before I have, as they were publicly summed up and charged upon me, and yet none of them tending to the breach of holy or civil peace, of which I have ever desired to be unfeignedly tender, acknowledging the ordinance of magistracy to be properly and adequately fitted by God to preserve the civil state in civil peace and order, as he hath also appointed a spiritual government and governors in matters pertaining to his worship and the consciences of men; both which governments, governors, laws, offences, punishments, are essentially distinct, and the confounding of them brings all the world into combustion. He adds:

A land cannot be Babel.

CHAP. VII.

Mr. Cotton. "And to speak freely what I think, were my soul in your soul's stead, I should think it a work of mercy of God to banish me from the civil society of such a commonweal, where I could not enjoy holy fellowship with any church of God amongst them without sin. What should the daughter of Sion do in Babel, why should she not hasten to flee from thence ?"

Answer. Love bids me hope, that Mr. Cotton here intended me a cordial to revive me in my sorrows: yet, if the ingredients be examined, there will appear no less than dishonour to the name of God, danger to every civil state, a miserable comfort to myself, and contradiction within itself.

For the last first. If he call the land Babel, mystically,

2 ["I intended not a cordial of consolation to him, . . . but only a conviction, to abate the rigour of his

indignation against the dispensation of divine justice." Cotton's Answer, p. 48.]

of Christ.

which he must needs do or else speak not to the point, yet a church how can it be Babel, and yet the church of Christ also?

civil states where yet

peo- no sound of

Secondly, it is a dangerous doctrine to affirm it a misery to live in that state, where a Christian cannot enjoy the fellowship of the public churches of God without sin. Do we not know many famous states wherein is known no Famous church of Jesus Christ? Did not God command his ple to pray for the peace of the material city of Babel, Jesus Christ. Jer. xxix. [7,] and to seek the peace of it, though no church of God in Babel, in the form and order of it? Or did Sodom, Egypt, Babel, signify material Sodom, Egypt, Babel? Rev. xi. 8, and xviii. 2.

A true church of

in material

There was a true church of Jesus Christ in material Babel, 1 Pet. v. 13. Was it then a mercy for all the in- Jesus Christ habitants of Babel to have been banished, whom the church Babylon. of Jesus Christ durst not to have received to holy fellowship? Or was it a mercy for any person to have been banished the city, and driven to the miseries of a barbarous wilderness, him and his, if some bar had lain upon his conscience that he could not have enjoyed fellowship with the true church of Christ?

his

a civil state
distinct
from mercies
of a spiritual

Thirdly, for myself, I acknowledge it a blessed gift of The mercy of God to be enabled to suffer, and so to be banished for name's sake and yet I doubt not to affirm, that Mr. nature. Cotton himself would have counted it a mercy if he might have practised in Old England what now he doth in New, with the enjoyment of the civil peace, safety, and protection of the state.3

Or should he dissent from the New English churches, and join in worship with some other, as some few years since he was upon the point to do in a separation from the

S ["I bless the Lord from my soul for his abundant mercy in forcing me

out thence, in so fit a season." Cot-
ton's Answer, p. 49.]

C

C

Old and

churches there as legal, would he count it a mercy to be plucked up by the roots, him and his, and to endure the land, for the losses, distractions, miseries that do attend such a condi

New Eng

countries

and civil

government tion? The truth is, both the mother and the daughter, able. Old and New England-for the countries and governments

incompar

Mr. Cotton not having

are lands and governments incomparable: and might it please God to persuade the mother to permit the inhabitants of New England, her daughter, to enjoy their conscience to God, after a particular congregational way, and to persuade the daughter to permit the inhabitants of the mother, Old England, to walk there after their conscience of a parishional way (which yet neither mother nor daughter is persuaded to permit), I conceive Mr. Cotton himself, were he seated in Old England again, would not count it a mercy to be banished from the civil state.

And therefore, lastly, as he casts dishonour upon the felt the mise- name of God, to make Him the author of such cruel mercy,

ries of others

can be no

of them.

equal judge so had his soul been in my soul's case, exposed to the miseries, poverties, necessities, wants, debts, hardships of sea and land, in a banished condition, he would, I presume, reach forth a more merciful cordial to the afflicted. But he that is despised and afflicted, is like a lamp despised in of him that is at ease, Job xii. 5.

the

eyes

[Mr. Cotton was at one time much inclined to Antinomianism, which, in the hands of Mrs. Hutchinson, led to no small disturbance in New England. He however denied that he wished to separate on the ground of the legal teaching of the churches with whom he held communion, but thought of removing to New Haven, 66 as being better known

to the pastor and some others there, than to such as were at that time jealous" of him in Boston. A timely perception of Mrs. Hutchinson's errors led him to renounce her fellowship, and he remained at Boston. Neal's Hist. of N. E., i. 183; Mather's Magnalia, iii. 21; Knowles's Life of R. Williams, p. 140.]

CHAP. VIII.

Mr. Cotton. Yea; but he speaks not these things to add affliction to the afflicted, but if it were the holy will of God to move me to a serious sight of my sin, and of the justice of God's hand against it. "Against your corrupt doctrines it pleased the Lord Jesus to fight against you, with the sword of his mouth, as himself speaketh, Rev. ii., in the mouths and testimonies of the churches and brethren, against whom, when you overheat yourself in reasoning and disputing against the light of his truth, it pleased him to stop your mouth by a sudden disease, and to threaten to take breath from you: but you, instead of recoiling, as even Balaam offered to do in the like case, chose rather to persist in the way, and protest against all the churches and brethren that stood in your way: and thus the good hand of Christ that should have humbled you to see and turn from the error of your way, hath rather hardened you therein, and quickened you only to see failings, yea, intolerable errors, in all the churches and brethren rather than in yourself.”

Answer. In these lines, an humble and discerning spirit may espy-first, a glorious justification and boasting of himself and others concurring with him. Secondly, an unrighteous and uncharitable censure of the afflicted.

of the

The lantern

of God's word must alone try who fights

with the

sword of

To the first I say no more, but let the light of the holy lantern of the word of God discover and try with whom the sword of God's mouth, that is, the testimony holy scripture for Christ against antichrist, abideth. God's And whether myself and such poor witnesses of Jesus Christ in Old and New England, Low Countries, &c., desiring in meekness and patience to testify the truth of

mouth, the

same word

of God.

Whether

Mr. Cotton

or the

answerer

be likest to Balaam.

Jesus against all false callings of ministers, &c., or Mr. persecuting, Cotton, however in his person holy and beloved, swimming persecuted, with the stream of outward credit and profit, and smiting with the fist and sword of persecution such as dare not join in worship with him:-I say, whether of either be the witnesses of Christ Jesus, in whose mouth is the sword of his mouth, the sword of the Spirit, the holy word of God, and whether is most like to Balaam?

The answerer's profession con

cerning his

sickness,

which Mr.

Cotton upbraids to him.

To the second: his censure. It is true, it pleased God by excessive labours on the Lord's days, and thrice a week at Salem: by labours day and night in my field with my own hands, for the maintenance of my charge: by travels also by day and night to go and return from their court, and not by overheating in dispute, divers of themselves confessing publicly my moderation, it pleased God to bring me near unto death; in which time, notwithstanding the mediating testimony of two skilful in physic, I was unmercifully driven from my chamber to a winter's flight." During my sickness, I humbly appeal unto the Father of spirits for witness of the upright and constant, diligent search my spirit made after him, in the examination of all passages, both my private disquisitions with all the chief of their ministers, and public agitations of points controverted; and what gracious fruit I reaped from that sickness, I hope my soul shall never forget. However, I Scripture, mind not to number up a catalogue of the many censures

history, ex

["I have been given to understand, that the increase of concourse of people to him on the Lord's days in private, to the neglect or deserting of public ordinances, and to the spreading of the leaven of his corrupt imaginations, provoked the magistrates, rather than to breed a winter's spiritual plague in the country, to put

him a winter's journey out of the country." Notwithstanding, Mr. Cotton asserts that Mr. Williams was treated most tenderly by the officer, James Boone, "who dare not allow that liberty to his tongue, which the examiner often useth in this discourse." Cotton's Answer, p. 57.]