But let the just with joy abound; He wipes the tears from widows' eyes, 81. Thomas Adams, 1580-1656. (Handbook, pars. 94, 382.) A doctrinal Puritan who remained in the Church, but seems to have suffered for conscience sake. A Learned Ministry. Ar Learning as well as office is requisite for a minister. unlearned scribe, without his treasure of old and new, is unfit to interpret God's oracles. The priest's lips should preserve knowledge, is no less a precept to the minister, than a promise to the people. We are unfit to be seers, if we cannot distinguish between Hagar and Sarah. A minister without learning is a mere cypher which fills up a place, and increaseth the number, but signifies nothing. There have been some niggardly affected to learning, calling it man's wisdom. If the moral songs of a poet, or 2 philosopher, or perhaps some golden sentence of a father drop from us, it is straight called poisoned eloquence, as if all these were not the spoils of the Gentiles, and mere handmaids unto divinity. They wrong us: we make not the pulpit a philosophy-logic-poetry-school: but all these are so many stairs to the pulpit. Will you have it? The fox dispraiseth the grapes he cannot reach. If they could beat down learning, they might escape censure, for their own ignorance. For shame! Let none that have borne a book dispraise learning. She hath enemies enough abroad, she should be justified of her own children. Let Barbary disgrace arts, not Athens. Popish Pleas. They plead antiquity, as a murderer may derive his homicide from Cain: they plead unity, so Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians combined against Christ: they plead universality, yet of the ten lepers but one was thankful. Where many join in the truth, there is the Church; not for the many's sake, but for the truth's. The vulgar stream will bring no vessel to the land of peace. Adams' Works, NICHOL'S ed., iii., xxiii., xxv. 82. John Hales, 1584-1656. (Handbook, pars. 382, 388.) Schism. All schisms have crept into the Church oy one of three ways; either upon matter of fact, or matter of opinion, or point of ambition. For the first, I call it matter of fact, when something is required to be done by us, which either we know, or strongly suspect to be unlawful; so the first notable schism, of which we read in the Church, contained in it matter of fact. For it being upon error taken for necessary that an Easter must be kept; and upon worse than error, if I may so speak (for it was no less than a point of Judaism, forced upon the Church), upon worse than error I say, thought further necessary, that the ground, for the time of keeping that feast, must be the rule left by Moses to the Jews; there arose a stout question, whether we were to celebrate, with the Jews on the xivth moon, or the Sunday following. These matters, though most unnecessary, most vain, yet caused as great a combustion as ever was in the Church: the West separating and refusing communion with the East for many years together. In this fantastical hurry, I cannot see but all the world were Schismaticks: neither can anything excuse them from this imputation, excepting only this, that we charitably suppose that all parties out of conscience did what they did: a thing which befel them through the ignorance of their guides, and that through the just judgement of God, because through sloth and blind obedience men examined not the things which they were taught. The next schism which had in it matter of fact is that of the Donatist :-Now this schism, and likewise the former, to a wise man that well understands the matter in controversie, may afford perchance matter of pity, to see men so strangely distracted upon fancy, but of doubt or trouble what to do, it can yield none. For why might it not be lawful to go to church with the Donatist, or to celebrate Easter with the Quartodeciman, if occa sion so require? Surely you may safely communicate with either, so be you flatter neither in their schism. Come we then to consider a little of the second sort of schism arising upon occasion of variety of opinion. It hath been the common disease of Christians from the beginning not to content themselves with that measure of faith which God and Scriptures have expressly afforded us; but out of a vain desire to know more than is revealed, they have attempted to discuss things of which we can have no light, neither from reason nor revelation; neither have they rested here, but upon pretence of Church authority, which is now a tradition which, for the most part, is but figment, they have peremptorily concluded and confidently imposed upon others a necessity of entertaining conclusions of that nature; and to strengthen themselves, have broken out into divisions and factions, opposing man to man, synod to synod, till the peace of the Church vanished, without possibility of recall. . . . To load our publick forms with the private fancies upon which we differ is the most sovereign way to perpetuate schism unto the world's end. . . . If the spiritual guides and fathers of the Church would be a little sparing of incumbering churches with superfluities, and not over rigid either in reviving obsolete customs, or imposing new, there were far less danger of schism or superstition; and all the inconvenience were likely to ensue would be but this, they should, in so doing, yeeld a little to the imbecillities of inferiors, a thing which St. Paul would never have refused to do. Meanwhile, wheresoever false or suspected opinions are made a piece of the Church Liturgy, he that separates is not the Schismatick. ... ... A Tract concerning Schism, Tracts, p. 218. Antiquity. Antiquity! What is it else but man's authority born some ages before us. Now for the truth of things time maketh no alteration. Those things which we reverence for antiquity, what were they at their first birth. Were they false, time cannot make them false; were they true, time cannot make them more true. I have more understanding than all my teachers (said David), not because I am guided by them: but because thy testimonies are my meditation.' N 83. Phineas Fletcher, 1584-1650, and Giles Fletcher, 1586–1623. (Handbook, pars. 127, 128.) Agneia and Parthenia, A lovely pair of twins closed either side: Not those in Heav'n, the flowery Geminies, Are half so lovely bright; the one his bride, Agneia chaste, was joined in Hymen's ties, And love, as pure as Heaven's conjunction: And in her eyes thousand chaste graces move, Her sky-like arms glittered in golden beams, Fire to their flames, but heavenly fire, imparts: A loving pair, still coupled, ne'er alone; Her word, 'Though one when two, yet either two, or none.' With her, her sister went, a warlike maid, Chastity in the married. b Chastity in the unmarried. Itself unto itself was only mate; Ever the same, but new in newer date And underneath was writ, 'Such is chaste single state.' Thus hid in arms, she seemed a goodly knight, But when she list lay down her armour bright, From the Purple Island, Canto x. Against a Rich Man despising Poverty. Whatever man possesses, God has lent; And to his audit liable is ever, To reckon how, and where, and when he spent ; The more thou hast, thy debt still grows the more. But, seeing God himself descended down, To enrich the poor by his rich poverty; His meat, his house, his grave, were not his own; Let me be like my head whom I adore! Be thou great, wealthy-I still base and poor! From The Miscellanies. The Demand of Justice. Upon two stony tables, spread before her, Where good, and bad, and life, and death, were painted But when that scroll was read, with thousand terrors fainted. |