just cause to pack you away for wranglers, you turn over all the blame from the Church to the City: yet your Pastor and Church have so found the City in the Church, and branded it with so black marks, as that all your smooth extenuations cannot make it a less Babylon than the Church of England. Behold, now, by your own confessions, either Amsterdam shall be, or England shall not be, Babylon. These Eleven Crimes you have found and proclaimed, in those Dutch and French Churches *.

First, That the assemblies are so contrived, that the whole Church comes not together in one: so that the Ministers cannot, together with the flock, sanctify the Lord's Day; the presence of the members of the Church cannot be known; and, finally, no public action, whether excommunication or any other, can rightly be performed. Could you say worse of us? Where neither sabbath can be rightly sanctified, nor presence or absence known, nor any holy action rightly performed, what can there be but mere confusion?

Secondly, That they baptize the seed of them, who are no members of any Visible Church: of whom, moreover, they have not care as of members; neither admit their parents to the Lord's Supper. Mere Babylonism, and sin in constitution; yea, the same, that makes us no Church! For, what separation can there be, in such admittance? what other, but a sinful commixture? How is the Church of Amsterdam now gathered from the World?

Thirdly, That, in the public worship of God, they have devised and used another Form of Prayer, besides that, which Christ our Lord hath prescribed, Matt. vi. reading out of a book certain prayers, invented and imposed by man. Behold here our fellowidolaters! And, as follows, a daily sacrifice of a set Service-Book, which, instead of the sweet incense of spiritual prayers, is offered to God very swine's-flesh! a new portuise! and an equal participation, with us, of the curse of addition to the Word †!

Fourthly, That rule and commandment of Christ, Matt. xviii. 15. they neither observe, nor suffer rightly to be observed among them. How oft have you said, that there can be no sound Church without this course, because no separation! Behold the main blemish of England, in the face of Amsterdam!

Fifthly, That they worship God in the idol temples of Antichrist: so the wine is marred with the vessel; their service, abomination, with ours: neither do these antichristian stones want all glorious ornaments of the Romish Harlot; yet more.

Sixthly, That their Ministers have their set maintenance, after another manner than Christ hath ordained: and that also such, as by which any ministry at all, whether Popish or other, might be maintained; either tythes, or as ill. Behold one of the main arguments, whereby our Ministry is condemned as false and antichristian, falling heavy upon our neighbours!

Seventhly, That their Elders change yearly, and do not continue

* Fr. Johns. Articles against the French and Dutch Churches.
+ Barr. against Gyff.

in their office, according to the doctrine of the Apostles and practice of the Primitive Church. What can our Church have worse, than false governors? Both annual and perpetual they cannot be. What is, if not this, a wrong in constitution?

Eighthly, That they celebrate marriage in the church, as if it were a part of the Ecclesiastical Administration. A foul shame and sin! and what better than our Third Sacrament?

Ninthly, That they use a new censure of suspension, which Christ hath not appointed. No less than English presumption!

Tenthly, That they observe days and times; consecrating certain days in the year to the Nativity, Resurrection, Ascension of Christ. Behold their calendar as truly possessed: two commandments solemnly broken at once; and we not idolaters alone!

Eleventhly, which is last and worst, that they receive unrepentant excommunicates to be members of their Church; which, by this means, becomes one body with such, as be delivered unto Satan; therefore, none of Christ's Body. England can be but a miscelline rabble of profane men*. The Dutch and French Churches are, belike, no better: who can be worse, than an unrepentant excommunicate? Go now, and say, "It is the Apostacy of Antichrist, to have communion with the World in the holy things of God, which are the peculiars of the Church; and cannot, without great sacrilege, be so prostituted and profaned." Go, say that "The plaguy-spiritual leprosy of sin, rising up in the foreheads of many in that Church, unshut up, uncovered, yea wilfully let loose, infects all, both persons and things, amongst them," Go now, and fly out of this Babylon also, as the he-goats before the flock, or re

turn to ours.

But, however these errors be gross, perhaps they are tractable. Not the sin undoes the Church, but obstinacy:-Here is no evasion: for, behold, you do more accuse those Churches of corruption, than of wilfulness. For, divers times, have you dealt with them about these fearful enormities: yea, you have often desired, that knowledge thereof might be by themselves given to the whole body of their Church; or that, at least, they would take order that it might be done by you. They have refused both. What remains, but they be our fellow-heathens and publicans? and not they alone, but all Reformed Churches beside in Christendom, which do jointly partake in all these, except one or two personal, abominations? Will you never leave, till you have wrangled yourselves out of the world!

Sep.-"The hellish impieties in the City of Amsterdam, do no more prejudice our heavenly communion in the Church of Christ, than the frogs, lice, murrain, and other plagues overspreading Egypt did the Israelites, when Goshen, the portion of their inheritance, was free; Exod. viii. 22: ix. 26: nor than the Deluge, wherewith the whole world was covered, did Noah, when he and his family were safe in the ark; Gen. vii: nor than Satan's Throne

* H. Ainsworth in his Counterpoison.

did the Church of Pergamos, being established in the same city with it; Rev. ii. 12, 13."

BUT now I fear I have drawn you to say, that the hellish impieties, both in the City and Church of Amsterdam, are but frogs, lice, flies, murrain, and other Egyptian plagues, not prejudicing your Goshen. Say so, if you dare. I fear they would soon make the Ocean your Red Sea, and Virginia your Wilderness.

The Church is Noah's Ark, which gave safety to her guests, whereof ye are part but, remember, that it had unclean beasts also, and some savage. If the waves drown you not; yet, methinks, you should complain of noisome society. Satan's throne could not prejudice the Church of Pergamos: but did not the Balaamites (the Nicolaitans)? yet their heavenly communion stood, and the Angel is sent away with but threats.

SECT. 53.

Conversation with the World.

Sep." It is the will of God and of Christ, that his Church should abide in the World, and converse with it in the affairs thereof, which are common to both: but it is the Apostacy of Antichrist, to have communion with the world in the holy things of God, which are the peculiars of the Church; and cannot, without great sacrilege, be so prostituted and profaned."

As it were madness to deny, that the Church should converse with the World in the affairs thereof; so to deny her communion in God's holy things, with any of those of the World which profess Christianity (as yet uncensured), is a point of Anabaptistical Apostacy.

Such of the World are still of the Church. As my censure cannot eject them; so their sin, after my private endeavour of redress, cannot defile me.

I speak of private communicants. If an unbidden guest come, with a ragged garment and unwashen hands, shall I forbear God's heavenly dainties? The Master of the Feast can say, Friend, how camest thou in hither? not, "Friends, why came you hither with such a guest?" God bids me come: he hath imposed this necessity; never allowed this excuse. My teeth shall not be set on edge with the sour grapes of others. If the Church cast not out the known unworthy, the sin is hers: if a man will come unworthy, the sin is his but if I come not, because he comes, the sin is mine. I shall not answer for that other's sin: I shall answer for mine own neglect. Another man's fault cannot dispense with my duty *.

* Duobus modis non te maculat malus; videlicet, si non consentis, et si redarguis. d. 23. q. 4. A malis.

SECT. 54.

The Impure Mixtures of the Church of England.

1. Canons.

2. Sin uncensured.

3. Hierarchy.

4. Service-Book.

Sep.-"The air of the Gospel, which you draw in, is nothing so free and clear as you make shew: it is only because you are used to it, that makes you so judge."

As there is no element, which is not, through many mixtures, departed from the first simplicity; so no Church ever breathed in so pure an air, as that it might not justly complain of some thick and unwholesome evaporations of error and sin. If you challenge an immunity, you are herein the true brood of the ancient Puritans.

But, if too many sins in practice have thickened the air of our Church, yet not one heresy: that smoke of the Bottomless Pit hath never corrupted it: and, therefore, justly may I aver, that here you might draw in the clear air of the Gospel: no where upon earth more freely.

And if this be but the opinion of custom, you, whom absence hath helped with a more nice and dainty scent, speak your worst. Shew us our heresies, and shame us.

You have done it: and behold Four main Infections of our English Air.

Sep.-"The thick smoke of your Canons, especially of such as are planted against the Kingdom of Christ, the Visible Church, and the administration of it, do both obscure and poison the air, which you all draw in, and wherein you breathe."

THE First, the Smoke of our Canons. Wittily! I fear, the great Ordinances of the Church have troubled you more with the blow, than the smoke: for you tell us of their plantation against the Kingdom of Christ. What Kingdom? The Visible Church. Which is that? Not the reformedest piece of ours, whose best are but goats and swine not the close Nicodemians of your own sect amongst us, which would be loth to be visible: not foreigners; to them they extend not: none, therefore, in all the world, but the English-Parlour-Full at Amsterdam. Can there be any truer Donatism? Cry you still out of their poisoning the air: we hold it the best cleansed, by the batteries of your idle fancies; by ridding you from our air; and by making this your Church invisible to us. Smart you thus, till we complain.

Sep.-"The plaguy-spiritual leprosy of sin, rising up in the foreheads of so many thousands in the Church, unshut up, uncovered, infects all, both persons and things, amongst you; Lev. xiii. 45, 46, 47. 2 Cor. vi. 17."

THE Second is the Plague or Leprosy of Sin, unshut up and uncovered. We know that sin is as ill, as the Devil can make it; a most loathsome thing in the eyes of God, and his Angels, and Saints: and we grant, to our grief, that, among so many millions of men, there may be found some thousands of lepers. Good laws and censures meet with some; others escape: it is not so much our fault, as our grief. But, that this leprosy infects all persons, and things, is shamefully over-reached. Plague and leprosy have their limits, beyond which is no contagion: if a man come not near them, if he take the wind in an open air, they infect not. Such is sin: it can infect none, but the guilty *: those, which act, or assent to, or bear with it, or detest it not, are in this pollution; but those, which can mourn for it, and cannot redress it, are free from infection. How many foul lepers spiritually did our Saviour see in the public air of the Jewish Church! wherewith yet he joined, and his; not fearing infection so much, as gracing the remnants of their ruinous Church. Were those seven thousand Israelites, whose knees bowed not to Baal (1 Kings xix. 18.), infected with the idolatry of their neighbours? yet continued they still parts of the same Church. But this yet exceeds: not only all persons, but all things:-What! our Gospel? our heaven, earth, sea? our books, coin, commodities? Behold, you see the same heaven with us: you have no Bibles but ours: our air, in his circular motion, comes to be yours: the water, that washesh our island, perhaps washeth your hands: our unclean silver, I fear, maintains you: our commodities, in part, enrich your landlords and yet all things amongst us infected! You are content to take some evil from your neighbours.

Sep. "The blasting Hierarchy suffers no good thing to grow, or prosper; but withers all, both bud and branch."

THE Third is our Blasting Hierarchy, which suffers no good thing (that is, no Brownist, no singular fancy, for what good things have we but yours?) to grow or prosper amongst us; but withers all, both bud and branch: would to God the root also!

Sep.-"The daily sacrifice of the Service-Book, which, instead of spiritual prayer, sweet as incense, you offer up morning and evening, smells so strong of the Pope's portuise, as it makes many hundreds amongst yourselves stop their noses at it; and yet you boast of the free and clear air of the Gospel, wherein you breathe."

* Certè nullius crimen maculat nescientem. Aug. Epist. 48.