The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated…

CHAP. II. What our Nonconformity is not?

M. Before I tell you wherein our Nonconformity doth consist, I must tell you wherein it doth not consist, to avoid the false reports that commonly go abroad against us. And therefore I must premise that I pretend not to tell you the opinion of every odd person that Conformeth not; no more than you justify all that Conform in all their opinions. I think few ⟨p. 11⟩doubt not but that some Atheists, Sadducees, Infidels, Hobbists, Soci•ians, if not Papists, outwardly Conform: Yet we charge not their errors on the Church; and so on the other side. But those that were called by the King, and one another, 1660 and 1661, to treat of Concord, and that Assembled at Sion College, and elsewhere about it, did openly make known their minds: And I think they meddled not against any of these things following, by any accusation of them as sinful. I. They never denied the Lawfulness of a form of Prayer or a Liturgy: Though some falsely so accuse them. II. They denied not the soundness of the matter of Prayer, contained in the form of the English Liturgy, in the main: They though it a good Book, and the making of it a great Reformation, and honoured the excellent men that made it; but they thought it not such as could not or should not in any thing be amended, or that all might say was without fault. III. They thought not the Imposition of it a reason sufficient to prove it unlawful for them to use it were there no more. IV. They offered to use it when amended, and if that could not be had, they told you in their Reply, their purpose rather to Communicate in the use of it than not at all, and to have used all the lawful part themselves if they might be suffered in their public places and Ministry on such terms. V. They never accused the use of Holy days, as days of Thanksgiving to God, for giving such Holy Apostles to the Church, and whose memory we honourable commemorate. VI. They never accused our Kneeling at the Lords Supper as unlawful, but only the casting Godly persons from Communion for not using it, when they take it to be sin. About the Kneeling the old Nonconformists were not of one mind; some thought that every objectum motivum of Adoration was forbidden that was a Creature: But others said that every Creature in the World may be such an object: Our Meat is objectum motivum when we pray for a Blessing on it.