REFLECTIONS ON THE RELATION OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION Lately Printed at OXFORD PART I. AMSTERDAM Printed for I. S. 1688. REFLECTIONS ON THE RELATION OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION c. The First Part. The INTRODUCTION WE have been long in Expectation of some extraordinary Productions of the Eminent Convert of Oxford His Age his Learning and the present Conjuncture hath raised that Expectation very high and tho the ill success of his Discourses concerning the Presence in the Sacrament and the Adoration of it hath sunk his Reputation to a great Degree it having appeared that he neither writes exactly nor sincerely which hath lessened him much in the Opinion of those who expected great things from him Yet it was thought that matters of History would succeed better in his hand for it hath been long believed that he had examined those Transactions very critically so that when I heard that he had undertaken this Subject I expected great Discoveries from him and fancied that instead of Extracts out of Fuller and Heylin we should have found Records Originals Papers and the Cotton-Library often cited So it may be easily apprehended how much I was surprised when I found a Book of such a Volume in which there was not the least Discovery of any new matters of Fact and that there was nothing in it but a tedious Repetition very ill expressed in rough English of Arguments that have been over and over again both made and refuted together with a Representation of the state of Affairs in the last Age that was partly defective and partly false It seemed strange to me at first view to see so large a Book writ and printed eight years after that Dr. Burnet's History of the Reformation had appeared without its taking the least notice of that Work which hath been so well received so much read and which seems to be so well confirmed by the Proofs that accompany it that few Books of History have gained a more general Reputation than it hath done and as none of the Roman-Communion have been able hitherto to say any thing for the Disparagement of that Work except Mr. Varillas so he hath been so severely exposed by the Dr. that this attempt hath raised its Credit instead of lessening of it It is true This Book seems to be a part of a great Work and to have been writ many years ago For as this appears in many Parts of it so more remarkably in one Passage that shews it was written in the Interval between His Late Majesties being re-established in his Throne and the Restauration of Bishops and therefore when this Book was writ the Author could not vouch other Historians than such as had then appeared Yet since the printing of it was delayed so long and since it is believed that the Author and the Publisher is the same Person he might have given himself the trouble to have reviewed his Work or at least to have added some Appendix relating to that more copious and authentical Account which Dr. Burnet hath given us of our Reformation For if the Dr. hath deceived the World by a false Representation of Matters yet it must be confessed that he hath done it with so good a Grace and with such appearances of Sincerity and of proving what he relates and that both our Countrymen and Forreigners have read that Work so much as appears by the several Impressions at home and the several Translations that have been printed beyond Sea that it was too great an Omission in the Author of this Recital if he be still alive that he hath never mentioned that History nor said any thing to ruin the Reputation it hath gained I am I confess much inclined to believe that he who hath published this Book could not have writ it For as there is nothing in it that answers the Reputation he hath in the World so the time of writing it seems a Demonstration that he cannot be the Author of it For what Opinion can we have of a mans Conscience of his Probity or his Honour that could write such a Book against the Reformation and the Church of England in the year 1660. and yet could continue in the Communion of our Church concurring not only in the Acts of our daily Worship but mixing with us in the Holy Sacrament twenty five years after this Such a Criminal Compliance hath so many foul Characters upon it that after all the Charity to which a man can carry his thoughts he can scarce know how to have one good thought of a person capable of so black and such a long continued dissimulation both towards God and Man. Whether Oaths and Subscriptions have not come in wise to enhance the guilt of so horrid a Dissimulation I do not know but even tho that hath not been in the case God and Man hath been sufficiently mocked This is that which makes me very unwilling to believe that the Author of this Book could continue in all the Acts of visible Communion with this Church so many years after he writ it tho I confess he speaks so softly and with so little Detestation of the compliance of the Popish Clergy in Edward the 6th's time that this looks too like a man that was resolved to venture on the same guilt for he tells us in his harsh Stile That the perpetual outward compliance of some other Bishops contrarily affected since there preceded before it penalties and Fears and the seeing of the prime Bishops to be imprisoned and ejected for standing out is far from an authentical Consent and unjustly reckoned as such For tho none can know mens Hearts but by their outward appearances yet where mens Votes are asked after Penalties Imprisonments of others Threats c. which are so strong motives of Dissimulation Now all that conform in these are to be presumed Compliers and none free Voters And afterwards without expressing any horror at it he owns That many of the inferior Clergy remained still of the old Religion which he goes about to prove by several Reasons And yet after all this there was nothing to be apprehended in K. Edward's days by such of the Clergy as would not receive the Reformation but the loss of their Benefices which if we are not mistaken in the Man our Author felt to be such a strong motive of Dissimulation that he resolved to be overcome by it If a single Act of impious Worship against a mans Conscience was thought so heinous a crime by the Primitive Church that it could not be expiated but by a Penitence of many years continuance then certainly the same Sin repeated in the course of so many years against such clear Convictions of Conscience must be confessed to be so heinous a Transgression that according to the Spirit of the Primitive Times such an Offender could have expected no other Grace but to obtain the Peace of the Church in his last agonies To see a man change is natural especially where
here while he is in England he will condemn these treasonable Doctrines The ground upon which he condemns them is also suitable to the Condemnation it self For he says that this is the Opinion of several Catholicks This was modestly expressed For tho it is true that several of those he calls Catholicks are of this mind yet all Catholicks are not of it So that the Doctrine of murdering Kings is at least a probable one and since the Decrees of the Church of Rome for the deposing of Princes fall not only on those that are Hereticks themselves but even on the Fautors and Favourers of Hereticks I do not see how his Majesty's Life is secured For besides the Protection and Liberty that he grants to Hereticks of his own Dominions he hath received and encouraged the Refuges of another Prince which is to be a Favourer of Heresy of the worst sort So that if Innuendoes were in fashion I do not see how our Author could defend himself against an Indictment of Treason or at least against an Information Our Author to let us see how wary he is in his Concessions as he calls them ends the Paragraph with another It shall be granted here For it is plain he will not loose an inch of all the Papal Pretensions but will preserve them entire to a better time XXXIX Our Author pretends that Q. Elizabeth's Supremacy was carried much higher than had been granted by the former Clergy under K. Henry the 8th The Allegation is false for the Supremacy was carried much higher under King Henry than it was under Queen Elizabeth who as she would not accept of the Title of Head of the Church so she explained her Supremacy both in her own Injunctions and in the Acts of Convocation and Parliament that followed in so unexceptionable a manner that our Author himself hath nothing to object to it He seems also to infinuate as if the King's Supremacy were asserted by us as a Grant of the Clergy whereas we pretend to no such thing The Civil Supremacy that we ascribe to our Princes is founded on the Laws of God on the Rules of Humane Society on the Laws of England and on the Practice of the Church for many Ages and King Henry receiv'd no new strengthning of his Title by the Act of the Clergy which did not confer any new Authority on him but only declared that which was already inherent in him XL. Our Author enters into a long Discourse to prove the Invalidity of Orders granted in our Church which he doth so weakly and yet as he doth all other things so tediously and with so much Confusion that I have no mind to follow him in all his wandrings He seems to question the Authority of Suffragan Bishops who though they were limited as to their Iurisdiction yet as to their Order they were the same with the other Bishops The Proceedings in Queen Mary's Time were too full of Irregularity and Violence to be brought as Proofs that the Orders given by King Edward's Book were not valid In a word the Foundation of that false Opinion of some of the Church of Rome was that ever since the Time of the Council of Florence the Form in which Priests Orders were conferred was believed to be the delivering the Sacred Vessels with a power to offer Sacrifices for the Dead and Living So they reckoned that we had no true Priests since that Ceremony was struck out of our Ordinal But the folly of all this is apparent since Men began to examine the Ancient Rituals and those which have been published by Morinus shew that as this Rite is peculiar to the Roman Church so it was not received before the Ninth Century And since all Ordinations during the first Eight Centuries were done by the Imposition of Hands and Prayer then there can be no reason to question our Orders since we retain still all that the Ancient Church thought necessary As for the common Observation of our Ordinals not being enacted by Queen Elizabeth before the Eighth Year of her Reign it hath been so oft made and answered that I am 〈…〉 see our Author urge it any further Would he that hath disputed so much against the Civil Authorities medling in Matters Sacred annul our Orders because the Law was not so clearly worded with relation to that part of our Offices The most that can possibly be made out of this is that the Ordinations were not quite legal so that one might have disputed the paiment of the Fruits But this hath no relation to us as we are a Church in that the Book of Ordinations having been annexed to the Book of Common-Prayer in King Edward the Sixth's Time the reviving of the Book of Common-Prayer in Queen Elizabeth's Time was considered as including the Book of Ordinations Though it s not being expresly named this gave occasion to Bonner to question the validity of them in Law. Upon which the Explanatory Act passed declaring that it had been the Intention of the Parliament to include that in the Book of Common-Prayer So that this Act only declared the Law but did not create any new Right I have now gone over all that I judged most material in this tedious Book The darkness of the stile the many unfinished Periods the frequent Repetitions the many long Quotations to very little purpose above all the intricate way of Reasoning made it a very ungrateful thing to me to wrestle through it In it one may see how much a Man may labour and study to very little purpose For how unhappy soever the Author hath been in his pains it cannot be denied but he hath been at a great deal to compass it But a Man that neither sees things distinctly nor judges well of them the more he toils about them he entangles himself and his Reader so much the more So that never was so much pains taken to less purpose If our Author gives us many more Books of this size both as to Sincerity and good Reasoning he will quickly cure the World of the Mistake in which they were concerning him He passed once for a Learned Man and he had passed so still if he had not taken care to let the World see by so many repeated Essays how false a Title he hath to that Reputation which had fallen upon him But it seems his Sincerity and good Judgment are of a piece Otherwise as he could not obtrude on the World the falsehoods concerning latter times and the Ignorance of Antiquity that appears in all his Books so when so many have been at the pains to discover both his Mistakes and his Impostures He would either have confessed them or some way excused them But it is no wonder to see a Man that dissembled so long with God and that lied so oft to him serve the World now as he did his God for so many Years I pray God touch his Heart and give him a Repentance proportioned to the heinousness of his Sins by which he hath given so much Scandal to the Atheistical sort of Men who from him must be tempted to draw strange Consequences And he hath certainly brought a greater Reproach on that Church to which he hath gone over than all the Services he can ever render them in his useless and confounded Writings will be able to wipe off But to whom sovever he hath been a Reproach our Church hath no share in it since of him and of such as he is we must say They went out from us but they were not of us For if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us but they went out that it might be made manifest that they were not all of us FINIS P. 82. ad finem From p. 140. Page 141. Adorat of the Euchar. p. 28. P. 139. Ephes. 5. 24. Col. 3. 20. Page 87 88. 2 Chron. 17. 7. 2 Chron 9. 5 8. V. 11. 2 Chron. 29. 5. V. 34. 2 Chron. 30. 23. Numb 9. 10. Ezra 7. 25. Nehem. 13. 28. Ludolph P. 20. lin 12. P. 21. Hist. Reform P. 1. Re◠Bo. 2. n. 10. Ibid n. 24. Nam qui Reginae odio vel speratae sec dum forsan notae futurae conjugis illecib◠titillatione Regem agi putant ij ex cordes plane toto quod aiunt coelo errare videntur Ibid. P. 22. Cott. Lib. Vit. B. 13. P. 23. ◠25. Printed in the Cabala P. 26. P. 28. P. 39. 25 Henry 8th n. 14. P. 41. Hist. Reform Rec. b. 2. n. 37 38 39. P. 51. P. 78 79. P. 57. P. 58. P. 64. P. 68. P. 71. P. ibid. P. 72. P. 84. P. 90. P. 93. P. 9◠P. ibid. P. 108. P. 110. P. 111. P. 119. P. 127. P. 134. P. 135. P. 142. P. 157. P. 160. Ibid. Tolet. can 10. §. 75. c. 13. 1040. Vita Gul. Abb. Dijon c. 4. P. 162. P. 176 273. P. 187. P. 208. P. 120. P. 2.
by the unanimous Consent of the Second Council of Chalons And Radulphus Glaber tells us that in the 11th Century an ill Custom was creeping in that none was ordain'd Deacon till he had first sworn Obedience to his Bishop Among the Rituals published by Morinus in the 4th there is only mention of a Promise of Submission and Obedience to the See in the 9th Ritual which he believes to be about 700 Years old there is an Oath of Obedience indeed to the Patriarchal See but this is far from any claim to Antiquity since it is plain it did not begin to be exacted till the Popes began to raise their Pretensions far beyond that of a Patriarch and so this Oath was soon formed to so high a strain that no Temporal Prince whatsoever had his Subjects more strictly bound to him than all Bishops were subjected to the Pope as their Temporal as well as their Spiritual Head which will appear to every one who will give himself the trouble of reading it XXXV He quarrels our Liturgy for leaving the Oblation to God of the Holy Eucharist as propitiatory or impetratory of any Benefits for the Living or to the Dead contrary to the Belief of former Churches and Councils If by former he means the Ages of Darkness that had preceded the Reformation this we esteem no Reproach but if he will carry this matter higher it is easie to shew they had no other Notion of a Sacrifice in the Eucharist than such as we still retain which is a Commemoration of that one Sacrifice by which we were reconciled to God and a Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving upon it which we still retain and according to the Spirit of the Ancient Church we use the term Sacrifice And here our Author betrays that malignancy of Spirit which he bears our Church in accusing us for some Changes that our Reformers made in the Liturgy as if these had been such heinous things Whereas the Changes that the Roman Church hath made have been of another nature and they have so altered all their Books of Divine Offices that if any will compare the Ordo Romanus which was a Ritual of the 10th or 11th Century with the Missals at present it will appear how inconsiderable the Changes that our Reformers made are when compared to those of that Church If any will take the Pains to examine the Books of Ordination that are collected by Morinus he will see that the Prayers which in one Age were esteemed the Forms of Ordination came to be considered in another but as preparatory Devotions And that the Prayers which in one time were only Blessings after Orders given were at another time looked on as the formal Words by which they were given Since then all Churches chiefly that of Rome have so often changed their Divine Offices it is a very unreasonable thing to reproach the Church of England for having done it once or twice in the beginning of the Reformation XXXVI Our Author it seems thinks he hath a privilege to reproach our Church in spite of the clearest Discoveries that can be made so though that Worthy and Learned Person that answered his two Discourses concerning the Real Presence and the Adoration of the Sacrament had from the light given in Dr. Burnet's History answered the Objection he had made from the Alteration in the Article of the Sacrament concerning the Presence a great deal of the Explanation that was made in Edward the Sixth's Time being left out under Queen Elizabeth Yet it is clear by the Original Subscription which I my self viewed in Bennet Colledg Library that all the Clergy were of the same mind with those of King Edward's Time only upon a prudential Consideration it was not thought necessary to publish it so that it was not cast out but suppressed Common Decency should have obliged our Author not to have mentioned this any more or to have answered that which had been said upon it But it seems with the new Religion he hath got he hath received a most indelible degree of Impudence XXXVII Our Author engages into a long enquiry concerning the Articles of Religion that were printed in King Edward the Sixth's Time and hath indeed offered some Things that seem to leave it doubtful whether they were agreed to in a Convocation or not But all this is a Matter of very small Importance if these Articles were not passed in Convocation in King Edward's Reign we are sure they were agreed too in Convocation in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's Reign And it is no great matter to us whether they are ten Years older or later that is whether they were agreed to in the Year 1552 or in the Year 1562. It is more likely they were agreed to in King Edward's Time for they were printed then with that Title and though Impostures are but too ordinary to be determined by the baldness of a Title Page yet things are seldom printed as flowing from such a publick Authority when it is known that they are the Projects of a few Heads that would impose upon the World It cannot now be known from the Records of the Convocation they being all burnt but it is certain that soon after in Queen Elizabeth's Time these Articles were ever looked on as the Work of the Convocation in King Edward's Time. Nor is there any reason to think otherwise for by that time 〈…〉 said they 〈◊〉 made the Bishopricks were so filled and the Clergy were every where so compliant that there is no reason to think that the regular way was not taken in a Matter of this nature As long as the Popish Party was the Majority our Reformers were obliged to carry Matters by some selected Bishops and Divines whose Propositions were enacted by the Civil Authority but when the Clergy was by degrees wrought to give a more universal concurrence in the Reformation which was done before the Year 1552. we have no reason to think that the regular Method was neglected But it is to very little purpose to spend many words concerning a matter of small consequence and in which there is so little certainty XXXVIII Our Author shews how dry all his Concessions are in favour of the Civil Authority in opposition to the Papal Pretensions not only for deposing but even for assassinating Heretical Princes in these words It shall here be granted as being the Opinion of several Catholicks that no general Council hath any Authority to make any Ecclesiastical Law which any way intrenches upon any Civil Right nor any Foreign Prelate hath Authority to use a Temporal Power over Princes when judged Heretical to kill or depose them or absolve their Subjects from their Allegiance The King is certainly much obliged to our Author who hath given him such an Assurance of enjoying his Crown and his Life For he grants it here as he said elsewhere he would not be thought to justify the burning of Hereticks in this place So