"that we have Diffenters, and I hope we fhall never be without them t."

13. The last and the most general argument on which the Dif fenters depend, and which, if it were juft, would render all other arguments fuperfluous, is this; that all men "have a right to judge and chuse for themselves in matters of religion.”

This is an extenfive principle, which juftifies all fects, and fu perfedes all inftitutions and facraments whatsoever. It also fhews the Diffenters of this day, who have recourse to it, to be quite a different class of men from the Puritans in the days of Elizabeth; for here they extend their claims from schism up to herefy, and beyond it, even into the privileges and immunities of infidelity itself. The Puritans formerly judged against us in our discipline; but the Diffenters and their friends now judge against us in our doctrines. For thus faith the author of the Independent Whig, another apologist of the Diffenters:-"No man ought to pay any fubmiffion to that doctrine or difcipline which he does not like:" and the war, which was once carried on against prelacy and ceremonies, is now turned against articles and creeds.

If the Diffenters at large have this right of chufing what they like, and rejecting what they dislike, then the Quakers have it: and why not the Jews and the Mahometans? For I defire to know what there is betwixt us and them, but matters of religion?

As to this affair of chufing, especially in matters of religion, there are strange examples of human perverseness and wickedness. How often did the people chufe new gods? Herefy is fo called, because it is a doctrine which a man doth not receive, but chuse for himself; and if his choice is of right, there can be no fuch thing as herefy in the world. But herefy is reckoned among the works of the flesh; and they that heap up teachers to themselves, are faid to do it of their own lufts. Thus every cafe becomes defperate for luft being an irrational, brutal principle, hears no reafon; and nothing but diforder and confufion can follow, when this principle takes the lead in religion. When men took wives of fuch as they chofe, and had no rule but this rule of choice: the earth was foon filled with violence: and if men may take what they chufe in religion, sects and divisions, ftrife and envying, rebellion and facrilege, without end, must be the confequence; and fo it is already recorded in the annals of this kingdom.

* Vol. iii. p. 223.

POST SCRIP T.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE FIRST SEPARATION OF THE DISSENTERS FROM THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

THE

HE preceding fhort View of the Argument betwixt the Church and the Diffenters, having brought the authors of Free and Candid Difquifitions on the Liturgy of the Church of England under our confideration, I cannot help mentioning on this occafion, that I have a manuscript in my poffeffion of seventytwo sheets, containing remarks on that work, written imme diately after its publication, by one of the firft fcholars, and best divines of this century.

The public never did, and probably never will, receive any information from thefe papers; but to me they have been very entertaining and inftructive. In one of the author's notes upon a large quotation from the epiftles of St. Cyprian, I find the following account of the rife and progrefs of the fchifm, which hath troubled the state of the church, more or lefs, ever fince the reformation; and as this little work may fall into the hands of fome readers, who never heard whether our Diffenters originally divided from us, or we from them, it may be useful to fhew how the cafe ftands. The fact is this; they went out from us, after the full eftablishment of this church.

"For, in the year 1548, 2 Ed. 6. the archbishop of Canterbury, and twelve of the other principal bishops and divines, - joined in a committee, drew up the form of celebrating the Lord's fupper; and, after that, of the reft of the common prayer, chiefly from the best primitive formularies of public prayer they could find; which was foon after confirmed by authority of parliament, with this teftimony fubjoined, viz. that "none could doubt but that the authors were infpired, and affifted therein by the Holy Ghost." At the fame time (as Nichols, in his Defenfio Ecclefiæ Anglicanæ, obferves) it was the peculiar happiness of our reformation, that as it had been established by the concurrent authority of the church and state, fo we enjoyed the most perfect agreement and unanimity of all orders of men among us; the

very name of thofe fwarms of fectarists (the filthy pollutions whereof have, fince, infected so far and wide) being then not fo much as heard of in our land. Neither did any one, either at home or abroad, (the envy, ill-nature, and heterodoxy of Calvin, only excepted) charge us, in the leaft, with any remains of popifh leaven, as mixt with our fervices and orders, or any thing that looked that way: but all men honoured our church, as the moft holy mother of the people of God committed to her, as well as the most ftrenuous oppofer of antichrift, and the chief bulwark of the reformation. And fo matters continued; 'not a dog moving his tongue, or fowing the leaft feed of fchifm, or diffention, to corrupt her: till under the perfecution in queen Mary's time, when many flying (as it was to be expected) into the Proteftant ftates abroad, there fettled themfelves into little chapelries, or churches, by permiffion of the magistrates, according to the order of the common prayer, and service of the church of England. Only, at Frankfort, one Fox, a man of a turbulent innovating fpirit, with others affociated to him, were drawn into fondness for Calvin's plan, (fchifmatical, as it was, from all Chriftian churches fince the Apostles) and made themfelves a new farrago of public prayers, as oppofite to the English, and confequently to thofe of all the primitive churches, as they could devife: which, upon queen Mary's death, they brought home with them; and, in preaching and writing, endeavoured to force, or palm upon the people, but yet without any direct and open fchifm; till one Cartwright, in a theological disputation held at Cambridge before the queen, [Elizabeth] being rebuked by her for his unreasonable and turbulent manner of conducting himself in it, thereupon went off, full fraught with fpleen and fpite, to Calvin: from whence returning, with new ulcers added to his old fores, and caufing fresh disturbances, he was expelled his college, and deprived of the Margaret profefforfhip, by Dr. Whitgift, who was head of the fame college, [Trinity] and vicechancellor of the univerfity. Whereupon, with others of his own Calvinistical caft, he began to fet up his novo-puritanical fchifm, with claffes, conventicles, &c. in avowed contempt, and rebellion against the church. The fmoking brands of which fire of fchifm being blown up by the tainted breath of his followers, broke out, in half. an age, into a flame that once fet three kingdoms into a blaze, brought one of the beft of kings to the block, extirpated epifcopacy, and the peerage, fo as without the visible

interpofition of Providence, there appeared no more hopes of their restoration for ever. Neither are the coals of the old brands yet quenched, but they burn ftill under the embers of fedition, wherewith they are raked up, and threaten yet new and worse fires, perhaps to the civil, but certainly to the religious state of things among us; which God avert!"

This good man did not live to fee the difmembering of the British empire, by the separation of the American colonies, begun and carried on by the fame party both here and there, to the loss of fo many thousand lives, and the oppreffing of the people with new and endless burthens of taxes. So notorious was the cafe, that even the gentlemen of the army, who had an opportunity of making proper obfervations, and were properly difpofed to make them, brought home this report with them to the mother country, that if the church of England had but obtained that timely support in the colonies, for which it had so often petitioned, the American rebellion had never happened; and if this government shall be as remifs toward itself, in the mother country as it has been towards the colonies, the fame evils will foon break out at home.