An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…

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▪

4. Did Peter Heylin, or Archbishop Laud and his adherents, if Heylin belie him not, deal with the Papists on such terms as these? Did they say, They will justify their Invasion 88, and their Powder-Plot, and all their Treasonable Practises, and Bulls, and all their false Doctrines for which these were done, if we abate them any thing, or yield them the least; and therefore we will yield them nothing at all? Did Grotius, did your Bishop Forbes, doth your Mr. Herbert Thorndike go upon such terms with them, or not? Speak out, Do you think us or the Papists nearer to you? If they are nearer you than we are, then you are nearer them than us; Even than us who subscribe to all the faith of the Church of England, and differ, as you say, but in indifferent things: Than us whose Writings declare our judgments to the world. But if you be really nearer to us, than to the Papists, why may you not yield as far to us, for peace and concord, as the Episcopal Reconcilers would have done to them? Even Dr. R. Cox would have yielded to Church-Images, Vid. Epist. ad Cassand.

4. Did Peter Heylin, or Archbishop Laud and his adherents, if Heylin belie him not, deal with the Papists on such terms as these? Did they say, They will justifie their Invasion 88, and their Powder-Plot, and all their Treasonable Practises, and Bulls, and all their false Doctrines for which these were done, if we abate them any thing, or yield them the least; and therefore we will yield them nothing at all? Did Grotius, did your Bishop Forbes, doth your Mr. Herbert Thorndike go upon such terms with them, or not? Speak out, Do you think us or the Papists nearer to you? If they are nearer you than we are, then you are nearer them than us; Even than us who subscribe to all the faith of the Church of England, and differ, as you say, but in indifferent things: Than us whose Writings declare our judgments to the world. But if you be really nearer to us, than to the Papists, why may you not yield as far to us, for peace and concord, as the Episcopal Reconcilers would have done to them? Even Dr. R. Cox would have yielded to Church-Images, Vid. Epist. ad Cassand.