prejudice and neglect of due consideration we should condemn these Practices as contrary to the Laws of God and injurious to mens Souls though they were not so I grant even this may be called Misrepresenting for 't is to call good evil and evil good light darkness and darkness light and whoever is guilty of this kind of Misrepresentation is guilty of a very great Sin and does great mischief in the World not by falsifying matters of Fact but as much as in him lies by changing the nature of things And upon these terms the dispute of Misrepresenting may be easily accommodated Let him plainly confess that we are not Misrepresenters in the first sense that we do not falsly charge any Doctrines or Practices on the Church of Rome which she disowns that we do not teach our People that the Church of Rome believes or practices otherwise than she does and we will give him leave to call us Misrepresenters still if he can shew that we charge their Doctrines or Practices with such guilt as they do not deserve But it is by no means a sufficient answer to this Charge to call us Lyars which for ought I can see is all we are like to get in Answer from this man Of all the several projects for ending Controversie the most effectual that I ever yet heard of is that which our Author hath set on foot for he would now insinuate that he has vindicated the Church of Rome from our Misrepresenting not onely matter of Fact but the guilt we charge them with upon those matters that are confessed by themselves Now I have shewn him as well as I could that some of their confessed Doctrines are false and some of their confessed Practices are unlawful and that their best Apologies for them are insufficient What says the Accomodator to all this He answers that all this is Misrepresenting as that signifies Lying But how the dispute should be carried on upon these Terms otherwise then by giving him the Lye back again I do not comprehend And therefore because neither true Religion or good Breeding will suffer me to carry on a Dispute at that rate the Controversie should seem even upon this account to be at end and I give him joy of the honour that he is like to get by it And yet I think an indifferent Reader may observe that his fastning the Lye upon us for Misrepresenting them in the less-proper sense as he pretends we do is but an after-game to which he is reduced by the extremity of a bad Cause The design of our Author in his Twofold Character of a Papist was to perswade our People that we were Misrepresenters in the first and most proper Sense that we had belyed the Church of Rome with imputing such Doctrines to her as she did not own and this all men that ever I met with understood to be the design of it But since he cannot make good his Charge against us he will now make good his Title of Misrepresenting in a less-proper Sense not that we misreport the Doctrines and Practices of their Church but that we unjustly condemn them and though we will rather allow him to call this Misrepresenting than dispute about a word yet if this be all he intended to acquaint the World that Protestants think worse of Popery than Papists do it was a wonderful discovery and he took as notable a way to rectifie such mis-apprehensions He disclaims all disputing and thinks to confute Protestant Misrepresentations by giving onely a true Character of a Papist with reference to his Faith and Practice out of the most authentick Records of their Church Now if the Misrepresentation does not concern matter of Fact but only mens judgments and opinions about such matters how can a meer Character rectify such Misrepresentations When we know what the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome is and yet think very ill of it Can the meer relating what the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome is cure our ill opinion of it And yet this is all the business of a Character to tell us what a Papist is which might indeed reconcile us to Popery had we disliked Popery onely because we did not understand it or took it to be something more formidable than it is but cannot cure such dislikes as arise from a true understanding of Popery He appeals to the Definitions of the Councils of Trent and the Bishop of Condom's Exposition c. to vindicate Popery from the Misrepresentations of Protestants that is to show us what the genuine Doctrines of Popery are And how can this confute our Misrepresentations unless by Misrepresenting he understood Misrepresenting matter of Fact charging such Doctrines on their Church as were never decreed by their Councils nor owned by their most authentick Expositors For the Authority of the Council of Trent is nothing to us any otherwise than as we own it to be the Rule and Standard of the Romish Faith and therefore he can prove nothing against us out of the Council of Trent but onely that those are not the Doctrines of the Church of Rome which we say are and this cannot confute Protestant Misrepresentations of Popery unless our Misrepresentations consist in charging them with such Doctrines as their Church and Councils do not own And therefore though he is now willing to grant that we are not Misrepresenters as that signifies down-right Lyers who charge the Church of Rome with Believing and Practising what she does not yet it is apparent that this was what he intended in his Title of a Papist Misrepresented to accuse Protestants of charging Papists with such Doctrines and Practices as they do not own and if this be not the intent and design of his Book there is a great deal less Sense in it then I thought there had been For if by Misrepresenting he only meant that we reproach and calumniate the Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome and charge them with such guilt as they do not deserve not that we charge them falsly with such Doctrines and Practices as they do not own as he now would have it though I grant this may be called Misrepresenting if the charge be false yet it is not such a Misrepresenting as is confuted only by a Character or by true Representing it is wholly matter of Dispute as I have often told him for he must not think that we Protestants shall believe ever the better of Popery because he professes to believe very well of it in his Character of a Papist Represented If he will vindicate the Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome from that guilt which Protestants charge on it if he will justifie the Worship of Saints and Angels and Images Transubstantiation the Adoration of the Host half Communion Prayers in an Unknown Tongue c. and prove us to be Misrepresenters he must quit his retreat of Character-making and fairly dispute the points in question which is the way the
Imprimatur July 22. 1686. IO. BATTELY AN ANSWER TO THE Amicable Accommodation OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REPRESENTER AND THE ANSWERER LONDON Printed for Iohn Amery at the Peacock and William Rogers at the Sun both against St. Dunstan's Church in Fleetstreet MDCLXXXVI AN ANSWER TO THE Amicable ACCOMMODATION Of the Difference between The Representer and the Answerer IN Answer to the Reply to Papists protesting against Protestant Popery our Author has amicably accommodated away the whole Book excepting one word called Misrepresenting and therefore whereas he expects Ten sheets from me in return I must be forced to compound with him for a much less number We are likely at last to agree about the meaning of Misrepresenting which is a very common word and easily understood when men give their minds to it Our Author Printed a double Character of a Papist Misrepresented and Represented the first being an accusation on Protestants for misrepresenting Papists I examined every part of his Character and could not find why he called it Misrepresenting for it did not appear by his Characters that we had charged them with any Doctrines or Practices excepting some few things but what they themselves owned We charge indeed their Doctrines and Practices with such guilt as they do not own but this I told him did not properly belong to Representing but Disputing for while we agree about matters of fact there is no Misrepresenting on either side and then we are no otherwise Misrepresenters than as all men are who condemn such Opinions and Practises as others judge very true and innocent and thus Papists as much misrepresent Protestants as Protestants misrepresent Papists that is they equally differ from each other in their Opinions and judgments of the same things but who are truly the Misrepresenters is not to be decided by Character-making but by Reason and Argument Well our Accommodator is very willing out of civility and for the sake of peace to yield this point That the Title of a Papist Misrepresented is not to be taken in its strict and proper sence as Misrepresenting signifies downright Lying or falsly charging of matter of fact but in its larger or less-proper sence as it comprehends both Lying Calumniating Mis-interpreting Reproaching Mis-construing Mis-judging c. which I confess is a very great piece of civility that he will not charge us now with down right lying but onely with Lying and Calumniating and several other hard words into the bargain There needs not many words about this matter for the short of the case is this In order to reconcile our people to the Church of Rome he thought it necessary to perswade them that Popery is quite another thing than what they had been taught it is which would at once remove their prejudices against Popery and beget in them a great jealousie and suspicion of their former Teachers for men will not easily trust those who have once deceived them In order to this he gives us a double Character of a Papist one he calls the Character of a Papist Misrepresented the other of a Papist Represented which any man would guess should be two very different and contrary things the first what a Papist is not the second what he is and yet when we come to examine them every thing almost which can properly be called a Character or Representing is the same in both onely the Character of a Papist Misrepresented tells you what opinion Protestants have of Popery and the Character of a Papist Represented tells us what good thoughts Papists have of themselves and their own Religion now whoever doubted but that Papists and Protestants differ very much in their Opinions of Popery as they do also in their Opinions of Protestancy And this is the onely pretence for his charge of Misrepresenting not that we charge them with believing or practising what they do not believe or practice but that we think worse of their Faith and Practice than he thinks they deserve And if this be all that he means by Misrepresenting we readily own the charge that we have much worse thoughts of Popery than he has that we believe those Doctrines to be erroneous and those Practises to be sinful which he thinks very well of and because I am resolved if possible to be as civil as he is in my Concessions and not to dispute about words I am contented he should call this misrepresenting Lying Calumniating or what he pleases if he can prove that we condemn their Faith or Worship unjustly onely he must remember that this will engage him in a dispute which he seems resolved not to engage in For he must not think that upon his bare word we must be concluded guilty of that misrepresenting which he calls Lying He should have been very much afraid to accuse us of Lying if he is resolved altogether to represent and not to dispute For certainly no wise man will give his Neighbour the lye unless he be well prepared to prove it against him Misrepresenting was a civil term because honest men may through mistake misrepresent but Lying is the fault of Knaves which as it deserves great punishment so it ought not to be charged upon men without great proof much less with none at all And therefore he should not have taken up an obstinate humour against Disputing just before he thought fit to charge us with Lying but have remembred what M. de Meaux says in his Pastoral Letter p. 29. Those who bear false and scandalous witness against an innocent person are condemned to the same punishment which the Crime of which they bear witness did deserve had it been found true But to clear my self as well as I can besides this that I am not conscious to my self of any misrepresenting I must tell him once more that in a strict and proper sence to misrepresent relates only to matter of fact when we charge men with saying and doing what they never said or did as our Accommodater confesses and in this sence I have already proved that we are no Misrepresenters and at last if I understand him he confesses that we are not but then he tells us that to misrepresent in a larger and less-proper sence signifies also to put a false construction on things As for instance to say that to Worship Saints and Angels and the Virgin Mary as practised by the Church of Rome is to give the Worship of God to Creatures and that their Image-Worship is what God has forbid in the second Commandment that their denying the Cup to the Laity is contrary to the institution of our Saviour and their Latine Service is a very unreasonable Worship and destructive of the edification of the Church c. Now though we do not charge them falsly in these cases as to matter of fact for they do Worship Saints and Images and deny the Cup to the Laity and keep the Service of the Church in a Language unknown to the people yet if through
laid aside their Vizards and let them now paint the Church of England how they please and the worse the better for how mean an opinion soever he seems to have of our Dissenters they are too wise and cautious to take Characters from open and professed Enemies The truth is he has horribly abused our Dissenters unless by Dissenters he means only his dearly beloved Quakers with whose Cant he is as well acquainted as if he had been either their Master or Scholar For he has drawn up such a charge against the Church of England in the name of a Dissenter as no Dissenter ever made It is a Popish Character Fathered upon a Dissenter for which they are much beholden to him that when he has a mind to say things so spiteful and silly that he himself tho' none of the modestest men is ashamed to own he can think of no person so fit to say them as a Dissenter Did ever any Dissenter charge the Church of England with making gods of dead men because we call our Churches still by the names of those Saints to whom they were dedicated in the times of Popery For did not the Dissenters themselves do so in the late times of Reformation And do they scruple to do so now If there were any difference it was only in not giving the Title of Saint to them and I suppose that does not alter the case for if it be Paul's or Peters or Mary's Church it is much the fame But they were not so silly as to think that names which were used only for distinction without paying any worship to Saints or erecting any Altars to them in those Churches which were called by their names made Gods of dead men The Bills of Mortality were the same formerly in the Dissenters time that they are now and yet they did not suspect themselves guilty of placing Mary above Christ or making a Goddess of her Did ever any Dissenter charge the Church of England with Image-Idolatry for having Pictures in their Bibles or Moses and Aaron painted with the Ten Commandments without leaving out the Second against Image-worship especially when these are things wherein the Church of England is no otherwise concerned than in not correcting the extravagancy of Painters and Printers And I confess I have always suspected that these men who now charge us with the Image-Idolatry of having Pictures in our Common-prayer Books which is a very late invention did secretly lay the design to reconcile our people by degrees to the use of Pictures and Images The Dissenters indeed were never any great Friends to Holy-days but they never charged us with worshipping Saints on those days which they saw we did not nor do they now charge us with worshipping the Bread when we kneel at receiving the Sacrament which is contrary to the publick Declarations of our Church but reject it because it was no Table-posture and because it had been abused as they scruple not to say to an Idolatrous worship of the Host in the Church of Rome They have indeed objected against our Liturgy That it was taken out of the mass-Mass-book and have been sufficiently answered as to that point and we know who they were that first started that Objection some Mass-Priests under the disguise of Puritans But I never heard before that they were scared with the very names of Epistles and Gospels and Colects and Litanies nor did they ever quarrel with retaining Popish Saints in our Calendar when we give them to place in our Prayers which is only an evidence what Reformation we have made I never knew before that our Dissenters thought the Mass-book as Ancient as St. Basil and St. Chrysostom or that they liked our Common-Prayer-Book ever the worse because it came in with the Reformation of Religion and has been altered since several times for the better whereas their complaint is that it is not yet altered enough Much less are they scandalized at the Thanksgiving for discovery of the Plot how great a Chimera soever it be Nor is there any dispute that I know of between the Dissenters and us about the Power of Absolution or the Ministerial power of forgiving Sin They and we agree that Christ has left such a Power in the Church of remitting and retaining Sins of receiving in and putting out of the Church which is the state of Pardon and Forgiveness and we both deny that this is absolute and judicial or not only Ministerial They know we oppose the pretence of a Judicial Power to forgive Sins in the Church of Rome which we say is reserved for the great Judg of the World and it is very strange they should peremptorily charge us with giving the Power of God to forgive Sins to men and yet at the same time accuse us of not agreeing what this power of Absolution is Tho our Accommodator may make bold sometimes to contradict himself yet I doubt the Dissenters will think themselves misrepresented by such contradictions But did ever any Dissenter charge us with encouraging a Death-bed Repentance for not obliging men to Confession and Penance which he calls to Confess and Repent in the time of their Health We teach men to confess their Sins to God and to men too when there is occasion for it either to reconcile themselves to their Brother or to receive Ghostly comfort and advice and we teach them to Repent of their Sins and reform them in time of Health and show them what great danger there is in a Death-bed Repentance and how very seldom it proves true which is no great encouragement to such delays But how the Dissenters who reject Confession to a Priest and the Popish Sacrament of Penance themselves should quarrel with us for doing so is somewhat strange But we pretend to a power of giving Absolution and never enjoyn it but in the last agony which he says is argument enough to conclude there 's no obligation of Repenting amongst us till death looks us in the face But he has not improved this Argument so well as he might for Absolution is never enjoined not so much as in the hour of Death for we are only required to give Absolution in case the Penitent earnestly desire it and therefore according to his reasoning it follows that we think Repentance never necessary not so much as in the hour of Death But other men who have common understanding would hence conclude that we make a great difference between the Sinners Repentance and the Priests Absolution that the first is always necessary the other only in case of Church Censures or to give relief to afflicted Consciences or to dismiss penitent sinners in the peace of the Church Do not Dissenters themselves allow converted Priests who are under the vow of Continency to Marry if they cannot preserve their Chastity without it And has not our Accomodator then put a wise Objection into their Mouths against the Church of England which if it be any Objection returns