with us
in the making some such act for that purpose, as may enable
us to exercise, with a more universal satisfaction, that power
of dispensing, which we conceive to be inherent in us. Nor

1662.] The King's Declaration. 455
can we doubt of their cheerful co-operating with us in a
thmg wherein we do conceive ourselves so far engaged, both
in honour and in what we owe to the peace of our dominions
which we profess we can never think secure, whilst there
shaU be a colour left to the malicious and disaffected to
inflame the minds of so many multitudes upon the score of
conscience, with despair of ever obtaining any effect of our
promise for their ease.
In the last place, as to that most pernicious and injurious
scandal, so artificially spread and fomented, of our favour to
papists; as it is but a repetition of the same detestable arts,
hy which aU the late calamities have been brought upon this
kingdom in the time of our royal father, of blessed memory,
(who, though the most pious and zealous protestant that ever
reigned in this nation, could never wash off the stains cast
upon him hy that malice, but by his martyrdom,) we conceive
all our subjects should be sufficiently prepared against that
poison by memoty of those disasters ; especially since nothing
is more evident, than that the wicked authors of this scandal
are such as seek to involve aU good protestants under the
odious name of papists, or popishly affected : yet we cannot
hut say upon this occasion, that our education and course of
life in the true protestant religion has been such, and our
constancy in the profession of it so eminent in our most
"desperate condition abroad among Roman catholic princes,
whenas the appearance of receding from it had been the
hkeliest way in all human forecast, to have procured us the
most powerful assistances of our re- establishment, that should
any of our subjects give but the least admission of that
scandal unto their beliefs, we should look upon it as the
most unpardonable ofience that they can be guilty of towards
us. 'Tis true, that as we shall always according to justice
retain, so we think it may become us to avow to the world,
a due sense we have of the greatest part of our Roman
catholic subjects of this kingdom, having deserved well from
our royal father, of blessed memory, and from us, and even
from the protestant religion itself, in adhering to us with
H H

466 The King's Declaration. [1663.
their lives and fortunes for the maintenance of our crown in
the religion established, against those who, under the name
of zealbus prbtestants, employed both fire and sword tb
overthrow them both. We shall, with as much freedom,
profess unto the world that it is not in our intention to
exclude our Roman catholic subjects, who have so demeaned
themselves, from aU share in the benefit of such an act, as in
pursuance of our promises, the wisdom of our parliament
shall think fit to offer unto us for the ease of tender con
sciences. It might appear no less than injustice, that those
who deserved weU and continued to do so, should be denied
some part of that mercy which we have obliged ourselves to
afford to ten times the number of such who have not done
so. Besides, such are the capital laws in force against them,
as though justified in their rigour by -the times wherein they
were made, we profess it would be grievous unto us to
consent to the execution of them, by putting any of our
subjects to death for their opinions in matters of religion only.
But at the same time that we declare our little liking of
those sanguinary ones, and our gracious intentions already
expressed to such of our Roman cathoUc subjects as shaU
live peaceably, modestly, and without scandal; we would
have them aU know, that if for doing what their duties and
loyalties obUged them to, or from our acknowledgment of ,
their weU-deserring, they shall have the presumption to hope
for a toleration of their profession, or a taking away either
those marks of distinction or of our displeasure, which in a
weU-govemed kingdom ought always to be set upon dissen
ters from the reUgion of the state, or to obtain the least
remission in the strictness of those laws, which either are or
shall be made to hinder the spreading of their doctrine, to
the prejudice of the true protestant religion ; or that upon
our expressing (according to Christian charity) our disUke
for bloodshed for religion only, priests shall take the boldness
to appear and avow themselves to the offence and scandal of
good protestants, and of the laws in force against them, they
shall quickly find we know as well to be severe, when wisdom

1663.] The King's Declaration. 457
requires, as indulgent when charity and sense of merit
chaUenge it from us.
With this we have thought fit to arm our good subjects'
minds against the practices of our iU ones, by a true know
ledge of our own; of which, now rightly persuaded, we
make no question, but that whosoever they be from whom
they can derive the spreading or fomenting of any of those
wicked suggestions, they will look upon them with detes
tation, as the most dangerous enemies of our crown, and of
the peace and happiness of the nation : and that what we
have here published wUl happily prepare them all to a
cheerful expectation of the approaching sessions of parlia
ment; an assembly so eminent in their loyalty and their
zeal for the peace and prosperity of our kingdoms, that
having already made those happy settlements for the main
tenance of the reUgion estabUshed, and of our just rights,
their foU concurrence with us can no way be doubted in the
performance of aU our promises, and to the effecting of those
gracious intentions, which (God knows) our heart is full of,
for the plenty, prosperity, and universal satisfactions of the
nation. In order to which, although it be foreign to the main scope
of this our Declaration, which is prineipaUy to prevent the
mischiefs aimed at by the scandals therein mentioned, and
that wherein we reserve the enlargement of ourself tiU the
opening of the next sessions of parliament, yet we cannot
forbear hinting here unto our gbbd subjects four particulars,
wherein we think to give them the most important marks of
our care. First, In punishing, by severe laws, that licen
tiousness and impiety, which, since the dissolution of
govemmentj we find, to our great grief, hath overspread the
nation. Secondly, As weU by sumptuary laws as by our
own example of frugaUty, to restrain the excess in men's
expenses, which is grown so general and sb exorbitant, beyond
all bounds either of their quaUties or fortunes. Thirdly, So
to perfect what we have already industriously begun in the
retrenching of aU our own ordinary and extraordinary charges

468 Proceedings in Parliament [1662-3,
in navy, garrisons, household, and aU their dependants, as to
bring them within the compass of our settled revenue, that
thereby our subjects may have little cause to apprehend our
frequent pressing them for new assistants. And lastly. So to
imprbve the good consequences of these three particulars to the
advancement of trade, that all our subjects finding (as well as
other nations envying) the advantage this hath of them in
that prime foundation of plenty, they may aU, with minds
happUy composed by our clemency and indulgence (instead
of taking up thoughts of deserting their professions, or trans
planting) apply themselves comfortably and with redoubled
industry to their several vocations, in such manner as the
private interest of every one in particular may encourage him
to contribute cheerfuUy to the general prosperity.
Given at our court at Whitehall, this twenty-sixth day of
December, in the fourteenth year of our reign.

XXX.
Proceedings in Parliament upon the King's Declaration of
26th December, 1663. — Journals of' the House of Com
mons, vol, riii,
Sabbati, 31° Februarii, [1663—3], 15« Car II, [p. 438 b.]
Resolved, Sfc. — That Wednesday next be appointed for
reading the king's majesty's Declaration and last Speech, and
for taking the same into consideration and debate.
Mercurii, 25° FebruarU, [1663—3], 15» Car. II, [p. 440 a, b.]
The House then took into consideration the order, made
the one-and-twentieth of this month, for reading the king's
majesty's Declaration and Speech.

1663-3.] upon the King's Declaration. 469
And taking the same into debate ;
And the Declaration and Speech being read ;
The question being put. That the House do now proceed in
the debate upon the king's majesty's Declaration and Speech,
The House was dirided.
The Noes went out :
Mr. Clifford, f Tellers for the noes : "|

{

Sir Sol. Swale, t With the noes.
Sir Courtney Poole, ( Tellers for the yeas : 1 9(.q
Colonel Strangwayes, \ With the yeas, j
And so it was resolved in the affirmative.
And the House accordingly proceeding in the debate;
Upon consideration had by the House of the king's ma
jesty's Declaration and Speech ;
Resolved, upon the question, Nemine contradicente — That
the humble thanks of this House be returned to the king's
majesty, for his constancy iu the observation of the Act of
Indemnity. Resolved, ^c, Nemine contradicente — That the humble
thanks of this House be returned to the king's majesty, for
his profession against introducing a government by a mUitary
power. Resolved, ^c, Nemine contradicente — That the humble
thanks of this House be returned to his majesty, for his
gracious inritation to this House to prepare some laws against
the growth and progress of popety.
Resolved, ^c, Nemine contradicente — That the humble
thanks of this House be returned to his majesty for his
resolution to maintain the Act of Uniformity.
Joris, 36° Februarii, [1663—3], 15° Car, II, [p. 441 a.J
Ordered— Thai it be referred to a committee, to coUect
and bring in the reasons of the House for the vote of advice
'to his majesty, upon the debates had yesterday; and also to
prepare and bring in a bill to prevent the further growth of
popety: viz., Sir Hen. North, Mr. SoUcitor-General, Mr.

470 Proceedings in Parliament [1663-3,
Vaughan, Sir Edw, Walpoole, Sir Tho, Meres, Sfr Fra,
Goodrick, Colonel Windham, Lord Fanshaw, Mr, Hunger-
ford, Mr, Ashburnham, Sir Rich, Everard, Sir Bain,
Throckmorton, Lord Newburgh, Lord Falkland, Lord An-
cram, Major-General Egerton, Sir John Goodrick, Sir John
Duncombe, Lord Bruce, Sir Robert Atkyns, Sir John
Birkinhead, Sir Wm, Lowther, Master of the RoUs, Sir
Anthony Cope, Mr, Broome Whorwood, Colonel Strang
wayes, Sir Tho, Gower, Serjeant Charlton, Colonel Progers,
Sir Edm, Peirce, Sir Cha, Harbord; and they are to meet
in the Speaker's chamber, at two of the clock this afternoon;
and to send for persons, papers, and records.
Resolved, §-c,-— That, in the close of the reasons to be
presented to his majesty, for the vote of adrice, it be also
added, that this House, in pursuance thereof, wUl assist his
majesty with their lives and fortunes; and that the committee
appointed to bring in the reasons do pen an address, to that
purpose, to his majesty.
Veneris, 37° Februarii, [1663—3], 15° Car II,
[pp, 443a— 4436,]
Sir Heneage Finch reports, from the committee appointed
to coUect and bring in the reasons of this House for their
vote of adrice to the king's majesty ; and, in the close of
those reasons, to add — That the House wUl assist his majesty
with their lives and fortunes ; and to pen an address to his
majesty for that purpose ; the several reasons, and address,
agreed by the committee, in writing, which he read in his
place, and did after bring up and deUver the same in at the
clerk's table.
The first paragraph was read; and, upon the question,
agreed to.
The second paragraph was read; and, on the question,
agreed to.
The third was read ; and, on the question, agreed to.
The fourth paragraph was read; and, on the question,
agreed to.

1663-3.] upon the King's Declaration. 47]
The fifth paragraph was read.
Resolved — That after the word " endeavours," these words
"by your declaration," be inserted.
And the same was done accordingly,
Besolved, §-c. — That the words "by a gracious forbear
ance," be omitted,
¦Which were struck out accordingly.
Resolved — That these words, " that there be any indulgence
to such persons who presume to dissent from the Act of
Uniformity," be inserted.
Which was done accordingly,
Besolved, S^c. — That the paragraph, so amended be agreed
to. The reasbus were read.
The first paragraph was read the secbnd time ; and, bu the
question, agreed tb.
The next paragraph was read.
Resolved, S^c. — That the word " and " be inserted, instead
of "if,"
Besolved, ^c. — That this clause be added in the close of
the first paragraph ; " nor could it be otherwise understood,
because there were laws of uniformity then in being, which
could not be dispensed with, but by Act of ParUament,"
Which was done accordingly,
Besolved, ^c. — That these words, " they who do pretend a
right to that supposed promise," be inserted in the beginning
of the second paragraph.
Which was done accordingly.
Resolved, ^c. — That the paragraph, so agreed to, do pass.
The next paragraph was read the second time; and

The next was read the second time ; and, on the question,
agreed to.
The rest, untU the last paragraph, were severally read;
and, on the question, agreed to.
An additibnal reason, in writing, tendered to be inserted
before the last reason.

473 Proceedings in Parliament [1663-3,
Resolved f ^c. — That the reason, being in these words, " It
is a thing altogether without precedent, and wUl take away
all means of convicting recusants, and be inconsistent with
the method and proceedings of the laws of England," be
inserted. Which was done accordingly.
The last reason was read.
Resolved, ^c. — That these words, in the close of the last
paragraph, viz., " it being most notorious, that the vcty
prayers, which some pretend to make for the supreme
authority, are stUl mingled with vUe and seditious reflec
tions," be omitted.
The question being put, "To agree to the address and
reasons, to be presented to his majesty, as they are amended,
and read ? "
It was resolved in the affirmative.
Which are as foUoweth, riz. :
" May it please your most excellent majesty,
" We, your majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the
knights, citizens, and burgesses of the House of Commons,
in parliament assembled, having, with all fidelity and obedi
ence, considered of the several matters comprised in your
majesty's late gracious Declaration of the twenty-sixth of
December last, and your most gracious speech at the begin
ning of this present session, do, in the first place, for ourselves
and in the names of all the Commons of England, render
to your sacred majesty, the tribute of our most hearty
thanks, for that infinite grace and goodness wherewith your
majesty hath been pleased to publish your royal intentions of
adhering to your Act of Indemnity and Oblirion, by a con
stant and religious observance of it. And om' hearts are
further enlarged in these returns of thanksgirings, when we
consider your majesty's most princely and heroic professions,
of relying upon the affections of your people, and abhorring
all sort of military and arbitrary rule. But, above all, we
can never enough remember, to the honour of your majesty's
piety, and our own unspeakable comfort, those solemn and

1668-3.] upon the King's Declaration. 473
most endearing inritations of us your majesty's subjects, to
prepare laws, to be presented to your majesty, against the
growth and increase of popety ; and, withal, to provide more
laws against licentiousness and impiety; at the same time
declaring your own resolutions for maintaining the Act of
Uniformity, And it becomes us always to acknowledge and
admire your majesty's wisdom in this your Declaration;
whereby your majesty is pleased to resolve, not only by
sumptuary laws, but by your own royal example of frugality,
to restrain that excess in men's expences which is grown so
general and so exorbitant ; and to direct our endeavours to
find out fit and proper laws for advancement of trade and
commerce. "After aU this, we most humbly beseech your majesty to
beheve, that it is with extreme unwUlingness and reluctancy
of heart, that we are brought to differ from anything which
your majesty hath thought fit to propose. And though we
do no way doubt, but that the unreasonable distempers of
men's spirits, and the many mutinies and conspiracies which
were carried on during the late intervals of parliament, did
reasonably incUne your majesty to endeavour, by your
Declaration, to give some allay to those ill humours, till the
parhament assembled, and the hopes of an indulgence if the
parliament should consent to it ; especially seeing the pre
tenders to this indulgence did seem to make some title to it,
hy rirtue of your majesty's Declaration from Breda. Never
theless, we, your majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects,
who are now returned to serve in parliament from those
several parts and places of your kingdom for which we were
chosen, do humbly offer it to your majesty's great wisdom,
that it is in no sort adrisable that there be any indulgence to
such persons who presume to dissent from the Act of Unifor
mity and religion established, for these reasons :
" We have considered the nature of your majesty's Decla
ration from Breda, and are humbly of opinion that your
majesty ought not to be pressed with it any further ; because
it is not a promise in itself, but only a gracious declaration

474 Proceedings in Parliament [1663-3.
of your majesty's intentions to do what in you lay, and what
a parliament should advise your majesty to do : and no such
adrice was ever given, or thought fit to be offered; nor
could it be otherwise understood, because there were laws of
uniformity then in being which could not be dispensed with,
but by Act of Parliament.
" They who do pretend a right to that supposed promise,
put their right into the hands of their representatives,
whom they chose to serve for them in this parhament ; who
have passed, and your majesty consented, to the Act of
Uniformity. " If any shall presume to say, that a right to the benefit of
this Declaration doth stUl remain after this Act passed, it
tends to dissolve the very bonds of government, and to
suppose a disability in your majesty and your Houses of
Parliament, to make a law contrary to any part of your
majesty's Declaration, though both Houses should advise
your majesty to it.
"We have also considered the nature of the indulgence
proposed, with reference to those consequences which must
necessarily attend it.
" It will estabUsh schism by a law, and make the whole
government of the church precarious, and the censures of it
of no moment or consideration at all,
" It wUl no way become the gravity or wisdom of a parlia
ment, to pass a law at one session for uniformity, and at the
next session (the reasons for uniformity continuing stUl the
same) to pass another law tb frustrate br weaken the execu-
tion of it,
" It wiU expose your majesty to the restless importimity
of every sect or opinion, and of every single person
also, that shall presume to dissent from the church of
England. " It wUl be a cause of increasing sects and sectaries ; whose
numbers wiU weaken the true protestant profession so far,
that it wiU at least become difficult for it to defend itself
against them. And, which is yet further considerable, those

1663-3.] upon the King's Declaration. 475
numbers which, by being troublesome to the government,
find they can arrive to an indulgence, will, as their numbers
increase, be yet more troublesome, that so, at length, they
may arrive at a general toleration, which your majesty hath
declared against; and, in time, some prevalent sect wUl, at
last, contend for an establishment ; which, for aiight can be
foreseen, may end in popery,
"It is a thing altogether without precedent; and will
take away all means of conricting recusants, and be in
consistent with the method and proceedings of the laws of
England, " Lastly, it is humbly conceived, that the indulgence pro
posed wiU be so far from tending to the peace of the kingdom,
that it is Ukely rather to occasion great disturbance ; and, on
the contraty, that the asserting of the laws, and the religion
established, according to the Act of Uniformity, is the most
probable means to produce a settled peace and obedience
through the kingdom ; because the variety of professions in
rehgion, when openly indulged, doth directly distinguish men
iato parties, and, withal, gives them opportunity to count
their numbers ; which, considering the animosities that, out
of a reUgious pride, wUl be kept on foot by the several
factions, doth tend, directly and inevitably, to open disturb
ance; nor can your majesty have any security, that the
doctrine or worship of the several factions, which are aU
governed by a several rule, shall be consistent with the peace
of your kingdom,
"And if any person shall presume to disturb the peace of
the kingdom, we do, in all humility, declare, that we wUl for
ever, and upon all occasions, be ready with our uttermost
endeavours and assistance, to adhere to, and serve your
majesty, according to our bounden duty and aUegiance,"
Ordered— That such members of this House, as are
of his majesty's privy councU, do move the king's majesty,
that he would give leave to this House to wait on him,
at such time and place as his majesty shaU think fit and
appoint.

476 Proceedings in Parliament. [1663-3,
Sabbati, 38° Februarii, [1663—3], 15° Car II,
[pp, 443 b — 444 a,]
Sir WiUiam Compton reports that he, with some other
members of this House, of his majesty's honourable privy
councU, had attended his majesty, and signified unto him
the desires of this House to wait on his majesty at such time
and place as he should please to appoint; and that his
majesty did receive the message very graciously, as he doth
all things that come from this House ; and, to give them a
testimony of it, had appointed the shortest time he could
for the House to attend him, which was this afternoon, at
three of the clock, in the Banqueting House at WhitehaU.
The address and reasons of this House, to be presented to
his majesty, being fair written, were this day read the third
time. Resolved, S^c. — That the word " in " he made " upon,"
Resolved, ^c. — That these words, "and religion estab
lished," be added after the word " uniformity."
Post Meridiem.
Mr. Speaker, and the members of this House accompany
ing him, according to his majesty's appointment, went in a
body to attend his majesty at the Banqueting House in
WhitehaU, with the address of thanks and reasons for the
vote of non-indulgence to be presented to his majesty ; and,
being returned,
Mr. Speaker reported that the answer his majesty gave
thereunto was to this effect, viz. :
"That he gave us hearty thanks for our many thanks;
that never any king was so happy in a House of Commons as
he is in this; that the paper and reasons were long, and
therefore he would take time to consider of them, and send
us a message; that we could never differ but in judgment,
and that must be when he did not rightly express himself, or
we did not rightly understand him ; but our interest was so
far linked together, that we could never disagree."

1664.] The Conventicle Act. 477
Lunse, 16° Martii, [1663—3], 15,, Car. II, [p. 451 a.]
Mr. Secretary Morice reports a message from his majesty,
in writing, which he deUvered to Mr. Speaker ; and the same
was twice read, and was as foUoweth :
" Charles R.
"His majesty is unwiUing to enlarge upon the address
lately made to him by his House of Commons, or to reply to
the reasons ; though he finds what he had said much mis
understood : but renews his hearty thanks to them for their
expressions of so great duty and affection ; and for their free
declaration, ' that if any persons shaU presume to disturb the
peace of the kingdom, they wiU for ever, and in aU occasions,
be ready, with their utmost endeavours and assistance, to
adhere to, and serve his majesty;' and doth very heartily
desire them so to enable him, and to put the kingdom into
such a posture, as, if any disturbance or seditious designs
arise, they may be easUy suppressed."
Resolved, ^c. — That the humble thanks of this House be
returned to the king's majesty, for his gracious message to
this House. And such members of this House as are of his
majesty's honourable privy councU, are to present the thanks
of this House to his majesty.

XXXI.
The Conventicle Act, 1664.
An Act to prevent and suppress Seditious Conventicles.
Whereas an Act made in the five-and-thirtieth year of the
reign of our late sovereign lady queen Elizabeth, entitled, an Act
to retain the queen's majesty's subjects in their due obedience,
hath not been put in due execution by reason of some doubt

478 the Conventicle Ad. [1664.
of late made, whether the said Act be still in force ; although
it be very clear and erident ; and it is hereby declared, that the
said Act is still in force, and ought to be put in due execution.
II. For providing therefore of further and more speedy
remedies against the growing and dangerous practices of
seditious sectaries, and other disloyal persons, who, under
pretence of tender consciences, do at their meetings contrive
insurrections, as late experience has showed.
III. Be it enacted by the king's most excellent majesty, by
and with the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and
temporal, and commons in this present parhament assembled,
and by the authority of the same, that if any person of the
age of sixteen years or upwards, being a subject of this realm,
at any time after the first day of July, which shall be in the
year of our Lord, one thousand six hundred sixty-and-four,
shall be present at any assembly, conventicle, or meeting,
under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other
manner than is allowed by the Uturgy or practice of the
church of England, in any place within the kingdom of
England, dominion of Wales, and town of •Berwick-upon-
Tweed; at which conventicle, meeting, or assembly, there
shall be five persons or more assembled together, over and
above those of the same household ; then it shaU and may he
lawful to, and for any two justices of the peace of the county,
limit, division, or liberty wherein the offence aforesaid shall
be committed, or for the chief magistrate of the place where
such offence aforesaid shaU be committed ; (if it be within a
corporation where there not two justices of the peace) ;
and they are hereby required and enjoined upon proof to
them or him respectively made of such offence, either by con
fession of the party, or oath of witness, or notorious eridence
of the fact (which oath the said justices of the peace, and
chief magistrate respectively, are hereby empowered and re
quired to administer) to make a record of evety such offence
and offences under their hands and seals respectively;
which record so made, as aforesaid, shall, to aU intents and
purposes, be in law taken and adjudged to be a full and perfect

i664] The Conventicle Act. 479
conviction of every such offender for such offence : and there
upon the said justices and chief magistrates respectively, shall
commit every such offender, so convicted as aforesaid, to the
gaol or house of correction, there to remain without bail or
mainprize, for any time not exceeding the space of three
months, unless such offender shaU pay down to the said jus
tices or chief magistrate, such sum of money, not exceeding
five pounds, as the said justices or chief magistrate (who are
hereby thereimto authorized and required) shall fine the said
offender at, for his or her said offence ; which money shall be
paid to the churchwardens for the relief of the poor of the
parish where such offender did last inhabit.
IV. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
thai if such offender, so conricted as aforesaid, shall at any
time again commit the like offence contrary to this Act, and
be thereof in manner aforesaid convicted, then such offender
so conricted of such second offence, shall incur the penalty of
imprisonment in the gaol or house of correction, for any time
not exceeding six months, without baU or mainprize, unless
such offender shaU pay down to the said justices or chief
magistrate, such sum of money, not exceeding ten pounds, as
the said justices or chief magistrate (who are thereunto autho
rized and required, as aforesaid) shall fine the said offender
at, for his or her said second offence, the said fine to be dis
posed in manner aforesaid.
V. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that if any such offender so convicted of a second offence
contrary to this Act in manner aforesaid, shall at any time
again commit the Uke offence contrary to this Act, then any
two justices of the peace, and chief magistrate, as aforesaid,
respectively, shaU commit every such offender to the gaol, or
house of correction, there to remain without baU or mainprize
untU the next general quarter sessions, assizes, gaol delivery,
great sessions, or sitting of any commission of Oyer and
Terminer in the respective county, limit, divisibn, br liberty
which shaU first happen; when and where every such
offender shall be proceeded against by indictment fbr such

480 The Conventicle Act. [1664.
offence, and shall forthwith be arraigned upon such indict
ment, and shall then plead the general issue of not guUty,
and give any special matter in evidence, or confess the indict
ment; and if such offender proceeded against, shall be
lawftdly convicted of such offence, either by confession or
verdict, or if such offender shaU refuse to plead the general
issue, or to confess the indictment, then the respective justices
of the peace at their general quarter sessions, judges^of assize
and gaol delivery at the assizes and gaol delivcty, justices of
the great sessions at the great sessions, and commissioners bf
Oyer and Terminer, at their sitting, are hereby enabled and
required to cause judgment to be entered against such
offender, that such offender shaU be transported beyond the
seas to any of his majesty's foreign plantations (Virginia and
New England only excepted) there to remain seven years;
and shall forthwith under their hands and seals make out
warrants to the sheriff or sheriffs of the same county where
such conviction or refusal to plead or to confess, as aforesaid,
shall be, safely to convey such offender to some port or haven
nearest or most commodious to be appointed by them respec
tively ; and from thence to embark such offender to be safely
transported to any of his majesty's plantations beyond the
seas, as shall be also by them respectively appointed (Virginia
and New England only excepted:) whereupon the said
sheriff shaU safely convey and embark, or cause to be em
barked such offender, to be transported> as aforesaid ; under
pain of forfeiting for default of so transporting every such
offender, the sum of forty pounds of lawful money ; the one
moiety thereof to the king, and the other moiety to him or
them that shall sue for the same in any of the king's courts
of record, by bUl, plaint, action of debt, or information ; in
any of which, no wager of law, essoin, or protection shaU be
admitted: and the said respective court shaU then also
make out warrants to the several constables, headboroughs,
or tithingmen of the respective places where the estate, real or
personal, of such offender so to be transported shall happen to
be, commanding them thereby to sequester into their hands

1664.] The Conventicle Ad. 481
the profits of the lands, and to distrain and sell the goods of
the offender so to be transported, for the reimbursing of the
said sheriff all such reasonable charges as he shall be at, and
shaU be aUowed him by the said respective court for such
conveying and embarking of such offender so to be trans
ported, rendering to the party, or his or her assigns, the over
plus of the same, if any be, unless such offender, or some
other on behalf of such offender so to be transported, shall
give the sheriff such security as he shall approve of, for the
paying all the said charges unto him.
VI. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that in default of defraying such charges by the parties to be
transported, or some other in their behalf; or in default of
security given to the sheriff, as aforesaid, it shall and may be
lawful for every such sheriff to contract with any master of a
ship, merchant, or other person, for the transporting of such
offender at the best rate he can : and that in every such
case it shall arid may be lawful for such persons so contract
ing with any sheriff for transporting such offender, as afore
said, to detain and employ every such offender so by them
transported, as a labourer to them or their assigns, for the
space of five years, to aU intents and purposes, as if he or she
"Were bound by indentures to such person for that purpose :
and that the respective sheriffs shall be allowed or paid
fi'om the king, upon their respective accounts in the exche
quer, all such charges by them expended, for conveying, em
barking, and transporting of such persons, which shall be
allowed by the said respective courts from whence they
received their respective warrants, and which shall not have
been by any of the ways aforementioned paid, secured, or re
imbursed unto them, as aforesaid.
VII. Prorided always, and be it further enacted, that in
case the offender so indicted and convicted for the said third
offence, shall pay into the hands of the registrar or clerk of
the court or sessions where he shall be convicted (before the
said court or sessions shall be ended) the sum of one hundred
pounds, that then the said offender shaU be discharged from
I I

483 The Conventicle Ad. [1664.
imprisonment and transportation, and the judgment for the
same. VIII. And be it further enacted, that the Uke imprison
ment, indictment, arraignment, and proceedings shall be
against every such offender, as often as he shaU again offend
after such third offence; nevertheless is dischargable and
discharged by the payment of the like sum as was paid by
such offender for his or her said offence next before committed,
together with the additional and increased sum of one
hundred pounds more upon every new offence committed :
the said respective sums to be paid, as aforesaid, and to
be disposed of as foUoweth, (viz.,) the one moiety for the
repair of the parish church or churches, chapel or chapels
of such parish within which such conventicle, assembly, or
meeting shall be held ; and the other moiety to the repair
of the highways of the said parish or parishes (if need
require) or otherwise for the amendment of such highways as
the justices of peace at their respective quarter sessions shall
direct and appoint; and if any constable, headborough,
or tithingman shaU neglect to execute any the said warrants
made unto them for sequestering, distraining, and seUing any
of the goods and chattels of any offender against this Act, for
the levying such sums of money as shall be imposed for the
first or second offence, he shall forfeit for every such neglect
the sum of five pounds of lawrful money of England; the one
moiety thereof to the king, and the other moiety to him that
wiU sue for the same in any of the king's courts of record, as
is aforesaid: and if any person be at any time sued for
putting in execution any of the powers contained in this
act, such person shall and may plead the general issue, and
give the special matter in evidence; and if the plaintiff
be nonsuit, or a verdict pass for the defendant thereupon,
or if the plaintiff discontinue his action, or if, upon
demurrer, judgment be given for the defendant, every
such defendant shall have his or their treble costs.
IX. And be it further enacted, that if any person against
whom judgment of transportation shall be given in manner

1664.] The Conventicle Act. 483
aforesaid, shall make escape before transportation, or bej ng
transported, as aforesaid, shaU return unto this realm of
England, dominion of Wales, and tbwn of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, without the special licence of his majesty, his heirs
and successors, in that behalf first had and obtained, that the
party so escaping or returning shall be adjudged a felon, and
shaU suffer death as in case of felony, vrithout benefit of
clergy: and shall forfeit and lose to his majesty aU his or
her goods and chattels for ever ; and shall farther lose to his
majesty aU his or her lands, tenements, and hereditaments for
and during the life only of such offender, and no longer : and
that the wife of any such offender by force of this act shall
not lose her dower, nor shall any corruption of blood grow or
be by reason of any such offence mentioned in this act ; but
that the heir of every such offender by force of this act, shall
and may, after the death of such offender, have and enjoy the
lands, tenements, and hereditaments of such offenders, as if
this act had not been made.
X. And for better preventing of the mischiefs which may
grow by such seditious and tumultuous meetings under pre
tence of reUgious worship : be it further enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that the lieutenants or deputy lieutenants,
or any commissioned officers of the mUitia, or any other of
his majesty's forces, with such troops or companies of horse
or foot ; and also the sheriffs and justices of peace and other
magisteates and ministers of justice, or any of them jointly
or severally withiu any the counties or places within this
kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick-
upon-Tweed, with such other assistance as they shall think
meet or can get in readiness with the soonest, on certificate
made to them respectively under the hand and seal of any one
justice of the peace, or chief magistrate, as aforesaid, of his
particular information or knowledge of such unlawful meet
ings or conventicles held or to be held in their respective
counties or places, and that he (with such assistance as he
can get together, is not able to suppress or dissolve the same)
shaU and may, and are hereby required and enjoined to repair
I I 3

484 The Conventicle Ad. [1664
unto the place where they are so held, or to be held, and by
the best means they can to dissolve and dissipate, or prevent
all such unlawful meetings, and take into their custody such
of those persons so unlawfully assembled as they shall judge
to be the leaders and seducers of the rest, and such others as
they shall think fit to be proceeded against according to law
for such their offences.
XI. And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that
every person who shall wittingly and willingly suffer any such
conventicle, unlawful assembly or meeting aforesaid, to be
held in his or her house, outhouse, barn or room, yard or
backside, woods or grounds, shall incur the same penalties and
forfeitures as any other offender against this act ought to
incur, and be proceeded against, in all points, in such manner
as any other offender against this act ought to he proceeded
against. XII. Provided also, and be it enacted by the authority
aforesaid, that if any keeper of any gaol or house of correc
tion, shall suffer any person committed to his custody for any
offence against this act, to go at large, contrary to the war
rant of his commitment according to this act, or shaU permit
any person, who is at large, to join with any person com
mitted to his custody by virtue of this act, in the exercise of
religion, di^ering from the rites of the church of England;
then every such keeper of a gaol or house of correction shall
for every such offence forfeit the sum of ten pounds, to be
levied, raised, and disposed by such persons, and in such
manner as the penalties for the first and second offences
against this act are to be levied, raised, and disposed.
XIII. Provided always, that no person shall be punished
for any offence against this act, unless such offender be pro
secuted for the same within three months after the offence
committed : and that no person who shall be punished
for any offence by virtue of this act, shall be punished for
the same offence by virtue of any other act or law what
soever. XIV. Provided also, and be it enacted, that judgment of

1664.] The Conventicle Act. 485
transportation shall not be given against any feme covert,
unless her husband be at the same time under the like
judgment, and not discharged by the payment of money, as
aforesaid ; but that instead thereof she shall by the respective
court be committed to the gaol or house of correction, there
to remain without bail or mainprize, for any time not exceed
ing twelve months, unless her husband shall pay down such
sum, not exceeding forty pounds, to redeem her from impri
sonment, as sbaU be imposed by the said court, the said sum
to be disposed by such persons, and in such manner as the
penalties for the first and second offence against this act are
to be disposed.
XV. Provided also, and be it enacted by the authority
aforesaid, that the justices of the peace, and chief magistrate
respectively empowered, as aforesaid, to put this act in execu
tion, shaU and may, with what aid, force, and assistance they
shall think fit, for the better execution of this act, after
refusal or denial, enter into any house, or other place where
they shall be informed any such conventicle, as aforesaid, is
or shall be held.
XVI. Provided, that no dwelling house of any peer of
this realm, whilst he or his wife shaU be there resident, shall
be searched by rirtue of this act, but by immediate warrant
fi'om his majesty under his sign manual, or in the presence of
the lieutenant, or one of the deputy lieutenants, or two
justices of the peace, whereof one to be of the quorum of
the same county or riding : nor shall any other dwelling
house of any peer or other person whatsoever, be entered
into with force by rirtue of this act, but in the presence of
one justice of the peace, or chief magistrate respectively,
except within the city of London, where it shall be lawful for
any such other dweUing house to be entered into, as aforesaid,
in the presence of one justice of the peace, alderman, deputy
alderman, or any one commissioner for the lieutenancy for the
city of London.
XVII. Provided also, and be it enacted by the authority
aforesaid, that no person shaU by virtue of this act be com-

486 The Conventicle Ad. [1664.
mitted to the house of correction, that shall satisfy the said
justices of the peace, or chief mEigistrate respectively, that he
or she (and in case of a feme covert, that her husband) hath
an estate of freehold, or copyhold to the value of five pounds
per annum, or personal estate to the value of fifty pounds ;
anything in this act to the contrary notwithstanding.
XVIII, And in regard to a certain sect called quakers, and
other sectaries, are found not only to offend in the matters
provided against by this act, but also obstruct the proceeding of
justice by their obstinate refusal to take oaths lawfully
tendered unto them in the ordinary course of law: there
fore be it farther enacted by the authority aforesaid, that if
any person or persons being duly and legally served with pro
cess or other summons to appear in any court of record,
except court leets, as a witness, or returned to serve of any
jury, or ordered to be examined upon interrogatories, or being
present in court shall refuse to take any judicial oath legally
tendered to him by the judge or judges of the same court,
having no legal plea to justify or excuse the reftisal of the
same oath : or if any person or persons being duly served
with process, to answer any bill exhibited against him or
them in any court of equity, or any suit in any court ecclesi
astical, shall refase to answer such biU or suit upon his or
their corporal oath, in cases where the law requires sach
answer to be put in upon oath ; or being summoned to be a
witness in any such court, or ordered to be examined upon
interrogatories, shall for any cause or reason, not aUowed by
law refuse to take such oath, as in such cases is required by
law : that then, and in such case, the several and respec
tive courts wherein such refusal shaU be made, shaU be, and
are hereby enabled to record, enter, or register such refusal,
which record or entry shaU be, and is hereby made a con
viction of such offence; and all and every person and
persons so, as aforesaid, offending, shaU for every such offence
incur the judgment and punishment of transportation in such
manner as is appointed by this act for other offences,
XIX, Prorided always, that if any the person or persons

1664.] The Conventicle Act, 437
aforesaid, shaU come into such Cburt, and take his or their
oath in these words :
I do swear, that I do not hold the taking of an oath to be
unlawful nor refuse to take an oath on that account,
XX, Which oath the respective court or courts aforesaid,
are hereby authorised and required forthwith to tender,
administer, and register, before the entry of the conviction
aforesaid; or shaU take such oath before some justice cf
the peace, whb is hereby authbrized and required to admin
ister the same, to be returned into such court : such oath
so made shall acquit him or them from such punishment ;
anything herein to the contrary notwithstanding,
XXI, Prorided always, that every person conricted as
aforesaid in any courts aforesaid, (other than his majesty's
court of king's bench, or before the justices of assize, or
general gaol deUvery) shall by warrantcontaining a certificate of
such conriction under the hand and seal of the respective judge
or judges before whom such conviction shall be had, be sent to
some one of his majesty's gaols in the same county where
such conviction was had, there to remain without bail or
mainprize until the next assizes, or general gaol delivery:
where, if such person so conricted shall refase to take the
oath aforesaid, being tendered unto him by the justice or
justices of assize or gaol delivery; then such justice or
justices shaU cause judgment of transportation to be executed
in such manner as judgment of transportation by this act is
to be executed : hut in case such person shaU take the said
oath, then he shaU thereupon be discharged,
XXII, Prorided always, and be it enacted by the authority
aforesaid, that if any peer of this realm shall offend against
this act, he shaU pay ten pounds for the first offence, and
twenty pounds for the second offence, to be levied upon his
goods and chattels by warrant from any two justices of the
peace, or chief magistrate of the place or dirislon where such
peer shall dweU: and that every peer for the third, and
every further offence against the tenor of this act, shall be
tried by his peers, and not otherwise.

488 The Five Mile Act. [1665,
XXIII, Provided also, and be it further enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that this act shaU continue in force for
three years after the end of this present session of parliament;'
and from thenceforward, to the end of the next session of
parliament after the said three years and no longer.

XXXII.
The Five Mile Act.

An Act for Restraining Nonconformists from Inhabiting in
Corporations.
Wheeeas divers parsons, ricars, curates, lecturers, and other
persons in holy orders, have not declared their unfeigned
assent and consent to the use of all things contained and
prescribed in " The Book of Common Prayer, and administra
tion of the sacraments, and other rites and ceremonies of the
church, according to the use of the church of England," or
have not subscribed the declaration or acknowledgment con
tained in a certain Act of Parliament made in the fourteenth
year of his majesty's reign, and entitled, an Act for the
Uniformity of Public Prayers and Administration of Sacra
ments, and other Rites and Ceremonies, and for the Establish
ing the form of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of
Bishops, Priests, and Deacons in the Church of England,
according to the said Act, or any other subsequent Act. And
whereas they or some of them, and divers other person and
persons not ordained according to the form of the church of
England, and as have since the Act of Oblivion taken upon
them to preach in unlawful assemblies, conventicles, or meet
ings, under colour or pretence of exercise of religion, con
trary to the laws and statutes of this kingdom, have settled
themselves in divers corporations in England, sometimes
three or more of them in a place, thereby taking an opportu-

1665.] The Five Mile Act. 489
nity to distU the poisonous principles of schism and rebellion
into the hearts of his majesty's subjects, to the great danger
of the church and kingdom.
II. Be it therefore enacted by the king's most excellent
majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present par
hament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that the
said parsons, ricars, curates, lecturers, and other persons in
holy orders, or pretended holy orders, or pretending to holy
orders, and all stipendiaries, and other persons who have been
possessed of any ecclesiastical or spiritual promotion, and
every of them, who have not declared their unfeigned assent
and consent, as aforesaid, and subscribed the declaration
aforesaid, and shall not take and subscribe the oath following:
I, A. B., do swear, that it is not lawful upon any pre
tence whatsoever, to take arms against the king ; and that I
do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his
authority against his person, or against those that are com
missioned by him, in pursuance of such commissions; and
that I wUl not at any time endeavour any alteration of
government, either in church or state.
III. And all such person and persons as shall take upon
them to preach in any unlawful assembly, conventicle, or
meeting, under colour or pretence of any exercise of religion,
contrary to the laws and statutes of this kingdom ; shall
not at any time from and after the four and twentieth day of
March, which shall be in this present year of our Lord God
one thousand six hundred sixty-and-five, unless only in pass
ing upon the road, come or be within five miles of any city
or town corporate, or borough that send burgesses to the par
liament, within his majesty's kingdom of England, princi
pality of Wales, or of the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed ;
or within five miles of any parish, town or place, wherein he
or they have since the Act of Oblirion been parson, vicar,
curate, stipendiary, or lecturer, or taken upon them to preach
in any unlawful assembly, conventicle, or meeting, under
colour or pretence of any exercise of reUgion, contrary to the

490 The Five Mile Ad. [1665.
laws and statutes of this kingdom; before he or they
have taken and subscribed the oath aforesaid, before the
justices of the peace at their quarter sessions to be holden for
the county, riding, or dirision, next unto the said corporation,
city, or borough, parish, place, or town in open court, (which
said oath the said justices are hereby empowered there to
administer) ; upon forfeiture for every such offence the
sum of forty pounds of lawful English money; the one third
part thereof to his majesty and his successors; the other
third part to the use of the poor of the parish where the
offence shall be committed ; and the other third part thereof
to such person or persons as shaU or will sue for the same hy
action of debt, plaint, biU, or information in any court of
record at Westminster, or before any justices of assize. Oyer
and Terminer, or gaol delivery, or before any justices of the
counties palatine of Chester, Lancaster, or Durham, or the
justices of the great sessions in Wales, or before any justices
of peace in their quarter sessions, wherein no essoin, protec
tion, or wager of law shaU be allowed.
IV. Provided always, and be it further enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that it shall not be lawful for any person
or persons restrained from coming to any city, town corporate,
borough, parish, town, or place, as aforesaid, or for any other
person or persons as shall not first take and subscribe the said
oath, and as shaU not frequent dirine service established by
the laws of this kingdom, and carry him or herself reverently,
decently, and orderly there, to teach any public or private
school, or take any borders, or fablers that are taught or in
structed by him or herself, or any other ; upon pain for every
such offence to forfeit the sum of forty pounds, to be recovered
and distributed, as aforesaid.
V. Provided also, and be it farther enacted by the autho
rity aforesaid, that it shall be lawful for any two justices of the
peace of the respective county, upon oath to them of any of
fence against this act, which oath they are hereby empowered
to administer, to commit the offender for six months, without
bail pr mainprize, unless, upon or before such cemmitment, he

1670,] The Conventicle Act, 49I
shall, before the said justices of the peace, swear and subscribe
the aforesaid oath and declaration,
VI, Prorided always, that if any person intended to be
restrained by virtue of this act, shall without fraud or covin
he served with any writ, subpoena, warrant, or other process
whereby his personal appearance is required, his obedience to
such writ, subpoena, or process, shaU not be construed an
offence against this act.

XXXIII,
The Conventicle Act, 1670,
An Act to Prevent and Suppress Seditious Conventicles,
FoK proriding further and more speedy remedies against the
growing and dangerous practices of seditious sectaries, and
other disloyal persons, who, under pretence of tender con
sciences, have or may at their meetings contrive insurrections
(as late experience hath shewn) : be it enacted by the
king's most exceUent majesty, by and with the advice and
consent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons in this
present parliament assembled, and by authority of the same,
that if any person of the age of sixteen years or upwards,
being a subject of this realm, at any time after the tenth day
of May next, shall be present at any assembly, conventicle,
or meeting, under colour or pretence of any exercies of reli
gion in other manner than according to the liturgy and prac
tice of the church of England, in any place within the
kingdom of England, or dominion of Wales, or town of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, at which conventicle, meeting, or
assembly, there shall be five persons or more assembled
together, over and besides those of the same household, if it
be in a house where there is a family inhabiting ; or if it be
in a house, field, or place where there is no famUy inhabiting;

493 The Conventicle Ad, [1670,
then where any five .persons or more, are so assembled, as
aforesaid, it shall and may be lawful to and for any one or
more justices of the peace of the county, limit, dirision, cor
poration, or liberty wherein the offence aforesaid shall be
committed, or for the chief magistrate of the place where the
offence aforesaid shall be committed ; and he and they are
hereby required and enjoined, upon proof to him or them
respectively made of such offence, either by confession of the
party or oath of two vjitnesses : (which oath the said
justice and justices of the peace, and chief magistrate respec
tively, are hereby empowered and required to administer) or
by notorious evidence and circumstance of the fact, to make
a record of every such offence under his or their hands and
seals respectively : which record so made, as aforesaid, shaU
to all intents and purposes be in law taken and adjudged to
be a full and perfect conviction of every such offender for
such offence ; and thereupon the said justice, justices, and
chief magistrate respectively, shall impose on every such
offender so convicted, as aforesaid, a fine of five shiUings for
such first offence ; which record and conriction shaU be cer
tified by the said justice, justices, or chief magistrate, at the
next quarter sessions of. the peace, for the county or place
where the offence was committed.
II. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that if such offender so conricted, as aforesaid, shall at any
time again commit the like offence or offences, contrary to
this act, and be thereof in manner aforesaid convicted, then
such offender so conricted of such like offence or offences,
shall for every such offence incur the penalty of ten shUlings:
which fine and fines, for the first and every other offence
shall be levied by distress and sale of the offender's goods and
chattels ; or in case of the poverty of such offender, upon the
goods and chattels of any other person or persons who shaU
be then convicted in manner aforesaid of the like offence at
the same conventicle, at the discretion of the said justice,
justices, or chief magistrate respectively, so as the sum to be
levied on any one person in case of the poverty of other

1670.] The Conventicle Act. 493
offenders, amount not in the whole to above the sum of ten
pounds, upon occasion of any one meeting, as aforesaid :
and every constable, headborough, tithingman, churchwar
dens, and overseers of the poor respectively, are hereby
authorized and required to levy the same accordingly, having
first received a warrant under the hands and seals of the said
justice, justices, or chief magistrate respectively so to do :
the said monies so to be levied, to be forthwith delivered to
the same justice, justices, or chief magistrate, and by him or
them to be distributed, the one third part thereof to the use
of the king's majesty, his heirs and successors, to be paid to
the high sheriff of the county for the time being, in manner
foUowing : that is to say, the justice or justices of peace shall
pay the same iuto the court of the respective quarter
sessions, which said court shall deliver the same to the sheriff,
and make a memorial on record of the payment and delivery
thereof, which said memorial shall be a sufficient and final
discharge to the said justice and justices, and a charge to the
sheriff, which said discharge and charge shall be certified into
the exchequer together, and not one without the other : and
no justice shall or may be questioned or accountable for the
same in the exchequer or elsewhere, than in quarter sessions :
another third part thereof to and for the use of the poor of
the parish where such offence shaU be committed ; and the
other third part thereof to the informer and informers, and
to such person and persons as the said justice, justices, or
chief magistrate respectively shall appoint, having regard to
their dUigence and industty in the discovery, dispersing, and
punishing of the said conventicles.
III. And be it farther enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that every person who shaU take upon him to preach or teach
in any such meeting, assembly, or conventicle, and shall
thereof be convicted, as aforesaid, shall forfeit for every such
first offence the sum of twenty pounds, to be levied in
manner aforesaid upon his gbods and chattels; and if the
said preacher or teacher, so convicted, be a stranger, and his
name and habitation not known, or is fled, and cannot be

494 The Conventicle Ad. [1670.
found, or in the judgment of the justice, justices, or chief
magistrate before whom he shaU be convicted, shall be
thought unable to pay the same, the said justice, justices, or
chief magistrate respectively, are hereby empowered and
required to levy the same by warrant, as aforesaid, upon the
goods and chattels of any such persons who shaU be present
at the same conventicle ; anything in this or any other act,
law, or statute to the contrary notwithstanding; and the
money so leried, to be disposed of in manner aforesaid :
and if such offender so convicted, as aforesaid, shaU at any
time again commit the like offence or offences contrary to this
act, and be thereof convicted in manner aforesaid, then such
offender so conricted of such like offence or offences, shaU
for every such offence, incur the penalty of forty pounds, to
be leried and disposed, as aforesaid.
IV, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that every person who shall wittingly and wilUngly suffer any
such conventicle, meeting, or unlawful assembly aforesaid, to
be held in his or her house, outhouse, bam, yard or backside,
and be convicted thereof in manner aforesaid, shall forfeit
the sum of twenty pounds, to be levied in manner aforesaid,
upon his or her goods and chattels ; or in case of his or her
poverty or inabUity, as -aforesaid, upon the goods and chattels
of such persons who shall be convicted in manner aforesaid,
of being present at the same conventicle ; and the money so
leried, to be disposed of in manner aforesaid.
V. Provided always, and be it enacted by the authority
aforesaid, that no person shall by any clause of this act he
Uable to pay above ten pounds for any one meeting, in regard
of the poverty of any other person or persons.
VI, Provided also, and be it further enacted, that in aU cases
of this act, where the penalty or sum charged upon any offender
exceeds the sum of ten shiUings, and such offender shaU .find
himself aggrieved, it shaU and may be lawful for bim within
one week after the said penalty or money charged shaU be
paid or levied, to appeal in writing from the person or persons
convicting, to the judgment of the justices of the peace in

1670.] The Conventicle Act. 495
their next quarter sessions : to whom the justice or jus
tices of the peace, chief magistrate, or alderman, that first
convicted such offender, shall return the money levied upon
the appeUant, and shaU certify under his and their hands and
seals, the evidence upon which the conviction past, with the
whole record thereof, and the said appeal; whereupon
such offender may plead and make defence, and have his trial
by a juty thereupoh : and in case such appellant shall not
prosecute with effect, or if upon such trial he shall not be
acquitted, or judgment pass not for him upon his said appeal,
the said justices at the sessions shaU give treble costs against
such offender for his unjust appeal : and no other court
whatsoever shaU intermeddle with any cause or causes of
appeal upon this act, but they shaU be finaUy determined in
the quarter sessions only,
VII. Prorided always, and be it further enacted, that upon
the deUvcty of such appeal, as aforesaid, the person or per
sons appeUant shaU enter before the person or persons con
ricting, into a recognizance, to prosecute the said appeal with
effect : which said recognizance the person or persons con
ricting is hereby empowered to take, and required to certify
the same to the next quarter sessions : and in case no
such recognizance be entered into, the said appeal to be nuU
and void,
VIII, Provided always, that evety such appeal shaU be left
with the person or persons so convicting, as aforesaid, at the
time of the making thereof,
IX, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that the justice, justices of the peace, and chief magistrate
respectively, or the respective constables, headboroughs, and
tithingmen, by warrant from the said justice, justices, or chief
magistrate respectively, shall and may, with what aid, force,
and assistance they shall think fit, for the better execution of
this act, after refusal or denial to enter, break open, and enter
into any house or other place, where they shaU be informed
any such conventicle, as aforesaid, is or shaU be held, as weU
within liberties as without: and take into their custody

496 The Conventicle Act. 11670.
the persons there unlawfuUy assembled, to the intent they
may be proceeded against according to this act : and, that
the lieutenants or deputy lieutenants, or any commissionated
officer of the militia, or other of his majesty's forces, with
such troops or companies of horse and toot; and also the
sheriffs, and other magistrates and ministers of justice, or any
of them jointly or severaUy, within any the counties or places
within this kingdom of England, dominion of Wales, or town
of Berwick-upon-Tweed, with such other assistance as they
shall think meet, or can get in readiness with the soonest, on
certificate made to them respectively under the hand and
seal of any one justice of the peace or chief magistrate, of
his particular information or knowledge of such unlawful
meeting or conventicle held, or to be held in their respective
counties or places, and that he with such assistance as he can
get together, is not able to suppress and dissolve the same,
shall and may, and are hereby required and enjoined to repair
unto the place where they are so held, or to be held, and by
the best means they can to dissolve, dissipate, or prevent aU
such unlawful meetings, and take into their custody such and
so many of the said persons so unlawfully assembled as they
shall think fit, to the intent they may be proceeded against
according to this act,
X. Provided always, that no dwelling house of any peer of
this realm, where he or his wife shall then be resident, shaU
be searched by virtue of this act, but by immediate warrant
from his majesty, under his sign manual, or in the presence
of the lieutenant, or one deputy lieutenant, or two justices of
the peace, whereof one to be of the quorum of the same
county or riding.
XI. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, '
that if any constable, headborough, tithingman, church
warden br overseer of the poor, who shaU know, or be
credibly informed of any such meetings or conventicles held
within his precincts, parishes, or limits, and shall not give in
formation thereof to some justice of the peace, or the chief
magistrate, and endeavour the conviction of the parties

1670.] The Conventicle Act. 497
according to his duty; but such constable, headborough,
tithingman, churchwarden, overseers of the poor, or any per
son lawfully called in aid of the constable, headborough, or
tithingman, shall wUfuUy and wittingly omit the performance
of his duty, in the execution of this act, and be thereof
convicted in manner aforesaid, he shall forfeit for every such
offence, the sum of five pounds, to be levied upon his goods
and chattels, and disposed in manner aforesaid: and that
if any justice of the peace, or chief magistrate, shall wilfully
and wittingly omit the performance of his duty in the execu
tion of this act, he shall forfeit the sum of one hundred
pounds; the one moiety to the use of the informer, to be
recovered by action, suit, bUl, or plaint, in any of his majesty's
courts at Westminster, wherein no essoin, protection, or wager
of law shaU lie.
XII, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid
that if any person be at any time sued for putting in execu
tion any of the powers contained in this act, otherwise than
upon appeal allowed by this act, such person shall and may
plead the general issue, and give the special matter in evi
dence : and if the plaintiff be nonsuit, or a verdict pass
for the defendant, or if the plaintiff discontinue his action, or
if upon demurrer, judgment be given for the defendant,
- evety such defendant shall have his fuU treble costs.
XIII. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that this act, and aU clauses therein contained, shall be con
strued most largely and beneficially for the suppressing of
conventicles, and for the justification and encouragement of
all persons to be employed in the execution thereof: and
that no record, warrant, or mittimus to be made by virtue of
this act, or any proceedings thereupon, shall be reversed,
¦avoided, or any way impeached by reason of any default in
form : and in case any person offending against this act,
shall be an inhabitant in any other county or corporation, or
% into any other county or corporation after the offence
committed, the justice of peace or chief magistrate before
whom he shaU be convicted, as aforesaid, shaU certify the
K K.

498 The Conventicle Ad. [1670,
same under his hand and seal, to any justice of peace, or
chief magistrate of such other county or corporation wherein
the said person or persons are inhabitants, or are fled into :
which said justice or chief magistrate respectively, is
hereby authorized and required to levy the penalty or penal
ties in this act mentioned, upon the goods and chattels of
such person or persons, as fully as the said other justice of
peace -might have done, in case he or they had been inhabi
tants in the place where the offence was committed,
XIV, Prorided also, that no person shall be punished for
any offence against this act, unless such offender be prosecuted
for the same within three months after the offence committed:
and that no person who shaU be punished for any offence
by virtue of this act, shall be punished for the same offence
by virtue of any other act or law whatsoever,
XV, Prorided, and be it farther ensicted by the authority
aforesaid, that every alderman of London for the time being,
within the city of London, and the liberties thereof, shall
have (and they and every of them are hereby empowered and
required to execute) the same power and authority within
London, and the hberties thereof, for the examining, convict
ing and punishing of all offences within this act •committed
- ¦within London, and the liberties thereof, which any justice of
peace hath by this act in any county of England, and shaU
be subject to the same penalties and punishments, for not
doing that which by this act is directed to be done by any
justice of peace in any county of England,
XVI, Prorided, and be it enacted by the authority afore
said, that if the person offending, and convicted, as aforesaid
be a feme covert, cohabiting with her husband, the penalties
of five shillings, and ten shillings, so as aforesaid incurred,
shall be leried by warrant, as aforesaid, upon the goods and
chattels of the husband of such feme covert,
XVII, Provided also, that no peer of this realm shall be
attached or imprisoned by virtue or force of this act; any
thing, matter, or clause, therein to the contrary notwithstanding,
XVIII, Prorided also, that neither this act, nor anything

1673.] Tlie Test Ad. 499
therein contained, shall extend to invaUdate or void his
majesty's supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs : but that his
majesty, and his heirs and successors may from time to
time, and at aU times hereafter, exercise and enjoy all powers
and authority in ecclesiastical affairs, as fully aud as amply as
himself or any of his predecessors have or might have done
the same ; anything in this act notwithstanding.

XXXIV.
The Test Act.

An Act for Preventing Dangers which may happen from
Popish Recusants.
For preventing dangers which may happen from popish
recusants, and quieting the minds of his majesty's good
subjects :' Be it enacted by the king's most exceUent
majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present
parhament assembled, and by authority of the same, that all
and every person or persons, as well peers as commoners, that
shaU bear any office or offices, civil or military, or shall
receive any pay, salary, fee, or wages, by reason of any
patent or grant from his majesty, or shall have command or
place of trust from or under his majesty, or from any of his
majesty's predecessors, or by his or their authority, or by
authority derived frora him or them, within the realm of
England, dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, or in his majesty's navy, or in the several islands of
Jersey and Guernsey, or shaU be of the household, or in the
serrice or employment of his majesty, or of his royal highness
the Duke of York, who shaU inhabit, reside, or be withm the
K K 3

500 Tlie Test Act. [1673.
city of London or Westminster, or within thirty miles
distant from the same, on the first day of Easter term that
shaU be in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and
seventy-three, or at any time during the said term, all and every
the said person aud persons shaU personally appear before the
end of the said term, or of Trinity term next following, in his
majesty's High Court of Chancery, or in his majesty's Court
of King's Bench, and there in public and open court, between
the hours of nine of the clock and twelve in the forenoon,
take the several oaths of supremacy, and aUegiance, which
Oath of Allegiance is contained in the statute made in the
third year of king James, by law established ; and during
the time of the taking thereof by the said person and persons,
all pleas and proceedings in the said respective courts shall
cease; and that all and every of the said respective
persons and officers, not haring taken the said oaths in the
said respective courts aforesaid, shall, on or before the first
day of August, one thousand six hundred and seventy -three, at
the quarter sessions for -that county or place where he or
they shall be, inhabit, or reside, on the twentieth day of May,
take the said oaths in open court, between the said hours of
nine and twelve of the clock in the forenoon;- and the
said respective officers aforesaid, shall also receive the sacra
ment of the Lord's supper, according to the usage of the
church of England, at or before the first day of August, in
the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and seventy-
three, in some parish church, upon some Lord's day, com
monly called Sunday, immediately after divine service and
sermon, II, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that aU and every person or persons that shall be admitted,
entered, placed, or taken into any office or offices, ciril or
military, or shall receive any pay, salary, fee, or wages, by
reason of any patent or grant of his majesty, or shall have
command or place of trust, from or under his majesty, his
heirs or successors, or by his or their authority, or by
authority derived from him or them, within this realm of

1673.] The Ted Ad. 501
England, dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, or in his majesty's navy, or in the several islands of
Jersey and Guernsey, or that shall be admitted into any ser
vice or employment in his majesty's or royal highness's
household or famUy, after the first day of Easter term afore
said, and shall inhabit, be, or reside, when he or they is or
are so admitted or placed, within the cities of London or
Westminster, or within thirty miles of the same, shall take
the said oaths aforesaid, in the said respective court or courts
aforesaid, in the next term after such his or their admittance
or admittances into the office or offices, employment or
employments aforesaid, between the hours aforesaid, and
no other, and the proceedings to cease, as aforesaid; and
that all and every such person or persons to be admitted after
the said first day of Easter term, as aforesaid, not having
taken the said oaths in the said courts aforesaid, shall, at the
quarter sessions for that county or place where he or they
shall reside, next after such his admittance or admittances
into any of the said respective offices or employments afore
said, take the said several and respective oaths, as aforesaid :
And all and every such person and persons so to be
admitted, as aforesaid, shall also receive the sacrament of the
Lord's supper, according to the usage of the Church of
England, within three months after his or their admit
tance in or receiring their said authority and employment,
in some public church, upon some Lord's day, com
monly called Sunday, immediately after divine service and
sermon. III. And every of the said persons in the respective court
where he takes the said oaths, shall first deliver a certificate
of such his receiving the said sacrament, as aforesaid, under
the hands of the respective minister and churchwarden,
and shaU then make proof of the truth thereof, by two
credible witnesses, at the least, upon oath ; all which
shall be enquired of, and put upon record in the' respective
courts. IV. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid.

503 The Ted Ad. [167
that aU and evety the person or persons aforesaid, that do or
shaU neglect or refuse to take the said oaths and sacrament
in the said courts and places, and at the respective times
aforesaid, shaU be ipso facto adjudged uncapable and dis
abled in law, to aU intents and purposes whatsoever, to have,
occupy, or enjoy the said office or offices, employment or
employments, or any part of them, or any matter or thing
aforesaid, or any profit or advantage appertaining to them, or
any of them; and every such office and place, employment
and employments, shall be void, and is hereby adjudged
void, V, And be it farther enacted, that aU and every such
person or persons that shaU neglect or refuse to take the said
oaths, or the sacrament, as aforesaid, within the times and in
the places aforesaid, and in the manner aforesaid, and yet
after such neglect or refusal, shall execute any of the said
offices or employments, after the said times expired, wherein
he or they ought to have taken the same, and being thereupon
lawfully conricted, in or upon any information, presentment,
or indictment, in any of the king's com'ts at Westminster, or
at the assizes, evety such person or persons shaU be disabled
from thenceforth, to sue, or use any action, biU, plaint, or
information in course of law, or to prosecute any suit in any
Court of Equity, or to be guardian of any chUd, or executor
-or administrator of any person, or capable of any legacy, or
deed of gift, or to bear any office within this realm of
England, dominion of Wales, or town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed; and shall forfeit the sum of five hundred pounds,
to be recovered by him or them that shaU sue for the same,
to be prosecuted by any action of debt, suit, bill, plaint, or
information in any of his majesty's courts at Westminster,
wherein no essoin, protection, or wager of law shaU lie,
VI, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that the names of all and singular such persons and officers
aforesaid, that do or shaU take the oaths aforesaid, shall be in
the respective Courts of Chancery and King's Bench, and the
quarter sessions, inroUed, with the day and time of their

1673.] Tlie Ted Ad, 503
taking the same, in rolls made and kept only for that intent
and purpose, and for no other; the which rolls, as for the
Court of Chancery, shall be pubUcly hung up in the office of
the Petty-bag, and the roll for the King's Bench in the
Crown-Office of the said court, and in some public place in
every quarter sessions, and there remain during the whble
term, evety term, and during the whble time of the said
sessions, in every quarter sessions, for everyone to resort to,
and look upon, without fee or reward; and likewise none
of the person or persons aforesaid shall give or pay, as any
fee or reward, to any officer or officers belonging to any of the
courts, as aforesaid, above the sum of twelve pence for his or
their entry of his or their taking of the said oaths aforesaid.
VII, And farther, that it shaU and may be lawful to and
for the respective courts aforesaid, to give and administer the
said oaths aforesaid, to the person or persons aforesaid, in
manner as aforesaid; and upon the due tender of any
such person or persons, to take the said oaths, the said
courts are hereby required and enjoined to administer the
same, VIII. And be it further enacted, that if any person or
persons not bred up by his or their parent or parents from
their infancy in the popish religion, and professing themselves
to be popish recusants, shaU breed up, instruct, or educate his
or their chUd or chUdren, or suffer them to be instructed or
educated in the popish religion, every such person being
thereof convicted, shaU be from thenceforth disabled of
bearing any office, or place of trust or profit, in church or
state; and aU such chUdren as shall be so brought up,
instructed, or educated, are and shaU be hereby disabled of
bearing any such office or place of trust or profit, until he and
they be perfectly reconcUed and converted to the church of
England, and shaU take the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegi
ance aforesaid, before the justices of the peace, in the open
quarter sessions of the county or place where they shall
inhabit, and thereupon receive the sacrament of the Lord's
supper, after the usage of the church of England, and

504 The Ted Ad. [1673,
obtain a certificate thereof, under the hands of two or more
of the said justices of the peace,
IX, And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that at the same time when the persons concerned in this act
shall take the aforesaid Oaths of Supremacy and AUegiance,
they shaU likewise make and subscribe this declaration follow
ing, under the same penalties and forfeitures as by this act is
appointed :
I, A. B., do declare, that I do believe that there is not
any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord's supper,
or in the elements of bread and wine, at or after the con
secration thereof by any person whatsoever.
X. Of which subscription there shall be the like register
kept as of the taking the oaths aforesaid,
XI. Provided always, that neither this act, nor anything
therein contained, shall extend, be judged or interpreted any
ways to hurt or prejudice the peerage of any peer of this
realm, or to take away any right, power, privilege, or profit,
which any person (being a peer of this realm) hath or ought
to enjoy by reason of his peerage, either in time of parliament
or otherwise ; or to take away creation-money or bills of
impost, nor to take away or make void any pension or salary
granted by his majesty to any person for valuable and suffici
ent consideration, for life, lives, or years, other than such as
relate to any office, or to any place of trust under his
majesty, and other than pensions of bounty or voluntary
pensions; nor to take away or make void any estate of
inheritance granted by his majesty, or any his predecessors,
to any person or persons, of, or in any lands, rents, tithes, or
hereditaments, not being offices; nor to take away or
make void any pension or salary already granted by his
majesty to any person who was instrumental in the happy
preservation of his sacred majesty after the battle at Worces
ter, in the year one thousand six hundred and fifty-one, until
his majesty's arrival beyond the seas; nor to take away or
make void the grant of any office or offices of inheritance, or
any fee, salary, or reward, for executing such office or offices.

1673.] The Ted Ad, 505
or thereto any way belonging, granted by his majesty, or any
his predecessors, to, or enjoyed, or which hereafter shaU be
enjoyed by any person or persons who shall refuse or neglect
to take the said oaths, or either of them, or to receive the
sacrament, or to subscribe the declaration mentioned in this
act, in manner therein expressed : nevertheless, so as
such person or persons haring or enjoying any such office or
offices of inheritance, do or shall substitute and appoint his
or their sufficient deputy or deputies (which such officer or
officers respectively are hereby impowered, from time to time,
to make or change, any former law or usage to the contrary
notwithstanding) to exercise the said office or offices, until
such time as the person or persons haring such office or
offices shaU voluntarily, in the Court of Chancety, before the
Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper for the time being, or in
the Court of King's Bench, take the said oaths, and receive
the sacrament according to law, and subscribe the said
declaration, and so as all and every the deputy or deputies so
as aforesaid to be appointed, take the said oaths, receive tbe
sacrament, and subscribe the said declaration from time to
time, as they shall happen to be so appointed, in manner as
by this act such officers whose deputies they be, are ap
pointed to do, and so as such deputies be, from time to time,
approved of by the king's majesty, under his privy signet :
but that all and every the peers of this realm shall have,
hold, and enjoy what is provided for, as aforesaid, and all and
evety other person or persons before-mentioned, denoted or
intended within this proriso, shall have, hold, or enjoy what
is provided for, as aforesaid, notwithstanding any incapacity
or disability mentioned in this act.
XII, Prorided also, that the said peers and every of them
may take the said oaths, and make the said subscription, and
deUver the said certificates before the peers sitting in parlia
ment, if the parliament be sitting within the time limited for
doing thereof, and in the intervals of parliament, in the High
Court of Chancety, in which respective courts all the said
proceedings are to be recorded in- manner aforesaid.

506 The Ted Ad, [1673,
XIII, Prorided always, that no married woman, or person
under the age of eighteen years, or being beyond or upon the
seas, or found, by the lawful oaths of twelve men, to be mow
compos mentis, and so being and remaining at the end of
Trinity term in the year of our Lord one thousand six hun
dred and seventy-three, haring any office, shaU by rirtue of
this act, lose or forfeit any such his or her office (other than
such married woman during the life of her husband only) for
any neglect or refusal of taking the oaths, and doing the
other things required by this act to be done by persons haring
offices, so as such respective persons, within four months after
the death of her husband, coming to the age of eighteen
years, returning into this kingdom, and becoming of sound
mind, shall respectively take the said oaths, and perform all
other things in manner as by this act is appointed for
persons to db, who shaU happen to have any office or
offices to them given or faUen after the end of the said
Trinity term,
XIV. Prorided also, thatj any person, who by his or her
neglect br refusal, according to this act, shaU lose or forfeit
any office, may be capable, by a new grant, of the said office,
or of any other, and to have and hold the same again, such
person taking the said oaths, and doing all other things
required by this act, so as such office be not granted to, and
actually enjoyed by some other person at the time of the
re-granting thereof.
XV. Prorided also, that nothing in this act contained
shall extend to make any forfeiture, disability, or incapacity
in, by, or upon any non-commissioned officer or officers in
his majesty's navy, if such officer or officers shall only sub
scribe the declaration therein required, in manner as the same
is directed,XVI. Prorided also, that nothing in this act contained,
shall extend to prejudice George Earl of Bristol, or Anne
Countess of Bristol, his wife, in the pension or pensions
granted to them by patent under the great seal of England,
bearing date the fifteenth day of July, in the year of our

1688.] Tlie Toleration Act, 507
Lord one thousand six hundred sixty-and-niue, being in lieu
of a just debt due to the said earl frbm his majesty, particu
larly expressed in the said patent.
XVIL Prbrided also, that this act, or anything therein
contained, shaU not extend to the office of any high constable,
petty constable, tithingman, headborough, overseer of the
poor, churchwardens, surveyor of the highways, or any like
inferior civU office, or to any office of forester, or keeper of
any park, chase, warren, or game, or of bailiff of any manor
of lands, or to any like private offices, or to any person
or persons haring only any the before-mentioned, or any the
like offices.

XXXV.
The Toleration Act.
An Act for Exempting their Majesties Protestant Subjects,
Dissenting from the Church of England, from the Penalties
of certain laws.
Forasmuch as some ease to scrupulous consciences in the ex
ercise of religion may be an effectual means to unite their
majesties' protestant subjects in interest and affection,
II, Be it enacted, by the king's and queen's most excellent
majesties, by and with the adrice and consent of the lords
spiritual and temporal, and the commons, in this present par
hament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that
neither the statute made in the three-and-twentieth year of
the reign of the late queen Elizabeth, entitled, an Act to
retain the queen's majesty's subjects in their due obedience;
nor the statute made in the twenty-ninth year of the said

508 The Toleration Ad, [1688,
queen, entitled, an Act for the more speedy and due execu
tion of certain branches of the statute made in the three-and-
twentieth year of the queen's majesty's reign, viz., the afore
said act ; nor that branch or clause of a statute made in the
first year of the reign of the said queen, entitled, an Act for
the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Serrice in the Church,
and Administration of the Sacraments ; whereby all persons,
haring no lawful or reasonable excuse to be absent, are re
quired to resort to their parish church or chapel, or some
usual place where the common prayer shall be used, upon pain
of punishment by the censures of the church, and also upon
pain that every person so offending shall forfeit for every such
offence twelve pence ; nor the statute made in the third year
of the reign of the late king James the first, entitled, an Act
for the better Discovering and Repressing Popish Recusants ;
nor that other statute made in the same year, entitled, an
Act to prevent and avoid Dangers which may grow by Popish
Recusants ; nor any other law or statute of this realm, made
against papists or popish recusants, except the statute made
in the five-and-twentieth year of king Charles II, entitled,
an Act for preventing Dangers which may happen from
Popish Recusants; and except also the statute made in the
thirteenth year of the said king Charles II, entitled, an Act
for the more effectual preserving the King's Person and
Government by disabling Papists from sitting in either House
of Parliament ; shall be construed to extend to any person or
persons dissenting from the church of England, that shaU
take the oaths mentioned in a statute made this present par
liament, entitled, an Act for removing and preventing all
Questions and Disputes concerning the assembling and sitting
of this present parliament ; and shall make and subscribe the
declaration mentioned in a statute made in the thirtieth year
of the reign of king Charles II, entitled, an Act to prevent
Papists from sitting in either House of Parliament: which
oaths and declaration the justices of peace at the general
sessions of the peace to be held for the county or place where
such person shall live, are hereby required to tender and

1688.] The Toleration Ad. 509
administer to such persons as shaU offer themselves to take
make, and subscribe the same, and thereof to keep a
register: and likewise none of the persons aforesaid shall
give or pay, as any fee or reward, to any officer or officers
belonging to the court aforesaid, above the sum of sixpence,
nor that more than once for his or their entry of his taking
the said oaths, and making and subscribing the said declara
tion; nor above the further sum of sixpence for any certifi
cate of the same to be made out and signed by the officer or
officers of the said court.
III. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that aU and every person and persons already convicted or
prosecuted in order to conviction of recusancy, by judgment,
information, action of debt, or otherwise, grounded upon the
aforesaid statutes, or any of them, that shall take the said
oaths mentioned in the said statute made this present parlia
ment, and make and subscribe the declaration aforesaid, in
the Court of Exchequer, or assizes, or general or quarter
sessions to be held for the county where such person lives,
and to be thence respectively certified into the Exchequer,
shall be thenceforth exempted and discharged from all the
penalties, seizures, forfeitures, judgments, and executions,
incurred by force of any the aforesaid statutes, without any
composition, fee, or further charge whatsoever.
IV. And be it farther enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that all and every person and persons that shall, as aforesaid,
take the said oaths, and make and subscribe the declaration
aforesaid, shall not be liable to any pains, penalties, or forfei
tures, mentioned in an act made in the five and thirtieth year
of the reign of the late queen Elizabeth, entitled, an Act to
retain the Queen's Majesty's Subjects in their due Obedience;
nor in an act made in the two and twentieth year of the
reign of the late king Charles II, entitled, an Act to prevent
and suppress Seditious Conventicles ; nor shall any of the
said persons be prosecuted in any ecclesiastical court, for or
by reason of their non-confonning to the church of England.
V. Prorided always, and be it enacted by the authority

510 The Toleration Ad. .[1688.
aforesaid, that if any assembly of persons dissenting from the
church of England shall be had in any place for religious
worship with the doors locked, barred, or bolted during any
time of such meeting together, all and every person or per
sons, that shaU come to and be at such meeting, shaU not
receive any benefit from this law, but be liable to aU the
pains and penalties of aU the aforesaid laws recited in this
act, for such their meeting, notwithstanding his taking the
oaths, and his making and subscribing the declaration afore
said. VI. Prorided always, that nothing herein contained shaU
be construed to exempt any of the persons aforesaid from
paying of tithes or other parochial duties, or any other duties
to the church or minister, nor from any prosecution in
any ecclesiastical court, or elsewhere, for the same.
VII. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that if any person dissenting from the church of England, as
aforesaid, shall hereafter be chosen or otherwise appointed to
bear the bffice bf high constable, or petit constable, church
warden, overseer of the poor, or any other parochial or ward
office, and such person shaU scruple to take upon him any of
the said offices in regard of the oaths, or any other matter or
thing required by the law to be taken or done in respect of
such office, every such person shall and may execute such
office or employment by a sufficient deputy, by him to be pro
rided, that shall comply with the laws on this behalf. Pro-
¦rided always, the said deputy be allowed and approved by
such person or persons, in such manner as such officer or
officers respectively should by law have been aUowed and
approved. VIII. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that no person dissenting from the church of England in
holy orders, or pretended holy orders, or pretending to
holy orders, nor any preacher or teacher of any congregation
of dissenting protestants, that shaU make and subscribe the
declaration aforesaid, and take the said oaths at the general
or quarter sessions of the peace to be held for the county.

1688.] The Toleration Aid. 511
town, parts, or dirision where such prrson lives, which court
is hereby empowered to administer the same, and shall also
declare his apprbbatibu of and subscribe the articles of reli
gion mentioned in the statute made in the thirteenth year
of the reign of the late queen Elizabeth, except the thirty-
fourth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth, and these words of the
twentieth article, viz., "the Church hath power to decree
Rites or Ceremonies, and authority in Controversies of Faith,
and yet" shall be liable to any of the pains or penalties men
tioned in an act made in the seventeenth year of the reign of
king Charles II, entitled, an Act for restraining Non-confor
mists' from inhabiting in Corporations; nor the penalties
mentioned in the aforesaid act made in the two-and-twentieth
year of his said late majesty's reign, for or by reason of such
persons preaching at any meeting for the exercise of religion;
nor to the penalty of one hundred pounds mentioned in an
act made in the thirteenth and fourteenth of king Charles,
II, entitled, an Act for the Uniformity of Public Prayers,
and Administration of Sacraments, and other Rites and
Ceremonies: and for establishing the Form of Making,
Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons
in the Church of England, for officiating in any congregation
for the exercise of religion permitted and allowed by this act.
IX. Prorided always, that the making and subscribing the
said declaration, and the taking the said oaths, and making
the declaration of approbation and subscription to the said
articles, in manner as aforesaid, by every respective person or
persons herein before mentioned, at such general or quarter
sessions of the peace, as aforesaid, shall be then and there
entred of record in the said court, for which sixpence shaU be
paid to the clerk of the peace, and no more : prorided that
such person shall not at any time preach in any place, but
with the doors not locked, barred, or bolted, as aforesaid,
X. And whereas some dissenting protestants scruple the
baptising of infants, be it enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that evety person in pretended holy orders, or pretending to
holy orders, or preacher, or teacher, that shall subscribe the

513 The Toleration Act. [1688,
aforesaid articles of religion, except before excepted, and also
except part of the seven-and-twentieth article touching infant
baptism, and shaU take the said oaths, and make and sub
scribe the declaration aforesaid, in manner aforesaid, every
such person shall enjoy all the privileges, benefits, and advan
tages, which any other dissenting minister, as aforesaid,
might have or enjoy by virtue of this act.
XI. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that every teacher or preacher in holy orders, or pretended
holy orders, that is a minister, preacher, or teacher of a con
gregation, that shall take the oaths herein required, and make
and subscribe the declaration aforesaid, and also subscribe
such of the aforesaid articles of the church of England, as
are required by this act in manner aforesaid, shall be thence
forth exempted from serving upon any jury, or from being
chosen or appointed to bear the office of churchwarden, over
seer of the poor, or any other parochial or ward office, or
other office in any hundred of any shire, city, town, parish,
division, or wapentake.
XII. And be it farther enacted by the authority aforesaid,
that every justice of the peace may at any time hereafter
require any person, that goes to any meeting for exercise of
religion, to make and subscribe the declaration aforesaid, and
also to take the said oaths or declaration of fidelity herein
after mentioned, in case such person scruples the taking of an
oath, and upon refusal thereof, such justice of the peace is
hereby required to commit such person to prison without bail
or mainprize, and to certify the name of such person to the
next general or quarter sessions of the peace to be held for
that county, city, town, part, or division where such person
then resides, and if such person so committed shall upon a
second tender at the general or quarter sessions refase to make
and subscribe the declaration aforesaid, such person refusing
shall be then and there recorded, and he shall be taken thence
forth to all intents and purposes for a popish recusant con
vict, and suffer accordingly, Snd incur aU the penalties and
forfeitures of all the aforesaid laws.

1688.] The Toleration Act. 513
XIII. And whereas there are certain other persons, dissen
ters from the church of England, who scruple the taking of
any oath, be it ena,cted by the authority aforesaid, that every
such person shall make and subscribe the aforesaid declara
tion, and also this declaration of fidelity following, viz. : —
I, A.B.,do sincerely promise and solemnly declare before God
and the world, that I will be true and faithful to king WUliam
and queen Mary ; and I do solemnly profess and declare, that I
do from my heart abhor, detest, and renounce, as impious and
heretical, that damnable doctrine and position, that princes
excommunicated or deprived by the pope, or any authority of
the see of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their sub
jects, or any other whatsoever. And I do declare, that no
foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought
to have, any power, jurisdiction, superiority, pre-eminence, or
authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm.
And shaU subscribe a profession of their Christian belief
in these words —
I, A, B., profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus
Christ, his Eternal Son, the true God, and iu the Holy
Spirit, one God, blessed for evermore ; and do acknowledge
the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be
given by dirine inspiration.
Which declarations and s'Sbscription shall be made and
entered of record at the general quarter sessions of the
peace for the county, city, or place where every such person
shaU then reside. And evety such person that shaU make
and subscribe the two declarations and profession aforesaid,
being thereunto required, shaU be exempted from all the
pains and penalties of aU and evety the aforementibued
statutes made against pbpish recusants, br prbtestant nencon-
formists, and also from the penalties of an act made in the
fifth year of the reign of the late queen Elizabeth, entitied,
an Act for the Assurance of the Queen's Royal Power over
all Estates and Subjects within her Dominions, for or by
reason of such persons not taking or refusing to take the
oath mentioned m the said act; and also from the penaUiea

514 The Toleration Ad. [1688.
of an act made in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of the
reign of king Charles the Second, entitled, an Act for pre
venting Mischiefs thay may arise by certain persons called
Quakers refusing to take lawful oaths ; and enjoy aU other
the benefits, privUeges, and advantages, under the like Umita
tions, prorisos, and conditions, which any other dissenters
should or ought to enjoy by rirtue of this act.
XIV. Provided always, and be it enacted, by the authority
aforesaid, that in case any person shall refuse to take the said
oaths, when tendered to them, which every justice of the
peace is hereby empowered to do, such person shaU not be
admitted to make and subscribe the two Declaratibns afore
said, though required thereuntb either before any justice of
the peace, or at the general or quarter sessions before or
after any conviction of popish recusants, as aforesaid, unless
such person can, within thirty-one days after such tender of
the Declarations to him, produce two. sufficient protestant
witnesses, to testify upon oath that they believe him to be a
protestant dissenter ; or a certificate under the hands of four
protestants, who are conformable to the church of England,
or have taken the oaths and subscribed the Declaration above
mentioned, and shall also produce a certificate, under the
hands and seals of six, or more, sufficient men of the
congregation to which he belbngs, bwning him for one of
them. XV. Provided also, and be it enacted, by the authority
aforesaid, that until such certificate, under the hands of six
of his congregation, as aforesaid, be produced, and two
protestant witnesses come to attest his being a prbtestant
dissenter, br a certificate under the hands of four protestants,
as aforesaid, be produced, the justice of the peace shall, and
hereby is required to take a recognizance with two sureties in
the penal sum of fifty pounds, to be leried of his goods and
chattels, lands and tenements, to the use of the king's and
queen's majesties, their heirs and successors, for his produc
ing the same ; and if he cannot give such security, to
commit him to prison, there to remain until he has

1688.] the Toleration Act, 515
produced such certificates, or two witnesses, as afore-

XVI. Provided always, and it is the true intent and
meaning of this act, that all the laws made and pro
rided for the frequenting of divine serrice on the Lord's
day, commonly called Sunday, shall be still in force, and
executed against aU persons that offend against the said
laws, except such persons come to some congregation or
assembly of reUgious worship, aUowed or permitted by this
act. XVII, Provided always, and be it further enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that neither this act, nor any clause,
article or thing herein contained, shaU extend, or be con
strued to extend, to give any ease, benefit, or advantage to
any papist or popish recusaiit whatsoever, or any person
that shall deny, in bis preaching or vrriting, the doctrine
of the blessed trinity, as it is declared in the aforesaid
articles of reUgion,
XVIII, Prorided always, and be it enacted, by the
authority aforesaid, that if any person or persons, at any
time or times after the tenth day of June, do and shall
willingly and of purpose, maUciously or contemptuously come
into any cathedral or parish church, chapel, or other congre
gation permitted by this act, and disquiet or disturb the
same, or misuse any preacher or teacher, such person or
persons, upon proof thereof before any justice of peace, by
two or more sufficient ¦witnesses, shaU find two sureties, to be
bound by recognizance in the penal sum bf fifty pbunds, and
in default of such sureties, shall be committed to prison,
there to remain tUl the next general or quarter sessions;
and upon conviction of the said offence, at the said general
or quarter sessions, shaU suffer the pain and penalty of
twenty pounds, to the use of the king's and queen's majesties,
their heirs and successors.
XIX. Provided always, that no congregation or assembly
for reUgious worship shall be permitted or allowed by this

516 The Toleration Act. [1688.
act, until the place of such meeting shaU be certified to the
bishop of the diocese, or to the archdeacon of that arch-
deacouty, or to the justices of the peace at the general or
quarter qessions of the peace for the county, city, or place
in which such meeting shall be held, and registered in the
said bishop's or archdeacon's court respectively, or recorded
at the said general or quarter sessions; the register, or
clerk of the peace whereof respectively, is hereby required to
register the same, and to, give certificate thereof to such
person as shall demand the same, for which there shall be
no greater fee nor reward taken, than the sum of sixpence.

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