Church-Lur●●●● UNKENNELLED Or the true Stating of the CASE BETWIXT Sequestered Ministers AND Those that dispossessed them Proverbs 14. 34. Righteousness 〈…〉 Nation injustice is reproach to any People Prov. 18. 17. He that is first in his C●●se s●●●●th just b●● Neig●●●●● cometh and s 〈…〉 LONDON Printed 16●● THE Church-Lurcher Unkennelled WHere men are confident that through the partiality or prejudice of the Hearers or Readers their Adversaries are condemned already they study not so much how to argue as to reproach nor how to prove a guilt as how to aggravate a guilt presumed Such hath been the fair dealing we Sufferers have had from our Oppressors in these late days The question never being put Whether according to the Rule of the Scripture we were capacitated for the Ministry or according to the Rule of the Law of the Land rightly invested in our Livings But they thought it enough to run us down with a full cry ' that we were Baalls Priest's Ceremony-mongers Popishly-affected Malignants Formalists etc. and to exalt themselves for the only Soulsaving sin-swinging Church-reforming Ordinances purifying Ministers etc. But we hope it is not an affected and ill-joynted Cant that will charm those just & rightful Judges before whom our Cause is now depending And to them and all the world in the name of ourselves and our suffering Brethren we are confident to offer these things First That if any of us who were ejected were ever proved either Ignorant Scandalous or Superstitious we are contented to be again turned out of our Livings the very next day after the Law hath re-settled us therein Only this we hope that we shall not be judged as of late we were by Tailors and Shoemakers Joiner's and Pewterer's or which is worse Anabaptists Socinians Quakers Atheists King-killers with two or three dull Temporizers shuffled in for Assistants nor that we shall have our using the Lord's Prayer or kneeling at our prayers or being uncovered at the worship of God to go for Superstition or our Loyalty to our Sovereign and Obedience to lawful Constitutions both Ecclesiastical and Civil to be reckoned for scandal Let th●se judge us that by the Rule of the Scriptures and the Law of the Land are to judge us and let them judge us by those two ●ules and we are contented to stand or fall as such a Judgement shall conclude of us We are most of us as ready to confess as our Adversaries are to charge it that there were many who deserved censure But that it was not their demerits and guilt but either the value of their Benefices or the considerableness of their Parts and reputation that laid most of us under the censure of the usurped Powers we could easily evince if the world had not already the proof of it so clear that they have brought it to a Proverb Such a man's Living o● his Learning made him a Malignant And if our Adversaries will call for further proof they must pardon us if we come to names in telling the Story that when one of their own gang in the University begged That his Tutor might not be ejected pleading that he was a very honest godly and learned man some replied Oh! but your Tutor being not for our cause he must be the rather ejected for such a one will do our Cause more harm then if he were either Ignorant or Scanddalous And it is no hard matter to gather up a Jury of such abominable transactions that will evidence the design not to have been for real reformation but the setting up of their own faction Secondly This we offer to prove every man of us against his own Church Pirate that he is or hath been ignorant or scandalous or in default of our proof we 'll discharge them for all the profits of our livings and places except the fifth's And that they may see we can make good this offer in a great measure let them but call for one that ran through sequestered Living after Living and in one dropped a Son in another a Son in Law in a third a Kinsman and we can tell how to spell his name Let them inquire for another that had Preached against self till as the Mayor of the Town told him he had preached self into above a 1000ls per annum and we suppose we shall be able easily to answer the question Or if they send hue and cry after Convict Drunkards Extortioners Revilers Suborners of their very Fathers to forswear themselves or those who promoted the first Petition to bring the King to his Trial and Condemnation and men of the like brand we are sure we can name some such possessed at present or very lately of some of our livings But we confess the very writing of these Blanks is that which we could hardly have brought ourselves to had we not seen it necessary to stop the mouths of our Slanderers by just recriminations Not that we accuse all For here we freely profess to believe and we are sure we can have the suffrages of multitudes of our suffering Brethren in this matter that many who have entered upon living that were vac●nted by sequestration yet were men very learned truly Godly Charitable Humble and Just and eminently laborious in the work of their Ministry and took up the places they entered on for the works sake not for the wages And we ourselves know many of them so well qualified that we could readily have set down under their Ministry and Communicated in all Ordinances with them during the violent suspension of ourselves from the exercise of our Ministry But we deny again this last Character to be due to any who contrived and promoted the ejecting of a Minister and entered Ahab like on condemned Naboths Vineyard or that hath den●ed the payment of the fifth part or a greater proportion of the profits to the sequestered Minister as equity might require or that resolves to sit fast to his possession of a sequestered Living till the Leavor of the Law shall heave him out Such we are sure are justly stigmatised with injustice and uncharitableness and we can name not a few of such But w● abhor to imitate the practice of our Adversaries in setting abroad their black Centurys wherein they gratified not only the Devil but the Pope also Nay will not themselves now grant that their Scribe was designed to d● a courtesy for the Pope under a Presbyterian Vizor ●n throwing dirt on that Ministry of England who had by their Pens and preaching so long maintained the b●each against his Emissaries Will not they grant this I say when they shall hear it confirmed That he with others of the fraternity is fled to hide himself from Justice under the elbow of a Cardinal In short then the question about our re-investing with our Rights is not Whether clear Lights shall be put out and dark Lanterns set up We are troubled to hear That such an envious comparison should be fathered on so reverend and worthy a person as Mr. Baxter We appeal to him and others Learned and godly of the Presbyterian Brethren Whether they do not know many sequestered Ministers no less learned and godly than their Ejectors Nay let them say if they do not know where Learned and godly men have been put out and boys and self-seeking Temporizers have been put in But this is the Question Whether those Lights which the Law of the Land set up in the Candlesticks or those Williams-with thewispe that violence and usurpation conjured up have the best claim to the Candlesticks The Question is not Whether or no an hopeful Reformation shall be made blank and voided But Whether Oppression shall prevail under the name of Reformation For many of us can profess in the presence of God That our prayers to him and our endeavours with men have been frequent and sincere to this effect That the Nation might be reform from ignorance and profaneness and Sectarianisme and be made a Body of intelligent serious and united Christians And if any amongst us strive to hinder that work we 'll join in reading from Mount Ebal that curse against such Let the great Master lay them aside as vessess in which he hath no pleasure Here therefore we adjure our Brethren who own the knowledge and conscience of what is just and equal not to labour further by clamour and importunity and false imputations to hinder his Sacred Majesty and this his happy Parliament from harkening to our just Suits and the cries of our impoverished Wives and Children and the groans and desires of our scattered slocks whose eyes & hearts are generally toward us their lawful Pastors Our Desires are not to obstruct the way of any that have been in our Livings if deserving men from such preferments or employments as they may lawfully pursue And we confess there are many of them of such eminency for Parts and Piety & Moderation that they are much likelier to be exalted to the highest Spheres in the Church than most of us a●● And we see it and rejoice in it blessing God from the bottom of our hearts for so prudent and pious a Prince that his Majesty's favours lie in common for Brethren both of the Presbyterian and Episcopal Judgement But this we ask not only for our own sakes but that the Ministry be not blamed and that a stumbled block may not be laid in the way of worldlings who plead Ministers leaping upon other men's thresholds to the hardening of themselves and that the mouths of our common Adversaries may be stopped give us up our Rights show that you did but take the charge of the slocks till the rightful Shepherds were again free to look to them and stop the further progress of that jealousy that is already entered into the heads of some both your and our betters That the Presbyterian Ministers manifest such discontents and spirit their prayers and preaching with the former pretences of fears and jealousies not because of their distances from the Episcopal in point of Church Order but for fear they should by Law be compelled to forgo the sweet Morsels of sequestered Living We are sure many of you abhor from any thing that may give rise to this Suspiition and for those that do otherwise the Lord will judge them POST SCRIPT Whereas the late Saturday Petition of some in sequestered Livings to the Parliament hath suggested their sufferings for his Majesty at Worcester and in the Loyal attempts of Sir George Booth and request That in the general ●oy of the Kingdom they may n●● be sa●ed by being left to be proceeded against by a course of Law We hereafter to make it goo● that for one whom the● can produce who suffered for his Majesty there were twenty of them in sequestered Livings who sent horse and men to Cromwell at Worcester and to Lambert in Cheshire Nay amongst those that subscribed that Petition may we but know their Names we question not but to find many offenders of that foot mark And it is evident enough both to his Majesty ●nd the Parliament that they are the men who by their preaching at present have conjured up the old Devil of fea●s and Jealousies and would choose rather to imbroil us again in a Civil War than part with their-not-their Livings And we wonder they can plead foe pity to themselves who would know no pity to their poor Brethren We can instance where some of them have run down two or three or four Ministers into beggary by procuring one sequestered Living and passing from that to another of better value and so onwards reckoning no more of undoing their ejected Brethren and their Families than Boys would do to pluck down Birds-nests one after another and some of them have caused us to be sequestered and ejected without Summons and all we had to be ceased on even to our Boo●● and wearing Apparel much of which they bought of 〈…〉 ators at a low and inconsiderable value and have to this day refused to relieve our Families with one penny of fifths And we no less wonder that they are not ashamed to own that they have been so far from being a Law to themselves that they are afraid to stand to the Judgement of the Law of the Land But we hope our just and noble Patriots will not lay before their posterity the stumbling-block of such an evil example That men should be continued in what they had unjustly gotten le●st they should be sadned when all others who have walked according to Rule are rejoiced that Justice as well as our King is from exile FINIS