Chapter V: Book I: Part II. p.139

The following Book of this Work is interesting and most instructive as an instance of Syncretism, and its Epicurean 'clinamen', even when it has been undertaken from the purest and most laudable motives, and from impulses the most Christian, and yet its utter failure in its object, that of tending to a common centre. The experience of eighteen centuries seems to prove that there is no practicable 'medium' between a Church comprehensive (which is the only meaning of a Catholic Church visible) in which A. in the North or East is allowed to advance officially no doctrine different from what is allowed to B. in the South or West;--and a co-existence of independent Churches, in none of which any further unity is required but that between the minister and his congregation, while this again is secured by the election and continuance of the former depending wholly on the will of the latter.

Perhaps the best state possible, though not the best possible state, is where both are found, the one established by maintenance, the other by permission; in short that which we now enjoy. In such a state no minister of the former can have a right to complain, for it was at his own option to have taken the latter; 'et volenti nulla fit injuria'. For an individual to demand the freedom of the independent single Church when he receives £500 a year for submitting to the necessary restrictions of the Church General, is impudence and Mammonolatry to boot.

Ib. p. 141.

They (the Erastians) misunderstood and injured their brethren,
supposing and affirming them to claim as from God a coercive power
over the bodies or purses of men, and so setting up 'imperium in
imperio'; whereas all temperate Christians (at least except Papists)
confess that the Church hath no power of force, but only to manage
God's word unto men's consciences.

But are not the receivers as bad as the thief? Is it not a poor evasion to say:--"It is true I send you to a dungeon there to rot, because you do not think as I do concerning some point of faith;--but this only as a civil officer. As a divine I only tenderly entreat and persuade you!" Can there be fouler hypocrisy in the Spanish Inquisition than this?

Ib. p. 142.

That hereby they (the Diocesan party) altered the ancient species of
Presbyters, to whose office the spiritual government of their proper
folks as truly belonged, as the power of preaching and worshiping God
did.

I could never rightly understand this objection of Richard Baxter's. What power not possessed by the Rector of a parish, would he have wished a parochial Bishop to have exerted? What could have been given by the Legislature to the latter which might not be given to the former? In short Baxter's plan seems to do away Archbishops--[Greek: koinoì epískopoi]--but for the rest to name our present Rectors and Vicars Bishops. I cannot see what is gained by his plan. The true difficulty is that Church discipline is attached to an Establishment by this world's law, not to the form itself established: and his objections from paragraph 5 to paragraph 10 relate to particular abuses, not to Episcopacy itself.

Ib. p. 143.

But above all I disliked that most of them (the Independents) made the
people by majority of votes to be Church governors in
excommunications, absolutions, &c., which Christ hath made an act of
office; and so they governed their governors and themselves.

Is not this the case with the Houses of Legislature? The members taken individually are subjects; collectively governors.

Ib. p. 177.

The extraordinary gifts of the Apostles, and the privilege of being
eye and ear witnesses to Christ, were abilities which they had for the
infallible discharge of their function, but they were not the ground
of their power and authority to govern the Church. * * * 'Potestas
clavium' was committed to them only, not to the Seventy.

I wish for a proof, that all the Apostles had any extraordinary gifts which none of the LXX. had. Nay as an Episcopalian of the Church of England, I hold it an unsafe and imprudent concession, tending to weaken the governing right of the Bishops. But I fear that as the law and right of patronage in England now are, the question had better not be stirred; lest it should be found that the true power of the keys is not, as with the Papists, in hands to which it is doubtful whether Christ committed them exclusively; but in hands to which it is certain that Christ did not commit them at all.

Ib. p. 179.

It followeth not a mere Bishop may have a multitude of Churches,
because an Archbishop may, who hath many Bishops under him.

What then does Baxter quarrel about? That our Bishops take a humbler title than they have a right to claim;--that being in fact Archbishops, they are for the most part content to be styled as one of the brethren!

Ib. p. 185.

I say again, No Church, no Christ; for no body, no head; and if no
Christ then, there is no Christ now.

Baxter here forgets his own mystical regenerated Church. If he mean this, it is nothing to the argument in question; if not, then he must assert the monstrous absurdity of, No unregenerate Church, no Christ.

Ib. p. 188.

Or if they would not yield to this at all, we might have communion
with them as Christians, without acknowledging them for Pastors.

Observe the inconsistency of Baxter. No Pastor, no Church; no Church, no Christ; and yet he will receive them as Christians: much to his honor as a Christian, but not much to his credit as a logician.

Ib. p. 189.

We are agreed that as some discovery of consent on both parts (the
pastors and people) is necessary to the being of the members of a
political particular Church: so that the most express declaration of
that consent is the most plain and satisfactory dealing, and most
obliging, and likest to attain the ends.

In our Churches, especially in good livings, there is such an overflowing fullness of consent on the part of the Pastor as supplies that of the people altogether; nay, to nullify their declared dissent.

Ib. p. 194.

By the establishment of what is contained in these twelve propositions
or articles following, the Churches in these nations may have a holy
communion, peace and concord, without any wrong to the consciences or
liberties of Presbyterians, Congregational, Episcopal, or any other
Christians.

Painfully instructive are these proposals from so wise and peaceable a divine as Baxter. How mighty must be the force of an old prejudice when so generally acute a logician was blinded by it to such palpable inconsistencies! On what ground of right could a magistrate inflict a penalty, whereby to compel a man to hear what he might believe dangerous to his soul, on which the right of burning the refractory individual might not be defended as well?

Ib. p. 198.

To which ends * * I think that this is all that should be required of
any Church or member ordinarily to be professed: In general I do
believe all that is contained in the sacred canonical Scriptures, and
particularly I believe all explicitly contained in the ancient Creed,
&c.

To a man of sense, but unstudied in the context of human nature, and from having confined his reading to the writers of the present and the last generation unused to live in former ages, it must seem strange that Baxter should not have seen that this test is either all or nothing. And the Creed! Is it certain that the so called Apostles' Creed was more than the mere catechism of the Catechumens? Was it the Baptismal Creed of the Eastern or Western Church, especially the former? The only test really necessary, in my opinion, is an established Liturgy.

Ib. p. 201.

As reverend Bishop Ussher hath manifested that the Western Creed, now
called the Apostles' (wanting two or three clauses that now are in it)
was not only before the Nicene Creed, but of much further antiquity,
that no beginning of it below the Apostles' days can be found.

Remove these two or three clauses, and doubtless the substance of the remainder must have been little short of the Apostolic age. But so is one at least of the writings of Clement. The great question is: Was this the Baptismal Symbol, the 'Regula Fidei', which it was forbidden to put in writing;--or was it not the Christian A. B. C. of the 'Catechumeni' previously to their Baptismal initiation into the higher mysteries, to the 'strong meat' which was not for babes'? [2]

Ib. p. 203.

Not so much for my own sake as others; lest it should offend the
Parliament, and open the mouths of our adversaries, that we cannot
ourselves agree in fundamentals; and lest it prove an occasion for
others to sue for a universal toleration.

That this apprehension so constantly haunted, so powerfully actuated, even the mild and really tolerant Baxter, is a strong proof of my old opinion,--that the dogma of the right and duty of the civil magistrate to restrain and punish religious avowals by him deemed heretical, universal among the Presbyterians and Parliamentary Churchmen, joined with the persecuting spirit of the Presbyterians,--was the main cause of Cromwell's despair and consequent unfaithfulness concerning a Parliamentary Commonwealth.

Ib. p. 222.

I tried, when I was last with you, to revive your reason by proposing
to you the infallibility of the common senses of all the world; and I
could not prevail though you had nothing to answer that was not
against common sense. And it is impossible any thing controverted can
be brought nearer you, or made plainer than to be brought to your eyes
and taste and feeling; and not yours only, but all men's else. Sense
goes before faith. Faith is no faith but upon supposition of sense and
understanding: if therefore common sense be fallible, faith must needs
be so.

This is one of those two-edged arguments, which not indeed began, but began to be fashionable, just before and after the Restoration. I was half converted to Transubstantiation by Tillotson's common senses against it; seeing clearly that the same grounds 'totidem verbis et syllabis' would serve the Socinian against all the mysteries of Christianity. If the Roman Catholics had pretended that the phenomenal bread and wine were changed into the phenomenal flesh and blood, this objection would have been legitimate and irresistible; but as it is, it is mere sensual babble. The whole of Popery lies in the assumption of a Church, as a numerical unit, infallible in the highest degree, inasmuch as both which is Scripture, and what Scripture teaches, is infallible by derivation only from an infallible decision of the Church. Fairly undermine or blow up this: and all the remaining peculiar tenets of Romanism fall with it, or stand by their own right as opinions of individual Doctors.

An antagonist of a complex bad system,--a system, however, notwithstanding--and such is Popery,--should take heed above all things not to disperse himself. Let him keep to the sticking place. But the majority of our Protestant polemics seem to have taken for granted that they could not attack Romanism in too many places, or on too many points;--forgetting that in some they will be less strong than in others, and that if in any one or two they are repelled from the assault, the feeling of this will extend itself over the whole. Besides, what is the use of alleging thirteen reasons for a witness's not appearing in Court, when the first is that the man had died since his 'subpoena'? It is as if a party employed to root up a tree were to set one or two at that work, while others were hacking the branches, and others sawing the trunk at different heights from the ground.

N. B. The point of attack suggested above in disputes with the Romanists is of special expediency in the present day: because a number of pious and reasonable Roman Catholics are not aware of the dependency of their other tenets on this of the infallibility of their Church decisions, as they call them, but are themselves shaken and disposed to explain it away. This once fixed, the Scriptures rise uppermost, and the man is already a Protestant, rather a genuine Catholic, though his opinions should remain nearer to the Roman than the Reformed Church.

Ib.

_But methinks yet I should have hope of reviving your charity. You
cannot be a Papist indeed, but you must believe that out of their
Church (that is out of the Pope's dominions) there is no salvation;
and consequently no justification and charity, or saving grace. And is
it possible you can so easily believe your religious father to be in
hell; your prudent, pious mother to be void of the love of God, and in
a state of damnation, &c._

This argument 'ad affectum' is beautifully and forcibly stated; but yet defective by the omission of the point;--not for unbelief or misbelief of any article of faith, but simply for not being a member of this particular part of the Church of Christ. For it is possible that a Christian might agree in all the articles of faith with the Roman doctors against those of the Reformation, and yet if he did not acknowledge the Pope as Christ's vicar, and held salvation possible in any other Church, he is himself excluded from salvation! Without this great distinction Lady Ann Lindsey might have replied to Baxter:--"So might a Pagan orator have said to a convert from Paganism in the first ages of Christianity; so indeed the advocates of the old religion did argue. What! can you bear to believe that Numa, Camillus, Fabricius, the Scipios, the Catos, that Cicero, Seneca, that Titus and the Antonini, are in the flames of Hell, the accursed objects of the divine hatred? Now whatever you dare hope of these as heathens, we dare hope of you as heretics."

Ib. p. 224.

_But this is not the worst. You consequently anathematize_ all Papists
by your sentence: for heresies by your own sentence cut off men from
heaven: but Popery is a bundle of heresies: therefore it cuts off men
from heaven. The minor I prove, &c.

This introduction of syllogistic form in a letter to a young Lady is whimsically characteristic.

Ib. p. 225.

You say, the Scripture admits of no private interpretation. But you
abuse yourself and the text with a false interpretation of it in these
words. An interpretation is called private either as to the subject
person, or as to the interpreter. You take the text to speak of the
latter, when the context plainly sheweth you that it speaks of the
former. The Apostle directing them to understand the prophecies of the
Old Testament, gives them this caution;--that none of these Scriptures
that are spoken of Christ the public person must be interpreted as
spoken of David or other private person only, of whom they were
mentioned but as types of Christ, &c.

It is strange that this sound and irrefragable argument has not been enforced by the Church divines in their controversies with the modern Unitarians, as Capp, Belsham and others, who refer all the prophetic texts of the Old Testament to historical personages of their time, exclusively of all double sense.

Ib. p. 226.

As to what you say of Apostles still placed in the Church:--when any
shew us an immediate mission by their communion, and by miracles,
'tongues', and a spirit of revelation and infallibility prove
themselves Apostles, we shall believe them.

This is another of those two-edged arguments which Baxter and Jeremy Taylor imported from Grotius, and which have since become the universal fashion among Protestants. I fear, however, that it will do us more hurt by exposing a weak part to the learned Infidels than service in our combat with the Romanists. I venture to assert most unequivocally that the New Testament contains not the least proof of the 'linguipotence' of the Apostles, but the clearest proofs of the contrary: and I doubt whether we have even as decisive a victory over the Romanists in our Middletonian, Farmerian, and Douglasian dispute concerning the miracles of the first two centuries and their assumed contrast 'in genere' with those of the Apostles and the Apostolic age, as we have in most other of our Protestant controversies.

N.B. These opinions of Middleton and his more cautious followers are no part of our real Church doctrine. This passion for law Court evidence began with Grotius.

Ib. p. 246.

We conceived there needs no more to be said for justifying the
imposition of the ceremonies by law established than what is contained
in the beginning--of this Section.... Inasmuch as lawful authority
hath already determined the ceremonies in question to be decent and
orderly, and to serve to edification: and consequently to be agreeable
to the general rules of the Word.

To a self-convinced and disinterested lover of the Church of England, it gives an indescribable horror to observe the frequency, with which the Prelatic party after the Restoration appeal to the laws as of equal authority with the express words of Scripture;--as if the laws, by them appealed to, were other than the vindictive determinations of their own furious partizans;--as if the same appeals might not have been made by Bonner and Gardiner under Philip and Mary! Why should I speak of the inhuman sophism that, because it is silly in my neighbour to break his egg at the broad end when the Squire and the Vicar have declared their predilection for the narrow end, therefore it is right for the Squire and the Vicar to hang and quarter him for his silliness:--for it comes to that.

Ib. p. 248.

To you it is indifferent before your imposition: 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, &c.

But what is all this, good worthy Baxter, but saying and unsaying? If they are not indifferent, why did you previously concede them to be such? In short nothing can be more pitiably weak than the conduct of the Presbyterian party from the first capture of Charles I. Common sense required, either a bold denial that the Church had power in ceremonies more than in doctrines, or that the Parliament was the Church, since it is the Parliament that enacts all these things;--or if they admitted the authority lawful and the ceremonies only, in their mind, inexpedient, good God! can self-will more plainly put on the cracked mask of tender conscience than by refusal of obedience? What intolerable presumption, to disqualify as ungodly and reduce to null the majority of the country, who preferred the Liturgy, in order to force the long winded vanities of bustling God-orators on those who would fain hear prayers, not spouting!

Ib. p. 249.

The great controversies 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 divided as Puritans than those that will make
religion their business, &c.

Had not the Governors had bitter proofs that there are other and more cruel vices than swearing and careless living;--and that these were predominant chiefly among such as made their religion their business?

Ib.

And whereas you speak of opening a gap to Sectaries for private
conventicles, and the evil consequents to the state, we only desire
you to avoid also the cherishing of ignorance and profaneness, and
_suppress all Sectaries_, and spare not, in a way that will not
suppress the means of knowledge and godliness.

The present company, that is, our own dear selves, always excepted.

Ib. p. 250.

Otherwise the poor undone Churches of Christ will no more believe you
in such professions than we believed that those men intended the
King's just power and greatness, who took away his life.

Or who, like Baxter, joined the armies that were showering cannon balls and bullets around his inviolable person! Whenever by reading the Prelatical writings and histories, I have had an over dose of anti-Prelatism in my feelings, I then correct it by dipping into the works of the Presbyterians, and their fellows, and so bring myself to more charitable thoughts respecting the Prelatists, and fully subscribe to Milton's assertion, that "Presbyter was but Old Priest writ large."

Ib. p. 254.

The apocryphal matter of your lessons in Tobit, Judith, Bel and the
Dragon, &c., is scarce agreeable to the word of God.

Does not Jude refer to an apocryphal book?

Ib.

Our experience unresistibly 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.

This now is the very point I most admire in our excellent Liturgy. To any particular petition offered to the Omniscient, there may be a sinking of faith, a sense of its superfluity; but to the lifting up of the soul to the Invisible and there fixing it on his attributes, there can be no scruple.

Ib. p. 257.

The not abating of the impositions is the carting off of many hundreds
of your brethren out of the ministry, and of many thousand Christians
out of your communion; but the abating of the impositions will so
offend you as to silence or excommunicate none of you at all. For
example, 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, &c.

As long as independent single Churches, or voluntarily synodical were forbidden and punishable by penal law, this argument remained irrefragable. The imposition of such trifles under such fearful threats was the very bitterness of spiritual pride and vindictiveness;--after the law passed by which things became as they now are, it was a mere question of expediency for the National Church to determine in relation to its own comparative interests. If the Church chose unluckily, the injury has been to itself alone.

It seems strange that such men as Baxter should not see that the use of the ring, the surplice and the like, are indifferent according to his own confession, yea, mere trifles, in comparison with the peace of the Church; but that it is no trifle, that men should refuse obedience to lawful authority in matters indifferent, and prefer the sin of schism to offending their taste and fancy. The Church did not, upon the whole, contend for a trifle, nor for an indifferent matter, but for a principle on which all order in society must depend. Still this is true only, provided the Church enacts no ordinances that are not necessary or at least plainly conducive to order or (generally) to the ends for which it is a Church. Besides, the point which the King had required them to consider was not what ordinances it was right to obey, but what it was expedient to enact or not to enact.

Ib. p. 269.

That the Pastors of the respective parishes may be allowed not only
publicly to preach, but personally to catechize 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 exclusion of them till they have made a credible
profession of repentance, and then to receive them again to the
communion of the Church;--provided there be place for due appeals to
superior power.

Suppose only such men Pastors as are now most improperly, whether as boast or as sneer, called Evangelical, what an insufferable tyranny would this introduce! Who would not rather live in Algiers? This alone would make this minute history of the ecclesiastic factions invaluable, that it must convince all sober lovers of independence and moral self-government, how dearly we ought to prize our present Church Establishment with all its faults.

Ib. p. 272.

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 the Book of Common Prayer, till it be effectually reformed by
divines of both persuasions equally deputed thereunto.

The dispensing power of the Crown not only acknowledged, but earnestly invoked! Cruel as the conduct of Laud and that of Sheldon to the Dissentients was, yet God's justice stands clear towards them; for they demanded that from others, which they themselves would not grant. They were to be allowed at their own fancies to denounce the ring in marriage, and yet impowered to endungeon, through the magistrate, the honest and peaceable Quaker for rejecting the outward ceremony of water in Baptism, as seducing men to take it as a substitute for the spiritual reality;--though the Quakers, no less than themselves, appealed to Scripture authority--the Baptist's own contrast of Christ's with the water Baptism.

Ib. p. 273.

We are sure that kneeling in any adoration at all, in any worship, on
any Lord's Day in the year, or any week day between Easter and
Pentecost, was not only disused, but forbidden by General Councils,
&c.--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.

Was not this because kneeling was the agreed sign of sorrow and personal contrition, which was not to be introduced into the public worship on the great day and the solemn seasons of the Church's joy and thanksgiving? If so, Baxter's appeal to this usage is a gross sophism, a mere pun.

Ib. p. 308.

Baxter's Exceptions to the Common Prayer Book.

1. Order requireth that we begin with reverent prayer to God for his
acceptance and assistance, which is not done.

Enunciation of God's invitations, and promises in God's own words, as in the Common Prayer Book, much better.

2. That the Creed and Decalogue containing the faith, in which we
profess to assemble for God's worship, and the law which we have
broken by our sins, should go before the confession and Absolution;
or at least before the praises of the Church; which they do not.

Might have deserved consideration, if the people or the larger number consisted of uninstructed 'catechumeni', or mere candidates for Church-membership. But the object being, not the first teaching of the Creed and Decalogue, but the lively reimpressing of the same, it is much better as it is.

3. The Confession omitteth not only original sin, but all actual sin
as specified by the particular commandments violated, and almost
all the aggravations of those sins.... Whereas confession, being
the expression of repentance, should be more particular, as
repentance itself should be.

Grounded, on one of the grand errors of the whole Dissenting party, namely, the confusion of public common prayer, praise, and instruction, with domestic and even with private devotion. Our Confession is a perfect model for Christian communities.

4. When we have craved help for God's prayers, before we come to them,
we abruptly put in the petition for speedy deliverance--('O God,
make speed to save us: O Lord make haste to help us',) without any
intimation of the danger that we desire deliverance from, and
without any other petition conjoined.

5. It is disorderly in the manner, to sing the Scripture in a plain
tune after the manner of reading.

6. ('The Lord be with you. And with thy spirit',) being petitions
for divine assistance, come in abruptly in the midst or near the
end of morning prayer: And ('Let us pray'.) is adjoined when we
were before in prayer.

Mouse-like squeak and nibble.

7. ('Lord have mercy upon us: Christ have mercy upon us: Lord have
mercy upon us'.) seemeth an affected tautology without any special
cause or order here; and the Lord's Prayer is annexed that was
before recited, and yet the next words are again but a repetition
of the aforesaid oft repeated general ('O Lord, shew thy mercy upon
us'.)

Still worse. The spirit in which this and similar complaints originated has turned the prayers of Dissenting ministers into irreverent preachments, forgetting that tautology in words and thoughts implies no tautology in the music of the heart to which the words are, as it were, set, and that it is the heart that lifts itself up to God. Our words and thoughts are but parts of the enginery which remains with ourselves; and logic, the rustling dry leaves of the lifeless reflex faculty, does not merit even the name of a pulley or lever of devotion.

8. The prayer for the King ('O Lord, save the King'.) is without any
order put between the foresaid petition and another general request
only for audience. ('And mercifully hear us when we call upon
thee').

A trifle, but just.

9. The second Collect is intituled ('For Peace'.) and hath not a word
in it of petition for peace, but only 'for defence in assaults of
enemies', and that we 'may not fear their power'. And the prefaces
('in knowledge of whom standeth', &c. and 'whose service', &c.)
have no more evident respect to a petition for peace than to any
other. And the prayer itself comes in disorderly, while many
prayers or petitions are omitted, which according both to the
method of the Lord's Prayer, and the nature of the things, should
go before.

10. The third Collect intituled ('For Grace'.) is disorderly, &c....
And thus the main parts of prayer, according to the rule of the
Lord's Prayer and our common necessities, are omitted.

Not wholly unfounded: but the objection proceeds on an arbitrary and (I think) false assumption, that the Lord's Prayer was universally prescriptive in form and arrangement.

12. The Litany ... omitteth very many particulars, ... and it is
exceeding disorderly, following no just rules of method. Having
begged pardon of our sins, and deprecated vengeance, it proceedeth
to evil in general, and some few sins in particular, and thence to
a more particular enumeration of judgments; and thence to a
recitation of the parts of that work of our redemption, and thence
to the deprecation of judgments again, and thence to prayers for
the King and magistrates, and then for all nations, and then for
love and obedience, &c.

The very points here objected to as faults I should have selected as excellencies. For do not the duties and temptations occur in real life even so intermingled? The imperfection of thought much more of language, so singly successive, allows no better representation of the close neighbourhood, nay the co-inherence of duty in duty, desire in desire. Every want of the heart pointing Godward is a chili agon that touches at a thousand points. From these remarks I except the last paragraph of s. 12:

(As to the prayer for Bishops and Curates and the position of the
General Thanksgiving, &c.)

which are defects so palpable and so easily removed, that nothing but antipathy to the objectors could have retained them.

13. The like defectiveness and disorder is in the Communion Collects
for the day.... There is no more reason why it should be appropriate
to that day than another, or rather be a common petition for all days,
&c.

I do not see how these supposed improprieties, for want of appropriateness to the day, could be avoided without risk of the far greater evil of too great appropriation to particular Saints and days as in Popery. I am so far a Puritan that I think nothing would have been lost, if Christmas day and Good Friday had been the only week days made holy days, and Easter the only Lord's day especially distinguished. I should also have added Whitsunday; but that it has become unmeaning since our Clergy have, as I grieve to think, become generally Arminian, and interpreting the descent of the Spirit as the gift of miracles and of miraculous infallibility by inspiration have rendered it of course of little or no application to Christians at present. Yet how can Arminians pray our Church prayers collectively on any day? Answer. See a 'boa constrictor' with an ox or deer. What they do swallow, proves so astounding a dilatability of gullet, that it would be unconscionable strictness to complain of the horns, antlers, or other indigestible non-essentials being suffered to rot off at the confines, [Greek: hérkos hodóntôn]. But to write seriously on so serious a subject, it is mournful to reflect that the influence of the systematic theology then in fashion with the anti-Prelatic divines, whether Episcopalians or Presbyterians, had quenched all fineness of mind, all flow of heart, all grandeur of imagination in them; while the victorious party, the Prelatic Arminians, enriched as they were with all learning and highly gifted with taste and judgment, had emptied revelation of all the doctrines that can properly be said to have been revealed, and thus equally caused the extinction of the imagination, and quenched the life in the light by withholding the appropriate fuel and the supporters of the sacred flame. So that, between both parties, our transcendant Liturgy remains like an ancient Greek temple, a monumental proof of the architectural genius of an age long departed, when there were giants in the land.

Ib. p. 337.

As I was proceeding, Bishop Morley interrupted me according to his
manner, with vehemency crying out * * The Bishop interrupted me again
* * I attempted to speak, and still he interrupted me * * Bishop
Morley went on, talking louder than I, &c.

The Bishops appear to have behaved insolently enough. Safe in their knowledge of Charles's inclinations, they laughed in their sleeves at his commission. Their best answer would have been to have pressed the anti-impositionists with their utter forgetfulness of the possible, nay, very probable differences of opinion between the ministers and their congregations. A vain minister might disgust a sober congregation with his 'extempore' prayers, or his open contempt of their kneeling at the Sacrament, and the like. Yet by what right if he acts only as an individual? And then what an endless source of disputes and preferences of this minister or of that!

Ib. p. 341.

The paper offered by Bishop Cosins.

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, contrary to the word of God; and if
they can make any such appear; let them be satisfied.

2. If not, let them propose what they desire in point of expediency,
and acknowledge it to be no more.

This was proposed, doubtless, by one of your sensible men; it is so plain, so plausible, shallow, 'nihili, nauci, pili, flocci-cal'. Why, the very phrase "contrary to the word of God" would take a month to define, and neither party agree at last. One party says:

The Church has power from God's word to order all matters of order so as shall appear to them to conduce to decency and edification: but ceremonies respect the orderly performance of divine service: ergo, the Church has power to ordain ceremonies: but the Cross in baptizing is a ceremony; ergo, the Church has power to prescribe the crossing in Baptism. What is rightfully ordered cannot be rightfully withstood:--but the crossing, &c., is rightfully ordered:--'ergo', the crossing cannot be rightfully omitted.

To this, how easily would the other party reply;

1. That a small number of Bishops could not be called the Church:

2. That no one Church had power or pretence from God's word to prescribe
concerning mere matters of outward decency and convenience to other
Churches or assemblies of Christian people:

3. That the blending an unnecessary and suspicious, if not
superstitious, motion of the hand with a necessary and essential act
doth in no wise respect order or propriety:

Lastly, that to forbid a man to obey a direct command of God because he will not join with it an admitted mere tradition of men, is contrary to common sense, no less than to God's word, expressly and by breach of charity, which is the great end and purpose of God's word. Besides; might not the Pope and his shavelings have made the same proposition to the Reformers in the reign of Edward VI., in respect to the greater part of the idle superfluities which were rejected by the Reformers, only as idle and superfluous, and for that reason contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, though few, if any, were in the direct teeth of a positive prohibition? Above all, an honest policy dictates that the end in view being fully determined, as here for instance, the preclusion of disturbance and indecorum in Christian assemblies, every addition to means, already adequate to the securing of that end, tends to frustrate the end, and is therefore evidently excluded from the prerogatives of the Church, (however that word may be interpreted) inasmuch as its power is confined to such ceremonies and regulations as conduce to order and general edification. In short it grieves me to think that the Heads of the most Apostolical Church in Christendom should have insisted on three or four trifles, the abolition of which could have given offence to none but such as from the baleful superstition that alone could attach importance to them effectually, it was charity to offend;-when all the rest of Baxter's objections might have been answered so triumphantly.

Ib. p. 343.

Answer to the foresaid paper.

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 39
Articles, that is contrary to the word of God.

I think this might have been left out as well as the other two articles mentioned by Baxter. For as by the words "contrary to the word of God" in Cosins's paper, it was not meant to declare the Common Prayer Book free from all error, the sense must have been, that there is not anything in it in such a way or degree contrary to God's word, as to oblige us to assign sin to those who have overlooked it, or who think the same compatible with God's word, or who, though individually disapproving the particular thing, yet regard that acquiescence as an allowed sacrifice of individual opinion to modesty, charity, and zeal for the peace of the Church. For observe that this eighth instance is additional to, and therefore not inclusive of, the preceding seven: otherwise it must have been placed as the first, or rather as the whole, the seven following being motives and instances in support and explanation of the point.

Ib. p. 368.

Let me mediate here between Baxter and the Bishops: Baxter had taken for granted that the King had a right to promise a revision of the Liturgy, Canons and regiment of the Church, and that the Bishops ought to have met him and his friends as diplomatists on even ground. The Bishops could not with discretion openly avow all they meant; and it would be bigotry to deny that the spirit of compromise had no indwelling in their feelings or intents. But nevertheless it is true that they thought more in the spirit of the English Constitution than Baxter and his friends.--"This," thought they, "is the law of the land, 'quam nolumus mutari'; and it must be the King with and by the advice of his Parliament, that can authorize any part of his subjects to take the question of its repeal into consideration. Under other circumstances a King might bring the Bishops and the Heads of the Romish party together to plot against the law of the land. No! we would have no other secret Committees but of Parliamentary appointment. We are but so many individuals. It is in the Legislature that the congregations, the party most interested in this cause, meet collectively by their representatives."--Lastly, let it not be overlooked, that the root of the bitterness was common to both parties,--namely, the conviction of the vital importance of uniformity;--and this admitted, surely an undoubted majority in favor of what is already law must decide whose uniformity it is to be.

Ib. p. 368.

We 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 consenting to this Liturgy
without any considerable alteration.

This is forcible reasoning, but which the Bishops could fairly leave for the King to answer;--the contract tacit or expressed, being between him and the anti-Prelatic Presbytero-Episcopalian party, to which neither the Bishops nor the Legislature had acceded or assented. If Baxter and Calamy were so little imbued with the spirit of the Constitution as to consider Charles II. as the breath of their nostrils, and this dread sovereign Breath in its passage gave a snort or a snuffle, or having led them to expect a snuffle surprised them with a snort, let the reproach be shared between the Breath's fetid conscience and the nostrils' nasoductility. The traitors to the liberty of their country who were swarming and intriguing for favor at Breda when they should have been at their post in Parliament or in the Lobby preparing terms and conditions!--Had all the ministers that were afterwards ejected and the Presbyterian party generally exerted themselves, heart and soul, with Monk's soldiers, and in collecting those whom Monk had displaced, and, instead of carrying on treasons against the Government 'de facto' by mendicant negociations with Charles, had taken open measures to confer the sceptre on him as the Scotch did,--whose stern and truly loyal conduct has been most unjustly condemned,--the schism in the Church might have been prevented and the Revolution of 1688 superseded.

N.B. In the above I speak of the Bishops as men interested in a litigated estate. God forbid, I should seek to justify them as Christians.

Ib. p. 369.

'Quære'. Whether in the 20th Article these words are not
inserted;--'Habet Ecclesia auctoritatem in controversiis fidei'.

Strange, that the evident antithesis between power in respect of ceremonies, and authority in points of faith, should have been overlooked!

Ib.

Some have published, That there is a proper sacrifice in the Lord's
Supper, to exhibit Christ's death in the 'post-fact', as there was a
sacrifice to prefigure it in the Old Law in the 'ante-fact', and
therefore that we have a true altar, and not only metaphorically so
called.

Doubtless a gross error, yet pardonable, for to errors nearly as gross it was opposed.

Ib.

Some have maintained that the Lord's Day is kept merely by
ecclesiastical constitution, and that the day is changeable.

Where shall we find the proof of the contrary?--at least, if the position had been worded thus: The moral and spiritual obligation of keeping the Lord's Day is grounded on its manifest necessity, and the evidence of its benignant effects in connection with those conditions of the world of which even in Christianized countries there is no reason to expect a change, and is therefore commanded by implication in the New Testament, so clearly and by so immediate a consequence, as to be no less binding on the conscience than an explicit command. A., having lawful authority, expressly commands me to go to London from Bristol. There is at present but one safe road: this therefore is commanded by A.; and would be so, even though A. had spoken of another road which at that time was open.

Ib. p. 370.

Some have broached out of Socinus a most uncomfortable and desperate
doctrine, that late repentance, that is, upon the last bed of
sickness, is unfruitful, at least to reconcile the penitent to God.

This no doubt refers to Jeremy Taylor's work on Repentance, and is but too faithful a description of its character.

Ib. p. 373.

A little after the King was beheaded, Mr. Atkins met this priest in
London, and going into a tavern with him, said to him in his familiar
way, "What business have you here? I warrant you come about some
roguery or other." Whereupon the priest told it him as a great secret,
that there were thirty of them here in London, who by instructions
from Cardinal Mazarine, did take care of such affairs, and had sat in
council, and debated the question, whether the King should be put to
death or not;--and that it was carried in the affirmative, and there
were but two voices for the negative, which was his own and another's;
and that for his part, he could not concur with them, as foreseeing
what misery this would bring upon his country. Mr. Atkins stood to
the truth of this, but thought it a violation of the laws of
friendship to name the man.

Richard Baxter was too thoroughly good for any experience to make him worldly wise; else, how could he have been simple enough to suppose, that Mazarine would leave such a question to be voted 'pro' and 'con', and decided by thirty emissaries in London! And, how could he have reconciled Mazarine's having any share in Charles's death with his own masterly account, pp. 98, 99, 100? Even Cromwell, though he might have prevented, could not have effected, the sentence. The regicidal judges were not his creatures. Consult the Life of Colonel Hutchinson upon this.

Ib. p. 374.

Since this, Dr. Peter Moulin hath, in his Answer to 'Philanax
Anglicus', declared that he is ready to prove, when authority will
Call him to it, that the King's death, and the change of the
government, was first proposed both to the Sorbonne, and to the Pope
with his Conclave, and consented to and concluded for by both.

The Pope in his Conclave had about the same influence in Charles's fate as the Pope's eye in a leg of mutton. The letter intercepted by Cromwell was Charles's death-warrant. Charles knew his power; and Cromwell and Ireton knew it likewise, and knew that it was the power of a man who was within a yard's length of a talisman, only not within an arm's length, but which in that state of the public mind, could he but have once grasped it, would have enabled him to blow up Presbyterian and Independent both. If ever a lawless act was defensible on the principle of self-preservation, the murder of Charles might be defended. I suspect that the fatal delay in the publication of the 'Icon Basilike' is susceptible of no other satisfactory explanation. In short it is absurd to burthen this act on Cromwell and his party, in any special sense. The guilt, if guilt it was, was consummated at the gates of Hull; that is, the first moment that Charles was treated as an individual, man against man. Whatever right Hampden had to defend his life against the King in battle, Cromwell and Ireton had in yet more imminent danger against the King's plotting. Milton's reasoning on this point is unanswerable: and what a wretched hand does Baxter make of it!

Ib. p. 375.

But if the laws of the land appoint the nobles, as next the King, to
assist him in doing right, and withhold him from doing wrong, then be
they licensed by man's law, and so not prohibited by God's, to
interpose themselves for the safety of equity and innocency, and by
all lawful and needful means to procure the Prince to be reformed, but
in no case deprived, where the sceptre is inherited! So far Bishop
Bilson.

Excellent! O, by all means preserve for him the benefit of his rightful heir-loom, the regal sceptre; only lay it about his shoulders, till he promises to handle it, as he ought! But what if he breaks his promise and your head? or what if he will not promise? How much honester would it be to say, that extreme cases are 'ipso nomine' not generalizable, --therefore not the subjects of a law, which is the conclusion 'per genus singuli in genere inclusi'. Every extreme case must be judged by and for itself under all the peculiar circumstances. Now as these are not foreknowable, the case itself cannot be predeterminable. Harmodius and Aristogiton did not justify Brutus and Cassius: but neither do Brutus and Cassius criminate Harmodius and Aristogiton. The rule applies till an extreme case occurs; and how can this be proved? I answer, the only proof is success and good event; for these afford the best presumption, first, of the extremity, and secondly, of its remediable nature--the two elements of its justification. To every individual it is forbidden. He who attempts it, therefore, must do so on the presumption that the will of the nation is in his will: whether he is mad or in his senses, the event can alone determine.

Ib. p. 398.

The governing power and obligation over the flock is essential to the
office of a Pastor or Presbyter as instituted by Christ.

There is, [Greek: hôs émoige dokei], one flaw in Baxter's plea for his Presbyterian form of Church government, that he uses a metaphor, which, inasmuch as it is but a metaphor, agrees with the thing meant in some points only, as if it were commensurate 'in toto', and virtually identical. Thus, the Presbyter is a shepherd as far as the watchfulness, tenderness, and care, are to be the same in both; but it does not follow that the Presbyter has the same sole power and exclusive right of guidance; and for this reason,--that his flock are not sheep, but men; not of a natural, generic, or even constant inferiority of judgment; but Christians, co-heirs of the promises, and therein of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and of the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. How then can they be excluded from a share in Church Government? The words of Christ, if they may be transferred from their immediate application to the Jewish Synagogue, suppose the contrary;--and that highest act of government, the election of the officers and ministers of the Church, was confessedly exercised by the congregations including the Presbyters and Arch-presbyter or Bishop, in the primitive Church. The question, therefore, is:--Is a national Church, established by law, compatible with Christianity? If so, as Baxter held, the representatives (King, Lords, and Commons,) are or may be representatives of the whole people as Christians as well as civil subjects;--and their voice will then be the voice of the Church, which every individual, as an individual, themselves as individuals, and, 'a fortiori', the officers and administrators appointed by them, are bound to obey at the risk of excommunication, against which there would be no appeal, but to the heavenly Cæsar, the Lord and Head of the universal Church. But whether as the accredited representatives and plenipotentiaries of the national Church, they can avail themselves of their conjoint but distinct character, as temporal legislators, to superadd corporal or civil penalties to the spiritual sentence in points peculiar to Christianity, as heretical opinions, Church ceremonies, and the like, thus destroying 'discipline', even as wood is destroyed by combination with fire;--this is a new and difficult question, which yet Baxter and the Presbyterian divines, and the Puritans of that age in general, not only answered affirmatively, but most zealously, not to say furiously, affirmed with anathemas to the assertors of the negative, and spiritual threats to the magistrates neglecting to interpose the temporal sword. In this respect the present Dissenters have the advantage over their earlier predecessors; but on the other hand they utterly evacuate the Scriptural commands against schism; take away all sense and significance from the article respecting the Catholic Church; and in consequence degrade the discipline itself into mere club-regulations or the by-laws of different lodges;--that very discipline, the capability of exercising which in its own specific nature without superinduction of a destructive and transmutual opposite, is the fairest and firmest support of their cause.

20th October, 1829.

Ib. p. 401.

That sententially it must be done by the Pastor or Governor of that
particular Church, which the person is to be admitted into, or cast
out of.

This most arbitrary appropriation of the words of Christ, and of the apostles, John and Paul, by the Clergy to themselves exclusively, is the [Greek: prôton pseudos], the fatal error which has practically excluded Church discipline from among Protestants in all free countries. That it is retained, and an efficient power, among the Quakers, and only in that Sect, who act collectively as a Church,--who not only have no proper Clergy, but will not allow a division of majority and minority, nor a temporary president,--seems to supply an unanswerable confirmation of this my assertion, and a strong presumption for the validity of my argument. The Wesleyan Methodists have, I know, a discipline, and the power is in their consistory,--a general conclave of priests cardinal since the death of Pope Wesley. But what divisions and secessions this has given rise to; what discontents and heart-burnings it still occasions in their labouring inferior ministers, and in the classes, is no less notorious, and may authorize a belief that as the Sect increases, it will be less and less effective; nay, that it has decreased; and after all, what is it compared with the discipline of the Quakers?--Baxter's inconsistency on this subject would be inexplicable, did we not know his zealotry against Harrington, the Deists and the Mystics;--so that, like an electrified pith-ball, he is for ever attracted towards their tenets concerning the pretended perfecting of spiritual sentences by the civil magistrate, but he touches only to fly off again. "Toleration! dainty word for soul-murder! God grant that my eye may never see a toleration!" he exclaims in his book against Harrington's Oceana.

Ib. p. 405.

As for the democratical conceit of them that say that the Parliament
hath their governing power, as they are the people's representatives,
and so have the members of the convocation, though those represented
have no governing power themselves, it is so palpably
self-contradicting, that I need not confute it.

Self-contradicting according to Baxter's sense of the words "represent" and "govern." But every rational adult has a governing power: namely, that of governing himself.

Ib. p. 412.

That though a subject ought to take an oath in the sense of his rulers
who impose it, as far as he can understand it; yet a man that taketh
an oath from a robber to save his life is not always bound to take it
in the imposer's sense, if he take it not against the proper sense of
the words.

This is a point, on which I have never been able to satisfy myself.--The only safe conclusion I have been able to draw, being the folly, mischief, and immorality of all oaths but judicial ones,--and those no farther excepted than as they are means of securing a deliberate consciousness of the presence of the Omniscient Judge. The inclination of my mind is at this moment, to the principle that an oath may deepen the guilt of an act sinful in itself, but cannot be detached from the act; it being understood that a perfectly voluntary and self-imposed oath is itself a sin. The man who compels me to take an oath by putting a pistol to my ear has in my mind clearly forfeited all his right to be treated as a moral agent. Nay, it seems to be a sin to act so as to induce him to suppose himself such. Contingent consequences must be excluded; but would, I am persuaded, weigh in favour of annulling on principle an oath sinfully extorted. But I hate casuistry so utterly, that I could not without great violence to my feelings put the case in all its bearings. For example:--it is sinful to enlarge the power of wicked agents; but to allow them to have the power of binding the conscience of those, whom they have injured, is to enlarge the power, &c. Again: no oath can bind to the perpetration of a sin; but to transfer a sum of money from its rightful owner to a villain is a sin, &c. and twenty other such. But the robber may kill the next man! Possibly: but still more probably, many, who would be robbers if they could obtain their ends without murder, would resist the temptation if no extenuations of guilt were contemplated;--and one murder is more effective in rousing the public mind to preventive measures, and by the horror it strikes, is made more directly preventive of the tendency, than fifty civil robberies by contract.

Ib. p. 435.

That the minister be not bound to read the Liturgy himself, if
another, by whomsoever, be procured to do it; so be it he preach not
against it.

Wonderful, that so good and wise a man as Baxter should not have seen that in this the Church would have given up the best, perhaps the only efficient, preservative of her Faith. But for our blessed and truly Apostolic and Scriptural Liturgy, our churches' pews would long ago have been filled by Arians and Socinians, as too many of their desks and pulpits already are.