CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England, and the causes that hitherto have hindered it: in two Books, written to a Friend,

Of Prelatical Episcopacy, and whether it may be deduced from the Apostolical times, by virtue of those Testimonies which are alleged to that purpose in some late Treatises; one whereof goes under the Name of James Archbishop of Armah,.

The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty. In two Books,
Animadversions upon the Remonstrant's Defence against Smectymnuus, .
An Apology for Smectymnuus,.

Of Education; to Master Samuel Hartlib,

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34

45

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88

121

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AREOPAGITICA; a Speech for the liberty of unlicensed Printing, to the Parlia ment of England,.

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The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, restored to the good of both sexes, from the Bondage of Canon Law, and other Mistakes, to the true meaning of Scripture in the Law and Gospel compared, &c., The Judgment of Martin Bucer concerning Divorce: written to Edward the Sixth, in his second Book of the Kingdom of Christ, &c., TETRACHORDON: Expositions upon the four chief Places in Scripture which treat of Marriage, or Nullities in Marriage, &c.,. COLASTERION: A Reply to a nameless Answer against the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce: wherein the trivial Author of that Answer is discovered, the Licenser conferred with, and the Opinion, which they traduce, defended, 356 The tenure of Kings and Magistrates: proving, that it is lawful, and hath been held so through all ages, for any, who have the Power, to call to account a Tyrant, or wicked King, and, after due conviction, to depose, and put him to Death, if the ordinary Magistrate have neglected, or denied to do it, &c., 374 Observations on the Articles of Peace between James, Earl of Ormond, for King Charles the First, on the one hand, and the Irish Rebels and Papists on the other hand and on a Letter sent by Ormond to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin and a Representation of the Scots Presbytery at Belfast in Ireland. To which the said Articles, Letter, with Colonel Jones's Answer to it, and Representation, &c., are prefixed, . EIKONOCLASTES: in answer to a book, entitled, Eikon Basilike, the Portraiture of his sacred Majesty in his Solitudes and Sufferings, .

OF

REFORMATION IN ENGLAND,

AND

THE CAUSES THAT HITHERTO HAVE HINDERED IT.

IN TWO BOOKS.

WRITTEN TO A FRIEND.

[FIRST PUBLISHED 1641.]

SIR,-Amidst those deep and retired thoughts, which, with every man Christianly instructed, ought to be most frequent, of God and of his miraculous ways and works amongst men, and of our religion and works, to be performed to him; after the story of our Saviour Christ, suffering to the lowest bent of weakness in the flesh, and presently triumphing to the highest pitch of glory in the spirit, which drew up his body also; till we in both be united to him in the revelation of his kingdom, I do not know of any thing more worthy to take up the whole passion of pity on the one side, and joy on the other, than to consider first the foul and sudden corruption, and then, after many a tedious age, the long deferred, but much more wonderful and happy reformation of the church in these latter days. Sad it is to think how that doctrine of the gospel, planted by teachers divinely inspired, and by them winnowed and sifted from the chaff of overdated ceremonies, and refined to such a spiritual height and temper of purity, and knowledge of the Creator, that the body, with all the circumstances of time and place, were purified by the affections of the regenerate soul, and nothing left impure but sin; faith needing not the weak and fallible office of the senses, to be either the ushers or interpreters of heavenly mysteries, save where our Lord himself in his sacraments ordained; that such a doctrine should, through the grossness and blindness of her professors, and the fraud of deceivable traditions, drag so downwards, as to backslide into the Jewish beggary of old cast rudiments, and stumble forward another way into the new-vomited paganism of sensual idolatry, attributing purity or impurity to things indifferent, that they might bring the inward acts of the spirit to the outward and customary eye-service of the body, as if they could make God earthly and fleshly, because they could not make themselves heavenly and spiritual; they began to draw down all the divine intercourse betwixt God and the soul, yea, the very shape of God himself, into an exterior and bodily form, urgently pretending a necessity and obligement of joining the body in a formal reverence, and worship circumscribed; they hallowed it, they fumed it, they sprinkled it, they bedecked it, not in robes of pure innocency, but of pure linen, with other deformed and fantastic dresses, in palls and mitres, gold and gewgaws fetched from Aaron's old wardrobe, or the flamins vestry: then was the priest set to con his VOL. I. Α

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motions and his postures, his liturgies and his lurries, till the soul by this means of overbodying herself, given up justly to fleshly delights, bated her wing apace downward: and finding the ease she had from her visible and sensuous colleague the body, in performance of religious duties, her pinions now broken, and flagging, shifted off from herself the labour of high soaring any more. forgot her heavenly flight, and left the dull and droiling carcase to plod on in the old road, and drudging trade of outward conformity. And here, out of question, from her perverse conceiting of God and holy things, she had fallen to believe no God at all, had not custom and the worm of conscience nipped her incredulity: hence to all the duties of evangelica grace, instead of the adoptive and cheerful boldness which our new alliance with God requires, came servile and thrallike fear: for in very deec., the superstitious man by his good will is an atheist; but being scared from thence by the pangs and gripes of a boiling conscience, all in a pudder shuffles up to himself such a God and such a worship as is most agreeable to remedy his fear; which fear of his, as also is his hope, fixed only upon the flesh, renders likewise the whole faculty of his apprehension carnal; and all the inward acts of worship, issuing from the native strength of the soul, run out lavishly to the upper skin, and there harden into a crust of formality. Hence men came to scan the Scriptures by the letter, and in the covenant of our redemption, magnified the external signs more than the quickening power of the Spirit; and yet looking on them through their own guiltiness with a servile fear, and finding as little comfort, or rather terror from them again, they knew not how to hide their slavish approach to God's behests, by them not understood, nor worthily received, but by cloaking their servile crouching to all religious presentments, sometimes lawful, sometimes idolatrous, under the name of humility, and terming the piebald frippery and ostentation of ceremonies, decency.

Then was baptism, changed into a kind of exorcism and water, sancti fied by Christ's institute, thought little enough to wash off the original spot, without the scratch or cross impression of a priest's forefinger: and that feast of free grace and adoption to which Christ invited his disciples to sit as brethren, and coheirs of the happy covenant, which at that table was to be sealed to them, even that feast of love and heavenly-admitted fellowship, the seal of filial grace, became the subject of horror, and glouting adoration, pageanted about like a dreadful idol; which sometimes deceives wellmeaning men, and beguiles them of their reward, by their voluntary humility; which indeed is fleshly pride preferring a foolish sacrifice, and the rudiments of the world, as Saint Paul to the Colossians explaineth, before a savoury obedience to Christ's example. Such was Peter's unseasonable humility, as then his knowledge was small, when Christ came to wash his feet; who at an impertinent time would needs strain courtesy with his master, and falling troublesomely upon the lowly, all-wise, and unexamɩ nable intention of Christ, in what he went with resolution to do, so provoked by his interruption the meek Lord, that he threatened to exclude him from his heavenly portion, unless he could be content to be less arrogant and stiffnecked in his humility.

But to dwell no longer in characterizing the depravities of the church, and how they sprung, and how they took increase; when I recall to mind at last, after so many dark ages, wherein the huge overshadowing train of error had almost swept all the stars out of the firmament of the church; how the bright and blissful reformation (by divine power) struck through the black and settled night of ignorance and antichristian tyranny, methinks sovereign and reviving joy must needs rush into the bosom of him that