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A43648 An apology for the new separation in a letter to Dr. John Sharpe, Archbishop of York, occasioned by his farewell-sermon, preached on the 28th of June, at St. Giles's in the Fields. Hickes, George, 1642-1715. 1691 (1691) Wing H1841; ESTC R12652 21,953 20

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Ages have done by some of his Royal Ancestors if they can but once persuade the People who are easily deceived or a considerable number of them that it is not for the Interest of the Nation that he should longer reign over them The least the People so persuaded would probaly say of their Majesties in a time of general defection would be in the Words of Dr. Sherlock Let them go if they cannot defend-themselves and when they were gone which all their faithfull Subjects pray God to forbid they would think it their Duty to shut the door after them for you and such as you would presently exhort them to study to be quiet and doe their own business and to be more concerned for their Countrey and Nation than to break the Peace of for the Interest of any single Man or Woman in it as their Majesties would then be styled Nay this great Concern of yours for our Country and Nation in opposition to the Interest of the Prince will justifie any thing as well as being quiet or sitting still It exposes him to Ehud's Dagger as well as Gideon's Sword to Assassins and Bravoes as well as to Rebels Deposers and High Courts of Justice for a Prince in your Arithmetick is but a single Man and if his Safety and Interest is not in Reality or Opinion consistent with that of the People they may dispatch or depose him any way it matters not how a Ravilliac or a Clement may doe the Work with a Steletto when a League or Association cannot doe it Princes at this rate can be no longer safe than they continue in the good opinion of the People Page 29. and are looked upon to be good Men and encouragers of true Religion As long as the Case is so you say they are not onely to be submitted to bus to be acknowledged as Blessings But by the Rule of Contraries If they come to be or which is all one happen to be thought bad Men by the People and Encouragers of false Religion as Henry the 4th of France and Charles the 1st of England were then they are no longer to be acknowledged as Blessings but to be resisted deposed or murthered as Curses and no Man ought to be concerned at it but to be quiet and let the Deliverers of the People doe their Word their own way for as you intimate the King is but a single Man and the Interest of the Countrey which others call the Publick Good is to be preferred without Exception before the Interest i. e. before the Welfare and safety of any Particular Man I profess my Lord I cannot but wonder that any Government should prefer Men that turn Subjects to it upon such loose and dangerous Principles as are equally destructive of all Governments and can secure none For this Doctrine upon which your Exhortation is founded undermines Senates as well as Kings for as a King my Lord is with you but a single Man so by the same figure in Politicks Senates are but a few single Men met together and so the People in parity of Reason ought at all times to be more concerned for their Countrey than a sew single Men. Nay my Lord by this Doctrine the minor Part in a pure Democracy can never want a plausible pretence of resisting the major in whose Determinations they ought to acquiesce for though they are the minor they may always pretend to be a sounder Part that are more concerned for their Countrey than for the Interest of any number of Men though never so great and so at this rate there can be no Peace in any Nation or Government but eternal Opposition without a powerful standing Army which is an uncertain state of Peace a Peace as long as it endures attended with Oppression Poverty and Slavery and not much better for the People than a State of War Nay my Lord you will find that this Principle of yours will ruine Bishops as well as Kings for when Sir George Mackenzy and others of the Episcopal Party defended the Bishops of Scotland in the Convention of that Kingdom What a doe said a Presbyterian Lord is here about the Bishops I think we ought to be more concerned for our Countrey than the Interest of Twelve Man It was of such Latitude as this of yours and such Latitudinarians as you are that Dr. Sherlock complained not long before he had taken the Oaths had ruined both the Church and State He then saw how such loose Doctrines as yours made them both Ohnoxious to an everlasting rotation of Turns and Revolutions and was not sparing in his Reflections and Invectives upon one whom he thought the Arth-Latitudinarian but as Dr. Collins said at Cambridge Then was then but now is now for since that he hath left the narrow for the wide and easie Way or it I may compare Principles as you do Religion to Cloaths Page 14. he hath changed his old streight uneasie Fashion for the never easie Mode he hath cast off the slavish Principles of strict and inflexible Loyalty to his Prince his Soul is no longer fettered with them but is as free as the happy Liberty of Obeying and Regnant Powers can make him It matters not with you or him my Lord what the King be lawful or unlawful real or titular rightful or wrongful provided he be in Possession of the Throne Thus let Twenty Kings supplant one another and you can transfer you Allegiance to the later though you have recognized and sworn Allegiance never so solemnly to the former and declared that 〈◊〉 Power can absolve you from that Oath nay though you have made a vow to God of Obedience to him and he actually claims his Right and prosecutes his Claim and charges his Subject to keep their Allegiance entire for him yet notwithstanding all this you can turn Subjects to him that usurps his Throne though he got it and keep it never so unjustly like the Gentleman's Spaniel who forsook his Master and followed the Thief after he had knocked him down and got upon his Horse Thus with you and such as you my Lord whoever can mount Bucephalus will be your Alexander whoever can get into the Throne shall certainly be your Caesar if God should suffer a Cromwell to destroy their Majesties and seize the Crown you would own him and be Subject to him and pray publickly for him in the Regal Style because St. Paul hath said That every Soul must be subject Page 28. and hath bad us put up Prayers and Supplications and Intercessions for all Men especially for Kings and all that are in Authority without any distinction or restriction what Kings or what Persons in Authority we are to pray for and what not From these Words my Lord I presume to conjecture upon what Principles you took the Oath for being asked in Company some time since why you did not write a Book to persuade men to take the New Oath you replied to this effect That
you believed you could write Satisfactorily upon the Subject but you were afraid the Government would not like your Reasons and in truth my Lord you had reason for what you said for no Government can like this time-serving and precarious Principle of swearing Allegiance unto Princes Indeed a distressed Government may connive at it in a time of Exigence but it can never approve it it may be content with it upon Force when it can have Allegiance paid upon no better terms but when it grows strong enough it will despise such beggarly Elements of Subjection being the Anthers of then to condign Punishment and order their Books to be burnt by the hand of the Common Hang-man For my own part I am not afraid to tell your Grace that I hope to see such Bishop and Priests become Base and Contemptible in the Eyes Loth of King and People that expound St. Paul as you and Dr. Sherlock have done contrary to the Rules of moral Equity and Justice and advance Allegiance to the Government upon a Principle that is destructive to it and the true and lasting Peace of the Kingdom in which our Happiness does consist No Divines of the Church of England but you and Dr. Sherlock and a few more since the Revolution ever so expounded Rom. 13.1 and 1 Tim. 11.1 2. and I have so good Opinion of the Constancy of our Clergy to their Principles that I verily believe were your Exposition proposed to the Convocation they would condemn it as contrary to right Reason and the moral Duties of Religion acording to which all the general and unlimitted Precepts in the Gospel concerning relative Duties ought to be limitted and understood Doth not Nature it self at first hearing teach us that the Apostle by higher Powers and Kings in those two places meant rightful higher Powers and Kings And will not you your self grant that in other places where he or other Apostles exhorts Children to obey their Parents Wives to obey their Husbands Servants their Masters and the People their Pastors that he me us only such as are truly and rightfully so though according to you own Observation He makes no restriction or distinction what Father Husbands Masters and Pastors are to be obeyed and what not But you imply that the reason of this Exhortation to pray for Kings is general and are not the Reasons as general upon which he exhorts us to perform our relative Duties of our other Superiours as hath been observed in the several learned Answers to Dr Sherlock to which I humbly refer your Grace for your better information in the following Order as I have read them with great Delight and Satisfaction The Title of an Vjurper after a through Settelement examined p. 39 and forwards The Duty of Alleg ance settled upon its true Grounds according to Scripture and Reason Chap. 3. Dr. Sherlock 's Case of Allegiance considered Sect. 3. The Examination of the Arguments drawn from Scripture and Reason in Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance in the Examination of Sect. 4. Pag. 28 I have taken upon me to direct your Grace to these particular places in hopes that you will read them and impartially examine the Reason of these learned Anthours against Dr. Sherlock's way of Expounding the Apostle Rom. 13.1 and by consequence against your own who after this manner have expounded the Apostle's Precept of Praying for Kings in a Sense as unlimitted as he hath done the other of Subjection to them viz. of Praying for Kings without distinction provided they are in Possession of the Throne These Expositions my Lord as some Men think reflect upon their Majesties and the Acts of Recognition and if you have no more to say to justifie your Praying for them Exaltabunt Jacebei the Adversaries I fear will have occasion to triumph My Lord I could name some great Men among you who when they were directed to read some of their Books replied that they were satisfied and desired not to be unsettled but I expect better things from a Person of your Candour and Ingenuity Nay my Lord I think you are bound in Honour and Conscience to examine your Adversaries Reasons against the unlimitted Sense of the Apostle's Exhortations for fear you should happen to be in the wrong and continue to delude the People by an Exposition of his Words apparently contrary to the dictates of natural Reason and by consequence to the meaning of that holy Spirit by which the Apostle wrote You cannot but know that this unlimitted Sense in which you expounded the Apostle is of ill Fame and hath been generally disapproved by the learned Divines of our Church it was insisted on it the times of the late Usurpation by Phanatical time-serving Writers but rejected with disdain by the Martyrs and Confessors of Loyalty among the Suffering Clergy-men as it now is by Jacobeans It was so expounded by Mr. Jenkins who in the late Usurpation argued for Subjection as Dr. Sherlock doth now and was ever after Infamous for it and exposed without Mercy for it by your old Acquaintance Dr. Grove now Bishop of Chichester as you may see in the Margent ‡ Answer to Mr. Jenkins's Farewell Sermon p. 15. It is a most excellent Presertative against Tower-hill But what is this famed Position of the Doctor 's As far as I can learn it was laid down in these very Words or to this purpose Regimen Politicum fundatur in Provident à D●i Extraordinarià This Mr. Jenkins calls his asserting Providential Disposal though one might conjecture what this means yet it had not been so clear without the Comment which he has made upon it in the beginning of his humble Petition to the Supreme Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England in short it is this That whoever they be that get the Power into their hands the Providence of God evidently appears in removing others and investing them with the Government And he looks upon it as his Duty to yield to this Authority all active and chearful Obedience even for Conscience sake This is a fine pleable Principle as a Man can wish 't will lap about your Finger like Barbary Gold Thus when King Charles the First of blessed Memory had the Power in his hands this was an Extraordinary Providence and the Right of Government was in him But stay it may be the Dector had not studied the point so soon but to be sure when the Parliament got the better that was an Extraordinary Providence ideed and then indeed without doubt they were the Supreme Authority as this Petitioner styles them and so was Oliver Cromwel and so was Richard and so was the Rump and so was the Committee of Safety and so was I know not who and so round until his Majesties most happy Restauration and then because there was an Extraordinary Providence in that so is he too and so Mr. Jenkins is as good a Subject as can be desired and so he had been whoever had come And