3. Argument 2. Inventions rendering the Spirit useless for worship are not to be complied with.
Argument 2. Inventions rendering the Spirit useless for worship are not to be complied with.
A rgument 2 Owen:
2nd Argument: That which was in its first contrivance, and has been in its continuance, an invention and engine to defeat or render useless the promise of Christ unto his Church of sending the Holy Spirit in all ages to enable it unto the due discharge and performance of all divine worship in its assemblies, is unlawful to be complied withal, nor can be admitted in religious worship; but such is the Liturgical worship. That the Lord Christ did make such a promise, that He does make it good, that the very being and continuance of the Church (without which, it is but a dead machine) does depend thereon, I suppose will not be denied; it has been undeniably proved.
Baxter:
§12. To your second argument I answer:
1. To the minor: Do you mean that this was the intent of the first contrivers and continuers? or only that it had this effect, contrary to their
intent? The first seems your sense, which is another misreport, for:
1. You know not who the first inventor was.
2. You know not all the continuers.
3. And so high a charge is to be taken for a slander, till it be proved.
4. Are you sure that you lay not this charge of malignity on the men of God that made the Jews' psalms? and on Christ, that composed a form of praying and baptizing? and on Paul, that commands hymns and imposed on Timothy a form of sound words [2 Tim. 1:13]?
And if you meant it but of the English Liturgy, you could never prove that our martyrs and confessors that made it had so malignant an end. But you speak it of liturgical worship in general, which obliges you to prove almost all the pastors for 1,120 years and more to be such malignants. And it's easily disproved, whether you meant it of their intent or of the effect, by assigning the true and better intent and effect. They did it not to render useless the Spirit's help, but:
1. To be useful where such abilities were lacking. It was the antecedent disability of men that occasioned liturgic forms.
2. And it was to be a help subordinate to the Spirit's help, to those that have it but in part, as spectacles to dark sights and sermon notes to weak memories.
3. They are really a great help to many, and therefore not made only to hinder them. When fitter and more sound and moving words are set before an unready speaker, they help his affection more than his own shorter and unmeeter words would do; and his mind, being not taken up with the study of words, is the freer to attend its affections.
You must not measure all men's volubility of speech by your own. I can truly say that forms are oft a help to me. I find young and old Christians are
more fit to use them than the middle-aged: for the young cannot at first pray well (at least before others) without them till use has taught them; and the old have discretion to fit their affections to sound words oft repeated. But the middle-aged, that have a greater heat and a lesser light, are much more taken with their own sudden effusions and expressions.
Do you think that when Calvin formed the liturgy for Geneva and France, he had so malignant a design as to defeat the Spirit's help? Or do our
English psalms and tunes quench the Spirit? and are they used to keep men from the gift of making hymns ex tempore [out of the temporal circumstances]?
2. I answered your minor first because it is matter of fact, but your major also is untrue, for that which is imposed with an ill intent may be used to a good one: and that which hurts some may be a help to others. If the parishchurches were all built to serve Popery and the mass, and were dedicated to saints, yet we may use them lawfully to better purposes. If priests' marriages be forbidden for ill ends, it may be forborne for good ends. If glebe and tithes were here given first to maintain the mass, they may be used to maintain sound teachers. It was Popes that reversed the old custom of not-adoring-kneeling on any Lord's Day: and yet you may lawfully kneel then in prayer, yea, though they brought in kneeling to the [sacramental] host by that alteration. So that this is another error; and your confirmations are not true.
Owen:
Hereon the Church lived and acted for several ages, performing all divine worship in their assemblies by virtue of the gifts and graces of the Holy
Spirit and no otherwise. 1
When these things were neglected when the way of attaining and the exercise of them appeared too difficult to men of carnal minds, this way of worship by a prescribed liturgy was insensibly brought in to render the promise of Christ and the work of the Holy Ghost in the administration of gifts useless. And herein two things do follow.
Baxter:
§13:
1. It is a great error to think that the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit may not be exercised if we use the same words or if they be prescribed. The chief help of God's Spirit lies in giving us a due esteem of the things prayed for, and a holy desire after them and a lively faith and hope that we shall obtain them, and a fixed resolution to use all other means for them and avoid all that would deprive us of them. And doubtless he that has these mental dispositions has thereby a great help for his expression of them, for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. But:
1. It's well known that use and knowledge can enable a hypocrite to pray as long and in as good words and earnest tone as a sincere Christian.
2. That which is easiest needs the least help: It is to me so much easier to speak my own thoughts in prayer ex tempore than to remember a form of words that never since I was twenty years old did I ever learn [memorize] and say without a book the words of one prayer or one sermon since I preached; to have learned a prayer or sermon without a book would have cost me ten times and more both time and labor, and fear of being out, than
I ever used or could afford.
3. Pardon me for asking whether if this author put all the errors of this his writing into a prayer or sermon, he did not need more help of the Spirit to have avoided them and to have spoken nothing but truth, than to have
fluently uttered so many mistakes? He has heard those called Arminians on one side and Antinomians on the other oft fluently express their opinions in God's worship. The former he took to be heinous errors. Had not all these had more of the help of God's Spirit if they had uttered nothing but true and good in a form than they had to speak so much error and evil to God or man with extemporate fluency.
4. May not a man use the Lord's Prayer by the Spirit's help? If I have any help of God's Spirit, it is more in the use of that prayer than at any other time.
5. May not one sing psalms by the help of the Spirit unless he make them ex tempore? I doubt you lay too much on words: God's Spirit works on the heart and its greatest help is in its greatest gifts, which are faith, repentance, love, desire, etc. and not words. Words must be used and weighed, but the main work is heart-work, and God knows the meaning of the Spirit when we have but groans which we cannot express and cry but "Abba, Father."
But you come to history and add another misreport in the words, "and no otherwise," that the Church for several ages worshipped "no otherwise" than by such gifts as you describe, which exclude liturgic forms. It's plain in the descriptions of Justin and Tertullian that they did use extemporate prayer then, but not that they did no otherwise:
1. Tertullian himself gives you their form of a creed and so do many others.
2. They used a set form of words in baptizing.
3. And they constantly used singing psalms and hymns, which were not made ex tempore, nor by every singer.
4. They used the Lord's prayer in form often.
5. At the Lord's Supper they had diverse words of form and responses. In Cyprian some parcels are to be seen, and in diverse others.
6. The truth is our history of the Church's manner of worship for the first two hundred years is so little that we know but little how they did it, beside the foresaid two passages in Justin and Tertullian. But by what is in the historians of the next ages, and by the Churches' general use of the liturgies without contradiction soon after, and what Daille has gathered, De cultu
Latinorum, etc., 2 we know that "no otherwise" is not true.
2. It's too true that the carelessness, sloth and worldly alienations of ministers made all useful sufficiency for the work of the ministry in praying and preaching to be neglected, and does to this day. But I hope no wise man dreams that all the pastors had one soul or one mind and design. If any malignants used or enjoined forms to make Christ's promise and the Spirit's help useless, others used them and promoted the use of them for the performance of Christ's promise and the Spirit's help:
1. Because there were not (when public countenance increased the churches) half enough men for the ministry that had the extemporate gifts of prayer and preaching.
2. And you confess that each church had then many elders for oversight besides those that labored in the Word and doctrine. Do you believe that all these had such extemporate gifts of utterance? Or that these might not on occasion pray and preach. 3
3. If parents teach children necessarily to pray in a prescribed form of words, without designing to defeat Christ or his Spirit, but to subserve them; how can you tell, but the first prescribers of public forms did mean as well, when they found few persons able to do so well without, and abundance of heretics ready to corrupt God's worship with their errors?
4. Let it be soberly considered whether men's long and hard study for all the words which they write in books and for their sermons be done to defeat
Christ and his Spirit, or to subserve them? And why the use of words studied by others and weighed by us before we utter them should defeat the Spirit any more than words premeditated by ourselves? Or at least is not the Spirit as much defeated in the people that join [in hearing sermons], whoever prepares the words? For they do not themselves put them up by their gift of utterance. And it's impossible when you speak for the people to know whether those words were before studied, and whether by yourself or by another from whom you borrowed them. I have heard Mr. Philip Nye wish that some men were sent into Wales and other such places with an injunction to read good sermon books to the people, such as Dr. Preston's,
Sibbes's, etc. Was this spoken to defeat the Spirit, or to serve Him?
Owen:
1. A total neglect of all gifts of the Holy Ghost in the administration of Church-worship and ordinances.
Baxter:
§14. The first consequence is an untruth: No doubt but liturgies were abused to cherish ignorance and negligence, but that the neglect was total is not true, whether you respect all the churches or all the parts of worship and ordinances:
1. The many holy and excellent men whose fame and writings are transmitted to us did not totally neglect all gifts of the Holy Ghost. Were all the great volumes of sermons preached and written by Chrysostom without any gift of the Holy Ghost? Or was preaching no ordinance? Were all
Augustine's elaborate volumes done without Him? Or all Cyprian's,
Macarius's, Ephrem Syrus's, Basil's, Gregory's, yea, or Bernard's homilies and works?
2. Are the gifts of holy desire, faith, hope, repentance, no gifts of the Holy Ghost? Or can you prove that these were all totally neglected in the administration of Church-worship?
3. It's known that in the exercise of discipline, which is a churchordinance, and in catechizing and preaching, they were not tied only to a form of words; no, nor in all confession, prayer and thanksgiving.
4. It's a great blow to the universal Church to say that it totally neglected all the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Owen:
2. When a plea for the work of the Holy Ghost began to be revived, it produced all the enmity, hatred and contempt of and against the Spirit of God Himself and his whole work in the Church, which the world is now filled withal.
Baxter:
§15. That word, "his whole work in the Church," is another misreport. It is not "his whole work" that is so contemned. A man may preach for mercy to the poor, for obedience to authority, for love, etc. and he may sing psalms of praise and pray for pardon and for kings and magistrates, and for daily bread and may profess to believe the Creed and Scripture, etc. without the contempt which you describe.
But no doubt but malignity will take advantage of liturgies and of almost anything, and so has still done: All is not unlawful which bad men abuse.
What is more turned against Christ in the world abroad than his two great ordinances of magistracy and ministry? What more abused to strife than the sacrament of love, union and communion? Are all these therefore unlawful?
Owen:
All the reproaches that are daily cast upon the Spirit of prayer, all the concontempt and scorn which all duties of religious worship performed by his aid and assistance are entertained withal, arises from hence alone, namely a justification of this devised way of worship as the only true way and means thereof.
Take this away and the wrath and anger of men against the Spirit of God and his work in the worship of the Church will be abated; yea, the necessity of them will be evident.
This we cannot comply with lest we approve the original design of it and partake in the sins which proceed from it.
Baxter:
And it's a palpable mistake that the foresaid scorn of all done by the Spirit "arises from hence alone," [from] a justification of the devised way of worship. It arises more from a malignant enmity to serious godliness and from worldly interests and designs, and from the slanders of seducers that accuse good men, and too much from the miscarriages of many that have boasted most of the Spirit, as Quakers, Ranters, Familists, etc. do.
And experience confutes you, for all those countries that make but little use of liturgies have yet malignant parties that hate and oppose spiritual, serious exercises of religion.
§16. Because you lay the main stress of your cause on history and experience, you constrain me to add some more history which I had rather have passed by. But if I set not experience against experience, I shall leave abundance unto the danger of error [for those] who can judge by little else than experience and that see and feel what's present, and forget what is long past and gone.
The Pros & Cons of Liturgies & Free Prayer The truth I have opened in my Christian Directory, that both ways are liable to great abuse and all human actions have their inconveniences. 4
1. The benefits of a sound liturgy are:
1. to keep out heresy and ill words from public worship, 2. to be a help to men of unready utterance,
3. that the people may know beforehand what they join in.
The inconveniences are:
1. the dulling of affection in hearing still the same words, 2. the tempting of slothful worldly candidates and ministers to learn no other way of praying when this will serve all their worldly turns.
But I must add that this follows not from the imposing of a liturgy, but from the exclusion of other prayer and taking up with this alone.
2. The conveniences of praying from a habit are:
1. a just variation, as occasions vary, 2. help to fresh affection, 3. forcing ministers to get ability for utterance.
The inconveniences are:
1. That the people know not till the words are past whether they may own them, and so they hardly try all and follow with just consent.
2. That abundance of young, raw, unskillful men do ordinarily disgrace prayer by their unskillful methods and expressions.
3. That heretics and erroneous men have great opportunity to put their sins into their prayer, which yet the people should by joining in make their own were they sound (which they are not bound to do by sermons): And no man of understanding can choose, but suspect that weak ignorant ministers will
be showing their weakness in the highest duties, and so must suspend their consent till late.
4. That less care will be taken in speaking to God than in speaking to men, while most sober ministers study their sermons.
5. That when to avoid disgraceful words and manner of praying, men must decree that no such weak or unready men shall be ministers, the number that can do it better will be so small as that most churches on earth must be so deprived of ministers and all public worship if that take place.
6. That by this means young ignorant men that by use can speak fluently and fervently in prayer shall be followed by the people when many great divines, judicious and holy that have not that readiness of utterance, shall be rejected as having not the Spirit.
7. That as all men's bodies and minds be not in the like quickness and fitness at all times, but sometimes clouded by fumes or weakness, the public worship shall be as mutable, uncertain and various as men's tempers are.
All these on both sides are so great inconveniences that though both Formalists and Fanatics have derided me for it, I have formerly said, and still say that I believe that the best way to avoid both sorts of evils is to have meet set forms, which shall be owned by the Church as their professed desires, not being so long as to take up too much time from freer prayer, much less to forbid it, which Calvin wisely ordered for France and Geneva.
And now as you have historically told us the ill consequences of a liturgy, I shall first tell you it is a mistake: None of these arise from a sound liturgy, but from the using that alone and not using also free prayer with it. And next I shall add some more of the history of Separation from churches that
have liturgies, though it be as displeasing to me as it is necessary to the people.
A History of Separatism I will pass by the histories of Muncer and Muntzer, and of David George in Holland, and of Henry Nicols, and the Familists, which were the offspring of Separation: and the sad conflicts which they had against the sober nonconformists, and their sad divisions among themselves in Holland, and how many of them went further to Anabaptistry and more, when Brown their leader here turned conformist. It is only what I have lived to see that I briefly mention:
When the [Long] Parliament began, 1640, there were few Separatists known, comparatively, in England: But when they were encouraged by hope of success, they began to stir and show themselves; and two sorts fell in with them and quickly increased them, that is:
1. the exasperated sufferers, 2. women and weak young men who thought it a great honor in religion to go far enough from persecutors and formal or ungodly ministers, not seeing the danger on the other extreme.
Holy and learned John Ball foresaw the danger and wrote his book called The Trial of Separation, 5 and after, two more: one against [the Separatist]
Canne and another against two New England ministers. 6
The [Westminster] Assembly being called, even sober and excellent men that were for the old conformity in case of necessity (but not otherwise), five of their number, differing from all the rest save two more, wrote for Independency. 7 This controversy began the great breach, while the five dissenters stood stiffly for a liberty that men might gather new churches out of the churches of the other ministers, of as many as should come to them in
all places, and should have all church-power in those separated churches.
The others did not what might have been done skillfully to heal the breach, though they did much. The two parties drew others into the division.
Those called presbyterians were the more quiet, because they thought the dissenters to be few. Independency might have been tolerated, but Separation was that which would not be endured when nothing was imposed in doctrine or worship which the dissenters excepted against. The Separaters, finding themselves few, were the more industrious, especially to get interest in the parliament and army. In the parliament they could never get near the major vote; but they had some, whose policy and industry made up what was lacking in number. And by them they got the army newmodeled, all parliament men thence put out and Cromwell put in power, second in name and first in deed.
He placed his interest (as Constantine did, in owning the persecuted Christians who had no other outward help but him) in declaring himself to be for liberty in religion and the Protector of all godly men that suffered for conscience-sake, or feared it, whereby the dissenters that feared lest the presbyterians would master them came in to him, and he got enough to head his army (and great numbers also of common soldiers) who were for Separation, and being men of other parts and interest than those that fight only for pay, would not run away but conquered almost wherever they came.
I lived in Coventry quietly and with godly, understanding men who thought all the accusations against Fairfax's (or rather Cromwell's) army as turbulent, overturning men had been slanders. After Naseby Fight [1645], 8 being near them, I went for novelty to see them. There some sober men among them told me how they had discouraged all the orthodox ministers,
save one or two, and were deserted by them; and [how they had] turned preachers themselves, they that had the most self-conceit being the speakers, and in a word foretold me what changes they would attempt against king, parliament and ministry.
I went home and told what I saw and heard, and being invited by some of the soberest to the army, I told an assembly of ministers my willingness to venture life and labor among them to undeceive as many as I could. The ministers consented to my going (Dr. Grew and Mr. Simon King, yet living, were two of them). There Cromwell, having notice of all before I came, gave me no opportunity to come near himself or the chief in power: But where I came, I did my best, for I found the Separatists half Arminians and the other half contrary, Antinonians, agreeing to use their power for the changes that were after made. The Scots and presbyterians they designedly and bitterly reproached (the book called Martin Mar-Priest, 9 and other such, tell you their dialect): their usual titles were, "The Priest-byters," "the Drivines," "the sinners of Westminster," "the Dissembly Men," and such like. The godly, able ministers were more scorned by them than formerly I had heard among the drunkards.
What they did after this England and Scotland felt. They cut off the king [Charles I, in 1649], they cast out eleven members from the parliament.
After that they cast out and imprisoned the major part, which was the House of Commons, and cast out all the House of Lord's. Then by these they made the people take an Engagement [1649] against the old form of government to be true to the Commonwealth as then established without a king and House of Lord's. They ordered the sequestring of all ministers that would not fast and pray before and give thanks after for their victories in Scotland.
They then pulled down this remnant of the Commons and called
themselves, without the people's choice, two persons out of each county and called them a parliament. These put it to the vote whether all the parishministers in England should not be put down at once; and as credible report went, it was carried against them but by three voices. These gave up their commissions to Cromwell.
He now becomes the defender of the ministers. The government is again changed and he is made Protector and fundamental laws were made among themselves, by we know not whom. Parliament lords were made by him, with parliaments called and broken at his pleasure. The government of the counties were put into the hands of major generals.
After the death of Oliver [in 1658], his son [Richard] was set up and his parliament was first pulled down (in which the reverend author now opposed told me he was an agent), and next himself. Then the Commons, called "the Rump," were made sovereign again. Then they were pulled down again and a Council of State out of the army that did it is set highest, till at last, by God's most remarkable hand, this conquering army dissolved utterly without one drop of blood and the king [Charles II was] restored without opposition [in 1660].
It's true that serious godliness all this while much increased in most parts of the land, but how? It was mainly by the excellent preaching and living of that ministry whom these Separatists vilified, such as the Assembly-men had been, and by a middle sort of peacemakers, who engaged in no sect, but would fain have healed all; 10 for the effects of the Separating party were these:
1. The land was cast into division and confusion by them.
2. Ranters and Quakers sprung from them.
3. Their overthrow of government brought a reproach on religion.
4. Separated churches of Anabaptists kept up a religious war in many places.
5. All the parish-ministers in Wales were put down and most of the churches shut up, itinerant preachers being set up in their stead lest the parishes should be thought to be churches. Perhaps you will say that these itinerants were better than the old ignorant ministers, but:
1. Their number was so small that there was commonly but one to six or eight parishes: so that the people publicly worshipped God but once in six or eight weeks: And had not a liturgy been better than nothing, or than to live like atheists?
2. The most famous of the itinerants were Mr. Walter Cradock and Vavasor Powel: I knew them both. The former was a most zealous man for practical godliness, with whom I conversed in my youth when in Mr.
Richard Simond's school in Shrewsbury he was concealed from the bishops' pursuit by the name of Mr. Williams. But how gross an Antinomian he turned after he had learned Separation before he was itinerant there, his printed sermons tell us, 11 where he so earnestly persuades men not to question their justification after conversion for any sin whatsoever they shall commit, and more such like. And his printed writings show that Mr.
Erbery, of whom he learned Separation, fell so far as that it's hard to discern that he was at all a Christian. And Vavasor Powel was an Antinomian.
Now I crave a sober answer to this: 1. Whether a liturgy had not been better than no worship for six days in seven? 2. Whether these itinerants that so dangerously erred in doctrine were not more sadly destitute of the help of the Spirit than they that only lacked ability to utter sound words without a form or books? And had not good forms been safer for that people
than the doctrine of Mr. Erbery, Mr. Cradock, Vavasor Powel, Morgan Lloyd of Wrexham (known also in print)?
It grieved me to talk with one of these itinerants in 1663 who came to me for counsel: He had been an Anabaptist set up for an itinerant over many parishes. I examined him and found that he had not anymore learning than to read English, and was grossly ignorant in divinity. He was ordained for all that by a bishop and conformed. I wondered how he past their examination. He told me that they asked him no questions about his learning or knowledge, but only whether he would conform, and so ordained him.
I have now opened some of the fruits of Separation in England, as you have done the supposed fruits of the liturgies, but indeed of the exclusion of free prayers; and judge now whether all the ill effects have come from one extreme. The truth is, having impartially observed the mischiefs of the age in which I have lived, I have found that both the extremes have been the chief causes and the peacemakers both the most understanding and the most innocent; and the nearer any of the several parties have come to them, the more innocent they have been.
It is not mere episcopacy or liturgies that have done the mischief, for such excellent men as Cranmer, Ridley, Hooper, Farrar, Parker, Jewel, Grindal,
Davenant, Ussher, etc. could use both profitably. It's not mere presbytery, for such as Calvin, Beza, Daneau, Sadeel, Rivet, Chamier, Daille, Blondel have been excellent lights in the Church. It is not mere Independency, for Ramus, Ames, Henry Jacob, Jeremiah Burroughs and many others of that mind have been excellent, peaceable men. It is not mere Anabaptistry
[baptists], for there have been many peaceable worthy men against infant baptism (and some bishops thought it not of divine institution); and when
they were rebaptized, continued in love and communion with others. But it is proud ignorance and lack of Christian love causing excommunicating, persecuting, Separation or schism in some, and withdrawing censorious
Separation in others, who (neither party) understand the truth nor ever loved their neighbors as themselves, nor learned to do as they would be done by.
The worldly PR. IGs. 12 and the unruly PR. IGs. by persecution and by causeless Separation and alienation have done the hurt.
But I will tell the bishops that they should not be too angry with the learned author of these twelve arguments, for I know not three men alive whom they are more beholden to for their restitution by opening the door and sweeping the way and melting down or pulverizing all that was like to have resisted them. I speak not of the intention, but of the action by which the Separatists cut down the banks, and when they had let in the prelacy and Liturgy, which they dislike, then write and talk against them.
I will add one question to this unpleasant section: If there be as few in all the Christian world, yea among the reformed Calvinists and Lutherans out of our king's dominions, that can pray as well without a form as with it, as we have great cause to believe, would he have all these nations dissolve all their churches and like atheists, cast off all public church-worship till they have ministers enough that have learned to pray better without a form or liturgy than with it? If this be desired, I appeal to any that can difference
Christianity from heathenism, whether liturgies or such a Separation from liturgies would do more hurt?
And I will add yet one question more: If there be not above two or three (or at last no) church-assemblies in a county which have nonconforming ministers and opportunity to worship God as churches, would you have all the rest of the countries 13 dissolve their church-assemblies, or forbear all
and live like unbelievers? If so, I am a separatist from such destructive principles and Separations.
1. Owen: "…if… before the end of the second century, any proof or undoubted testimony can be produced, of the imposition of the necessary use of liturgies, or of stated ceremonies of the practice of Church discipline consistent with that now in use in the Church of England, it will go a great way in the determination of the whole controversy between us." https://ota.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/repository/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12024/A53704/A53704.html? sequence=5&isAllowed=y , p. 360
2. John Daille, (Geneva: Joann Antonius & Samuel de Tournes, 1664).
3. While ruling elders do not have the calling, gifts or authority for congregational prayer or preaching by office, yet they may do such by God's call of, and provision in, necessity: https://reformedbooksonline.com/topics/topics-by-subject/church-government/ruling-elders/#prayer and https://reformedbooksonline.com/topics/topics-by-subject/church-government/rulingelders/#authority at 'Ruling Elders' (RBO), and https://reformedbooksonline.com/topics/topics-bysubject/preaching/#laymenmay at 'Preaching' (RBO).
4. Question 78, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A26892.0001.001/1:7.94?rgn=div2;view=fulltext in Christian Directory (London, 1673), pt. 3, Christian Ecclesiastics, Cases of Conscience, pp. 85153.
5. John Ball, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A02990.0001.001?view=toc (Cambridge, 1640).
6. Ball, https://archive.org/details/answertotwotreat00ball/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater (London:
1642); idem, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A63200.0001.001?view=toc (London, 1644).
7. Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, Sidrach Simpson, Jeremiah Burroughs, William Bridge, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A85427.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext (London, 1643).
8. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Naseby .
9. The Leveller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Overton_(Leveller) (fl. 1640–1664) had written several tracts under the satirical pseudonym "Martin Marpriest", a play off of the earlier, late1500's tracts by "Martin Marprelate" against clerical vestments and other ceremonies.
10. This included Baxter, as per his account, and description of their method, in The Nonconformists'
Plea for Peace (London, 1679), https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A26965.0001.001/1:9? rgn=div1;view=fulltext , pp. 130-31.
11. Walter Cradock, https://archive.org/details/gospellibertie00craduoft/page/n3/mode/2up? view=theater (London: M. Simmons, 1648).
12. This may likely mean "Proud Ignorants", as a contemporary critic of Baxter, who was unsure, so inferred in https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A65034.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext (London,
1684), p. 26. This is confirmed by Baxter's anti-party spirit and morally adjudged perspective in the
immediate context. Another option is "Presbyterians and Independents" as "G" may stand for "Gatherers", as Independents were sometimes called; yet much of the persecution was done by bishops, prelates and Formalists, as Baxter notes, so this alternative seems less likely. Baxter though may have meant both, or left his meaning ambiguous so as not to be able to be blamed for it by the named parties (note that he was reckoned an Independent by some, though he called himself a presbyterian at times). It is not to be missed that the abbreviations spell "prigs", which word was current in that era with its current meaning.
13. i.e. counties. "Countries", in such a context, meant those living in the country-side, and was often synonymous with counties.