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SECT. 50.

Power of Reforming Abuses given to the Church: and the Issue of the Neglect of it.

Sep." For the wafers in Geneva and disorders in Corinth, they were corruptions, which may and do, or the like unto them, creep into the purest Churches in the world: for the reformation whereof, Christ hath given his power unto his Church; that such evils, as are brought in by human frailty, may by divine authority be purged out. This power and presence of Christ you want; holding all by homage, or rather by villanage, under the Prelates: unto whose sinful yoke you stoop, in more than Babylonish bondage; bearing and approving, by personal communion, infinite abominations."

You, that can grant there will be corruptions in all other Churches, will endure none in ours. If England should have either unleavened wafers, or drunken love-feasts, though no other blemishes, she could not but be Babylon. We envy not your favours.

These, or whatsoever like enormities, Christ hath given power unto his Church to reform:

But what if the Church neglect to use it? What if those evils, which are brought in by human frailty, will not by divine authority be purged out? Now the error, by your doctrine*, is grown fundamental: so Christ is lost, and the foundation razed.

If we shall then assume, against our friends to convince our enemies, the Church of Geneva hath been seriously dealt with in this corruption, and dissuaded by vehement importunity, yet still persisteth; how can you free them, and charge us? See how we love to be miserable, with company!

This power to purge out all corruptions, Christ hath not given us. If he hath given it you, you must. first begin to purge out yourselves. You have done it: but still there remain some. Would

God, we had as much execution as power! Our Church should be as clean, as yours is schismatical. If you should measure faculties by their exercise, natural rest should be the greatest enemy to virtue, and the solitary Christian should be miserable.

This power of ours is not dead, but sleepeth. When it awaketh unto more frequent use, which we earnestly pray for, look you for the first handsel of it: none can be more worthy. As it is, we offend not more in defect, than you in excess of whom, that your Lazarello of Amsterdam, G. J., could say †, That you have Excommunications as ready, as a Prelate hath a Prison.

Christ is in many, that feel him not: but we want not the power only, but the presence of Christ :

*Barr. against Gyff. pp. 27, 28.

+ Troubles and Excommunications at Amsterdam.

How so? he was with us, while you were here. Did he depart with you? Will the Separatists engross our Saviour to themselves *; and, as Cyprian said + of Pupianus, go to heaven alone? yea, confine the God of Heaven to Amsterdam?

What insolence is this! we have him in his Word: we have him in his Sacraments: we have him in our hearts: we have him in our profession: yet this enemy dare say, we want him:

Wherein? I suppose in our censures. We have Peter's Keys, as his true successors both in office and doctrine: our fault is, that we use them not as you would. What Church doth so? Your first Martyr doth as zealously inveigh ‡ against the practice of Geneva and all other Reformed Congregations in this point, as against us: both for the wooden dagger, as he terms § it, of Suspension; and for their Consistorial Excommunications.

Woe were to all the world, if Christ should limit his presence only to your fashions! Here you found him; and here you left him. Would to God, we did no more grieve him with our sins, than you please him in your presumptuous censures !

In the rest, you rail against our Prelates, and us. Can any man think, that Christ hath left peaceable spirits, to go dwell with

railers?

Indeed, yours is freehold: so you would have it, free from subjection, free from obedience. This is looseness, more than liberty: you have broken the bonds, and cast the cords from you.

But you miscall our tenure. We hate villenage, no less than you hate peace; and hold, in capite, of him, that is the Head of his Body, the Church; Col. i. 18: under whose easy yoke we do willingly stoop, in a sweet Christian freedom; abhorring and reproving, and therefore, notwithstanding our personal communion, avoiding all abominations.

Sep.-"And, in these two last respects principally, your Babyfonish confusion of all sorts of people in the body of your Church without separation, and your Babylonish bondage under your spiritual lords the Prelates, we account you Babylon, and fly from you."

IN these two respects, therefore, of our confusion and bondage, we have well seen in this discourse, how justly your Sion accounts us Babylon. Since it is apparent, for the one, that here is neither confusion, nor Babylonish, nor without separation: for the other, no bondage, no servility; our Prelates being our fathers, not our mas

An tu solus Ecclesia es? Et qui te offenderit à Christo excluditur? Hieron. Epiphan.

+ Cypr. Solus in cælum ascend. Pupianus ? Et ad Acesium Novatianum Constan. Erigito tibi scalam, Acesi, et ad cælum solus ascendito. Socr. l. i. c. 7,

Bar. Gyff. Ref.

§ So some of their own have termed their excommunication. Confess. by M. Johns. Enquiry p. 65.

ters *; and if Lords for their external dignity, yet not Lords of our Faith.

And, if both these your respects were so; yet, so long as we do inviolably hold the foundation, both directly and by necessary sequel, any Railer may term us, but no Separatist shall prove us, Babylon.

You may fly, whether you list: would God, yet further; unless had more love!

you

SECT. 51,

The View of the Sins and Disorders of others, whereupon objected, and how far it should affect us.

Sep." Master H., having formerly expostulated with us our supposed impiety in forsaking a Ceremonious Babylon in England, proceeds, in the next place, to lay down our madness in choosing a Substantial Babylon in Amsterdam: and, if it be so found by due trial as he suggesteth, it is hard to say, whether our impiety or madness be the greater.'

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I NEED no better analyser, than yourself; save that you do not only resolve my parts, but add more: whereas, every motion hath a double term; from whence, and whither: both these could not but fall into our discourse.

Having, therefore, formerly expostulated with you for your (since you will so term it) impiety, in forsaking a Ceremonious Babylon of your own making in England; I thought it not unfit to compare your choice with your refusal; England, with Amsterdam, which it pleaseth you to entitle a Substantial Babylon. Impiety and Madness are titles of your own choice: let your guiltiness be your own

accuser.

The truth is, my charity and your uncharitableness have caused us to mistake each other.

My charity thus. Hearing, both at Middleburgh and here, that certain companies from the parts of Nottingham and Lincoln, whose harbinger had been newly in Zealand before me, meant to retire themselves to Amsterdam, for their full liberty, not for the full approbation of your Church; not favouring your main opinions, but emulating your freedom in too much hate of our ceremonies, and too much accordance to some grounds of your hatred: I hoped you had been one of their guides; both because Lincolnshire was your country, and Master Smith your oracle and general. Not daring, therefore, to charge you with perfect Brownism, what could I think might be a greater motive to this your supposed change, than the view of our, so oft proclaimed, wickedness, and the hope of less

* Amari parens et Episcopus debet, non timeri. Hier, ad Theophilum.

cause of offence in those foreign parts? This I urged; fearing to go deeper, than I might be sure to warrant.

Now comes my charitable Answerer, and imputes this easiness of my challenge to my ignorance: and, therefore, will needs persuade his Christian Reader, that I knew nothing of the First Separation, because I objected so little to the Second.

Sep.-"Belike, Master H. thinks we gather Churches here by town-rows, as they do in England; and that all within the Parish Procession are of the same Church. Wherefore else tells he us of Jews, Arians, and Anabaptists; with whom we have nothing common, but the streets and market-place? It is the condition of the Church, to live in the world, and to have civil society with the men of this world; 1 Cor. v. 10. John xvii. 11. But what is this to that spiritual communion of the Saints, in the fellowship of the Gospel, wherein they are separated and sanctified from the world unto the Lord? John xvii. 16. 1 Cor. i. 2. 2 Cor. vi. 17, 18."

IT were strange, if I should think you gather Churches there by town-rows, as we in England; who know that some one prison might hold all your refined flock. You gathered here by hedge-rows: but there, it is easier to tell how you divide, than how you gather.

Let your Church be an entire body, enjoying her own spiritual communion; yet, if it be not a corrosive to your heart to converse in the same streets, and to be ranged in the same town-rows with Jews, Arians, Anabaptists, &c. you are no whit of kin to him, that vexed his righteous soul with the uncleannesses of foul Sodom. That good man had nothing but civil society with those impure neighbours: he differed from them in religion, in practice: yet could he not so carelessly turn off this torment. His house was God's Church; wherein they had the spiritual communion of the Saints yet, while the city was so unclean, his heart was unquiet.

Separation from the world how required.

We may, you grant, have civil society with ill men; spiritual communion, only with Saints: those must be accounted the World; these only, the Church. Your own allegations shall condemn you. They are not of the world, saith Christ, as I am not of the world; John xvii. 16. Both Christ and they were parts of the Jewish Church the Jewish Church was not so sanctified, but the most were extremely unclean: therefore, we may be parts of a Visible Unsanctified Church, and yet be separate from the World.

St. Paul writes to his Corinthians, sanctified in Christ, Saints by calling: 1 Cor. i. 2 :-True: but, not long after, he can say, Ye are yet carnal; 1 Cor. iii. 3. In his Second Epistle, Come out, saith he, from among them: but from whom? from Infidels, by profession; not corrupted Christians.

SECT. 52.

The Nearness of the State and Church, and the great Errors found by the Separatists in the French and Dutch Churches.

Sep." We, indeed, have much wickedness in the City where we live; you, in the Church. But, in earnest, do you imagine we account the Kingdom of England, Babylon; or the City of Amsterdam, Sion? It is the Church of England, or State Ecclesiastical, which we account Babylon; and from which we withdraw in spiritual communion: but, for the Commonwealth and Kingdom, as we honour it above all the States in the world, so would we thankfully embrace the meanest corner in it, at the extremest conditions of any people in the Kingdom."

THE Church and State, if they be two, yet they are twins; and that so, as either's evil proves mutual. The sins of the City not reformed, blemish the Church: where the Church hath power and in a sort comprehends the State, she cannot wash her hands of tolerated disorders in the Commonwealth. Hence is my comparison of the Church (if you could have seen it, not the Kingdom) of England, with that of Amsterdam.

I doubt not, but you could be content to sing the old song, of us, Bona terra, mala gens. Our land you could like well, if you might be lords alone. Thanks be to God, it likes not you; and justly thinks the meanest corner too good for so mutinous a generation. When it is weary of peace, it will recal you. You, that, neither in prison, nor on the seas, nor in the coasts of Virginia, nor in your way, nor in Netherland, could live in peace; what shall we hope of your ease at home? Where ye are, all you thankful tenants cannot, in a powerful Christian State, move God to distinguish betwixt the known sins of the City and the Church.

How oft hath our Gracious Sovereign, and how importunately, been solicited for a Toleration of Religions? It is pity, that the Papists hired not your advocation; who, in this point, are those true Cassanders *, which Reverend Calvin long since confuted. Their wishes, herein, are yours; to our shame and their excuse. His Christian heart held that toleration unchristian and intolerable, which you either neglect or magnify. Good Constantine winked at it, in his beginning t; but, as David at the house of Zeruiah. Succeeding times found these Canaanites to be pricks and thorns; and, therefore, both by mulcts and banishments sought either their yieldance or avoidance. If your Magistrates, having once given. their names to the Church, endeavour not to purge this Augean Stable; how can you prefer their communion to ours?

But, howsoever now, lest we should think your landlords have too

Cassand. de Offic. Boni Viri. Bellar, de Laicis.

Eusch. in Vitâ Const.

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