are harder to swallow than their camels; and that, while all Christendom magnifies our happiness, and applauds it, your handful alone so detests our enormities, that you despise our graces ?" His concluding admonition is so singularly characteristic, that it cannot be withheld, "Sure," says Hall, "you intended it not: but, if you had been their hired agent, you could not have done our enemies greater service. The God of Heaven open your eyes, that you may see the injustice of that zeal which hath transported you; and turn your heart to an endeavour of all Christian satisfaction: otherwise, your souls shall find too late, that it had been a thousand times better to swallow a Ceremony, than to rend a Church; yea, that even whoredoms and murders shall abide an easier answer than Separation. I have done, if only I have advised you of that fearful threatening of the wise man, The eye that mocketh his father, and despiseth the government of his mother, the ravens of the river shall pick it out, and the young eagles eat it.' "b

f

"'d

Leaving, for the present, this " Bedlam stuff," we hasten to remark, that, on Robinson's arrival, he and his friends attached themselves to their former colleague, Smyth, whose altercations, however, with the" ancient church" of Johnson and Ainsworth, impelled the later comers, after about twelve months, to prefer settling at Leyden, where they left that most " precious" savoury relic, "a good name." Previously to this final removal, Robinson's pen was employed in vigorously defending the righteous cause in which he was suffering. He lost no time in sending forth "An answer to a Censorious Epistle," which we find to be denominated, by a country Curate, a "scurrilous pamphlet ;" but by that Curate's favourite, "a stomachful pamphlet," which he received not two months since." Though we are about to give the whole of Robinson's "Answer," we are compelled to couple with it, portions of Hall's reply, dated 1610, and intituled, A Common Apology of the Church of England; Against the unjust Challenges of the over-just Sect, commonly called Brownists; for, out of this tract it is that we have copied Robinson's, from the "margent." An affected Dedication is prefixed, by Hall, "To our Gracious and Blessed Mother, The Church of England," in which he tells, forsooth, his "Reverend, Dear, and Holy Mother," that, "besides the private injuries to the Monitor,' meaning himself, Robinson had cast “ upon Thine honourable Name, blasphemous imputations of Apostacy, Antichristianism, Whoredom, Rebellion!" Let the Reader, now deliberate on the weight of these

a In the same style of infuriated bigotry, Gabriel Powel wrote in his "Consideration of the Deprived and Silenced Ministers' Arguments, &c. 1606." p. 58,-"Scandalous Ministers for life, are more tolerable in the Church, than such as be factious, schismatical, or scandalous for doctrine and fanatical conceits." b Prov. xxx. 17.

c Milton's Apol. for Smectymnuus. 1642. Prose Works, imp. 8vo. 1833. p. 82. d Eccles. vii. 1.

The Rev. John Jones, in his "Life and Times" of Bp. Hall. 1826. 8vo. p. 56. f Hall's Dedication. By J. H. 1610. 4to. pp. 145.

hOf this kind of " appendant form of a ceremonious presentment," Milton says, it "will ever appear, among the judicious, to be but an insulse and frigid affectation. As no less was that," continues Milton, "before his Book, against the Brownists, to write a Letter to a Prosopopcia; a certain rhetorized woman whom he calls Mother;' and complains of some that laid whoredom' to her

allegations, and also on such of the responses by Hall, as we have deemed it necessary to adduce below. Thus wrote Robinson:“PREAMBLE.—IT is a hard thing even for sober-minded men, in cases of controversy, to use, soberly, the advantages of the times; upon which, whilst men are mounted on high, they use to behold such as they oppose too overly, and not without contempt; and so are ofttimes emboldened to roll upon them, as from aloft, very weak and weightless discourses thinking any slight and slender opposition sufficient to oppress those underlings whom they have, as they suppose, at so great an advantage. Upon this very presumption, it cometh to pass, that this Author undertaketh thus solemnly and severely to censure a cause whereof, as appeareth in the sequel of the discourse, he is utterly ignorant: which, had he been but half so careful to have understood as he hath been forward to censure, he would either have been, I doubt not, more equal towards it, or more weighty against it. As this Epistle is come to my hands, so I wish the Answer of it may come to the hands of him that occasioned it. Entreating the Christian Reader, in the Name of the Lord, unpartially to behold, without either prejudice of cause or respect of person, what is written on both sides; and from the Court of a sound Conscience, to give just judgment.

C

"AN ANSWER, &c,-THE 'Crime' here objected, is 'Separation :' a thing very odious in the eyes of all them from whom it is made; as evermore casting upon them the imputation of evil, whereof all men are impatient. And hence it cometh to pass that the Church of England can better brook the vilest persons' continuing communion with it, than any whomsoever separating from it, though upon never so just and well-grounded reasons. And yet separation from the world, and so from the men of the world, and so from the Prince of the world that reigneth in them, and so from whatsoever is contrary to God, is charge: and, certainly, had he folded his Epistle, with a superscription, to be delivered to that female figure, by any post or carrier who were not a ubiquitary, it had been a most miraculous greeting!" Apol. for Smectymnuus, p. 77. Previously to this, Milton had, in "Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's [Hall's] Defence' against Smectymnuus," 1641, written thus, " Mark, Readers, the crafty scope of these Prelates; they endeavour to impress deeply into weak and superstitious fancies, the awful notion of a Mother;' that, hereby, they might cheat them into a blind and implicit obedience to whatsoever they shall decree or think fit! And, if we come to ask a reason of aught from our 'Dear Mother,' she is invisible, under the book and key of the Prelates, her spiritual adulterers. They only, are the Internuncios, or the go-betweens, of this trim devised mummery. Whatsoever they say, she says must be a deadly sin of disobedience not to believe. So that we, who, by God's special grace, have shaken off the servitude of a great male tyrant, our pretended Father, the Pope, should now, if we be not betimes aware of these wily teachers, sink under the slavery of a female notion; the cloudy conception of a demy-island Mother;' and, while we think to be obedient sons, should make ourselves rather the bastards, or the centaurs, of their spiritual fornications." Edit. sup. p. 72.

a Would God, overliness and contempt were not yours." Hall, p. 4. "The discourse' that I rolled down upon you, was weak and weightless' you shall find this was my lenity, not my impotence.”- "I was not enough your enemy: forgive me this error, and you shall smart more!" Hall. p. 4, 5. "To you not so extreme as your answer bewrays: a late Separation, not the first." Hall, p. 7.

C

the first step to our communion with God and angels and good men, as the first step to a ladder is to leave the earth!a

"The Separation' we have made, in respect of our knowledge and obedience, is indeed 'late' and new; yet is it, in the nature and causes thereof, as ancient as the Gospel, which was first founded in the 'enmity' which God himself put betwixt the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent; which enmity' hath not only been successively continued, but also visibly manifested by the actual Separation' of all true Churches from the world, in their collection and constitution, before the Law, under the Law, and under the Gospel. Which Separation the Church of England neither hath made nor doth make, but stands actually one with all that part of the world within the Kingdom, without separation: for which cause, amongst others, we have chosen, by the grace of God, rather to separate ourselves to the Lord from it, than with it from Him; in the visible constitution of it.

"To the title of 'Ringleader,' wherewith it pleaseth this 'Pistler to style me, I answer, That if the thing I have 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 my 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.e

a "Your Doctor [Ainsworth] would persuade us, you separate from nothing' but our corruptions' [Counterpoison, p. 2.]: you are honester, and grant it from our Church. It were happy for you, if he lied not; who, in the next page [5,] confutes himself; showing that you separate from us as Christ from the Samaritans, namely, from the Church, not the corruptions only; and not as he did from the Jews, namely, from their corruptions, not from their Church. His memory saves our labour, and mars his Discourse!" Hall, p. 11.

b Gen. iii. 15.

e Gen. iv. 13, 14, 16. vi. 1, 2. vii. 1, with 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21. Gen. xii. 2. Lev. xx. 24, 26. Neh. ix. 2, John xvii. 14, 16. Acts ii. 40. xix. 9. 1 Cor. vi 17.-" You quote Scriptures, though-to your praise-more dainty indeed than your fellows." Hall. p. 13.

d

The Separatists' idol, 'visible constitution,' will prove but an appendance of an external form; no part of the essence of a true Church.""If our baptism be good, then is our constitution' good. Thus your own' Principles' teach. (Principl. and Infer. p. 11.) The outward part of the true visible Church is a vow, promise, oath or covenant betwixt God and the saints: now, I ask, Is this made by us in baptism, or no? If it be, then we have, by your confession,-for so much as is outwardly required-a true visible Church: so your Separation is unjust." Hall, p. 20, 31.

"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 Master Smyth, 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

:

a

"Your pitying of us, and sorrowing for us, especially for the wrong done by us, were, in you, commendable affections; if by us justly occasioned; but if your Church be deeply drenched in Apostacy, and you cry peace, peace,' when sudden and certain desolation is at hand, it is you that do the wrong, though you make the complaint. And so, being cruel towards yourselves, and your own whom you flatter, you cannot be truly pitiful towards others whom you bewail. But I will not discourage you in this affection, lest we find few in the same fault: the most, instead of pity' and compassion, affording nothing but fury and indignation.b

"The first action laid against us is of 'unnaturalness,' and ingratitude, towards our Mother,' the Church of England, for our causeless 'Separation' from her. To which unjust accusation, and trivial querimony, our most just defence hath been, and is, That, to our knowledge, we have done her no wrong. We do freely, and with all thankfulness, acknowledge every good thing she hath, and which ourselves have there received. The superabundant grace of God covering, and passing by, the manifold enormities in that Church, wherewith these good things are inseparably commingled; and wherein we also, through ignorance and infirmity, were inwrapped. But what then? Should we still have continued in sin, that grace might have abounded? If God have caused a further truth, like a light in a dark place, to shine in our hearts, should we still have mingled that light with darkness, contrary to the Lord's own practice, Gen. i. 4; and, express precept, 2 Cor. vi. 14?

'But, the Church of England, say you, is our Mother,' and so

:

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, Exod xxiii. 2.: 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 'conviction' 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 misresolved 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." Hall, p. 31.

"Was your Church, before this Apostacy'? Show us your ancestors in opinion!.. But you leap back—if I urge you far-from hence to the Apostles' times, to fetch our once true Church from far, that it might be dear. You shall not carve for us. We like not these bold overleaps of so many centuries. I speak boldly, you dare not stand to the trial of any Church, since theirs." Hall, p. 33, 34.

How can you expect 'compassion,' when you breathe fire and write gall? Never mention the fury' of others' indignation,' till the venomous and desperate writings of Barrowe and Greenwood be either worn out with time, or, by the thunderbolts of your, not rare, Censures, be struck down to hell, whence their maliciousness came." Hall, p. 38.

"Whatsoever you do to us, I will not, any more, in favour of you, wilfully wrong myself. You have bidden me now, to take you as a complete Separatist; and speak this for yourself and yours." Hall, p. 39.

ought not to be avoided. But, say I, we must not so cleave to Holy Mother' Church as [that] we neglect our Heavenly Father and his Commandments: which, we know, in that estate, we could not but transgress; and that, heinously, and against our consciences; not only in the want of many Christian Ordinances, to which we were most straitly bound, both by God's Word and our own necessities; but also in our most sinful subjection to Antichristian Enormities,d which we are bound to eschew as Hell. She is our Mother;' so may she be, and yet not the Lord's Wife! Every mother of children is not a wife. Ammi and Ruhamah' were bidden to 'plead' with their mother, apostate Israel; and 'plead' that she was 'not' the Lord's wife,' nor he her husband.' And though you forbid us a thousand times, yet must we 'plead.' Not to 'excuse' our fault,' but to justify our innocency: and that not only, nor so much, in respect of ourselves, as of the Truth which, without sacrilege, we may not suffer to be condemned unheard. And if you yet hear her not, rather blame yourselves as deaf than as dumb. Is not Babylon' the Mother of God's 'people;' whom He, therefore, commandeth to depart out of her,' lest, being partakers of her sins,' they also partake of her 'plagues?' And, to conclude, What say you more against us, for your Mother,' the Church of England; than the Papists do for their Mother, and your Mother's Mother, the Church of Rome, against you whom they condemn as unnatural bastards, and impious matricides, in your separations from her ? And were not Luther, Zuinglius, Cranmer,

a "I dare take it upon my soul, that all your transgression which you should, necessarily, have incurred by her obedience, is nothing so heinous as your uncharitableness in your censures and disobedience." Hall, p. 47.

b"The question is not, whether we should ask leave of Princes to be Christians; but, whether, of Christian Princes, we should ask leave to establish circumstances of government." Hall, p. 49.

"Say, that your Church should employ you back to this our 'Babylon,' for the calling out of more Proselytes; [and that] you are intercepted, [and] imprisoned! Shall it be sin, in you, not to hear the prophecies at Amsterdam? The Clink [prison,] is a lawful excuse! If your feet be bound, your 'conscience' is not bound.' In these negatives, outward force takes away both sin and blame; and alters them from the patient to the actor: so that, now, you see your 'strait bonds,' if they were such, loosed by obedience, and overruling power." Hall, p. 50.

If she have enormities,' yet not so many or if many, not Antichristian.' Your Ham [Fr. Johnson,] hath espied ninety-one nakednesses in this his Mother, and glories to show them. [See back, p. 103, note a] All his malice cannot show one fundamental error. And when the foul mouth of your false 'martyr' [Barrowe,] hath said all, they are but some spots and blemishes; not the old running issues, and incurable botches of Egypt." Hall. p. 55.

e "God's command, shields them from the note of ungracious." Hall, p. 56. f" Hos. ii. 1, 2.

"The noise of your contentions is so great, that your truth' cannot be heard. Learned Junius, and our learnedst Divines, and neighbour Churches, have oft heard your clamours, never your 'truth' so little have you of this, and so much of the other, that we are ready to wish, as he of old, either ourselves deaf or you dumb!" Hall, p. 57.

h Rev. xviii. 2. 4.

"We were Nephews to that Church, never Sons; unless as Rome was mother-city of the World, so by human institution, we suffered ourselves to be ranged under her Patriarchal authority, as being the most famous Church