re cautious followers are no
part of our real Church doctrine. This passion for law Court evidence
began with Grotius.

Ib. p. 246.

We conceived there needs no more to be said for justifying the
imposition of the ceremonies by law established than what is contained
in the beginning--of this Section.... Inasmuch as lawful authority
hath already determined the ceremonies in question to be decent and
orderly, and to serve to edification: and consequently to be agreeable
to the general rules of the Word.

To a self-convinced and disinterested lover of the Church of England, it
gives an indescribable horror to observe the frequency, with which the
Prelatic party after the Restoration appeal to the laws as of equal
authority with the express words of Scripture;--as if the laws, by them
appealed to, were other than the vindictive determinations of their own
furious partizans;--as if the same appeals might not have been made by
Bonner and Gardiner under Philip and Mary! Why should I speak of the
inhuman sophism that, because it is silly in my neighbour to break his
egg at the broad end when the Squire and the Vicar have declared their
predilection for the narrow end, therefore it is right for the Squire
and the Vicar to hang and quarter him for his silliness:--for it comes
to that.

Ib. p. 248.

To you it is indifferent before your imposition: and therefore you may
without any regret of your own consciences forbear the imposition, or
persuade the law makers to forbear it. But to many of those that
dissent from you, they are sinful, &c.

But what is all this, good worthy Baxter, but saying and unsaying? If
they are not indifferent, why did you previously concede them to be
such? In short nothing can be more pitiably weak than the conduct of the
Presbyterian party from the first capture of Charles I. Common sense
required, either a bold denial that the Church had power in ceremonies
more than in doctrines, or that the Parliament was the Church, since it
is the Parliament that enacts all these things;--or if they admitted the
authority lawful and the ceremonies only, in their mind, inexpedient,
good God! can self-will more plainly put on the cracked mask of tender
conscience than by refusal of obedience? What intolerable presumption,
to disqualify as ungodly and reduce to null the majority of the country,
who preferred the Liturgy, in order to force the long winded vanities of
bustling God-orators