Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	church_n	doctrine_n	homily_n	2,004	5	11.8804	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65419	A vindication of the present great revolution in England in five letters pass'd betwixt James Welwood, M.D. and Mr. John March, Vicar of Newcastle upon Tyne : occasion'd by a sermon preach'd by him on January 30. 1688/9 ...	Welwood, James, 1652-1727.; March, John, 1640-1692.; Welwood, James, 1652-1727.	1689 (1689)	Wing W1310; ESTC R691	40,072	42

but this was too hot for your Fingers and therefore you thought fit to drop it Secondly In your Second Paragraph I find nothing material for having referr'd you to the Homilies of our Church for Scripture Proofs of Passive Obedience you are it seems afraid to look into that excellent Book lest you should be found guilty of a Scandalum Ecclesiae and in truth I must commend your Wisdom for its much safer writing against a private Minister than against so glorious a Church but believe it you must not expect to go Scot-free since I have now prov'd the Doctrin of Passive Obedience in my narrow sense as you call it very improperly seeing it is the largest sense any takes it in to be the Doctrin of the Church of England Thirdly You say that I am unwilling the Protestants abroad should share with the Church of England in her darling Doctrin of Passive Obedience which is a Story as true as many you use to tell in the Coffee-house for if you look into the third Paragraph of my former Letter you 'll find me reproving your Learned Ignorance for abusing several of those great Names you mention such as Luther Melancthon Calvin Grotius and others whom you represent as Patrons of Resistance which is but another name for Rebellion You are now forc'd to own That the Government of the Empire differs so far from ours in England that what would be unlawful Resistance here would be but a legal Defence there and this alone is sufficient to vindicate most of those Foreign Divines you mention But because you are very hard to please I shall add further out of Sleidans Comment Lib. XVII where he tells us That the Elector of Saxony who was the chief Person engaged in the German Wars against Charles the Fifth did openly declare That if the said Charles was own'd to be a proper Sovereign with respect to the Princes of the Empire it must then be granted That it was not lawful to wage War with him I hope you will not be so injurious to the Prince of Orange as to affirm That he is no Sovereign Prince because he is proclaimed King of England Luther indeed at first was ignorant as you were of the Constitution of the Empire and therefore was altogether for resisting Charles the Fifth but afterwards he was better inform'd by Learned Lawyers as Sleidan and Melchar Adam Report Melancthon you 'll find Orthodox in this matter if you consult his Loc. Com. de Vindicat. Magistrat Indeed some have thought Calvin as you do a favourer of resisting Sovereign Princes because Lib. 4. Institut he has this Passage Si qui nunc sint populares Magistratus ad moderandum Regum libidinem constituti quales olim erant qui Lacaedemoniis Regibus oppositi erant Ephori If saith he there be any such Magistrates as the Ephori were among the Lacaedemonians they may oppose and resist Kings but in other cases he denies it Now because you are ignorant of the Power of the Ephori among the Spartans and that their two Kings were not proper Sovereigns but the one Admiral by Sea and the other Generalissimo of Land Forces I shall for your better instruction remit you to Arist. Polit. Lib. 2. Plutarch in Pausan or Keckerman de Repub. Spart a Book perhaps more easie to be got in Scotland You are pleas'd to triumph because Grotius as you say is of your Opinion and tell me He is not inferiour to me either for Learning or Judgment It 's well that you can speak a little truth at any time but whether it be your gross Ignorance or the liberty Travellers use to take it s very seldom that you speak all the Truth for the Learned Grotius though in his Book de Iure Belli pacis and in another written in his Younger Time he did drop some unmeet Expressions and unfound Arguments yet when he had weighed Matters better he retracted his former Opinions and in his last Works is as much for Non-Resistance as I was in my Sermon For proof of this Vid. Anot. on Rom. 13. Mat. 26.52 Vot pro pace where he approves of the Proceedings of the University of Oxford about Paraeus on the Romans and allows of this their Determination viz. That Subjects ought by no means to resist their King by force nor ought they to take either offensive or defensive Arms against the King for the cause of Religion or any other thing whatsoever But you no doubt will despise the Determination of our famous University though applauded by your own Grotius and imitate your Country-man Gillispie who in scorn called Prayers and Tears Oxford Divinity By these few instances it will I hope be evident to all unprejudic'd Persons how much you have abus'd these great Names Luther Melancthon Calvin and Grotius Fourthly In the next place you have the confidence to tell me That the Church of England is for the Principle of Resistance and that the Homilies cannot be for Passive Obedience Now this is not only to contradict me but also to contradict your self having in your former Paragraph call'd it the darling Doctrin of our Church You might have receiv'd full satisfaction in this matter had you according to my Advice consulted the Book of Homilies but instead of doing this and to have an opportunity to shew your great Talent of wrangling you labour to evince your impudent Assertion by these impertinent Arguments First Because Queen Elizabeth protected the Hollanders in the Revolt from Spain but this I have answer'd in my former Letter and obliged you to acknowledge That the Government of the Netherlands was vastly different from this of England so that theirs was not properly Resistance but a warrantable Defence This I say you were told before and own'd the matter and yet think fit to serve up your twice sodden Coleworts that you may seem to say something Secondly You tell me as a great Secret That the Convocation of the Clergy of England gave vast Sums towards the Protection of the Hollanders and the Preamble of every Act insinuates the lawfulness of their Resisting the King of Spain This is a Secret with a Witness for I dare be bold to say That the Learnedst Lawyer in England never heard of an Act of Parliament for Mony made by a Convocation But suppose the Bishops or any of the Clergy did contribute such vast Sums it will not prove That our Church did not own Passive Obedience in Queen Elizabeths time as you assert But pray Sir were not the Homilies in her time And that the Fathers of our Church did then take them in the same sense as I did in my Sermon will appear beyond all contradiction from the Testimonies of Bishop Bilson and Iewell I begin with Bishop Bilson who speaks thus in his Book of Christian Subjection Deliverance if you would have it obtain it by Prayer and expect it in Peace These be the Weapons for Christians the Subjects have no Refuge against their

remain SIR Your Humble Servant JOHN MARCH Feb. 19. 1688 9. For the Reverend Mr. JOHN MARCH Vicar of Newcastle Newcastle March 3. 1688 9. SIR AFTER your so unusual method of exposing your Second Letter at your Stationers Shop and thereby to most of the Town I might have expected it my self especially considering my so often sending for it but your delaying it from day to day and at last absolute Refusal put me upon the necessity of getting a Copy of it another way I cannot much blame you for this Conduct the writing and dispersing such a Letter required indeed the Denial of it to the Person for whom it was design'd I find you are liable to the fate of him of whom it was said If he had held his Peace he might have been thought a Philosopher and I was nothing unwilling you should continue such in the Opinion of the Mobile I might well spare my self the trouble of a Rejoinder there being nothing in your Letter that requires one for they must have clearer Eyes than mine that can discover any thing material or to the purpose in it but instead thereof a continued shuffling and waving of the Question mixt with so mean Sarcasms that for your own Honour I could have wish'd you had omitted them So that to give you an Answer I am at a great loss being unacquainted with Billingsgate Oratory and oblig'd at every turn to repeat my own words in my former Letters which you have been pleas'd to wrest so far as I cannot say you have given a fair repetition of one single Sentence of mine all along yours But to evince to the unbiass'd and knowing Persons of the place That you are not infallible as your admiring Mobile would have you I have put my self upon a nauseating Task of writing you these few Lines in answer to so indigested and immethodick a Letter You begin it with bantering my taking notice of the Direction of your first and tell me That the Heraulds Office will inform me that a Doctor of a Foreign University has no Priviledge in England I pretend to no great Priviledges any where but I had reason to expect a designation you refuse not to some who scarce ever saw an University Neither have I liv'd so obscure or been so little imploy'd as not to be known for what I am by most of the Gentry and People of Quality in the place and you notably contradict your self in saying You was ignorant of my Quality since you name expresly my Profession in your first Letter But we shall not fall out upon that Head since the Heraulds Office is not like to be much troubled with either of our Escutcheons Next you would fix upon me a great ferment of Choler and Rudeness in many of my Expressions you enumerate and tell me I deserved not so modest an Answer as you vouchsaf'd me considering the Provocations I gave you a Person that never disobliged me I submit both my first and second to any neutral Person who perhaps will allow them a better Construction and if any thing of Heat has slipt from my Pen I hope the occasion of it will do more than procure me a pardon It 's true you never disoblig'd me but no Personal Injury could have affected me more than the hearing a glorious and unparallel'd Deliverance branded in the Pulpit with the infamous Names of Rebellion Damnation and the like and the being a Witness to a Series of Actings consequential to such Expressions You seem'd to me in inveighing against a Revolution wherein the Finger of God was so visible to act much in parallel with those of old who dar'd to attribute the stupendious Effects of Omnipotence to a baser Influence And for me to have been an Apathist on such an occasion would have been but another name for Stupidity In your accusing me of Passion you must needs have a fling at poor Zeno and Two thousand Years rest in his Grave must not shelter him from your accusation of a felo de se albeit his manner of Death is not agreed upon by Authors whereof not a few allow him a natural one Before you come to answer my Letter you will needs premise something concerning the Doctrin of the Church of England and this you say will bring us to the true State of the Question Whereupon you are at the pains to cite several Passages out of the Book of Homilies against Resistance and for Passive Obedience and then you subsume Having premis'd thus much to state the Question you come to examine my Letter Sir I thought every School-Boy knew better what it was to state a Question than to cite Authorities to prove the thing questioned and what gentiel Name to give your thus stating it I am at a loss The stating of a Question is properly the removing all Equivocation of Terms or Amphibologies of Speech as the Schools speak whereby both the Opponent and Defendant may agree in the same sense and meaning of the words And pray Sir how came you to imagine That the Authorities produc'd removed any Difficulty arising from a wrong understanding of the words Passive Obedience and Resistance c. that are the Subjects of our Debate If you had been at pains to cast your Eyes upon my Letter so as to read it I presume you would have found me stating the Question betwixt us thus upon the matter viz. That to resist the Magistrate when he is lawfully such and acting in execution of Laws is one thing but to resist the same Person when he divests himself of that Sacred Character by trampling on Fundamental Laws is quite another The first is certainly unlawful but not the second And to elucidate this I told you there was a great Difference betwixt a Princes trampling upon a part of his Subjects in execution of Laws made against them and his doing of the same in downright contradiction of Fundamental Laws made in their Favours And albeit in the first case it were disallowable to Resist yet in the second reason and common sense in my Opinion does warrant it And upon my thus stating of the Question I did then as now once for all tell you That all places of the Homilies yea of Holy Scripture it self disproving Resistance of Magistrates are to be understood in a natural sense and with Analogy of Reason to be meant of Magistrates when lawfully such and acting conform to Laws and not of Princes divesting themselves of that Office by their own Faults and Mismanagement And in my giving so necessary and natural a Gloss upon the Homilies I do but Justice to those worthy Reformers that compil'd them whereas on the contrary you by endeavouring to wrest their Words to your notion of Passive Obedience derogate from the Reason and Learning of those Excellent Men And thus you have lost your pains and time in citing them At length you come to examine my Letter and in the first place you tell me I will have Dr.

to yours I am glad to find your Paroxism over in the end of your Letter and you inclinable to a little Sport in proposing to me Two Questions in Physick I might laugh them over if your Skill in Physick were not greater than mine in Divinity And to shew my self all Obedience I answer to the first That under your Correction a redundancy in Choler with a little mixture of adust Melancholy has produced more Tragedies in the Body of Man than the Juice of the Pancreas is capable to do and these Affections seldom hit the Body without allowing a large share to the Mind As to the second Question I was almost going to complement you by giving the credit of the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood to a Clergy-man the great Padro Paulo as Bishop Bedel insinuates but I am as loath to part with the Honour of that Discovery from my own Profession as you are to allow mine that of knowing Divinity And if I should affirm That the 12 th Chapter of Ecclesiastes contains a true Systeme of the Circulation of the Blood you might have a large Field to shew your Skill of Physick and Divinity at once by demonstrating the contrary Now I hope my Obedience to you will oblige you to a jus talionis and instead of two Questions I 'le presume but to propose one Viz. Whether or not he that pays the stipend should jure Divino present to the Church This is a Question may concern you and I am positively for the affirmative till you convince me of the contrary SIR Your humble Servant JAMES WELWOOD P. S. I must add one thing more How kindly would your Principle of Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance relish with the poor Protestants of Ireland at this day And indeed if they be all of your Opinion we are like to have many thousands of Martyrs if the goodness of God and the Princes Conduct prevent it not Thus Sir I have answered your Letter in a Strain somewhat different from yours for your Heat and Bitterness shall not Authorize mine If you have any further Commands for me you shall find me ready to serve you being that I am To Doctor WELWOOD Newcastle Feb. 19. 1688 9. Good Doctor YOU were it seems in some danger of losing the honour of being an Apathist because you found not in the Superscription of my Letter the glorious Title of Dr. Medicinae but if you will be at the charge of consulting the Heralds Office you may soon satisfie your self That tho perhaps you may have commenc'd Doctor in some Foreign Academy yet you have no claim to the Priviledges of the same degree in England till you are admitted ad cundem in one of our Famous Universities if this Apology will not allay the effervence of your Choler I have nothing to plead besides the Ignorance of your Quality You are in a much greater ferment by reason of that rude Answer you say I sent you but others that saw it thought it more modest than you deserved considering these Provocations you had given me a Person that never injur'd you in my life But I fancy you expected from me some such mighty Complements as Dr. Burnet met with in his Travels for charging me with false Doctrin waspish Expressions want of Breeding scurrilous and indecent Epithets black Aspersions bad Genius horrible Positions Scandalum Magnatum want of Prudence Choller narrow Theatre having Books and not reading them For these and many more are the Flowers and Embellishments of your Stile and yet good Man you are not capable of any Impressions of Heat and Bitterness but more cool than the Alpes and a greater Adeptus in Stoicism than Old Zeno was who yet say some did at last swing himself out of the World in a pleasant Paroxism of Apathy But in lieu of your charging me with Cholerick Strains I shall return you two known Sayings Turpe est Doctori cum culpa redarguit ipsum Et Medice cura teipsum Before I come to examine what you may think material in your second Letter I shall premise something concerning the Doctrin of the Church of England which I think may be better gathered out of her own Authentick Monuments than out of your Country-men barely and this will bring us to the truest State of the Controversie In order thereunto I shall begin with the necessary Doctrin and Erudition of a Christian Man set forth by the Authority of Henry the Eighth and compos'd by Cranmer Ridley Redman and other glorious Martyrs On the fifth Commandment they deliver themselves thus Subjects be bound not to withdraw their Fealty Truth Love and Obedience towards their Prince for any Cause whatsoever it be neither for any Cause they may conspire against his Person nor do any thing towards the hindrance nor hurt thereof nor of his Estate and they prove this from Rom. 13. Whosoever resisteth the Powers resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist them get to themselves Damnation And upon the sixth Commandment No Subjects may draw their Swords against their Prince for whatsoever Cause it be and tho Princes which be the Supreme Heads of their Realms do otherwise than they ought to do yet God hath assign'd no Judges over them in this World but will have the Judgment of them reserv'd to himself and will punish them when he seeth it time In the Second Part of the Sermon of Obedience in the Book of Homilies our Church declareth That it is not lawful for Inferiours and Subjects in any case to resist and stand against the higher Powers For St. Pauls Words are plain Whosoever withstandeth shall get to themselves Damnation In the Second Part of the Homily against Rebellion we have these Words David was fain to save his Life not by Rebellion or any Resistance but by flight and hiding himself from the Kings sight Shall we not rise and rebel against our known mortal and deadly Enemy that seeks our Lives No saith godly David What shall we do then to a Saul an evil unkind Prince an Enemy to us hated of God hurtful and pernicious to the Common-Wealth Lay no violent hand upon him saith good David but let him live until God appoint or work his end It is most plain from these Passages That the Church of England forbids all Resistance of the Higher Powers in all Causes whatsoever And tho you and your Country-man Barclay were pleased to trouble the World with nice Distinctions our Church thinks it more advisable to follow St. Paul's Example and use none at all Having premis'd thus much to state the Controversie aright I shall now examine your Letter First You will have Dr. Burnet the Author of that Pamphlet whether I will or no and bring such silly Arguments to prove it as are not worth the mentioning But since you will have it so I wish you had taken more pains to vindicate his Reputation seeing he has subscribed the Homilies and asserted Passive Obedience to the heighth

Burnet to be Author of that Pamphlet whether you will or not and in so doing you say I derogate from his Credit since he subscrib'd the Book of Homilies and has asserted Passive Obedience A strange shuffle indeed and of a piece with the rest of your Letter I never so much as insinuated any such thing and whether it be his or not I know not But sure I am all your Hearers thought and I have evinced it as much as the matter can bear That in the scurrilous Epithets you gave the Author of that Pamphet as you call it you design'd Dr. Burnet and this you wisely pass over without an Answer I was willing to think you were now asham'd of these Expressions but the whole Tenor of your Letter forbids me to think that blushing is your greatest fault It were a piece of odd presumption to suppose that Great Man needed any Mans Vindication especially mine And sure I am in his subscribing the Homilies and asserting Passive Obedience he sufficiently understood the sense of the Words and his Reason and Learning is too great to have been cheated into your Notion of them But you know the Sun loses none of his Rays by being barkt at In your second Paragraph I find nothing but a Repetition of the Homilies yet once more to prove Passive Obedience a Principle of the Church of Englands and this requires no other Answer but what I have already given you in stating the Question and clearing the sense of the Words You begin your third Paragraph with another shuffle in making me call Passive Obedience the darling Principle of the Church of England than which nothing was farther from my thoughts and to call it yours meaning Mr. Vicars was not in my Opinion to father it upon the Church of England Then you tell me I am forc'd to own That the Government of the Empire is so far different from that of England that what would be Rebellion here would be but a legal Defence there This requires indeed a considerable Talent of Confidence for I acknowledge no such thing Yea upon the contrary I asserted That the Bulla Aurea of the Empire and the Coronation Oath in England were so far parallel that they were both Barriers against the Incroachments of the Sovereign One would have thought that instead of mis-citing my Expressions a Man of your Character would rather have endeavoured to give a fair Answer by evincing That the Bulla Aurea warrants Resistance and the Coronation Oath disallows it You are as unjust to Sleidan as to me for the Duke of Saxony is mentioned by him to use no such Expressions as these you mentioned but instead of saying The Emperor was not a proper Sovereign his words are He is not an absolute and despotick Monarch and so may be resisted When you aver That Luther at first understood not the Government of the Empire when he was for Resistance I cannot but regret his misfortune in the want of your acquaintance seeing he might have been better instructed by you at Newcastle than either by his Reading or Converse with the Greatest Men upon the place And I have as little reason to believe his Ignorance on that Head as his recanting his Opinion for both are equally true As to what you say of Calvin and Melancthon's being for Passive Obedience if I had their Works besides me as I have not I could evince the contrary from their Writings But who knows not that the first did vindicate the Genevans their throwing off the Jurisdiction both of the Bishop of Geneva and Duke of Savoy whereof one of them behov'd to be their Soveraign and the last did allow of the Famous Smalcalde League against Charles V. Next you are so kind as to instruct me a little of the power of the Ephori whereof you suppose I am utterly ignorant I cannot in good manners but thank you for this condescendance And yet it 's somewhat strange how you come to have so intuitive acknowledge of me as without search to find me ignorant of what ev'ry School Boy may know I never dream'd that Keckerman Aristotle or Plutarchs works were so rare in Scotland as you insinuate perhaps the Books we have under these Names are spurious and you by a vast charge of enquiry have found out the Genuine ones that have not yet come our length I am hopeful your charity will oblige you to bestow one true Copy of these great Mens Works upon a whole Nation you have so great a kindness for And yet Sir if what we have of Plutarch be true you are as ignorant of the Spartan Kings as I of the Ephori for if you will consult his Lives of Agesilaus Agis and Lysander you may find that albeit Lycurgus found the Government lodged in two Kings and left it so yet both before his time and afterwards the Spartans were ruled but by one King and particularly from Archidamus to Agis the last of the Heraclidae including six Kings one after another Thereafter you are pleased very obligingly to accuse me of a downright Lye in saying Grotius allows of Resistance and yet with the same breath you confess he dropt in his younger years some unmeet expressions and unsound arguments in his Book de Iure Belli Pacis which afterwards you confidently affirm he retracted I can hardly be perswaded to take with a Lye in saying Grotius allows of Resistance since in my second Letter I gave you his own words for it and you your self acknowledge he did so But I am fully convinc'd you are guilty of a thing called a mistake in saying he retracted his Opinion for Bleaw's Edition of that Book with the addition of Notes written by himself a little before his death as the very title bears not only repeats all he had formerly said upon that Head but confirms it with new Additions to which I refer you Your Reflection upon Gillespy I am willing to impute to your love to his Country and yet I perswade my self it will meet with no better name among the most of Men than that of a groundless calumny In your fourth Paragraph you would fain fix upon me a contradiction in first asserting Passive Obedience to be the darling Principle of the Church of England and then denying it Certainly this is to try how far you can push forward an untruth without lying I did indeed call Passive Obedience your darling meaning Mr. Iohn Marches but that it 's the Principle of the Church of England I have evinc'd the contrary The next time I have occasion to name any thing that belongs to you I find I must play the Quaker and use the word Thine otherwise you will Father it upon the whole Church Next with the same ingenuity you say I confessed the Government of Holland to be so far different from that of England that what were Lawful Resistance there would be Rebellion here I need not tell you I said no such thing upon the contrary I