[CCCVIII.—For the Right Honourable, my Lady Viscountess of Kenmure.]
(WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY—RELIGIOUS SECTS.)
M ADAM,—Grace, mercy, and peace be to you.—I am glad to hear that your Ladyship is in any tolerable health; and shall pray that the Lord may be your Strength and Rock. Sure I am, that He took you out of the womb; and you have been casten on Him from the breasts. I am confident that He will not leave you till He crown the work begun in you.
There is nothing here but divisions in the Church and Assembly;[438] for beside Brownists and Independents[439] (who, of all that differ from us, come nearest to walkers with God), there are many other sects here, of Anabaptists,[440] Libertines who are for all opinions in religion, fleshly and abominable Antinomians,[441] and Seekers,[442] who are for no church-ordinances, but expect apostles to come and reform churches; and a world of others, all against the government of presbyteries.[443] Luther observed, when he studied to reform, that two-and-thirty sundry sects arose; of all which I have named a part, except those called Seekers, who were not then arisen. He said, God should crush them, and that they should rise again: both which we see accomplished. In the Assembly, we have well near ended the government, and are upon the power of Synods, and I hope near at an end with them; and so I trust to be delivered from this prison shortly. The King hath dissolved the treaty of peace at Uxbridge, and adhereth to his sweet prelates, and would abate nothing but a little of the rigour of their courts, and a suspending of laws against the ceremonies, not a taking away of them.[444] The not prospering of our armies there in Scotland is ascribed here to the sins of the land, and particularly to the divisions and back-slidings of many from the cause, and the not executing of justice against bloody malignants.
My wife here, under the physicians, remembereth her service to your Ladyship. So recommending you to the rich grace of Christ, I rest, your Ladyship's, at all obedience in Christ,
S. R.
London, March 4, 1644.