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

Name: An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…
Author: Richard Baxter

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.

:673p. 190–191

Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are lost, and that the cure of gross ignorance, hardheartedness, unbelief, and sensuality, are of necessity to salvation, ⟨p. 191⟩or not. If not, deal openly, and silence both your selves and us. If yea, then either you know how these maladies abound in the people, and how much labour the cure doth usually cost, or not. If not, then take not on you to be Pastors or English men, or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments, but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to. But if you do know this, then I need to say no more to you, but to desire you to suppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them; but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them. The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors. The worldling, drunkard, and fornicator, is most miserable, that would have no reproof or help. Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cries, and that you hear them calling to you for help: O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance, unbelief, insensibility, worldliness, and sensuality, that are utter strangers to that life of faith, and love, and holiness, without which none can please or see God; and must quickly be converted and made new creatures, or they are lost for ever. Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints, you heard them expostulating with you for their souls: O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation! Alas, our ignorance, and deadness, and worldly-mindedness, and fleshly affections, are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used: what shall we do then, if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed! Alas! say not that the reading of the Scriptures, and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn: We confess that it should do so, if our disease were so light as to need no more; the thing it self is good, and every word of God is precious; but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep, and hardened in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone:

Either you believe that where the Gospel is hid, it is hid to them that are lost, and that the cure of gross ignorance, hardheartedness, unbelief, and sensuality, are of necessity to salvation, ⟨p. 191⟩or not. If not, deal openly, and silence both your selves and us. If yea, then either you know how these maladies abound in the people, and how much labour the cure doth usually cost, or not. If not, then take not on you to be Pastors or English men, or competent Judges of any of the peoples cases and concernments, but confess that these are matters that you are strangers to. But if you do know this, then I need to say no more to you, but to desire you to fuppose that soul-necessities are not the less because men complain not of them; but greatest where there is the greatest insensibility and contentedness with them. The Turks and Heathens cry not out for the help of Christian Pastors. The worldling, drunkard, and fornicator, is most miserable, that would have no reproof or help. Suppose therefore that their necessities are instead of cryes, and that you hear them calling to you for help: O pity the many hundred thousand souls that are drowned in ignorance, unbelief, insensibility, worldliness, and sensuality, that are utter strangers to that life of faith, and love, and holiness, without which none can please or see God; and must quickly be converted and made new creatures, or they are lost for ever. Or suppose that their necessities being their complaints, you heard them expostulating with you for their souls: O take not from us that means which God by Nature and by his Institution hath made so needful to our salvation! Alas, our ignorance, and deadness, and worldly-mindedness, and fleshly affections, are too hardly cured by all the best means and diligence that can be used: what shall we do then, if you deprive us of that which we have enjoyed! Alas! say not that the reading of the Scriptures, and a few lifeless notes of a Sermon will serve turn: We confess that it should do so, if our disease were so light as to need no more; the thing it self is good, and every word of God is precious; but it is the nature of our disease to be read asleep, and hardned in our sins by the customary hearing of a few good words in a sleepy saying tone:

:674p. 191–192

It is the skilful choice of pertinent Truths, convincingly and clearly uttered, and closely applied with life and seriousness, that our case requireth: We confess, that if a School-boy, or a raw ignorant youth from the University, did but read a chapter, or say over a less pertinent cento of good words, we should be moved and converted by it. But our disease is deadness, darkness and disaffection to holiness, to God and Heaven; and liveliness, deceit, and love to the ⟨p. 192⟩world and fleshly things; and without a miracle these will not be cured, nor our souls be saved, without lively, clear, and affectionate preaching, agreeable to the sacred Truth delivered; nor without the help of prudent conduct, and the constant watchfulness of tender love, and the example of a holy heavenly life. O therefore pity our miserable souls, that must be saved now by the Gospel of salvation, or be damned to everlasting fire. You tell us so your selves; and if you would have us believe you; show us that you believe your selves. You speak for good works, and what better works than the saving of mens souls! And how shall we hear without a Preacher? O give us such for number and quality, as will imitate Paul, Act. 20. that covet no mans silver and gold, but will teach us publicly and from house to house, day and night with tears; that will be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all long suffering and doctrine, in meekness instructing even opposers of the faith, much more the tender children of him who is the father of mercies. Alas! we have enemies enow, the Devil, and the World, and the Flesh, are enemies of our faith, and holiness, and salvation; and we are the greatest enemies to our selves: be not you also our enemies and destroyers, who call your selves our Pastors and our Fathers. Think what it is for such a multitude of souls to be shut out of heaven for ignorance, unbelief, impenitency and ungodliness, and to lye in hell for ever; and how little comfort it will be to us in our torments, to be told that the Order and Decency of Church-affairs did require it; or that it was necessary to preserve the interest of the Diocesans. O make not such merchandise of our souls. Christ purchased them with his blood: Do not you sell them for thirty pieces of silver. He scourged the buyers and sellers out of his Temple;

:675p. 192–193

do not you drive out the faithful Preachers. He overthrew the tables of the money-changers; do not you overthrow the doctrine, discipline, or Table of the Lord. He came from Heaven into flesh to seek and save those that were lost; do not you contrive and labour to famish and destroy them. He gave them his flesh and blood for food; do not you devour their flesh and blood. He preached in Ships, and Mountains, and Wildernesses, and Houses, to many, and to few; to rich and poor, to ignorant women, and the meanest and the worst among the people; do not you think then that to read to us those words which we can every day read at home, ⟨p. 193⟩or to make a formal speech to us once a week, is enough to cure such souls as ours. There is joy among the Angels of God in heaven over one sinner that repenteth! O do not you rejoice to hinder the preaching of Repentance unto thousands! Christ set up a Ministry, to preach the Gospel to every creature under heaven, and to teach them whatever he hath commanded, even to the end of the world! Do not you contradict him, and say, Preach not! Kick not against the pricks! Woe to him that striveth with his Maker! Who hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered? The saving of Souls is too good a work for any that is good to strive against! And Christs Ministers are workers together with him, and not against him. If you take away from our mouths the bread of life, it will be cold comfort, and a poor relief to us in our misery in hell, to tell us that they were pestilent fellows, and ringleaders of a sect, that would have saved us; that is, that they were not conformable to your Subscription, Oath and Ceremonies. Suppose them to be in the wrong, and you in the right! Why must our Souls be left to damnation, because our Teachers think that a sin, which you think you your selves have made a duty? Shall not the soul that sinneth dye? If they have eaten sour grapes, why must our teeth be set on edge? If he be mistaken that thinks that it is aggravated Lying and Perjury which he refuseth, which you say is but a thing indifferent, yet Christ is not to be blamed for that: And why shall the fire of his kindling be quenched, his gifts be suspended, his Gospel hindered, his redeemed ones forsaken, because some of his Ministers were, as you thought, too fearful of offending him?

:676p. 193

O hear these expostulations of miserable Souls, before you are speechless under the Expostulations of the tender Saviour of Souls?

:677p. 193–194

5. You have other punishments enough, besides forbidding them to preach Christs Gospel, whereby to be revenged on Nonconformity. Is their fearing an Oath a greater sin than profane swearing? If not, let us pay at the same rates for not swearing, and for not disobliging all others from a Vow, as swearers do by the Law for every Oath. And we will not desire you to execute the Laws as seldom on us, as they are executed on them; which is not, I think, for one Oath of Twenty thousand? Or are we worse than drunkards, or fornicators? If not, punish us no worse than they are punished? Are we worse than petty thieves? If not, let ⟨p. 194⟩us be put in the stocks and whipped, as Paul and Silas were▪ so we may but preach Christs Gospel? Or if we are as bad as felons, allow us our Clergy, and burn us in the hand, use us as Prynne, Bastwick and Burton were used on the Pillory, so you will not hinder us from preaching to sinners, the word of salvation. Or put us in the House of Correction, and use us as the Israelites were used in Egypt, rather than forbid us to labour to save the peoples Souls? Can your profound understandings find no way to punish a man that feareth Lying, Perjury, and false Worship (suppose mistakingly), which will consist with such intermission and liberty as is necessary to the doing of our Masters work? The servants of the King and Parliament are privileged from arrests and molestation, which would hinder them from their necessary duty: We crave no impunity for our sins above the basest subjects in the Land! We will be thankful to be under no severer usage, than Colliers, and Bargemen, and Seamen, and begging Rogues and Vagabonds have; yea constrain us to beg our bread in rags from door to door, rather than restrain us from doing the work to which in our Ordination we are devoted, and by the belief of a life to come, obliged. Have all other faults more suitable punishments, save only those of the Ministers of Christ? You can punish your child, without forbidding him to love you or obey you: you can punish a School-boy otherwise than by forbidding him to learn; and a Master, otherwise than by forbidding him to teach; and your Servant, otherwise than by forbidding him to work; and Eighteen hundred scrupulous Physicians, otherwise than by forbidding them to help the sick. Deal not worse with Christ and Souls.

5. You have other punishments enough, besides forbidding them to preach Christs Gospel, whereby to be revenged on Nonconformity. Is their fearing an Oath a greater sin than prophane swearing? If not, let us pay at the same rates for not swearing, and for not disobliging all others from a Vow, as swearers do by the Law for every Oath. And we will not desire you to execute the Laws as seldom on us, as they are executed on them; which is not, I think, for one Oath of Twenty thousand? Or are we worse than drunkards, or fornicators? If not, punish us no worse than they are punished? Are we worse than petty thieves? If not, let

:678p. 194

But if still you say, that there is no other way to save mens souls from our false doctrine, or false worship, or any other danger which our Ministry will bring upon them; We still answer you, Make Canons and Laws against false Doctrine, or against Seditious, Rebellious, Schismatical, or other intolerable Preaching, or against Idolatrous, or superstitious Worship, or against either Tyranny or omission of Church-discipline, or against a worldly, fleshly, idle, or otherwise vicious life; and let us be liable to the penalty of those Laws, as others are. But the next shall further answer this.

But if still you say, that there is no other way to save mens souls from our false doctrine, or false worship, or any other danger which our Ministry will bring upon them; We still answer you, Make Canons and Laws against false Doctrine, or against Seditious, Rebellious, Schismatical, or other intollerable Preaching, or against Idolatrous, or superstitious Worship, or against either Tyranny or omission of Church-discipline, or against a worldly, fleshly, idle, or otherwise vicious life; and let us be lyable to the penalty of those Laws, as others are. But the next shall further answer this.

:679p. 194–195

6. It is a most certain thing that your method will not attain the Churches Edification, Unity or Concord, but is the directest way to subvert all these: No nor your own establishment, or honour ⟨p. 195⟩in the world, if that be it which you mean still, by the Interest of the Church. And why should any men use a means that will subvert, and will never attain his ends? Did you know this, you would never choose or use it. But I perceive you do not, and for ought I see you will not know it. I shall give you those reasons that should make you know it, if you have but the understanding of ordinary men; supposing what is distinctly said in the Propositions.

6. It is a most certain thing that your method will not attain the Churches Edification, Unity or Concord, but is the directest way to subvert all these: No nor your own establishment, or honour ⟨p. 195⟩in the world, if that be it which you mean still, by the Interest of the Church. And why should any men use a means that will subvert, and will never attain his ends? Did you know this, you would never chuse or use it. But I perceive you do not, and for ought I see you will not know it. I shall give you those reasons that should make you know it, if you have but the understanding of ordinary men; supposing what is distinctly said in the Propositions.

:680p. 195

Every wise man in the use of means, will both foresee the probable effect, and fore resolve how far to carry them on. Either you think that your silencing, and other hard usages of the Ministers, shall convince and change them, or disable and destroy them. The former I have showed you is a most vain surmise: For, 1. Kindness is more forcible to change the judgment; than violence and hard usage. This useth oftener to set men in opposition to what a hurtful adversary reasoneth for. It is seldom that an enemies words convert. Opposition rather kindleth an opposing zeal.

Every wise man in the use of means, will both foresee the probable effect, and fore resolve how far to carry them on. Either you think that your silencing, and other hard usages of the Ministers, shall convince and change them, or disable and destroy them. The former I have shewed you is a most vain surmise: For, 1. Kindness is more forcible to change the judgment; than violence and hard usage. This useth oftener to set men in opposition to what a hurtful adversary reasoneth for. It is seldom that an enemies words convert. Opposition rather kindleth an opposing zeal.

:681p. 195

2. You may partly conjecture by your selves. If you thought it were Lying, Perjury and false Worship which was imposed on you, would you change your judgment, by threatenings or by punishments? There is nothing in force to illuminate the mind. If you say, It will tame their obstinacy, and make them hearken more to reason, I answer as before: It most powerfully exciteth those prejudices and passions, which hinder reason, though it may promote hypocrisy in some.

2. You may partly conjecture by your selves. If you thought it were Lying, Perjury and false Worship which was imposed on you, would you change your judgment, by threatnings or by punishments? There is nothing in force to illuminate the mind. If you say, It will tame their obstinacy, and make them hearken more to reason, I answer as before: It most powerfully exciteth those prejudices and passions, which hinder reason, though it may promote hypocrisie in some.

:682p. 195

3. And experience telleth you and all the world, that you are mistaken: We read the same books out of a prison, as in it (if there we may have them): And what abundance of Ministers▪ within these ten years, have come out of long imprisonment in the same mind as they went in (yea much confirmed). But who can you name that came out convinced that his way was wrong? How long have they suffered, not only poverty and reproach, but that silencing which they account a greater evil? And yet how few are changed by all this (For the Novel-Politicians talk of a hundred men that continue to displease you, is but a means to tell the world, how exactly your Actions and Historical Narratives agree, and what posterity must expect from the later, as well as we from the former).

:683p. 195–196

4. But if 9 or 10 years experience be too little for you, look back to the experience of all the world. Your Bishop Taylor, and ⟨p. 196⟩many of your own, can tell you, how opposition inflameth the opposed party into a greater zeal.

:684p. 196

5. In a word, I know not only my self, but so many of the Nonconformable Ministers of England, that I utterly despair that even silencing or imprisonment should change their judgments.

:685p. 196

2. The next question then is, Whether it will make them hypocrites, and force them to go against their judgments? And this I am as confident it will never do with the most: 1. Because I know so many of them to be truer to God and to their Consciences. 2. Because experience also long evinced this. 3. And so hath the experience of former ages, in such as they: some have still shrunk in a time of suffering: But enow have suffered to fill up such Volumes as Mr. Fox's, and the Century-Writers, and many others. 4. And here also I ask, Would you do so your selves? Would you do that which you think to be Lying, Perjury, renouncing Reformation, &c. against your consciences, rather than suffer? or would you not? If yea, you tell the world what your Religion is? If not, judge by your own course, both now and formerly, whether they or you be liker to choose sin before suffering. I know not you so well as them; and therefore know not what you would do, so well as I, and you, and all the world may know what they will do. 5. And if they were such Villains, as to sell their Souls for the safety of their flesh, why should not the same principle now prevail with them, to stretch their conscience by some distinction, and take Livings and Honour among you with Conformity, instead of a hunted and afflicted state of life? If Satan shall say, Skin for skin, and all that he hath will a man give for his life: Let me touch his body, and I will make him curse thee to thy face; whereas now he serveth not God for nought. Yet God would support and vindicate the integrity of Job; and though he may fall into some impatience, he would not yet forsake his Master, nor leave his integrity to the death.

2. The next question then is, Whether it will make them hypocrites, and force them to go against their judgments? And this I am as confident it will never do with the most: 1. Because I know so many of them to be truer to God and to their Consciences. 2. Because experience also long evinced this. 3. And so hath the experience of former ages, in such as they: some have still shrunk in a time of suffering: But enow have suffered to fill up such Volumes as Mr. Fox's, and the Century-Writers, and many others. 4. And here also I ask, Would you do so your selves? Would you do that which you think to be Lying, Perjury, renouncing Reformation, &c. against your consciences, rather than suffer? or would you not? If yea, you tell the world what your Religion is? If not, judge by your own course, both now and formerly, whether they or you be liker to chuse sin before suffering. I know not you so well as them; and therefore know not what you would do, so well as I, and you, and all the world may know what they will do. 5. And if they were such Villains, as to sell their Souls for the safety of their flesh, why should not the same principle now prevail with them, to stretch their conscience by some distinction, and take Livings and Honour among you with Conformity, instead of a hunted and afflicted state of life? If Satan shall say, Skin for skin, and all that he hath will a man give for his life: Let me touch his body, and I will make him curse thee to thy face; whereas now he serveth not God for nought. Yet God would support and vindicate the integrity of Job; and though he may fall into some impatiency, he would not yet forsake his Master, nor leave his integrity to the death.

:686p. 196

3. The last question therefore is, Whether their destruction will do your work, or not, seeing neither their change of judgment, nor for saking their consciences, is to be expected by your means?

:687p. 196–197

I find that the Novel-Politician is confident of it, that sharp execution is the way, and would easily do it: And so are most that write against us, as well as Bishop Gunnings Chaplain. But, 1. He speaketh but like one of Rehoboams puny Councillors; contrary to all the experience of the world. I hope God will give his Majesty wisdom to avoid such counsels, that would have him make his little ⟨p. 197⟩finger heavier than Solomons loins. I confess if the work be to extirpate Christianity it self, they that will and can follow it to the height of the example of Japan, might imagine a possibility of the like success. But it cannot be done so in England, if there were any that would do it: Because the body of the Nation is of the same Religion, as the Japonions were against. Or if the work were to suppress the Protestant Religion, the Inquisition in Spain would be a probable means, where there are but very few to be tormented, and the thing may be done secretly in vaults, out of the peoples sight and noise. But for Protestants to destroy each other, yea such and so many as must be so destroyed, and this for the advancement of the Protestant interest, is a course that will not do that work for which it is pretended.

I find that the Novel-Politician is confident of it, that sharp execution is the way, and would easily do it: And so are most that write against us, as well as Bishop Gunnings Chaplain. But, 1. He speaketh but like one of Rehoboams puny Councellors; contrary to all the experience of the world. I hope God will give his Majesty wisdom to avoid such counsels, that would have him make his little ⟨p. 197⟩finger heavier than Solomons loyns. I confess if the work be to extirpate Christianity it self, they that will and can follow it to the height of the example of Japon, might imagine a possibility of the like success. But it cannot be done so in England, if there were any that would do it: Because the body of the Nation is of the same Religion, as the Japonions were against. Or if the work were to suppress the Protestant Religion, the Inquisition in Spain would be a probable means, where there are but very few to be tormented, and the thing may be done secretly in vaults, out of the peoples sight and noise. But for Protestants to destroy each other, yea such and so many as must be so destroyed, and this for the advancement of the Protestant interest, is a course that will not do that work for which it is pretended.

:688p. 197–199

For, 1. Blood was never yet of light digestion: Nebuchadnezzars furnace devoured the Executioners; and so did Daniel's Lyons too. God hath ever showed himself a God of Love, and an enemy to the enemies of it. Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but God hath many ways to deliver them out of all. As I said already, who would have thought that enow should have escaped Queen Mary's Bonfires to have planted a Protestant Church so soon? Or so many escaped the French Massacre, as so soon to have made that fact repented of, and ring to the Odium of the Actors through the world; Yea that so many should survive the Two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland, as to see so terrible a revenge: Yea that the far greater Murders of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses should be followed with a resurrection of the witnesses of the truth, with double advantage; and leave the everlasting odium of bloody cruelties upon Rome; and that the German-sufferings should so soon be revenged by the Swedes? Or that the desolations, which for the Interim were made among the German Ministers, should so soon be repaired? Or that the Prelacy which Constantius, and other Arian Emperors set up, should so soon be changed, and the Arian cruelties recorded to their perpetual shame? And that the Vandals in Africa should but murder Ministers enow to kill themselves with the stroke: Or that the true Persecutions of the Heathen Emperors should but increase the Church of Christ, and the blood of Martyrs should be its seed? Or that fewer Nonconformist Ministers than there be Counties in England in 1640, should multiply into that number as they did within two or three years? Or that the Diocesan-Ministers, supperest ⟨p. 199⟩by Cromwell, should revive to the strength that they were in, within three years after his death? Men may contrive, but God will dispose: Caiaphas may think that one should dye for the people, rather than all the Nation perish; and the fact may prove their speedy and most dreadful ruin.

For, 1. Blood was never yet of light digestion: Nebuchadnezzars furnace devoured the Executioners; and so did Daniel's Lyons too. God hath ever shewed himself a God of Love, and an enemy to the enemies of it. Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but God hath many ways to deliver them out of all. As I said already, who would have thought that enow should have escaped Queen Maries Bonefires to have planted a Protestant Church so soon? Or so many escaped the French Massacre, as so soon to have made that fact repented of, and ring to the Odium of the Actors through the world; Yea that so many should survive the Two hundred thousand murdered in Ireland, as to see so terrible a revenge: Yea that the far greater Murders of the poor Waldenses and Albigenses should be followed with a resurrection of the witnesses of the truth, with double advantage; and leave the everlasting odium of bloody cruelties upon Rome; and that the German-sufferings should so soon be revenged by the Swedes? Or that the desolations, which for the Interim were made among the German Ministers, should so soon be repaired? Or that the Prelacy which Constantius, and other Arrian Emperors set up, should so soon be changed, and the Arrian cruelties recorded to their perpetual shame? And that the Vandals in Africa should but murder Ministers enow to kill themselves with the stroke: Or that the true Persecutions of the Heathen Emperors should but increase the Church of Christ, and the blood of Martyrs should be its seed? Or that fewer Nonconformist Ministers than there be Counties in England in 1640, should multiply into that number as they did within two or three years? Or that the Diocesan-Ministers, supprest

Reformers309

Puritans1,782

Westminster Assembly24

Evangelicals36