Reformation had been a more apt and proper Epithete Furthermore I will appeal to the whole World whether it be not more pardonable to imitate a King in his laudable Actions and Policies performable by him as a Man than to resemble him to so base and abject a person as a Postillion is known to be The Doctor very well knows that this is one rule always to be observed in taking a Metaphor That it be not from any thing filthy or sordid especially when the Translation is to Kings and it is very much to his disrepute that he who values himself at so great a rate for his stile and oratory should so grosly fail in the common and known rule of a Similitude And yet I will not be over rash and impute all to his mistake The intimacy that he says he had with Mr. William Petit Councellor of the Inner-Temple and that he had his Assistance and Directions as to the Laws and Customs of this Nation in writing his History of the Reformation give some suspicion that he might have no very high thoughts of our Kings Mr. Petit's late Printed Book indicates too much of his Temper and his choice of Doctor Burnet for the digesting and publishing his Collections argue too much of Doctor Bunnet's also and there 's no question to be made but that they consulted together as in order to the composing of the History of the Reformation of the Church so for the writing of that History of the Reformation of Kings which Mr. Petit a little after published under the Title of The Ancient Rights of the Commons of England c. in the Preface to which he delivers this as an undoubted and authentique story Apud Britannos populus magna ex parte principatum tenet pag. 4. and pag. 6. De minoribus rebus principes consultant de majoribus omnes Among the Britains the People have the Government for the most part The Princes consult concerning the lesser things but All concerning the greater And further says That Parliaments were instituted to hear and determine the Complaints and the wrongful Acts of the King the Queen and their Children Now all this very well agrees with the Metaphor of the Postillion and we may also hence conclude That it was not from the Doctor 's principles of Government but some other particular interest which is easily discerned that he publickly declared at the King's-Bench in Westminster-Hall He did not believe that part of the late most hellish Plot against the Person and Dignities of our late Sovereign King Charles II. of blessed Memory which was laid for seizing his Person and giving him only some due Chastisement Your disingenuity to your Superiors in the Church is as great as your injustice to King Charles the First of which an higher instance cannot be given than to represent them as Patrons to your Errors because they have been civil to your Person There is I see great care to be taken of treating some Men with common kindness And the arguing seems more particularly unbecoming those of your Complexion or Moderation whose temperamentum ad pondus or just mixture consists in this viz. To indulge every Man in his particular judgment and treat him with a fair converse when retaining quite different sentiments from him And I am very confident that your self will take it very ill from that Man which shall call you Phanatick because you have trimmed for them and drawn up a scheme of comprehension and had so frequent meetings with them at Doctor Burton's Chamber Besides the grand Case at the King's Bench-Bar at Westminster-Hall last Summer has made it fully appear That a Man may be under a heavy guilt and yet such be the circumstances as to persons and things that his Superiors cannot with prudence call him to an account and retribute to him his condign punishment nay farther so hard may the necessity be as to enforce from them a civil treat and with more especial kindness You plead That before the Church was re-established you received Episcopal Orders from an excellent Bishop of this Church which may be true and I question not but that it is But it is no proof that you were then an Episcopal Divine Several in those days took that prudent way upon this consideration because tho' some denied a Presbyter to be a Bishop yet all own'd a Bishop to be a Presbyter and consequently must accept of your Ordination The divine appropriated Right of the Bishop and singular Power enstated on him by Christ might not be considered by you in that action And in the last place you are very unjust to me in adding to all your other Calumnies this one viz. That I am therefore so severe unto you and enhaunse your supposed crime because an Offender my self as if it were some atonement for my own miscarriages to be always finding fault with my Brethren And tho' this Scandal be of less concern to the publick than those other which you laid upon the Royal Martyr and your Church Governors yet it is every way as groundless and false Whatever my other failings have been yet I dare appeal to and do provoke my greatest Enemies to produce one instance wherein I have declined or warped from any one publick duty interpretable to be incumbent upon me as a Subject or a Church-man But those Men that answer Books by Reproaches and purge themselves by Recriminations must be allowed to make use of all the Topicks that are within that compass and to improve their design by the general advantages it tenders to them A method used by your predecessor Dr. Burnet who after this manner discharges his Gall upon me You are pleased to acquaint the world That you received Episcopal Orders in the late Confusion and think it sufficient to vouch your early Zeal for our Church and Episcopacy I can say more That in the year 1658 I was made a Deacon by that most worthy Father and reverend Prelate Brian then Lord Bishop of Sarum and within that year had the further Power of the Priesthood conferr'd upon me And by virtue of this power I served the Church in the daily Ministrations according to the Rubricks and Law established but not protected among us the secular Power being disenabled to do it by reason of that most horrid Rebellion which was then prosperous I served the Church when she was not able to reward me when without a prospect of it and have had the honour to attend Mr. Peter Gunning at Exeter Chapel with the Chalice One that then look'd the Tyrant in the face 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Strom. 4. p. 480. and whom the Church of God in antient times would have placed among her most renowned Martyrs tho' he died in his Bed full of years and honour but the other day being Lord Bishop of Ely. And thus I have answered those little pleas you have given in for your self and wiped off those Calumnies that you laid upon me
LICENSED July 19. 1686. A LETTER TO Edw. Stillingfleet D. D. c. In ANSWER to the Epistle Dedicatory before his SERMON Preached at a Publick Ordination at St. Peter's Cornhil March 15. 1684 / 5. TOGETHER WITH Some Reflections upon certain LETTERS which Dr. Burnet wrote on the same occasion By SIMON LOWTH Vicar of Cosmus Blene in the Diocess of Canterbury Sed non idcirco frater charissime relinquenda est Ecclesiastica disciplina aut sacerdotalis solvenda est censura quoniam convitiis infestamur aut erroribus quatimur B. Cyprianus Ep. 55. ad Cornelium Impp. Honorius Theodos A. A. Anthemio P. F. P. Hirenarcharum vocabula quae adsimulata provincialium tutela quietis ac pacis per singula territoria haud sinunt stare concordiam radicitùs amputanda sunt Cesset igitur genus perniciosum reipublicae Cesset rescriptorum Hirenarchas circiter inconsulta simplicitas celsitudinis tuae sedes provinciarum defendenda suscipiat pacis hujusmodi locupletioribus commissura praesidia 12. Cod. Theodos Tit. 14. LONDON Printed by J. L. and are to be Sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall in Amen-Corner MDCLXXXVII A LETTER TO Dr. Stillingfleet In ANSWER to his Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his SERMON Preached at a Publick Ordination in the Church of St. Peter's Cornhil March 15. 1684 / 5 Reverend Sir HAVING perused your angry Epistle I am now abundantly satisfied that after all the clamorous Objections and riotous Noises against my Book of Church-Power raised and kept up by Men of your Party and Complexion and all the endeavours of such Champions as your self and that renowned Hero the famous Dr. Burnett you have been able to say nothing in reply to it besides personal remarks and accusations I might add choice Epithets and embellishments of Wit that might have become a Tripas Exercise in the Sophister's Schools but by no means the Gravity of an old exercised Master of Polemicks If you can reap any satisfaction from loading me with the general Titles of a Plagiary ridiculous fool malicious unskillful maker of Controversies a barbarous and rude Disputer with his Brethren an accuser of his Brethren an implacable man uncharitable unjust slanderer proud void of prudence and common discretion the usual Complements you are pleased to bestow upon me you may be happy in the enjoyment of your humor though it hath not an Irenical Complexion But I that design nothing but the pursuit of Truth and Honesty shall only endeavour in an easie method and plain words to come to the true state of the Controversie between us and my reply you may be pleased to take in this order First I shall presume to make some return to those little Pleas and Excuses that you give in for your self and those Accusations of any weight that you are pleased to bring in against me and withal take the liberty to reflect a little upon the Treatment I have received from your Friend and Advocate Dr. Burnett upon the same occasion For I foresee that opportunity will be offer'd Secondly I shall make it appear That the account you give of your Irenicum is not fair nor true and that you conceal your Crime in the very confession of it The whole design and plot being meerly laid against the Re-establishment of the Church of England Thirdly I shall enquire more particularly how far you have recall'd and recanted the principal Errors of it and particularly the Imposture of your Manuscript not doubting to make it appear That you still owe a publick Recantation for it not to the poor Vicar of Cosmus Blene but to the Church of England First I shall consider herein the little pleas you make use of for your self and your trifling Accusations against me together with your Characters of me and also take the liberty of some Reflections upon Dr. Burnet And here your failure is so evident and notorious at the very entrance and your conclusion so inconsequential that it plainly appears you began your Epistle in a passion and without a due consideration of those things which in course follow upon one another Otherwise how could you say to your most Reverend Diocesan That as you have the satisfaction of doing your duty in obeying his Lordship's command for Printing the Sermon you Preached at his last solemn Ordination so you hope others will have so much at least in Reading of it as to be convinced how unjustly you have been not long since represented to the world as an enemy to the very being of Churches in general and to the constitution of this Church in particular Pray how does it follow because you Preached sound and orthodox Divinity at that one time that you had never Preached or Printed any thing Erroneous or Heretical before Or what connexion is there in this such a one is now a sound Divine and therefore he was so always Had you in that Sermon made it appear that my Accusation was not True or that I had said you would never retract those unsound tenents that I accused you of then you might have depended with some tolerable assurance upon the Reader 's conviction of the injustice I had done you But since so it is that you neither attempted to clear your self concerning those things I accused you of neither did I say you would never retract them to infer injustice on my part because some years after that I had accused you you Preached a Sermon which was Orthodox in those points wherein I said you were once defective is a conclusion he alone can be guilty of whose common perceptions are choaked with Choler No Man could suspect that Dr. Stillingfleet made it had not the following part of the Epistle been of his Composure also consisting mostly of the like undecencies I said you were guilty of such Doctrines at the time when I Printed my Book but I did not say you would never retract them It was part of my design in writing that Book to inform you better and that you might come to a sense of those Errors which I apprehended at that time you were not sensible of I told you I judged a retractation necessary and that you ought to make one which was my crime in that I spake so plainly and boldly to you and no Man rejoyces more or thanks you more than I do for what you have performed of that nature in your Sermon You argue on at the same rate and say That my Calumny as you are pleased to call it is groundless and ridiculous because you have since proved the Church a distinct Society and vindicated her power in general and the particular constitution of this Church Now this supposes the truth of my accusation and that you once had asserted the contrary only I am so disingenuous that I take no notice of your retractation but still urge that first Error against you and this is the full of all that you can be interpreted to plead for your self The conclusion indeed seems larger
I there said of them appearingly capable of an exception was That in laying their Argument they did not consider that so ill-natured a Man as Parker might at some time or other have advantage against them And I am so far from acknowledging it a fault that I accuse them of more inconsiderateness of the same nature you may make it their fault if you can in that they did not foresee also That such a Book as the Irenicum would come into the world taking occasion from their writings and by their authority to degrade and depose them expresly making them a party against themselves and the institution of their Episcopal Order and with as much perverseness and ill nature as ever Robert Parker acted against them And now you see my crime it is well if the offence does not lye the other way in that I made Parker appear a defamer the familiarities one that I know once had with his writings taking them for his own gives a shrewd suspicion of it Yes but I lay to their charge the bringing in a new sort of Henrician Heresie which is as new to me as the name it goes under Henrician Heresie I am at a loss to find who this Henricius or Henricianus the Author of an old Heresie is I have consulted all my Books as Epiphanius St. Austin with others of the Ancients that wrote of Hereticks as Irenaeus Tertullian and particularly the Notes of Pamelius upon Tertullian's Prescriptions against Hereticks where the Catalogue of them is explained and am still as ignorant as when I first set out Who can this Haeresiarcha be I consider'd a little farther and the word appearing Novel I consulted my modern Authors down to Edward's Gangraena but neither fell nor fall appear'd here either At last reading Dr. Stillingfleet's Answer to Mr. Cressey's Epistle Apologetical pag. 406. I found the Man but in great obscurity among the mouldy Papers in the Cottonian Library And truly Sir tho' I will not presume to offer to you any advice of my own yet I will venture to recommend the advice which an excellent Friend of yours gave to me as he supposed in the like case and because I appear'd to him unintelligible it is your Advocate Dr. Burnet's in his Letter that he was pleased once to write to me pag. 7. You had best to do as another Emperor did write of your self and illustrate your Epistle with Annotations That which comes next is a flight of your wit upon the Vicar of Cosmus Blene and the Vicar at Rome but falls as much short of it as Cosmus Blene and Rome are distant from one another But more ill nature accompanies it without which some have no wit at all and you insinuate that to attack you is to be a Papist or at least to be their Friend as certainly as the Devil is known by his cloven foot for so Dr. Burnet speaks out in his last Letter and farther adds That we equally degrade Kings from their Ecclesiastical Supremacy and at length will make them Reign at the mercy of the Church and at the Pope's courtesie The Doctor was in a heat during the whole time of his Epistolizing and did not consider immediate consequences for he brings Mr. Dean of St. Paul's as evidently into the praemunire as he does me and accuses him of the same Popery who has declared himself to be of my judgment and that the Church is a distinct Society And further That I have not produced one considerable Argument which he had not made use of to that purpose in a Discourse published above Twenty years since But if the Doctor and the Dean have no better Arguments to prove us Papists as we are very well assured they have not we may better bear the charge I 'll add Or than these which are farther produced in the following part of the Paragraph tho' once thought to be very good ones 'till my great humility in writing my self Vicar of Cosmus Blene better inform'd you As Because I proceed so like a judge in Controversies and after an imperious manner summon by a kind of Citation c. It seems then that every judge of Controversies is a Pope and each Citation is a Bull from Rome or else that my private Letter begging a more full information from your own hand for that was all which I desired of you in my Letter is of the same nature as a Summons or Citation from the Courts Ecclesiastical and you suspected lest an Answer to it had been a declining your Diocesan's Authority and Jurisdiction One of these or all you must be interpreted to mean if you mean any thing and choose whether you please it is pure Irenicum all over or the very Weapon-salve Doctrine and Argumentation Thus Men usually run into the contrary extream thinking thereby to atone for the first Error And you who have before asserted your Bishop to be really void of Power or a mere name without Authority now enlarge his Power as much too far and make it a breach of Canonical Obedience to Write or Answer a Private Letter without his knowledge and Licence However notwithstanding the danger of Popery for you will certainly say again That I proceed like a judge of Controversies and summon you after an imperious manner by a kind of Citation and you may as well say so now as before I 'll venture to ask you Two Questions more 1. Where the crime really lyes in proceeding like a judge of Controversies does not every one that writes of Controversies become a judge of them he ought to be so or else he ought not to write about them And if you had laid your calumny here That I am not fit to write Controversies but undertake to be a judge when I am not qualified for one and proved it you had done something more than every Traducer can do Your Objection seems co-incident with Dr. Burnet's in his rude Letter which he sent me December 20. 1684. Because I published my Book after a course of studies upon full thoughts and a thorow consideration or that I did not Print it as he does Manuscripts without fear or wit or as he did his Letters in their defence with such rash heady precipitancie that he is forced to retract in one what he wrote in another and each contradicts the other as will appear in due place 2. Admit that I had sent you a summons by citation to Answer such Questions as I should demand of you supposing you in great Errors and the Church of God had received great damages by your publication of them you of all Men ought to have taken the least exceptions against me for it who in your Irenicum have enstated me as a Presbyter and by virtue of my Orders in full power for the doing of it as to superintend inspect preside over and govern the Churches and from the best authority and precedents Ecclesiastical So that if I had transgressed since Dr. Stillingfleet led me
it self Pag. 134. you seem at least too unwary in your Expression asserting That if the whole Nation in Parliament consent to the passing a Law for removal of Pastors and putting in of others this is sufficient for the satisfaction of that People to whom they are appointed as Pastors by virtue of that Power or for the making them true Pastors I yield that the right of Investiture is originally in the Secular hand and by consequence the right of deprivation upon the breach of those terms on which the Investiture is made Thus Abiathar was removed and Zadok put in his room But the question is supposing Zadok had not been of the Priestly Line Whether Solomon's placing him in the High-Priest's Chair did by virtue of his Kingly Power alone create him High-Priest and the People were thereupon bound to own and submit to his Ministry Or to bring an instance nearer home supposing an Act of Parliament appoint a certain Person to be Minister in such a Parish when he is really no Minister because without Ordination from a Bishop Whether by virtue of that Law he is made a true Minister and ought to be received as such by that People to whom by Act of Parliament he is sent No understanding Christian will own him as his Minister upon such terms We have a great instance of this nature in the Church of Scotland about Fourteen Years since The Secular Power commanded Dr. Burnet Archbishop of St. Andrews to admit into particular Churches and in the relation of Ministers certain Men that had no Episcopal Orders and by consequence were not of the Gospel Priesthood the most excellent and exemplary Prelate refused for this reason Because the Prince may promote to what temporal Possessions he please but he cannot promote to the Authority which is Spiritual as to the former he must be submitted to but not as to the latter And his Lordship was a great example of the last case for denying their Institution he was Suspended from his Bishoprick and sustained it with a due resignation tho' the Government upon second thoughts restored him with greater honour and estimation in which he died But as to the more immediate question and which occasioned this Section you ought to have urged That the consent of the People did not constitute a Minister neither was it any necessary qualification in order to it as Mr. Baxter and his Combination pretended But instead of doing this you reply That an Act of Parliament is sufficient to constitute him such which savours too much of the old Vessel I confess the consequents would be really evil in the Government both of Church and State if he be an Usurper in a Parish to whom the People do not consent the disorders thereby must become intolerable and the consequents would be as noxious on the other hand if the Parliament had the Power of qualifying for it For then the Ministry will be quite swallowed up in the State and every Usurper be his Religion what it will may alter the Priesthood or as in the days of Jeroboam make Priests of whom he please But thus it fares with your Arguments and it is their usual fault That they prove too much You take away Infallibility and the Ministry at once in other places and maintain here the Secular Power to the destruction of the Spiritual I 'll receive him in Seculars whom my Prince is pleased to set over me but none in Spirituals who hath not an Authority which the Secular hand cannot derive unto him 5. But that which crowns all is Pag. 300. when you scatter those mists which some pretend to have before their Eyes that they cannot clearly see what we mean by the Church of England and tell us it is so called because it was received by the common consent of the whole Nation in Parliament Surely if now we be not a Parliament Church we never were in the opinion of any nor ever shall be Should any Man ask me what the Church of England is I would tell him It is that due Succession of Authority Doctrine Worship and Discipline which are now made Law in the Kingdom of England but if that Law ceaseth to own and protest them I should not thereby think it to become less the Church of England For certain there was a Church of England when there was no Parliaments in England according to those who carry their aera or date to the highest pitch And we say There was the very Church of England that now is and neither Parliament nor Pope had appeared in our Coast Besides What if the Parliament of England pass a Bill of Abjuration against the present Church as they did the other day against the Crown of England The Rump Parliament did it Why then your definition of the Church of England is much at the same as Socrates defined a Man Homo est Animal bipes implume A Man is a living Creature with two Feet and without Feathers Diogenes's Jackdaw was as good a Man when he had pluckt his Feathers off The being of the Church of England does not depend upon any such outward advantages or upon the Votes of the People whether in Parliament or out of it We thankfully own the outward advantages she has had and now enjoys by Parliaments but we own withal her separate Being abstracted from them the Church of God here in England is antecedent to them all One while I was willing to think That this Book was wrote by you at a time when the general design was on Foot for enlarging the Privileges of Parliaments or rather of the House of Commons by the Men of Shaftsbury and you might think your self engaged to cast in something and if so you add that which is very considerable making the Being of the Church of England to depend upon their owning and acceptance of it The Kingdom must have Parliaments once a Year at least only for this for otherwise we may have no Church once a Year But then again this seems not to be the reason because I find you to have been of the same Judgment some years before and you reckon up this among the Encroachments and Usurpations of the Bishop of Rome and spoil thereby a good cause viz. That Acts of Parliament were no certain indications of the Judgment of the Church or the generality of the People in that time Answer to Mr. Cressy's Epistle Apologetical c. pag. 448. I must therefore conclude that you were somewhat discomposed neither is this the only unwary expression you have let fall within the distance of one or two Pages For you there mix the Pastors and People together as of the same Church diffusive You say farther That to assert in every Church a constitutive regent part as essential to it is the same as the Pope's universal Pastorship And again That the Acts of the Convocation are to be allow'd and enacted by the King and the three States of the Kingdom Flatly against the King's Prerogative in making Church-Laws by the Convocation alone As also your term National Church is as incongruous as any National Congregational Classical are Relatives and give life to one another 6. It doth not appear why you Reprinted that scandalous Manuscript which so immediately opposeth all Church-Power in the utmost latitude of it and by the Authority of so many of our most eminent Reformers Nay farther with an artifice to conceal Archbishop Cranmer's Retraction unless it be to give all the seeming Authority you could to the Doctrines there asserted There is not one Note in the Margent by which it appears that you had then altered your first conceptions of it as Printed in the Irenicum Nay you have own'd and justified it in part in your Epistle to my Lord of London or if there be any alteration made it is least there might be occasion to suspect that Cranmer had deserted you 3. And in the last place you have made no satisfaction at all to the Church of God for that Irenicum Doctrine which equals the Presbyter with the Bishop There is not any thing like amends for it in all your writings that I have met with It is true you often speak of Episcopacy as the most ancient Government derivable from the Apostles But you have not any where asserted it in the number of those Institutions and Practices Apostolical which are perpetual and immutable And until you say this all you can say besides is to no purpose The Bishop is notwithstanding at the mercy of your Prince or your Presbyters when their prudence sees fit to degrade and depose him There is no more Obligation to continue the distinct order of Bishops than that order of Widows in the Epistle to Timothy And thus Sir I have shew'd that you have not made due satisfaction for those errors in your Irenicum concerning the Power of the Church in general and the constitution of our Church in particular of which I accused you in my Letter dated May 1. 1682. I have also shew'd more at large the grounds of my Accusation I beg only this Favour of you That if you think fit to return an Answer you will do it in a Scholar-like way i. e. by Argument and Matter of Fact not Raylings and Nick-names it is really below your quality in the Church to Act Andrew Marvel It was thought by J. O. to be a thing below him And therefore we know on whom he set that Buffoon when his case was much at one with yours and he wanted argument Besides tho' Dr. Burnet was pleased to assign me the Province yet I am not at leasure to catch Flies But if you keep to these terms I shall certainly make a reply and you will thereby oblige Novemb. 6. 1685. Reverend Sir Your Humble Servant SIMON LOWTH FINIS