Heylyn Abingdon Mar. 28. 1659. 8. This Letter being sent after the other it was no hard matter to divine of the answer to it if any answer came at all I might have learned by my address to M. Baxter that there was nothing to be gained by such civilities but one reproach upon another men of that spirit being generally for quod scripsi scripsi as we know who was seldome accustomed to retract or qualify what they once had written But as my own ingenuity invited me to write the first so to the sending of the second I was directed in a manner by the Justificator pag. 15. where he complains that you M. Peirce did not endeavour to purge the peccant humor by a private Letter before you made the passionate adventure of calling him obstinate This made me not without some thoughts that a private Letter might prevail upon such a person who desired not to be accounted obstinate in his own opinions from which modesty I might collect a probable hope that he would not persevere in any error when he was once convinced of it but rather make amends to truth and reparation to the parties which were injured by him The least I could expect if he vouchsaft me any answer was to learn the name or names of those by whom the yong man had been abused in the information which might entitle me perhaps to some other adversary whom I had more desire to deal with But if no answer came at all as perchance there might not I should be able to conclude that he had neither proof nor Author for either calumny which whether he had or not will evidently appear by the following Letters which though unlookt for came at last to make good the Proverb and are here subjoyned verbatim without alteration M. Hickman's Answer to D. Heylyn's first Letter SIR 9. YOu are pleased to honour me with a Letter and to subscribe your self my very loving Friend and Christian Brother I take it for a great favour and shall be heartily glad if my Answer may procure a good understanding betwixt us and prevent any further trouble Your charge is threefold 1. That in the Preface to my first Edition I say That your Book had as I was informed received the desert of its bitterness being burnt by the hand of the common hang-man I deny not the words nor can I see any reason to be ashamed of them For 1. There is an Ordinance of the Lords and Commons still in force commanding that all Books of the complexion yours is of should be seized and publiquely burnt 2. It was commonly noised that your Book against the Arch-Bishop of Armagh was actually burned 3. I proceeded not barely upon common report but had my intelligence from one of no mean employment who hath his constant residence at White Hall and I am pretty confident your Book had been de facto so disgraced if the sickness and death of the late Protector had not put the Privy counsel upon minding matters of higher concernment And will you now say that I was so zealous in fastening a reproach upon you that I cared not whether it were true or false You have in your own Books printed many matters of fact with more confidence for which you cannot pretend so much ground 2. You charge me that I have made bold with you in my second Edition Novum crimen ante haee tempora inauditum You had in your Examen Historicum bestowed some ugly words upon a Colledge never to mentioned without honour and I by a true relating the whole business against which you so much exclaim labour to vindicate the credit of the Society and for this I must be accounted bold Who can help it 3. You charge me for laying a fouler reproach on the late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury because I intimate that he was disgracefully turned out of the Divinity Schooles by Dr. Holland and for this you say I would be troubled to produce my Author It may be you and I are not agreed what it is to be disgracefully turned out of the Schools but if this be it to be publiquely checkt for a seditious person who would unchurch the Protestant Churches beyond the Sea and sow division betwixt us and them by a novel Popish Position You cannot sure think that it will be any trouble to me to produce my Author For you censure and therefore I presume have read M. Prinne's Breviate in which all this is extant totidem verbis That Author having laid such a charge and none of the Arch-Bishops friends having all this while pleaded not guilty I might take it pro Confesso yet I must tell you M. Prinne's is not the onely Ground on which I proceed though what my other Grounds be I shall not declare till I well understand what use you intend to make of my Letters And now Sir I hope that lamentable jeer of my standing in need to pray for Ignorant Readers and such as are fit to be abused might have been spared been bestowed upon some Temporizer whose design it is to ingratiate himselfe with great ones who can complement a Prince so Highly as to style himselfe his Creature and the workmanship of his hands For my own part Favour and Riches I neither want nor seek I have so much of a man in me to be very subject to Errors but I hope I have not so little of a Christian in me as not to be very willing to recall any Error which by any learned man shall be discovered to me The Design of the Historical part of my Book is to prove that till Bishop Laud sat in the Saddle our Divines of prime Note and Authority did in the Five points deliver themselves consonantly to the determinations of the Synod of Dort and that they were enjoyn'd Recantation who were known either to Broach or Print that which now is called Arminianism Can any one deny this In my Doctrinal part I assert that malum morale quà tale non est Ens positivum In which I promise my self that I shall not have you who profess to take your Opinions from the Fathers an Adversary I deny not whose name you so much honour hath in many things deserved well of the University but that his name should be so precious as you intimate to all who love the Church of England I am not yet convinced Me thinks the Character Isidor Pelus gives of Eusebius lib. 2. Epist 246. doth too well suit him That whole Epistle is most heartily recommended to your Reading and so are you to the Grace of Jesus Christ by Your most humble Servant Henry Hickman Mr. Hickmans Answer to Dr. Heylyns second Letter SIR 10. THis Letter was drawn up the last week and had been sent but that I was necessitated to be absent from the University for two or three days I have now received a second Letter wherein you desire by virtue of a promise made in my second Edition to know
occasion and finally acknowledging that the principal part of what he intended was in a Book of M. Dow's But scarce had he absolved me from it when he indeavoured presently to make good the charge out of some scattered passages in a Book of mine against M. Burton published in the year 1637. so that it seems to be my fortune to be called unto as late a reckoning by M. Baxter for some passages in my Answer to Burtons most seditious Pamphlets and by D. Barnard and him both for some things taken up here and there out of my History of the Sabbath first published in the year 1635. And as if this had not been enough to quicken me to a new encounter he passeth from one point unto another charging me with profaneness in reproaching extemporary Prayer and being an enemy to the holy improvements of the Lord's day c. accusing me for many unjust as well as uncharitable speeches against my brethren for having some bloody desires and making such rigorous Laws to hang up all that are against me for speaking more favourably of the Papists then the Protestant partie with many other things intermixed here and there in some of which he disputes against me and in others he desires to be satisfied by me So that taking one thing with another he hath afforded me work enough in returning an answer which being to long to be contained in a Letter I have digested it Letter-wise into a set discourse upon all particulars which are offered to me Now M. Baxter's Letter was as followeth The Copy of M. Baxter's Answer to the first Letter of D. Heylyn's Reverend SIR I Received yours of September 13. containing your favourable judgment of my extorted discourse of Grotius his Religion with your exception of that only which concerns your â—elf And first you here wish I had spared your name unless I could have proved you to have been one of that Religion which yâ—u think I cannot or found some more particular charge against you c. To which I answer First I now wish I had spared your name my self for the reason that I shall render you anon But secondly I never gave the least intimation that I took you to be of Grotius Religion and therefore you need not call for proof of it it is another subject the sensing of the word Puri an that I am speaking of where I mention your name I hope you think not that I charge every man with the same opinion that is but named by me in the same Book Thirdly Yea I did not so much as charge you at all that is accuse you but tell the world who you took for a Puritan Concerning which words in Answer to the rest of your Letter I shall give you the just account I had read on one day above 20. years ago when it first came out your Book against M Burton and M. Dow's Book against him and I think one of M. Pocklinton's on another occasion I certainly remembred the foresaid character of a Puritan in one of them and I was perswaded that it was in yours and that something of it more or less was in both I now confess to you it was my temerity the concomitant of hast to mention you upon the trust of my memory after above 20. years time for I never had your Book since and now upon search I find the principal part of what I intended is in M. Dow's who charactereth them from their Doctrines of predestination perseverance or non-ability to fulfill the Law c. 4. But so much of it I find in yours as justifieth what I said of you if I can understand you you deal with M. Burton as the Puritans Oracle page 152. their superintendent Champion c. Preface And your description of him containeth first that he follows Illyricus in his Doctrines providentia predestinatione gratia libero Arbitrio c. pag. 182. And to satisfie us fully what you meant you refer us to the Arminians necessaria responsio pag. 83 where with pag. 82. 84 85. it is expresly manifest that it is the Doctrine of Pareus and the rest of the Contra-remonstrants that the Arminians there do charge upon Illiricus and consequently that you do charge on M. Burton the Oracle as you call him of the Puritans and so upon the Puritans with him If you say you charge not these on him quatenus a Puritan I Answer You carry it openly in all your Book as if you dealt with him only as a Puritan and seditious and so describe Puritans by him If you mix such Doctrinal charges and afterwards tell us that you meant them on some other account you satisfie your Reader that understandeth you as describing Puritans only when you so often give the person described that name and profess to oppose him as such and tel us of no other ground And what else you mean by their accustomed wresting of the Article in the point of predestination is past my understanding there being no accustomed Doctrine but the Anti-Arminian among the Puritans in the point of Predestination that you can call a wresting of the Article you add also to help us further to understand you that it is false that D. Jackson ' s Books are to maintain Arminianism pag. 122. 123. 5. Sir You are the expounder of your own words and may give us the Law in what sense we shall understand them because they are the signs of your own mind which is known only to your self And if you shall but tell me that you meant somewhat else then your words in the common sense import I shall take my self bound to understand you accordingly hereafter and if you require it I shall willingly publish an account of my mis-understanding of you with my following satisfaction to the world to do you right But till you shall give us another sense of your own you must needs allow us to take your words in the common sense 6. I shall not trouble you with any more on that subject But were it not that in your writings I â—avour a spirit so very distant from my disposition that I have small hopes that my words will escape your displeasure I should on this occasion have dealt freely with you about many things in many of your Books that have long been matter of scandal and grief to men that have much Christian meekness and moderation Many reproaches against extemporary Prayer the holy improvement of the Lords day c. with many unjust as well as uncharitable speeches of your Brethren whom you took for adversaries are matters that I am exceeding confident you have exceeding cause in tears and sorrow to bewaile before the Lord and for which you are very much obliged to publish your penitential lamentations to the World and were it my case I would not for ten thousand Worlds dye before I had done it and if I erre in this I think it not through partiality but through weakness Oh the
common sense import though I desire that my words should be understood alwaies in the litteral sense or in any other sense that you shall give them as afore was said which being premised I would fain see how you prove the point which you have so blindly undertaken Marry say you I deal with M. Burton as the Puritans Oracle pag. 152. their superintendent Champion c. as in my Preface to that Book and my desâ—râ—ptiâ—n of him is that he followeth Illyricus in his Doctrines de providentia predestinatione gratia libero arbitrio c. pag. 182. Stay here a little M Baxter do you not tell us in the former part of your Letter that you had not seen that Book against M. Burton above 20. years and therefore condemned your temerity in mentioning me on the trust of your memory after so long time and can you now direct us not only unto single words Oracle Superintendent Champion c. and to the several pages where they are Can you direct us to a marginal Note pag. 182. relating to a Book called Necessaria Responsio and to the folios of that Book viz. pag. 82. with pag. 82 84. 85. or tell your Readâ—â— in what part or page of that Book he may find D Jackson acquitted from maintaining Arminianism and the Puritans condemned for wresting the Articles of the Church pag. 122 123. Can you do this and yet with confidence declare that it is 20. years since you saw that Book Assuredly your memory must be very good in remembring so many single words and particular passages with the very places where they are after the space of twenty years or very bad in not remembring that the description of a Puritan which you had charged on Peter Heylyn was to be found in M. Dow and perhaps not there Quid verba audiam cum facta videam You tell us that you have not seen that book this twenty years and here is evidence enough that you have it by you for I cannot think that you clogged your Note Book with such petit remembrances unless the term of twenty years may pass in your account for no more then yesterday 13. But be your memory good or bad I am sure your Logick is far worse none of old Baxter's this then your memory can be The Charge you are to prove is this That with the late Prelates a Puritan was either a Non-Conformist or a Conformist that in Doctrine was no Arminian of which sort Peter Heylyn gave us a description by their opinions By which we are to understand if you mean nothing else but what your words in the common sense import that the Puritans of whom the said sorry fellow called Peter Heylyn hath given us a description by their opinions is such a Conformist who in Doctrine is no Arminian This is the point you are to prove and for the proof of this you instance in M. Burton of Fryday-Street who though he was no Arminian in point of Doctrine yet was he so far from being a Conformist that since the hanging up of Penry at Saint Thomas of Waterings where he Preached before a very thin audience on the top of the Ladder as Johannes Stow informeth us Anno 1593. There never was a more profest outragious violent and seditious Non-Conformist in the Church of England Now if the Puritans be there described by M. Burton as you say they are or if the Reader understand me as describing Puritans only because I have so often given the person described that name as I am willing that he should and you say he must It must needs follow thereupon that the Puritans against whom I write cannot be such Conformists as are no Arminians but such notorious Non-Conformists as their Oracle and Champion M. Burton was There was an old distinction made by I know not whom betwixt the Knaves Puritan and the Knave Puritans the Knaves Puritan being one that made a conscience of his waies and followed not profane and licentious persons in their ungodly way of living But the Knave Puritans were those who under pretence of long Prayer devoured widdows houses and wilfully opposed the Rights and Ceremonies of the Church and clamorously cried down the Lordly Prelacy and jurisdiction of the Bishops that they might themselves Lord it over Gods people in their several Parishes and sit as so many petit Popes in their Classical Sessions These and no others are the Puritans against whom I write not against those who walk unblamably before God and man nor against those who following Calvin's judgment in the matter of predestination and the points concomitant conform themselves unto the Rites and Ceremonies of the Church of England here by Law established of which last sort were many Bishops Deanes Dignitaries in Cathedral Churches whose parts piety I admire as much as any whom it had been a madness to condemn for Puritans such Puritanism and their several dignities being inconsistent 14. So then the Puritan whom I aim at in the person of M Burton is a notorious Non-Conformist and whither I had described him or them we are next to see And my description of him as you tell us containâ—th first that hee follows Illyricus in his Doctrines dâ— providentia predestinatione gratia libero arbitrio c. If it conteins that first as you say it doth it must needs contain something in the second third and fourth places which you are willing not to speak of For if â—ou look into the place by you cited pag. 882. you will there find that M. Burton is not only said to be a follower of Illyricus in his Doctrines de providentia c. but to have also followed him in his fiery nature and seditious principles one of which was Principes potius metu seditionum terrendos quam vel minimum pacis causa indulgendum That Princes should be rather terrified with the feares of tumults then any thing should be yielded to for quietness sake All which being laid together as it stands in your Author falls so much short of being a description of such Puritans as being conformable to the Church in Rites and Ceremonies are notwithstanding no Arminians in point of Doctrine which you have charged on Peter Heylyn that it conteineth not such a principal part of that description as you have laid on D. Dow For besides that the Puritans hold the same opinions with those who follow Calvin's judgment in some controverted points before remembred they hold also some opinions of their own that is to say it is not lawful to use the Cross in Baptism or to bow at the blessed name of Jesus which M. Burton calls Cross-worship and Jesu-worship nor to be uncovered in the time of Divine Service to wear the Surplice kneel at the Communion to marry with the Ring and finally to stand up at the Gospels and the Gloria Patri In all which he and they were as much opposed by those of the Conformable Clergy who follow Calvin's
exemplifying in my many reprâ—acâ—es against extemporary Prayer the holy improvement of the Lords day c. but where I beseech you in what Book or Books of mine may a man meet with any of those many reproaches against extemporary Prayer May you not be again mistaken and find upon a further search that those many reproaches against extemporary Prayer are to be found in D. â—olkinton or in some body else The most that I have said agâ—inst extemporary Prayer occurreth in a brief discours touching the form of Prayer appointed to be used before the Sermon Sect. 22. in which you read That whereas the Church prescribes a set form of Prayer in her publique Liturgie from which it is not lawful for any of her Ministers to vary or recede she did it principally to avoid all unadvised effusions of gross and undigested Prayers as little capable of piety as they are uterly void of order and this she did upon the reason given in the Melevitan Council viz. least else through ignorance or want of care any thing should be uttered contrary to the rules of faith Ne forte aliquid contra fidem vel per ignorantiam vel per minus studium siâ— compositum as the Canon hath it And again page 348. We plainly see by the effects what the effect of theirs would tend to What is the issue of the liberty most men have taken to themselves too many of that sort who most stand upon it useing such passages in their Prayers before their Sermons that even their Prayers in the Psalmist's language are turned into sin Thus find we in the General Preface That the inconveniencies which the liberty hath brought upon us in these latter days are so apparent that it is very hard to say whether the liberty of Prophesying or the licentiousness in Praying what and how we list hath more conduced to these distractions which are now amongst us and if there were no such effect too visible of this licentiousness which I desire the present state to take notice of the scandal which is thereby given unto our Religion in speaking so irreverently with such vain repetitions and tautologies to almighty God as in extemporary and unpremeditated Prayers is too frequently done seem a sufficient consideration to bring us back again to that ancient form which the wisedom of the Church prescribed to prevent that mischief And finally that men never did so litterally offer unto God the Calves of their lips as they have done of late since the extemporary way of praying hath been taken up â—nd if it were prohibited by the Law of Moses to offer any thing unto God in the way of the legal Sacrifices which was maimed sported or imperfect how can it rationally be conceived that God should be delighted with those Oblations or spiritual Sacrifices which have nothing almost in them but maims spots and blemishes These are my words I must confess but that they are reproaches I must needs deny But first I do not speak these words of all extemporary Prayers in general or more particularly of those which gifted men may make in their private devotions but of those unpremeditated undigested Prayers which men ungifted and unlearned men have poured out too frequently in the Church of God And secondly if they be reproaches they are such reproaches and such only as when a man is said to have been slandered with a matter of truth and for the proof hereof besides the authority of the Council of Melevis before remembred I maâ— bring that our incomparable Hooker in the fifth Book of his Eccles Politie Num 25. Who though he actually saw but few did foresee many of â—hoâ—e inconveniencies which the humor of extemporary Prayer at last would bring into the publique worship of Almighty God for there he tells us of the grievous and scandalous inconveniences whereunto they make themselves daily subject who by their irksome deformities whereby through endless and sensless effusions of undigested Prayers they oftentimes disgrace in most unsufferable manner the worthiest part of Christian duty towards God when being subject herein to no certain order pray both what they list and how they list But behold a greater then Hooker is here even His most Excellent and most Incomparable Majesty the late King CHARLS who telleth us in his large declaration against the Scots That for want of a set form of Prayer they did sometimes pray so ignorantly that it was a shame to all Religion to hear the Majesty of God so barbarously spoken unto and sometimes so seditiously that their very Prayers were either plain libels against Authority or manifest lies stuffed with all the false reports in the Kingdom And what effects he found of them among the English appears by his Proclamation against the Directory bearing date Novemb. 30. Anno 1644. where we are told That by abolishing the Book of Common-Prayer there would be a means to open the way and give the liberty to all ignorant factious or evil men to broach their own fancies and conceits be they never so wicked and erroneous and to mislead people into sin and rebellion and to utter those things even in that which they make for their Prayers in their Congregations as in Gods presence which no conscientious man can assent to say Amen to And hereunto I shall add no more but this viz. that the passages produced before out of two of my Books and countenanced both by sad experience and such great Authorities must needs be either true or false if true they can be no reproaches if false why do you not rather study to confute them then reprove me for them 17. The next charge which you lay upon me and thereby render me obnoxious to a new reproof relates to my reproaches against the holy improvements of the Lords day c. How far your c. will extend is hard to say and therefore had you done more wisely had you left it out especially consider how many doubtful descants and ridiculous glosses were made upon a former c. and happily left standing in one of the Canons Anno 1640. for either I am guilty of more reproaches against piety and the power of godlines or I am not guilty if guilty why do you not let me know both their number and nature that I may either plead my innocence or confess my crime If not why do you thus insinuate by this c that you suppress some other charges which you have against me But letting that pass cum ceteris â—rroribus Where I beseech you can you point me to any reproaches of that day or of the holy improvements of it Much I confess is to be found in some of my Books against the superstitious and more then judaical observation of it which cannot come within the compass of being a reproach unto it Might not the Scribes and Pharisees Si licet exemplis in parvo grandibus uti in the Poets words have charged our Saviour with the
that you do not too much Lord it over your brethren of the Clergy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is in the Original neither dominantes in cleris as the vulgar Latine by vertue of any such Commission as I find your name in You say you are a sorry Lawyer and I think so too for else you could not chuse but know that every minister upon his institution and induction is actually possessed of a free hold in that Benefice into which he is instituted or inducted of which he is not to be dis-placed if the Magna Charta be in force as I think it is but by the Laws of the Land and therefore ceaseth not by his own vitiousness to have a right to the mantainance which belongs unto it as you strangely tell us until he be convicted according to those Laws and deposed accordingly 23. But you proceed and having charged me with some bloody desires which you find not mine you tell me that I must not make such rigorous Laws for all and hang them that are against me This if you speak to me in my personal capacity you might well have spared it knowing that I have no authority of making Laws and that the Legislative Power is in other hands but if you speak to me as the Primipilus as in scorn you call me amongst the chiâ—â— of the defenders of the late turgid and persecuting sort of Prelaâ—y you may do well to let us know what rigorous Laws have been made at the instigation of the Prelates for hanging all that were against them what execution hath been done upon any of the Puritan faction since the so much celebrated Raign of Q. ELIZABETH What Confessors and Martyrs have been added lately unto Fox's Kalender The Prelates in the mean time must be thought to be in a sad condition and every one of them might have said in his own particular Si bâ—ne râ—xeâ—o â—civâ—s si mlae Deos iratos habeo If they discharged the trust reposed in them for suppressing Heresies and Schisms and preserving Order in the Church according to the Canons of the Church and the Laws of the Land they were sure to get nothing but anger and hate from men if not they were as sure to incur the high displeasure of almighty God And yet for this for doing nothing but their duty and would to God they had done that as they should have done they must be branded by the odious name of Persecutors But certainly M. Baxter if they may be called a persecuting sort of Prelates they must be called so à non Persâ—quâ—nâ—o as Lucus was à non Lucendo by some old Gramarians for being too indulgent to the Puritan faction for standing in the gapp betwixt them and the Kings displeasure when he might more easily have crushed them then have spoke the word For if you look into his Majesties Proclamation against the Scots bearing date Febr. 20 in the 14 year of his Raign when he first took up Arms against them you will there find First that it was given out by the Covenanters that some of power in the Hierarchy of England have been the cause of his Majesties first taking Arms to invade that his Native Kingdome and of medling with their Religion And secondly that his Majesty Answers thereunto that it was most certain that no one of them had done any thing therein but by his own Princely direction and command and that it was notoriously known to all the Councel then present that their counsels were for peace and that they were the perswaders as much as in them lay of the undeserved moderation wherewith he had hitherto proceeded towards so great offenders And therefore tell me if you can in what this persecuting humour of theirs did consist especially Cannot such a seditious wretch as Burton such a rake-shame as Vicars of Stamford such a notorious piece of Non-Conformity as Rood of Abingdon be censured in the high Commission perhaps to deprivation and some short imprisonment but presently you must câ—y out of a Persecution Cannot the Ordinaries in their several and respective Jurisdictions proceed unto the silencing of a factious Lecturer or the suspending of an unconformable Minister usque ad Reformationem but that must pass also under the same account If there be persecuting on the one side there must be martyrdom and other sufferings on the other side And then such sufferings must not be for it is Causa non Paena quae facit Martyrem either for factious Preaching or seditious Writing or an incorrigiable opposition to established Orders but for the testimony of a good conscience in bearing witness to the truth and constantly adhering to the faith of Christ when the abnegation or renouncing of it is required of them Such sufferers if you can shew me you have gained the cause and for such Persecutions as you complain of they so seldom happened that there was the more notice taken of them because they were so rare and came so seldom once in a year or perhaps not above once in two or three years we might hear the news of some one or other notoriously known for his inconformity who was brought upon the stage for a terrour to others which is the most you can complain of but so I trow it was not with the Presbyterians when they were in power whose little finger was heavier on the Regular Clergie then the loins of all the Bishops had been on them Consult the Acts of the High Commission inquire into the Registers of the several Bishops and tell me if for every one of the Puritan party who had been silenced suspended or deprived according to the Laws of the Land during the last 20. years of Episcopal Government some scores at the least of the conformable Clergie have not been sequestred ejected and turned out of all without law in lesse then half that time by the Presbyterians Here is a persecution indeed undecima persecutio as the Book not unfitly calls it A Persecution with a witnesse 24. But you have other Titles of Honour to bestow upon them and think it not enough to brand the Bishops with the odious title of a persecuting sort of Prelacie but you must adde the word Turgid to make up the measure as well of your incivilities as of their afflictions which word although it be not usual in the English Tongue yet we can understand it without the help of a Dictionarie and understand by it that you tax the Prelates with a high swelling kind of pride I heard one preach in Westminster Abbey about the beginning of the long Parliament who much bemoaned the sad condition of the Clergie and the impossibilities under which they lay of giving content unto the people for if said he they kept close and privately or lived any thing below their means the people were then apt to cry O the base sordidness of the Clergie but if according to their means and in
any little outward lustre they then cried on the other side O the pride of the Clergie But tell me M. Baxter if you can at the least in what the turgidness or the high swelling pride of the Prelates did appear most visibly was it in the bravery of their apparel or in the train of their attendance or in their lordly port or lofty looks or in all or none Admitting the worst and most you can of these particulars would you have men that shine in an higher Orb move in a lower Sphere then that in which God hath placed them oâ— being ranked in order and degree above you would you not have them keep that distance which belongs to their places or because you affect a Paritie in the Church and perhaps in the State would you have all men brought to the same level with your self without admitting sub and supra in the Scale of Government If they were your Fathers in God why did you not look upon them with such reverence as becometh children If your superiors in the Lord why did you not yield them that subjection which was due unto them If fixt in place and power above you by the Laws of the Land only and no more then so why did you not give obedience to those Laws under which you lived and by which you were to be directed Take heed I beseech you M. Baxter that more spiritual pride be not found in that heart of yours then ever you found worldly and external pride in any of my Lords the Bishops and that you do not trample on them with a greater insolence calco Platonis fastum sed majore fastu as you know who said in these unfortunate dayes of their calamity then ever they exprest towards any in the times of their Glory Were it my case as it is yours I would not for 10000 worlds depart this life before I had obtained their pardon and given satisfaction to the world for these horrible scandals 25. This leads me from your uses of reproofs or reprehension which for my better method I have laid together to that of Exhortation which comes next in order For having told me of my many reproaches against extemporary prayers the holy improvements of the Lords day c. with my uncharitable as well as unjust speeches against my brethren you adde how confident you are that they are matters which I have exceeding cause in tears and sorrow to bewail before the Lord and for which I am very much obliged to publish my penitential lamâ—ntations to the world and that if it were your case you would not for 10000 worlds dye before you had done it This is good counsel I confess if it were well grounded and as divine â—hysick as could be given if it were properly administred as it ought to be But let me tell you M. Baxter you goe not the right way to work in your Application you should first convince me of my errours before you presse me to a publick Recantation of them and make me sensible of my sins before you preach repentance to me or can require such a solemn and severe repentance as you have prescribed It was in the year 1635. that the History of the Sabbath was first published which if it doth contain such matters of Reproach against the holy improvements of the Lords day as you say it doth why hath it not been answered in all this time my errors falsities and mistakes layd open in the sight of the world It is true that in the Postscript of a Letter writ from Dr. Twisse to the late Lord Primate bearing date May 29. Anno 1640. I find it signified with great joy no question that M. Chambers of Clouford by Bath hath long agoe answered Dr. Heylins History of the Sabbath but knew not how to have it printed But this was nothing but a flourish a cup of hot water as it were to keep life â—nd soul together till the pang was over For M. Chambers might as well know how to get his Book printed had he been so pleased as M. Byfield of Surry could get a Book of his printed in answer to that of Dr. White then Lord Bishop of Ely which came out at the same time with that History Or if he could not get it printed before that time which the Doctor speaks of I am sure he might have done it since the Presse being open to all comers but to none more then unto such as write against the Government and established Orders of the Church of England And it is more then 20. years since I published that Book so much complained of against M. Burton in which I answered all his Objections against the preheminence of Bishops their function in the Church the exercise of their Jurisdiction and cleared them from the guilt of all innovations in Doctrine Discipline and Forms of Worship which M. Burton in a furious zeal had laid upon them Why hath not that been answered neither in which the differences between us are so briefly handled that it would have required no great study but that the truth is mighty and prevaileth above all things Giue me but a satisfactory answer to those two Books not nibling at them here and there like a Mouse at a hard piece of Cheese which he cannot Master and then you may take further time to look into the History of Episcopacy and that of Liturgies Give me I say a full and satisfactory answer to those two Books and you shall find I have a malleable soul that I shall be as ready to publish my penitential Lamentations to the world as Origen did his in the Primitive times and cast my self as Esebollus did before the dores of the Church and call upon the Congregation passing in and out to trample on me for an unsavoury piece of salt calcate me tanquam salem insipidum fit only to be thrown on the common dunghil Till you do this you have done nothing but must leave me in the same state in which you found me and when you doe it I hope you will give me leave to use your own words and say that if I have erred it hath been through weaknâ—sse not by partiality much lesse by any willful opposition to a manifest truth 26. This said you fall into rapture and cry out Oh the holy breathings after Christ the love to God the heavenly mindedness the hatred of all known sin the humility self denial meekness c that you have discerned as far as effects can shâ—w the heart to others in abundance of those people that differ from you in some smaller things Here is a Panegyrick indeed fit only for Angelical spirits or such at least as live only on the food of Angels How well accommodated and applyed to the present subject we shall best perceive by consulting some of the particulars Some of your holy breathings we have seen before and shall see more in that which follows tell me then what you think of
you have attributed to them as far as the effects can shew the heart to others I have before took some pains to let you see how easily men may be mistaken when they behold a man through the spectacles of partiality and defection or take the visible appearances for invisible graces the fraudulent art fiâ—â—s and deceits of men for the coelestial gifts of God And as for that which you have inferred hereupon viz. that if he love them he will scarcely take my dealing well You should first prove the Premises before you venter upon such a strange conclusion and not condemn a Christian brother upon Ifs and Ands. 32. In the next place you please to tell me that you are not an approver of the violence of any of them and that you do not justifie M. Burtons way and that you are not of the mind of the party that I most oppose in all their Discipline as a Book now in the Press will give the world an account In the two first parts of which Character which you have given us of your self as I have great reason to commend your moderation and hope that you will make it good in your future actions so I can say little to the last not having heard any thing before of the Book you speak of nor knowing by what name to call for it when it comes abroad But whereas you tell us in the next that you are sure the Church must have unity and charity in the ancient simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Government or not at all I take you at your word hold there and we shall soon agree together Vnity and charity in the ancient simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Government no man likes better then my self bring but the same affections with you and the wide breach which is between us in some of the causes which we mannage on either side will be suddenly closed but then you must be sure to stand to the word ancient also and not to keep your self to simplicity only if unity and charity will content you in the ancient Doctrine in the simplicity thereof without subsequent mixtures of the Church I know no doctrine in the Church more pure and ancient then that which is publickly held forth by the Church of England in the book of Articles the Homilies and the Chatechism authorized by Law under the head or rubrick of Confirmation Of which I safely may affirm as S. Augustine doth in his Tract or Book Ad Marcellinum if my memory fail not his qui contradicit â—ut à Christi fide alienus est aut est haereticus that is to say he must be either an Infidei or an Heretick who assenteth not to them If unity and charity in the simplicity of Worship be the thing you aim at you must not give every man the liberty of worshiping in what form he pleaseth which destroys all unity nor cursing many times in stead of praying which destroyes all charity the ancient and most simple way of Worship in the Church of God was by regular forms prescribed for the publick use of Gods people in their Congregations and not by unpremeditated indigested prayers which every man makes unto himself as his fancy shall lead him which I hope I have sufficiently proved in my Tract of Liturgies And if Set Forms of Worship are to be retained as I think they be you will not easily meet with any which hath more in it of the ancient simplicity of the Primitive times then that by which we did officiate for the space of fourscore years and more in the Church of England And finally if the ancient simplicity in Government be the point you drive at what Government can you find more pure and ancient then that of Bishops of which I shall only present you with that Character of it which I find in that Petition of the County of Rutland where it is said to be That Government which the Apostles left the Church in that the three ages of Martyrs were governed by that the thirteen ages since have alwayes gloried in by their succession of Bishops from the Apostles proving themselves members of the Catholick and Apostolick Church that our Laws have established so many Kings and Parliaments have protected into which we were baptized as certainly Apostolical as the observation of the Lords day as the distinction of Books Apocryphal from Canonical as that such Books were written by such Evangelists and Apostles as the consecration of the Eucharist by Presbyters c. An ample commendation of Episcopal Government but such as exceedeth not the bounds of truth or modesty Stand to these grounds for keeping unity and charity in the ancient simplicity of Doctrine Worship and Government in the Church of God and you shall see how cheerfully the Regal and Prelatical party whom you most oppose wil join hands with you and embrace you with most dear affections 33. But you begin to shrink already and tell me that if I will have men live in peace as brethren our Union must be Law or Ceremonies or indifferent Forms This is a pretty speculation I must needs confesse but such as would not passe for practicable in any well-governed Common-wealth unless it be in the Old Vtopia or the New Atlantis or the last discovered Oceana For how can men possibly live in peace as brethren where there is no Law to limit their desires or direct their actions Take away Law and every man will be a Law unto himself and do whatsoever seemeth best in his own eyes without control then Lust will be a law for one Felony will be a law for another Perjury shall be held no crime nor shall any Treason or Rebellion receive their punishments for where there is no law there is no transgression and where there is no transgression there can be no punishment punishments being only due for the breach of Laws Thus is it also in the service and worship of Almighty God which by the hedge of Ceremonies is preserved from lying open to all prophaneness and by Set Forms be they as indifferent as they will is kept from breaking out into open confusion God as S. Paul hath told us is the God of Order not of Confusion in the Churches If therefore we desire to avoid confusion let us keep some order and if we would keep order we must have some forms it being impossible that men should live in peace as brethren in the house of God where we find not both David hath told us in the Psalms that Jerusalem is like a City which is at unity in it self and in Jerusalem there were not only solemn Sacrifices set Forms of blessing and some significant Ceremonies prescribed by God but Musical Instruments and Singers and linnen vestures for those Singers and certain hymns and several times and places for them ordained by David Had every Ward in that City and every Street in that Ward and every Family in that Street and perhaps every
tam stultus sum ut diversitate explanationum tuarum me ladi putem quia nec tu laesiris si nos contraria senserimus A POST-SCRIPT To the former Answer Containing The Exchange of Letters between Dr. Heylyn and Dr. Barnard tonching the intended burning of the book called Respondit Petrus With that which followed thereupon 51. MY Answer long enough before must be made longer by this Post script because I would not leave you M. Baxter without full satisfaction to every point you have objected in your Letter or keep you longer in suspense then needs I must You gave some glances in your Letter of the burning of Books for which you had no ground in either of the places you refer me to where you find nothing at all touching the burning of the books of the Sabbatarians but only of the suppressing and calling of them in which made me apt enough to think as I told you then that you intended that for a private nip relating to a book of mine called Respondit Petrus which was publickly noised abroad to have been publickly burnt in London as indeed the burning of it was severely prosecuted though it scaped the fire A full account whereof being too long to be incorporated into the body of that Answer I promised then to give you in a place by it self And therefore I have writ this Post-script to make good that promise I wish you too well to suffer you to remain long in any errour which I am able to remove or to be wrought upon by any false rumours and reports which I am able to disperse and as I have endeavoured the first in all my applications to you so I shall now endeavour the last that I may disperse the others also And this I shall the rather do that I may Duos parletes una fidelia dealbare as in the Latine or Kill two birds with one Stone in the English Proverb My satisfying you in this publique manner will much contribute to the undeceiving of such others also who either out of too much credulity in themselves or dis-affection toward me have been as apt to report as they were easie to believe it Many such I have had the chance to meet with as well at London as elsewhere in whom this Fame had taken so deep a root that I could hardly pluck it up Some of them whom I endeavoured to perswade to a dis-belief of that false report conceiving rather that I rather spake favourably for my selfe then advantagiously and impartially for the truth of the fact And if those persons whom I met with were so hardly satisfied when they heard the story from my self how much more hardly could such others receive satisfaction who live farther off and could have it only from my friends But beside this there was another motive to induce me to it and that is the preventing of all such as possibly may make use of that report to my disadvantage For whereas Mr. Sanderson in the end of his Post Haste scurrilous Pamphlet called the Reply c. hath used some threats That whensoever I shall appear armed again he will be ready to meet me at my own weapon be it sharp or smooth he will be apt to catch at any thing which may serve his turn without examining the truth or enquiring into the certainty of it The like measure I may chance to have from some others also who speak as big and threaten me as much as he but threatened men live long they use to say so perhaps may I and sure I am that none of these threatnings will prevail so far upon me as to shorten the number of those dayes I have to come for your sake therefore and for theirs I have drawn up a full and perfect Narrative of the whole business in this manner following The Intercourse of LETTERS Between D. Heylyn and D. Barnard Touching the intended burning of the Book called Respondit Petrus 52. PHylosophers tell us of a Meteor called Ignis fatuus whose property it is to lead men out of their way and draw them many times into dangerous precipices and such an Ignis fatuus hath of late deceived and abused many in all parts of the Land whom therefore I shall endeavour to unundeceive and bring them back into the way of truth and knowledge The fame is and it is made a common fame by the spreading of it That the Book called Respondit Petrus hath been publiquely burnt and burnt by the order of the Council A fame which hath little truth in it though it hath more colour for it and appearances of it then many other charges which have lately been laid upon me Concerning which the Reader may be pleased to know That on Saturday the 26. of June last past intelligence was given to a friend of mine that an Order was sent by the Council to the Lord Mayor of London requiring him to see the Book called Respondit Petrus to be called in and publiquely burnt Notice whereof being given to me who was then in London I was advised by some of my friends to neglect the matter it being a thing that would redound unto my honour as they pleased to say considering it might be rationally concluded by all knowing me that the Book could not other wise be confuted then by fire and faggot I knew full well what sentence had been passed by Facitus upon the order of the Senate or great Consul of Rome for burning the Books of Cremutius Cordus the Historian Neque aliud externi Reges aut qui eadem sevitia usi sunt nisi dedecus sibi a que illis gloriam peperere that is to say that such who formerly had exercised that kind of severity gained nothing but ignominie to themselves and glory to all those whose Books they burnt But for my part I was rather of Sir John Falstaffs minde in that particular and did not like such grinning honour and therefore chose rather to prevent the obloquie then to glory in it In order whereunto I thought fit to apply my self to D. Barnard of Grays Inn who as he first began the quarrel in publishing the Book Entituled The Judgment of the late Lord Primate c. so was he supposed to have moved the first wheel in the Engine although he stood behind the Curtain and appeared not in it conceiving that if he might be taken off the whole business would soon come to nothing without any more ado upon which ground I wrote the following Letter to him on the Munday morning and received his answer to the same in the afternoon the Coppies of which Letter and the answer to it I shall here subjoyn Dr. Heylyn's Letter to Dr. Barnard SIR 53. WIth what unwillingness I entred upon my answer to that Book of Yours Entituled The Judgment of the Late Lord Primate c. I doubt not but you have found before this time both in the Preface to it and the two first Paragraphs of it In handling
who had taken up the information or vulgar Hear-sâ—y without inquiring into the falsity or malice of the first Report if Mr. Hickman would have had the patience to have stayd so long 4. But long I had not lain in this quiet slumber when I was rouzed by your Letter of March 8. informing me of a second Edition of that Book in which I did not bear a part in the Prologue only as in that before nor was made one of the Actors only in the body Tragi-Comedy but that the matter of the whole Epilogue was of my mistakings All which I could have slept out also if the same Letter had not directed me to page 23 24. where I should find a passage to this effect viz. That Dr. Holland had turned Dr. Laud the most Renowned Arch-Bishop of Canterbury out of the Schools with disgrace for but endeavouring to maintain that Bishops differed in order not only in Degree from inferiour Presbyters A son of Craesus which was dumb from his very birth could find a tongue when he perceived his Father in danger of death whom no extremity of his own might possibly have forced on so great a Miracle And therefore I conceive that it will not be looked upon in me as a matter of Prodigie that the Dishonour done to so great a Prelate who in his time was one of the Fathers of this Church and the chief amongst them should put me to a Resolution of breaking those bonds of silence which had before restrain'd me from advocating in my own behalfe I was not willing howsoever to engage my self too rashly with an unknown Adversary without endeavouring further to inform my self in his Grounds or Reasons In which respect I thought it most agreeable to the ingenuity which I had shown to Mr. Baxter on the like occasions to let him see how sensible I was of the injury done unto my self and the indignity offered to the fame of so great a Person before I would endeavour the righting of my self or the vindicating of his honour in a publique way To which end I addrest unto him these ensuing Lines Dr Heylyn's first Letter to Mr. Hickman SIR 5. YOur Book of the Justification of the Fatherâ— c. was not long since put into my hands w th a direction to a passage in the Preface of it It was not long before I consulted the place in which I found mention that a Book of mine had received the desert of its bitterness in being burnt by the hand of the publique Hangman It seems you were so zealous in laying a Reproach upon me that you cared not whether it were true or false It was thought a sufficient warrant to you that you were informed so without any further enquiring after it Which pains if you would please to take you might have learned that though such a thing was much endeavoured yet it was not effected i. e. that it went no further then noise and fame which served to some instead of all other proofs I was advertised yesterday by several Letters that the Book is come to a second Edition in which you have not only made bold with me which I can easily contemn but have laid a fouler Reproach on the Late Arch-Bishop of Canterbury in being disgracefully turn'd out of the Schools by Dr. Holland But Sir however you may please to deal with such a poor fellow as I am you ought to have carried a greater Reverence towards a Prelate of such eminent Parts and Place whose Memory is more precious amongst all that love the Church of England then to suffer it to be so defamed and by such a person You pretend Information for the ground of your other errour but for this I believe you would be troubled to produce your Authors And if there be no more truth in the other parts of your Book in which you deliver points of Doctrine then you have shown in these two passages in which you relate to matters of fact you had need pray to meet with none but ignorant Readers such as are fit to be abus'd and not with any knowing and intelligent man Excuse me if my love to truth and my tenderness to a name which I so much honour have extorted from me these few lines which are most heartily recommended to your consideration as you are to the grace and blessings of Almighty God by Your very affectionate friend and Christian Brother Peter Heylyn Abingdon March 19. 1658. 6. By this time I had got the Book which I caused to be read over to me till I came to page 38. where I found my self as much concerned as before in the Preface and the integrity of Dr. Burlow once Dean of Chester and afterwards successively Bishop of Rochester and Lincoln to be more decryed then Dr. Laud the late Arch-Bishops was dishonoured in the former passage This put me to a present stand and I resolved to go no further till I had certified the Author of my second Grievance which I did accordingly I had waited somewhat more then a week since I had writ my other Letter without receiving any answer The shooting of a second Arrow after the first might possibly procure a return to both and so it proved in the event But take my second Letter first and then we may expect his answer unto both together Now the second Letter was as followeth Dr. Heylyn's second Letter to Mr. Hickman SIR 7. SInce the writing of my former Letter the last Edition of your Book hath been brought unto me In which I find p. 23. that you ground your self upon the Testimony of some who are still alive for Laud's being disgracefully turned out of the Dinity Schools by Dr. Holland I find also p. 38. that Dr. Burlow did upon his death-bed with grief complain of the wrong he had done to Dr. Reynolds and those who joyned with him in mis-reporting some of their Answers and certain passages therein contained And of the truth of this you say that you are able to give a satisfactory account to any person of ingenuity who shall desire it Sir I am not ashamed of having so much of a Suffenus as to entitle my self to some ingenuity and therefore think it not amiss to claim your promise and to desire a more satisfactory account in that particular then your bare affirmation This with your nomination of the parties who are still alive and able to testifie to the truth of the other I desire you would please to let me have with the first conveniency If no speedy opportunity doth present it self you may send to me by the Preacher who comes hither on Sunday I expected that my former Letter would have been gratified with an answer but if you send me none to this I shaâ—l think you cannot And so commending you and your Studies so far forth as they shall co-operate to the peace of the Church to God's heavenly Blessing I subscribe my self Your very affectionate Friend to serve you Peter
what Grounds I had had to affirm that Dr. Burlow did declare his trouble for some wrong done to Dr. Reynolds c. in relating the Hampton-Court Controversie Sir I will not censure you to have no Ingenuity but yet you must pardon me if I refuse to give you any further account of the matter till I understand first whether you will deal as plainly with me about some things contained in your own Examen Historicum Will you send me word what the names of those men are who said two of your Sermons about the Tares had done more mischief to the Papists then all the Sermons that ever Dr. Prideaux preached against them and what the name of that man is who did by Bishop Williams his appointment give a pension out of his place for the maintenance of a Scholar 2. I would gladly know whether you intend what I write onely for your own private satisfaction and not for publick view 3. I would willingly be informed what you would take for satisfaction whether it will suffice if I prove the business from the mouth of one who was a lover of the English Prelacy Liturgy and Ceremony When you have satisfied me you may suddenly expect an answer from him who again subscribes himself Your humble Servant Henry Hickman Magd. Coll. Ap. 1. 1659. 11. These Answers leaving me as unsatisfied as before I was I found that I had lost both my hopes and labour for the declining of a business which I was not willing to appear in if any satisfaction had been given me otherwise And therefore since he was not pleased to declare himselfe so freely to me in a private way as to beget between us such a right understanding as might prevent all further trouble which his first Letter seemed to wish I see not how I can avoid the making of a more publick business of it then I first intended unless I should betray my self unto scorn and censure My Letters being in his hands cannot be recalled and if I should not now proceed to give the world that satisfaction which I lookt for from him in the retracting of his Calumnies and salfe Reports he and his friends might think I could not In the pursuit whereof I purposed to have gone no further then the vindicating of my self and those whose names are dear unto me from the obstinacy of his Reproaches But he hath hinted me I thank him to another Argument relating to the Historicall part of his discourse of which perhaps I may render you an account also before we part Beginning at the lowest step I shall ascend at last by leisure to the top of the Stairs that having answered for my self I may be credited the more when I speak for others The Answer of P. Heylyn D. D. to Mr. Hickman's Letters of April 1. Relating to some Passages in a Book called The Justification of the Fathers c. 11. IT was good Councel which Demaratus of Corinth gave to Philip of Macedon when he advised him to settle all things well at home before he intermedled in the differences amongst the Grecians In correspondence whereunto I shall first do my best Endeavour to acquit my self from those Reproaches which the Justificator with a Prodigal hand hath bestowed upon me and thereby fit my self the better for advocating in behalf of those eminent persons of whose Renown I am more solicitous then my one Concernments Beginning therefore with my self in the first place I must take notice of his practise to make me clash with the Lord Primate whose Rest I desire not to disturbe upon any occasion He should have first reconciled those two passages which I proposed to D. Barnard p. 103. 104. of Respondit Petrus before he had made it such a wonder that a Doctor of Divinity should so unworthily handle a Reverend person and fasten upon him a dissent from the Church of England in a mater wherein he doth so perfectly agree with her If so if he agree so perfectly with the Church of England how comes he to differ from himselfe and speak such contradictions as D. Barnard nor no other of his great Admirers can find a way to reconcile to the sence of the Church Or if they can or that they think those contradictions not considerable for making his Agreement the lesse perfect with the Church of England you have gained the point which you contended for in your dispute which M. Buâ—le and D. Barnard laboured to deprive you of in his Book of the Lord Primates Judgment intended against none by name but your selfe and me though others be as much concerned in the General Interess 12. Much good may the Concession do you What comes after next the burning of the Book by the common Hangman I thought that Ignis fatuus had had been quencht sufficiently by the assurance which I gave him to the contrary in my Letter of the 19th of March But his desire to have it so is so prevalent with him that he neither doth deny the words nor can find any Reason to be ashamed of them be they never so false And what Ground can we find for so great a confidence 1. He appeals unto an Ordinance made in the year 1646. Which Ordinance he pretends to be still in force but whether it be so or not is a harder Question then a greater Lawyer can determine That Ordinance making â—o Report he flyes next to a common noise which Rings still in his Ears and must gain credit either as a noise or common or as both together though for the most part the louder the noise is and the more common it grows the less credit to be given unto it You know well what the two great Poets say of Fame Fama malum velox quae veris addere falsa Gaudet Eminimo sua per mendacia crescit But yet not seeming to lay much strength upon common Fame though it be one of his best Authors in some other cases he pretends unto a special Revelation from the Privy Council and grows so confident upon the strength of the intelligence that he holds at White-Hall which all great States-men must pretend to that he is sure the Book de Facto had been so disgraced though whether disgraced by being so burnt is another question if the sickness and death of the late Protector had not put the Privy Council upon minding maters of higher concernment The contrary whereof my Postscript unto M. Baxter hath most clearly Evidenced 13. The second charge wherein I stand single by my self is onely toucht at in the Letter where I am said to have bestowed some ugly words upon a Colledge not to be mentioned without honour insisted on more largely in the fag end of the Book without the least coherence or relation to it And there this man of brass makes me worse then a Tinker a rude Expression which declares him to be better studied in his Metaphisicks then his Moral Philosophy in committing more and fouler
that opined the contrary The like may be affirmed of Cambridge when D Whittakers sat in the Divinity Chair and M. Perkins great in the esteem of the Puritan Faction had published his Book Intituled The Golden Chain which Book containing in it the whole Doctrin of the Supra-Lapsarians was quarrelled first by Arminius in the Belgicks Churches and sharply censured afterwards by D. Robert Abbot in his Book against Tompson By these two first and after on the coming down of the Lambeth Articles of which more anon as hard a hand was kept upon all those who embrace not the Calvinian Rigors as was done at Oxon the Spirit of that Sect being uncapable of opposition in the least degree Under which two Generall Answers but the last especially we may reduce all Arguments which are drawn from the severe proceedings of those Professors and their adherents against all such as held any contrary opinion to them that is to say against Bishop Laud by Doctor Holland and D. Abbot by the last against D. Houson also and by D. Prideaux against Mr Bridges and in the other university by D. Whittakers against M. Barret by the whole faction there against Peter Barrow and finally by the two Professors then being against M. Simpson And yet those times were not without some Eminent men and men of prime Note and Authority as he calls their opposites which bear witnesse to the genuine Doctrines of the Church of England now miscalled Arminianism who never were subjected to the ignominy of a Recantation Amongst which I may Reckon D. Hursnet for one Master of Pembrook Hall in Cambridge afterwards successively Bishop of Chichester Norwich and Arch Bishop of York Whose Sermon aâ— St. Pauls Cross the 27 of Octob. 1584. sufficiently declares his judgment in those points of Controversie And I may Reckon D. Buckridge for another President of S. Johns Colledge c. and Tutor unto Bishop Laud at his first coming to Oxon who carring these opinions with him to the See of Rochester maintained them in a publick conference at York house against D. Morton Bishop of Lichfield and D. Preston Master of Emanuel Colledge in Cambridge Anno 1626. 25. I have already written a full discourse shewing upon what Principles and Positions the Church of England did proceed at her first Reformation But this being designed as an Ingredient to a larger work now almost finished I must not wrong that work so far as to make use of it at the present and therefore you must needs have patience till a further time In the mean season I shall endeavour an answer to all those Arguments which your Adversarie hath made use of to evince the point he chiefly aims at leaving the positivity of Sin to your abler hand Where by the way give me leave to tell you that one who seems to wish me well though known no further to me then by the first Letters of his name signified in his Letter to me of the 3d. of March that Mr. Hickman was not the Author but the Compiler of the Book which is now before us having all the Assistance as he was credibly informed which the University could afford him But in this I cannot be of his opinion far less assistance being needful to this petty performance then the united Councels of an university Though my Eyes be very bad and unuseful to me in this way yet I am able to trace the steps of this young Serpent in all the Cliffs and precipices of the Rock upon which he glideth not onely as to follow him in his Proofs and arguments but many of his Phraseâ— and florishes also I could direct you to the Authors from which he borroweth his faining and his failing in the Advertisement at the End of his Book his charging you with tumbling in your Tropes and rowling in your Rhetorick p. 4 his dealing with you as Alexander did with his Horse Bucephalus taking him by the Bridle and leading him gently into the Sun that other men may see how lustily you lay about you though your selfe do not p. 7. I could direct you also to the very pages in M. Prinns book of Anti-Arminianism and that called Canterburies Doom out of which without acknowledging his Benefactor he takes all his Arguments Except that of Gabriel Bridges in Oxon and M. Sâ—mpson in Cambridg perhaps these also But being they are made his own as some unhappy Boys makâ— knives when they do but steal them I will Answer them one by one in Order as they come before me 26. In the first Entrance to his proofs he begins with Wicklife concluding that because the Papists have charged it on him that he brought in fatal necessity and made God the Author of sinne therefore it may be made a pâ—obable Guâ—ss that there was no disagreement between him and Calvin The Course of which Argument stands thus that there being an agreement to these points betwixt Wickliffe and Calvin and the Reformers of our Church embracing the Doctrins of Wickliff therfore they must embrace the Doctrine of Calvin also But first it cannot be made good that our Reformers embrace the Doctrine of Wickliffe or had any Eye upon that Man who though he held many points against those of Rome yet had his field more tares then wheat his Books more Heterodoxies then sound Catholick Doctrines And secondly admitting this Argument to be of any force in that present case it will as warrantably serve for all the Sects and Heresies which now swarm amongst us as for that of Calvin Wickliffe affording them the Grounds of their several dotages though possibly they are not so well studied in their own concernments For they who have consulted the works of Thomas Waldeâ—sis or the Historia Wiclesiana writ by Harpfield will tell us that Wickliffe amongst many other Errors maintained these that follow 1. That the Sacrament of the Altar is nothing else but a piece of Bread 2. That Priests have no more Authority to Minister Sacraments then Lay men have 3. That all things ought to be common 4. That it is as lawful to Christena child in a Tub of water at home or in a ditch by the way as in a Fontstone in the Church 5. That it is as lawful aâ— all times to confess unto a Layman as to a Priest 6. That it is not necessary or profitable to have any Church or Chappel to pray in or to do any divine service in 7. That buryings in Church Yards be unprofitable and vain 8. That Holidayes ordained and instituted by the Church taking the Lords day in for one are not to be observed and kept in Reverence in as much as all dayes are alike 9. That it is sufficient and enough to believe though a man do no good works at all 10. That no humane Laws or Constitutions do oblige a Christian and finally that God never gave Grace or knowledge to a great person or Rich man and that they in no wise follow the same What Anabaptist
in him then art thou written in the book of life and shalt be saved 29. In the last place we are to note that there is a clause in the end of the Article viz. that we are to receive Gods promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture then which nothing can be more contrary to the Doctrine of the Supralapsarians which restrains Election unto life to few particulars without respect had to their Faith in Christ or Christs death for them and extendeth the Decree of Reprobation to the far greatest part of Manking without relation to their incredulity or unbelief And though your adversary tells us that he who reads the common Prayer Book with an unprejudiced mind cannot chuse but observe divers passages which make for a personall and eternal Election yet I find but little ground for the affirmation the Promises of God as they are generally set forth unto us in Holy Scripture being the ground of many Prayers and Passages in the Publique Liturgie for in the General Confession it is said expresly that the Promises of God in Christ Jesus our Lord are declared not to this or that man particularly but to all mankind declared to all because first made to all mankind in Adam in the promise of Redemption by the seed of the woman Gen. 3. 15. Secondly it is said in the Te de um that when our Saviour Christ had overcome the sharpness of Death he did open the Kingdom of Heaven to all Believers Thirdly we find a Prayer for the day of the Passion commonly called Good-Friday which is so far from pointing to any personal Election that it bringeth all Jâ—ws Turkâ— and Infidels within the possibility and compass of it Morciful God so the Church teacheth us to pray who host made all men and hatest nothing which thou hast made nor wouldest the death of a sinner but rather that he should be converted and live have mercy upon all Jews Turks Infidelâ— and Hereticks and take from them all ignorance hardness of heart and contempt of thy word and so fetch them home blessed Lord to thy flock that they may be saved amongst the remnant of the true Israelites and be made one fold under one Shepherd Jesus Christ our Lord who liveth and reigneth c. Can your Antagonist read this Prayer and observe those passages and think the Liturgy so contradictory to it self as to afford him any proof that such a personal Election from all Eternity as an unprejudiced mind may desire to meet with If not why doth he talk so confidently of divers passages which a careful Reader cannot chuse but observe in the Common Prayer Book which enclines that way yea let him direct us to those passages and reconcile the differences which he finds betwixt them 30. And though it was not my intent to produce any arguments at this time in Justification of the Doctrine of the Church of England as by you maintained yet since your Adversary stands so much on the 17th Article and thinks it makes so strongly for defence of the Calvinists I will here lay down the Judgment of two Godly Martyrs who had a chief hand in the Great Work of this Reformation and therefore must needs know the meaning of the Church therein more then any of us The first of these shall be Bishop Hooper who in the Preface to his Exposition on the ten Commandments hath expresly told us That Cain was no more excluded from the Promise of Christ till he excluded himself then Abel Saul then David Judas then Peter Esau then Jacob that God is said to have hated Esau not because he was dis-inherited of Eternal Life but in laying his Mountains and his Heritage waste for the Dragons of the Wilderness Mal. 1. 3. that the threatnings of God against Esau if he had not of his own wilful malice excluded himself from the Promise of Grace should no more have hindred his Salvation then Gods threatnings against Nineve c. That it is not a Christian mans part to say that God hath written Fatal Laws as the Stoick and with necessity of destiny violently pulleth the one by the hair into Heaven and thrusteth the other headlong into Hell that the cause of Rejection or Damnation is Sin in man which will not bear neither receive the Promises of the Gospel c. And secondly we shall find Bishop Latimer in his Sermon on the third Sunday after the Epiphany speaking in this manner viz. That if the most are damned the fault is not in God but in themselves For Deus vult omnes homines salvos fieri God would that all men should be saved but they themselves procure their own Damnation and despise the passion of Christ by their own wicked and inordinate living He telleth us also in his fourth Sermon preached in Lincoln shire That Christ only and no man else merited Remission Justification and sound felicity for as many as will believe the same that Christ shed as much blood for Judas as for Peter that Peter believed and therefore was saved that Judas did not believe and therefore was condemned the fault being in him only and in no body else More to which purpose I have elsewhere noted as afore was said and give you this only for a tast to stay your stomack And though Archbishop Cranmer the principal Architect in the work spent his endeavours chiefly against the Papists yet that most holy Martyr tells us somewhat in his fifth Book against Gardiner fol. 372. which doth directly look this way Where speaking of the sacrifice which was made by Christ he lets us know That he took unto himself not only their sinnes that many years before were dead and put their trust in him but also all the sinnes of those that until his coming again should truly believe in his Gospel so that now we may look for no other Priest nor sacrifice to take away our sins but onely him and his sacrifice that as his dying once was offered for all so as much as pertained unto him he took all mens sinnes unto himself In all which passages and many others of like nature in the other two there is not any thing which makes for such a personal absolute and irreversible decree of Predestination as Calvin hath commended to us and therefore no such meaning in the 17th Article as his Disciples and adherents in defence of themselves and their opinions would obtrude upon it For if there were your Adversary must give me some better Reason then I think he can why Cranmer Ridly Hooper and the rest that laboured in this Reformation should command the Paraphrases of Erasmus to be translated into English studied by Priests and so kept in Parish Churches to be read by the People whose Doctrines are so contrary in all these particulars to that of Calvin and his followers 31. But I return again unto your Adversary who in the next place remembreth us of a Catechism
the whole Work was finished confirmed and put in execution before either of them was brought over dispatcht soon after their arrival to their several Chair'es Martyr to the Divinity Lecture in Oxon and Bucer unto that of Cambridge where he lived not long And dying so quickly as he did vix salutata Accademia as my Author hath it though he had many auditors there yet could he noâ— gain many Disciples in so short a time And though Peter Martyr lived to see the death of King Edward and consequently the end of the Convocation Anno 1552. in which the Articles of Religion were first composed and agreed on yet there was little use made of him in advising and much less in directing any thing which concerned that business For being a stranger and but one and such an one as was of no Authority in Church or State he could not be considered as a Master builder though some use might he made of him as a Labourer to advance the work Calvin had offered his assistance but it was refused Which showes that Cranmer and the Rest to whom he made offer of his service Si quis mei usus esset as his own words are if they thought it needful were not so favourable to the man or his Doctrines either as to make him or them the Rule of their Reformation 33. Pass we next to Alexander Nowel Dean of St. Pauls and Prolocutor of the Convocation An. 1â—â—2 in which the Articles were Revised and afterwards ratified and confirmed by the Queens authority In which capacity I must needs grant it for a truth that he understood the conduct of all affairs in that Convocation as well as any whosoever But then it is to be observed that your Adversary grants their 17. Articles to be the very same verbatim which had before passed in the Convocation of King Edw. 6. No new sence being put upon it by the last establishment And if no new sence were put upon it as most sure there was not it must be understood no otherwise then according to the Judgement of those learned men and Godly Martyrs before remembred who concurred unto the making of it From which if M. Nowels sence should differ in the least degree it is to be looked upon as his own not the sence of the Church And secondly it cannot rationally be inferred from his being Prolocutor in that Convocation and the knowledge which he needs must have of all things which were carried in it that therefore nothing was concluded in that Convocation which might be contrary to his own judgement as a private person admitting that he was inclinable to Calvin in the points disputed which I grant not neither For had he been of his opinions the spirit of that Sect is such as could not be restrained from showing it self dogmatically and in terms express and not occasionally onely or upon the by and that too in such general terms that no particular comfort for your Adversary can be gathered from them And it were worth the while to know first why your Antagonist appealing to his Catechism should decline the Latin Edition of it which had been authorized to be publiquely taught in all the Grammer Schools of England and the English translation of the same by a friend of the Authors 1572. both still in use and both reprinted in these times since the year 1647 And secondly what it was which moved him to fly for succour to the first draught of it in the English Tongue out of which the two last were extracted that first draught or Edition being laid aside many years ago and not approved by any such publick Authority as the others were somewhat there must be in it which brought that first Edition so soon out of credit and therefore possibly thought fit by your Adversary for the present turn and thought to let us know which Catechism it is he means he seems to distinguish it from the other by being dedicated to the two Arch-Bishops yet that doth rather betray his ignorance then advance his cause the Authors own Latine Edition and the English of it being dedicated to the two Arch-Bishops as well as that 34. But since he hath appealed to that English Catèchism to her English Catechism let him go In which he cannot find so much as one single question touching the Doctrine of Predestination or the points depending thereupon and therefore is necessitated to have recourse unto the Articles of the Catholick Church the members and ingredients of it from thence he doth extract these two passages following the first whereof is this viz. To the Church do all they properly belong as many as do truly fear honour and call upon God altogether applying their minds to live holily and Godly and with putting all their trust in God do most assuredly look for the blessings of Eternal life they that be stedfast stable and constant in this faith were chosen and appointed and as we term it predestinate to this so great felicity The second which follows not long after as his Book directeth is this that followeth viz. The Church is the body of the Christian Commonwealth i. e. the universal number and fellowship of the faithful whom God through Christ hath before all beginning of time appointed to everlasting life And here again we are to Note that the First of these two passages not being to be found in the Latine Edition nor the English Translation of the same is taken almost word for word out of Poynets Catechism and therefore to be understood in no other sence then before it was And that the second makes the Church to consist of none but the Elect which the nine and tenth Article makes in a more comprehensive signification So that to salve this sore he is fain to fly to the destinction of a visible and invisible Church fit for his definition unto that which he calls invisible making the visible Church of Christ to consist of such as are assembled to hear the Gospel of Christ sincerely taught to call on God by prayer and receive the Sacraments Which persons so assembled together are by the Article called a Cong egation of faithful men as well as those which constitute and make up the Church invisible And yet I doubt your Adversary will not not grant them all to be in the number of the Elect. But granting that the Church doth consist of none but the Elect that is to say of none but such who have been through Christ appointed to everlasting life from before all time as is there affirmed yet there is nothing in all this which justifieth the absolute and irrespective decree of the predestinarians nothing of Gods invincible workings in the hearts of his chosen ones which your Antagonist maintains or which doth manifestly make for such a personal Election as he conceives is to be found in many passages of the Common Prayer Book though what those passages are and where they are to be found he keeeps
as a secret to himself for some new discovery 35. For M. Nowel who sate Prolocutor in the Convocation Anno 1562. he takes a leap to the year 1587. in which he findes a Book published by D. John Bridges Dean of Salisbury and afterwards Lord Bishop of Oxon Entituled A Defence of the Government established in the Church of ENGLAND And that he might come to it the sooner he skips over the admission of Peter Barro a French man to the Lady Margarites Professor-ship in the University of Cambridge Anno 1574 who constantly held these points in a contrary way to that of the Calvinian plat-form and relinquished not that University till after the year 1595. of which more hereafter And he skips over also Doctor Harsâ—ets Sermon at Pauls Cross Octob. 27. 1584. in which he so declared himself against the Calvinistical Doctrines of Predestination that neither Mountague nor any that have writ since him did ever render them more odious unto vulgar cars But being come to him at the lâ—st what finds he there Marry That D. Bridges was of opinion That the Elect fall not finally and totally from Grace and so did D. Overal also of whom more anon who notwithstanding disallowed the Doctrine of Predestination as maintained by Calvin and puts not any such Comment on the 17. Article as your Antagonist contends for The like he findes in M. Hookers Discourse of Justification from whence he concluded no more but that M. Hooker was of a different opinion from you in the point of falling away from Grace Which point he might maintain as D. Overal D. Bridges and some others did and yet not be of the same judgment with the Calvinistical party either sub or supra touching that absolute and iresistable decree of Predestination the restriction of the benefit of Christs death and passion to particular persons and the invincible or rather irresistable operations of the grace of God in the conversion of a sinner which were so rigidly maintained in the Schools of Calvin I see then what is said by D. Bridges and what is said by M. Hooker but I see also what is said by the Church of England in the 16. Article in which we find That after we have received the holy Ghost we may depart from Grace given and fall into sin and by the grace of God we may arise again and amend our lives No such determination as either totally or finally to be found in the Article nor suffered to be added to it when it was motioned and desired by D. Reynolds in the conference at Hampton Court that old saying Non est distinguendum ubi lex non distinguit being as authentical as true and as true as old Howsoever I am glad to hear from your adversarie that M. Hooker could not tell how to speak Judicially as he saith he could not and then I hope he may be brought in time to approve of all things which he hath written so judiciously in behalf of the Liturgie and all the Offices Ceremonies and Performances of it which whensoever he doth I make no question but but that he may come to like the Episcopal Government and by degrees desert the Presbiterians both in Doctrine and Discipline as much as he Certain I am that M. Hooker maintained no such determination of humane action by any absolute decree or prelimitation as the Calvinists do and declared his dislike thereof in Cartwright the great Goliah of that Sect who had restrained all and every action which men do in this life to the preceding will and determination of Almighty God Even to the takeing up of a straw a fine piece of Dotage 36 But he demands How the Church came to dispose of the places of greatest influence and trust to such as hated Arminianism as the shadow of death If she her self consented to those opinions which he calls Arminian amongst which reckoning the Arch Bishops till the time of Laud he first leaves out Arch Bishop Cranmer the principal instrument under God of this Reformation which plainly shews that Cranmer was no favourer of those Opinions which your Antagonist contends for and consequently that the Articles were not fitted in these points unto Calvin's fancie And secondly he brings in Parker and Grindal whom M. Prinne whose diligince few things have escaped which serve his turne hath left out of his Catalogue in which he hath digested all our English Writers whom he conceived to be Antiarminianly enclined in a kind of Cronologie Thirdly he brings in Bishop Bancroft as great an enemy to the Predestinarian and Puritan Faction as ever sate in the See of Canterbury he had not else impeacht the Doctrine of Predestination as it was then taught by the Calvinians for a desperate Doctrine You have the whole passage in the Conference at Hampton Court impartially related by D. Burlow though your Adversary hath some invisible vileness or other to affirm the contrary Whereon a motion made by D. Reynolds about falling from Grace The Bishop of London this very Bancroft whom we speak of took occasion to signifie to his Majesty how very many in these days neglecting holiness of life presumed too much of persisting Grace If I shall be saved I shall be saved which he tearmed a desparate Doctrine shewing it to be contrary to good Divinity and the true Doctrine of Predestination Wherein saith he we should reason rather ascendendo then descendendo thus I live in obedience to God in love with my neighbour I follow my vocation c. therefore I trust that God hath elected me and predestinated me to salvation Not thus which is the usual course of argument God hath predestinated and chosen me to life therefore though I sin never so grievously yet I shall not be damned for whom he once loveth he loveth to the end so little a friend was this great Pralate to the Calvinian Doctrine of Predestination and persisting Grace 37. But your Adversary not content with this hath found some proofs as he conceives That Bancroft hated that which he calls Arminianisme like the shadow of death he telleth us that in his time came out the Book called The Faith Religion Doctrine professed in the Realm of England and Dominions thereof In this as much mistaken as in that before that Book being published in the time of Arch-Bishop Whitgift Anno 1584 as he might have found in Mr. Fullers Church History lib. 9 fol. 172. being twenty years almost before Bancroft came to the See of Canterbury and 12. at least before he was made Bishop of London And being then published was as he saith disliked by some Protestants of a middle temper whom by this his Restrictive Comment were shut out from a concurrence with the Church of England whom the discreet â—uxity of the Text admitted thereunto And if disliked by Protestants of a middle temper as he saith it was there is no question to be made but that it was disliked much more by all true Protestants such as
your Adversary calls Arminians who constantly adhered to the determinations of the Church of England according to the Literal and Grammatical sense and the concurrent Expositions of the first Reformers I grant indeed that the Book being afterwards re-printed was dedicated with a long Epistle to Arch-Bishop Bancroft But that intituleth him no more to any of the propositions or opinions which are there maintained then the like Dedication of a Book to an Eminent Prelate of our Nation in denyal of Original Sin intituled him to the maintenance of the same opinion which he as little could digest they are your Adversaries own words in the Epistle to the Lecturers of Brackley as the most rigidly Scotized Presbyterian Nor stays he here for rather then lose so great a Patron he will anticipate the time and make Dr. Bancroft Bishop of London almost 18 moneths before he was and in that Capacity agreeing to the Lambeth Articles An errour which he borrowed from the Church Historian who finding that Richard Lord Elect of London contributed his Assent unto them puts him down positively for Dr. Richard Bancroft without further search whereas he might have found upon further search that the meeting at Lambeth had been held on the 26th of November 1595. that D. Richard Flesher Bishop of Worcester was then the Lord Elect of London and that D. Bancroft was not made Bishop of that See till the 8th of May Anno 1697. 38. The next Considerable preferments for learning the Clergy he makes to be the two Chairs in the Universities both to be occupied by those who were profest Enemies to such Doctrines as he calls Arminianism Which if it were granted for a truth is rather to be looked on as an infelicity which befell the Church in the first choice of those Professors then to be used as an argument that she concurred with them in all points of Judgement That which was most aimed at in those times in the preferring men to the highest dignities of the Church and the chief places in the Vniversities was their zeal against Popery and such a sufficiency of learning as might enable them to defend those points on which our separation from Rome was to be maintained and the Queens interess most preserved The Popes supremacy the Mass with all the points and niceties which depended on it justification by faith the marriage of Priests Purgatory and the power of the civil Magistrate were the points most agitated And whosoever appeared right in those and did withal declare himself against the corruptions of that Church in point of manners was seldome or never looke into for his other opinions until the Church began to find the sad consequents of it in such a general tendency to innovation both in doctrine and discipline as could not easily be redressed From hence it was that we find a non-conformist though â— moderate one in the chaire at Oxon a Mother but a violent Patron of in-conformity in a Professorship in Cambridge so many hankering after Calvin in almost all the Headships of both Vniversities And it was hardly possible that it should be otherwise Such of the learned Protestants as had been trained up under the Reformation made by King Edw. 6. and had the confidence and courage to stand out to the last in the Reign of Queen Mary were either martyred in the flames or consumed in prisons or worn out with extremity of Grief and disconsolation And most of those which had retired themselves beyond the Seas returned with such a mixture of outlandish Doctrines that it was hard to find amongst them a sufficient number of men so qualified as to fill up the number of Bishops and to be dignified with the Deanrys of Cathedral Churches By means whereof there followed such an universal spreading of Calvinism over all parts of the Church that it can be no matter of wonder if the Professors of the Vniversity should be that way byassed And yet as much as the times were inclined that way I believe it will be hard if not impossible for your Antagonist to prove that those Professors did agree upon such a platform of Gods decrees as he and others of the same perswasions would fain obtrude upon us now In Cambridge D. Whitaker maintained the supra-Lapsarian way of Predestination which D. Robert Abbot of Oxon condemned in the person of Perkins And I have heard from persons of very good Esteem that Dr. Abbot himself was as much condemned at his first coming to the Chair for deviating from the moderation of his Predecessor D. Holland who seldome touched upon those points when he might avoid them For proof whereof it may be noted that five onely are remembred by Mr. Prynne in his Anti Arminianism to have maintained the Calvinian tenents in all the time of that Professor from the year 1596. to the year 1610. whereas there were no fewer then 20. who maintained them publickly in the Act as the others did in the first six years of D. Prideaux And as for D. Overal one D. Overal as your Adversary calls him in contempt afterwards Dean of S. Pauls Bishop of Lichfield and at last of Norwich that his opinion were not that for which you are said to stickle I am sure it was not that for which he contends that he did not Armintanize in all things I am sure he Calvinized in none 39. Proceed we next to the Consideration of that Argument which is derived from the censures inflicted in either Vniversity upon such as trod the Arminian path so soon as they began to discover themselves Exemplified in Cambridge by the proceedings there against Barret Barrow and Simpson in Oxon by the like against Laud Houson and Bridges Of Barret Simpson and Bridges I shall now say nothing referring you to the 23. Section of this discourse where you will find a general answer to all these particulars In the case of Dr. Laud and Dr. Houson there was somewhat else then that which was objected against the other Your Adversary tells us of D. Housons Suspention for â—â—urting onely against Calvin If so the greater the injustice and the more unjustifiable the suspension for what was Calvin unto us but that he might be flurtad at as well as another when he came cross unto the discipline or Doctrine of the Church of England But Mr. Fuller tells you more particularly that at a Sermon preached in St. Maries in Oxon he accused the Geneva Notes as guilty of mis-interpretation touching the divinity of Christ and his Mesiah-ship as if symbolizing with Arrians and Jewes against them both and that for this he was suspended by D. Robert Abbot propter Conciones publicas minus Orthodoxas offensione plenas Which though it proves this Reverend person to be rufly handled yet it makes nothing to the purpose of your mighty Adversary which was to show that some such Censures of Arminianism might be found in Oxon as had been met withal in Cambridge nor doth he speed
no other issue could be expected then the curse of God in making a perpetual rent and destruction in the whole body of the state pag. 39. was not because they were so in and of themselves but for other Reasons which our great Masters in the Schools of policy called Reason of State That King had said as much as this comes too of the Puritans of Scotland whom in the second Book of his Basilicon Doron he calls the very pests of a Common-wealth whom no deserts can oblige neither Oaths nor Promises bind breathing nothing but sedition and calumny c. Advising his Son Prince Henry then Heir of the Kingdom not to suffer the Principles of them to brook his Land if he list to sit at rest except he would keep them for trying his patience as Socrates did an evil wise And yet I trow your adversary will not grant upon these expressions though he might more warrantably do it in this case then he doth in the other that Puritans are not to be suffered in a State or Nation especially in such a State which hath any mixture in it of Monarchical Government Now the Reason of State which moved King James to so much harshness against the Remonstrants or Arminians call them which you will was because they had put themselves under the Patronage of John Olden Barnevelt a man of principal authority in the Common-wealth whom the King looked upon as the profess'd Adversary of the Prince of Orange his dear Confederate and Ally who on the other side had made himself the Patron and Protector of the Rigid Calvinists In favour of which Prince that King did not only press the States to take heed of such infected persons as he stiles them which of necessiry would by little and little bring them to utter ruine if wisely and in time they did not provide against it but sent such of his Divines to the Synod of Dort as he was sure would be sufficiently active in their condemnation By which means having served his own turn secured that Prince and quieted his neighbouring provinces from the present distemper he became every day more willing then other to open his eyes unto the truths which were offered to him and to look more carefully into the dangers and ill consequence of the opposite Doctrines destructive in their own nature of Monarchial Government a matter not unknown to any who had acquaintance with the Court in the last times of the King Noâ— makes it any thing against you that his Majesties repeating the Articles of the Creed two or three days before his death should say with a kind of sprightfulness and vivacity that he believed them all in that sense which was given by the Church of England and that whatsoever he had written of this faith in his life he was now ready to seal with his death For first the Creed may be believed in every part and article of it according as it is expounded in the Church of England without reflecting on the Doctrine of Predestination and the points depending thereupon And secondly I hope your Adversary doth not think that all the bitter speeches and sharp invectives which that King made against Remonstrants were to be reckoned amongst those Articles of his faith which he had writ of in his life and was resolved to seal with his death no more then those reproachful speeches which he gives to those of the Puritan Faction in the conference at Hampton Court the Basilicon Doron for which consult my answer to Mr. Baxter neer 29. and elsewhere passim in his Writings 44. The greatest part of his Historical Arguments being thus passed over we will next see what he hath to say of his Late Majesties Declaration printed before the Articles An. 1628. and then proceed unto the rest He tells us of that Declaration how he had learned long since that it was never intended to be a two edged Sword nor procured out of any charitable design to setle the Peace of the Church but out of a Politique design to stop the mouths of the Orthodox who were sure to be censured if at any time they declared their minds whilst the new upstart Arminians were suffered to preach and print their Heterodox Notions without controul And for the proof hereof he voucheth the Authority of the Late Lord Faulkland as he finds it in a Speech of his delivered in the House of Commons Anno 1640. In which he tells us of these Doctrines that though they were not contrary to Law yet they were contrary to custome that for a long time were no ofter preached then recanted Next he observes that in the Recantation made by Mr. Thorne Mr. Hodges and Mr. Ford it is not charged upon them that they had preached any thing contrary to the Doctrine of the Church according to the ancient Form of the like Recantations enjoyned by the ancient Protestants as he calls them but onely for their going against the Kings Declaration which but only determined not having commanded silence in those points Thirdly that the Prelatical oppressions were so great in pressing this Declaration and the other about lawful Sports as were sufficient in themselves to make wise men mad 45. For answer to these Arguments if they may be called so I must first tell you that the man and his Oratour both have been much mistaken in saying that his Majesties Declaration was no two edged sword or that it tyed up the one side and let loose the other for if it wounded Mr. Thorn and his companions on the one side it smote as sharply on the other against Dr. Rainford whose Recantation he may find in the Book called Canterbury's Doome out of which he hath filched a great part of his store He is mistaken secondly in saying that this Declaration determined nothing for it determineth that no man shall put his own sence or Comment to be the meaning of the Article but should take it in the Literal and Grammatical sense which Rule if the Calvinians would be pleased to observe we should soon come to an agreement Thirdly if the supposition be true as I think it be that the Doctrines which they call Arminianism be not against the Law but contrary to custome only then is the Law on our side and nothing but custome on theirs and I think no man will affirm that Custome should be heard or kept when it is against Law But fourthly if the noble Oratour were mistaken in the supposition I am sure he is much more mistaken in the proposition these Doctrines being preach'd by Bishop Latimer and Bishop Hooper in King Edwards time by Dr. Harsnet and Peter Baroe in Queen Elizabeths time by Dr. Howson and Dr. Laud in King James his time none of which ever were subjected to the infamy of a Recantation Fiftly if the Recantation made by Mr. Thorn and his companions imported not a retracting of their opinions as he saith they did not it is a strong argument of the
mildness of his Majesties Government and the great Moderation shown by Bishop Laud in the use of his power in not compelling men to say or do any thing against their Conscience a moderation which we find not amongst those of the Sect of Calvin when any of the opposite party fell into their hands Sixthly whereas it might be thought that the Ancient Protestants as he merrily calls them had past many such severe censures upon those whom he stiles Arminians he instanceth in none but in Barret and Bridges which make too small a number for so great a bragg Quid dignum tanto and the rest And finally for answer to the Prelatical oppressions I shall referre you to my former Discourse with Mr. Baxter num 20 21 23 repeating only at the present that the Proceeding of the Bishops were mild and gentle compared with the unmerciful dealings of the Presbiterians by whom more Orthodox Learned and Religious Ministers were turned out of their Benefices within the space of three years then by all the Bishops in England since the Reformation 46. But the King must not think to carry it so the Puritan Faction being generally Calvinistical in Doctrine as well as in Discipline prevailed so in the House of Commons Jan. 28. 1628. that they agreed upon this Counterpoise or Anti-declaration following viz. We the Commons now assembled in Parliament do claim profess and avow for truth the sense of the Articles of Religion which were established in Parliament 13. Eliz. Which by the publick Acts of the Church of England and the general current Exposition of the Writers of our Church have been delivered to us and we reject the sense of the Jesuites and Arminians and all other wherein they differ from us Which counterpoise made in direct opposition to the Kings Declaration your adversary makes a product of the Civil Authority whereas the House of Commons was so far at that time from being looked on as the Civil Authority of the English Nation that it was of no Authority at all nor could make any Order to bind the Subject or declare any thing to be Law and much less Religion till it was first countenanced by the Lords and finally confirmed by the Royal assent But this he doth in correspondence to the said Protestation in which the Articles of Lambeth are called the publique Acts of the Church of England though made by none but the Arch Bishop of Canterbury two Bishops of which onely one had actually received Consecration one Dean and half a dozen Doctors and other Ministers or thereabouts neither impowered to any such thing by the rest of the Clergy nor authorized to it by the Queen And therefore their determinations can no more properly be called the Acts of the Church then if one Earl with the eldest Sons of two or three others meeting with half a dozen Gentlemen in Westminster Hall can be affirmed to be in a capacity of making Orders which must be looked on by the Subject as Acts of Parliament 47. Your Adversary begins now to draw toward the Lees and in the Dreggs of his discourse offers some Arguments to prove that those doctrines and opinions which he calls Arminianism were countenanced to no other end but to bring in Popery And for the proof hereof he brings in Mr. Prinn's Report to the House of Commons in the Case of Montague An. 1626. In which it is affirmed that the whole frame and scope of his book was to discourage the well affected in Religion and as much as in him lay to reconcile them unto Popery He gives us secondly a fragment of a scattered Paper pretended to be written to the Rector of the Jesuites Colledge in Bruxels In which the Writer lets him know that they had strongly fortified their Faction here in England by planting the Soveraign Drug Arminianism which he hoped would purge the Protestants from their Heresie Thirdly he backs this paper with a clause in the Remonstrance of the House of Commons Anno 1628 where it is said that the hearts of his Majesties Subjects were perplex'd in beholding the dayly growth and spreading of the faction of Arminianism that being as his Majesty well knew so they say at least but a cunning way to bring in Popery All which he flourishes over by a passage in the Lord Faucklands Speech before remembered in which it is affirmed of some of the Bishops that their work was to try how much of a Papist might be brought in without Popery and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospel without bringing themselves in danger of being destroyed by the Law c. To all which being but the same words out of divers mouths I shall return one answer only which is briefly this Your adversary cannot be so ignorant as not to know that the same points which are now debated between the Calvinians and the Old Protestants in England between the Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants in the Belgick Churches and finally between the Rigid and Moderate Lutherans in the upper Germany have been as fiercely agitated between the Franciscans and Dominicans in the Church of Rome the old English Protestants the Remonstrants and the moderate Lutherans agreeing in these points with the Franciscans as the English Calvinists the Contra-Remonstrants and the Rigid Lutherans do with the Dominicans So that there is a complyance on all sides with one of the said two parties in the Church of Rome And therefore why a general compliance in these points with the Friers of St. Dominick the principal Sticklers and Promoters of the Inquisition should not be thought as ready a way to bring in Popery as any such compliance with the Friers of St. Francis I would fain have your Adversary tell me when he puts out next 49. The greatest of the storm being over there remains only a few drops which will make no man shrink in the wetting that is to say the permission of some books to be frequenly printed containing the Calvinian Doctrine and the allowance of many questions to be maintained publiquely in the Act at Oxon contrary to the sence of those which he calls Arminians Amongst the Books so frequently printed he instanceth in the Practise of Piety Perkins his Principles Balls Catechism c. which being incogitantly licensed to the Press at their first coming out could not be afterwards Restrained from being Reprinted notwithstanding the many inconveniences which ensued upon it till the passing of the Decree in Star-Chamber July 1637. concerning Printing by which it was ordered to the great grief and trouble of that Puritan faction that no Book whatsoever should be reprinted except Books of the Law till they were brought under a review and had a new License for reprinting of them And though D. Crakanthorps Book against the Archbishop of Spalato was but once printed yet being called Defensâ—o Ecclesiae Anglicanae it serves your Adversaries turn as well as if it had been Printed an hundred times over How so because
and impotency of the people But you who have no better name for the people in a Commonwealth then the Rascal Rabble will have Kings at a venture to be of Divine right and to be absolute where as in truth if divine right be derived unto Kings from these of the Hebrews onely it is most apparent that no absolute King can be of Divine right For these Kings if they were such by the Law alledged then by the same Law they could neither multiply Horses nor wives nor Silver nor Gold without which â—o King can be absolute but were to keep all the words of this Law and these Statutes and so by consequence were regulated Monarchs nay could of right Enact no Law but as those by David for the reduction of the Ark for the regulation of the Priests for the Election of Solomon which were made by the suffrage of the people no otherwise then those under the Kings of Rome and ours under the late Monarchy what then is attributed by Calvin unto popular Magistrates that is not confirmed by Scripture and reason yet nothing will serve your turn but to know what power there was in the Sanhedrim to controle their Kings to which I answer that both Skickardus and Grotius with the full consent of the Talmudists have assured you that in case the King came to violate those Laws and Statutes it was in the power of the Sanhedrim to bring him unto corporal punishment Moreover it is shewn by the latter out of Josephus that Hircanus when he could not deliver Hierom from the Sanhedrim by power he did it by art Nor is your evasion so good as that of Hircanus while you having nothing to say to the contrary but that Herod when he was question'd was no King shuffle over the business without taking notice as to the point in controversie that Hircanus who could not save Herod from the question was King The manner of the restitution of the Sanhedrim made by Jehoshaphat plainly shewes that even under the Monarchy the power of the Sanhedrim was co-ordinate with that of the King at least such is the judgement of the Iewish Writers for saith Grotius the King as is rightly noted by the Talmudists was not to judge in some cases and to this the words of Zedekiah seem to relate whereto the Sanhedrim demanding the Prophet Jeremiah he said Behold he is in your hands for the King is not he that can do any thing without you nor except David had ever any King Session or vote in this Councell to which soon after he adds that this Court contiued till Herod the Great whose insolency when exalting it self more and more against the Law the Senator had not in time as they ought suppressed by their power God punished them in such a manner for the neglect of their duty that they came all to be put to death Herod except Sameae onely whose foresight and frequent warning of this or the like calamity they had as frequently contemned In which words Grotius following the unanimous consent of the Talmudists if they knew any thing of their own orders expresly attributes the same power unto the Sanhedrim and chargeth them with the same dury in Israel that is attributed unto the three Estates in a Gothick Moddel and charged upon these by Calvin Thus that there never lay any appeal from the Sanhedrim unto Moses except when the Jews were in captivity or under provincial Government to any other Magistrate as also that they had power upon their Kings being that your self say Iâ— the objection paramount and which not answered you confess that the three Estates convened in Parliament or any other papular Magistrate Calvin dreams of notwithstanding any discontinuance or non-usage on their parts or any prescription alledged by Kings to the contrary may resume and exercise that authority which God hath given them when ever they shall find a fit time for it And this letter shewing plainly that you have in no wise answered this objection it remains that your whole Book even according to your own acknowledgement is confuted by this letter Or if you be of another mind I shall hope to hear further from you 3. These are the very words of that you Letter to which an answer is required though to no part thereof but that which doth concern the Spartan Ephori and the Iewish Sanhedrim I can by any rules of disputation be required to answer the rest of your discourse touching the balancing or over-balancing of such degrees and ranks of men of which all Government consist is utterly Extrinsecally and extravagant unto my design which was not to dispute the severall forms of Government and in what the differences between them did most especially coâ—sist but onely to declare that neither the Spartan Ephori nor any such popular Magistrates as Calvin dreams of had any authority originally invested in them to controul their Kings much less to murder or depose them Howsoever I shall not purposely pass by any thing which by your self or any indifferent Reader shall be thought material without giving you my judgement and opinion in it Some things you say I writ as a Polititian a silly one I am God help me and some things as a Polititian and divine too And as a Polititian I am charged by you to have affirmed that the Spartan Kings were as absolute Monarchs as any in those times till Euripon the 3d. King of the Race of Hercules and the 2d King of the younger house to procure the favour and good will of the Rascal rabble loosened the raigns of Government and thereby much diminishing the Regall power This I affirm indeed and this you deny but you neither Answer my Authorities nor confute my Reasons my Authorities I derive from Plutarch first who speaking of the said Euripon whom he calleth Eurition affirms that till his time the Government of Sparta was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sufficiently Monarchical if it were not more And secondly from Aristotle who calls the Government of Charilaus the sixt King of that House who as you say was generally affirmed to be a good man by the name of a tyranny And if it might be called a Tyranny then when the Regall power was under such a diminution by the folly of Euripon there is no question to be made but that the Spartan Kings were absolute Monarchs before any such diminution had been made To these two proofs you answer nothing nor say you any thing at all in confutation of the Reason by me brought to prove it Which is That having acquired the Estate by conquest and claiming by no other title then by that of Armies there was no question to be made but that they Governed in the way of absolute Monarchs it being not the guise of such as come in by conquest to covessant and capitulate with their Subjects but to impose their will for a Law upon them This being the custome of all Kings who
claim by conquest it must belong to you to prove the contrary and tell me why the Spartan Kings should not observe the same rule in the Acts of Government as all others did Crowns which are purchased by the Sword seldome sit fast upon the head of the Conquerors if they deliver up that Sword by which they were purchased And therefore it was noted for a great error in Julius Cesar a man of greater parts and power then a King of Sparta to hope that he might hold that supream Authority by love of the people which he got by force of Arms and was so to hold it Against this you object First That the Spartan Kings could not be absolute because they had a Nobility Peâ—ple to gratifie But then you should have told us by what rule in Government the Spartan Kings who preceded Eurypon could be obliged to gratifie either the People or Nobility of that Country which they had conquered by the Sword And whereas you alledge in defence of Eurypon That his letting loose the Reines of Government to obtain favour with the people was a confession of the infirmity of the Monarchy and that his Action in so doing was not so voluntary in it self as unavoidable imprudence It was indeed a plain confession of the infirmity of the Monarch in not being able to hold the Kingdom in the same Estate in which it had been held by his Father and Grand father Of the infirmity of the Monarchy that is to say the form of Government by them established and to which the Spartans formerly had been accustomed I cannot think it to be any confession at all nor can I see how that imprudent Act of his can be affirmed to have been unavoidable in point of prudence by that which you produce from the words of Agis the five and twentieth King of Sparta of the younger house where he affirms that a King of Sparta could never come to be equal unto any other King but only by introducing equality among the people But first a King of Sparta might be as absolute in his own Dominions as any other King whatsoever of a larger Territory with whom he could not be thought equal in power and Riches The absoluteness or Autocraty of Kings if I may so call it depending not upon the greatness of their revenues or extent of Empire but only in their form of Government And secondly I would fain know how by the introducing an equality among the people could render a poor King of Sparta equal to any other King either of any greater power or larger Territory It was not possible for Agis aâ— he said himself in his address unto his Mother se alios reges pecunia aquare posse to equal other Kings in wealth and riches and therefore he resolved upon some exploit by which his name and reputation might grow great in the sight of the people and no exploit seemed in his eyes so probable to obtain that name and reputation which he aimed at then by introducing equality among the people which probably might make him a great King in the love and estimation of the common people for I must no longer call them the Rascal rabble though in no bodies else Nor could the low condition of the Kings of Sparta impose any such necessity upon Eurypon to change the Government as you say it did neither Eurypon nor any of his Successors encreasing either in power or riches by the alteration and finally whereas you seem to justifie this necessity by those words of Agis in which he told his Mother That a Servant or Lievtenant of Selinus or Ptolomey was worth more then ever were all the Kings of Sparta put together First Agis speaks not of any of the Lievtenants of those two Princes who possibly might amass more treasures then all the Kings of Sparta had done before but only of the Servants of those Leivtenants for it is Satraparum famuli servi Procuratorum in the translation of Xyland with which not having the Greek by me I content my self And secondly these words being spoken of the Servants of such Lievtenants and of the Servants of such great Persons which lived under either of those two Kings must needs have more of Rhetorique in them then of real truth For Agis did not only tell the people when he came to put this project in execution that he would devide amongst them his own Fields and Pastures of which he had very many in his own possession but that he would deliver up ten thousand Talents to be put into the common Treasury And if this one King were so rich in Lands and so stored with Money Dives agris dives positis in soenore nummis it must be very strange to think that a Servant of any of the Princes or Lievtenants of either of the said two Kings should be worth more then all the Kings of Sparta were they put together 4. But here before we can proceed I must clear my self from that Parenthesis of yours in which you say that I commonly call the people by the name of Rascal rabble as in another place you tell me that I have no better name for them then that but I hope you do not and I am sure you cannot gather out of any such words that I bestow that title on the people generally which either make up the main body of a Common wealth or comprehend all sorts of people which are not in the Rank and order of titular Nobility There is a great difference in the ellegancy and propriety of the Latine tongue between Plebs and Populus Populus signifying somtimes the agregative body of a State as Irasci populo Romano nemo sapienter potest in the words of Livie Somtimes all such of a State or Nation that are not in places of command as Senatus populusque Romanus in the vulgar stile of Republick But Plebs is of lower alloy relating unto none but those of inferiour quality as Laborers Handicrafts Artificers which commonly make up the greatest part of a State or Nation and yet pass under the account of the Rout or Rabble And such are they of whom Aristotle telleth us in his Books of Politiques That they are not only base or wicked Judges in their own Cases and that many of them differ little from Beasts You may do well to quarrel him for the one or not me for the other 5. In the next place you let us know That the Monarchy that is or can be absolute must be founded upon an Army planted by military Colonies upon the over balance of Land being in the Dominion of the Prince And so far I concur in opinion with you seeing it proved by late experience amongst our selves that no Prince can be an absolute Monarch without an Army that is to say without some standing Forces to be ready at command upon all occasions But then what reason have you to think that Aristodemus having conquered the Realm of Sparta
suppose like a Divine 20. But you have another use to make of the Prophet Hosea whose words you cite unto a purpose that he never meant namely to prove that Kings are not of Divine Right For having said that such Divines who will alwaies have Kings to be of divine right are not to be hearkned too seeing they affirm that which is clean contrary to Scripture you add that in this case said Hosea they have set up Kings and not by me they have made Princes and I knew it not But first these words are not spoken by the Prophet touching the institution of Kings in General but onely of a particular fact in the ten Tribes of Israel by with drawing themselves from the house of David and setting up a King of their own without consulting with the Lord or craving his approbation and consent in the business Secondly If it may be said that Kings are not of Divine Right and institution because God saith here by the Prophet that some Kings have been set up but not by him you have more reason to affirm that Kings are of Divine Right and institution because he saith in another place less capable of any such misconstruction as you make of this by me Kings reign All Kings are said to reign by God because all reign by his appointment by his permission at the least And yet some Kings may be truly said not to reign by him either because they are set up by the people in a tumultuous and seditious way against the natural Kings and Princes or else because they come unto their Crowns by usurpation blood and violence contrary to his will revealed and the establisht Laws of their severall Countrys Which Argument if it should be good we could not have a stronger against such Papists as hold alwayes for it seems no mater if they did hold so but somtimes that the Pope by Divine right is head of the universall Church then by showing them out of their own Histories how many Popes have raised themselves into that See either by open faction or by secret bribery and by violent and unjust intrusion Of whom it may be said and that not improperly that though they pretend to be Christs Vicars and the successors of St. Peter yet were they never plac't by Christ in St. Peters Chair Now to dispute from the persons to the power and from the unjust wayes of acquiring that power to the original right and institution of it is such a sorry piece of Logick as you blaming those who dispute from the folly of a people against an Ordinance of God For upon what ground else do you lay the foundation of the legall Government especially amongst the Hebrews but on the folly of the people p. 11. the imprudence and importunity of the people p. 14. upon which ground also you build the supream authority of the Judges who onely by the meet folly of the people came to be set up in Israel p. 13. But certainly if their desires to have a King were folly and imprudence in them it must be felix fatuitas a very fortunate imprudence and a succesful folly I am sure of that that people never live in a settled condition till they come to the Government of Kings For was it not by the fortunate conduct of their Kings that they exterminated the rest of the Canaanites broke the Amalekites in pieces and crusht the power of the Phylistins growing by that means formidable unto all their Neigbours Was it not by the power and reputation of their Kings that they gained some strong Towns from the Children of Ammon and enlarged their Territories by the conquest of some parts of Syria that they grew strong in shipping and mannaged a wealthy trade from Esion-Geber in the streights of Babel-Mandel to the Land of Ophir in the remotest parts of India Prosperities sufficient to justifie and endear such burdens as by the alteration of the Government might be said upon them 21. From such Divines in Generall as will always I must keep that word have Kings to be by divine Right you come to me at last in my own particular charging me that at a venture I will have Kings to be of Divine Right and to be absolute whereas in truth say you if Divine Right be derived unto Kings from these of the Hebrews onely it is most apparent that no absolute King can be of Divine Right And first to answer for my self for having sometime been a Parson I shall take leave to Christen my own Child first I think that I was never so rash nor so ill advised as to speak any thing at aventure in so great a point as the originall institution and divine right of Kings Secondly I am sure I have not so little studied the Forms of Government as to affirm any where in that Book against Calvin as you call it that all Kings be absolute The second Sect. of the sixt Chapter of that Book being spent for the most part in shewing the differences between conditional Kings and an absolute Monarch And Thirdly They must be as sorry Divines and as bad Historians as my self who ascribe the absolute Power or the Divine right of Kings to the first institution of a King amongst the Hebrews For who knows not if he know any thing in that kind that there were Kings in Aegypt and Assyria as also of Scycionia in Peleponesus not long after the Flood Kings of the Aborigines and the Trojan race in Italy in that of Athens Argos and Micenae amongst the Greeks of the Parthians Syrians c. in the Greater and of Lydia in the lesser Asia long time before the Raign of Saul the first King of the Hebrews all which were absolute Monarchs in their several Countrys And as once Tully said Nulla gens tam barbara that never Nation was so barbarous but did acknowledge this principle that there was a God so will you hardly find any barbarous Nation who acknowledge not the supream Government of Kings And how then all Nations should agree in giving themselves over to the power and Government of Kings I believe none cannot show me a better reason then that they either did it by the light of natural reason by which they found that Government to be fittest for them or that the first Kings of every Nation were the heads families that retained that paternal right over all such as descended of them as might entitle their authority to divine institution For proof whereof since you have such a prejudice against Divines you need look no farther then your self who tells us p. 12. That Kings no question where the ballance is Monarchical are of Divine right and if they be good the greatest blessing that the Government so standing can be capable of or if you will not stand to this then look on the first Chapter of Aristotles Politicks where he makes the Regall Government to stand upon no other bottom then paternal Authority Initio
civitates regibus parebant c. At the first saith he Cities were Governed by Kings and so still at this day are such Nations as descended of men accustomed to the King by Government For every houshold is governed by the eldest as it were by a King and so consequently are the Colonies or Companies multiplyed from thence governed in like sort for Kindreds sake Which words of Aristotle seconded by the general practice of all Nations I look on as a better Argument of the Original institution Divine Right of Kings that great Philosopher in the 4th Book of his Politicks cap. 2. giving unto the Regall Government the attribute of Divinissima or the most Divine then to fetch either of them from the institution of the first King among the Hebrews so that you might have spared the labour of showing the inconsequences of arging from a contingent case to a matter of absolute necessity as from the making of the first King amongst the Hebrews to the necessity of making Kings in all other Nations unless you could have found some adversary to contend withal And with like thrift you might have saved your self the trouble of proving that the words of Moses in Deut. 17. v. 18. touching recourse to be had unto the Judge which should be in those dayes in some certain cases inferred not a necessity of having any such supream Judge as God raised up from time to time to govern and avenge his people in their greatest misery unless you have met with any which I know not of which trust as much to that Text of Scripture for those supream Judges as you rely upon it for the Court of Sanhedrim of which more anon The corollary wherewithal you close this passage I like well enough had you grounded your discourse on some clearer Text For I conceive as well as you that those Judges are not necessitated by the will of God but foreseen onely by his providence not imposed by the Law but provided by iâ— as an Expedient in case of necessity 22. But before I come to examine the Text of Scripture on which you ground both the Authority of the Sanhedrim and those supream Judges which governed in their several times the affairs of Israel I must first see what form of Government it is which you chiefly drive at and in comparison whereof you so much vilifie and condemn the Regall And fiâ—st the Government you drive at musâ— be plainly Popular and such Popular estate call iâ— Timocraty or a Democratie or what else you please into which the old Agrarian laws must be introduced for the better settling of equality amongst the people And such a Common-wealth as this you fancy to be most agreeable to the natural liberty of Mankind and Divine institution There is nothing say you more clear nor certain in Scripture then that the Commonwealth of Israel was instituted by God p. 14. and settled on a popular Agrarian p. 12. And that the Restitution of their Common-wealth was fore-signified in these words of the Prophet Hosea I will be thy King cap. 13. 10. But if you have no better grounds for the Institution then for the Restitution of this Common-wealth they are too weak for foundation of so great a building The Prophet speaks in that place particularly to the house of Ephraim v. 1. the people of the Realm of Israel v. 9. as appears more distinctly by their kissing the Calves the Golden Calves of Dan and Bethel v. 2. Of whose reduction to their native Country after their being carried away captive by Salmanasser King of Assyria there is nothing signified in the Scripture in the way of prophesie nor no relation of it as a matter of Fact Nor can you show me any clear and evident text by which I may be sure that this Commonwealth was instituted by God considering that Moses during the whole time of his life governed authoritatively and supreamly without any appeal unto the people or unto any other power either co-ordinate with him or superior to him which I believe is more thenyou can show me in any Duke of Venice or any State-holder of the Netherlands or any other Prince in a Common-wealth which onely serve as second Notions in a State to put their business into form and give date to all publick instruments as the Keepers of the Liberties not long since in England Nor do I finde that Josuah abated any thing of that power which Moses had advising sometime with the Elders of the people but not governed by them so that the first Government amongst the Israelites had more in it of the Regal then the popular Forms to which they did desire to return again upon the apprehension of the Anarchy and confusion under which they lived when there was no King in Israel as in other Nations And as for your Agrarian laws your Popular Ballance as elsewhere upon which this Commonwealth is supposed to be settled I conceive it will be very hard for you to prove that also For though the Land of Canaan was divided by Lot amongst the Tribes yet neither had the Tribes themselves their equal portion nor every family in those Tribes their equal shares in those unequal portions with one another some of the Tribes enjoying little or nothing of the lot which had fallen unto them and some of the Families of those Tribes being scattered up and down the Country as Jacob had prophesied of Simeon in the Book of Gen. which utterly destroyes that popular Agrarian on which this Common-wealth is supposed to be founded and in which you say they might have continued but that they desired to have a King like other Nations 23. Your second Argument for a preferring a popular Estate before a Monarchy is derived from reason and that reason grounded on the natural liberty of all mankind which cannot better be preserved them in popular Governments God never required as you say of any Man or any Government that they should live otherwise then according to their estate that there are rules in Scripture to show the duty of a servant to such whose wants have made them servants but that there is no rule in Scripture that obligeth a man unto the duty of a servant which can live of himself And finally having askt this question whether God hath less regard of a Nation then he hath of a man you tax the Israelites for making themselves servants by desiring a King to be set over them when they might have continued as they were in a free condition But first that natural liberty of Mankind which our great Polititians so much talk of hath no ground in nature for as servants are bound by positive Lawes to obey their Masters so women are bound by the law of Nature to submit themselves unto their Husbands and children by the same law to be obedient to their parents This if the Scripture had not taught you you might have learnt from Aristotle as he did from Homer
or be corrupted with pleasures Which if it were not thus the rule of Government prescribed by God in Deut. 17. must bâ— directly contrary unto the manner of the King that is to say the customary practise of those Kings in the course of their Government which God himself describes 1 Sam. 8. 17. And yet this manner of the King being told by Samuel unto the People was so farre from terrifying them from having a King as they desired that they cryed out the more vehemently Nay but we will have a King over us c. And which is more Samuel having again informed ihem at the auguration of Saul touching the manner of their King it follows in the Text â—hat Samuel wrote it in a Book and laid it up before the Lord 1 Sam. 20. 25. Which to what purpose it was done unless it were to serve for a standing measure both of the Kings power and the peoples obedience it is hard to say And if you look upon the practise of David and his posterity we shall find how little they conceived themselves to be circumscribed within those limits which you have assigned them of which you cannot take a better survey then what is given you by the excellent but unfortunate Sir Walter Rawleigh in his conjecture of the causes hindring the reunion of Israel with Judah during the troubles of that Kingdom Hist of the World Part. 1. cap. 19. Sect. 6. Where having first told us that the dis-affection of the ten Tribes if we look upon humane reason was occasioned by desire of breaking that heavy yoak of bondage wherewith Solomon had galled their necks discourseth further of the hinderances of a re-union of the Kingdoms in this manner following Surely saith he whosoever shall take the paines to look into those examples which are extant of the differing courses held by the Kings of Israel and Judah in the administration of Justice will find it most probable that upon this ground iâ— was that the ten Tribes continued so averse from the line of David as to think all adversity more tolerable then the weighty Scepter of that House For the death of Joab and Shimei was indeed by them deserved yet in that they suffered it without form of judgement they suffered like unto men innocent The death of Adoniah was both without judgement and without any crime objected other then the Kings jealousie out of which by the same rule of Arbitrary justice under which it may be supposed that many were cast away he would have slain Jeroboham if he could have caught him before he had yet committed any offence as appears by his confident return out of Aegypt like one that was known to have endured wrong having not offered any That which comes after in that Author being a recapitulation onely of the like arbitrary proceedings of Jehoram and other of the following Kings I forbear to add marvelling onely by the way that the Sanhedrim did not take these Kings to task for violating the standing rules of their Government laid down as you affirm in Deut. 17. and lay some corporall punishment on them as you say they might 27. This leads me on to the institution of the Sanhedrim their power and period In the two first whereof you place the greatest part of your strength for defence of Calvin though possibly you may be mistaken in all three alike In the first Institution and authority of the Jethronian Judges there is no difference between us The first thing you accept against is that I make the 70. Elders to be chosen out of the Iethronians concerning which you tell me that I may do you a greater favour then I can suddenly imagine to tell you really for what cause or upon what Authority my speech is so positive that is to say that God willed Moses to chuse the seventy Elders out of those that were chosen in the 18th of Exodus If I can do you any favour in this or in any thing else I shall not be wanting in any thing which I can do for your satisfaction And therefore you may please to know that my speech is grounded on those words in Numbers 11. v. 1. viz. And the Lord said unto Moses Gather unto me seventy men of the Elders of Israel whom thou knowest to be Elders of the people and officers over them And bring them unto the Tabernacle of the Congregation that they may stand there with thee c. By which you may perceive that the 70. were not to be chosen out of the Elders onely but out of the Elders and Officers and other Officers at that time there were none to be found but those which were ordained by Moses in Exo. 18. to be Rulers of thousands Rulers of Hundreds Rulers of fifties and Rulers of â—ens for the determining of such smaller differences and suits in Law that might arise among the people And Secondly it is consonant with reason that it should be so that none should be admitted into the number of the 70. but such of whose integrity and abilities there had been some sufficient trial in the lower Courts Concerning which take here the Gloss of Deodati on the former words viz Elders viz. chosen out of the greater number of the other heads of the people Exo. 18. 25. that is to say Rulers of thousands Rulers of hundreds c. for to make up the great Councel or Senate Thou knowest viz. those thou hast thy self chosen into office or known and approved of in the exersising of it Would you have more for I am willing to do you any favour within my power then know that Ainsworth a man exceedingly well versed in all the learning of the Hebrews hath told me in his Notes or Comment on the former Text that by Officers in this place it seemeth to be meant of such Elders and Officers as were well known and had approved themselves for wisdome and good carriage for which they might with comfort be preferred to this high Senate For they that have Ministred well as the Apostle saith Purchased to themselves a good degree 1 Tim. 3. 13. And more particularly thus Our wise men have said that from the great Sanhedrim they sent into all the Land of Israel and made diligent enquiry whomsoever they found to be wise and afraid to sinne and meek c. They made him a Judge in his City And from thence they preferred him to the Gate of the Mountain of the House of the' Lord and from whence they promoted him to the Gate of the Court of the Sanctuary and from thence they advanced him to the great Judgement Hall for which he citeth Maimony one of the chief Rabbines in all that part in his Book of the Sanhedrim cap. 2. Sect. 8. which gives me very good assurance that the seventy were first chosen by Moses out of the Iethronian or Ruling Elders which were afterwards called Judges in the Gates because they were chosen out of that body in the times
c. which no man can conceive to relate onely to the Judges of the lower Courts Nor find I any variation in the rest that follows no nor in that which comes after neiher v. 14. where those directions do begin which concern the people and not the Priests or Judges onely in the Election of their King And therefore give me leave to think and laugh not at me I beseech you for my singularity that there is no other meaning in that Text but this i e. That if a doubt or scruple should arise amongst them in their severall dwellings in matters which concerned Religion and the right understanding of the law of God they should have recourse to the Priests and Levites for satisfaction in the same according unto that of the Prophet Malachy that the people were to seek the Law from the mouth of the Priest as before we had it But if it were a civil controversie matters of difference which they could not end amongst themselves and by the interposition of their friends and Neighbours they should refer it to the Judge or Judges in whose times they lived to be finally decided by him And for this Exposition I have not onely some authority but some reason also My Authority shall be taken from the words of Estius who makes gloss upon the Text viz. Haec sententia modo sacerdotem modo judicem nominat propter duplicem magistratum qui erat in populo dei sacram civilem quamvis contingeret aliquando duplicem magistratum in eandem personam concurrere My reasons shall be taken first from that passage in the 12. verse in which it is said that the man that will do presumptuously and will not hearken unto the Priest that standeth to Minister there before the Lord thy God c. Where the Priest seems to be considered in personal capacity as he stands ministring before the Lord at his holy Altar not as he sits upon the bench and acts â—with other of the Judges in an open Court But whether that be so or not certain I am that many inconveniences must needs happen amongst the people if the Text be no otherwise to be understood as you would have it It is confest on all hands that there was some intervall of time from the death of every one of the supream Judges and the advancing of the next though in Chronologies the years of the succeeding Judges are counted from the death of his Predecessor And you your selfe confess p. 14. that the Sanhedrim did not continue long after Josuah And I can find no restitution of it till the time of Iehoshaphat For though you tell us p. 16. that never any King except David had Session or Vote in this Councel by which you intimate that the Sanhedrim was on foot again in the time of David Yet you have shewed us neither reason nor authority for it And therefore you may do me a greater favour as your own words are then you suddenly imagine to tell me really in what Book of Scripture or in what other Author I may find it written that either the Sanhedrim was on foot again in the time of David or that David did at any time sit and vote amongst them Hereupon I conclude at last that if the Text be to be understood as you would have it and as you say it is understood in the sence of all Authors both Iewish and Christians then must the people be without remedy at the least without remedy of Appeal in their suits and controversies during the interval of time betwixt the Judges and without remedies also in their doubts scruples touching the meaning of the Law for the whole space of time which past betwixt the death of Iosuah and the raign of Iehoshaphat which comes to 511. years or there abouts which I desire you seriously to consider of 32. And yet the matter were the less if having given the Sanhedrim the Dernier Resort or the supream power in all appeals you did not ascribe to them an authority also to controul their Kings For proof whereof you tell us that both Skickardus and Grotius with the full consent of the Talmudists have assured you that if the King came to violate the Laws and the Statutes it was in the power of the Sanhedrim to bring him unto corporall punishment How far Skickardus hath assured you I am not able to say not being directed by you to any Book or Books of his where it may be found But if you find no more in Skickardus then you do in Grotius you will have little cause to brag of this discovery For Grotius in his first Book de jure belli c. cap. 3. and not cap. 1. as is mistaken in the print first telleth us thus viz. Samuel jus regum describens satis ostendit adversus Regis injurias nullam in populo relictam potestatem c. Samuel saith he describing the power of the King of Israel showes plainly that the people had no power to relieve themselves from the oppressions of their Kings according unto that of some antient Writers on those words of David Against thee onely have I sinned Psal 51. And to show how absolutely Kings were exempted from such punishments he presently subjoyns the testimony of Barnach monus an Hebrew In dictis Rabinorum titulo de judicibus which is this nulla creatura judicat regem sed benedictus that is to say that no creature judgeth or can judge the King but onely God for ever blessed According unto which I find a memorable Rule in Bracton an old English Lawyer relating to the Kings of England viz. Omnem esse sub rege ipsum sub nullo sed tantum sub deo That every man is under the King but the King is under none but God Betwixt which passages so plainly destructive of the power ascribed to the Sanhedrim Grotius interlopes this following passage from some Iewish Writers viz. Video consentire Hebraeos regi in eas leges quae de officio regis scriptae extabant peccanti inflicta verbera sedâ—a apud illos infamiâ carebant a rege in signum penitentiae sponte suscipiebantur ideoque non a lictore sed ab eo quem legisset ipse probatur suo arbitrio verberibus statuebat modum I have put down the words at large that the learned and judicious Reader may see what he is to trust to in this point The sence whereof is this in English viz. that stripes were inflicted on the King if he transgressed those Lawes which had been written touching the Regal office But that those stripes carried not with them any mark of infamy but were voluntary undergone by him in testimony of his repentance upon which ground the said stripes were not laid upon him by a common Officer but by some one or other of his own appointment it being also in his power to limit both the the number and severity of those stripes which they were to give him
more desirous of a private and retired life then of such an agreeable conversation But the window of my shop being almost shut almost all my Wares plundered with the loss of my Library it is high time for me to give over this trade leaving to nimbler Pens the managing of these Political Discourses wherewith mine hath been already dulled P. H. Lacies Court in Abingdon December 24. 1658. AN APPENDIX To the former Papers in Answer to some passages in M. FULLERS late Appeal for INJURED INNOCENT 1. IT is observed of Cicero that renowned Orator that having spent the greatest part of his life in the service of the Commonwealth and in defence of many of the principal Citizens whose cause he pleaded when they stood in need of so great an Eloquence there was none found to advocate in his behalf when his occasions most required it Cum ejus salutem nemo defendisset qui per tot annos publicam civitatis privatam Civium defenderat as Paterculus hath it An infelicity which I have some reason to expect though I do not fear it when after so many services to the Church in Generall and appearing in defence of so many particular persons of most note and eminence I shall be loaded with reproach by some and contempt by others Two adversaries I have lately drawn upon me for my love to truth my zeal unto the Church and the injured Clergy By one of which notwithstanding my Respectful usage of him I have been handled in so rude and scurrilous a manner as renders him uncapable of any honest correction there being no Pen foul enough to encounter with him which would not be made fouler by engaging in so foul a subject From the other though more exasperated I have received a well studied Answer composed with ingenuity and judgment not standing wilfully in an Error of which he finds himself convinced though traversing many points in debate between us which with more honour to the truth might have been declined And in the end thereof I find a Letter directed or superscribed unto me tending especially to the begetting of such a friendly correspondence betwixt us as may conduce to the establishment of a following Peace Which Letter I shall first lay down and after some considerations had and made on the book it self I shall return as fair an Answer Now the words of the Letter are as followeth To my Loving Friend Dr. Peter Heylyn 2. I Hope Sir that we are not mutually unfriended by this difference which hath hapned betwixt us And now as Duellers when they are both out of breath may stand still and Parley before they have a second Pass let us in cold blood exchange a word and mean time let us depose at least suspend our Animosities Death hath crept into both our Clay-Cottages through the Windows your Eys being Bad mine not Good God mend them both and sanctifie unto us those monitors of mortality and however it fareth with our corporall Sight send our Souls that Collyrium and Heavenly Eye-salve mentioned in the Scripture But indeed Sir I conceive our Time Paines and Parts may be better expended to Gods Glory and the Churches Good then in these needless Contentions Why should Peter fall out with Thomas both being Disciples to the same Lord and Master I assure you Sir what ever you conceive to the contrary I am cordial to the Cause of the English Church and my Hoary Hairs will go down to the Grave in sorrow for her sufferings You well remember the Passage in Homer how wise Nestor bemoaned the unhappy difference betwixt Agamemnon and Achilles O Gods how great the grief of Greece the while And Pryams self and Sons do sweetly smile Yea all the Trojan Party swell with laughter That Greeks with Greeks fall out and fight to slaughter Let me therefore tender you an expedient intendency to our mutual agreement You know full well Sir how in Heraldry two Lioncels Rampant endorsed are said to be the Embleme of two valiant men keeping appointment and meeting in the Field but either forbidden to fight by their Prince whereupon Back to Back neither Conquerors nor Conquered they depart the Field several wayes their stout stomacks not suffering them both to go the same way least it be accounted an injury one to precede the other In like manner I know you disdain to allow me your Equal in this Controversie betwixt us and I will not allow you my Superiour To prevent further trouble let it be a drawn Battel and let both of us abound in our own sence severally perswaded in the truth of what we have written Thus parting and going out back to back here to cut off all contest about Precedency I hope we shall meet in Heaven Face to Face hereafter In order whereunto God willing I will give you a meeting when and where you shall be pleased to appoint that we who have Tilted Pens may shake hands together S. Paul writing to Philemon concerning Onesisimus saith For perhaps he therefore departed for a season that thou mightest receive him for ever To avoid exceptions you shall be the Good Philemon I the Fugitive Onesimus Who knoweth but that God in his providence permitted yea ordered this difference to happen betwixt us not onely to occasion a Reconciliation but to consolidate a mutual friendship betwixt us during our lives and that the survivor in Gods pleasure onely to appoint may make favourable and Respectful mention of him who goeth first to his Grave The desire of him who Remains SIR A Lover of your Parts and an Honourer of your Person Tho. Fuller 3. This Letter I must needs confess to be very civil and the addâ—ess agreeable enough to my disposition so that I am obliged both in point of manners and good nature to return such an answer to it as may sufficiently declare that my contentions rather aim at Truth then Victory or Victory no further then it triumpheth in the vindication of an injured truth But first I am to enter into consideration of some particulars relating to the late Appeal my Adversary my self and finally to some few differences which remain between us 4. And first concerning The Appeal for by that name he calls his Answer to my Animadversions I cannot make a fitter Resemblance of it then to a well digested Answer to a Chancery Bill which for the most part endeth with these formal words viz. Absque hoc that any matter or thing material or effectual for him the defendant to make Answer unto in this his Answer is not sufficiently Answered confessed or avoided traversed or denyed to the best of his knowledge Many particular Errors which were charged upon him he hath ingeniously confessed and promised to correct them in the next Edition so that I must needs think that I have not bestowed my labour in vain in case it produce no further good effect upon him as I hope it will some he endeavoureth to avoid and seeks
there must be some guilt some doubt at least that all is not well as it should have been The Animadvertor was not of such eager spirit as to let fly at every one which came in his way and possibly might never have heard of this Church History living far of and no such trading in the Books of the time if the frequent clamours of the wrongs done to the Church and Clergy had not come to his ears before the Book it selfe had been brought to his hands And when it was brought into my hands it found me so far unresolved to do any thing in it that nothing but invincible importunity could have drawn me to the undertaking The Appealant therefore may be sure that I never sent him any such message as that if I had not been visited with blâ—ndness I would have been upon his bones before that time of which whosoever did it from him he knew as little of my corporal blindness which I thank God is not yet fallen on me as he did of my secret intentions as to that particular so far as I was from sending anysuchmessage to him that I resolved not to be known for the Author of those Animadversions whensoever they should come abroad and to disguise my self the better related in the Margin to a passage in my own Cosmogrophy fol. 19 which now the Appealant chargeth on me as a solecism in point of Heraldy in laying mettal upon mettal p. 2. fol. 12. 18. My Authors first fears being fallen upon him he finds himself brought under a new debate whether he should return an Answer to the Animadversions or sit down in silence The cause being pleaded on both sides he resolves at last to return a plain full and speedy Answer fol. 3. Full enough I confess of needless questïons and disputes which rather showed a Resolution not to bear the Quarrel then an ability to maintain it I remember I have somewhere read of a famous Wrastler who being many times overthrown who did suddenly start up and by an Eloquent Oration perswaded the people that he rather fell by the slip of his own foot then by the strength of his Adversary Such a wrastler I have met with in the present Appealant who imputes all his faults to slips slips of the Pen slips Pretal as he words it and slips of memory To which three heads the Greatest Errors and mistakes which occurs in the faltiest and falsest writing may notunfitly be reduced so much the fuller in regard he hath incorporated the greatest part of the Animadversions into the body of his Book which if abstracted from the rest of the Authors one would make the Greater Book of the Law upon a just a perfect Calculation of the line and folio's by one part in five Fuller then otherwise it needed or could have been by making use of such of the additionall Notes intended more for supplement and illustration then the disparagement of the Author or disgrace of the work But my Adversary thinks his work so perfect as to stand no more in need of Illustration then it doth of Correction supplements supposing some defects as Corrections presuppose some Errors Onely I hope the Animadversions will be well paid for before all is done the Authors being so well paid for the first Original as is said before and the Appealant better paid by the Book-sellers and his many Patrons to whom they are presented like the prayers of some old Mendicants at the doors of their good Masters and Dames for the transcript of them 19. But whether it be full or not I am sure it is more full then speedy For though the Appealant would be thought to be furnished with the Pen of a ready Writer yet had he time and leisure more then enough for a greater Work considering what helps he had to set it forward and therefore I may say in the words of Sampson that if he had not ploughed with my heifer he must have askt more time though otherwise he had time enough to have read my Riddle If Mason one of the Correctors to some Presses in London had not falsely and unworthily communicated the sheets to him as they came from the Press we might have heard of this Appeal about Michaelmas next in case it had not cooled in the heats of Summer and been retarded by the leisure of a long vacation But making use of this Advantage and having all such other helps as the Libraries and shops in London the use of his own hands and eyes the contribution of his friends and an excellent memory to boot could supply him with it could not come abroad against Easter term without the Midwifery of three Presses to assist at the Labour The making of a full and speedy Answer for it must be both could not else have agreed with that want of leisure his many various imployments and coming twice a Lords day to the Pulpit which without oftentation he pretends to in that very Chapter But some like Aesops fellow servants whom he tells me of presumes so much upon themselves as to promise that they can do all things and that whatever thing they do shall be full and speedy though there be little speed and less fulness in them 20. So much being said of the Appealant in reference to his engaging and dispatch let us behold him next in his qualifications One of the fellow servants of the Animadvertor a fellow sufferer with him in the cause of the King and one of the same party in the Church All this I am very glad to hear of and am sorry I did not hear it sooner especially if there be any truth as I hope there is in the insinuation My fellow servant if he were it must not be in the capacity of a Chaplain in Ordinary for I never saw his name in the list of the forty eight accompanied with his fixt times of Attendants as the others were but supernumerary and at large of whom there is no notice taken in the Court though they may make som noise in the Country And a sufferer he could not be because he willingly relinquisheth both his cure and prebend which he advanceth by the name of none of the worse Benefices and one of the best Prebends in England not holding both or either of them till they were forcibly taken from him as well as from the rest of his brethren fol. 2. no suffering where no injury or wrong is offered and there can be no injury done in disposing that which he so willingly abandoned as he saith himself for volenti non fit injuria as the saying is never applyed more aptly then on such emergencies And if he were of the same Party in the Church as he saith he was he would have show'd some greater zeal in maintenance of the intress and concerments of it some greater measure of compassion towards those poore men who being spoiled of their Goods and Livings by the infelicity of the times must afterwards be
Caerleon upon Vske for any thing our Author can affirm to the contrary and was undoubtedly such at the first coming in of the Saxons though afterwards for the space of 140. years as before is said it remained Pagan so that our Author might have spared his pains in proving the Metropolitans of St. Davids to be successors unto them of Caerleon which was never denyed unless he could infer from thence that Caerl on was Senior in Christianity unto Canterbury for four hundred years as he expresly saith it was as well as in the Metrapolitical Dignity invested in it And this if he can do I shall conclude him willingly for a subtle Logitian though I shall hardly ever allow him for a sound Historian 27. The like imperfect defence he makes about the time when Lillies Grammer was imposed by King Hen. the 8. on all the Grammer Schools of England plac'd by him in the 11th year of that King Anno 1619 which was full eleven years before it was ordered by the Convocation of the year 1630. ut una edatur formula Authoritate hujus sacrae Synodi c. that one onely form of Teaching Grammer should be enjoyned from thenceforth by the authority of the Convocation to be used in all the Grammer Schools of the Province of Canterbury And questionless the Clergy in their Convocation would not have troubled themselves in ordering one onely Form of Grammer to be taught in all the Schooles of the Province of Canterbury if the King so many years before had commanded Lillies Grammer to be used in all the Schools of England Considering therefore that this order of the Convocation preceded the command of King Henry the 8. and that Lilly dyed some years before the making of this Order as our Author plainly proves he did the difference between us may be thus made up that Lillies Grammer being one of those many the multiplicity whereof had been complained of in that Convocation was chosen out of all the Râ—st by the Convocation as fittest for the publick use and as such Recommended by the King to all the Grammer Schools within his Dominions The Animadvertor was mistaken in making Lilly to be living after the Convocation who was dead before And yet he discovers no such indiscretion not made any such cavelling at a well timed truth in the Authors Book as the Appealant lays upon him the time of the imposing and not the making of Lillies Grammer being the matter in dispute in which the Appealant must be found as much mistaken for the Reasons formerly laid down as the Animadvertor in the other 28. His next defence is worse then this because he finds not any shift to convey himself out of the Reach of the Animadversion For finding it so clealy proved from the words of the instrument that the payment of the 100000. for the Province of Canterbury was to be made in five years and not in four which he held most probable he hopes to save himself by saying that not reckoning the first summe which was paid down on the nâ—il they had just four years assigned them for the payment of the remaindâ—r And so indeed it must have been if the first twenty thousand pound had been paid down upon the nail as he saith it was but indeed was not the instrument of that Grant bearing date the 22. of March 1530. and the first payment to be made at Michaelmas following As bad an Auditor he is in casting up the smaller summe of Pilkintons pension as in the true stating of this payment making no difference no great difference betwixt taking away 1000 l. yearly from the Bishoprick and charging it with an annual pension of 1000 l. For he that hath 1000 l. per annum in Farms and Mannors may pay a 1000 l. pension yearly out of it to a publick use and reserve a good Revenue out of it for his own occasions by fines and casualties in the Renovation of Eâ—â—ates and in such services and provisions for domestick uses as commonly are laid upon them 29 Our Author tells us of the Homilies as a Church Historian That if they did little good they did little harm but he avows as an Appealant that he hath as high an esteem of them as the Animadvertor p. 2. fol. 87. And then I am sure he must needs acknowledge them to be in a capacity of doing much good and no harm at all which is directly contrary to his first Position That the Homilies had been Reproached by the name of Homily Homilies by many of the Puritan faction I have often heard but never heard before that they had been called so by any of the same party with the Animadvertor and am as farre as ever I was from knowing whom that one man should be who did call them so he not being named by the Appealant Where by the way the Author hath uncased himself appears in his own proper person without any disguise for having first told us in the second Chapter of his Apparatus that he was one of the same party with Dr. Heylyn he now declares himself to be of the other and well it had been saith he for the peace and happiness of the Church if the Animadvertor and all of his party had as high an esteem as the Author hath c. where if the Author hath not plainly declared himselfe to be of a different party from the Animadvertor his many protestations pretences notwithstanding I must needs think my selfe as much darkned in my understanding as in my Bodily sight when he can extricate himselfe out of this entanglement I may perhaps think fit to enter on a set discourse whether the Images of God and his Saints may be countenanced in Churches I know by the word Countenancing whom he chiefly aims at without a visible opposition to the second Homily of the second Book but till then I shall not 30. As little am I bound to return any answer to his Argument taken Acts 2. 27. against the Local descent of Christ into Hâ—ll this being not a fit time and place for such set discourses The question and dispute between us relates unto the judgement of the Church of England touching this particular in which he cannot concur with the Animadvertor that any such Local descent hath constantly been maintained by the Church of England But that this is the positive Doctrine of the Church of England appears first by giving that Article a distinct place by its selfe both in the Book of Articles published in the time of King Edward the 6. Anno 1552. and in the Book agreed upon in the Convocation of the 5. of Queen Eliz. An. 1562. In both which it is said expresly in the self same words That as Christ dyed for us and was buried so is it to be believed that he went down into Hell which is either to be underderstood of a Local descent or else we are tyed to believe nothing by it but what
zeal and ignorance A writing is subscribed on the 10th of May by Finch Lord Keeper Manchester Lord Privy Seal Littleton Chief Justice of the Common Pleas Banks Atturney General Witsield and Heath his Majesties Serjeants at the Law in which it was declared expresly that the Convocation being called by the Kings writ ought to continue till it was dissolved by the Kings Writ notwithstanding the dissolution of the Parliament But what makes this unto the purpose Our Author a more learned Lawyer then all these together hath resolved the contrary and throw it out as round as a boul that after the dissolution of the Parliament the Clarks of Diocesses and Cathedrals desisted from being publick persons and lost the notion of Representatives and thereby returned to their private condition The Animadvertor instanced in a convocation held in the time of Queen Eliz. An. 1585. which gave the Queen a Benevolence of two shillings in the pound to be raised on the Estates of all the Clergy by the meer censures of the Church without act of peachment Against which not able to object as to the truth and realty of it in matter of Fâ—ct he seems to make it questionable whecher it would hold good or not in point of Law if any turbulent Clergy-man had proved Recusant in payment and having slighted by the name of a blâ—ck â—wan a single instance of an unparliamented inpowred Convocation he imputes the whole success of that â—ash adventure rather unto the popularity of so Peerless a Princess the necessity of her occasions and the tranquillity of the times then to any efficacy or validity in the act it self And to what purpose all this pains but to expose the poor Clergy of the Convocation An. â—640 to the juster censure for following this unquestioned precedent in granting a more liberal benevolence to a gracious soveraign by no other authority then their own 34. If the â—ppealant still remain unsatisfied in this part of the Churches power I shall take a little more pâ—ins to instruct him in it though possibly I may tell him nothing which he knows not already being as learned in the Canons as in the common Law In which capacity I am sure he cannot chuse but know how ordinary a thing it was with Bishops to suspend their Clergy not onely ab officio but a Beneficio and not so onely but to sentence them if they saw just cause for it to a deprivation Which argues them to have a power over the property of the Clergy in their several Diocesses and such a power as had no ground to stand on but the authority of the Canons which conferred it on them And if our Author should object as perhaps he may that though the Canons in some cases do subject the Clergy not only to suspentions but deprivations of their cures and Benefices â—in which their property is concerned yet that it is not so in the case of the Laity whose Estates are not to be bound by so weak a thred I must then lead him to the Canons of 1603 for his satisfaction In which we find six Canons in a row one after another for providing the Book of Common Prayer the Book of Homilies the Bible of the largest Edition a Font for Baptism a fair Communion Table with a Carpet of Silk or other decent stuff to be laid upon it a Pulpit for Preaching of Gods Word a Chest to receive the alms for the Poor and finally for repairing of the Churches or Chappels whensoever they shall fall into any decay all these provisions and reparations to be made at the charges of the several and respective Parishes according to such rates as are indifferently assest upon them by the Church wardens Sides men and such other Parishioners as commonly convened together in the case which rates if any did refuse to make payment of they were compellable thereunto on a presentment made to the Ordinary by the said Church-wardens and other sworn Officers of the several and respective Parishes And yet those Canons never were confirmed by Act of Parliament as none of the like nature had been formerly in Queen Eliz time though of a continual and uncontroled practise upon all occasions The late Lord Primate in * a Letter more lately published by D. Barnard assures the honourable person unto whom he writ it that the making of any Articles or Canons at all to have ever been confirmed in that Kingdom by Act of Parliament is one of Dr. Heylyns Fancies And now it must be another of the Doctors Fancies to say that never any Articles or Canons had ever been confirmed by Act of Paliament in England though possible they may relate unto the binding of the subject in point of Poperty 35. But our Author hath a help at Maw and making use of his five fingers hath thrust a word into the proposition in debate between us which is not to be sound in the first drawing up of the issue The Question at the first was no more then this whether such Canons as were made by the Clergy in their Convocations and authorized by the King under the broad Seal of England could any further bind the subject then as they were confirmed by Act of Parliament And Secondly Whether such Canons could so bind either at such times as the Clergy acted their own Authority or after their admission to King Hen. the 8. in such things as concerned Temporals or temporal matters otherwise then as they were confirmed by national Customes that is to say as afterwards he expounds himselfe until they were consirmed by Act of Parliament Which points being so clearly stated by the Animadvertor in behalf of the Church that no honest evasion could be found to avoid his Argument the Appealant with his five fingers layes down life at the stake and then cryes out that the Animadvertor arrogates more power unto the Church then is due unto it either by the laws of God or man maintaining but he knows not where that Church men may go beyond Ecclesiastical Censures even to the limbs and lives of such as are Recusants to their Constitutions p. 2. so 53. And having taken up the scent he hunts it over all his Book with great noise and violence assuring us that such Canons were constantly checkt and controlled by the Laws of the Land in which the temporal Estate life and limbs of persons were concerned p. 2. fol. 27. As also that the King and Parliament though they directed not the proceedings of Ecclesiastical Courts in cases of Heresie which is more then his History would allow of yet did they order the power of Bishops over declared Hereticks without the direction of the Statute not to proceed to limb and life p. 2. fol. 45. And finally reduceth the whole Question to these two Propositions viz. 1. The proceedings of the Canon Law in what touched temporals of life limb and estate was alwayes limited with the secular Laws and national Customes of England And
he instanceth in that great contention between the Eastern and Western Bishops in the Primitive times about the day on which they were to celebrate the Feast of Easter I must needs say he could noâ— instance in a worse or find out any other example for this inconformity which could be more destructive of the hopes which he builds upon it For though he verily believeth as he saith he doth that God was equally honored by both by such as religiously observed it I cannot think but that he also doth believe that the contention much redounded to the dishonour of God the disgrace of Religion the renting of the Church into Schisms and Factions the grief of many sober and pious Christians and the great rejoycing of the Gentiles that difference begetting such animosities between the Churches and proceeding from one heat to another they fell at last to mutual Excommunications of the opposite parties One thing I must confess I am glad to hear of that is to say that God is honoured by such men who do religiously observe the Feast of Easter but what offence he may give by it to some others as I cannot guess so neither shall I make it any part of my care And therefore I shall leave him as he doth the Judges as best skilled in his own faculty to make good his own Acts. 44. Charged by the Animadvertor for making the distractions and calamities which befel this Kingdom to be occasioned primarily by sending a new Liturgie to the Kirk of Scotland he positively denies that he ever said any such word as that the Liturgie did primarily occasion the war with Scotland Rather saith he the clean contrary may by charitable Logick be collected from my words when having reckoned up a compliaction of heart burnings among the Scots I thus conclude Ch. Hist Lib. 11 163 Thus was the Scotish Nation full of discontents when this Book being brought amongst them bare the blame of their breaking forth into more dangerous designes as when the Cup is brim full the last though least superadded drop is charged alone to be cause of all the running over and then he adds Till then that the word primarily can be produced out of my Book let the Animadvertor be held primarily as one departed from truth and secondarily as a causless accuser of his brother I have stood behind the Curtain all this while to hear the Appealant rant himself out of breath without fear of discovery and that being done I shall take him gently by the hand and walk him to the beginning of the Scotish tumults where we find thus viz. But now we are summoned to a sadder subject from the suffering of a private person to the miseries and almost mutual ruine of two Kingdoms England and Scotland miseries caused from the sending of a Book of Service or new Liturgie thither which may sadly be tearmed a Rubrick indeed dyed with the blood of so many of both Nations slain on that occasion Ch. Hist Lib. 11. fol. 159. 160. And now I would fain know with what charitable Logick any thing else can be collected out of those words but that the miseries and calamnities which befel the Kingdom of England were occasioned primarily by sending a new Liturgie to the Kirk of Scotland For first in Marshaling the Causes of those miseries and ruines in which both Kingdoms were involved he makes the sending of the Book of Service and new Liturgie thither to be the prime cause both in order and nature of the whole disturbance Secondly he speakes plainer in these words to confute himself then had been formerly observed by the Animadvertor the Animadvertor charging him for no more then saying that those calamities and miseries were occasioned by sending the new Liturgie thither which now he plainly doth affirm to be caused by it And thirdly though the word primarily be not found in that passage yet he must be a very charitable Logician who will not find it in the order and method of Causes which are there offered to his view deduced they may be from his book though it cannot be produced out of it and therefore he may take the departure from the truth on himself alone and send for the accuser of the Brethren to keep him company 45. Concerning the release of the twelve Bishops for now he grants them to be twelve which before he did not he hopes to have me upon some advantage for denying them to have continued eighteen moneths in the Tower without any intermediate discharge pro tempore but not being willing out of his abundant charity to have me persist wilfully in any error he directeth me to be informed by Bishop Wrenn that none of them were released before May 6. And from that reverend Prelate I could as willingly take my Information if I had any convenient opportunity to ask the Question as from any other whosoever but being I am at such a distance I must inform my self as well as I can by my Lord of Canterbury who in his Breviate tels us this That on February 14. 1641. there came an Order that the twelve Bishops might put in bail if they would and that they should have their hearing upon Fryday and that on Wednesday the 15. they went out of the Tower Assuredly my Lord of Canterbury cannot be thought to be so ignorant in the affairs of his Brethren being then fellow Prisoners with him as not to understand their successes whether good or bad or to be of such a careless Pen as to commit so gross an error in matter of fact especially in such things as were under his eye and therefore I resolve as before I did till I shall see some better reason to the contrary then I have done hitherto that there was a general Order for the discharge of the twelve imprisoned Bishops on Feb. 14. and that they were remanded back again by the power and importunity of the House of Commons upon the reasons formerly laid down in the Animadversions 46. And here I would have left the Bishops to enjoy their liberty but that I am called back again to congratulate with the Archbishop of York for holding the Deanry of Westminster in commendam on so good an account I thought till now that he received it as a favour not an act of Justice but the Appealant hath enlightned my understanding with a clearer notion telling me that King Charls confirmed that Deanry upon him for three years in lieâ— of the profits of his Archbishoprick which the King had taken sedâ— vacante If so his Majesty must be either more just or more indulgent to Bishop Williams then he had been to Bishop Neil his old trusty Servant whom I find not to be gratified with any such commendam or compensation either when he was promoted from Durham to receive Winchester or translated from Winchester to the See of York and yet the King had taken the vacant profits of those Sees for a longer time that is to say
like and reckoned him for a reproach to the holy improvements of the Sabbath by justifying his Disciples in plucking off the ears of Corn upon that day commanding the man whom he had cured of his diseases to take up his bed and walk though upon the Sabbath and finally giving this general Aphorism to his Disciples That the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath Then which there could be nothing more destructive of those superstitions wherewith that day was burthened by the Scribes Pharisees and thereby more accommodated to the ease of the Ox and Asse then to the comfort and refreshment of the labouring man might not the latter Rabines among the Jews defend themselves in those ridiculous niceties about the keeping of that Sabbath Queen-Sabbath as they commonly call it for which they stand derided and condemned by all sober Christians by reckoning them for such holy improvements as D. Bound and his Disciples have since encogitated and devised to advance the dignity of the Lords day Saints Sunday as the people called it in times of Popery to as high a pitch Restore the Lords day to that innocent freedom in which it stood in the best and happiest times of Christianity and lay every day fresh burthens upon the consciences of Gods people in your restraints from necessary labours and lawful pleasures which neither we nor our forefathers have been able to bear though christned by the name of holy improvements The coming out of Barbours's Book Printed and secretly dispersed Anno 1628. but walking more confidently abroad with an Epistle Dedicatory to his Sacred Majesty about five years after declare sufficiently what dangerous effects your holy improvements had produced if not stopt in time and stopt they could not be by any who maintain your Principles that poor man being then deceived into the errour of a Saturday Sabbath a neer neighbour of this place hath been of late by the continual inculcating both from the Pulpit and the Press of the perpetual and indispensable morality of the fourth Commandment as it hath been lately urged upon us But so much hath been said of this by others and elsewhere by me that I forbear to press it further nor indeed had I said thus much had you not forced me upon it for my own defence 18. And for those most unjust as well as uncharitable speeches those bitter reproaches as you call them afterwards which you charge upon me in reference to my brethren whom I take for adversaries when you have told me what they are and of whom they are spoken and where a man may chance to find them I shall return a more particular answer to this calumny also but till then I cannot In the mean time where is that ingenuity and justice you so much pretend too you make it foul crime in me not easily to be washed away with the tears of repentance that I have used some tart expressions which you sometimes call bitter reproaches sometimes unjust and uncharitable speeches against my brethren many of them being my inferiours and the best but my equals and take no notice of those odious and reproachful Attributes which you have given unto your Fathers all of them being your superiours de facto though perhaps you will not grant them to be such de jure You call me in a following passage the Primipilus by which I finde you have studied Godwin's Antiquities or chief of the defenders of the late turgid or persecuting sort of Prelates whither with greater scorn to me or reproach to them it is hard to say the merit of the accusation we shall see anon I note here only by the way in S. Paul's expression that that wherein you judge another you condemn yourself seeing you do the same things and perhaps far worse But to return unto my self take this in general that though I may sometimes put vinegar into my inck to make it quick and opulative as the case requireth yet there is nothing of securrility or malice in it nothing that savoureth of uncharitableness or of such bitter reproaches as you unjustly tax me with But when I meet with such a firebrand as M. Burton whose ways you will not seem to justifie in that which followeth I hope you cannot think I should pour Oyl upon him to encrease the flame and not bring all the water I had to quench it whither soul or clean Or when I meet with such unsavoury peices of wit and mischief as the Minister of Lincoln Diocesse and the Church Historian would you not have me rub them with a little salt to keep them sweet The good Samaritan when he undertook the care of the wounded passenger is said to have poured into his wounds both Oyl and Wine that is to say the Oyl to cherish and refresh it and the Wine to cleanse it Oleum quo foveatur Vinum quo mordeatur as I have read in some good Authors he had not been a skilful Chyrurgion if he had done otherwise one plaister is not medcinal to all kind of sores some of which may be cured with Balm when others more corrupt and putrified do require a lancing but â—o I shall not deal with M. Baxter nor have I dealt so with others of his perswasion insomuch that I have received thanks from the Ministers of Surrey and Buckingham shire in the name of themselves and of that party for my fair and respectful language to them both in the Preface to my History of the Sabbath and the Conclusion to the same 19. But you go on and having given me some good councel which I shall thank you for anon you tell me that besides those many bitter reproaches of my Brethren which I take for adversaries I rise unto such bloody desires of hanging them as the better remedy then burning their Books For this you point us to the History of the Sabbath pag. 2 pag. 254. and in the general Preface to Ecclesia vindicata Sect. 8. In which last place we find it thus That partly by the constancy and courage of the Arch-Bishop Whitgift who succeeded Grindal Anno 1583. the opportune death of the Earl of Leicester their chief Patron Anno 1588. and the incomparable pains of judicious Hooker Anno 1595. but principally by the seasonable execution of Copping and Thacker hanged at Saint Edmonds bury in Suffolke for publishing the Pamphlets of Robert Brown against the Book of Common-prayer they became so quier that the Church seems to be restored to some hopes of peace Nothing in this that savoureth of such bloody desires as you charge upon me I am sure of that and there is little more then nothing in the other passage where speaking of D. Bound's Book of Sabbath-Doctrines and the sad consequents thereof I add that on the discovery of it this good ensued that the said Books were called in by Arch Bishop Whitgift in his Vâ—sitations and by several Letters and forbidden to be Printed and made common by Sir
John Popham Lord Chief Justice at the Assizes held at Bury and thereunto I subjoyned these words viz. Good remedies indeed had they been soon enough applied yet not so good as those which formerly were applied to Thacker and his fellow Copping in the aforesaid Town of Bury for publishing the Books of Brown against the Service of the Church But here is no mention not a syllable of burning the said Books of Sabbath-Doctrines but only of suppressing and calling in Which makes me apt enough to think that you intended that for a private nip relating to a Book of mine called Respondit Petrus which was publiquely voyced abroad to have been publiquely burnt in London as indeed the burning of it was severely prosecuted though itscaped the fire a full account whereof being too long to be inserted in this place I may perhaps present you with in a place by it self And secondly what find you in that latter passage which argueth me to be guilty of such bloody desires as I stand accused for in your Letter Cannot a man report the passages of former times and by comparing two remedies for the same disease prefer the one before the other as the case then stood when the spirit of sedition moved in all parts of the Realm but he must be accused of such bloody desires for makeing that comparison in a time of quietness in a time of such a general calm that there was no fear of any such tempest in the State as did after follow If this can prove me guilty of such bloody desires the best is that I stand not single but have a second to stand by me of your own perswasion for in the same page where you find that passage viz. page 254. you cannot chuse but find the story of a Sermon Preached in my hearing at Sergeants Inn in Fleetstreet in which the Preacher broach'd this Doctrine That temporal death was at this day to be inflicted by the Law of God on the Sabbath breaker on him who on the Lord's day did the works of his daily calling with a grave application to my Masters of the Law that if they did their ordinary works on the Sabbath day in taking fees and giving counsel they should consider what they did deserve by the Law of God The man that Preached this was Father Foxly Lecturer of S. Martins in the Fields Superintendent general of the Lecturers in S. Antholin's Church and Legate à Latere from the Grandees residing at London to their friends and agents in the Countrey who having brought these learned Lawyers to the top of the Ladder thought it a high piece of mercy not to turn them off but there to leave them either to look after a Reprieve or sue out their Pardon This Doctrine you approve in him for you have passed it quietly over qui tacet consentire videtur as the saying is without taking any notice of it or exceptions against it and consequently may be thought to allow all those bloody uses also which either a blind superstition or a fiery zeal shall think fit to raise But on the other side you find such bloody desires in the passages before remembred which cannot possibly be found in them but by such a gloss as must pervert my meaning and corrupt my text and it is Male dicta glossa quâ corrumpit textum as the old Civilians have informed us 20. But to come nearer to your self May we be sure that no such bloody desires may be found in you as to the taking away of life in whom we find such merciless resolutions as to the taking away of the livelyhood of your Christian Brethren The life of man consists not only in the union of the soul and body but in the enjoyment of those comforts which make life valued for a blessing for Vita non est vivere sed valere as they use to say there is as well a civil as a natural death as when a man is said to be dead in law dead to the world dead to all hopes of bettering his condition for the time to come and though it be a most divine truth that the life is more then food and the body then rayment yet when a man is plundered both of food and cloathing and declared void of all capacities of acquiring more will not the sence of hunger and the shame of nakedness be far more irksome to him then a thousand deaths How far the chiefs of your party have been guilty of these civil slaughters appears by the sequestring of some thousands of the Conformable and Established Clergy from their means and maintainance without form of Law who if they had done any thing against the Canons of the Church or the Laws of the Land were to be judged according to those Laws and Canons against which they had so much transgressed but suffering as they did without Law or against the Law or by a Law made after the fact aâ—ainst which last his Highness the late LORD PROTECTOR complaineth in his Speech made in the year 1654. they may be truly said to have suffered as Innocents and to be made Confessors and Martyrs against their wills Either they must be guilty or not guilty of the crimes objected If they were guilty and found so by the Grand Inquest why were they not convicted and deprived in due form of Law If not why were they suspended sine die the profits of their Churches sequestered from them and a Vote passed for rendring them uncapable of being restored again to their former Benefices Of this if you do not know the reason give me leave to tell you The Presbyterians out of Holland the Independents from New England the beggerly Scots and many Trâ—n châ—r-Chaplains amongst our selves were drawn together like so many Vultures to seek after a prey for gratifying of whom the regular and established Clergy must be turned out of their Benefices that every Bird of r pine might have its nest some of them two or three for failing which holding by no other Tenure then as Tenants at will they were necessitated to performe such services as their great Patrons from time to time required of them 21. Now for your part how far you are and have been guilty of these civil slaughters appears abundantly in the Preface which is now before us in which you do not only justifie the sequestring of so many of the regular and established Clergy to the undoing of themselves and their several families but openly profess That you take it to be one of the charitablest works you can do to help to cast out a bad Minister and to get a better in the place so that you prefer it as a work of mercy before much sacrifice Which that it may be done with the better colour you must first murther them in their fame then destroy them in their fortunes reproaching them with the Atributes of utterly insufficient ungodly unfaithful scandalous or that do more harm then good
better natured then the Lady Moore of whom my Author knows a tale that coming once from Shrift she pleasantly saith unto her Husband be merry Sir Thomas for I have been well shriven to day and mean to lay aside all my old shrewishness yea Madam saith he and to begin again afresh 10. But so it shall not be with me that which my adversary takes for a shrewishness in me shall be laid aside never to be resumed again upon any occasion when I am not personally concerned In which case if either my spirit prove so eager or my style so tart and smart as he * says it is I hope the naturall necessity of self preservation will excuse me in it Where by the way I must needs think my self unequally dealt with by the present Appeallant who is not pleased with my humour be it Grave or Pleasant If I am Grave and serious in my Animadversions he ascribes it ever and anon to my too much Morosiâ—y as if I were the Morose himselfe in Ben Johnsons Epicaene Iâ— smart and jocular I shall be presently accused oâ— Railing as if I had been bred in Billings-Gate Colledge I can not make my selfe merry with a mess of Fullers but I must have a Rail laid in my Dish and a quail to boot especially if I touch on our Author himself who will behold me for so doing with no other eyes then the servants of Hezekiah looked on Rabsecah p. 2. fol. 95. And if I do but speak unhappily of a Waltam Calf the application of the Harmless Proverb without more aâ—o must be Railing also and such a railing as is like a Toâ—d swelled with venome as much beneath a Doctor as against Divinity p. 3. fol. 33. But let not my Author be too Angry upon this account my Title to the Calf being like to prove as good as his especially if our Contentions be so needless as his Letter intimates For iâ— our Quarels onely be de lana caprina the equall Rider may bestow the Calf upon both alike Et vitulo tu dignus â—ic est as said the Umpire in the Poet. And in all this I hope there is is nothing of the snarling dog to which he iâ— pleased to compare me within few lines after though he knows well that I can Bite as well as Bark if I set my self to it 11. But now I am to change my weapons or rather to throw down the Sword and take up the Buckler that I may save my self the better from those furious blows which the Appealant leâ—s fly at me He charges mâ— in Generall first with not being over dutiful to the Fathers of the Church fol. 2. Dutiful then I am to the Fathers of the Church though not over dutiful which I believe is more then all men who have read his History canaffâ—â—m of him and next particularly for writing against the two Arch-bishops of York and Armah Dr. Prideaux Dr. Hackwell and Calvin who against all the Rules of Heraldry must be marrialled first my engaging with M Lestrange with D. Barnard and his Squire not being forgotten Of which the first four might have slept in Peace in the Bed of Rest without any disturbance on my part if three of them had not been conjured up by Dr. Barnard and his Squire to begin the Quarrel and the fourth raised by M. Lestrange when I least lookt for him And as for Calvin who must needs lead the Van in this General Muster I know no reason which can hinder me or any other who have subscribed unto the Government of the Church of England or have taken the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance to the Kings thereof from taking him to task if he comâ—â—n our way as well as any other forrain oâ— Domestick Writer of what name soever 12. But my â—ndutifulness hath transported me beyond the Fathers of the Church And I am next accused for waving my Loyalty and Discretion together in having so â—auâ—ily and unsubject-like counted how often King Charles waved his Crown p. 1. fol. 56. Somewhat is also intimated within few lines after concerning some of those whom he calls â—igh Royalistâ— who maintaining that all the Goods of the subjects are at the Kings absolute dispose have written of him in a base and disparaging language since the time of his death If any were faulty in this last kind let them speak for themselves neither my Tongue nor Pen shall ever be imployed in their behalf Certain I am that I am free enough from the accusation my nearest kindred being persons of two fair a Fortune to be betrayed by one of their own blood to a loss of that Property which they have by Law in their Estates And no less certain am I that no flattery or time-serving no preaching up the Kings Prerogative nor derogating from the property of the English subjects could be found in any of my Sermons before his Majesty had they been sifted to the very Bran. In confidence whereof as in the way of Anticipation hath been said elsewhere I offered the Committee of the Courts of Justice before whom I was called in December 1640. on the complaint of M. Prinne to put into their hands all the Sermons which I had either preacht at Court or in Westminster Abby to the end that they might see how free and innocent I was from broching any such new Doctrines as might not be good Parliament proof whensoever they should come to be examin'd The 2d crimination for waving my Loyalty and discretion together in speaking something freely let it be called saucily to please my Author of the Kings waving of hs Crown is already answered und the Appeallant might have found it in my Answer to the Observator Observed where the like Objection had been made My Answer is That Errors in conduct of affairs and effects in Councels are not unprofitably noted by the best Historians and that too in the greatest Princes Their successors might be else to seek in the knowledge of some things of weight and consequence and such as most nearly do concern their own preservation He that soweth Pillows under the Elbows of Great Princes when they are alive shall be termed a flatterer and he that flatters them being dead to the prejudice and wrong of their Posterity deserves not to pass for an Historian That wit is alwaies better cheap which is purchased with the price of another mans Errors then with the feeling of our own So that my Adversary in these Criminations doth but Actum agere and therefore is to be content with such former Answers as have been made unto his hands 13 Now as I stand accused for two little Loyalty to the King so I am charged with two much doting on the Queen even the Great Queen and Empress of this world called Regina Pecunia whose Letter must be made more prevalent with me for publishing the Animadversions then all the other considerations pretended by me And for proof
hereof he calls the Book it self to witness Offered to and Refused by some Stationers because that by reason of his Hiâ—h terms they could not make a saving Bargain to themselves fol. 57. For Answer whereunto I must let him know that the Animadversions when they stood single by themselves in the first draught of them were offered to M. Roycroâ—t the Printer for a peece of Plate of five or six pounds and a quartern of Coppies which would have cost him nothing but so much paper conditioned that he should be bound to make them ready bâ— Candlemas Term 1657. but he not performing that condition I sent for them again enlarged them to a full third Part and seconded them with the Advertisements on Sandersons Histories and having so done offered them to M. Royston and M Marriot who had undertook the Printing of the Book called Respondit Petrus after my old friend had refused it whose Propositions for I reserved the offer to be made by them being very free and ingenuous were by me cheerfully excepted But M. Marriot afterwards declining the business it was afterwards performed by M. Royston and M. Seyle his said old friend on no better conditions then had been offerred at the first And now I am forced upon this point I shall add this also that for the Obseruations on the Hist of H. L. Esq and the defence thereof against the Observator Observed the Help to History which now I shall boldly take upon me being thus put to it my Commentary on the Creed and the Book called Ecclesia Vindicata I never maâ—e any conditions at all and for the four last never received any consideration but in Copies onely and those too in so small a number that I had not above seven or eight of the three first and but twelve of the last And for the Printing of these Papers so far am I from making any Capitulation that it remains wholly in the ingenuity of the Stationer to deal with me in it as he pleaseâ— so that I scrible for the most part as some Cats kill Mâ—se rather to find my self some Recreation then to satisfie hunger And though I have presented as many of the said Books and my large Cosmographies within seven years past as did amount at the least unto twenty pound I never received the value of a single â—â—â—thing either directly or indirectly either in money or any other kind of Retribution of what sort soever When my Adversary can say the like let him upbraid me with the Love of Regina Pecunia but till then be silent 14. But he goes on and charges me with addressing my History of St. George by several Letters to the Earls of Danby Lindsey c. And it is fit that he should have an answer to that Charge also And therefore be he pleased to know that when I first came came to the Kings service I was very young a stranger and unpractised in the wayes of the Court and therefore thought it necessary to make my self known to the Great Lords about his Majesty by writing that History having presented it to three or four of the Lords which were of the Order of the Garter the Earl of Rutland would needs force upon me the taking of two twenty shilling peeces in Gold The sence and shame whereof did so discompose me that afterwards I never gave any one of them with my own hands but onely to the Earl of Sommerset whom I had a great desire to see and from whose condition I could promise my self to come off with freedom But afterwards addressed them with several Leters by some one or other of my servants with whom I hope my Adversary will not think that I parted stakes as many Country Madams are affirmed to do in the Butlers Box. And though I dedicated two of my Books since his Majesties death to two great Peers of this Realm yet for avoiding all such sinister interpretations which otherwise might have bâ—â—n made I sent the one of them with a Letter into Wiltshire and another unto High-Gate by one of my Sons not above 15 years of age receiving from the one a civil acknowledgment in curteous language but from the other not so much as a verbal thanks And give me leave to add this also that I have found more civility in this Kind from a Noble Lady of Hertfordshire whom I never saw and unto whom I never made the least application of this nature then from all persons of both Sexes that ever I addrest my self unto since this scribling humour seised upon me I thank God I never was reduced to such a necessity as to make the writing of Books any part of the trade which I was to live by for if I had I should have found from it such an hungry subsistence as would not have given a chick its breakfast when first out of the shell If the great Queen Regina Pecunia had not been better courted by some of our late Scripturients then she hath hitherto been by me they might have put up all their gettings into a Sempsters Thimble and not filled it neither 15. These Charges being thus blown aside I must be told of many Errors in my Cosmography and the brief view of the Raign of King Charles not long since published the not discovering whereof my Adversary imputes unto himself for a work of merit In reference to the fiâ—st I must needs confess that in the last Edition of my Cosmography there are many Errors but they are rather Errors of the Press then of the Pen. And the Appeallant cannot chuse but know since he pretends to have read that Book that I complain more then once or twice for want of true intelligence in the discribing of some remote Countrys and India amongst the rest which were but little known to Ancient Writers and have been so imperfectly discribed by our modern Travellors that no certainty in History or Chorography can be gathered from them If any person shall be pleased to improve my knowledge and certifie me of the Errors which I have committed I shall not spurn against him as the Appeallant doth at me but thankfully acknowledge their humanity in it and cheerfully reform what is found amiss In the composing of this Book he is pleased to tell me that the extravagancies by me committed are as great as his that 16. parts thereof in 20. are meerly Historical alien from the subject in the strictneâ—s thereof The Pedâ—grees of so many Princes not being reducible to the subject which I have in hand fol. 37. But if he hâ—d been pleaseâ— to consult the Title he might have found that the History of the whole world and all the principal Kingdoms Seas and Iles thereof is as much promised in that Book as the Chorography or Topical Discription of the severall places and therefore neiâ—her Alien Extrinsecal or Extravagant to my first design And whereas he is pleased to tell us a merry tale of a Gentleman who bespoke a