Imprimatur Hic Liber cui Titulus A Vindication of the Principles of the Author c. Dec. 14. 1687. Jo. Battely A VINDICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE AUTHOR of the Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes Testium From the Charge of POPERY In Answer to a late Pretended Letter from a Dissenter to the Divines of the Church of England As Deceivers and yet True 2 Cor. 6.8 LONDON Printed for Henry Mortlock at the Phoenix in St. Paul's Church-yard 1688. A VINDICATION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE AUTHOR of the Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes Testium c. HAD I not already promised the world in Print a speedy Vindication of my self the natural care and tenderness that every man hath for his own Reputation are a sufficient engagement to set about the clearing of my self from being that Counterfeit or teaching that Popery I am accused of in a Pretended Letter from a Dissenter to the Divines of the Church of England I have already hinted to the world in the Advertisement at the end of my Second Letter to Sabran the Jesuit that I am very well satisfied not onely that this pretended Letter came out of Henry Hill's Press but that it was the Issue of the Representer's or Compiler's call him whether you will malicious Pen. This every one that I converse with as well as my self quickly saw and every man else cannot but see that either knows the Print of Henry Hills or the Stile of the Representer Having made this discovery of their unhansom underhand-dealings herein I was once thinking to have shewn how very conformable this management was to the Secret Practices of some of the Members of the Church of Rome in former times against the Established Church of England but when I found Materials increase too much upon my hands which would have made an Introduction too large for such a Discourse as I intend this to be I have upon that and a better reason laid that design aside I cannot however but tell the Representer here that I have read and considered his Third Chapter in his Third Part of Popery Misrepresented and Represented about the Jesuits in Protestant Pulpits And that I found neither Truth nor Reason there as I think I could make apparent unto the world were not this a Subject too nice for the present Age. I will tell him also that it would have been as prudent in him not to have touched upon this string since this is a Subject in the treating of which he doth inevitably run himself upon hurting either his Cause or his Conscience Among the Methods made use of against the Church of England there is none more likely to have ruined the Church than that which was so much in vogue in the late King's Reign I mean the beginning and keeping up of Fears and Jealousies against the Church as if her Greatest as well as most Learned Members had been at best Popishly affected and waited onely for a good opportunity either of stepping over unto the Church of Rome or at least of accommodating Matters with Her and meeting her half way How successful this false and most unreasonable Slander of the Church of England was no person can be ignorant that remembers even the last part of the late King's Reign What share some of our Representer's Friends had in the raising or fomenting those Jealousies and Fears of the Best Church-men and Greatest Men in it is not so easie to discover here That they had some share in them is what we have very good reason to suspect since we are sure that they did reap the greatest advantage from them But when that time was come which the Fanatical Enemies of the Church of England said the Church-men waited onely for and when those deluding and deluded People saw that to the Confusion of all their false surmizes the Clergy of the Church of England continued firm to their Mother-Church and vigorous against all the Assaults of Rome and were as far as ever from betraying the Cause or the Defence of the Church of England or the Protestant Interest those Fears and Jealousies were laid aside and buried and the Multitude began to have a new as well as just apprehension of things and were not ashamed to confess that they had been very much abused with those false Fears and groundless Jealousies and that they were now abundantly convinced that the Church-men really were what they had all along professed and shewn themselves to be True Sons of the Church of England and the most faithful and diligent Defenders of the Protestant Cause This discovery of the Sincerity of the Clergy of the Church of England was I do not in the least question very uneasy to one Part of the World who could not but be highly troubled that the serviceable and prosperous Fears and Jealousies were now out of date and laid by as utterly useless and I do not doubt that they were thereupon no little unwilling to have them quite forgotten All the business was how to retrieve those Fears and Jealousies before they were clean extinct and what must be done to keep some of them up and to continue them in the Heads of the deluded People I can very easily suppose that there were as many Expedients almost as Welwishers to the support of the Old Method but he in my opinion seems to have hit on the most probable means who was for shewing to the World that there still is an Agreement in most material things between the two Churchs of England and Rome This was the Invention of one of our Representers Church who it seems took it very ill that the world should think the Clergy of the Church of England were such great Opposers of Popery or that they really were as far from being infected with Principles of Popery as they were desirous to be thought at this time That he might therefore convince the People and expose to the world that great mistake He prepares a Collection and publishes in Print his worthy design which was to shew according to the Title it bears An Agreement between the Church of England and the Church of Rome But there were two great Mistakes committed in the publishing of that Pamphlet which were like to ruin the design of it and prevent its doing any good towards the keeping up of Fears and Jealousies of the English Clergy the One was that the Author thereof did discover so plainly what Church he was of and the other was that the Book did in its Title page shew out of whose Press it came Had it been the Work of some Protestant Dissenter it would have required a fairer examination and deserved the greater credit as coming from one who commonly makes such professions of Conscience and Sincerity and who by his former share of promoting Fears and Jealousies of the Clergy might seem to be in a particular manner interested to make good his quondam charge against the Clergy of the Church of
England Nay had the Author but personated a Dissenter in it and published it as from one of that kind it might have expected better success But for him to lay open so plainly himself and to let the world know that he was of the Church of Rome and which was as ill managed to have Henry Hills to set his name to his Book that so every one might know whence it came this was too gross to impose upon any and this was enough to blast the whole design since there are no people of tolerable sense but would as soon as they saw whence it came reflect with themselves that this Book must needs be a ridiculous sham because if there were in reality any such Agreements between any of the Members of the Church of England and the Church of Rome the Romanists would have been far from being either so uncivil to their secret Friends or so much Enemies to their own Designs as to discover their private Allies to the world and post them up that every Body may know them and thereby deprive themselves of ever having such secret Friends any more And therefore this ridiculous Pamphlet was so far from helping on or keeping up the Jealousie-Design or doing them any good that way The Reverend Dr. Shâ—â—lock that it onely served to provoke that very worthy Person who was particularly aimd at and abused in it to publish a Vindication of himself wherein he hath throughly basted the pretences of his Romish Adversary and broke the neck of the silly design The ill fortune however of that fruitless design did not deter our Representer from trying the same Method again so good and so promising an undertaking must not be let fall for the miscarriages of one Man a design so necessary must be pursued and care onely taken not to make any more such false steps as the former Author had but to secure the Privacy of it To this good purpose our Representer comes forth and presents the world with no fewer than sixteen Articles of Popery extracted out of one Book lately published by a Member of the Church of England and this in the disguise of a Dissenter and without any Printers name to it that so the Suppositious Brat might pass undiscovered and all that was said in this pretended Letter might be swallowed by the unthinking Multitude as if it came from some real Dissenter This new Method the Representer was pleased to try first against me for out of my Answer to his Nubes Testium are all those Articles of Popery pretended to be collected which are the Subject of that personating Letter from the Dissenter to the Divines of the Church of England But to the great disparagement of our crafty Representer this Letter neither was so well managed as it ought to have been for tho there was Art in fathering the Brat upon the Dissenters as if it had come from One of them yet this Art was forgotten to personate the Dissenter a little better for in this pretended Letter One plainly sees the Representer in every Period and his own stile carried throughout And therefore as tho the Author were conscious to himself and his Friends of the same mind that his stile would endanger his discovery all care was taken that it might not be known out of what Press this pretended Letter was sent Randal Taylor the Publisher of it had a strict charge laid upon him not to discover whence he had it or for whom he did publish it and thereupon durst not tell whence he had it and so resolute were they to have it concealed that when my Booksellers Servant went the next day to Henry Hills Printing-house to buy two or three of the Letters among other Books they denied the Letter and refused to sell him any of it tho he saw and pointed to a heap of them in the shop before their faces But all this foolish care was to no purpose since Henry Hills Print is too well known to all Booksellers and the Representers stile to all Scholars that have given themselves the trouble of reading his frothy Pamphlets I must confess that upon publishing my Answer to the Compiler of the Nubes Testium I did expect to meet with a great deal of ill usage and slanders I had in my Answer to that Book of the Representer discovered two things in relation to the Author of it which I knew would incense and gall the Author of it as much as they would please the Generality of Readers the One was that He had stole his whole Book except a small passage or two out of Natalis Alexandre a present Writer of the Church of Rome without once mentioning whence He had it The other thing was that He had stole the Book out of an Author every one of whose Volumes made use of by this Plagiary had been condemned to the flames two years before by the present Pope and all people forbid under pain of Excommunication immediately incurr'd the keeping reading or transcribing any of those Volumes and thereupon stands excommunicate for his pains by the present Pope and cannot be absolved by any person but the Pope himself or the Bishop of Rome for the time being The First of these did discover how much a Scholar our Representer was notwithstanding that Pompous Collection out of Fathers and the other shewed as plainly how dutiful a Son of the Church he is notwithstanding all the fine things said in behalf of the Bishop of Rome in any of his Pieces As I did expect so I now have found that I have in the highest manner disobliged our Representing Compiler since I meet with the worst usage that rage or malice were able to dictate I little dreamed that in the mustering up of my faults and mistakes Popery would have been any part of my charge but it seems I was sufficiently mistaken and tho I who may be allowed to know my own sense best did believe there was no more Popery in my Book than there is either in my Heart or my Head yet this prying Representer can find a great deal of it there and charges me quoting place and page for it with sixteen Articles of Popery which large Bill against me I will now examine The three first Articles of Popery that I am charged with are about the Pope himself in favour of whom I am charged with saying first that I can grant that the Bishop of Rome is the Successor of S. Peter 2. That that See is the Centre of the Catholick Communion while possest by an Orthodox Bishop 3. That whosoever separates himself from it professing the true Faith and possessed by a Catholick Bishop is guilty of Schism And is this ingenuous dealing must every Disputant be charged with what he grants meerly for disputation sake And must every Writer be charged with what he onely supposes for argument sake and to expose his Adversary more plainly This is very hard and very unreasonable measure to
all that he did pray for I am no more able to defend it than I could the Prayers of any man whom God had blessed with Children and Heirs to his name and his Estate if he should be importunate with God that he would bestow the blessing of Children upon him and bestow in his mercy but one Son upon him to keep up his family and his name I do not mention these things to expose those two venerable Fathers but to vindicate the Practice of my Mother-Church in relation to these things I think those that dye in the Lord have no need of our Prayers and that those that dye in his disfavonr can receive no benefit by them The fifteenth Article against me is that I say that it is the Opinion of his Church that Christs Body is really present in the Eucharist This charge is as ridiculous as any of the rest for if the real presence be the Opinion of our Church how comes it to be one of my Articles of Popery Could this unreasonable Adversary have shewn that the Real Presence is not the Opinion of our Church but onely of the Church of Rome and that I was a believer of such a real Presence his charge against me of a Popish Opinion herein would have been most justly laid But he neither offers to prove that our Church is not of that Opinion nor is he at all able to do it and yet I must be a Papist notwithstanding I believe with our Church whose real Presence is far from looking like Popery since she hath so often and so fully declared that by real here is only meant a spiritual not corporeal or natural Presence of Christs Body Nay in that very place where I said it was the Opinion of our Church that Christs Body was really present in the Eucharist I gave also the reason of that Opinion because we believe as my words (c) p. 65. there are that the consecrated Elements do by the Appointment of God communicate to every faithful Receiver the Body and Blood of Christ which is no more than what S. Paul hath said in other words before us when he tells the Corinthians that the Bread which he and they broke was a Communion of or did communicate to them the Body of Christ and that the Cup of Blessing was a Communion of the Blood of Christ 1 Cor. 10.16 The last Article of Popery against me is of the same nature with the former that I do confess That that consecrated Food is the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ I do own that I did grant those words as taken out of Justin Martyr but had my Sly Adversary but had the Honesty to have put down the words that do immediately follow there I am sure that this would either not have been put down as an Article of my Popery or that my Accuser would have been hist at by all men for his folly in charging me with it since immediately after those words I did express my self thus We have already granted that it is to wit that the Consecrated Food is the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ however to corroborate what we said above it is evident to a Demonstration that this consecrated Food was still Bread and not transubstantiated into the natural Body and Blood of Christ because S. Justin says at the same time and in the same sentence that our Bodys are Nourished by that very consecrated Food to affirm which of the Natural Flesh of Christ is impious and detestable Thus I have gone through and fully answered this large Charge of Popery against me and since he was not satisfied in the Letter to set them onely once down but does for the greater security of effecting his designs against me repeat them in short before he ends his Letter I will do the same here by my Answers unto them The first charge therefore in three Articles about the Pope and the fourth about Tradition I have shewn to be as Notorious and Scandalous a Falsification of a mans words and meaning as the greatest Cheat in the world could be guilty of that the six next can be called Popery onely by the same Figure that we would call the Belief of Christs Resurrection Popery because all Christians in the world believe it as well as the Church of Rome which is a thing so horridly foolish as no one but he that hath more Malice than Wit or Logick in his head could be supposed guilty of and for the last six they are most falsely nicknamed Popery and most ridiculously laid to my particular charge except this Malicious Adversary can shew that to make a thing Popery it is necessary that it be believed and practised by all Churches that are against as well as for the Church of Rome and that I am the Generality of Christians or at least the whole Church of England If ever Rage and Folly Malice and Weakness were equally discovered to the world it certainly was in this wretched Letter wherein all the care seems to be either to pervert my words and falsifie my meaning or to put down that as said by me which was not so as meant by me that was not so and as said by me in particular which was common unto all Christians Notwithstanding this injurious usage of me yet I cannot but thank the Representer for it since he hath by this Letter discovered to the world what sort of person he is and thereby given warning to the world to have a care how they believe One that will be guilty of such dishonest things He may write on as long as he pleases but this usage of me will I question not prevent his doing any mischief by it since Men are for reading those Books onely wherein they have reason to expect Truth Candor and Integrity and are always upon their guard against if they vouchsafe to read an Author that can and does write without any concern for Truth Conscience or Honesty I will before I conclude make one short address unto the Dissenters that they would have a care how they suffer themselves to be imposed upon in these things I know this Author makes it his great care to keep them still aloof off the Church of England and therefore is upon every occasion nay without any occasion still putting them in mind of the late Execution of Penal Laws and how they were harassed by them But can they believe after all this that this man is their real Friend whose Principles and Practices look quite another way I think his affixing this most false and injurious Letter unto some of them is a fair warning how much real kindness he hath for them who was so very desirous to have this Letter thought by all people to be theirs which is made up of nothing else but folly falshood and slander What is this but to have the world to believe that the Dissenters are still the same foolish false and slanderous people that most of his Church did use to think them and I am affraid do still continue to do I will trouble them no further but request this at their hands that they would make it their Prayer to God that they never may be guilty of the dishonouring of God by affording their helping hand to the ruine of the Protestant Religion FINIS