rigorous, are 1. Because they are by law: if we tell you that so is the Spanish Inquisition, you'll say, we compare our lawgivers to the Spaniards: if we say that your new mentioned martyrs were burnt by law in England, you'll say that we compare them to Papists. But all these are laws: and so are those in reformed countries which are against bishops and ceremonies do you therefore think them not too rigorous? 2. Your other reason is that the rigour is no more than is necessary to make the imposition effectual. You never spake words more agreeable to your hearts, as far as by your practices we can judge of them. Either you mean effectual to change men's judgments, or effectual to make them go against their judgments, or effectual to rid them out of the land or world. The first you know they are unfit for; if you think otherwise, would you that your judgments should have such kind of helps to have set them right? The second way they will be effectual with none but wicked men and hypocrites, who dare sin against their consciences for fear of men : and is it worth so much ado to bring the children of the devil into your church? The third way of efficacy, is but to kill or banish all the children of God that are not of your opinion for it is they that dare not sin against conscience whatever they suffer: and this is but such an efficacy as the Spanish Inquisition and Queen Mary's bonfires had, to send those to God whom the world is not worthy of. You know every man that is true to his God and his conscience, will never do that which he taketh to be sin, till his judgment is changed and therefore, with such, it can be no lower than blood, or banishment, or imprisonment at least, that is the efficacy which you desire: and if no such rigour be too much, its pity the French, that murdered 30,000 or 40,000 at their Bartholomew days, or as Dr. Peter Moulin saith, 100,000 within a few weeks, and the Irish that murdered 200,000 had not a better cause: for they took the most effectual way of rigour.

But when God maketh inquisition for the blood of his servants, he will convince men that such rigour was too much,

and that their wrath did not fulfil his righteousness. You shew your kindness to men's praying in the pulpit without your book: make good what you say, that such praying is of no great antiquity and we will never contradict you more! Or if we prove it not the ancientest way of praying in the Christian church, we will give you leave to hang, or banish us, for not subscribing to the Common Prayer Book: which the apostles used, and which was imposed on the church for some hundred years. But it seems you think that we are beholden to mere sufferance without law or canon for conceived prayers. How long then it will be suffered we know not, if we must live by your patience.

§ 20. It seemeth that our converse and yours much differ:

the most that we know or meet with had rather be without the liturgy and you say, that the people are generally well satisfied with it. By this time they are of another mind. If it were so we take it for no great honour to it; considering what the greater number are in most places, and of what lives those persons are (of our parishes and acquaintance generally or for the most part) who are for it: or what those are that are against it, and whom for its sake you desire your effectual rigour may be exercised against. The Lord prepare them to undergo it innocently!

§ 21. Doth there need no more to be said for the ceremonies? How little will satisfy some men's consciences! Lawful authority hath in other countries cast out the same bishops and ceremonies which are here received. Doth it follow that they are good in one country, and disorderly and undecent in another? or that our authority only is infallible in judging of them? Is not God's worship perfect without our ceremonies, in its integrals as well as its essentials?

As for circumstantials when you saw us allow of them, you need not plead for them as against us. But the question is, whether our additions be not more than circumstances.

§ 22. We suppose that you give all to the cross in baptism which is necessary to a human sacrament: and this we are ready to try by just dispute.

When you say that never was moral efficacy ascribed to them, you seem to give up all your cause: for by denying this ascribed efficacy, you seem to grant them unlawful if it be so and if it be not so let us bear the blame of wronging them. The informing and exciting the dull mind of man in its duty to God, is a moral effect from moral efficacy. But the informing and exciting the dull mind of man, in its duty to God, is an effect ascribed to our ceremonies: ergo., a moral effect from moral efficacy is ascribed to our ceremonies. The major cannot be denied by any man that knoweth what a moral effect and efficacy is: that which worketh not per modum naturæ in genere causæ efficientis naturalis only, but per modum objecti, vel in genere causæ finalis, upon the mind of man, doth work morally: but so do our ceremonies: ergosure the Arminians that deny all proper physical operations of God's Spirit, as well as his Word, and reduce all to moral efficacy, will not say that ceremonies have such a physical efficacy more than moral. And if not so, the good effects here mentioned can be from no lower efficacy than moral. And the minor which must be denied, is in the words of the preface to the Common Prayer Book, and therefore undeniable. The Word of God itself worketh but moraliter proponendo objectum, and so do our ceremonies.

§ 23. There is a great difference between sacramental ceremonies, and mere circumstances, which the reformed churches. keep. These we confound not, and could have wished you would not. Our cross in baptism is a dedicating sign, (saith the canon) or transient image, made in token that this child shall not be ashamed of Christ crucified, but manly fight under his banner against the flesh, the world, and the devil, and continue Christ's faithful servant and soldier to his life's end. So that 1. It is a dedicating sign, performed by the minister, and not by the person himself, as a bare professing sign is. 2. It engageth the party in a relation to Christ as his soldier and servant. 3. And in the duties of this relation against all our enemies, as the sacramentum militare doth a soldier to his general; and that in plainer and fuller words

than are annexed to baptism. 4. And it is no other than the covenant of grace or of Christianity itself, which this sacrament of the cross doth enter us into, as baptism also doth. It is not made a part of baptism, nor called a sacrament, but as far as we can judge, made essentially a human sacrament adjoined to baptism. The reformed churches which use the cross, we mean the Lutherans, yet use it not in this manner.

§ 24. This is but your unproved assertion, that the fault was not in the ceremonies, but in the contenders: we are ready to prove the contrary: but if it had been true, how far are you from Paul's mind, expressed Rom. xiv and xv; and 1 Cor. viii. You will let your weak brother perish, and spare not, so you can but charge the fault on himself; and lay stumbling blocks before him, and then save him by your effectual rigour, by imprisonment or punishment.

§ 25. Those seem a few to you that seem many to us. Had it been but one hundred such as Cartwright, Amesius, Bradshaw, Parker, Hildersham, Dod, Nicolls, Langley, Paget, Hering, Baynes, Bates, Davenport, Hooker, Wilson, Cotton, Norton, Shephard, Cobbet, Ward, &c., they had been enough to have grieved the souls of many thousand godly Christians; and enough for any one of the reformed churches, had they possessed them, to have glorified in; and many far meaner are yet the glory of the ancient churches, and called, and reverenced as fathers. But we doubt this same spirit will make you think that many hundred more are but a few to be silenced ere long. And then your clemency will comfort the poor people that have ignorant or deboist readers instead of ministers (for too many such we have known,) that it was their pastors' faults that obstinately refused to conform, when they had promised it; that is, that repented of the sin of their subscription when they discerned it: and had they never been ignorant enough to subscribe, they had never entered and the many hundreds which you thus keep from the ministry, you make nothing of.

:

§ 26. Whether diocesans be a lawful authority as claiming spiritual government, and how far men may own them

even in lawful things, are controversies to be elsewhere managed. We justify no man's leaving his ministry upon the refusal of anything but what he judged unlawful, yea, and what was really so.

§ 27. Whether any offence were given (though not enough to warrant separation) let our argumentations on both sides declare. The said declaration of the church's sense is not the smallest part of the scandal. Calling a human sacrament indifferent, or no sacrament, proveth it not to be as it is called. That the Nonconformists were the cause of separation, who did most against it, is easily said, and as easily proved as the Arians proved that the Orthodox were the cause of the schism of the Luciferans who separated from the church for receiving the Arians too easily to communion.

§ 28. Church matters in this much differ from civil matters; and it is one thing to change a church custom when it dangerously prevaileth to corrupt men's understandings, and another thing when there is no such danger. So Hezekiah thought when he destroyed the brazen serpent, and Paul (who before circumcised Timothy) when he said, if ye be circumcised Christ shall profit you nothing. Could men have foreseen that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome in the imperial churches, would have been sublimated to such a challenged supremacy over all the Christian world, we suppose the ancients would have held it their duty to have removed the primacy to some other seat.

§ 29. According to your councils will you be judged of God? The not-abating of the impositions is the casting off many hundreds of your brethren out of the ministry, and of many thousand Christians out of your communion. But the abating of the impositions, will so offend you, as to silence or excommunicate none of you at all. For e.g. we think it a sin to subscribe, or swear canonical obedience, or use the transient image of the cross in baptism, and therefore these must cast us out. But you think it no sin to forbear them, if the magistrate abate them, and therefore none of you will be cast out by the abatement. But it seemeth that your