66 FRIENDLY DEBATE. [Conformist and Non-Conformist.] 93 the true God, to whom alone all religious | They ought not to betray the church honour is due; so he that giveth any alms wherein they live by a base and unworthy to an idle beggar, robbeth the truly poor, silence. Even the meanest child of us to whom properly all the fruits of our alms ought to speak when you are about to kill are due."-Special Remarques of the Life of our mother. Your long nails wherewith DR. SANDERSON, pp. 23-6. you now scratch her face must be shewn the people, who see them not while they behold your hands lifted up to Heaven. But besides these two, there is a third sort between both, who are dissatisfied only with a few things; allow our ministers to be good men, and wish for peace, but yet for private respects hold fair correspondence with the furies now named; keep up the separation; hold conventicles; suffer the people, without reproof, to be fierce and violent against us, connive at a great many of their false and absurd opinions; let them alone in their rude and insolent behaviour; take not sufficient care to instruct them in the truth, to bring them to a modest and peaceable temper;-in short, to qualify them for compliance with us. Do not smile at the word, for I can demonstrate, it might soon be brought about, if they pleased. Conformist. We do not think you all of a kind, though now you flock together. There are some (of your ministers for instance) who I believe are of an humble spirit, quiet and peaceable in the land, desiring unity and accord, grieving for the breach of it; and are so far from condemning those that are satisfied to do what the law requires, that they are sorry they | cannot contribute to the common peace by doing the same: upon which account they go as far as they can, and conform to public order in all things wherein they are satisfied; and are tender of breaking any laws: and when they cannot obey them, do not rail upon them and their makers; but silently and without any noise, omit to do what they enjoin. These we cannot but love, and are sorry that in so great a number we can find so few of this good temper. For there is a second sort, with which the kingdom swarms, who are of an haughty humour, of a furious and factious disposition, puft up with a conceit of their gifts to such a height, that they will scarce allow any man to know any thing of God, who is not of their party. Sour and crabbed they are above all other men, cross and peevish beyond all expression: they never speak well of our governors or government; they are always reviling bishops and common prayer, and talking like men inspired; it is an easy matter for them to disparage all our ministry, and beget an ill opinion of them in the minds of their credulous followers. Which we conceiving to be their business, no wonder if our men seek to preserve themselves, not by disgracing, but by rightly representing them to the world. "Non-Conformist. How, I pray? Can you do more than all the men in the kingdom? "C. Let them persuade their people but to be of their mind, and the business is done. "N. C. Do you think they do not? "C. No, I warrant you. If they did, the people would conform, though they cannot. For that which keeps this sort of ministers from conforming is not any thing to which the people are bound, but something particularly required of them. me. "N. C. You have revealed a secret to "C. It is easy for any body to find out that hath a mind to it. There being nothing plainer than this, that they would have read those prayers which I would have you hear, if something else had not been in the way, which you are not concerned in; and that is, renouncing the covenant. Let them then but persuade you to do all that they can do themselves; and in order to that, give you reasons why it should be done, and then I may hope to see you and I go to the same church together. And for them that do not stand upon the covenant, (for there are some such) they have the greater reason to exhort you to come, nay, to come themselves and bring you along with them."-Friendly Debate, pp. 155-7. [Bad People everywhere, and Good People everywhere.] 66 Conformist. Ir you will have me speak my mind plainly, and not be angry, I think I may say without any rashness, that your godly people are generally of the lowest form in Christ's school. A great deal of their religion is of their own making, and they want a great deal of God's religion. They are ever wrangling about little ceremonies. They break the peace of the church by this means, and seem to make no scruple about it. They are froward and peevish; greedy of riches, stubborn in their opinions; and by no means can bear with any man differing from them in matters of doctrine. In short, I see a strange ignorance mixt with presumption and wilfulness, not without a high degree of superstition, in those whom you admire for godliness. But then there is a sort of people who enjoy that name among you, in whom I can see nothing but an humour of despising and railing at all ancient received customs, how good soever; together with a sullen devotion, and such a turbulent nature, as will give no rest to themselves or others. And they have one peculiar quality, proper to themselves alone, which is, to revile our ministers, even as they go along the streets; a thing which I could never observe our ungodly people to be guilty of towards your ministers, who may pass peaceably enough; nay, I think, is not committed in any country in the world, where they are of different religions. Perhaps you will say that ours would do it, did not the power of the Lord overawe them and shut up their mouths, that they may not reproach his faithful servants. But this is only a cast of your skill in searching the hearts of men, and gives us a taste of the opinion you have of your dearness to God. "Non-Conformist. I doubt not but that they are very dear to God, and that God will reprove even kings for their sakes, saying, touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm. "C. You have a strong faith. But methinks, before you suffer it to grow to such a confidence, you should soberly consider whether some of those precious ones may not be anointed that make godliness a pretence for their disobedience to kings, and sauciness towards their betters; that flatter you into a conceit of your godliness, that you may flatter them with the title of the prophets of the Lord. To me it is no mean argument of their want of integrity, that they teach you no better, and connive at all this wickedness: and never (that I could hear of,) lay bare and rebuke those sins that reign so much among your party. Tell me, whence came all the scurrilous pamphlets that are abroad? Out of what shop do the venemous libels fly about the town? Who are they that not only despise our clergy, but put open affronts on them as they quietly and soberly walk the street? That have the poison of asps under their lips and spit it in good men's faces? That in a fearful manner scorn and revile their holy calling, and salute them everywhere with the ordinary name of Baal's priests? Are they not all bred up in your churches? Do they not all frequent your meetings? And do not bystanders of your persuasion laugh and rejoice when they see this contempt poured on them? Do they not seem to encourage those by their applauses, who are so rude and insolent in their behaviour toward good men? And yet these style themselves the Godly, and take it ill will, if we do not think them so. These you are content to | wrought in them of being wicked overmuch, wink at, that your congregations may be full. Your ministry dare not preach down these abuses, lest they should be thought to be friends to Baal. "N. C. There will be some bad people every where. by schism and disobedience, and letting loose their furious passions and unruly tongues; by reviling God's ministers: nay by despising governments, and speaking evil of dignities."-Friendly Debate, pp. 116-19. [When Things are indifferent, and when they are not so.] "WE are agreed that the thing commanded by authority is not the less indifferent in its own nature after it is com use of it is not so indifferent and at liberty. We must needs be therefore agreed also that this restraint comes not upon us from the things themselves, because still perfectly indifferent, but only from the law which ties us up. Now we say, that to this law we are to be subject, not regarding our own liberty so much as the prince's authority. You say, no; but as the law cannot alter the nature of the things, so it ought not to restrain your freedom in the use of them, but leave that as indifferent as the things themselves: that is, that the king ought to make no such law about those matters: if he do, then it is unlawful to do what he commands to be always done; because he ought to leave you at liberty to let it alone if you please; and you ought to maintain your liberty, and by no means to part with it. "C. I am glad to hear you say so. By and by, you will confess that there may be also good people everywhere, and that some of our ministers may be good, though your revilers make no difference, but if they see a man in a cassock, presently throw dirt in his face and call him a limb of antichrist, or some such thing. So brutish and out-manded, than it was before; but only our rageous are the passions of this heady people! so wonderfully do they profit in your school in those new virtues of hatred to ancient customs and habits though never so innocent, and hatred or anger to all that are not of their way. For such is the fire I have sometimes seen in their eyes when they meet one of our ministers, that one would think they had a mind to burn them up; and I make no doubt they would call upon your prophets, if they were but like Elijah, to call for fire down from Heaven to consume us. You may condemn their folly perhaps; but whatsoever you are pleased to say, they are the most zealous of your party, and think themselves the most godly. And for any thing I can hear, they may think so still; it not being the manner of your preaching to meddle with such things as these; nor the time, I doubt, to be named, when you heard a sermon to reprove the scurrilous and railing language of some among you against the English clergy. No, the way hath been, and I doubt still continues, to declaim only against superstition and formality, and will-worship, and sometimes against morality; and then to exhort the people to prize ordinances, and seek after pure ordinances, and admit of no human mixtures. But whilst the poor people are thus affrighted, and made exceeding timorous lest they should be righteous overmuch, by following vain traditions of men, they have little or no fears "Put the case then, that you (being master of a family) will have your children and servants to come at a certain time and place, &c., to worship God. It is indifferent indeed in itself, and all one to God, whether it be at ten, eleven, or twelve o'clock; or in what part of your house they meet; or in what cloathes they come; or what postures they use. point the hour of meeting shall be twelve; and that they come into your parlour, or hall, or chapel, if you have that conveniency: and beside, you require your servants that they shall not come into your But you ap 96 FRIENDLY DEBATE - LANCELOT ADDISON. parlour (suppose) in those frocks wherein | observed. And when they that will not they just before rubbed your horses' heels, observe them, yet acknowledge them to be indifferent things, truly I think nobody will think them harshly used, if they be turned out of doors. If they be fools and blocks, that cannot understand common sense, then, I confess, they are to be pitied; and his good nature may work so far as to bear with their simplicity, if they be otherwise good servants: but yet those knaves that abused their simplicity, and instilled these filthy principles into them, deserve to be punished and put out of his service, till they acknowledge their fault, and learn more manners. Just like this is the present case before us. The church is but a larger family, a wider society, in which the king is the father and supreme governor. If he make some laws for the more convenient, orderly and decent worship of God there, which in themselves are lawful, and declared not to be in their own nature necessary, but only prudent constitutions, I cannot see but that those who refuse to obey them upon pretence of their liberty, and that God may as well be worshipped without those things, do shew themselves as unmannerly, rude and refractory persons, as the children or servants in that supposed family, of which I bade you conceive yourself master. And I leave you to apply this case to that, and to make the parallel complete in your thoughts at your leisure. I hope it will be worth your labour, if you do it seriously."—Friendly Debate, pp. 78-81. [The Earth's Produce influenced by Man's Sins.] "THERE is a sort of religionists among the Barbary Moors," says LANCELOT ADDISON, "who measure the products of the earth by the sins of its inhabitants, and who divine of the success of their tillage from the observation of their Ramadan, or Lent, and the due celebrating of their Easter, Hid Segnèr, or the little feast that LATIMER FULLER. concludes it."-PINKERTON'S Collection, vol. 15, p. 405. [Absolution of a Mule at Paul's Cross.] 6 "THE same man that laid sedition to my charge, was asked another time whether he were at the sermon at Paul's Cross; he answered that he was there; and being asked what news there, 'Marry,' quoth he, 'wonderful news; we were there clean absolved, my mule and all had full absolution.' Ye may see by this that he was such a one as rode on a mule, and that he was a gentleman. Indeed his mule was wiser than he, for I dare say, the mule never slandered the preacher. Oh an unhappy chance had this mule to carry such an ass on her back! I was there at that sermon myself; in the end of this sermon he gave a general absolution, and as far as I remember, these, or such other like words he spake, but at the least I am sure this was his meaning. As many as do acknowledge yourselves to be sinners, and confess the same, and stand not in defence of it, but heartily abhor it, and will believe in the death of Christ, and will be conformable thereunto, Ego absolvo vos,' quoth he. Now saith this gentleman his mule was absolved. The preacher absolved none but such as were sorry and did repent. Belike then she did repent her stumbling, his mule was wiser than he a great deal. I speak not of worldly wisdom, for therein he is too wise, yea, he is so wise, that wise men marvel how he came truly by the tenth part of that he hath; but in wisdom which consisteth in rebus Dei, in rebus salutis, in godly matters and appertaining to our salvation, in this wisdom he is as blind as a beetle, tanquam equus et mulus, in quibus non est intellectus, like horses and mules that have no understanding. If it were true that the mule repented her of her stumbling, I think she was better absolved than he."LATIMER'S Third Sermon before Edward VI. [Pastors in this Age, why in constant Motion.] 97 "Most of these men seem born under a travelling planet; seldom having their education in the place of their nativity; ofttimes composed of Irish infancy, British breeding, and French preferment; taking a coule in one country, a crosier in another, and a grave in a third; neither bred where born, nor beneficed where bred, nor buried where beneficed; but wandering in several kingdoms. Nor is this to be imputed to any humour of inconstancy, (the running gait of the soul,) or any affected unsettledness in them; but proceeding from other weighty considerations. First, to procure their safety. For in time of persecution, the surest place to shift in, is constant shifting of places; not staying any where so long, as to give men's malice a steady aim to level at them. Secondly, to gain experience in those things, which grew not all in the same soil. Lastly, that the gospel thereby might be further, and faster propagated. When there be many guests and little meat, the same dish must go clean through the board; and divine providence ordered it, that in the scarcity of preachers, one eminent man travelling far, should successively feed many countries." |-FULLER'S Church History, cent. vi., book 1, p. 42. "If you demand then, where was God's temple all this while? the answer is at hand: there where antichrist sate. Where was Christ's people? even under antichrist's priests: and yet this is no justification at all, either of antichrist or of his priests; but a manifestation of God's great power, who is able to uphold his church even there, where Satan's throne is. Babylon was an infectious place, and the infection thereof was mortall: and yet God had his people there whom hee preserved H |