Posterity that could possibly be laid on them by Ancestors all the obligations they knew of from Conscience and from Religion that where no fear of Man could there at least the fear of God might restrain them Nothing was then thought more available for this purpose than the imprecation of curses on those who should presume to violate it ratified by the concurrence of those who were Authorized by God to oblige him as the Ministers of his Religion and with the Solemnities then used to make the imprecation yet more dreadful It argues very little foresight and is unworthy those excellent endowments wherewith God has blessed our Ecclesiastical Historian when in his Apology for Sacriledge in the Conclusion of his Discourse concerning the Regalia he would weaken the fear of these Imprecations now on account of the superstitiousness by which they were transacted He might easily have foreseen that by suggesting this he did not only weaken the security of his own function for which it would have become him to have been more concerned but the security of the whole Nation for which he must be concerned whether he will or no if he will enjoy any benefit by the grant of our common Ancestors For we have no other security for all the Charters and Customary Immunities of this present Age no not for the Great Charter it self nor consequently for our Liberties and Properties than what he is there so prodigal of and so willing to own unobliging Now what can we say why any who can should not invade the Rights already constituted besides the Right that Ancestors have for obliging their Successors in matters wherein themselves had once a Right by the Constitution under which they lived I know even this is questioned now by some who can find in their hearts to prostitute great parts to ill designs Yet the Interest of Mankind in general which is an infallible Argument of Right in Cases of this nature requires it should be so Otherwise all Leagues and Covenants must expire with the Persons that made them and every Monarchs death must dissolve the whole Body Politick and leave subjects in the state of Nature and their Successors at liberty whether they will ratifie the grants of their Ancestors This must oblige Successors in Justice and Conscience to perform the will of the deceased though it be in their Power to do otherwise But what if this will not restrain them All the remedy that has been thought of to make them observe it has only been the fear of inflictions from the Deity to which imprecations of their Ancestors might make them liable And the belief of these things has obliged all civilized Mankind to own the obligation of the Laws of Nature and of Nations and has indeed been the principal ingredient in the Belief that has so generally prevailed in the World that there is a God that governs the whole World as well as his peculiar people and that with regard to this Life seeing the Belief of the future Rewards and Punishments is proper to them who have received his Divine Revelations and that therefore he will reward keeping of Faith with temporal Prosperity and punish breaches of it with temporal Calamities Why should theyelse in passing their Faith appeal to that Universal Judge of Mankind and imprecate on themselves curses from him if it had not been believed on all sides that curses so imprecated were really to be feared from his Justice to whom both parties had submitted the Judgment of their Cause Why should the like Oaths be required from persons of very false and impious Religions if it had not been believed Universally that God was obliged to perform the imprecation made for securing Faith in this World according to the Opinion of him that made the imprecation how much soever he was otherwise mistaken in his Opinion concerning the true Religion God did actually inflict the imprecations of his own people for securing Faith with the Gibeonites upon their posterity many Ages after in the time of David though the Peace made with the Gibeonites was expresly against his own command So he did also those between Abimeleck and the Sichemites though made in the Temple of Baal Berith Yet all this security was overborn by that violent Prince and with the consent of his Parliaments If his Reign must be allowed for a Reign of Precedents then Magna Charta and the Coronation Oath may again be broken by a Prince who can get Parliaments to joyn with him in breaking them as he did Then the Laity may be voted out of their Rights and forced to surrender them by the concurrence of his Clergy with him as the Clergy were then by the concurrence of the Laity Then any Prince who can but go far enough from the Religion of his Ancestors shall be encouraged to overturn the whole Constitution on pretence of the unobligingness of grants made with the solemnities of a Religion which he judges false and which perhaps indeed may be so But it was not only in affairs of Religion that the Prince I am speaking of did things unfit to pass into Precedents though done with the consent of his Parliaments The most unjust thing remaining in our present Laws the way of proceeding by Attainder from which no innocence can secure a Man was first introduced in his time In his time the debts of the Crown were twice discharged by Acts of Parliament without payment In his time his Proclamations were made equal with Acts of Parliament In his time his Children by both marriages that of Queen Katherine of Spain and that with Anne Bollen were declared illegitimate and that by Acts of Parliament though by the Law of God only one could be so In his time the Lands of the Universites and Hospitals had been given him by the Parliament if he had been pleased to accept of them So very liberal these Parliaments were of what was not out of their own Purses and so far from being a security to the subject against his greatest exorbitances I meddle not with any of his or their personal faults because I am unwilling to engage on so unpleasing an Argument any farther than the exigency of my Cause obliges me to do so And that does only concern me to shew how little reverence is due to them as Legislators § XVIII BUT God be praised we are now concerned with a better and more tolerable Supremacy than that was The next Protestant Princess Q. Elizabeth was prevailed on to lay aside the Title of Supream Head and to propose and admit of a better explication of the Supremacy it self And that upon account of the aversness of the Bishops to it if she had not done so So we are informed by a Letter of Dr. Sands to Dr. Parker preserved by Bishop Burnet He also tells us the Person who prevailed on her to do so Mr. Lever says he put such a scruple into the Queen's Head that she would not take
they could they did so it being notorions in those Primitive Times that they had no more consent of the Civil Magistrate for the one than for the other and yet exercised both and were seconded by God in their Acts of Discipline which supposed their claim to both of them But by Archbishop Cranmer ' s Principles the Apostles themselves could lay no claim to either of them without the consent of the Civil Magistrate and therefore could derive no such Rights to Successors claiming from them that could be undeprivable by the Civil Magistrate Had this Doctrine been true Bishops deprived by a lawful Magistrate cou'd have claim'd no longer But even our Adversaries themselves seem sensible now not only how contrary those Paradoxes were to the Sense of truly Catholick Antiquity but also how little agreeable they are to the prevailing Opinion of them who cordially espouse the Cause of Religion in general and of the Church of England in particular even in this present degenerous Age. This being so our Adversaries themselves cannot be displeased at us for disowning a Supremacy explained by and grounded on such Doctrines as even themselves dare not undertake to defend § XII AND such indeed was the Supremacy as it was first introduced by King Henry the VIII and as it was continued under King Edward the VI. Then as much was challenged as could be allowed by even those licentious Principles of Archbishop Cranmer I mean so much was challenged by the Kings themselves and by the Laity who made a majority in the Legislative Power by the Constitution So much was plainly the design of King Henry to whom Cranmer so effectually recommended himself by these Opinions as our Historian observes And the Sense of the Legislative Power cannot be better proved â—â—an from the Expressions of the Laws themselves T 〈…〉 st Law is more modest and though it do own the King for Head of the Body Politick consisting of Spiritualty and Temporalty yet withal it clearly distinguishes their two Jurisdictions and does not make them interfere any further than as that perhaps might be meant by making the King the common Head of both of them For so the words of the Act run The body Spiritual whereof having power when any cause of the Law Divine happened to come in question or of Spiritual learning that it was declared interpreted and shewed by that part of the said Body Politick called the Spiritualty now usually called the English Church which always hath been reputed and also found of that sort that both for knowledge integrity and sufficiency of number it hath been always thought and is also at this hour sufficient and meet of it self without the intermeddling of any exterior Person or Persons to declare and determine all such doubts and to administer all such Offices and Duties as to their rooms Spiritual doth appertain c. And the Laws Temporal for tryal of Property of Lands and Goods and for the conservation of the People of this Realm in Unity and Peace without rapin or spoil was and yet is administred adjudged and executed by sundry Judges and Ministers of the other part of the said Body Politick called the Temporalty And both their Authorities and Jurisdictions do conjoyn together in the due administration of Justice the one to help the other Accordingly it is afterwards enacted that all Causes concerning our Dominions be finally and difinitively adjudged and determined within the Kings Jurisdiction and Authority and not elsewhere in such Courts Spiritual and Temporal of the same as the natures conditions and equalities of the Cases and matters aforesaid in contention or hereafter happening in contention shall require Thesâ— things plainly shew the State wherein that assuming Princes â—ound things when he began his Innovations and which all o 〈…〉 to endeavour to restore who desire that the antient bounds of Magna Charta should be preserved inviolable For what security can it give us in our present Settlements if former violations of it in others by not being repealed must be allowed to pass into Precedents for new and future violences when any are possessed of force sufficient to attempt them But this will directly overthrow the Legality of what has been done for depriving our Holy Fathers by a Lay Authority even supposing it Legal It is indeed probable that when this Act was made the King himself designed no such exercise of purely Spiritual Authority by Lay Persons Bishop Burnet himself observes that in Cromwell ' s first Commission as no such Precedency was granted him as was afterwards next the Royal Family so neither was any Authority at all granted him over the Bishops And this Act now mentioned shews plainly that the Case was so All Appeals here of private Persons in Spiritual Causes are ultimately to the Archbishops saving the Prerogative of the Archbishop and See of Canterbury And in Causes wherein the King should be concerned the ultimate Appeal is to the Spiritual Prelates and other Abbots and Priors of the upper House assembled and convocated by the Kings Writ in the Convocation being or next ensuing within the Province or Provinces where the same matter of contention is or shall be begun Thus far therefore it is very plain that neither the Title of Head nor the Supremacy could oblige us to own any Lay Authority whatsoever to be sufficient for a Spiritual Deprivation even interpreted according to the Sense of the Legislators themselves So all the Right that the King as a common Head could pretend to over the Clergy in Causes purely Spiritual was not a Right to give them any Power which they were not supposed to have Antecedently to any exercise of the Kings Authority over them but a Right to oblige them to make a good Use of that Power which they had already received from God But on this Supposition as he can give them no new Power in these matters so neither can he take that Power from them which he never gave them Which will alone be sufficient to ruine the validity of Lay Deprivations § XII HOWEVER Archbishop Cranmer ' s Opinion being so grateful to the King and the Laity who made the majority in the Legislative Power did accordingly prevail But being withal as singular among the Clergy who were notoriously the only competent Judges of Spiritual Rights it prevailed in such a way as one would expect an Opinion labouring under such a disadvantage of true Authority would do that it was urged to the height when either elation of success or an exigence of affairs urged them to such odious extremities otherwise the practise of it was intermitted when cooler thoughts took place as having great presumptions against it that it was unwarrantable and those good ones even in the Opinion of the Governours themselves who having now intirely subdued the Clergy were no longer under any other restraint than that which was from their own Consciences Accordingly after the surrendry of the Clergy when now
all his violences had success according to his own mind the King gave Cromwell a more ample Commission over the Bishops themselves and with Power of Spiritual Coercion answerable to the utmost rigor of these loose Opinions now mentioned And he was a person every way fitted for it As he was an intimate Friend of Archbishop Cranmer ' s so he was also a favourer of that singular Opinion which was so much for the interest of his Commission Our Historian himself takes notice of it as one of the things objected to him at his Attainder that he had said that it was as lawful for every Christian man to be the Minister of that Sacrament of the Eucharist as a Priest This clearly shews that Opinion to have been odious even then in the Consciences of the Attaindors themselves and therefore that their other Acts grounded on that and such like Opinions were not bona fide upon true conviction of Conscience Otherwise they could not have had the confidence to charge the belief of such Opinions as a Crime on him if they had in earnest believed them themselves The odiousness also of such a Power as was exercised by Cromwell appeared also in this that after him there was no Successor substituted in his place with such a Commission as his was nor any general Vicegerent appointed for executing the Kings Supremacy in Spirituals distinct from the Bishops and Archbishops However whilst his Commission held he acted to the height of what his Friend Cranmer ' s Opinion would warrant him He gave out general Injunctions for all Spiritual Jurisdictions as Bishops had done formerly for their own Dioceses He took upon him to call Bishops to an account for their administration in Spirituals Our Historian himself has inserted some of his Letters to this purpose sufficiently Imperious But however odious such general Commissions were for things beyond the Power of the Laity yet the Lay Law-makers could not be restrained from encroachments as they thought they had occasion But this they did by the degrees now intimated § XIII In the next year which was the XXVth of that King's Reign there is an Appeal allowed from the Archbishops themselves to the Kings Majesty in the Kings Court of Chancery And upon such Appeal a Commission was to be directed under the Great Seal to such Persons as should be named by the Kings Highness his Heirs or Successors which Persons so empowered were thereby Authorized to give definitive Sentences from which no further Appeal was allowed This was the very Power which had formerly been allowed to the Pope Accordingly it is enacted that no Archbishop nor Bishop of this Realm should intermeddle with any such Appeals otherwise or in any other manner than they might have done before the making of this Act. So that as the Power of the Pope was by the former Act translated to the upper House of our own Convocation in matters wherein the King himself should be concerned so here the same Power is again translated from the Convocation to the King himself and the Power of the Convocation is transacted by a smaller number and those of the Kings nomination This did put the decision of such Cases as much in the Kings Power as himself could desire though the persons to be nominated by him had been Ecclesiasticks Yet even that confinement is not laid upon him that they should necessarily be so He was therefore at perfect liberty not to exercise any part of this Power by Lay-men any further than as the Ecclesiasticks acting herein by his Commission might be supposed to derive their Power from him who was himself a Lay-man Yet even that was capable of a better Interpretation that the Commission did not give them the Power by which they acted but only Authorized them to exert the Power they had before with impunity from the Secular Laws and with the secular support This was only dare Judices as the Praetor did to particular Causes out of those who were by the Laws qualified and empowered to be Judges in general Thus Constantine the Great did dare Judices to the Donatists Melchiades and other Gallicane Bishops who otherwise was notwithstanding very wary of encroaching on the Bishops Rights in general to judge concerning Spiritual Causes What therefore was done hitherto was fairly reconcilable to our Doctrine without asserting any Right as to Spirituals derived from the King to the Bishops which as it was given by him might consequently be deprivable by him also What the King himself did in giving such a Commission to Cromwell was a Personal Act not granted him by any express Law during the time that Cromwell possessed it and therefore cannot be any just ground for interpreting the Supremacy and the Oath concerning it with relation to Posterity but must have been extinguished with his Person though he had been more constant to it than it appears he was Much more considering that even he himself did not think it fit to continue th Office after Cromwell The same may also be observed concerning the Bishops who took out Commissions for their Spiritual Episcopal Power There being hitherto no Law obliging them to do so must make their Acts also Personal For this is sufficient to shew they were not obliged to it by any Sense of the Legislators which cannot be known but by their Laws There was not so much as Proclamation for it that might reduce it to that Law which was made in the same Reign for equalling the Kings Proclamations with Acts of Parliament though that Law had continued still in force as it is certain it has not Less than one of these will not suffice for proving us concerned in what was then done as an Argument of that Sense of the Legislators which was to oblige all Posterity till the Law was repealed by the same Authority that made it § XIV THE next Act in the XXVIth year of the same King gives him as Head of the Church of England full Power and Authority from time to time to visit repress redress reform order correct restrain and amend all such errors heresies abuses offences contempts and enormities whatsoever they be which by any manner Spiritual Authority or Jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed repressed ordered redressed corrected restrained or amended c. Here are Spiritual Causes Errors and Heresies given as Instances wherein the King might concern himself And Spiritual Power in all the kinds of it is supposed in these Corrections to be performed by the King when he is allowed to correct all sorts of abuses that might by any manner Spiritual Authority or Jurisdiction be corrected No part of the Episcopal Power is here excepted not even that of Excommunication But then it is not even yet determined whether this Spiritual Authority and Jurisdiction be supposed in them who are to be by the King obliged to exercise it or whether also the Authority was to be derived from him too If the
the Title of Supream Head The Bishops as it is said will not swear to it as it is but rather lose their Livings The occasion seems to be that now the Succession falling to a Woman it seemed very indecent to believe her an Original of Sacerdotal Power who was by her Sex incapacitated for exercising any Sacerdotal Act to believe that a Right of Excommunication could be derived from her who was on the same account unqualified to consecrate the Eucharist and to give the Communion though they who had the Right had given her that power that she could be the Head of Sacerdotal Power to others who was not capable of being a Sacerdotal Head at all For the Apostles Reasoning holds concerning this Sacerdotal Headship which is the principle of mystical Unity that the Man in general is as much the Head of the Woman in general as the Head of the Man is Christ and the Head of Christ is God These things no doubt gave the Papists a subject of tragical Declamations then as their Books shew they did after Nor was the scandal only given to the Papists but to the Protestants also who returned from their exile with a zeal as great for the Geneva Discipline after the troubles at Frankford as the others could pretend to for the Papal And accordingly it was a Protestant that perswaded her to lay aside the Title of Supream Head or rather not to resume it after it had been laid aside by her Sister However the Supremacy it self she did resume but with such an Explication as made it thence forward tolerable The Supremacy it self she resumed as it had been practised formerly by her Father and her Brother as far as by any Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Power or Authority had heretofore been or might lawfully be exercised or used So the words of the Act run wherein she also revives the Act of 37 Hen. VIII 17. as far as it concerned the Practise of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction by Lay Doctors of the Civil Law She also resumed a Power of issuing out Commissions for exercising Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and of giving out Injunctions as formerly Thus the Case stood in her first Parliament which began Jan. 23. and was dissolved May 8. of the year 1559. Which things if they had held had been little else besides the abatement of a word But her Injunctions themselves followed that same year after the dissolution of the Parliament wherein she remits of the things themselves at least with reference to the Oath which was first introduced in this Parliament in the form wherein we use it now In these Injunctions she forbids her Subjects to give ear to those who maliciously laboured to notifie to her loving Subjects how by words of the said Oath it may be collected that the Kings or Queens of this Realm Possessors of the Crown may challenge Authority and Power of Ministery of Divine Service in the Church She therefore tells them that her Majesty neither doth nor never will challenge any other Authority than under God to have the Sovereignty and Rule over all manner of Persons born within these her Realms Dominions and Countries of what estate either Ecclesiastical or Temporal soever they be so as no other foreign Power shall or ought to have any superiority over them She tells them therefore that if any Person that hath conceived any other sense of the form of the said Oath shall accept the same Oath with this interpretation sense or meaning her Majesty is well pleased to accept every such in that behalf as her good and obedient Subjects and shall acquit them of all manner of Penalties contained in the said Act against such as shall peremptorily or obstinately refuse to take the same Oath § XIX HERE is a fair Legal Interpretation allowed by the Regal Authority it self for whose sake the Oath was imposed perfectly discharging us who have been concerned in it from the Belief of Archbishop Cranmer ' s Principles themselves and therefore from meaning any such sense of it as otherwise mig 〈…〉 have followed and indeed must if the taking of the Oath had necessarily supposed our belief of those Principles Here we find those Principles denied to have ever been the Sense of the Legislators even in the time of King Henry the VIII or King Edward the VI. The Queen in the same Injunction calls it a sinister perswasion and perverse construction to think it was so We need not now dispute how true this assertion was for the time past It is sufficient for our purpose that from the time of this Injunction we are not obliged to mean it so how plainly soever it may seem to be supposed in the Acts revived by her Yet whâ—â— I have already said is sufficient to shew how unsteady the Legislators were in urging the belief of these Principles on them who took this Oath even when the Words of the Laws themselves did seem most literally and naturally to import them in the Sense of the Legislators themselves I have already observed the Paper subscribed by Cromwell and Cranmer himself contrary to their own Doctrine in the height of Cromwell ' s Power I have observed that Cromwell ' s opinion that Lay-men might consecrate the Eucharist was so odious even in King Henry ' s Reign that it was made an Article against him for his Attainder So also in the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum wherein Cranmer had a principal hand drawn up in the later end of King Edward the VIth the Power of the Keys is owned to have been given by Christ to the Church and the Power of Administring the Sacraments and of Excommunication â—s asserted to the Ministers and Governors 〈◊〉 the Churches and they are allowed to be the Judges who are to be admitted to the Holy Table and who are to be rejected notwithstanding the Laws made in that same Reign prescribing to the Ministers what they were to do in these very Cases notwithstanding the words of the now mentioned Acts nay even of that very Collection asserting expresly that the King within his own Dominions has plenissimam Jurisdictionem over the Bishops and Clergy as well Ecclesiastical as Civil and that both Jurisdictions are derived from him as from one and the same Fountain This Reformatio was intended to have been confirmed in Parliament according to so many Acts made concerning it if the Kings death had not prevented it Whether these things be reconcilable or not I am not now concerned It is very possible that the same Legislators may own that in certain consequence which they do disown in express terms And in such a Case the securest way for the Subject who cannot be obliged to Contradictions will be rather to be concluded by their express professions than by their reasonings and consequences where they are not reconcilable Especially where those professions are agreeable to that Practise which is notoriously allowed by the Legislators themselves Allowed Practise is granted by
particulars of it were that our Church does not tell us here Yet without an enumeration of particulars none can tell what particulars were intended But these are rather to be judged of by other passages where the same Church tells us what that Authority was which she thought the Godly Kings had amongst the Jews This she her self tells us expresly in the Article She there tells us that the only Prerogative which we see to have been given always to all Godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself is that they should rule all Estates and Degrees committed to their charge by God whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal and restrain with the Civil Sword the stubborn and evil doers If this Right of ruling the Ecclesiasticks be all that is asserted to the Prince by the Supremacy in Spirituals and that very ruling be only a restraining them with the Civil Sword these two things are so very exactly agreeable to our Doctrine that we can by no means be concerned in the censures mentioned in the Canon I might withall mention what I have already insisted on the approbation of the Explication in the Injunction in the same Article by which we are excused from believing that the Lay Magistrate has any Right to deprive Bishops of their Spiritual Power or from believing any thing from whence that may be solidly inferred For why should we not interprete the sense of our Church of England in her Canons by her sense in her Articles Why should we suspect she meant to Excommunicate her Members by her Canons where no particulars are expressed for particularly disowning that extent of secular Authority in Spirituals which in her Articles where she states the Question and tells us what she takes to be the Rights of Princes as expressed in the Scriptures she does not mention as a Right of the Jewish Kings nor consequently of our own We deny not our Kings a Right of driving Bishops away by the Civil Sword if no more be insisted on from the Case of Solomon and Abiathar And no more can be pretended to be the Right of our Kings by this Explication in the Article This is in truth an antient Right of the Supream Power even before it was Christian. The Emperor Aurelian had it though then a Pagan and afterwards a Persecutor and practised it with the approbation of the Primitive Church against Samosatenus Exile and imprisonment and confinement to a certain place such as that was of Abiathar to Anathoth we grant to be Temporal Punishments in the Power and Right of him whoever he be who has the Right of managing the Civil Sword But it is very plain by this Interpretation of the Queens Injunction allowed in this Article that our Church did not oblige to the rigour of some mens private opinions and particularly not to these of Archbishop Cranmer concerning the dependence of the Sacordotal Power on the Prince And therefore though there have been those who from that Case of Abiathar have inferred the deprivableness of the Episcopal Power by the Lay Magistrate there is no reason to believe that ever our Church in that Canon intended to exclude all such from Communion who could not come up to the heights of these private Oâ—â—â—ators The rather this is credible because I have already shewn that even in the times of King Henry the VIII and of King Edward the VI. when these Opinions were believed by the Legislators themselves they notwithstanding had not the confidence to impose them How much less were they likely to 〈◊〉 under King James the 〈◊〉 when these Opinions were generally disbelieved I am sure those Fathers who made those Canons could not with the least likelihood pretend that in those Times of the Primitive Church when the first Christian Emperors governed this Opinion was believed that all Spiritual Power was derived from the Emperor and was therefore deprivable by him Yet if they did not they could not give this Right of depriving Bishops of their Spiritual Power to our Kings considering that in this very same Canon they do not pretend to give our Kings any other Rights than what were owned in the first Christian Emperors by the Primitive Christians § XXVI WELL. But however our Adversaries think that the sense of the Legislators as explained by the Practise is against us that Laymen have been permitted the use of Spiritual Censures Such was that Case of Cromwell Such that of the Lay Civilians still permitted by the Spiritual Courts and defended by the Act of Parliament Such the late Commission Court empowered to suspend and deprive the Bishop of London consisting of Laicks mixt with Ecclesiasticks and a Lay President But Facts alone do by no means signifie the mind of the Legislators unless they be approved and agreeable to Principles Much less can they pretend to be Rules in Conscience to the Obedience of the Subjects For Princes do many things upon exigencies of state which even themselves do not approve when they are free from those exigencies So far they would be even themselves from imposing them generally on their Subjects Consciences And the Facts we are speaking of have been so rare and discontinued that even that is suffiâ—ient to shew that even the Princes themselves have done them unwillingly and with regret and under the necessity of those very exigencies I need not repeat what I have already observed to this purpose in the Reigns of King Henry the VIII and King Edward the VI. As for the Commission Court it is no wonder if King James the II. took the utmost liberty that Protestant Lawyers allowed as Law It is rather to be admir'd that Protestant Lawyers should help him to an Expedient so hurtful to their own Communion and that upon such slender grounds as a few Facts which they were pleased upon so little probability to allow as Precedents The Bishop of London then when it was his own case did not think the Laymen his competent Judges in order to his suspension or deprivation from Spirituals And those Lawyers who had so much zeal not as to pervert them but keep them equal and unbiassed between both extreams did think his Plea not only equitable in conscience but warrantable in Law It were well his Lordship and those Lawyers would recollect how applicable those things are to our present case which themselves so zealously defended then As for the Act in favour of the Lay Civilians it self complains of the rareness of such Examples then because of the averseness of the Bishops to imploy such persons on such affairs That is sufficient to shew how much it was even then against the sense of the Ecclesiasticks who were the only competent Judges of Right in matters of this nature with regard to Conscience Since that time it has been still more disagreeable though the Practice has continued on account of that Act in favour of it Yet it has furnished the Non-conformists with an Objection and that such an one