in him to which every Man may attain by his personal Capacity antecedent to the being of a Church and Church-Governors Or in the words of Mr. Hales made your own by citing of them in your Irenicum pag. 108. Schism is but a Theological Scar-crow set up by such as hold a Party in Religion And by consequence the Church of England is upon the same terms in respect of the Church of Rome as the Dissenters are in respect of the Church of England The Impositions of both are alike Anti-Christian which is again the very Doctrine of the Irenicum Your Answer to several Treatises c. is the next of your Writings that I have pitcht upon whence to inform my self and others of your particular Judgment in these points of Church-Power and its Obligation And that which I hence report will be so much more satisfactory because in your Answer to Mr. Cressy's Epistle Apologetical c. you refer him hither from pag 260. to pag. 291. as those Pages in which you maintain as much Authority in the Church of England as ever the Church of England challenged to her self But here you have left the Church in the same condition you had placed her in before and altogether without Power to make her Declarations Law whether in Council or out of it and the Office assigned by you to her Pastors is to Teach Instruct Propose and Recommend engaging them in Toil and Labour enough in order to the search of Truth but they are no where vested with an Authority to oblige the whole Body of Christians or the Church diffusive Each Private Man is left at Liberty to receive or reject according to his Eye-sight and as he apprehends the Reasons Motives Tradition Context Criticism or inward Revelation of that which is delivered And you say withal That the ancient Church did not pretend to more Authority as is to be seen in the Pages foregoing As for that branch of Authority you assign her in making Rules and Canons about matters of Order and Decency in the Church it is no more than in effect you had said before in your Irenicum and accordingly you refer to it in the point in the Preface to the Vnreasonableness of Separation where notwithstanding you contend with all might and main sometimes against the Laws themselves as Anti-Christian sometimes against the execution of them that they be not imposed upon doubtful Consciences as I have already shew'd And you have since been engaged for a Toleration or Non-execution of Church-Laws in the said Preface pag. 83 84 85. then when you had Preached but a little before against Separation and this is the last and all the account that I can give of you in this affair He that is most favourable to you must yield that you are wavering and unfixed in your Judgment And did you really believe that there is an advantage on the side of Authority which ought to over-rule the Practice of such who are the Members of that Church where the Authority is exercised as you speak you would also be so kind to Dissenters as to urge with more constancy upon them their duty in obeying as a Private Man you ought to propose nothing less unto them Tho' I cannot see why we should less doubt of your good will to them and their Cause when you drew up those Terms and Articles of Toleration than of Coleman's kindness to the Papists when he drew up his Declaration for Dissolving the Long Parliament in order to a Toleration also And it will be difficult to determine which of the two was more presumptuous I know what course the Ancient Church would have taken with a Private Presbyter who after a full debate in Council seconded with a Church Sanction and confirmed by the Imperial Constitution should have dared to have made Proposals or draw up Rules and Limitations and make them publick in opposition thereunto and yet this was not your first attempt of this nature your good will to Comprehension Latitudinarian Principles hath all along been manifest and notorious Those many Meetings which you and your Church of England and Mr. Baxter and his Church of England had were not so private but that some took notice of them where you made Proposals for altering the Church Government setled and confirmed by all that is sacred in Church and State. And the reason is plain why those Men afterwards dealt so severely with you of which you complain in the above-mentioned Preface upon that Sermon which was Preached before my Lord Mayor because after your healing Condescensions in private you appear'd a Revolter and Apostate and they were to deal with you as one that had broken his Faith. If some other had Preached that Sermon they might possibly have born with him he acting according to his principles when you were not to be endured tu Brute their Friend with whom they took sweet Council together concerning the House of God. I add farther 1. That in your Treatise of the Vnreasonableness of Separation you no where that I could take notice of have pressed Christians to Obedience as they are a Corporation imbodied under Governors and Laws of their own which is the original and fundamental Obligation to submission and conformity arising from the nature of that Kingdom which Christ erected by the promulgation of the Gospel of which Kingdom every true Christian is a Subject I do not deny but that your performance is competently well done upon your principles and so far as it reacheth You have abundantly set forth the reasonableness of our Book of Common-Prayer in the Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies and urged Obedience thereunto from the destructive consequences that must inevitably follow in that Church or Society of Christians which retains not an Vniformity of Worship and more especially this reasonable one that we have in our Church of England But all is left still as matter of Dispute like the Corporation it self as Arbitrary and at the pleasure of its Subjects to retain or reject them and he that sees not with your Eyes by your own principles hath no Obligation for Obedience and Conformity to any one Rubrick Law or Injunction therein contained And it is observable in your Epistle Dedicatory that you beg pardon indeed of your Superiors for going beyond your bounds in your projects of accommodation But it is not for any one reason relating to them as your Governors or because you have been injurious thereby to their Power and Government in the Church of God which you in so doing had inroaded and invaded But because forsooth the Dissenters would not come up to you and their untractableness rendred your Project useless admit you had jump'd together and united in the project What then Why you had never begged their pardon And it was success not design was wanting by your own confession The very case of Coleman Besides is not this a delicate Apology for your self After
the agreement of it in making the Foundations of its being that is Believing in Christ and walking in him to be the grounds of its Communion From whence it necessarily follows that whatsoever Church imposeth the belief of other things as necessary Articles of Faith and not only agreements for the Churches Peace which were not so antecedently necessary to the being of the Catholick Church doth as much as in it lies break the Vnity of it and those Churches who desire to preserve its Vnity are bound thereby not to have Communion with it so long as it doth so To which you add That nothing ought to be imposed as a necessary Article of Faith to be believed by all but what may be evidently propounded to all persons as a thing which God did require the explicite belief of As also That nothing ought to be required as a necessary Article of Faith but what hath been believed and received for such by the Catholick Church of all Ages All which whoso please may read more at large from Page 48. to Page 57. I having only digested it and put in as narrow a room and with as much perspecuity as I could For since the rule is He that gives must take I venture to be so bold as to tell you It is there all along very roughly and incoherently both as to matter and form even contradictorily put together by you tho' not altogether so unintelligibly but that it is plain and evident that you have quite overthrown the Jesuite For as I said before If all Articles of Faith necessary to Salvation be antecedent to the being of the Church and its Governors the Pastors of it they cannot then how great soever that Power is wherewith they are enstated by Christ be conceived to have created any one of them But the main doubt is How you will answer for those many and palpable injuries our common Christianity suffers thereby and rescue your self from the perverser conclusions which are the immediate result of your Arguing As 1. That a Man may be a Christian and not a Church Member 2. That true Faith and Obedience may be attained out of the Church 3. That the being of the Church is not necessary to Salvation 4. That the Church is a subsequent Combination for Acts of Worship 5. That Church Officers are not of the essence of the Church 6. That the exercise of the Communion of the Catholick Church adds only to her perfection And by consequence 7. That the Church doth not cease to be a Church without it any other ways than a Man ceaseth to be a Man without a Hand or a Foot. 8. That the Union of the Catholick Church depends upon its agreement in the Foundation or in that assent and belief which is antecedaneous unto it Or thus 9. That Schism which is a breach of the Churches Union does not relate to Church Officers in their Church Laws and Canons 10. That all necessary Articles of Faith are antecedent to the Catholick Church and consequently that Article of the Holy Catholick Church in our Creed 11. That the being of a Ministry is not the object of a Christian Man's Faith so as necessarily to be believed by him 12. That that Church which imposeth it as such as much as in it lies breaks the Unity of the Church And other Churches are not bound to have Communion with it so long as it does so 13. That the Church Explanations of Faith are not a necessary object of Faith. 14. That the Church ought not to explicate any one Article of Faith or deliver and recommend it in any other words for the assent of Faith than those we find in Scripture 15. That when any such Explication of Faith is made it must be made evident to all persons that God did command that Explication and require the explicite belief of it 16. That the determinations of Faith made by any Council but more particularly by the Four first General Councils are an Usurpation and Imposition upon Christendom because there is no Declaration of God's will that those higher Articles should be so explained and imposed on Christians as in those Councils they are determined 17. That Athanasius and the Homoousians were the imposers upon the Church of God in that great Controversie betwixt them and the Arians 18. That Universality as to persons time and place is not that which makes a necessary Article of Faith because all necessary Articles of Faith are supposed by you to have been antecedent to the Catholick Church as to persons time and place and consequently you must either say That the Article of the Catholick Church is no necessary Article or object of Faith or those conditions are not necessary to the making such 19. That the placing some Books of the New Testament in the Canon which were not once there for some time of the Church is an imposition 20. That all the Laws and Definitions of the Church concerning the highest Articles of Faith oblige no otherwise than when concerning an ordinary Ceremony 21. That there is no more guilt in denying the Doctrine of one Substance than in not standing up when the Nicene Creed is said supposing that a Rubrick hath injoyned it 22. That the Church of England hath put the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds into her Church service and enjoined them for an instance of her Confession of Faith when she does not require that we believe them or if she do she goes beyond her Authority 23. That she greatly erres not only in imposing the Athanasian Creed for our Confession of Faith which either she does not require us to believe or if she does we ought not to believe but turns out the Apostles Creed upon certain days to bring that in its room 24. That her breach of trust together with the affront is much more unpardonable because the Athanasian Creed is commanded to be said in the room of the Apostles on the highest days and in the highest Offices of our Christian Service and Worship viz. The great Festivals of the Year as Christmas-day Easter-day Ascension-day Whitsunday Trinity-Sunday when a more particular signal Confession of our Faith with the greatest Zeal and Ardency Courage and Resolution is implied to be a Christian Man's Duty And lastly That herein and hereby you give support and countenance to the many Sectaries that are among us as Anabaptists Socinians Independents Quakers who upon these very grounds that you have laid down to oppose the Church of Rome quite fling off the Ministry or Church of God as altogether useless as to its publick Acts of Worship or Decrees and Declarations Or else they to be sure look upon it as that which cannot be supposed absolutely necessary to Salvation And indeed the consequence comes unavoidable upon you for if that which is necessary to the Salvation of all Men be antecedent to Church Society or Ecclesiastical Communion and attainable without it you will find very little left whereby to
you have Mountebank'd and Quack'd for full Five and twenty Years and find your Patient worse and worse under your hands and that you are unable to work a Cure you then return him to the Church and her Laws of Discipline for a just Habit and Temperature The College of Physicians I am sure would not think themselves beholden to such an Empirick 2. The reason which you give for that great tenderness you shew'd to Dissenters when writing the Irenicum Preface pag. 84. or that plenary Toleration all Men ought to have is because the Laws were not then Established and return it upon them that they have not very well requited you for the tenderness and pity you had for them and the concernment you expressed to have brought them in upon easier terms than were since required But pray was not the Church of England the same under the Rump Parliament and Cromwel and the Committee of Safety as it now is And what had you to do to enlarge or limit her terms then more than now It was then a Pragmatick Encroachment and so it is now I do not believe that Bishop of this Church from whom you say you received in those days Episcopal Orders gave you any such Directions I am sure you received no such Authority at your Ordination by him When the Empire frowns upon the Church or Anarchy relaxates the due Exercise of her Worship and Discipline Church-men and every good Christian are to consider what is most necessary to be practised And some directions are given in the case by the Author of the Discourse of Church-Power c. cap. 5. But none are to think themselves acquitted of their Obedience to Church-Laws during the Suspension or Interregnum much less that they are Authorized to prescribe easier terms and acquit the first Obligation Besides this Answer and Practice is no ways agreeing with him who hath told us That the Church is a peculiar Society in its own Nature distinct from the Commonwealth subsisting by Powers of its own apart from it subjected in the hands of its own Officers by a Charter from Christ never to be divorced but remaining formally in the Church after its being incorporated into the Commonwealth For how can this Church be disestablished by any confusions in the State or lose this Power All that can be said in your behalf is this and I am resolved to say what is to be said for you That according to this reason you do not believe the Power that is enstated on the Officers in this Body and Association for governing the whole to extend to Acts and Laws restraining their Liberties in these cases or that the Church is a Body subsisting by her own Laws but assert the Legislative Power in the Secular Hand which being at that time so much lessened in this Church and Kingdom you thereby amongst the rest of the Arbitrary Subjects became at liberty to act apart and did so conceiving that no Law as a Church-man or in Episcopal Orders did enjoin you the contrary And hence it 's plain why in the Appendix to the Irenicum where we have also the above-mentioned Definition of a Church you say That you have slit the Hair betwixt the Church and State adjusting to each that Power which belongs to them when you name only Excommunication and Administration of the Sacraments as her Rites And hence it is as evident also as any thing can be That I did not Steal my considerable Arguments out of this Appendix which I used in behalf of that other instance of the Power of the Church viz. to govern her own Body by her own Laws the asserting whereof makes up the Body of my Discourse And it farther appears That that was not one of those points concerning which you saw reason to alter your Judgment in Twenty Years time As in the Preface to the Vnreasonableness c. 3. In that Preface pag. 53. upon the clamors of Dissenters by reason of your Sermon against Separation and that you Preached not for Abatements and Alterations and taking away Ceremonies and Subscriptions and leaving them full Liberty to do what they pleased by which you might have gained their good Opinion and have been thought to have Preach'd a very seasonable Sermon Or in plain English because you did not make Proposals for Toleration as you did a little after To all this you suggest supposing my private Opinion were never so much for some Abatements to be made that might tend to strengthen and unite Protestants and were consistent with our Nations setlement had it been seasonable to have spoken of the alteration of Laws before Magistrates and Judges who are tied up to the Laws in being What the Power of Magistrates and Judges is relating to Church-Laws I have shew'd at large elsewhere and that according to the constitution of the Empire when Christian and the Statute Book of our Kingdom since the Reformation And I do allow your Plea to be just and good Christian Magistrates always were and still are Preservers and Executors of Church-Laws the Church owes her support in a great measure unto them And it is impious as well as unseasonable for a private Man but much more for a Man in the Pulpit to make Proposals for Nullities and Repeals of those Laws and Enfranchisements which the Religious favour of the Prince hath granted God's Church and the Zeal and Vigilance of good Magistrates take care to preserve entire and serviceable unto her But yet this is not all the guilt that is contracted or undecency that is committed by such attempts There is a Church-Power which you have defined to be distinct from the State and remaining in the Church after its Incorporation into the Commonwealth And no other reason can be given why your doing the same before these Magistrates and Judges had not been alike unseasonable or why you pleaded not the equal regard which you ought to have to them also only that you in reality are still of your Irenicum judgment viz. That the other Magistrates are the Church and all Power to make Church-Laws or execute them relating to outward decency and order is invested in them and that there is no Legislative Power enstated by Christ on his Officers You who could tell your Story and defame me to your Bishop whom I honour as one that is vested with the utmost of Power that our Saviour was pleased to have continued in his Church till his coming again and do owe an Obedience in special unto him and all that are of that Sacred and Superior Order in God's Church in your Epistle Dedicatory might have consider'd also that he was your Diocesan or that Spiritual Magistrate to whom you owe a more immediate Subjection and in respect of whom an attempt to alter Establish'd Laws had been equally unseasonable Neither did the absence of his Person at the Guild-Hall Chapel render him less awful and tremendous unto you 4. When you come to the Discourse
your account of it being only this That by the hand of Providence it happily came to your hands which account is very scandalous Providence being the Sanctuary for every Impostor is placed in the History of the Reformation of the Church of England with the time and year when the Conference was held and hath the Character as well it may upon your terms of an Authentique Writing and hereby Dr. Burnet is equally dishonoured as an Historian with your self as a Divine of the Church of England And first that your own reputation as a Divine of the Church of England must be shrewdly called in question hereby is most manifest because this Manuscript upon your alone authority and with the Character of stupendae eruditionis theologum is made use of by the most rigid and rude of the Presbyterian Party to prove That our first Reformers did not believe a Bishop and a Presbyter to be two distinct Orders but that it is in the power and at the pleasure of the Prince to Govern by Bishops and Presbyters or by Presbyters without them And they farther hereupon assert That our own Divines were generally of the same Opinion during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth tho' Bancroft and Laud have since maintained the contrary and asserted Bishops to be by Divine Right and a distinct Order This is to be seen in Mr. Hickman's Apologia pro ejectis in Anglia ministris vulgò Non-conformistis but a particular of this passage in it is given by the Reverend Dean of Windsor Dr. Durell in his Ecclesiae Anglicanae Vindiciae cap. 28. I might add because the Erastian Party is hereby much confirmed and strengthned Now can any Man think that a true Son of the Church of England who by his relation to her alone must be supposed to believe that the Power of the Prince is quite another thing from the Power of the Church as also the Power of a Bishop from the Power of a Presbyter would willingly and under such circumstances as these have given this great advantage to the Adversary that you so manifestly have done by reprinting this Manuscript and with the approbation of the two Houses of Parliament and not add one Note in the Margent disowning the evil consequents have been drawn from it Is it not rather a yielding to them and complying with the objection giving new Strength and Sinews unto it Or is it not a thankful acceptance of the honour that was done you by the Presbyterians in the Quotation And I fear you were over-tickled with that higher Eulogy and wonderful commendation they bestow'd upon you Sure I am you could not have served them and their design more advantageously I must confess I was startled at the first reading of it Again the reputation of Dr. Burnet is equally at the Stake also as an Historian The grounds and reasons produced by the Dean of Windsor in his forementioned Vindiciae cap. 28. upon which he suspects the Manuscript to be a fraud and not the writings and determinations of Cranmer and those others whose names it bears seems to me very considerable they amount indeed to a demonstration his words are these Nam quifactum c. For how comes it to pass that these things in that Manuscript were altogether unknown to John Fox that most diligent compiler of the Acts and Monuments of Cranmer and the other Martyrs a Man over much addicted to the Faction of the Puritans and the other most diligent writers of the Church of England Whence is it that Cartwright and other ancienter Puritans heard nothing of them And they are to be believed to have heard nothing since they have made no mention of them How happens it that no one Historiographer of that time hath remembred so memorable a thing as was that Conference of so many illustrious Men concerning the affairs of so great moment For if we may believe the Manuscript there was enquiry of many and the principal heads of Religion as of the Rights of the higher Powers about holy things and those most eminent Men and learned Prelates did there dispute of them all I 'll add how came Mr. Hobbs not to find it out He was a Man well acquainted with English Story and the concurrence of Arch-Bishop Cranmer and so many of our first Reformers in his Scheme of Government which I have shew'd to be the same with this in the Manuscript would have been very pleasing unto him He did not hate our Church and Divines so much but that he was glad on each occasion to serve himself of them and did so Surely a wise Man would have consider'd these things some way or other the Doctor wanted full thoughts and a thorough consideration here to be sure and it shall go for part of his punishment for that he hath so much despised them in others Surely no one would have gone to the Press without laying these things together and their consequences but he who looks upon himself as the very Pillar of Truth which will bear out any inscription it is entituled withal and his own Authority as sufficient to make credible whatever he shall think fit to recommend to Mankind And this his Arbitrary Precarious Self-authoritative way of writing History and Record-making is so much the more culpable in the Doctor because he hath particularly blamed Peter Heylin a Man much better and honester than himself upon the like as he supposed occasion His words in his Preface after many severer Animadversions upon him are these In one thing he is not to be excused that he never vouched any Authority for what he writ which is not to be forgiven any who write of Transactions beyond their own time and deliver new things not known before so that upon what grounds he wrote the greatest part of his Book we can only conjecture For surely it is much safer and a great deal less disingenuous to produce no Authority but leave Men to their own conjectures than to produce and vouch that Authority which is false and hath no bottom at all except that of one single Doctor or in his own Language a Sceptical injudicious Youth who vouches Providence for it by which he can only mean that the Manuscript came to his hands immediately from Heaven for no humane hand reacht it unto him All Historians all Men of what sort soever that can be conceived to have been concerned in things relating that way being altogether silent about it And I shall hereafter no more believe him in whatever it is that he delivers unless I see the originals with mine own Eyes or have them vouched by a better Authority than his own than I believed the late Dialogue between him and the Groaning-Board The old malicious Fable of the Nag's-Head-Ordination by which the Emissaries of Rome defamed our Church one way as you have by your Manuscript another carries much more likelihood of truth and credibility in it For our Bishops and Divines had a meeting at the