rise from the feast, unless the dishes be set on in your own fashion? Is it no city, if there be mud-walls half broken, low cottages unequally built, no state-house?

But your order hath more essence than you can express; and is the same, which politicians, in their trade, call Tağ Tйs tóλews, an incorporating into one common civil body, by a voluntary union, and that under a lawful government *. Our Church wants both: wherein there is both constraint, and false office :

Take your own resemblance, and your own asking. Say, that some tyrant, as Basilius of Russia, shall forcibly compel a certain number of subjects into Moscow; and shall hold them in, by an awful garrison, forcing them to new laws and magistrates, perhaps hard and bloody. They yield; and, making the best of all, live together in a cheerful communion, with due commerce, loving con versation, submissive execution of the enjoined laws. In such case, whether is Moscow a true city, or not?

Since your Doctor cites Aristotle, let it not irk him to learn of that philosopher, who can teach him †, that, when Clisthenes had driven out the tyrants from Athens, and set up a new government, and received many strangers and bondmen into the Tribes, it was doubted, not which of them were citizens, but whether they were made citizens unjustly. If you should find a company of true Christians in Utmost India ‡, would you stand upon terms, and enquire how they became so? While they have what is necessary for that heavenly profession, what need your curiosity trouble itself with the means?

SECT. 9.

Constraint requisite.

You see, then, what an idle plea Constraint is in the constitution of a city, the ground of all your exception.

"But it is otherwise in God's city, the Church:"

Why then doth his doctorship parallel these two? And why may not even constraint itself have place, in the lawful constitution or reformation of a Church? Did not Manasseh, after his coming home to God, charge and command Judah to serve the Lord God of Israel? 2 Chr. xxxiii. 16. Did not worthy Josiah, when he had made a covenant before the Lord, cause all, that were found in Jerusalem and Benjamin, to stand to it; and compelled all, that were found in Israel, to serve the Lord their God? 2 Chr. xxxiv. 32, 33. What have Queen Elizabeth or King James done more? or what other? Did not Asa, upon Oded's prophecy, gather both Judah

† Arist. Pol. 3. c. 1.

*Ans. ibid. Arist. Pol. 3. cap. 1. Edesius et Frumentius pueri, à Meropio Tyrio philosopho in Indiam deportati, postea ibi Christianam religionem plantârunt. Ruffin. 1. i. c. 9. Fæmina

inter Iberos.

and Benjamin, and all the strangers from Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon, and enact with them, that whosoever would not seek the Lord God should be slain? 2 Chr. xv. 9, 12, 13.

What means this perverseness? You, that teach * we may not stay princes' leisure to reform, will you not allow princes to urge others to reform? What crime is this, that men were not suffered to be open idolaters; that they were forced to yield submission to God's ordinances? Even your own teach †, that magistrates may compel Infidels to hear the doctrine of the Church; and Papists, you say elsewhere ‡, though too roughly, are Infidels.

But you say, "Not to be members of the Church: God's people are of the willing sort:"-True, neither did they compel them to this. They were before entered into the Visible Church, by true Baptism, though miserably corrupted. They were not now initiated, but purged. Your subtle Doctor can tell us, from Bernard §, that "Faith is to be persuaded, not to be compelled:" yet, let him remember, that the guests must be compelled to come in, though not to eat when they are come : compelled, not by persuasions, for these were the first invitations; therefore by further means though this conceit hath no place with us, where men were urged, not to receive a new faith, but to perform the old; to abandon that wicked idolatry which had defiled them, and to entertain but that truth which the very power of their Baptism challenged at their hand ¶.

But this was the old song of the Donatists: "Far be it from our conscience, to compel any man to the faith." If God did not draw us; and, by a sweet violence bend our wills to his, when should we follow him? Either you have not read, or not cared for the practice of the Ancient Church; and Augustin's resolution concerning the sharp penalties imposed upon the Donatists (would God none of your kindred) in his time; with his excellent defences of these proceedings **.

Barr. against Gyff. Brown, Reformation without Tarrying.

+ Greenwood, Conference with Cooper. Brown, Reformation without Tarrying. Conference with Doctor And. M. Hutch.

+ Conference with Doctor Andr. Reformation without Tarrying.

§ Ber. Fides suadenda, non cogenda. Counterpoison.

Dixit Paterfamilias servis, Quoscunque inveneritis, cogite intrare, &c. Aug. Epist. 48.

Pless, de Eccles. c. 10.

** Aug. Quòd si cogi per legem aliquem vel ad bona licuisset, vos ipsi miseri à nobis ad fidem purissimam cogi debuistis: sed absit à nostrâ conscientiâ, ut ad fidem nostram aliquem cogamus. Aug. Epist. 48. & 68. Qui phreneticum ligat, et qui letharg. excitat, ambobus molestus ambos amat. Ibid. Clamant, Neminem ad unitatem cogendum: quid hoc aliud, quàm quod de vobis quidam, Quod volu

mus sanctum est ?

POLEMICAL WORKS.

Pardons declared, Worship of Images and Pilgrimages forbidden, learned and godly Ministers required, their absences and misdemeanours inhibited, the Scriptures translated, publicly and privately enjoined to be read and received, the Word of God commanded to be sincerely and carefully preached. And, to all this, holy Master Fox addeth *, for my conclusion, such a vigilant care was then in the King and his Council, how by all ways and means to redress religion; to reform errors; to correct corrupt customs; to help ignorance; and to reduce the misleadings of Christ's flock, drowned in bind Popery, superstitious customs, and idolatry, to some better form of reformation: whereunto he provided not only these Articies, Precepts, Injunctions above specified, to inform the rude people; but also procured the Bishops to help forward the same cause of decayed doctrine, with their diligent preaching, and teaching of the people.

Go now, and say, that suddenly, in one day, by Queen Elizabeth's trumpet, or by the sound of a bell, in the name of Antichrist, all were called to the Church. Go, say with your Patriarch, that we erect religions, by proclamations and parliaments †.

Upon these premises I dare conclude, and doubt not to maintain gelost in Separatists in the world, that England, to go no higher, bad, in the days of King Henry the Eighth, a True Visible Church of God and so, by consequent, their succeeding seed was, by The Buccsal, Usty ačnitted into the bosom thereof; and, therefere, that, even of them, without any further profession, God's Church was truly conscitated.

if you staid say, that the following idolatry of some of them, in Queen Mary's days, excluded them: consider, how hard it will be to prove, that God's covenant with any people is presently disamused by the sins of the most, whether of ignorance or weakness; and if they had herein renounced God, yet that God also BUCAL V POROIced them.

To shut up your Constitution, then, there is no remedy: either You must go Geward to Anabaptism, or come back to us. All your Raceus climot answer that charge of your rebaptized brother ↑ : If we be a The Church, you inst return: if we be not (as a False Church is no Church of God you must rebaptize. If our Ripost be good, that is our Constitition good.

Thus your own zene pies teach. The outward part of the True V side Church is a vow, promise, ouch, or covenant betwixt God sine de Suns Now, I ask. Is this made by us in baptism, or no? Fieber we have by your contesson forsomuch as is outwardly required a True Vistole Church: so your Separation is

SIN, DI YOU IS recapcize: for the first Bap

* San guns Def are et Spern, and M. Ema-Greeaw. Laser Care, Jaser Trave's Master Chars-Brown, Refor

tism is a nullity; and, if ours be not, you were never thereby as yet entered into any Visible Church.

SECT. 11.

The Answerer's Title.

Sep." To the title of a Ringleader, wherewith it pleaseth this Pistler to style me, I answer, that, if the thing I have done be good, it is good and commendable to have been forward in it; if it be evil, let it be reproved by the light of God's Word and that God, to whom I have done that I have done, will, I doubt not, give me both to see and to heal mine error by speedy repentance. If I have fled away on foot, I shall return on horseback. But, as I durst never set foot into this way, but upon a most sound and unresistible conviction of conscience by the Word of God, as I was persuaded; so must my retiring be wrought by more solid reasons from the same Word, than are to be found in a thousand such pretty pamphlets and formal flourishes as this is."

As for the title of Ringleader, wherewith I styled this pamphleteer; if I have given him too much honour in his sect, I am sorry. Perhaps, I should have put him (pardon a homely, but, in this sense, not unusual word) in the tail of this train. Perhaps, I should have endorsed my Letter "To M. Smith, and his Shadow." So I perceive he was.

Whatsoever, whether he lead or follow, God meets with him.

If he lead: Behold, I will come against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, Jer. xxiii. 32.

If he come behind: Thou shalt not follow a multitude in evil, saith God.

If either, or both, or neither; if he will go alone: Woe unto the foolish prophets, saith the Lord, which follow their own spirits, and have seen nothing; Ezek. xiii. 3.

Howsoever, your evil shall be reproved by the light of God's Word. Your conjunction, I cannot promise; your reproof, I dare. If, thereupon, you shall find grace to see and heal your errors, we should, with all brotherly humbleness, attend on foot upon your return on horseback: but, if the sway of your mis-resolved conscience be heady and unresistible, and your retiring hopeless; these not solid reasons, these pretty pamphlets, these formal flourishes shall one day be fearful and material evidences against you, before that Awful Judge, which hath already said, that Judgments are prepared for the scorners, and stripes for the back of fools; Prov. xix. 29.