Ecclesiasticks as appears from several of their Papers still preserved But they were only some few selected by himself never fairly permitted to a freedom and majority of suffrages And when even those few had given their opinion yet still he reserved the Judgment of their reasons to himself And to shew how far he was from being indifferent those of them who were most open in betraying the Rights of their own function were accordingly advanced to the higher degrees in his favour and were intrusted with the management of Ecclesiastical affairs None had a greater share in Ecclesiastical Counsels than Archbishop Cranmer Nor is there any who upon all the Questions proposed wherein Ecclesiastical Power was concerned does more constantly side with the Kings imperious humour against the true Rights of his own Order He allows the King the Rights even of preaching the word and administring the Sacraments and allows neither of them to the Ecclesiasticks any further than as they derived them from the Princes Lay Commissions He permitted indeed their Consecrations as he had found them by those of their own order but derives nothing of their Power from those Consecrations He makes the Ceremonies of Consecration indifferent things no way concerned in conveying the Spiritual Power That he derives wholly from their Lay Deputation He gives them a Power of preaching the Word and administring the Sacraments where the Lay Powers allow it and he allows them neither where the Secular Magistrate forbids them They must admit whom the Laws oblige them to admit and they must not excommunicate any whom the Secular Laws take into their protection The Magistrate notwithstanding his being a Lay-man may perform these offices himself if he pleased And the Ecclesiasticks notwithstanding their Consecration are not by him permitted to perform them unless the Magistrate be pleased to give them leave Nay so far he proceeds in his flattery of the Civil Magistrate that he allows no more gifts of the Holy Ghost in the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery than in the collation of any Civil Office Even in the Apostles themselves he rather excuses than commends all the exercise of their Spiritual Authority as necessitated to it by the exigency of their present Circumstances As if any necessity could excuse Usurpation As if any exercise of a Power not belonging to them could have been seconded by so visible manifestations of God himself as that was which was exercised by the Apostles Yet even their Authority he makes perfectly precarious He owns no obligation on the Consciences of the Christians of those times to obey even the Apostles themselves but ascribes their Obedience then wholly to their good will so as to leave it to their own liberty whether they would be subject or no. And why so Only because the Apostles had no Civil Empire This wholly resolves all obligation of Conscience into Civil Empire and makes it impossible for the Church to subsist as a Society and a Communion without the support of the Civil Magistrate Accordingly that same Archbishop Cranmer took out a Patent for his Episcopal Power preserved by Bishop Burnet full of a Style so pernicious to Ecclesiastical Authority He there acknowledges all sort of jurisdiction as well Ecclesiastical as Civil to have flowed originally from the Regal Power as from a Supream Head and as a Fountain and Spring of all Magistracy within his own Kingdom He says they who had exercised this Jurisdiction formerly for which he took out this Patent had done it only PRECARIO and that they ought with grateful minds to acknowledge this favour derived from the Kings liberality and indulgence and that accordingly they ought to yield whenever the King thought fit to require it from them And to shew what particulars of Ecclesiastical Power he meant his Patent instances the Power of ordering Presbyters and of Ecclesiastical coercion meaning no doubt that of Excommunication Nay further the same Patent gives him a Power of Executing by the Kings Authority those very things which were known to have been committed to him by God himself in the Scriptures per ultra ea quae tibi ex Sacris Literis divinitus commissa esse dignoscuntur By which we understand that no branch of Spiritual Power whatsoever was excepted Yet all this grant was to last no longer than the Kings pleasure I know not what the Lay Encroachers themselves can desire more Here is so little security for the Churches subsisting when the Secular Laws discountenance her as that she is not allowed the same liberty that other subjects have of pleading the Secular Laws already made in favour of her but is left exposed to the Arbitrary pleasure of the Prince which is thought hard in the Case of other Subjects This yoke the Politicians have lately imposed on the Church of Scotland GOD in his good time release her from it § VIII I have often wondered how the most learned Bishop Stillingfleet who first published the forementioned Papers as far as they concerned Archbishop Cranmer could think them consistent with his own Principles They are so perfectly contradictory to his Discourse concerning the Power of Excommunication subjoyned in the Second Edition of the Irenicum and indeed to the Doctrine of the Irenicum it self as far as it was consistent with it self or with any one Hypothesis For sometimes he seems to doubt whether there can be any Power properly so called without coercion or any coercion without external force As if indeed the fears of the future mischieves attending exclusion from the Priviledges of Church Communion had not been in the purest Ages of the Christian Religion more properly coercive than the fear of any evils that were in the power of the Secular Magistrate It is certain that good Christians then chose rather to suffer any thing the Magistrate could inflict than Excommunication But I more admire that such a betrayer of Ecclesiastical Rights should by our Ecclesiastical Historian of the Reformation be proposed as the Hero of his times and as Exemplary to such as might in his opinion deserve the name of Heroes still Yet he calls it a strange Commission in Bishop Bonner when he took out a Commission from the King as to his Spirituals conceived in the same terms with that of Cranmer in the particulars now mentioned He grants that Bonners inducement to take out that Commission was that it was observed that Cranmers great interest in the King was chiefly grounded on some opinions he had of the Ecclesiastical Officers being as much subject to the King as all other Civil Officers were Yet Cranmer was to be excused because that if he followed that opinion at all it was out of Conscience Why he should doubt whether he was of that Opinion I cannot guess when himself has published those very Papers of the learned Bishop Stillingfleet wherein Archbishop Cranmer does so plainly own himself of that opinion when he has also published Cranmers own
Authority was not supposed derived from him it will not follow that it was deprivable by him And if it were not then all the obligation the King could lay upon the Bishops to do as he would have them could not be in Conscience but in Interest so far only as they thought the inconveniences they might incur by his displeasure greater than those the Church might suffer by that imposition on their liberty This therefore might be born with by the Bishops so far as they might judge it reconcilable with the Churches interests And that indeed no more could be intended appears from a Paper published by Bishop Burnet from a Cottonian M S. For there is a full acknowledgment of a distinct Authority in the Bishops from the Potestas gladii lodged in the King Yet it is signed by Cromwell and that after his second and more ample Commission because he signs before the Archbishops And long after this Act between the years 1537. and 1538. as the Bishop himself conjectures Thus far therefore Cromwell himself was not very positive in that Opinion no nor Cranmer who here subscribes among the rest which makes the Spiritual Authority derived from the King So far it was then from being the Authorized Sense of the Legislators But I cannot by any means think it commendable in the Prince to impose even so far though the Right of external force be indeed his Should the Church follow his example she has as good a Right to impose on his Actings in Temporal Causes by her Spiritual Censures as he can pretend to for his interposing in her Spiritual Affairs by his Temporal Force For he cannot pretend to a more immediate Title from God for his Temporal Force than she can for her Right of inflicting Spiritual Censures And if it should be thought reasonable for either of them to make use of that Right of coercion which justly belongs to them both for imposing on the other in matters not belonging to them it would certainly be more reasonable for the Spiritual Power to impose on the Temporal in order to Spirituals than for the Temporal Power to impose upon the Spiritual in order to Temporals For my part I would rather that both would keep within their own bounds that as we must render to God the things that are Gods so we may also render to Caesar the things that are Caesars But whether the Laity did in this Act assume more than what was really their due I am not so much coâ—cerned at present It is sufficient that what was assumed by them was not sufficient either directly or by any necessary consequence to put it in their power to deprive our Bishops of their Spiritual Authority § XV. HOWEVER though hitherto they did not yet at length our Legislators of those times did advance the Supremacy as high as Archbishop Cranmer ' s Principles would warrant them But it was not before the later end of that Sacrilegious Reign In the seven and thirtieth year of it there was a scruple started concerning the Lay Doctors of the Civil Law by whom the Discipline of the Ecclesiastical Courts was managed after the death of Cromwell on account of their being Lay-men whether the Spiritual Censures issued out by such could have any effect with regard to Conscience This scruple being raised on that account of their being Lay-men was conceived by the Parliament by manifest consequence to affect the Kings Power also for such Censures because he also was a Lay-man This could not have been if they had not intended to assert such a Right in the King though a Lay-man even for Spiritual Censures For had they intended no more than that the King by his Lay Power should only oblige Spiritual Persons to do their duty in exerting that Spiritual Power which they had received not from him but from God himself in this case the consequence objected against the Supremacy had been out of doors and that which had signified nothing would have needed no remedy When therefore to prevent this consequence they assert the Supremacy in such a Sense as may qualifie the King though a Lay-man to a Right to inflict such Censures they must consequently mean it so as to assert this Right to him as a Supream Magistrate though not invested with any Power from God distinct from that of the Sword Accordingly they tell us that his most royal Majesty is and hath always justly been by the Word of God Supream Head in the Earth of the Church of England and hath full Power and Authority to correct punish and repress all manner of Heresies Errors Vices Sins Abuses Idolatries Hypocrisies and Superstitions sprung and growing within the same and to exercise all other manner of Jurisdictions commonly called Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction They tell us withal the occasion of this Objection That though the Decrees and Constitutions by which the exercise of Spiritual Jurisdiction had been confined to Holy Orders had been utterly abolished by the Act of the five and twentieth year of this same Reign yet because the contrary is not used nor put in practise by the Archbishops Bishops Archdeacons and other Ecclesiastical Persons who have no manner of Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical but by under and from your Royal Majesty it addeth or at least may give occasion to some evil disposed Persons to think and little to regard the Proceedings and Censures Ecclesiastical made by your Highness and your Vicegegerent Officials Commissaries Judges and Visitors being also Lay and married men to be of little or none effect or force And Forasmuch as your Majesty is the only and undoubted Supream Head of the Church of England and also of Ireland to whom by Holy Scripture all Authority and Power is wholly given to hear and determine all manner Causes Ecclesiastical and to correct all Vice and Sin whatsoever and to all such Persons as your Majesty shall appoint thereunto Therefore it is enacted that Doctors of the Civil Law though Lay and married being put in office by any one having Authority under the King his Heirs and Successors may lawfully execute all manner of Jurisdiction commonly called Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and all Censures and Coercions appertaining or in any wise belonging unto the same Here the Bishops are denied to have any manner of Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical but by under and from the Prince Here all Authority and Power is said to be wholly given him to hear and determine all manner Causes Ecclesiastical Here he is said by the Word of God to have full Power and Authority to exercise all manner of Jurisdictions commonly called Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction And all this is asserted as their Sense of the Title of Head and of the Prerogative of Supremacy If so the Bishops can have no Power but what is derived from the Lay Magistrate for all this is challenged to him as he is a Lay-man and therefore none but what must be supposed deprivable by him Then after their deprivation their Character is gone
and all their Power as Bishops of the Catholick Church is gone and all they do after the Lay Magistrate has deprived them will be perfect Nullities till they be again confirmed by Power derived from the Civil Magistrates This Hypothesis supposing the Legality of the Civil Power will indeed serve our Adversaries designs to the full But it is as notoriously false as it is notoriously true that there was even in the Apostles time a Discipline exercised independent on the Civil Magistrate And our Adversaries dare not stand by it § XVI THIS extravagant Notion of the Supremacy continued through the next Reign of King Edward the VI. Not only as that same Act continued still unrepealed but as the same Practice which supposed it continued and as no better Explication of the Supremacy was substituted in stead of it Now it was that Archbishop Cranmer took out his new Commission from the King for his Archbishoprick in the style formerly used by Bishop Bonner perfectly adapted to his own singular Opinion Now it was that the Bishop of Worcester took out the like Commission in the very beginning of this Reign Though Bishop Burnet observes that no such form was imposed on Bishop Ridley nor on Bishop Thirlby who were consecrated in the year 1550. In that same year it was that the young King himself expresses his own Opinion in these words But as for Discipline I would wish no Authority given generally to all Bishops but that Commission be given to those that be of the best sort of them to exercise it in their Dioceses By which we may easily understand that Bishop Ridley who did put out Injunctions had singular favour shewn him in that he was permitted to do so So that no general Inferences are to be gathered from his Case Yet even he and such as he were to Act by Commission which is perfectly consistent with the Hypothesis that was so destructive of the Churches Authority The only difference between him and others was that he was to hold his Authority for Life they only during the Princes pleasure But for proving the sense of the Law-makers of those times I rather chuse to insist on the expressions of the Laws themselves And those are very home to this purpose In the Statute 1 Edw. VI. c. 2. They say that all Authority of Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived and deducted from the Kings Majesty as Supream Head of these Churches and Realms of England and Ireland They therefore enact that all Processes Ecclesiastical should run in the King's name only that the Teste should be in the name of the Archbishop Bishop or other having Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction who hath the Commission and grant of the Authority Ecclesiastical immediately from the Kings Highness They add withal that the Seal of Jurisdiction was to have the Kings Arms on it as an Acknowledgment from whom the Jurisdiction was derived There are indeed some exceptions in that same Act wherein the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Bishops are allowed to use their own Seals But considering that the reasons given for their using the King's Arms are general such as extend to all Archbishops and all Spiritual Jurisdictions whatsoever those exceptions cannot argue any independence of the Spiritual Jurisdiction even in the Cases so excepted The Archbishop had a liberty of using his own Seal in Cases of smaller consequence which were not likely to be exempted from the Secular Power when the greater were not and in Dispensations to be granted to the King himself where though the Power had been in general originally derived from the King yet it had not been decent in the Dispensation it self to express its being so For that had been to the same purpose as if the King by his own Authority had dispensed with himself Yet the Power might have been derived from him as that of our ordinary Judges is when they give Sentence against the King in favour of a Subject by virtue of their Commission from the Crown empowering them to do so And the Cases wherein other Bishops are there allowed to use their own Seals are only such wherein their own inferiors are concerned who derive their Power from them which is very consistent with their own deriving their Power from the King Especially when this liberty is granted them by that very Power which pretended to be the Original of all their Episcopal Spiritual Power I mention not now the several Acts sufficiently frequent in this Reign requiring Clergymen to admit to Communion and empowering them to punish by Spiritual Censures though these do also proceed on the same supposal when they are not in execution of Canons made before by Ecclesiastical Authority that even such Spiritual Authority is originally vested in the Lay Magistrate For my design at present is not to enquire how far the Lay Power even the Legislative Power has encroached on the Rights of the Clergy actually but how far they have declared their encroachments included in the Sense of the Supremacy for maintenance of which the Oath was made and which must therefore be maintained by them who would then take the Oath veraciously according to the true meaning of the Legislators But what I have insisted on from this Act shews the Legislators sense of the Supremacy it self § XVII YET though this impious notion of the Supremacy was continued in the Reign of this excellent Prince who did not live to that maturity of his own Judgment that might otherwise have enabled him to have seen the falshood and all tendency of these ill Principles which had been instilled into him by his Godfather who was always the most forward promoter of them yet they were first introduced in the Sacrilegious Reign of King Henry the VIII And why should any Posterity have regard for such an Age as that was which had themselves so little for all the Acts of their own Ancestors Why should any who regard Religion have any for them who brought in principles so destructive to all Religion and to the very Fundamentals of the Church as it is a Society and a Communion Atheists themselves who have no concern for the Truth of Religion yet cannot chuse but be concerned for the security Religion gives them in their present enjoyments by the Opinions of those who do in earnest believe it true and for the restraint it lays on such not to molest them in their possessions of what they are Legally intituled to when it is otherwise in their Power forcibly to dispossess them That wicked generation broke even this security All that could have been done had been done by their Ancestors for the security of Magna Charta and the Rights of the Clergy concerned in it as the first and sacredest part of it It had been confirmed by solemn and frequently repeated grants of all the Parties who had a Right to confirm it Not only so but all the Obligations for observing it were laid on their
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
THE DOCTRINE OF THE Church of England Concerning the Independency of the CLERGY ON THE LAY-POWER AS To those Rights of theirs which are purely Spiritual reconciled with our Oath of Supremacy AND THE Lay-Deprivations OF THE Popish-Bishops in the beginning of the Reformation By the Author of The Vindication of the depriv'd Bishops LONDON Printed MDCXCVII THE CONTENTS § I. THE Independancy of Bishops on the State pretended to be contrary to the Oath of Supremacy P. I. § II. And contrary to the Principles on which the Popish Bishops were deprived and our present Succession depends P. III. § III. The Authority of the Primitive Catholick Church is greatâ— then that of any Modern particular one P. IV. § IV. Even with regard to our particular Church Our behaviour signifies more Love and Concern for her than that of our late Brethren does P. VII § V. We shew our greater Love to our Churcâ— particularly in not yeilding so easily as they do that she should lose her Rights on any Te 〈…〉 P. IX § VI. What we do is perfectly consistent with the Authorized explication of the Supremacy vested in the King P. XI § VII Archbishop Cranmers Opinions in Henry the VIII's and Edward the VI's time perfectly destructive of all Spiritual Authority P. XII § VIII Archbishops Cranmers Authority in these matters none at all P. XV. § IX It is not for the Interest of the Church of Reformation that his Authority in these things should be regarded P. XVII § X. His Opiniens in this matter no more agreable to the Sense of our present Adversaries than to 〈◊〉 P. XXI § XI The Supremacy and Title of Head when first assumed by Henry the VIII consistent with our Doctrine P. XXIII § XII When the King gave the encroaching Commission to Cromwell it was not yet agreeable to the true Sense of the 〈◊〉 P. XXV § XIII The Appeal allowed from the Archbishops to the Kings Commissioners in Chancery no Argument of any Spiritual Power derived from the King P. XXVII § XIV The Supremacy explained 26. H. VIII 1. not contrary to our Doctrine in this Cause P. XXVIII § XV. The Supremacy as explained 37. H. VIII 17. full to our Adversaries purpose and the sense of Archbishop Cranmer P. XXX § XVI The same notion of the Spuremacy continued also under King Edward the VI. P. XXXIII § XVII King Henry the VIII's Reign by no means to be allowed for an Age of Precedents P. XXXV § XVIII Queen Elizabeth explained the Supremacy in a sense consistent with our principles P. XXXIX § XIX That Explication discharges us now from any Obligation to believe Archbishop Cranmers Principles P. XLI § XX. What the Queen requires we can Sincerely undertake and in a Sense fully answering the Imposition of the Leg 〈…〉 ors P. XLIII § XXI The Queens Injunction excuses us from Swearing to the Supremacy over Spiritual Persons in Causes purely Spiritual P. XLVI § XXII This Injunction of Queen Elizabeth still in force P. L. § XXIII The Explication in the Injuctions Authorize by our Church in her XXXVII Article P. LI. § XXIV The same Explication of the Injunctions confirmed by Act of Parliament P. LIII § XXV It is rather supppsed than contradicted by the 2 Canon P. LV. § XXVI The Practice of the Supremacy to our times no Argument of the Imposed Sense of the Legislators against us P. LVIII § XXVII The Objection proposed that our present Protestant Succession seems to depend on the validity of the Deprivation of the last Popish Bishops which was no other than Laical P. LX. § XXVIII The Lay-Deprivations of those Popish Bishops who took out Lay-Commissions for their Episcopal Power does not by any jast consequence effect our present Case P. LXI § XXIX The Popish Bishops were of another Communion and therefore needed no other Deprivation than that of the Lay-Magistrate P. LXIII § XXX This Doctrine agreeable exactly to the Sense and Practice of Antiquity P. LXVI § XXXI If the Popish Bishops had had a better Title yet that could not have illegitimated Successors any longer than their own Lives P. LXVIII § XXXII If the Popish Bishops then had the better Title yet their discontinuance of their Succession has made their Title worse now P. LXXI § XXXIII Present Settlements give Right where no better Rights is injured by them P. LXXII § XXXIV This is proved from the Donatist and Luciferian Disputes P. LXXIV § XXXV They who took out Lay-Commissions for their Episcopal Power might yet keep their better Title P. LXXX THE DOCTRINE OF THE Church of England Concerning the Iudependecy of the Clergy on the Lay-Power as to those Rights of theirs which are purely Spiritual reconciled with our Oath of Supremacy and the Lay-Deprivaons of the Popish Bishops in the beginning of the Reformation § I. SINCE the finishing of the former Discourse I have been warned of one Prejudice ogainst the Doctrine delivered in it concerning the Independancy of Church-Power on the State very necessary to be removed in order to the preparing our late Brethren for an impartial consideration of what we have to say in it's defence That is that as our Case of Protestant Bishops set up in opposition to other Protestant Bishops deprived by an incompetent Authority is new so our Principles on which our Plea in reference to the Schism is grounded are also charged with Novelty if not with regard to the Doctrine of the first and purest Ages of the Christian Church yet at least with regard to the Doctrine of our late common Mother the Church of England and with regard to that later Antiquity which is derivod no higher than the beginning of our Reformation from Popery It is therefore pretended that our Doctrine concerning the undeprivableness of the Bishops by the Lay-Power is inconsistent with the Supremacy asserted to our Princes in all Causes as well as over all Persons that it is therefore inconsistent not only with all the Lay Acts by which the Supremacy has been asserted but also with all those Acts of the Church by with she also hath concerned her self in this Dispute with the xxxvii Article and the Injunction of Queen Elizabeth owned by an Act of Parliament in her Reign for an Authentical Interpretation of the Supremacy with the Doctrine of the Homilies and the several Injunctions of the Ecclesiasticks for explaining and recommending the same Doctrine to the Belâ—ef and Consciences of their Auditors particularly with the Second Canon which Excommunicates all those who deny the Supremacy in any of those branches wherein it was allowed either to Jewish or Christian Princes and with all those Legal Oaths for maintaning it which have been taken not only by the generality of the Laity but the Ecclesiasticks also as many of them as have been admitted to any eminent station in the Ecclesiastical Government Not now to descend so low as a particular enumeration of the suffrages of our most celebrated Writers It
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
all to be sufficient to abrogate a Law much more to interpret the Legislators mind in Case of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Indeed it is the Conclusions and Practise of the Legislators that is the Law Their Reasonings are so no otherwise than as they clear their Sense when it does not otherwise appear so clearly from their words and Practise And it must have been very notorious in Practise that men who disbelieved these opinions of Archbishop Cranmer were notwithstanding admitted by the Government to take the Oath of Supremacy and thereupon to enjoy all the Priviledges and Immunities of Persons who had fully answered all the ends proposed by the Government in the imposition of it when the Queen takes it for so groundless a scandal to imagine that the owning of those Principles was expected 〈◊〉 such as would veraciously take the Oath even then when the words of the Legislators seemed so plainly to suppose that the Legislators themselves did believe those Principles true But whatever the Legislators themselves thought it hence appears very plainly that they did not oblige those who would be willing to take the Oath to think in this particular as they did And if this was not required then when the Legislators did believe these Principles true and the words of the Law did so plainly suppose them to do so and it was even in their Practise manifest that they did not require it much more we have reason to believe it not required now when not only the like liberty in Practise has continued even to our own times but we are withall so expressly discharged from all engagements to believe those Principles true by that very same Authority for whose interest the Oath was first framed and imposed and when we have withall so Authentical an Interpretation given us by the same Authority of what is expected from us so fully satisfactory to the ends of the Government and yet withall so free from any thing that may seem to imply our belief of those Principles which would have made the Oath indeed intolerable and inconsistent with that hearty zeal which we all owe in the first place to our Church and our Orthodox Communion § XX. TWO things the Queen expressly insists on as things intended to be meant by all who will take this Oath sincerely and veraciously And those are points making considerably for the interest and security of the Crown and which have formerly been disputed and are therefore worthy and fit to be the matter of an Oath First that our Princes have the Soveraignty and Rule over all Persons born in their Dominions as well Ecclesiastical as Civil This was a thing disputed by Anselm and Becket and decided against them as well by the concurrence of their own Order of the Ecclesiasticks as of the States And it was a point of great i 〈…〉 nce in the Circumstances of King Henry the VIII and 〈◊〉 first Princes of the Reformation to assure them of the Allegiance of that part of their Subjects who 〈◊〉 they pleaded exemption from them so had sworn Allegiance to the Popes with whom those Princes were then in open Hostility To this they were obliged not only by the general Laws of our Christian Religion which gave them no exemption where the Laws did not so but by the particular Laws of our Countries on account of the Baronies and Lay-fees of which the chief of them were generally possess'd The other point was that no other foreign Power ought to have any superiority over the born Subjects of these Realms This had also been a point antiently disputed in the Case of Wilfrid and in the Statutes of Provisors 25 Edw. the III. and of Praemunire 16 Rich. the II. and was of very great importance in the disputes between our Reforming Princes and the Court of Rome These two are all the Queen insists on and in the asserting of both these Rights to our Princes we do as heartily agree as our Legislators themselves can desire we should do And in doing so our Adversaries themselves cannot deny but that we serve the ends of the Legislators in imposing this Oath to very material purposes For my part I think we serve all the necessary ends according to the Sense of the Legislators themselves They do frequently profess a design not of Innovating but of asserting only Antient and Original Rights owned by the Laws themselves before those later Disputes concerning the Supremacy And if they were sincere in professing so I cannot see any reason they had to intend more These two Rights now mentioned had really been antiently asserted to the Crown on occasion of antient Disputes that had been started concerning them But where can our Adversaries pretend any elder Disputes concerning the validity of Lay Deprivations that gave any occasion for antient Laws still in force for asserting them valid Where can they find the whole Legislative Power united in asserting any such Right of Lay Deprivations or of the Proposition so frequent in the Laws of those times that all Ecclesiastical Authority was derived from the King Where could they find Commissions given to Laymen such as Cromwell was by the Lay Prince empowering to exercise all sorts of Spiritual Censures There is so little appearance of any Antient Disputes or Antient Laws made concerning these things that there is no likelihood that they did or could require the belief of their opinions in this matter if they only intended to revive the asserting of Antient Rights And for the opposition made then by the Clergy they perfectly subdued them and might if they had pleased have imposed these Opinions on them They might if they had thought fit have inserted them into the Form of the Oath of Supremacy it self They might otherwise have imposed it on all the Bishops to have taken out the like Commissions as Bishop Bonner and Archbishop Cranmer did And there was very little doubt of the concurrence of the Laity who might then have carried it in Parliament when the Authority of the Clergy was so broken by the Praemunire and the surrendry if there had been any design of attempting it But neither of these things having been attempted it seems to argue that though they were willing to keep this Opinion in some reputation for keeping the Clergy under those Depressions to which they had reduced them yet they had not even themselves the confidence to impose the belief of it on the Clergy nor to make it any part of that Supremacy for the Security of which the Oath was made This reason there was for believing the Queens affection true even for the time past though what she said had been considered without the Authority of the Person that delivered it We can hardly suppose her ignorant either of the facts or the designs with which they were transacted in the days of her Father and her Brother Yet I am apt to think that her comparing the Supremacy assumed by her self with that
which had been challenged by her Father and Brother does not so much imply that her Supremacy was as bad as theirs as that it was not worse This later meaning was very apposite to her purpose in urging it on the Popish Bishops who had owned it in her Father and Brothers times when it was worse than what was now expected from them But from the time she put out this Injunction and downwards her own Authority is sufficient to assure us whatever it was then that it is not required now Especially when seconded by the other Authorities which we shall produce hereafter § XXI BVT it is observable by the way that by the Queens explication the Supremacy over Spiritual Persons is all that is Sworn to not that which is expressly mentioned in the Oath which is in Spiritual Causes For the Queen professes her self satisfied if those two things be included in the Oath the renunciation of all foreign dependences and her Sovereignty at home over all her Subjects as well Spiritual as Temporal She requires no more for discharging Persons who can go so far from all the Penalties of the Act by which the Oath was imposed That these two may be reconciled it will be requisite that no more be included in the Oath than is in the Injunction and therefore that no Spiritual Causes be meant in the Oath but such as are absolutely necessary to be included in order to the rendring the Supremacy over Spiritual Persons practicable Such are all those Temporalties which on account of their being of their own nature Temporalties must therefore be supposed to have been Originally the Magistrates Right and are therefore only called Spirituals inasmuch as they are by the favour of the Magistrate annexed to Spiritual Offices and Spiritual Persons For this is a known Notion of this Word in our Laws that all the Temporals that were annexed to Spirituals are for that reason called Spirituals also So the Bishops Lordships their Baronies their Benefices are all called Spiritual So the Honours and Revenues also of the inferior Clergy and the Legal Priviledges to which they are intituled by their Tenures So the Causes also which being originally Political have notwithstanding been permitted to Spiritual Jurisdiction of this sort are all Causes Matrimonial and Testamentery which belonged to Secular Courts before the Conve 〈…〉 〈◊〉 of Princes to the Christian Religion And upon account of this name of Spiritual which is given to things of this nature in our Laws it is that the same Laws refer their cognizance to Spiritual Couâ—â—s and Spiritual Jurisdictions And indeed the generality 〈◊〉 the Causes now tryed in the Spiritual Courts were originally of this kind of things of their own nature Temporal and therefore Originally of secular cognizance Yet when the Clergy insisted on their exemption and allowed no appeals from their Courts in any of the matters then permitted to their Jurisdiction unless when themselves were pleased to deliver their Criminals over to the Secular Arm this Practise left the Secular Prince no remedy in so many Cases Originally belonging to his own cognizance more properly than to theirs to whom it had been allowed by the indulgence of his well-meaning pious Predecessors This grievance was again less tolerable to the Secular Magistrate on this account that the very Persons of the Clergy on account of their being taken for Spiritual in the estimation of the Law were wholly exempted from the cognizance of the Lay Courts even when guilty of Secular Crimes unless the Spiritual Judges were pleased to give them up to the Secular Arm after their having first degraded them and thereby deprived them of their Claim to Exemption on account of their being taken for Spiritual Persons There was reason for these Exemptions when they were first granted by Christian Princes full of their new zeal for their excellent Religion upon their first embracing it It had been practised by the Jews and from them received by the Christians before the Conversion of Princes even in the times of the Apostles Even then a Brother was not permitted to go to Law with a Brother before Infidel Judges They could be no other than Secular Causes that Infidel Judges were allowed to determine The name used by St. Paul who calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implieâ— they were so as also the meanness of the Persons by him 〈…〉 llowed to judge concerning them Even our Saviour himself seems to 〈◊〉 to it and to allow of it as I think Erastus himsel◠〈◊〉 first very happily observed when he allows them who would not stand to such an awaâ—â— of their own Ecclesiastical Brethren to be accounted as â—â—athens and Infidels that is to be as freely prosecuted in Heathen Courts as Infidels might be when Brethren of the peculiar People had any secular controversies with them The reason given for this was that Infidels might not know and take scandal at the Infirmities of those who were to be as lights exemplary to those who were not of the same profession And this reason held as well in the first times of the Conversion of Princes to our Christian Religion as it had done before Then also Heathens were allowed by the Constitution to be Judges in the Roman Courts And it holds still in general even since our Christian Laws have excluded any but those who at least profess themselves Christans from being Judges in our present Secular Courts The Clergy are still obliged to be as exemplary to our Christian Brethren of the Laity now as all Christians in general were then obliged to be in relation to the generality of the Gentile World This makes it as reasonable still to conceal the infirmities of the Clergy from the Lay Judges of our Secular Courts as it was then to conceal the Infirmities of Christians in general from the Gentile Courts And the grants of the Emperors to this purpose were only to authorize them to practise the same way of concealment by confining such Causes to the Audientia Episcopalis as they had practised before any Indulgences from Princes Nor was this liberty abused or like to be so whilst the Clergy had no foreign dependences such as they were possessed of afterwards not only in King Henry the VIIIths time but long before him when these Disputes concerning Exemptions were first started It was in Cases where the scandal might be avoided by such a Judgment of Persons well-affected and concerned for their Order not in Case of open hostility to their Prince None such were ever protected by their Priviledge in the first Ages after the Conversion of the Empire to our Christian Religion But when this foreign dependence had brought things to this pass that Spiritual Judges might be justly suspected of partiality in these Causes which were not Originally of Spiritual cognizance then it was not unseasonable nor unkind if Princes in their own defence did so far resume their antient Rights as to take better security than had been
either of Gods word or of the Sacraments the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify But that only Prerogative which we see to have been given to all Godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself that 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 Here we have the Explication in the Injunctions approved by our Church her self who gives us the same sense in her own words expressly and is fully satisfied with our believing the Prince ' s Right to govern both sorts of Persons By this we may also know her meaning in the words immediately preceding where she mentions all Causes that she did mean only such Causes as were absolutely necessary for making the Prince's Right perfectly practicable for governing the Persons of the Ecclesiasticks We are also here clearly and expressly discharged from all Obligation to believe Archbishop Cranmers singular Opinion and consequently from the belief of that Supremacy which was grounded on that Opinion without which I do not see how our Adversaries can ever be able to justify the validity of these Lay-deprivations And none that I know of doubts but that this Article at least of our Church does as much concern our times as those wherein it was first made § XXIV YET further that no Authority may be wanting we have this same Explication in the Injunctions expressly referred to and ratified in an Act of Parliament of the same Reign of Queen Elizabeth still in force and unrepealed The words are those Provided also that the Oath expressed in the said Act made in the first year shall be taken and expounded in such form as is set forth in an Admonition annexed to the Queens Majesty's Injunctions published in the first year of her Majesty's Reign That is to say to confess and acknowledge in her Majesty her Heirs and Successors none other Authority than that was challenged and lately used by the noble King Henry the VIII and King Edward the VI. as in the said Admonition more plainly may appear The word Admonition is taken from the Title of that particular Injunction wherein it is stiled an Admonition to simple Men deceived by Malicious that there may be no doubt but that the forementioned Injunction is intended in this Act. And that the Supremacy here assumed by the Queen and said to be the same that was challenged and lately used by King Henry the VIII and King Edward the VI. may not be so understood as to exclude the benefit of the Interpretation here referred to Indeed such a rigorous Construction had been perfectly to overthrow the whole Design of the Act in referring to it But that very Expression is used in the Injunction it self from whence the Parliament took it and therefore is to be understood in a sense consistent with the rest of the Injunction and therefore in a sense consistent with the renunciation of that singular Opinion of Archbishop Cranmer how much soever it may seem to have been supposed in the words of the Acts and to have been therefore the private sense of the Legislators themselves Yet they as well as the Queen her self think it was never the Legislators design even in those Reigns where it seems indeed to have been their sense to impose the belief of it on those who should take the Oath This must necessarily have been their sense when they refer us to the Injunction as expressing that sense of the Supremacy which they allowed and approved This must make the Explication in the Injunction theirs and consequently must make the true design of this Act as full to our purpose as the Injunction it self I need not now add to this Authority the Explication of the Supremacy by Archbishop Usher and approved of by King James the I. Much less the Opinions of the generality of our Divines since the beginning of Queen Elizabeth against that Opinion of Archbishop Cranmer without which as I have shewn it is impossible for our Adversaries to prove the validity of Lay Deprivations What some of them have reasoned from the Case of Solomon and Abiathar is the less to be regarded being destitute of Principles by which the like Practise had it really been such as they think it was can be proved allowable by the Doctrine of the Gospel and the Priesthood constituted by it nay being contrary to their own Doctrine concerning the Divine Right of Administring the Sacraments All that can be said is that by defending that Right of Solomon and by applying it to the Case of the Christian Magistrate with regard to the Popish Bishops who were of another Communion they may seem to have said things consequently applicable to our present Case of Bishops of the same Communion Yet whether they would have stood by this Consequence in Case of a Lay Deprivation of Protestant Bishops our Adversaries themselves cannot undertake and it is much more probable that many of them would not have stood by it But on the other side we can also say that when they denied the Right of Administring the Sacraments to be derived from the Magistrate they must by consequence deny the Right of Spiritual Government resulting from the Right of excluding refractory Subjects from the Sacraments and from the Spiritual Body and from the Rights annexed to that Body of CHRIST himself they must I say by necessary consequence deny this Spiritual Power to be the Magistrates Right they must by the same consequence deny all Right the Secular Magistrate can pretend to deprive of this Power which was never derived from him Thus there will be Consequence against Consequence But there is this difference between the two Consequences that ours reaches the present Case fully and directly but it may be questioned whether that of our Adversaries do so For it may well be questioned whether if the Lay Magistrate may deprive Popish Bishops of another Communion it will thence follow that he may also deprive Protestant Bishops of the same Communion as I shall shew hereafter § XXV BUT the second Canon of the year 1603. is objected against us The words are these Whosoever shall hereafter affirm that the Kings Majesty has not the same Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical that the Godly Kings had amongst the Jews and Christian Emperors in the Primitive Church or impeach in any part his Regal Supremacy in the said Causes restored to the Crown and by the Laws of this Realm therein established let him be Excommunicated ipso facto and not restored but only by the Archbishop after his repentance and publick revocation of those his wicked errors Here all that is affirmed to our Adversaries purpose is only this that our Kings have the same Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical that the Godly Kings had amongst the Jews But what that Authority was or what the
as the Vows of Wives and Maids were under the Law when made against the consent of the Husbands and Parents And the will of GOD concerning the lastingness of the Spiritual Power was manifest from the will of the Ordainers who before those Lay-Patents never intended to confer Orders for any other term than that of Life If therefore such would take upon them to exercise their Spiritual Power independently on their Patent though they might contradict the designs of those who made them take out their Patents in doing so yet having indeed Authority from GOD to do so what they did by that Authority might expect a ratification from GOD and therefore must have been valid with regard to Conscience The greater difficulty was that of the others who received their first Authority from their Patents before their Consecrations These might more plansibly be thought to receive no more Power by their Consecration than what they had already received by their Patent Especially if they had the same thoughts concerning their own Consecration as Archbishop Cranmer had that it gave them no new Power but was only a Solemnity of Investiture with the same Power which they had already a Right to by their Patent And if withall the Bishops who Consecrated them had been also of the same mind and must therefore have thought themselves obliged to give them no new Power by the Authority themselves had received not from the Prince but from Christ. But I have already shewed that even in those encroaching Reigns there was no Obligation laid on the Bishops to profess their Belief of those Impious Opinions I have shewed that at the same time that they were supposed in Practice yet their Belief was Odious and Singular and in express terms generally decried I have shewed that the most received Opinion even then was that the Right of Administring the Sacraments was derived from Christ and his Apostles and by them given only to the Church and consequently that it was only given by the Acts of Ecclesiastical Consecration These things therefore being thus believed must also have obliged them further to believe that whatever Power and Authority did follow from this Right of Administring the Sacraments could not be given by the Lay-Power but only by them who had continued the derivation of that Right of Administring the Sacraments from Christ and his Apostles These things therefore being generally believed by the Bishops might make them generally design the giving and receiving the same Power in their Consecrations which had been given and received by Consecration formerly What then could hinder even those Bishops which were Consecrated then from receiving it It was consequentially inconsistent you 'l say with those Patents by which they derived a Right of giving Orders and of inflicting Spiritual Censures from the King But it was no more so than those Patents were with those Doctrines that all Power of that kind was to be derived from Christ and his Apostles who had given it to the Church not to the Lay-Magistrate The consequence whereof must be that being mutually inconsistent they ought to be made consistent as far as is possible in Practice by Interpretation That is that one Duty be performed so far and so far only as is consistent with the performance of the other But in this way of proceeding it is unavoydable but that one of the two Duties must take place of the other so as to leave no place for the other any further than is consistent with the Interest of the Principal Duty And then there can be little doubt if an Ecclesiastick be Judge and of such only I am Speaking at present whether of the two Duties must be judged Principal If they be considered as Ecclesiasticks the Church is the Principal Body for which they ought to be concerned Consider them also as good Christians and as good Men and the same Obligation will hold still to prefer the Interests of the Church because they are indeed the greatest Interests in the Judgment of GOD and in the Judgment of Right Reason and the most immediatly and firmly obliging that which is indeed the immediate Subject of Obligations the Conscience All therefore that Persons so perswaded could promise and which the Magistrates of that Age acting against Principles might be Satisfied with as sufficiently answering his ends was to behave themselves in reference to the Magistrate so as if indeed they had no Power but what they derived from him That was to hold their places from whomsoever they had received them no longer than He was pleased they should hold them This Promise they might make as to the Temporalties that they would be no longer Legal Bishops entitled by the Secular Laws to Temporalties Tho' this was a particular Hardship put upon their Order For as for the Secular Peers the held their Peerage by Law not barely at the Pleasure of the Prince However these conditions importing no loss of Spiritual Authority the Bishops might with a safe Conscience submit to when imposed on them by unavoidable force They might also promise when they were deprived of their Temporals to quit their Spirituals also in order to the qualifying another of the same Communion to succeed them without any imputation of Schism But a general promise of this kind could not oblige them when quitting their Rights might betray the Church and make it depend precariously on the pleasure of the Magistrate However they not foreseeing this Case and not fearing it in the Circumstances then in view might make this indefinite Promise and intend really to fulfill it And whether they did well in doing so or no yet they might do it without owning the Right to Spiritual Power to be at the disposal of the Civil Magistrate Yet as long as they did not think it his Right they could not think themselves obliged in Conscience to quit their pretensions to their Spirituals barely because the Magistrate was pleased to invade them All the Obligations therefore they could have to do it must either have been from their Promise or from the present exigencies of the Case which might in their Opinion seem to require it Yet all this was consistent with an Opinion that whilst they had the Power they had it from an Authority Superior to that of the Civil Magistrate whâ—â—h till the Magistrate did deprive them might make all their Acts valid as done by a Divine Commission It is very plain withall that after the Patent was given yet the Magistrate himself took care to recommend them to Bishops for their Consecration Why so unless he believed that if he had done otherwise his Bishops would never have been taken for valid Bishops with regard to Conscience VVhy so if he had not therein designed to gratify the Ancient and Received Opinions concerning the Original of Church-Power which without such Consecration supposed them liable to so just Exceptions It was not the Magistrates fancy that Consecration gave them no new Power that
could hinder the Bishops and the People too who were rightly informed concerning the nature of the Spiritual Society from judging Consecration necessary for obtaining that Power which is purely Spiritual And it 's being thought necessary by the Bishops was enough to oblige the Consecrating Bishops to give and the Consecrated Bishops to receive that Spiritual Power which in their Opinion could not be had otherwise then by their Consecration And intending to give and receive it what could hinder their Intentions from the usual Success when the same Solemnities were used by Persons equally Authorized to give it with those who had been used to give it formerly Nor could the Magistrate expect that to gratify him they shou'd defraud themselves of any Priviledges or Powers received by their Ancestors and convey'd as before from Persons empower'd to administer the Solemnities and Rites of Consecration Such a Singular obsequiousness and self-denial is this He could not I say either in Conscience or Equity pretend to expect unless He had secur'd it in express Terms and exacted a particular Profession a Profession that might make it inconsistent with the Bishops Veracity to give or receive the usuall Power as by the same Solemnities and Authority it had been given and received by their Ancestors Rather on the contrary the Permission of the samâ— Solemn Rites and the same Authority in administring them as before without any new Security against the usual effect is an Argument the Prince left it to their Liberty to intend the giving and receiving the same Spiritual Power from CHRIST as had been usually conveyed by the same Ministry He therefore contented him self with the Security given him by the Patents that from whomsoever they received the Right of being Bishops in regard to Conscience yet they should not be Bishops in Law intitled to Baronies and revenues any longer than he pleased This being so it will follow that what they did before Deprivation was valid in Conscience and in Law also but what they did afterwards though that might also be valid in Concsience yet it was not to be vaild in Law Our first Consecrations were of the former sort and therefore were not the less valid in Conscience for having the accession of a validity in Law Thus our first Consecrations might derive a Title to our Present Fathers in Conscience not deprivable at the pleasure of the Civil Magistrate with regard to Conscience GOD awaken the zeal of our late Fathers and Brethern for asserting these Rights in Conscience which are so essential to their being our Fathers and our Brethren and for the Religion and Communion of our late common Churches in these Kingdoms And may our common LORD plead the Cause of his distressed and deserted Spouse THE END The Independency of Bishops on the Sate pretended to be contrary to the Oath of Supremacy * Injunct Q. Eliz. An. 1559. 5 †Eliz. 1. In App. to Bishop Burnet's 〈◊〉 of Refor And contrary to the Principles on which the Popish Bishops were deprived and our present Succession depends The Authority of the Primitive Catholick Church is greater than that of any modern particular one * P. 14. †Defence of the Church of England p. 20 21 22. Even with regard to our particular Church our behaviour signifies more love and concern for her than that of our late Brethren does We shew our greater 〈◊〉 to our Church particularly in not yielding so 〈◊〉 as they do that she should lose bee Rights on any terms What we do is perfectly consistent with the Authorized explication of the Supremacy vested in the King Arch-â—p Cranmers Opinions in 〈◊〉 cury the VIII and Edw. the VI. time perfectly destructive of all Spiritual Authoâ—â—â— See those Papers published by Bishop Stallingfleet Iren. c. ult and by Bishop Burnet Hist. of Resor Part. I. Collect. n. XXI B. III. Part II. Collect. Num. 2. Archbishâ—p Câ—â—â—mer's Au 〈…〉 〈◊〉 these matter noâ— at all Vol. I. Book III p. 267. It is not for the Interest of the Church or the Reformation that his Authority iâ— these things should be regarded Part. I. B. III. p. 204. Part. II. B. II. p. 243. His Opinions in this matter no more agreeable to the sense of our present Adversaries than to ours P. I. B. III. p. 267. The Supremacy and Title of Head when first assumed by Henry the VIII consistent with our Doctrine 24 Hen. VIII 12. When the King gave the encroaching Commission to Cr 〈…〉 it was not 〈◊〉 â—greeable to the tru 〈…〉 of the Legis 〈…〉 Vol. I. B. III. R. 278. The Appeal allowed from the Archbishops to the Kings Commissioners in Chancery no Argument of any Spiritual Power derived from the King 25 H. VIII 10. The Supremacy explained 26 H. VIII 1. not contrary to our Doctrine in this Cause Addend to the First Vol. Num. V. The 〈◊〉 as explained in 37 H. VIII 17. full to our Adversaries purpose and the sense of Archbishop Cranmer 25 II. VIII 〈◊〉 19. The same Notion of the Supremacy continued also under King Edw. the VI. Bishop Burnet Vol. II. Col. B. II. The Kings Re 〈…〉 Pap. 2. King Henry the VIIIths Reign by no means to be allowed for an Age of Precedents Queen Elizabeth explained the Supremacy in a Sense conâ—stent with our Principles Bishop Burnet p. 11. B. 111. Col. num 2. 1 Eliz. 1. Injunct by Queen Esâ—z Edition by Bishop Sparrow p. 77. 78. That Explication discharges'us now from any obligation to believe Archbishop Cranmer's Principles Resor Leg. Eccl. de Excom c. 2. De offic Jurisd omn. Judic What the Queen requires we can sincerely undertake and in a sense fully answering the Imposition of the Legislators â—he Queen's Injunction excuses us from swearing to the Supremacy over Spiriritual Persons in Causes purely Spiritual This Injunction of Queen Elizabeth still in force The Explication in the Injunctions authorized by our Church in her XXXVIIth Article The same Explication of the Injunctions confirmed also by Act of Parliament 5 Elizab. 1. It is rather supposed than contradicted by the second Canon The Practise of the Supremacy to our times no argument of the imposed sense of the Legislators against us Can. 12â— The Objection proposed that our present Protestant Succession seems to depend on the validity of the Deprivation of the last Popish Bishops which was no other than Laical The Lay Deprivations of those Popish Bishops who took out Lay Commissions for their Episcopal Power does not by any just consequence affect our present Case Vid. Specimen against Bishop Burnet p. 52 53. The Popish Bishops were of another Communion And therefore needed no other Deprivation than that of the Lay Magistrate This Doctrine agreeable exactly to the Sense and Practise of Antiquity If the Popish Bishops had had a better Title yet that could not have illegitimated Successors any longer than their own Lives If the Popish Bishops then had the better Title yet their discontinuance of their Succession has made their Title worse now 〈◊〉 Settle 〈…〉 give Right â—â—ere no better â—iâ—ht is injured by them This is proved from the Donatist and Luciferian Disputes Opt. Milev cont Parmenian L. 1. Artem. Onâ—ir 〈◊〉 1. c. 14 Adv. Euciferian They who took out Lay-Commissions for their Episcopal Power might yet keep their better Title Part. II. §. LV. p. 133. Ib. p. 131.
the Case that occasioned the Schism of the Luciferians The reason why they also were so very severe in disowning the Communion of so many Catholick Bishops was that they thought them guilty tho' not of the Arian Opinion yet of the Arian Communion For the Question with many of those who opposed Athanasius did only concern Communion Arius and Euzoius had under Constantine the Great made a pretended Recantation of their Haeresy and were thereupon received into Communion by Eusebius of Nicomedia and his Party This made that Party another Communion though the Recantation had been sincere till the Bishop of Alexandria for the time being had first received them because they were both of them Originally of the Jurisdiction of Alexandria and had been excommunicated for their Heresie by their Ordinary the Bishop of Alexandria who then was Alexander For the rules of Ecclesiastical Commerce then observed were that no Bishop could admit a Subject of another Bishop to his Communion without the Communicatory Letters of his Ordinary to whose Jurisdiction he belonged If he did he thereby broke the Rules of Commerce and thereby cut himself off from the Body of the Episcopal College who could no longer maintain Communion with him by giving Communicatory Letters to him or by receiving any from him This was in the Sense of that Age to out himself from the Catholick Communion and from the Catholick Church because the Communicants of such a Bishop would have Communion refused them over all the Catholick Church Such a Bishops Letters would not anywhere else intitle them to Communion and his Communicants could not be received without them by the common rules of Ecclesiastical Commerce There was also in this case something peculiar to make the Bishop of Alexandria's Communion Catholick It had been ratified in the General Council of Nice This made them who received those Alexandrian Presbyters to Communion without the consent of Athanasius their Ordinary guilty of rescinding their own Act as well as of the rule of the general Ecclesiastical Commerce However because they were received upon a pretended Recantation of their Heresy this involved many who were otherwise Orthodox in their Doctrine that they also were engaged in the Schism Especially those who rather Scrupled the Uncripturalness of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than the sense of the Catholick Church in useing it For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was thought Equivalent with the Catholick notion of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And when they enumerated the particulars included in the Phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And accordingly they used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which and the forementioned expressions they might very well mean a Son by Nature and by Univocal Generation not only a Factitious Son and by Adoption which seemed to be the most that was admitted by the first and most truly Heretical Arians This appears from the several Creeds of those times And though the true Arians had insidious meanings under those plausible terms as Athanasius and Hilary shew yet many of those who by that uncanonical reception of those dissembling Hereticks were engaged in the Heretical Communion had meanings also sufficiently reconcilable with the design of the Church in the Censures of Alexander ratifi'd by the Nicene Council for condemning the Original Doctrine of those two Hereticks I say the Original Doctrine as it had been taught by them when they began their disturbances for we are to observe that they did not seem to stand by their first Prevarications Arius himself was looked on as an Apostate from his own Heresy by Aetius and Eunomius so capable the Terms he used afterwards were of an Orthodox meaning 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 allowed by the Catholicks themselves who were more intent on the sense than the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as signifying an Univocal natural Son So I am sure Artemidorus expresses it Speaking of one who dreams of his being Born he says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 includes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the first and principal place And this Heathen Author who lived before those Disputes is a very competent witness how that Expression was used commonly then when there could be no design on the Dispute that was raised afterwards Lucifer therefore taking all for Arians who had been any way engaged in the Arian Communion comprehended under that name a great number of those who were notwithstanding very Orthodox in their Doctrine He took in those who Communicated with Arius and Euzoius rather as Penitents than as believing rightly He took in also all those who had been any way engaged in any Act of Communion with such as those were who had never been in their own Judgment otherwise than Orthodox He took in not only those who joyned with them not only in condemning Athanasius but all who had received any Orders from them that was the Case of Meletius of Antioch against whom he set up an Anti-Bishop though Meletius was even then in Exile for his Orthodoxy and all who had Communicated in any Sacraments administred by Persons so Ordained This must indeed have included a great number in the West where Lucifer was Bishop where though they were generally Orthodox yet since they had been reconciled to Valens and Ursacius on the belief of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 no doubt understood by those VVestern Bishops who received it in the Council of Ariminum in a good sense there were very few remaining free from the Contagion of the Arian Communion on some of the terms now mentioned So Faustinus and Marcellinus plainly suppose the Case to have been They hardly excuse Hilary himself hardly any but Lucifer and perhaps Eusebius Vercellensis Into so narrow a compass they contracted the Catholick Communion even in the VVest where notwithstanding the Catholick Doctrine was most universally received In this regard it was that St. Jerom says that the whole world admired at it self for becoming Arian This Admiration principally belongs to the Case of those who being Conscious to themselves of their being Orthodox in opinion might therefore the more justly admire at their being involved unawares in the Contagion of the Arian Communion In this regard St. Jerom might well call Hilary the Deacon who then continued the Luciferian Schism a new Deucalion in regard of the very small number which had escaped the Arian deluge upon so severe a test as this was of Communion Yet it can't be denied that this Contagion of Communion was in rigour Sufficient to have made them who had been involved in it judged as members of the Arian Communion till they had been reconciled as solemnly as they had Apostatized And whilst they were of another Communion all their Acts of Authority were justly questionable as to their Validity in another Body and Communion distinct from their own For how could one opposite Body convey
Privileges to or act by Jurisdiction upon another where there was no Common Government acknowledg'd no Legal Commerce or Subordination nothing but profess'd and notorius Hostility betwixt them And this whatever our modern Latitudinarians may fancy the Catholick Church has always taken to be the Case of opposite Communions And the generality of the Bishops being then involved in the Arian Schism though in the Heresy they were no otherwise involved than as the Schism did by Interpretation make them liable to the charge of the Heresy with which they Communicated there was no solemn reconciliation of them who were by their Office the Persons to whom reconciliation ought Ordinarily to have been made It was hard to expect it when the Bishops who had escaped the Contagion were so very small a number in comparison of those who were involved in it Yet these Practices must have occasioned many real Nullities if GOD had not been thought obliged in Equity to supply such defects where no injury followed to any Person living And the Catholick Church when she condemned the Luciferians for their Schism on account of these Austerities and charged the Guilt of the separation made on this account on them who made it plainly supposed that this was not a Cause sufficient to justify a Separation and therefore that such Nullities in rigour not in equity did not in the least affect the next Generation when there was no better Title which might in justice oblige GOD to ratify is for the good of Government and to oblige the whole Society to do justice under pain if they neglected it of not having their Acts of Spiritual Authority ratifyed by him without whose Ratification they must be unavaylable 'T is true there might be some reason for ratifying such Nullities when the Subjects by joyning with the better Title might secure their Interest in the Peculiar People But should GOD do it when there is no other Body in which the Subjects may secure themselves it must only make the Subjects desperate It would tempt them to believe that GOD intended there should no more be a peculiar People But how can that be reconciled with the new Covenant's being an Everlasting Covenant with its Gifts being without Repentance with Gods promise never to withdraw his mercies nor to suffer his Truth to fail notwithstanding whatsoever Provocations his chosen People might be guilty of How much less can he do it for such faileurs as he knows before to be unavoidable by them And for this purpose Dr. Hody ' s Collection is full And it seems indeed the design of the Author of it only to shew that the Church did not unravel Old disputes when the Persons were dead that werâ— concerned in them so as to make Nullities of all that had been done on the faulty side after the injury was ended and when things could not now be remedied This was the case of St. Chrysostom who disswaded his own Friends from such extremities not whilst he was living but after his decease This therefore was the fault of the Joannites that they made Nullities of all that was done by his Successors for so many years after his death contrary to the good Council himself had given them This was the fault of the Arsenians that they also made Nullities of all that was done by the Josephians for so many Years after the death of Arsenius This therefore being the occasion of that Collection will shew us the design of it The Author had no occasion to concern himself in defending the tolerableness of unjust much less of invalid deprivations whilst the Persons were living but only in defending the tolerableness of preceding Nullities after the injured Titles were extinct when they could not be recalled or amended And this will suffice to shew that though there had been invalidities in the Titles of our first Protestant Bishops on account of the better Titles of the Popish Bishops of the same Jurisdictions that cannot hurt the Titles of our Protestant Bishops now since their Succession has so long failed and ours been un-interrupted though both had been as they were not of the same Communion § XXXV BUT withall neither is that so certain as it may seem at the first view that even they who took out the Lay-Commissions did thereby lose their better Title to their Spiritual Authority received by their Ecclesiastical Consecrations So far indeed it might hold as to cut all such Persons off from the confidence of pleading the invalidity of the Lay-Deprivations that even such a Deprivation might be justly valid on their principles who had owned themselves to have no Spiritual Power but what they had received from the Civil Magistrate Indeed that worthy Person who was pleased to conceal himself under the assumed name of Anthony Harmar from the Processes against the Protestant Bishops in Queen Mary's time still preserved in the Register of Canterbury tells us that a Nullity of Title was objected to them by their Deprivers on account of these Lay-Commissions So the words of that Register are ob â—ullitatem Consecrationis ejus defectum tituli sui quem habuit à Rege Edwardo sexto per literas Patentes cum hac clausulâ dum bene se gesserit This form was used on Taylor Bishop of Lincoln Hooper Bishop of Worcester and Glocester Barlow Bishop of Hereford and Farrar Bishop of St Davids The same Patents also had been taken out by the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of Chester and Bristol as the same Author informs us as it should seem out of the same Registers Probably the rest did so too after the Act in King Edwards time But for those who had received their Orders from their Consecrations in the usual way antecedently to their Patents it is justy questionable whether any Act of theirs could alienate the Power they had received from Christ. Much more it is questionable whether they could do it by an indirect Act and by way only of Interpretation which is the most that can be made of their Patent It is not pretended that they did renounce their Spiritual power received from Christ any otherwise than as their owning another Original of that same Spiritual Power in their Patents may be so Interpreted And that Interpretation is only grounded on the inconsistency of these two Originals which makes it necessary that if one be owned the other must be rejected because they cannot be both possessed at once But this inconsistency is applicable both ways and may as well make their Patents null as inconsistent with their better Spiritual Title as make their Spiritual Title null as inconsistent with their Patents And it is not in their Power whether of the two shall be a Nullity unless GOD intended that the Power should be alienable when it was first given them If it was designed unalienable all their Acts afterwards to alienate it must have been Nullities as being inconsistent with the antecedent Right of GOD