[271] [Mr. Robinson’s book was published nine years after his death. It was entitled, “Of the Lawfulness of Hearing of the Ministers in the Church of England: penned by that Learned and Reverend Divine, Mr. John Robinson, late pastor to the English Church of God in Leyden, and Printed Anno 1634.” Mr. Canne’s work in reply was entitled “A Stay against Straying,” 4to. 1639.]
[272] [“If this be all the conclusion he striveth for, I shall never contend with him about it. But this is that I deny, a man to participate in a church-estate, where he partaketh only in hearing and prayer, before and after sermon; and joineth not with them, neither in their covenant, nor in the seals of the covenant.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 129.]
[273] [That is, as Mr. Cotton explains it, because “being cast out by the usurping power of the prelacy, and dismissed, though against their wills, by our congregations, we looked at ourselves as private members, and not officers to any church here, until one or other church might call us unto office.” Any other sense is either a mistake, or a “fraudulent expression of our minds.” Answer p. 131.]
[274] [“We are not so masterly and peremptory in our apprehensions; and yet the more plainly and exactly all church-actions are carried on according to the letter of the rule, the more glory shall we give unto the Lord Jesus, and procure the more peace to our consciences and to our churches, and reserve more purity and power to all our administrations.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 132.]
[275] [See Broadmead Records, Intro. p. lxxix.]
[276] [“The world is taken in scripture more ways than one, and so is separation; as when the apostle exhorteth the Romans, not to conform their church-bodies according to the platform of the Roman monarchy, into œcumenical, national, provincial, diocesan bodies, Rom. xii. 2. From the world, as taken for civil government of it, we are to separate our church-bodies, and the government thereof in frame and constitution.” Cotton’s Answer, pp. 135, 136.]
[277] [“Our not receiving all comers unto the communion of the Lord’s table, and other parts of church fellowship, saving only unto the public hearing of the word and presence at other duties, it argueth indeed that such persons either think themselves unfit materials for church fellowship, or else that we conceive them to be as stones standing in need of a little more hewing and squaring before they be laid as living stones in the walls of the Lord’s house.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 139.]
[278] [“Our practice in suppressing such as have attempted to set up a parishional way, I never heard of such a thing here to this day. And if any such thing were done before my coming into the country, I do not think it was done by forcible compulsion, but by rational conviction.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 139. It is difficult to reconcile this disclaimer with facts, unless we attribute ignorance to Mr. Cotton. See before, p. [233], note 8.]
[279] [Mr. Cotton calls this an untruth, yet he adds, “I hold that the receiving all the inhabitants in the parish into the full fellowship of the church, and the admitting of them all unto the liberty of all the ordinances, is an human corruption, and so if he will, an human invention.” Answer, p. 140.]
[280] [“The answer is near at hand.... Those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither, and slay them before my face, Luke xix. 27. And yet I would not be so understood as if Christ did allow his vicegerents to practise all that himself would practise in his own person. For not all the practices or acts of Christ, but the laws of Christ, are the rules of man’s administrations.” Cotton’s Answer, p. 144.]