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the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the dedication of the Temple,) whose names should they rather bear, though but for mere distinction *, than the blessed Apostles' of Christ?

But this is a colour only for you equally condemn those days of Christ's Birth, Ascension, Circumcision, Resurrection, Annunciation, which the Church hath, beyond all memory, celebrated †.

What, then, is our fault? We keep these holy as the Lord's Day-In the same manner, though not in the same degree. Indeed, we come to the Church, and worship the God of the Martyrs and Saints. Is this yet our offence? No: but we abstain from our most lawful labour in them :-True, yet not in conscience of the day, but in obedience to the Church: if the Church shall indict a solemn fast, do not you hold it contemptuous to spend that day in lawful labour; notwithstanding that liberty of the six days, which God hath given? Why shall that be lawful in a case of dejection, which may not in praise and exultation?

If you had not loved to cavil, you would rather have accepted the apology or excuse of our Sister Churches in this behalf, than aggravated these uncharitable pleas of your own.

Yet, even in this, your own Synagogue at Amsterdam, if we may believe your own §, is not altogether guiltless: your hands are still, and your shops shut, upon festival days. But we accuse you not would God this were your worst!

The Masters of our Courts would tell you, they would not care so much for this dispossession, as that it should be done by such conjurers as yourself.

SECT. 41.

Our Approbation of an Unlearned Ministry disproved. Sep.-" Constrained and approved Ignorance. If an ignorant and unpreaching Ministry be approved amongst you, and the people constrained by all kind of violence to submit unto it, and therewith to rest (as what is more usual throughout the whole kingdom?) then let no modest man once open his mouth to deny that ignorance is constrained and approved amongst you."

YOUR want of quarrels makes you still run over the same complaints which, if you redouble a thousand times, will not become just, may become tedious,

* Aug. Ep. 44. Scias à Christianis Catholicis nullum coli mortuorum, nihil deinque ut numen adorari, quod sit factum et conditum à Deo.

+ Que toto orbe terrarum, &c. sicuti quoque Domini Passio et Resurrectio ct in cælum Ascensus, et Adventus Spiritus Sancti, anniversariâ solemnitate celebrantur. Aug. Epist. 118.

Churches of France and Flanders in Harm. Confess.

§ Tho. White's Discover. p. 19.

God knows how far we are from approving an unlearned Ministry. The protestations of our gracious King, our Bishops, our greatest Patrons of Conformity in their public writings, might make you ashamed of this bold assertion. We do not allow that it should be: we bewail that it will be.

Our number of parishes compared with our number of divines, will soon shew, that, either many parishes must have none, or some divines must have many congregations, or too many congregations must have scarce divine-incumbents.

Our dread Sovereign hath promised a medicine for this disease: but, withal, tells you, that Jerusalem was not built all on a day *. The violence you speak of is commonly in case of wilful contempt, not of honest and peaceable desire of further instruction ; or, in supposal of come tolerable ability in the Ministry forsaken.

We do heartily pray for labourers into this harvest. We do wish that all Israel could prophesy. We publish the Scriptures, we preach, catechize, write; and, Lord, thou knowest, how many of us would do more, if we knew what more could be done, for the information of thy people, and remedy of this ignorance which this adversary reproves us to approve.

Sep.-" English Service, unknown Devotion. If the service said or sung in the Parish Church may be called devotion, then sure there is good store of unknown devotion; the greatest part in most parishes, neither knowing nor regarding what is said, nor wherefore."

WE doubt not, but the service, said in our Parish Churches, is as good a service to God, as the extemporary devotions in your parlours.

But, it is an unknown devotion, you say :-Through whose fault? the reader's, or the hearer's, or the matter? Distinct reading you cannot deny to the most parishes: the matter is easy prayers, and English Scriptures: if the hearers be regardless, or in some things All dull of conceit, lay the fault from the service to the men. yours are free from ignorance, free from wandering conceits! we envy you not some knowledge is no better than some ignorance; and carelessness is no worse than mis-regard.

SECT. 42.

Penances enjoined in the Church of England.

Sep" What are your sheet-penances for adultery, and all your purse-penances for all other sins? than which, though some worse in Popery, yet none more common.”

COMING now to the vaults of Popery, I ask for their Penances and Purgatory; those Popish Penances, which presumptuous Confessors

* Confer. at Hampt.

enjoined as satisfactory, and meritorious upon their bold absolutions.

You send me to sheet-penances and purse-penances.

The one, ceremonious corrections of shame, enjoined and adjoined to public confessions of uncleanness, for the abasing of the offender and hate of the sin: such like, as the Ancient Church thought good to use, for this purpose: hence they were appointed, as Tertullian speaketh, in sackcloth and ashes, to crave the prayers of the Church, to besmear their body with filthiness, to throw themselves down before God's Minister and Altar; not to mention other, more hard, and perhaps no less ancient rites: and hence, were those five stations t of the penitent, whereby he was at last received into the body of his wonted communion.

The other, a pecuniary mulct imposed upon some (not all, you foully slander us) less heinous offences; as a penalty, not as a penance. I hope you deny not; sodomy, murder, robbery, and (which you would not) theft itself is more deeply avenged.

But, did ever any of ours urge either sheet or purse, as the remedy of Purgatory; or enjoin them, to avoid those infernal pains? Unless we do so, our Penances are not Popish, and our Answerer is idle.

SECT. 43.

The Practices of the Church of England concerning the Funerals of the Dead.

Sep.-" Touching Purgatory, though you deny the doctrine of it, and teach the contrary; yet, how well your practice suits with it, let it be considered in these particulars: your absolving of men dying excommunicate, after they be dead, and before they may have Christian Burial."

YOUR next accusation is more ingeniously malicious. Our doctrine you grant contrary to Purgatory: but you will fetch it out of our practice, that we may build that which we destroy.

Let us, therefore, purge ourselves from your Purgatory.
We absolve men dying excommunicate:-

A rare practice, and which yet I have not lived to see. But, if law-makers contemn rare occurrents, surely accusers do not. Once is too much of an evil. Mark, then : Do we absolve his soul after the departure? No: what hath the body to do with Purgatory? Yet, for the body: do we, by any absolution, seek to quit it from sin? Nothing less reason itself gives us, that it is uncapable either of sin or pardon. To lie unburied, or to be buried unseemly, is so much a punishment, that the heathens objected it, though

*Sacco et cineri incubare, corpus sordibus obscurare, presbyteris advolvi, et aris Dei adgeniculari. Tert. de Pænit.

+ Canon. Greg. Neocæsar. goxλavois, à×çoaois, &c.

upon the havock and fury of war, to the Christians, as an argument of God's neglect *. All, that authority can do to the dead rebel, is to put his carcase to shame, and deny him the honour of seemly sepulture: thus doth the Church to those, that will die in wilful contempt. Those Grecian Virgins, that feared not death, were yet restrained with the fear of shame after death †. It was a real, not imaginary curse of Jezebel: The dogs shall eat Jezebel. Now the Absolution (as you call it, by an unproper, but malicious name) is nothing else, but a liberty given by the Church, upon repentance signified of the fault of the late offender, of all those external rites of decent funeral. Death itself is capable of inequality and unseemliness. Suppose a just Excommunication: what reason is it, that he, which, in his life and death, would be as a Pagan, should be as a Christian in his burial? What is any or all this to Purgatory?

Sep.-"Your Christian Burial in holy ground, if the party will be at the charges: your ringing of hallowed bells for the soul: your singing the corpse to the grave, from the church style: your praying over or for the dead; especially in these words, That God would hasten his kingdom; that we, with this our brother,' though his life were never so wretched and death desperate, and all other departed in the true faith of thy Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation, both in body and soul." "

The next intimation of our Purgatory, is our Christian Burial; in the place, in the manner: the place, holy ground, the church, churchyard, &c: the manner, ringing, singing, praying over the corpse. Thus, therefore, you argue: We bury the body in the church or churchyard, &c: therefore we hold a Purgatory of the soul.

A proof, not less strange, than the opinion. We do neither scorn the carcasses of our friends, as the old Troglodites; nor, with the old Egyptians, respect them more, than when they were informed with a living soul: but we keep a mean course betwixt both; using them as the remainders of dead men, yet as dead Christians, and as those which we hope one day to see glorious. We have learned to call no place holy in itself, since the Temple; but some more holy in their use, than others. The old oτRIA ‡ of the Christians, wherein their bodies slept in peace, were not less esteemed of them, than they are scorned of you. Gallienus thought he did them a great favour, and so they took it, when he gave them the liberty, not only of their churches, but of their former burying places $. In the same book, Eusebius commends Astyrius, a noble senator, for his care and cost of Marinus's bu

*Aug. de Civ. I. i.

+ Athenienses decreverunt, ne si quis se interfecisset sepeliretur in agro Altico, &c.

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Sleeping-places." Cæmiteria.

Euseb. l. vii. c. 12. τῶν τόπων θρησκυοίμων καὶ κοιμητής.

rial*. Of all these rites of funeral, and choice of place, we profess to hold, with Augustin †, that they are only the comforts of the living, not helps of the dead: yet, as Origen also teacheth us‡, "We have learned to honour a reasonable," much more a Christian, "soul; and to commit the instrument or case of it honourably to the grave." All this might have taught our Answerer, that we make account of a Heaven, of a Resurrection; not of a Purgatory.

But we ring hallowed bells for the soul:

Do not those bells hang in hallowed steeples, too? and do we not ring them with hallowed ropes? What fancy is this? If Papists were so fond of old, their folly and their bells, for the most part, are both out of date. We call them soul-bells, for that they signify the departure of the soul, not for that they help the passage of the soul. This is mere boys'-play.

But we pray over or for the dead:

Do we not sing to him also? Pardon me, I must needs tell you, here is much spite, and little wit. To pray for the consummation of the glory of all God's elect, what is it, but Thy Kingdom come? How vainly do you seek a knot in a rush, while you cavil at so holy a petition! Go, and learn how much better it is, to call them our brothers, which are not, in a harmless over-weening and over-hoping of charity; than to call them no brothers, which are, in a proud and censorious uncharitableness.

You cannot be content to tell an untruth, but you must face it out. Let any reader judge, how far our practice, in this, hath dissented from our doctrine: would to God in nothing more!

Yes, saith this good friend, in the most other things; our words profess, our deeds deny. At once, you make us hypocrites, and yourselves Pharisees. Let all the world know, that the English Church at Amsterdam, professeth nothing, which it practiseth not : we may not be so holy, or so happy.

Sep.-"Your general doctrines and your particular practices agree in this, as in the most other things, like Harp and Harrow. In word, you profess many truths; which, in deed, you deny. These, and many more Popish devices (by others at large discovered to the world) both for pomp and profit, are not only not razed and buried in the dust, but are advanced, amongst you, above all that is called God."

GENERALITY is a notable shelter of untruth. "Many more," you say "Popish devices;" yet name none. No, you cannot.

"Advanced above all that is called God?"-Surely, this is a paradox of slanders. You meant, at once, to shame us with false

* Splendidissima sepulturæ tradidit. Euseb. 1. vii. c. 15.

+ Curatio funeris, conditio sepulturæ, pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia quàm subsidia mortuorum. Aug. de Civit. 1. i. c. 12. Si enim paterna vestis et annulus tanto char. est posteris, nullo modo ipsu spernenda sunt corpora. Aug. de Civ. 1. i. c. 13.

Orig. cont. Cels. 1. viii. Rationalem animam honorare didicimus, &c.

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