A26865:524
An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…
An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II. an answer to the accusations urged as reasons for the silencing of about 2000 by Bishop Morley ..., III. reasons proving it the duty and interest of the bishops and conformists to endeavour earnestly their restoration : with a postscript upon oral debates with Mr. H. Dodwell, against his reasons for their silence ... : written in 1668 and 1669, for the most of it, and now published as an addition to the defence against Dr. Stillingfleet, and as an account to the silencers of the reasons of our practice / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for T. Parkhurst and D. Newman, 1681
AN APOLOGY FOR THE SILENCED MINISTERS, Especially for their not cea… › Part › Objection 25
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. But it is a gross mistake to think that this course will keep up your honour to posterity, or hinder the estimation of them who desire you to amend. For when you and we are in the dust, the world will not be afraid of you, nor silence truth lest they incur the danger of your frowns; but will freely tread upon your Hic jacet, and cast up your bones to make room for others, and talk of you and your acts as freely, as King Henry the Eighth, Queen Mary, Bishop Bonner, and Gardiner are now talked of. And there will such men survive us, as will take it for a greater fault and shame to have sinned impenitently than to have repented; and to have refused amendment, when peace and common interest required it, and so many arguments were used for it; yea, and to have so afflicted their brethren that desired and sought it of them, than to have been guilty of the mutability and weakness of amending, or of being more for love and unity, and peace.
2. But it is a gross mistake to think that this course will keep up your honour to posterity, or hinder the estimation of them who desire you to amend. For when you and we are in the dust, the world will not be afraid of you, nor silence truth lest they incur the danger of your frowns; but will freely tread upon your Hic jacet, and cast up your bones to make room for others, and talk of you and your acts as freely, as King Henry the Eighth, Queen Mary, Bishop Bonner, and Gardiner are now talkt of. And there will such men survive us, as will take it for a greater fault and shame to have sinned impenitently than to have repented; and to have refused amendment, when peace and common interest required it, and so many arguments were used for it; yea, and to have so afflicted their brethren that desired and sought it of them, than to have been guilty of the mutability and weakness of amending, or of being more for love and unity, and peace.
3. But if that be the matter, men of half your pretended wisdom, might easily know how to heal the Church, and yet to salve your honour too, yea and to deny the feared honour of the Dissenters, so far as such as you can hinder it. And if you will not interpret it as an approving of your act, I will tell you how: Cannot you abate the Subscriptions, Oaths, and other such Impositions, and tell the world, that you do it not as convinced by the Nonconformists arguments, nor as supposing that the things have any evil in them, but only out of your eminent charity, as bearing with the weak, and your love of the Churches peace and concord, more than the dissenters love them? Nay you may rail at the Nonconformists in your very Concessions, and call them as bad as you do in your writings, so you will but yield to healing terms; and do it not as a Reformation, but as a peaceable forbearance of these Schismatical, peevish, disobedient Reformers, that they may have no more pretence for Schism