thanks for setting them in opposition to the orthodox, among whom they were pleased to reckon themselves. The Author hath here owned something indirectly, of which they would have been ashamed. However, if any reader upon the strength of this or some broader hints, should suspect him to be rather unsound in his persuasion, such a person is to be regarded only as a sly orthodox brother hanging his ears in a corner; that is, as an insignificant cur, sitting and musing by the fire-side. If he should have the courage to take up a pen in defence of his faith, then he is to be reckoned among the "champions of error of the most palpable kind‡—in the first ranks of whom appear those who enjoy plentiful emoluments from the nature and construction of the establishment; who are therefore concerned to defend every thing belonging to it, not because it is true, or reasonable, or righteous in itself, but because it is established §." A very reasonable and charitable inference! But why is he thus hasty to conclude, that they who enjoy plentiful emoluments are bound to defend every thing in the establishment, whether right or wrong? This looks as if he and his friends had been aiming chiefly at their emoluments, while they have seemed to be pleading against their doctrines: and were therefore resolved to understand a defence of their doctrines as a defence of their emoluments. Or, perhaps, this reflection may be thrown out, to discourage them from defeuding what he has opposed, * See the Hist. of Nonconformity, printed 1708, p. 203. § Pref. p. 5. So speaks the Independent Whig, vol. iii. p. 253. "Who know no reason for liking what is established, but purely, because it is established: and will they not always have something very plausible to urge in favour and defence of their Gain ?” lest they should be thought mercenary in the eyes of the world. But what would he say, if they were to make no defence at all? I apprehend, he would be in the foremost ranks of those who would impute their silence to a sense of their weakness; and conclude they said nothing, only because they had nothing to say. If their Faith is received from the Scripture and the purest ages of the primitive Church, it is a principal part of their duty to contend earnestly for it against the disputers of this world: which if they should fail to do, he might then fall upon their characters with some shew of justice, and argue in plain terms, that they ought no longer to receive the wages, because they had ceased to do the work. The Prophet compares such careless guardians of the flock to dumb dogs that cannot bark*: and though the wolf will be sure to like them never the better for their vigilance, and impute it all to self-interest, or any other dishonourable motive, yet I hope they will always think that silence, which argues a want of fidelity to the Master of whose bread they are eating, the greater reproach of the two. The childish topics from which these champions reason, are "public authority, long possession, the concurrence of the majority, the danger to public peace from attempts to innovatet;" and such like. I do not stay here to refute all these accusations: first, because many of them belong to a certain class of arguments which the injured are not always bound to answer; and for which, I would advise the Author to consider seriously, whether he may not one day be obliged to answer us. Secondly, because they are only introduced as a specimen, to exemplify the first step in his method of reasoning. t Ibid. The men of Mr. Hooker's days having ripped up the faults of higher callings, proceeded next to impute them all to the kind of Ecclesiastical government established. And if we ask the Author, whence all this unreasonableness, and unrighteousness, and hypocrisy, and virulence arises; he readily accounts for it from the doctrine and discipline now established: which being established, must be defended; and being palpably erroneous, is never to be upheld by the writers of the Church, but at the expence of truth, reason, and morality. It follows therefore, that the natural remedy is the. removal of those articles and forms which have been the sources of all these evils. Then would a golden age of Truth, Peace, and Prosperity return once more to the world! And he is so filled with enthusiasm at the prospect, as to assume the air of a prophet, predicting that this visionary scene will one day be realized; when "the hearts and understandings of Pastors and People shall be opened as of one man, and prepared to receive those truths, which at present are confined to the breasts of a few †.' As the Puritans were ingenious in accommodating to their new discipline the prophecies and histories of the Scripture, even so would he also persuade us, that Christ and his Apostles were zealous for that same species of reformation which he hath laboured to recommend that the forms and fences of the Church which he hath attempted to overthrow, are "certain strong holds and partition walls, which it was the design of the Gospel to throw down and to level §;" (whence it follows, that we are Heathens or Jews:) Revealed to us in the systems of Socinus and Bishop Hoadley. § P. 171. † P. 335. ‡ P. 229, 300. that the kingdom of Christ is set up when establi ments are pulled down: that the true Christian liberz of which such glorious things are spoken in the GO pel, is a state of freedom from Creeds, Articles, an Subscriptions; which are bonds, yokes, and beggar elements, disagreeable to the spirit aud design of Christ anity: that it is tyrannical and Popish to lead men but pious and glorious to mislead them. The adversaries of Mr. Hooker made such wonderful discoveries in the Scripture, as they pretended, by the special illumination of the Holy Ghost. That the parallel is exact in this article, I would not be thought to insinuate: the writer of the Confessional seeming rather to refer the great discoveries of himself and his friends to a superior degree of reason and common sense, than to the aids and assistances of Divine Grace; and hath inserted it in the class of his principles, that Jesus Christ hath restored men to the pri vilege of working out their own Salvation by their own understandings and endeavours. But though the principle may be different, the high terms of distinction which are bred by it are nearly the same: whereby on the one side are found "the united powers of piety, truth, and common senset: on the other ignorance, indolences, profligate secularity, and the idolatry of lucre T. The one sort are honest and sensible Christians; knowing and thinking Christians**reasonable men and consistent Protestants serious and ju dicious men willing and capable of examining things without partiality and without hypocrisy. The other sort have had their character already; being bigots, partial and prejudiced retainers to Church + See Conf. p. 1. + Pref. p. 10. P. 25. power*, starving Inquisitors †, champions of public error the most palpable kind; from the addle-headed Dr. Webster, to the miserable and ridiculous sophist Dr. Waterlands, and so on to the firebrand Heylin, the factious Laud, and the fiery Bancroft! At the reading of these phrases, some will probably be so unjust, as to suppose the Author wholly made up of combustibles, and that he can breathe out no other language than that of persecution. But this happens only when his face is set against the friends of the Church. His words are as smooth as oil when he meets with the puritanical Abbot,,so excellent a person, so wise and so good a man||; or the worthy Bishop of Clogher-or the venerable Bishop of Win chester T. He is indeed so subject to be turned about by the influences of a party-spirit, that you will find him praising and vilifying the same individual person, as it happens to suit his purpose. Dr. Rogers, the chaplain of Archbishop Bancroft, who wrote upon the Articles in 1663, drops an expression, of which the Author endeavours to avail himself, and upon this occasion honours him with the appellation of "Honest old Rogers**" But in another place, he is metamor phosed on a sudden into " Thomas Rogers-who extols the Bishops, and reviles the Puritans with the most abject sycophantry" ††. The two remaining topics from which the Puritans argued, and upon which they chiefly depended for all their influence with the common people, were those of Popery and Persecution. And here the Author keeps equal pace with them. His favourite commonplace is the resemblance between the two Churches *P. 173. T P.303. + Pref. p. 17. ↑ P. 349. P. 183. P. 225. |