An extract from a work written against the Baptists by Dr. DANIEL FEATLY, will show the manner in which the Presbyterians treated MILTON, respecting his "Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce." Speaking of what he considered the awful sentiments of the Baptists on the subject of the sole headship of Christ in his church; that the civil magistrate had no authority in spiritual matters over the conscience; and that the doctrine of punishing men for conscience sake, was the crying sin of the new English churches, he seriously to contribute this peece of good counsail in way of Reformation to the wise and sensible care of superiours. I cannot but blush for our age, wherein so bold a motion hath been, amongst others, admitted to the light: what will all the Christian churches through the world, to whose notice those lines shall come, thinke of our wofull degeneration in these deplored times, that so uncouth a design should be set on foot among us?" Quoting Gen. ii. 24, the good bishop says: "Loe, before ever there was father or mother, or sonne in the world, God hath appointed that the bond betwixt husband and wife shall be more strait and indissoluble than betwixt the parent or the child; and can any man be so unreasonable as to defend it lawfull, upon some unkind usages, or thwartness of disposition, for parent to abandon and forsake his child, or the sonne to cast off his parent? much less therefore may it be thus betwixt an husband and wife: they two are one flesh. Behold here an union of God's making: a man's matched with a shrew: Thy bone that is fallen to thy lot, that doe thou knaw upon? which would not be, if it were altogether free for him to leave that bone, and take another." adds, "Witness a treatise on Divorce, in which the bands of marriage are let loose to inordinate lusts, and putting away wives for many other causes, besides that which our Saviour only approveth; namely, in case of adultery." He then mentions several other pamphlets, besides this of MILTON'S, which had been recently published by the Baptists, to which denomination he belonged.* *The Rev. Dr. Daniel Featley was doubtless well acquainted with the Baptists. The following account is amusing:"On October 17, 1641, a famous dispute took place between Dr. Featley and four Baptists, somewhere in Southwark; at which were present Sir John Lenthel and many others. The Doctor published his disputation in 1644; and tells us, in his preface, that he could hardly dip his pen in any other liquor than that of the juice of gall; it is therefore no wonder it is so full of bitterness. He calls the Baptists, (1,) An idle and sottish sect. (2,) A lying and blasphemous sect. (3,) An impure and carnal sect. (4,) A bloody and cruel sect. (5,) A prophane and sacrilegious sect. (6,) Describes the fearful judgments of God, inflicted upon the ring-leaders of that sect. This quarto work is entitled, 'The Dippers dipt; or, the Anabaptists ducked and plunged over head and ears, at a disputation in Southwark.' It is pompously dedicated 'To the most noble lords, with the honourable knights, citizens and burgesses, now assembled in parliament.' It is peculiarly gratifying that the Doctor, with all his malignancy, was not able to exhibit, much less substantiate, any charge against them, except what have been commonly but erroneously alleged against the Baptists in Germany; the disturbances at Munster being no more the effect of the principles of the Baptists, than the riots of London in 1789 were those The following beautiful sonnet, written just after these scenes of domestic strife had ended, will exhibit the calmed state of MILTON's mind in regard to correct evangelical sentiments, and the highest exercises of religious feeling: 66 ON THE RELIGIOUS MEMORY OF MRS. CATHERINE THOMSON, MY CHRISTIAN FRIEND, DECEASED "When Faith and Love, which parted from thee never, Of death, call'd life; which us from life doth sever. Love led them on, and Faith, who knew them best His biographer Toland informs us: "And now both his own father dying, and his wife's relations returning to their several habitations, he revived of Protestants, or those in Birmingham of Episcopalians." "The Doctor speaks very contemptuously of his opponents. He calls one of them a brewer's clerk:' no doubt this was Mr. Kiffin, who had been an apprentice to the his academic institution of some young gentlemen, with a design, perhaps, of putting in practice the model of education lately published by himself; yet this course was of no long continuance, famous republican, John Lilburn, of turbulent memory. He it was, too, it is probable, who is called 'Quartermini, the brewer's clerk,' in the pamphlet published in December, 1641, entitled New Preachers new.'" (History of Eng. Bap. Vol. i. p. 164.) Before parting with Dr. Featley, who was a member of "the Assembly of Divines at Westminster," the author hopes he shall be pardoned for giving one extract from this most vituperating pamphlet. It is from "the Epistle to the Reader:"—"This fire, [baptism] which in the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, and King James, and our gracious sovereign, [Charles I.] till now was covered in England under the ashes; or if it broke out at any time, by the care of the ecclesiastical and civil magistrates, was soon put out. But of late, since the unhappy distractions which our sins have brought upon us, the temporal sword being otherwise employed, and the spiritual fast locked up in the scabbard, this sect, among others, hath so far presumed upon the patience of the state, that it hath held weekly conventicles, re-baptized hundreds of men and women together, in the twilight, in rivulets and some arms of the Thames, and elsewhere, dipping them over head and ears. It hath printed divers pamphlets in defence of their heresy; yea, and challenged some of our preachers to disputation. Now, although my bent hath been always hitherto against the most dangerous enemies of our church and state, the Jesuits, to extinguish such balls of wild-fire, as they have cast into the bosom of our [Presbyterian] church; yet seeing this strange fire kindled in the neighbouring parishes, and many Nadabs and Abihus offering it on God's for he was to have been, in 1647, made adjutantgeneral to Sir WILLIAM WALLER, but that the new modelling of the army soon following, and Sir William turning cat-in-pan, this design was frustrated." The same historian says: "A little after FAIRFAX and CROMWELL had marched through the city with the whole army, to quell the insurrection of BROWN and MASSY, [who were] now grown discontented likewise with the parliament, [in December, 1648,] our hero changed his garret for one more accommodated to his circumstances, where, in the midst of all the noise and confusion of arms, he led a quiet and private life, wholly delighted with the muses, and prosecuting his indefatigable search after useful and solid altar, I thought it my duty to cast upon it the water of Siloam to extinguish it." No one could have possibly guessed that the irritated Doctor's pamphlet was water, much less pure water, had he not himself called it so! In my copy, one of the sixth edition, there is an engraved frontispiece, in which he is represented as dead, and laid out in his winding-sheet, and his epitaph dated 1645, with plenty of Greek and Latin! Six editions of this quarto, of 258 pages sold in six years!! So great and universal was the prejudice against the the SECT of Baptists' then, as long since, and still, every where spoken against! But as the devil is represented in the picture of the Reformers, puffing at a lighted candle, and saying, “We cannot blow it out!" so Dr. Daniel Featley, with his" many waters," could not quench" this fire." |