Baillie’s Parallel. Compend.

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A COMPEND OF THE PRECEDING TREATISE, in a Speech at the General Assembly of Glasgow, 1638.

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The imposing of the Books on the Bishops part is an act of greater tyranny, than ever was used in this Nation; for some few men by a Letter purchased from a Prince to press on a Nation against the hearts of all ranks and estates, contrary to many Laws of this Church and Kingdom, standing both in force and practice, three or four Books full of novations, all to be believed in every point, by every person, under pain of the great Excommunication, doth cast our souls, bodies, and estates under a slavery intolerable. In England, yea in Ireland to this day, as our adversaries confess, the smallest rite was never enjoined without the consent of a Convocation or general Assembly. By this preparative the Mass, yea the Alcoran or Talmud will not be gotten refused, let all the Kingdom cry they are against Scripture and the Laws of Church and State, they shall not be heard, if so some two or three prime and leading Bishops will oppose, no barre had been left us against the Alcoran, let be the Mass-book, but the sole will of our gracious Prince, if so this practice of our Bishops had gone on.

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Secondly, The service Book is all for common words by word drawn out of Popish Rituals, which this day are used at Rome. The first part of it is a compend of the Matins and Vespers in the Breviary: The second is, the sum of the Missal, the third of the Ceremonial.

Thirdly, The Mass Book, which all Protestants of what ever name do so far abhor that they rather would die than embrace it, this abominable Mass hath three parts; The Ordinary, which is sung on any common day; The Temporal, which is additions or changes used in all Sundays and high Festivals: The Sanctoral [i.e., pertaining to the saints], which is the forms added to the ordinary Mass on the Saints’ days. These three parts of the Mass are all set down in our Book; Out of the temporal we have above fourscore forms, out of the Sanctoral [i.e., pertaining to the saints], about twenty, what we leave out which the Mass hath, may be taken in upon the same reasons whereupon we take what we have borrowed.

Fourthly, The ordinary Mass is commonly divided in six parts; The Preparation, The Instruction, The Offertory, The Canon, The Communion, The Post-Communion. Our Book hath all these six in order.

Fifthly, The Preparation is subdivided in twelve portions, whereof we have ten near word by word, the Pater noster, the Collect, the Gloria Patri, the Kyrie Eleyson, the Confession, the Misereatur, the Absolution, the Angelic Hymn, the Salutation, the Oremus. The two which remains, Ave Maria, and the Introibo ad altare, we may not refuse upon reason. Stafford is allowed to print that it is puritanism to refuse to the Virgin Mary these hail Marys which our forbears of old wont to sing to her. For the Introibo our prime Bishops avow, that our Book not only hath an Introibo ad Altare, but which is much worse Adoremus altare.

Sixthly, The Instruction hath eight portions, four principal, which we have all in the same order, four of little moment, to wit, the Gradual, Hallelujah, Tractus,

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and Sequentia. These with the Popes good leave may all be omitted, as Spalato shews at large, and if the Pope will not dispense therewith, we might not refuse them on any reason according to our Bookmen’s grounds.

The principal are the Epistles, Gospels, Creed, Predication. In the reading of the Epistles and Gospels, we follow punctually the misorders, the follies, the superstitions of the Papists, we cast the Epistles ever before and the Gospels behind, contrary to the order of Scripture, we begin at the end of one chapter and end at the beginning of another, we course from place to place without any reason imaginable except the free-will of some foolish Pope, who cut Scripture in patches, and couched it in the Missal as his fancy led him: or some superstitious conceit of the day whereto he would apply such Scriptures, but oft with an evident impertinency. The Acts, the Revelation, the Books of the Prophets, except the Pentateuch we call them all Epistles, even as the Mass. We are commanded to stand at the Gospels and say at their beginning and ending the Popish sentences, but at the Epistles we may sit and keep silence; of this foule superstition there can be no reason given, but that wicked errour of the Papists, that the doctrine of the Epistles is more base and contemptible than the doctrine of the Evangelists, and so should be before it, as a servant goes before to make way for his Master. This wicked superstition they much increase, when they command to stand also at the reading of the Creed of Constantinople, by this means equaling an human writ to the Gospel, and preferring it much to the Epistles of the Apostles, at reading whereof they permit to sit.

Seventhly, the Predication is urged in the old Missals, but in the late order of Sarum it is omitted, this we follow and permit Communions to be celebrate without any Preaching, a horrible evil, who dispense with Preaching on a Communion day, may well want it all the days of the year, we are here worse than the Papists, the Council of Trent urges Bishops to preach every Sab-

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bath, and many more days, our folks cry down preaching so far as they can, and profess that it were good to have no more preaching then there was before the 18. year of K. Henry the eight: They teach that many Ministers should be kept in their places, but commanded never to preach so long as they live, that some few who are suffered to preach should do it but at some rare times, once in the month is abundant; that the reading of the Service is the only ordinary Preaching that God hath commanded, that by this means people may be brought back to that old simplicity, and so that ancient honesty which was among our fore-fathers before Luther or Calvin was born.

Yet there is more ill in this part of our Book, Homilies are to be framed by our Prelates, and what ever is put in them we must believe under the pain of excommunication. The Homilies of the Breviary are composed for the most part by the old Fathers, these of England by the Martyrs of that Church whose writes are very orthodox, but our Homilies are to be made by men whose lives are not approved, and whose doctrine is known to be both Arminian and Popish, it is not possible but such stuff as they have vented in many Sermons will be put in our Homilies, which notwithstanding we must without doubt simply believe, unless we would be excommunicate.

Eighthly, The Offertory, a plain Jewish oblation going before and making way for the unbloody and propitiatory sacrifice, we have clearly. In the Mass it hath four parts, so in our Book; the first is Scriptures stirring up the people to offer; the second, an Oblation of money; the third, an oblation of bread and wine; the fourth, prayers upon the bread and wine to prepare it for the ensuing Sacrifice.

In the first we go beyond the Papists, they content themselves with one place of Scripture, we have fifteen or more: many of them pointing at the Jewish sacrifice, yea directed to countenance the Priest’s greed. Our Book

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here patronizes that vile sacrilege of the Mass-Priest, who saves his Mass for advantage, for we are permitted to take to our own use the one half of the offering, and to employ the other half in what good use the Priest and the Church-warden can agree. In the second part we have a plain legal sacrifice, a putting of the offered money in the Priest’s hands, who sets it on the Altar before the Lord. In the third place, we have an offering of bread and wine on the Table. In the fourth part likewise prayers over the bread & wine that God would accept them for the benefit of the whole Church universal, both dead and living; the Mass expresses particularly some dead men’s names, which our men do not insert but keep them in the general.

Ninthly, The Canon which the Papists call the heart and head of their Mass, cor & vertex [the heart and summit], consists of Prefaces and Prayers. Their prefaces are either ordinary, or solemn: the ordinary we have word by word; the solemn are ten for high times; the first five for Christmass, Pasce, Pentecost, Ascension, Trinity, we have: The other five we want, but upon no necessity. The prayers are six in number, the third and fourth they count the only principal, to wit, the prayer of consecration, and the prayer of oblation; these two we have avowedly. The Papists distinguish their consecration from sanctification; consecration, especially here, they call a secret pronouncing of some holy words on the elements for their transubstantiation, we avow such a secret murmuring of words on the elements, for this prayer of consecration is not said that the people may hear, but in it we are ordained to run from them so far as the outmost wall will suffer, and then we must come to the west side of the Altar, and so turn our back, we must be within both the rails of timber and vail of cloth, least men should either see or hear us, so we may use any language we will, for God understands all, and the elements none. That the secret prayers over the elements are made for their conversion into the body and blood

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of Christ it is clear, for we take in these words of the Mass, Ut fiat corpus & sanguis [that it may become the body and blood], whence all Papists this day conclude transubstantiation, and which the English put out of their Book for fear to further by them this heresy; we put out the clause which stood here in the old Missals, Quod est figura corporis & sanguinis [which is a figure of the body and blood], which did oppose this wicked heresy, yea some two or three golden passages of the English Liturgy which did oppose likewise that abomination we scrape out. And to assure us more of their mind they have put in some new Rubrics, to eat the remains by Communicants in the holy place, to consecrate so little as can be, and to cover all with a Corporal, which word was never here used before the corpus [body] was believed to be under the elements, all this our Book hath gotten, as is averred, propter Sacramentarios [because of the Sacramentarians; i.e., Zwinglians], such heretics must we be who believe the body of Christ to be contained in the heavens until he come Again. They tell us that Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists are fully agreed on all that is material in that question, to wit, Christ’s real presence, that the only difference is about the mode and manner of presence, which is but an unnecessary, curious, and undecidable question, about the which none will contend did not the Devil foster up Puritans and Jesuits to hold in that fire, yea they are now come to avow the Popish modes, to proclaim the body of Christ to be received by our bodies and that corporally, and to be upon the Altar so grossly, that the Altar as its chair of estate is to be adored with latria it self, for the bodies presence on it, yea that the Papists when they worship the Altar or the elements or the species that are about the body are in no case Idolaters for that action: yea that the Church of Rome doth maintain no kind of Idolatry. The Rubrics of this part of the Mass some we take, as the laying our hands on the paten and chalice. The Rubric of bowing before the paten and chalice or hostie, thereof we have not a word but punctually our men practice it, giving four inclinaboes [i.e., bowings of the head] to the elements before the act

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of receiving: the other Rubric for the people’s prostration at the elevation of the hosty they cannot be against, sure their practice is to bow most lowly to the place where the hostie uses to lie.

Tenthly, The prayer of Oblation stands at the back of the consecration in the Mass, and so in our Book; there is in the words some changes, but what we add or detract it is for our disadvantage, the main words whereon the unbloody sacrifice is grounded we have, and if what we want of it were added, we must not refuse it, for they defend all this part of the Mass, making no bones to profess the offering up of Christ’s body and blood in a propitiatory sacrifice for the benefit both of quick and dead, yea in this matter of a true external unbloody sacrifice, which the Priests in the new Testament ordained by Christ after the order of Melchizedek in these words hoc facite [do this], do offer: our men within these two years have gone very near as far as any of the Romish Writers.

Eleventhly, The other four particles of the Canon we omit, but needlessly, for our men defend them all as good and lawful; for the matter, the things most to be stood upon are that in them the Pope is prayed for as the chief Bishop; this now these with whom we have to do will easily digest, to count him Antichrist is but the malicious ignorance of Puritans, yea it is but their mad frenzy to deny him this day the style of holiness in the very abstract, he is Peter’s successour, that order requires one to be chief and first among all Bishops, this honour is due to him who sits in Peter’s chair, that injurie was done unto him in the reformation, in taking from him not only his usurped power but even his proper right. In these prayers also the B[ishop]. of the diocese is put before the King; this now is not strange to the faction, they print that every B[ishop]. is a true Prince, yea a Monarch, so much more excellent than a King as the soul is more excellent than the body, that the Emperours in duty ought to light down from their horse and give reverence to the Bishops, yea on their knees to receive their blessing.

Twelfthly, The third scruple that might deter us from these prayers, is that the names of the Virgin Marie, and of many Saints are reckoned up, by whose intercessions and merits we pray to be defended: this also they defend; in their prefaces to their prayers, they delight to reckon up the names of these Saints, they maintain the Saints to be our Mediatours of intercession, as Christ is of redemption, they avow they pray to their Angel keeper, and would be glad to pray to all the Saints, if they were persuaded of their audience, and now many means have they found out of getting intelligence to the Saints of men’s estate on earth, especially that glass of the Trinity. As for merit they go as far in it as Bellarmine; their Epigrams are famous both to Papists and Protestants, Virtutum sancta & speciosa caterva salutem divino ex pacto quam meruere dabunt [The holy and beautiful company of virtues will give the salvation which, by divine covenant, they have merited]. The last scruple which might appear in these prayers is a supplication for ease to all who have died in faith and sleep in peace: from this all the Papists deduce Purgatory, yet this passage is defended by our men; as for Purgatory they are very near it, Limbus Patrum they teach openly, yea Christ’s descent there and lower also, for the bringing up of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Theseus, Penelope, and many Pagans. The grounds of Scripture whereby we refute Purgatory they deny, the passages of Scriptures and antiquity whereby the Papists labour to prove Purgatory they press on us, an expiative Purgatory wherein by the prayers of the living the sins of the dead are put away they profess.

Thirteenthly, After the Canon follows the Communion for better preparation thereto, the Missal hath some more prayers and ceremonies; the first prayer after the Canon, is the Pater noster [Our Father] with the Preface audemus dicere [we dare to say], the Priest having once gotten Christ the Son in his hands after the muttering of the prayers of consecration and oblation, is bold with a loud voice to say,

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Our Father: It is so in our Books clearly. After the Pater noster [Our Father] are sundry short prayers, the sum whereof is in our prayer of humble access; as for the ceremonies of breaking the host in three parts, the giving the pax, and so forth, our men will never strain at such gnats, they maintain the Church’s power of instituting significant rites, they take in worse ceremonies than those, to wit, surplices, rotchets, copes, candles, incense, organs, cornets, chancels, altars, rails, vails, a reclinatory for confession, a lavatory, a repository, also crossings, coursings, bowings, duckings, and which is worst of all, crucifixes of massy silver, images in carved stone and bowing of the knee before them.

Fourteenthly, Before the communion we have a direction that the Preacher shall communicate first himself alone in both kinds, this is the Roman order, where the Priest’s communion in both kinds is only required, the peoples communion they count but accidental, this is the consumption wherein they put the chief part of the essence of the Mass, we direct the people to communicate in their own order, never a word of both kinds, yea we seem to make the giving of the cup to the people no ways necessary, for our men build the people’s right to the cup not on God’s word, but only on tradition; they approve diverse cases of old, where the people did participate the bread alone, they have repositories near the Altar for keeping of the consecrated bread to the use of the sick. In the distribution, the words whereby the Priest assures the receiver that he takes in his mouth the body of Christ, are put directly in our Book from the Roman order, the body of Christ preserve thee to life eternal; and to persuade the receiver the more, he is to say Amen unto it. At the receiving of the cup the same words are borrowed from the Missal, the blood of the Lord Jesus preserve thy Soule, and the person receiver must say his Amen. The golden sentences of the English which here were put in as antidotes to the venom of transubstantiation are expurged, and for them

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a Rubric full of black venom is put in of covering the paten and chalice with a corporal.

Fifteenthly, The postcommunion is prayers of thanksgiving which the Priest sings in the end of the Service, the same in substance with our collect of thanksgiving; nothing in any of these postcommunions which our men do refuse; hardly will you find one sentence in the Mass, from the beginning to the end which our Book-men will not defend as tolerable, and so what we want of the full Mass, it needs no more but half an hour’s writing to the Bishops Chaplain, that in the next Edition it may be put in for our full union in our service with the mother Church of Rome. That the intention of our prime Bishops is Popery in gross, it may be shewn by reasons which they will not answer in haste.

For shortness, I will point only at four other particulars, to shew what seeds of Popish impiety, idolatry, errour, heresy, may be seen in our Book; for impiety, they put the Sabbath day and other festivals of human institution all in one order; teaching that the fourth command of God is not the ground of the Sundays’ observation, that we may lawfully without offence of God do all these things on the Sabbath which may be done on other holy days, that is, go to public pastimes, reap corn, fish, take journeys on horse or foot. Secondly, for idolatry, the cross in baptism will lead to it, for they avow from the use of the sign of the cross in Baptism, doth follow clearly the lawfulness of material crosses, crucifixes, images of all kinds in the Churches for religious use, yea that the religious use of images moves the heart with many pious affections, especially with a deep reverence towards the person who by the image is represented, which reverence is lawfully declared by outward adoration before the Image. Thirdly, for gross errour, the Book tells that all baptized Infants have all things necessary to salvation, and all of them who die before the years of discretion are undoubtedly saved, from hence our men conclude that all

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the Articles of Arminius do clearly follow the total and final apostasy of millions from the state of regeneration and salvation, the power of man’s free-will to oppose, resist, overcome and reject efficacious regenerating and saving grace, the perseverance in grace by our free-will antecedent in God’s mind to his decree of election, the intention of Christ to sanctify and save as well the reprobate as the elect, the conferring of sufficient grace to reprobates, yea universally to all men, &c.

These are the avowed doctrines from the same ground of our men without circumlocution, yea from another place may be gathered the errour of justification by the works of the Law, which all Protestants ever detested as a damnable heresy, the Book requires the restitution of the ancient penance, that by the afflictions of the body the soul may be saved, then bodily penance satisfies God’s wrath for sin; so faith in the blood of Christ is not our sole justification; the Papists go no farther in this point in their injurious heresy of justification, than our men these years past have gone, and that without controlment, except advancement to high honour and great benefices be counted a punishment. [See the Self-conviction.]

FINIS.