none shall be endured that are not just of the same visage and complexion. And then all the doubt will be, who is the man that will be the strongest and longest liver, or possess all England himself alone.

Accus. But they shew that they are perjured, false, unconscionable rogues, that took on them to scruple oaths and our church communion till now, and now can do all rather than be out of places of trust.

more.

Answ. 1. As to your church communion, can you blind men's eyes, that they shall not read what the old nonconformists have written to persuade men to it? See Messrs. Hildersham, Bradshaw, Gifford, Paget, Ball, and abundance And did not the present nonconformists shew the same judgment, in 1660, and 1661, in their treaty? And do not many come to your assemblies? And would they not all that are ministers preach there if they could have leave? And have you not, as is afore proved, excommunicated them by your canons, 5-8. And is the Oxford act (which imprisoneth them all six months if they be seen within five miles of a corporation or any place where they have preached within twenty years) an invisible thing? Do you lay men in gaol by it, and yet think it must be unknown? And he that knows it, knows that it sentences all such to goal if they be seen in your churches? And it is the course of human converse to say, If you come into any church within five miles, &c. you shall lie in gaol six months; and if you do not, you are rogues, and shall lie in gaol for not coming. Just when the ministers agreed to come more frequently than before, this act came out, and drove them back. You will say, they can appear in their own assemblies. Answ. 1. His majesty encouraged them by granting them liberty by his declaration. 2. They have more hope there of escaping out of your hands, than they have in your own churches.

And do you not see in print what Mr. Tombes the Anabaptist wrote long ago to persuade his followers to your communion? And what Mr. Nye wrote to persuade the independents to come to your churches? What great change is here of their judgments?

Object. But why did not the people do so all this while ?'

Answ. Because their own teachers did, as they thought, more profit them. Many a man thinks it lawful to wear rags

that yet had rather wear whole and comely clothes; and lawful to eat brown bread, and drink water, that will fare better when they can, and yet take these when they cannot. The people that had good houses before the fire, did without any chance of their judgments get into any poor rooms or cottages after it.

2. But suppose they lately change their judgments (as many no doubt have), you that think it is for the better are strange Christians that reproach men for repenting and amending. Do you call them to church and reproach them for not coming, and seek to ruin them for it, and now accuse them for coming? Doth not this shew that some men desired the present impositions, not for concord of all, but to drive some away, lest they should come in, and the land have concord? And doth not this shew what men we have to do with; and that it is somewhat else than nonconformity which such men hate? Your justice is, 'Come to church, or lie in gaol as schismatics. And if you come you are perfidious rogues.' Whether they do or do not, all is one to such judges, who have some other hateful matter in their

eye.

Object. But their doing it just now to keep their charter, and keep from suffering, proveth that they are perfidious rogues.'

Answ. 1. I pray tell men of brains and sense, for what it is that you would have men excommunicated, and laid in gaol or fined, if they conform not. Do you do all this without any purpose or hope to drive them to conformity? And do you do it only to make them perfidious rougues. If suffering may not alter them, why do you use it on them?

2. But who knows not that some things are lawful to avoid suffering which else would not be lawful. It is lawful to cast your goods into the sea to save the ship and men's lives; which else were a sin. It is lawful to give a thief your purse to save your life, which else were unlawful. It is lawful to blow up neighbour's houses to stop a fire. Christ proved it lawful to break the sabbath in cases of necessity; he withdrew into the wilderness and far from Jerusalem, to avoid the Pharisees' persecution. And Paul was let down by the wall in a basket; and which without danger of suffering, had not been lawful. Though no sin must be done to avoid suffering, yet that may and must be done, which

self-preservation makes no sin, but a duty; to kill a mart that assaults you in your own defence is not the same crime as unnecessarily to kill him.

But as to the other case of taking the corporation oath and declaration, if you know the case (as you should do before you accuse men), you know that it is the true sense of them that is all the controversy. Nobody scruples swearing loyalty, and renouncing rebellion and sedition, and all unlawful means of reformation. That which makes it difficult is that on one side, the proper universal sense of the words seem to them unlawful, and oaths must be taken in the usual sense, unless our rulers give another, yet on the other side, learned sober conformists profess that they take such words in the limited sense, or else they would not take them; and they argue subtly to prove that to be the true sense; and our lawmakers to whom it belongs will not end the controversy by an exposition. And can you wonder here if men fluctuate in uncertainty? And a late writer having given subtler arguments for the limited sense than were published before, did persuade many. And in that limited sense twenty nonconformist ministers took the oath long ago in London at one time.

But I justify none that mistake in so great a matter. And doubtless if they sinned God will not bless it to their good; it will prove their snare. And I am glad that we are agreed that perjury is a heinous sin. I beseech you then to consider, 1. Whether those men are fit to accuse them who drive them to it, and say to ministers, Swear or lie in gaol. 2. Or those who are of the mind of Grotius, Bishop Taylor, and such others, that lying is lawful when it saves ourselves, and wrongs no other; and of those divines that say, it is as lawful to defend myself from pernicious imposers with my tongue as with my hands.

3. Let us all with fear (who believe there is a God) avoid the dreadful crime of perjuring the whole land. This whole kingdom is sworn against all foreign jurisdiction in the oath of supremacy; and against all endeavours to alter the government of church or state, by, 1. The corporation act. 2. The vestry act. 3. The militia act. 4. The Oxford act of confinement. 5. And obliged by the act of uniformity. Is it not perjury then to endeavour any alteration of it? 1. What shall we then think of them that would bring in pope

ry? Would they not perjure the kingdom? 2. What shall we say of them that write for a foreign church jurisdiction, under the name of General Councils, or a college of bishops, or of foreign patriarchs, or of whom the pope is chief, and the principium unitatis' to the universal church. Is it no change of our church government to bring us under a foreign jurisdiction? Is it no change of state government to make the king and kingdom subject to that foreign jurisdiction, who may excommunicate him, and so bring on him all the evil that excommunication inferreth? And what man in his wits knoweth not that prelates and priests are much at the will and power of the princes under whom they live? Doth not our king expect that his bishops obey him? And those that must have this universal jurisdiction over our king and us, are the subjects of other princes, of which the far greatest part are Papists, Mahometans, Infidels, Heathens, or such as are called heretics; and if our king and we be made subject to the subjects of the Turk, the pope, the kings of Spain, France, Poland, the emperor, the Muscovite, the dukes of Bavaria, Tuscany, and such like, is he not made a subject to their lords and masters, and much worse? Will not this project perjure England?

3. Whether it be any alteration of government by them that would change the power and use of parliaments, I leave to lawyers.

These

4. But I would fain be satisfied of another case. kingdoms of England and Scotland took a covenant and vow, some voluntarily, some at their compositions, who had been sequestered for the king. This vow contained divers matters, of which some are notorious duties, as to repent of their sins, to oppose popery, schism, and profaneness, to defend the king, &c. It is not denied by most that I meet with, that this oath or vow was unlawfully imposed, and unlawfully taken, and many think some of the matter was unlawful, viz. to oppose prelacy, &c. But seeing casuists are. agreed, that an oath unlawfully both imposed and taken, bindeth to that part of the matter which is lawful and necessary, notwithstanding the conjunction of the rest. And the corporations of England are all formed by a declaration taken by all in power and trust, that 'There is no obligation (without the least exception) on me or any other person from the oath called the Solemn League and Covenant; the doubt

is, whether every man may declare that, of all the thousands of three kingdoms (whom he never knew) no one is bound by that oath, or vow, to repent of his sins, or in his place and calling to oppose schism, popery, or profaneness, or to defend the king. And whether all may declare that the Londoners and ministers, and the restored old parliament, and General Monk's army who restored the king, as supposing they were bound to it by that oath, were all deceived, and were under no such obligation thence. And whether I am not bound in charity to think that the sequestered royalists put a good sense on it when they took it. And so whether all the corporations of England are free from And for what it is that God hath singled them out for judgment.

If you be agreed with us (and with mankind) against so great a sin as perjury, especially national, let us help one another with love and patience to resolve such doubts.

Accus. But they have been guilty of rebellion in a civil war, and therefore are justly suspected to preach or hold rebellious doctrine.'

Answ. 1. Are those men lovers of love and concord who purposely make use of pardoned acts to keep the kingdom's wounds still open? Did not the king tell you in his declarations and act of oblivion, that the putting up all (save to the excepted persons), and closing for the future in mutual love, was the only way to the nation's peace? You would tempt men to think that you desire to see such days again, by trying whether destroying men will tempt nature to a selfdefence.

2. But you have oft had it proved (by Henry Fowlis, Bishop Barlow, and abundance more), that no Protestants come near the principles and practices of the Papists, as to king-killing and rebellion. And if yet you know not that the war began between two parties of episcopal conformists here among the English, you are unfit to judge of that which you know not. And by reading Rushworth, Whitlock, or any true histories of such times and matters, you may be better informed. As you may of their different principles if you read Jewel, Bishop Bilson, and Richard Hooker on one side, and Mainwarning and Sibthorp on the other.

3. But how few men are alive that had any hand in those miserable wars? You have oft been offered a thousand thanks if will silence and hunt no other that are as innoyou