near that time; and who cannot, without unreasonable partiality, be presumed to know more of the two or three hundred years before they were born, than some men in this present age may be thought to know of the last two or three hundred years; since they of the former time, to whom we pretend to give most credit, did never pretend to know any thing by divine revelation or inspiration; nor had they resort to more credible records for their information, than they of this present age have for so much of the preceding time. And yet all that we can receive from them cannot amount to a clear conviction in any important matter of fact, which they deliver to us; when others of the same time, who may be presumed to know as much as they, either contradict their assertions, or take no notice of such matter of fact to have been: which we shall too often find to be the case in the writers of the most ancient times. Let us come then to that plain meaning of the provocation, that in difference of opinion upon any Christian practice, or Christian precept, comprehended in or deduced from scripture, or relating to either, our safest direction will be from the judgment or opinion of those fathers, whose writings are left to us, and who lived nearest the primitive times, and from those councils which were celebrated by the primitive bishops in those times and few men having the hardiness te

be thought to undervalue either the one or the other, (how just exceptions soever they have to both) they who differ most in their practice and opinions, do with equal confidence aver their submission to that tribunal, which they call the sense of antiquity, and which they do with equal reason urge in defence of their mutual contradictions; for they do find in at least some of the fathers, it may be in all, what may very well be applied to all their purposes, as they find in others of them, and often in the same, what may seem to favour the contrary opinion: and therefore, though the concurrent consent of fathers and councils in any one particular conclusion, cannot but confirm any modest man in the believing thereof, yet any of their dissenting and contradicting other conclusions, and in which they frequently contradict each other, need not shake any man in his believing what, upon perusal of what they say, and the reason of their opinions by his own reason, he judges to be true, though contrary to what many, it may be most, of them have believed. Nor is there any one Christian church in the world, that at this time doth believe all that the fathers did believe and teach in their time, even in those things in which they did not contradict each other; nor is it the worse for not doing so; nor is there any ope church in the Christian world, that at this

day doth enjoin and observe all or the greater part of what was enjoined and practised in the primitive church. And therefore it is very little better than hypocrisy, to pretend that submission and resignation to the ancient fathers, and to the primitive practice, when they very well know, that the learning and industry of pious men who have succeeded the fathers, and the great skill in languages which they have arrived to, together with the assistance they have received from them, have discovered much which was not known to them, and made other interpretation of scripture than was agreeable with their conceptions: and that the difference of times, the alteration of climates, the nature and humour of nations and people, have introduced many things which were not, and altered other things which were in the practice of the primitive church, and observed in the primitive times: of all which several instances shall be given in the ensuing discourse. And we have no reason to believe that such introductions or alterations are unacceptable to God Almighty, or that he ever meant to limit posterity, when his church should be propagated and spread over the face of the earth, to observe all that was at first practised, when all the Christians of the world might have been contained in two or three great cities; which very probably they might have been, though they were

farther dissipated, when most of the apostles themselves were dead: and we may piously believe, that our Saviour himself and his apostles, who knew well how far the church in time would be extended, would not have reduced the Christian faith and doctrine into so little room, and left so little direction for the government thereof, if they had either expected such a union of opinion and judgement in all propositions which might arise, or be drawn from the former, as some men fancy to be necessary; or if they had not intended or foreseen, that in the latter, very many things would depend upon the wisdom and discretion of Christian princes; who, according to the customs and manners of the nations where Christianity should be planted, would establish and alter many things, as they saw from time to time like to advance and contribute to the growth and practice thereof. This liberty God permitted to his own church of the Jews; which, notwithstanding his so particular prescription of whatsoever he thought fit for his worship, introduced many things, and left out other things, which they had been accustomed to: and methinks we may more piously and more rationally believe, that God was not displeased with the discontinuance of the feast of tabernacles, at least in that manner that was prescribed and enjoined by himself, than that king David, the man after God'

own heart, and in whose time we have reason to believe the religion of the Jews to be in its greatest integrity; or that Solomon, in whose time their church was in its full lustre, and God himself was so well pleased; and Hezekiah, and so many good and pious kings who succeeded, would for a thou• sand years together have discontinued an essential piece of God's service so literally prescribed by him; and that Nehemiah, out of the scruple which his melancholy suggested to him, and in which piety would not restrain him, upon his exact perusal of the law, in which he found that the Lord had commanded Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in the booths in the feast of the seventh month, which was that of tabernacles, revived the order and method of observing that feast very warrantably, without any reproach upon those excellent kings and priests, who had as warrantably (we may believe) discontinued it: many as material alterations as that having been introduced by succession of time and difference of climates, and natures of people, both before and since, into the church of God.

Do the opinions of the present church in any Christian climate concur with the primitive in angels or devils; or with that doctrine of the Chiliasts, concerning the thousand years of Christ's reign upon earth, which was the judgment of the