The defence of the nonconformists plea for peace, or, An account of the matter…

Ans. Is that old Act, the old Book? Is subscribing to that Act, subscribing to the old Book? Why obtrude you on us such things unproved? 2. Do you not know that the New Act not only confirmeth the Old, but also altereth the sense of it, and tells you that henceforth it shall be understood, as meaning this New Book? And as Bishop Taylor truly tells you, Laws are not the Laws of the dead, but of the living, who therefore give them what sense they please. And yet shall so sober a man tell us, That subscribing the Old Act, is subscribing the Old Book? I begin to be weary answering such reasonings as these.

§ 4. Your fifth and sixth Reasons are from the general sense and opinion of all Divines, as for you: And you say, Never any to this day did think that the 36th Canon and Subscription included the Act.

Ans. You now practice what you plead for. ⟨p. 88⟩Can you tell what every Subscriber to this day thought? He is yet living that at the Savoy undertook to prove it an Act of Mercy to them to put all from the Sacrament that did not receive it kneeling. And you know that All the Bishops in the Lords House had their part in making that Act of Uniformity, with all its penalties. And as certainly they did consent to the making and imposing of it; so what should make you sure that they never meant (no not one of them) that any others should be bound to the same, when they put it into the Book, and put in the words [All things contained] and when it is so natural to such men to desire that all men approve of what they do? I should think it ten to one, that they that think it their duty to do such a thing, as the silencing of two thousand Ministers on those terms (or five thousand if they had not conformed,) will be very much concerned to have their act approved: And that they that will not endure us to speak in the praying Desk, or at either Sacrament to God in any one word but what they write down for us to say, are likely to desire that we may be also bound to approve of their Sanctions of this Law. But I am sure you speak that which you know not to be true.