lours, and taking up arms for Gentilism in life, or Heresy in judgment. And Augustin* tells us, "There cannot be a greater sin than Apostacy;" making, elsewhere, this sinner worse than the Infifidel. And the old Vulgate can give no worse term to by, where he finds it t; yea, tot, Rebels themselves.

What doth this brand to a Church, not Christian only, though you deny it, but famous? of whom is truly verified, after all your spleen, that, which the Spirit writes to the Angel of Ephesus; Laborasti et non Defecisti; Rev. ii. 3. Thou hast laboured, and not given in. Say, if you can, what Article of the Christian and Apostolic Faith have we renounced? What Heresy maintain we? Wherein have we run from the tents of Christ? What hold we, that may not stand with life in Christ and salvation? We challenge all men and devils, in this point, for our innocence. Distinguish, for stark shame, of so foul a word; or, which is better, eat it whole: and let not this blemish be left upon your soul and name, in the records of God and the world §; That you once said of a Church, too good for yours, "Drenched in Apostacy."

If we cry Peace, while you cry Apostacy; surely we flatter, while you rail. rail. Betwixt these two dangerous extremes, we know a wholesome mean | so to approve, that we foster not security: so to censure, that we neither revile, nor separate: and, in one word, to do that, which your Pastor could exhort ¶ the Separators from your Separation; for even this Schism hath Schisms: "If we should mislike, yet to rest in our differences of judgment, and notwithstanding peaceably to continue with the Church.

Had you taken this course, you should neither have needed to expect our pity, nor to complain of our cruelty. Surely, whether our love be cruel or not, your hatred is: whereof, take heed lest you hear from old Jacob, Cursed be their wrath, for it was fierce ; and their rage, for it was cruel; Gen. xlix. 7.

Sep.-"But, I will not discourage you in this affection, lest we find few in the same fault: the most, instead of pity and compassion, affording us nothing but fury and indignation.'

How can you expect compassion, when you breathe fire, and write gall? Never mention the fury of others' indignation, till the venomous and desperate writings of Barrow and Greenwood be either worn out with time; or, by the thunderbolts of your (not

Non est majus peccatum, quàm apostatare à Deo. Aug. in Psal. xviii. + Prov. vi. 12. Job xxxiv. 18.

Ezek. ii. 3.

§ Tertul. de Pat. Si hominibus placetur, Dominus offenditur: si, verò, illud enitimur et laboramus ut possimus Deo placere, et convitia et maledicta de bemus humana contemnere.

Confessed by M. John. loc. seq.

Enquir. of Th. White, p. 65.

**Cypr. de Simplic. Præl. Quid facit in corde Christiano luporum feritas et canum rabies? August. Confess. 1. ix. c. 9. Qualia solet eructare turgens indigesta discordia.

rare) censures be struck down to hell, whence their maliciousness I forbear to recapitulate how much rather would I help to bury, than to revive such unchristian exprobrations!

came.

SECT. 13.

The Separatists' Acknowledgments of the Graces of the Church of England.

Sep.-"The first action laid against us, is of unnaturalness and ingratitude towards our Mother the Church of England, for our causeless Separation from her. To which unjust accusation and trivial querimony, our most just defence hath been, and is, that, to our knowledge, we have done her no wrong. We do, freely and with all thankfulness, acknowledge every good thing she hath, and which ourselves have there received."

INGRATITUDE and unnaturalness to your Mother is objected, in that you fly from her; yea, now, woe is me! that you spit in her face, and mark her for a Harlot.

Would God the accusation were as far from being just, as from being trivial! Yet, perhaps, you intend it not in the lightness of this charge, but the commonness: you have caused me to smart for my charity, yet I forbear it not.

What is your defence? That you have done her no wrong, to your knowledge. Modestly spoken, but doubtfully: we know your wrong, but we know not your knowledge. It is well, if your wrong be not wilful: an ignorant wrong is both in more hope of amends, and of mercy.

But is not this caution added, rather for that you think no hard measure can possibly be a wrong to so vile a Church? I ask, and would be denied. No, you do, freely and with all thankfulness, acknowledge every good thing she hath. Whatsoever you do to us, I will not any more, in favour of you, wilfully wrong myself: you have bidden me now to take you as a compleat Separatist; and speak this, for yourself and yours.

Let the reader now judge, whether the wrong of your sect be wilful; and acknowledgment of our good, free and thankful.

Your first false-named Martyr shall give the first witness of the titles of our Church. "Who," saith he *, "that were not drunk and intoxicate with the Whore's Cup, could affirm this confuse Babel, these cages of unclean birds, these prisons of foul and hateful spirits, to be the Spouse of Christ ?" And, elsewhere t, he calls the people of our Church, "Goats and Swine." Is this any wrong, to your knowledge? The same author: "They have not,"

* H. Barr. Præf. to the Separation Defended.

+ Causes of Separ. Def. p. 12. Confer, with Doctor Andr.

saith he*, "in their Churches any one thing in their practice and proceedings, not one pin, nail, or hook according to the true pattern." Do you not now freely and thankfully acknowledge our Church's good things? What is more ordinary with him, and his brother in evil J. Greenwood, than to call † our worthy Ministers "Baal's Priests," "Cainites," "the marked servants of Antichrist," "Sellers of the Whore's wares," "Worshippers of the Beast?" Is this yet any wrong, to your knowledge?

Pastor Johnson sticks not to say, that "the Ministry and Worship of the Church of England were taken out of the Whore's Cup;" and plainly styles our Church (as which of you do not?) "Daughter of the great Babylon, that Mother of Whoredoms and Abominations of the Earth" yet more §; "That Hierarchy, Worship, Constitution, and Government, which they profess and practise, being directly Antichristian, do utterly destroy true Christianity; so as their people and Churches cannot, in that estate, be judged true Christians." Do you not now freely and thankfully acknowledge our good things? What can any devil of hell say worse against us, than this, that we are no Christians? Or, what good can there be in us, if no true Christianity? If we denied every Article of the Christian Creed; if we were Mahometans, as your good Pastor sticks not to compare us ; if the most damned Heretics under heaven; what could he say, but no Christians ?

Your Teacher and Pastor, which is a wonder, agree: for your Doctor Ainsworth makes this one head of his poisonous Counterpoison, That Christ is not the Head, Mediator, Prophet, Priest, King of the Church of England: you, their Disciple, are not yet promoted to this height of immodesty; yet what are your good things? Even to you, we are Apostates, Traitors, Rebels, Babylonish. This is well for a learner. Hereafter, if you will hear me, keep our good things to yourself, and report our evil.

Yea, that your uncharitableness may be, above all examples, monstrous, you do not only deny us any interest in the Church of Christ, but exclude us, what you may, from all hope and possibility of attaining the honour of Christendom: for, when a godly Minister protested to Master Barrow the truth of his Ministry, upon the approbation also of his people, he received this answer from him **: "Though you had such allowance, it could nothing avail, but rather overthrow your Ministry, they being as yet ungathered to Christ; and therefore neither may not in this estate chuse them a Minister, nor any exercise a Ministry unto them, without heinous sacrilege." O desperate judgment! we neither are Christians, nor can be! No Christianity, without Faith: no Faith, without the Ministry of the Word: no Word to us, without Sacri

*Pref. to Separ. Def.

+ Gyff, refuted touch. Donat. Observat, of M. H. Bar. p. 239.

Fr. Johns. Reas. 9, against M. Jac. p. 74.

§ Johnson against M. Jac. Excep. 3. Nota Benè.

Ibid.

Counterpois. pp. 127 and 131.

** Barr. Conference with M. Sperin, as Barr. himself hath written it. p. 9.

lege. What are we, that the very offer of bringing us to God should be criminal?

These are your acknowledgments of our good; who have learned of your Pastor to kiss and kill, all at once; to bless and curse, with one breath *. Your mercies are cruel.

SECT. 14.

The Unnaturalness of some principal Separatists.

BUT, who can wonder at your unnaturalness to the Church, that hears what measure you mete to your own?

Error is commonly joined with cruelty.

The outrageous demeanors of the Circumcelliones in Augustin's time, and more than barbarous tyranny of the Arians before him, are well known by all histories f, and not enough by any God forbid, that I should compare you to these.

Hear, rather, of Novatus, the father of a not-unlike sect: of whom Cyprian reports, that he would neither bestow bread on his father alive, nor burial on him dead, but suffered him both to starve and stink in the street; and, for his wife, lest he should be merciful to any, he spurned her with his heel, and slew his own child in her body.

What need I seek so far? I grieve to think and report, that your own Pastor hath parallelled this cruelty. His own brother, which is no less savage, though one of your sect is the public accuser and condemner of him in this crime to all the world §: who, after a pitiful relation of his eight years' quarrels with him, and four years' excommunication, in his Epistle before a large Volume, to this purpose, writes thus . "After all these, hath not our kind, careful, and old father come a long journey to make peace? Hath he not laboured with you, the Elders, and the Church, to bring you to peace? Hath he not used the help and counsel of the Reformed Churches herein? Yet will you not be reclaimed; but, adding that sin above all, have also monstrously excommunicated your father, the peace-seeker, &c." And, straight; "How oft desired he you, as if he had been the son and you the father, even with tears, that you would repent! In a word, how came he and I to your door, shewing you that it might be, upon his departing, you should see his face no more! &c. Yet you forced him, by your

*Fr. Johns. Seven Reas. against Jac. p. 64. G. Johns. Pref. to the Pastor. Ruffin. lib. ii. Eccles. Hist. c. 3.-Aug. Ep. et Possid. in Vitâ Aug.-Eusch. Hist. Ec. Damnis gravissimis et cædibus afficiebant, armati diversis telis.—So crat. 1. ii. c. 22, and 39.

Cyprian. 1. ii. Ep. 8. Novati pater in vico fame mortuus, nec postea ab illo sepultus. Sic Optat. I. i. Purpureus Donatista occidit sororis filios &c.

§ G. Johns. Discourse of Troubles and Excommunications at Amsterdam : printed 1603.

Ibid. p. 5.

ill dealing, still to leave upon you his curse, and all the curses written in God's book against unthankful and disobedient children." Thus far a brother concerning a brother, against father and brother. Other strangely-unkind usages of both, I would rather leave to the discovery of Master White *, and this miserable plaintiff †, who have written enough to make an enemy ashamed.

But whereupon was all this fearful broil in a pure Church? for nothing, but a little lace and whalebone in his wife's sleeve. The Trojan War could not be slandered with so weighty a beginning!

As for your Elder, Daniel Studly, whom your Pastor so much extolleth, if Master White's apostacy may be your shift against his relation; let him speak, who should have been a Fellow-Elder with him, banished for your truth, though ejected by your censure. "Mark," saith G. Johnson of this Studly §," how the Lord hath judged him, with unnaturalness to his own children; suffering them to lie at other men's feet, and hang on other men's hands; while he, his wife, and her daughter || fared daintily, and went prankingly in apparel, even in this place of banishment."

It is no joy to me to blazon these, or your other sins ¶. Would God they were fewer, and less in us all! Only, it was fit the world should know, as, how undutiful you are to your Common Parent; so, that father, brother, children bear part with your Mother in these your cruelties.

SECT. 15.

What the Separatists think themselves beholden to the Church of England for.

IF, then, such be the good things of our Church, what good can you acknowledge to have received from her? Nothing gives what it hath not **.

A Baptism, perhaps : " Alas, but no true Sacrament," you say: yea, the seal of gracelessness and mischief." As little are you beholden to the Church, for that; as the Church to you, for your good acceptation. Why are you not rebaptized? You, that cannot abide a False Church, why do you content yourselves with a False Sacrament? especially since our Church, being not yet gathered to Christ, is no Church, and therefore her baptism a nullity ++.

What else do you owe to the liberality of this Step-dame? You are close your Pastor is lavish for you both; who thus speaks ‡‡

Discovery of Brownism.

+ Vid. G. Johnson's book.

Eng. into Th. White's Discov. § Same Epist. p. 15. Filia Sponse.

|| They say, Mihi accusatio etiam vera contra fratrem displicet. Hieron. adversus Ruffin.

Bar. Exam. before the Archbishop and L. Anderson.-Brown, State of Christians, p. 39.—Qui non habe! quod det, quomodo det? vox Donat. Opt. lib. i. tt Bar. suprà. Fr. John. against M. Jacob. p. 41. Exc. 2.