Part III. The Pastor and the Prelate Compared in their Judgment and Practice about Things Indiff...

PART III. THE PASTOR AND PRELATE COMPARED IN THEIR JUDGMENT AND PRACTICE ABOUT THINGS INDIFFERENT.

Many controversies and contentions about things indifferent—The pastor resteth not in the estate of a kirk that is indifferently good, but would be at further reformation; the prelate inclineth to defection.—The pastor thinketh not that indifferent which doth good or evil to the people’s souls; the prelate accounteth that indifferent which doth neither good nor evil to his worhily estate.—The pastor thinketh nothing indifferent that is warranted by the word; the prelate every thing that is not fundamental.—The pastor findeth the direction for ceremonies to be as perfect under the gospel as it was under the law; but the prelate addeth unto it as if it wee irnperfect—The pastor appointeth no new thing in the worship of God; but the prelate is a new lawgiver.—The pastor is so limited that he thinketh nothing to be in use indifferent; but the prelate accounteth that to be preciseness and puritanism.—The pastor feareth to give offence in things indifferent; but the prelate is bold and scandalous.—Objection, None but puritans are precise in matters indifferent.—Answer, Distinguishing between two sorts of precisians or puritans.

Besides the speculations of the schoolmen, divided amongst themselves in their subtleties about things indifferent, which work mightily upon men’s wits, but more weakly upon their affections than to make any great division, there hath been much ado in the kirk since the beginning about adiaphorisms and things indifferent.

First, In the infancy of the Christian kirk the heat and the contention was great betwixt the converted Jews and Gentiles, about the keeping of the ceremonies of the law, which before were commanded, afterwards were forbidden, but in that tract of time were in a manner indifferent, concerning which we find that the apostles never imposed them upon any people or person that judged them unlawful, that they thought that every man should be persuaded in his own mind, and should do nothing against or without the warrant of his conscience; that by alt means scandal should be avoided, as that which bringeth wo upon him by whom it cometh, and destruction upon him upon whom it cometh; and many such rules of conscience and Christian prudence, which serve to the kirk for direction in matters indifferent, to the coming of Christ.

Secondly, There was great business about ceremonies, and things called indifferent, in the infancy of the reformed kirks, in the time of the interim, when, with so great power and persecution, the Romish corruptions were forced again upon them, under the name of indifference. At that time, politics and worldly men, more careful of their own wealth than of God’s truth, gave themselves to serve the time, and received all that was obtruded under the said cloak of indifference. These were accounted friends to Augustus. Others of great gifts and esteem in the kirk wished from their beans that these ceremonies had never been urged, yet thought it a less evil to admit some thing in the external part of God’s worship, and thereby uniformity in religion with their enemies, than by stoical stiffness, as they called it, and an obstinacy to provoke authority, and thereby to bring upon themselves banishment, and upon kirk and commonwealth desolation. Such men, looking more to unity than to verity, and more to the event than to their own duty, were called prudent, wise and peace able men. A third sort, setting aside all sophistication, and clashing with the enemy, taught plainly by word and writ from Scripture, and not from the grounds of policy, that when any part of God’s worship is in danger, that then, for the honour of God, confirmation of the truth, and edification of the kirk, confession is necessary. “He that confeseeth not me;" “He that is ashamed of me before men,” &c. They taught that it was not lawful to symbolize with the enemy; that in the case of confession the smallest ceremonies are not indifferent; that at such times the kirk should stand fast to her liberty against such as would bring her into bondage; that yielding to such ceremonies was a great scandal, —it being a returning to the vomit, the patching of an old clout upon a new garment,—and making ,the weak to think that the reformation of the kirk was not a work of God, but of man; that the untimely change of ceremonies was a show of defection from the whole reformation; that when the enemy urgeth uniformity, his intention should be looked to, because he never rests, but proceeds from the corruption of outward worship to corrupt the doctrine, and to leave nothing sound. Men that taught after this manner were accounted, by the former, politicals, and by peaceable formalists, to be contentious spirits and troublers of the peace of the kirk.

Thirdly, Albeit the reformed kirks agree for the most part in the general about the nature and use of things indifferent, yet they go fhr asunder in the application of the general to their particular practices. The Lutheran kirks hold some things for indifferent which the kirk of England receiveth not; and England holdeth a multitude of ordinances about discipline and ceremonies for indifferent which we take to be unlawful and beside the word: every kirk judging, or at least practising, according to their own measure of reformation. All crept not forth of that Roman deluge equally accomplished. No marvel that some of them should smell of the wine of fornication wherewith they all for so many years were drunk. But obstinacy against the incoming light, and the refusing of, a further degree of reformation is fearful; what is it, then, to draw others back from the reformation, and to bind them up again into their old chain of darkness! These manifold contentions about things indifferent, and ceremonies, have proved so pernicious, by defacing the kingdom of Christ, setting up the tyranny of antichrist, dividing pastors, offending people, dismembering the kirk, and almost putting out the life of true piety, that we may truly say, Nothing hath proved less indifferent to the kirk than the contentions about things indifferent; and many have been more hot for them than for the heart of true religion, because they concern the face of the kirk, and, as Erasmus said in another case, “the crowns and bellies of kirkmen.” Whether our old pastor or new prelate hath here the greatest guiltiness will appear by this little that followeth:

1. The PASTOR ever feareth defection, and still urgeth reformation, till every thing be done in the house of God according to the will of God. He accounteth the constitution of a kirk that is but indifferently good, or midway betwixt idolatry and reformation, to be but like the lukewarmness of Laodicea The PRELATE pleaseth himself in this, that there be many kirks in worse case; he reeteth in his indifference and lukewarmness, and rather inclineth downward to further defection, than aimeth at any higher reformation; like the priests of Samaria, that were as earnest against the true worship at Jerusalem, as they were against Baal and his idolatry.

2. The PASTOR looketh not to the world, but to religion, in matters of religion, and therefore thinketh not that indifferent in religion, which bringeth spiritual good or evil upon the kirk and the souls of the people, albeit that in their worldly estate it doth them neither good nor evil. The PRELATE esteemeth many things indifferent in religion, because they bring neither good nor evil to his worldly estate, albeit they do good or evil to the kirk, and to the souls of the people, and looketh more to the World than to religion in matters of religion.

3. The PASTOR acknowledgeth three degrees of matters of faith; some to be of the foundation at first principles of the doctrine of faith; some to be near the foundation, as the conclusions clearly blowing upon the former; and the third to be of all other matters warranted by the word; and what is of this third rank, were it never so far from the foundation, and never so small in our eyes, not to be a matter indifferent, but to bind the conscience, and to be a matter of faith. The PRELATE profeseeth the first and second to be matters of faith, but when he cometh to the third, he esteemeth them to be no matters of faith, but indifferent; and wondereth that a wise man shonid be so precise and puritanical, as to stand upon matters that are not fundamental, but indifferent. For so he distinguisbeth, making every thing either fundathental or indifferent.

4. The PASTOR, comparing the worship of God under the gospel with the worship under the law, findeth that the commandment, Deuteronomy 12:32, “Every word that I command you, that ye shall observe to do; thou shalt not add unto it, neither shall ye diminish from it,” doth equally concern both: that the mind of man, if left to itself, would prove as vain and foolish under the gospel as under the law, and that Jesus Christ was faithful as a son in all the house of God, above Moses, who was but a servant; and therefore, albeit the ceremonial observations under the law were many, which was the burden of the kirk under the Old Testament, and ours be few, which is our benefit, yet the determination from God, in all the matters of his worship, he fladeth to be all particular; the direction of all the parts of our obedience to be as clear to us that now live under the gospel, as it was to them that lived under the law. The PRELATE, as if either it were lawful now to add to the word, or man’s mind were in a better frame, or the Son of God was not so faithful as Moses the servant, or as if direction in few oeremonies could not be as plain as in many, would bring into the kirk a new ceremonial law, made up of translations of divine worship, of imitations of false worship, and of inventions of will-worship, to succeed to the abolished ceremonies under the law, which he interpreteth to be the liberty and power of the Christian kirk in matters indifferent, above the kirk of the Old Testament, but is indeed the great door whereby himself and others, (strange office-bearers, whereby days, altars, vestures, cross, kneeling, and all that Romish rabble’s shadow,) have entered into the kirk of Christ, and which will never be shut again till himself be shut out, who, while he is within, holdeth it wide open.

5. The. PASTOR giveth no power to the kirk to point other things in the worship of God, than are appointed already by Christ, the only lawgiver of his kirk, but to set down canons and constitutions about things before appointed, and to dispose the circumstances of order and decency that are equally necessary in civil and religious actions, and thereibre resolveth, first, that nothing positive, or that floweth merely from institution, can be indifferent, or can be appointed by the kirk; secondly, that reason may be given from Christian prudence, why things are appointed by the kirk thus, and no other way; and thirdly, that the constitutions of the kirk about things indifferent, cannot be universal for all times and kirks, and therefore cannot be oncluded upon any moral or unalterable ground, which made the ancients to observe, that albeit Christ’s coat had no seam, yet the kirk’s vesture was of divers colours; and that unity is one thing, and uniformity another. The PRELATE, as a new lawgiver, will appoint new rites and mystical signs in the kirk, that depend upon mere inititution, and are not concluded upon any reason of Christian prudence for such a time and place, but upon grounds unchangeable, and therefore obliging at all times and places, as is evident by the reason that he bringeth for fesval days, kneeling in the sacrament, &c.

6. The PASTOR distinguisheth betwixt the nature and use of things indifferent, and confesseth with all the learned, that albeit many actions be in their nature indifferent, yet that all our actions in particular (at least such as proceed from deliberation, which is the exception of some of the schoolmen) are either good or evil, and not one of them all is indifferent, in matters most indifferent, which obligeth him to seek a warrant from God for that which he doeth, that he may do it in faith, to walk circumspectly, to take heed to his own words, gestures, &c., and to do all that he doth to the glory of God. The Paztsrz abhorreth this doctrine as the foundation of puritanism, the restraint of his licentiousness, and the ruin of his monarchy; and, therefore, to the contrary, sinneth with a bold conscience, and maketh the people to sin, some with erring, some with doubting, and some with a contradicting conscience.

7. The PASTOR giveth ear to the Holy Ghost, charging that we put no occasion to fall, nor stumbling-block before our brethren, (for that is to destroy bim for whom Christ died) commanding the strong to bear with the infirmities of the weak, and not to please themselves with the neglect of their brethren; and threatening wo to them by whom offences come—against which no authority of man can stand, because it can necher make scandal not to be, nor not to be sin, nor not to be his sin that giveth the scandal The PRELATE, stopping his ear against the commandment, charge, and threatening of the Holy Ghost, whether he intend to give scandal or not, by his manifold abuse of things indifferent, and especially by receiving into the kirk again things called indifferent, which, for their great abuse, were abolished, giveth offence to all sorts; as the boldness and increase of papists, the contempt and mocketh of the profane, the superstition and perplexity of the simple, and the grief and crosses of the godly do declare, against which he never had any excuse but the pretext of authority. The Prelate’s objectione. The Prelate will still object, that ye were more wise to quit the name of conscience in matters so indifferent, as the controverted articles and others of that sort be, than still to talk of conscience, conscience, and that ye are but a part of puritans, that are so precise and singular beyond your neighbours in matters indifferent The Pastor’s answer.—The Prelate, persuading to put away conscience, is not unlike the fox, who, through his evil guiding, having lost his tail, would have persuaded all his neighbours to part with theirs, as an uncomely and unprofitable burden, that all being like himself, his deformity might no more am pear. A good conscience would please God in all things, in substance and ceremony, but with due proportion. It first and most standeth at camels, and yet I next it straineth at gnats, when the light of God’s truth makes them discernible. When he calleth us presicians, he is quite mistaken; for he that is so self-precise that he will rather part with the purity of God’s worship, and a good piece of the truth too, than want a compliment of his lordly dignity, or piece of his worldly commodity, or dish of his delicacy; and not he that is so precise in the matters of God’s worship, (wherein he hath no power to be liberal), that he will forsake all to follow Christ: be and no ocher is the right precisian. He calleth our pastors and our professors puritans, and consequently heretics; but, blessed be God, cannot name their heresy. They are still in profession that which he was not long since, when he was farther from heresy than he is now. This calumny constraineth us to distinguish betwixt two sorts of puritazs; the one is the old heretical puritan, who, from the author of his sect, was called Novatian, and from his heresy, Catharist or Puritan—such a one our pastor is not, for, 1st, The puritan denied the baptism of infants. The pastor waiteth on baptism, as a special part of his calling, which the prelate doth not.

2d, The puritans had their own prelates, and liked of prelacy. The pastor in this is no puritan, but the prelate the puritan.

3d, The puritan condemned second marriage as unlawful. The pastor maintaineth the honour of marriage against the puritan, the papist, and the prelate’s manifold matrimonial transgressions.

4th, The puritan denied reconciliation, in some cases, to penitents. The pastor would be glad to seethe prelate’s repentance, notwithstanding his great defections, and that in the time of peace, without the least essay of persecution; and, thereibre, our pastor is not a puritan. The other sort is the new nicknamed puritan in our times, wherein the papist calleth it puritanism to oppose the Roman hierarchy; the Arminian accounteth it puritanism to defend God’s free grace against man’s free will; the formalist thinketh it puritanism to stand out against conformity; the civilian, not to serve the time, and the profane thinketh it essential to the puritan to walk precisely, and not to be profane,—and so essential is it, indeed, that if all were profane there would be no puritan, for the profane and the puritan are opposed. He then is the new puritan that standeth for Christ against antichrist, that defendeth God’s free grace against man’s free will, that would have every thing done in the house of God according to the will of God, (which is his greatest heresy,) that seeketh after the power of religion in his heart (and this is his intolerable singularity,) and that stands at the staff’s end against the sins of the time (and this is his pride); and thus, after this way that the world calleth heresy, serveth he the God of his fathers, who have all been puritans of this stamp since the beginning. Abel, who was hated for his holiness; Enoch, that walked with God; Noah, that was a perfect man in his generation; Heber, that made Peleg’s name a testimony that he was free of the building of Babel; Moses, that stood upon an hoof;{1} Mordecai, that would not bow his knee; Daniel, that would hot hold his window shut; Eleazar, that would not eat one morsel; Paul, that would not dispense with one hour, nor with an appearance of evil; Marcus Arethusas, that would not redeem his life with the giving of an halfpenny to idolatry; Caius Sulpithis, who was ever esteemed by the pagans a good man, but that he was a Christian, &c., were they living at this time they would not escape this censure, and would be accounted good men if they were not puritans. The widow of Sarepta who entertained Elijah,—the Shunammite, the hostess of Elisha,— Hannah, who, for multiplying prayers and pouring out her heart before God, was rashly censurdd to be a daughter of Belial,—Anna, the widow that served God with fasting and prayer night and day, and spake of Christ,—the godly women that waited on Christ, ministered unto him of their substance, and told the apostles of -his resurrection,—Lydia, that constrained the apostles to abide with her,—Lois and Eunice, that had a care that their children should have grace,—the elect lady, the famous Hildgardis, who lived in the twelfth century,—Mechthilcles, Elisabeth the German, and many more who censured the corruptions of the kirk, and especially of the prelates of those times, and prophesied of the Reformation, which they longed to see, were they now living, would be censured for holy sisters and doting puritans, and that the rock and spindle had been fitter for them. Can any man or woman be vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked, 2 Peter 2:1-22; be stirred up in spirit against idolatry, Acts 17:1-34; be hot in religion, Revelation 3:1-22; fervent in spirit, Romans 12:1-21; walk precisely, Ephesians 5:1-33; fear an oath, make the Sabbath his delight, Isaiah 58:1-14; love the brotherhood, 1 Peter 2:1-25; take the kingdom of God by violence, Matthew 11:1-30; and keep a good conscience in all things, Acts 24:1-27, and not be made the drunkard’s song, the by-word of the people, and mocked for a puritan? It was the saying of Petrarch, "Simplicity carrieth the name of foolishness, malice the name of wisdom, and good men are so mocked that almost none can be found to be mocked.”