ORMED CHURCHES
OF
SCOTLAND, ENGLAND, AND IRELAND,
WHO
LOVE THE LORD JESUS, AND MEAN TO ADHERE UNTO THE REFORMATION OF RELIGION.
GRACE, MERCY, AND PEACE, FROM GOD OUR FATHER,
AND FROM
THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

As Satan's malice, and man's wickedness, cease not to molest the thrice
happy estate of the church of Christ, so hath the eternal council of the
only wise God predetermined the coming of offences, persecutions,
heresies, schisms and divisions, that professors may be proved before they
be as approved and made manifest, 1 Cor. xi. 19. And hence "It must needs
be that offences come," Matt. xviii. 17; neither hath the church ever
enjoyed both purity and peace any long time together. But whiles the
church of God, thus disquieted, at well with dangerous alterations, as
with doleful altercations, is presented in the theatre of this world, and
crieth out to beholders, "Have ye no regard, all ye that pass by!" Lam. i.
12. A pity it is to see the crooked and sinistrous courses of the greatest
part, every man moving his period within the enormous confines of his own
exorbitant desires; the atheistical nullisidian, nothing regardeth the
assoiling of ecclesiastical controversies,--he is of Gallio's humour, Acts
xviii. 17, and cares for none of those things; the sensual Epicurean and
riotous ruffian (go church matters as they will) eats and drinks, and
takes his pleasure; the cynical critic spueth out bitter aspersions,
gibeth and justleth at everything that can be said or done in the cause of
religion; the acenical jester playeth fast and loose, and can utter
anything in sport, but nothing in earnest; the avaricious worldling hath
no tune but _Give_, _give_, and no anthem pleaseth him but _Have_, _have_;
the aspiring Diotrephes puffeth down every course which cannot puff up;
the lofty favourite taketh the pattern of his religion from the court
iconography, and if the court swim, he cares not though the church sink;
the subdulous Machiavillian accounteth the show of religion profitable,
but the substance of it troublesome: he studieth not the oracles of God
but the principles of Satanical guile, which be learneth so well that he
may go to the devil to be bishopped; the turn-coat temporiser wags with
every wind, and (like Diogenes turning about the mouth of his voluble
hogshead, after the course of the sun) wheresoever the bright beams of
coruscant authority do shine and cherish, thither followeth and