further institution of God, which did make them to be parts of his worship, and ways and means of men's communion with himself, and to sanctifie the persons and actions approaching to them; which cannot be said of any places under the New-Testament, God has declared himself to be, both no respecter of persons, and no respecter of places; and our meeting-places are no more sacred than the ancient synagogues: that some excellent men of the episcopal way itself, have been above the conceit of "any difference in places;" Dr. Usher more particularly, who says, "in times of persecution, the godly did often meet in barns, and such obscure places, which indeed were public, because of the church of God there; the house or place availing nothing to make it public or private; even, as wheresoever the prince is, there is the court, although it were in a poor cottage." He added, that yet the churches (as they were metonymically, and almost catechrestically called) in the English nation, were not for the sake of old abuses to be demolished, as were the temples of the Canaanites, inasmuch as they were built for the worship of God; and those places are no longer polluted, when they are no longer so abused. He argued against organs and cathedral music, that there was a warrant of Heaven for instrumental music in the service of God under the law, when also this was not a part of their synagogue-worship, which was moral, but of their ceremonial temple-worship, whereas there is no such warrant under the gospel: that the instrumental music under the law, was intended for a "shadow of good things to come," which being now come, it was abolished; that even Aquinas himself, as late as four hundred years ago, pleaded against this instrumental music, as being used among the Jews, quia populus erat magis durus et carnalis.* the Church of Rome itself, it seems, had not then generally introduced it, as he says, nè videatur judaïzare.† Finally, against the book of common-prayer, he argued, that it is a setting of men's posts by God's, to introduce into the public worship of God, as a standing part thereof, and impose by force, another book, besides the books of God; nor is there any precept or promise in the book of God, for the encouragement of it, nor any example that any ordinary church-officers imposed any stinted liturgies upon the church: that K. Edward VI. in his declaration acknowledged, "it seemeth unto you a new service, but indeed is no other but than the old, the self-same words in English that were in Latin, saving a few things taken out, which were so fond, that it had bin a shame to have heard them in English:" yea, some of the bishops themselves have reported, that Pope Paul IV. did offer Q. Elizabeth to ratifie it by his authority, ut sacra hic omnia, hoc ipso, quo nunc sunt apud nos modo, procurari fus esset:t now, inasmuch as the Church of Rome is the "mother of harlots," let any Protestant judge, whether it be fit for us to fetch the form of our worship from thence, and indeed a great part of the form from that

• Because they were a more stiff-necked and carnal-minded people.

Lest it should appear to be Judaizing.

That it might be canonical to follow all the ritual observances in the exact form now adopted by us.

VOL. II.-4

old conjurer Numa Pompilius: that for ministers, instead of using their own ministerial gifts, to discharge the work of their ministry, by the prescriptions of others, is as bad as carrying the ark upon a cart, which was to have bin carried upon the shoulders of the Levites; and it is a sin against ths spirit of prayer, for ministers in these days to be diverted from the primitive way of praying, which was, according to Tertullian's account, sine monitore, quia de pectore,* in opposition to the præscript forms of prayer amongst the pagans. He also touched upon the corruptions in the very matter of the common-prayer; the grievous preference therein given unto the apocryphal above the canonical writings; the complementing of the Almighty "to give us those things, which for our unworthiness we dare not presume to ask;" the nonsense of calling the lessons out of the prophets, epistles; and many more such passages, which he but briefly touched, though, he said, "it would fill a volume to reckon them." He concluded these discourses with an admonition to the bishops and episcopal party, that they would not now revive, or, at least, not impose, the superstitions of the former times: but among many things which he spake in his exhortation, I shall only transcribe these words: "When you have stopt our mouths from preaching, yet we shall pray; and not only we, but all the souls that have bin converted, or comforted and edified by our ministry, they will all cry to the Lord against you for want of bread, because you deprive them of those that should break the bread of life unto them. Now, I had rather be environed with armies of armed men, and compassed round about with drawn swords and instruments of death, than that the least praying saint should bend the edge of his prayers against me, for there is no standing before the prayers of the saints. Yea, I testifie unto you, that as the saints will pray, so the Lord himself will fight against you, and will take you into his own revenging hand: I speak it conditionally, in case you persecute, and I wish all the bishops in Ireland heard me! For in the name, and in the love of Christ, I speak it to you, and I beseech you so to take it. I say, if once you fall to the old trade of persecution, the Lord Jesus will never bear it at your hands, but he will bring upon you a swift destruction. And your second fall will be worse than the first: for Dagon, the first time, did only fall before the ark of God; but when the men of Ashdod had set him up in his place again ⚫ the second time, then he 'brake himself to pieces' by his second fall, insomuch that there was nothing but the stump of Dagon left. Persecution is a very ripening sin; and therefore if once you superadd the sin of persecution, to the sin of superstition, you will be quickly ripe for final ruine; and in the day when God shall visit you, the guilt of all the righteous blood that hath bin shed upon the face of the earth, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Udal, and unto this day, will come down the hill upon your heads, even upon the persecutors of this generation. The

• Without a monitor, because from the heart.

Lord Jesus, when the 'day of vengeance is in his heart,' and when the 'year of his redeemed is come,' which is not far off, he will then require all that blood, and revenge it all upon your heads, if you justifie the ways of former persecutors, by walking in the same steps of blood and violence."

Mr. Mather having thus faithfully born his testimony, his persecutors yet let him live quietly for more than five months after it; but then they thought it their time to call these two sermons (though there were not one word therein, directly or indirectly against the King or his government) "seditious preaching;" and thereupon they silenced him, though with so much noise, that both English and French Gazets took notice of it: but all the notice, which he took of that charge himself, was to say, "If it be sedition to disturb the Devil's kingdom, who rules by his Antichristian ceremonies, in the kingdom of darkness, as the Lord Jesus Christ doth by his own ordinances, in his Church, which is the kingdom of heaven, I may say, 'I did it before the Lord, who hath chosen me to be a minister, and if this be to be vile, I will yet be more vile than thus.' Indeed, there belong'd unto him the character once given of Erasmus Sarcerius: "Lucebat in hoc viro commemorablis Gravitas et Constantia; non Minas, non Exilia, non ullam ullius hominis potentiamtaut vim pertimescebat; pæne dixeram, solem facilius de Cursu dimoveri potuisse, quam Matherum à Veritatis Professione.*

§ 11. Mr. Mather being so silenced by those "dwellers on the earth, who had bin thus tormented" by him, he did, with the consent of his Church, in the latter end of the year 1660, go over to England; where he continued a publick preacher in great reputation, at Burton-Wood, in Lancashire, until the general death upon the ministry of the non-conformists, at the black Bartholomew day, August 24, 1662—the act of which day doubtless made the Presbyterians think on the Bartholomew day which had been in another kingdom ninety years before; after which, the deputies of the reformed religion treated with the French King and the Queen mother, and some others of the Council, for a peace, and articles were on both sides agreed; but there was a question upon the security for the performance of those articles; whereupon the Queen said, "Is not the word of a King a sufficient security?" but one of the deputies answered, "No, by St. Bartholomew, madam, it is not!" Mr. Mather being one of the twenty hundred ministers expelled from all public places, by that act which was compleated by the "active concurrence" (as that excellent and renowned person, Dr. Bates, has truly observed) "of the old clergy from wrath and revenge, and the young gentry from their servile compliance with the court, and their distast of serious religion;" his Church in Dublin

• In this man were exhibited remarkable dignity and constancy. He feared neither threats, nor banishment, nor any power of man, nor any form of violence. I had almost said, that it would be easier to turn the sun from its course than Mather from the open profession of truth.

sent unto him to return unto his charge of them; having by this time opportunity to use that argument with him, for his return, "the men are dead that sought thy life." Accordingly, he spent all the rest of his days with his church in Dublin; but he preached only in his "own hired house," which, being a very large one, was well fitted for that purpose. And there was this remarkable concerning it, that although no man living used a more open and generous freedom, in declaring against the corruptions of worship reintroduced into the nation, yet such was his learning, his wisdom, his known piety, and the true loyalty of his whole carriage towards the government, that he lived without much further molestation; yea, the God of heaven recompensed the integrity of this his faithful servant, wherein he exposed himself, above most other men, for the truth, by granting him a protection, above most other men, from the adversaries of it; for which cause he did, in the year 1668, thus write unto his aged father in New-England: "I have enjoy'd a wonderful protecting Providence in the work of my ministry. I pray remember me daily in your prayers, that I may walk worthy of this goodness of God, and be made. useful by him for the good of the souls of his people. If any had told me in April, 1660, that I should have exercised the liberty of my ministry and conscience, either in England or Ireland, and that without conforming to the corruptions of the times, and this for seven or eight years together, I should not have believed it; I should have thought it next to an impossibility: but with God all things are possible."

§ 12. Although Mr. Mather was full of zeal against "corruptions in the worship of God," and in that just zeal he also wrote a treatise containing reasons against stinted liturgies, and the English one in particular, and answers to the lamentable concessions which a reverend person (whose name, for honor's sake he yet spared) had made, in his disputations, for them; nevertheless, like the Apostle John, whom he had long before imitated, when he was a young disciple, upon other accounts, he was full of love towards the persons of good men, that were too much led away with those corruptions.-Hence he carried it with all possible respect unto godly and worthy men of that way which he so much disliked-the Episcopal; however, while they excluded the Scripture from being the rule of Churchadministrations, and made unscriptural Rites, with promiscuous admissions to the Lord's table, and the denial of Church-power unto the proper pastors of the Churches, to be the terms of communion, he thought it impossible for non-conformists to coalesce in the same Ecclesiastical communion with them. Albeit he had the union of charity and affection with all pious conformists, of whom his words were, "There is Christian love and esteem due to such, as personally considered, and we should be willing and ready to receive them in the Lord:" yet for the union of an Ecclesiastical combination, with men that were of such principles, and by such principles became the authors of a schism, he said, "Unto their assembly

my glory, be not thou united;" and he added, "the best way for union with them is to labour to reduce them from the error of their way." Nevertheless, Mr. Mather, beholding that they who appeared studious of reformation in the nations were unhappily subdivided into three forms, or parties, commonly known by the name of Presbyterians, Independents, and Antipodo Baptists, he set himself to endeavour an union among all the good men of these three perswasions. To this purpose he did compose a most judicious Irenicum (afterwards printed) wherein he stated the agreement of these parties: he found, that they were agreed in all the fundamental points of the Christian faith, and rules of a Christian life; that they were agreed in the main acts of natural worship, namely, prayer and preaching, and hearing of the word; and in the special time for publick worship, namely, the Lord's days; that as to matters of institution, they were agreed in declaring for the Scriptures, as the direction of all; they were agreed that the Lord hath appointed a ministry in the Church, who are bound by office to publish the Gospel, and in his name therewith to dispence Sacraments, and the disciplines of the Gospel, and that all ignorant and ungodly persons are to be debarred from the Holy mysteries; and finally, that the humane inventions used and urged in the service of the Church of England, are unlawful. He proceeded then to consider the articles of difference which were betwixt them; and he found those articles to be mostly so meerly circumstantial, that if the several sides would but patiently understand one another, or act according to the concessions and confessions which are made in their most allowed writings, they might easily walk together, wherein they were of one mind, and wherein they were not so, they might willingly bear with one another, until God reveal unto them.-Only such as unchurch all others besides themselves, he found by the severity of their own disuniting principle, rendered uncapable of coming into this union: But unto all the societies of these Christians, that made union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, the foundation of Church communion, he did, with a most Evangelical spirit, offer, first, that they should mutually give the right hand of fellowship unto each other, as true Churches of the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, That they should kindly advise and assist each other in their affairs, as there should be occasion for it: Thirdly, That they should admit the members of each other's congregations unto occasional communion at the table of the Lord. In this uniting scheme of his, as there was a due tenderness towards various apprehensions, without scepticism in religion, so there was a blessed essay to remove the greatest stumbling-blocks of Christianity. Indeed, such a generous largeness of soul there was in our Mather, that he could, with the excellent-spirited Mr. Burroughs, have written it as the motto upon his study-door, Opinionum varietas, et opinantium unitas, non funt 'Adusara.* § 13. While Mr. Mather was fulfilling his ministry in Dublin, as one

* A difference of opinions is not incompatible with the perfect unity of those who cherish such opinions.