Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, or, Mr. Richard Baxters narrative of the most memorable passages of his…

2. They seem not to me to have taken the Course which should have settled these distracted Churches: Instead of disputing against all Episcopacy, they should have changed Diocesan Prelacy into such an Episcopacy as the Conscience of the King might have admitted, and as was agreeable to that which the Church had in the two or three first Ages. I confess, Mr. Vines wrote to me as their excuse in this and other Matters of the Assembly, that the Parliament tied them up from treating or disputing of any thing at all, but what they appointed or proposed to them: But I think plain dealing with such Leaders had been best, and to have told them this is our Judgment, and in the matters of God and his Church we will serve you according to our Judgment, or not at all. (But indeed if they were not of one Mind among themselves, this could not be expected).

2. They seem not to me to have taken the Course which should have setled these distracted Churches: Instead of disputing against all Episcopacy, they should have changed Diocesan Prelacy into such an Episcopacy as the Conscience of the King might have admitted, and as was agreeable to that which the Church had in the two or three first Ages. I confess, Mr. Vines wrote to me as their excuse in this and other Matters of the Assembly, that the Parliament tied them up from treating or disputing of any thing at all, but what they appointed or proposed to them: But I think plain dealing with such Leaders had been best, and to have told them this is our Iudgment, and in the matters of God and his Church we will serve you according to our Judgment, or not at all. (But indeed if they were not of one Mind among themselves, this could not be expected).

Archbishop Usher there took the rightest course, who offered the King his Reduction of Episcopacy to the form of Presbytery: And he told me himself, that before the King had refused it, but at the Isle of Wight he accepted it, and as he would not when others would, so others would not when he would: And when our present King Charles II. came in, we tendered it for Union to him, and then he would not: And thus the true moderate healing terms are always rejected by them that stand on the higher Ground, though accepted by them that are lower and cannot have what they will: From whence it is easy to perceive, whether Prosperity or Adversity, the Highest, or the Lowest, be ordinarily the greater Hinderer of the Churches Unity and Peace. I know that if the Divines and Parliament had agreed for a moderate Episcopacy with the King, some Presbyterians of Scotland would have been against it, and many Independents of England, and the Army would have made i the matter of odious Accusations and Clamours: But all this had been of no great regard to remove foreseeing judicious Men from those healing Counsels which must close our Wounds whenever they are closed.