REFLECTIONS ON THE RELATION OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION Lately Printed at OXFORD PART I. AMSTERDAM Printed for I. S. 1688. REFLECTIONS ON THE RELATION OF THE ENGLISH REFORMATION c. The First Part. The INTRODUCTION WE have been long in Expectation of some extraordinary Productions of the Eminent Convert of Oxford His Age his Learning and the present Conjuncture hath raised that Expectation very high and tho the ill success of his Discourses concerning the Presence in the Sacrament and the Adoration of it hath sunk his Reputation to a great Degree it having appeared that he neither writes exactly nor sincerely which hath lessened him much in the Opinion of those who expected great things from him Yet it was thought that matters of History would succeed better in his hand for it hath been long believed that he had examined those Transactions very critically so that when I heard that he had undertaken this Subject I expected great Discoveries from him and fancied that instead of Extracts out of Fuller and Heylin we should have found Records Originals Papers and the Cotton-Library often cited So it may be easily apprehended how much I was surprised when I found a Book of such a Volume in which there was not the least Discovery of any new matters of Fact and that there was nothing in it but a tedious Repetition very ill expressed in rough English of Arguments that have been over and over again both made and refuted together with a Representation of the state of Affairs in the last Age that was partly defective and partly false It seemed strange to me at first view to see so large a Book writ and printed eight years after that Dr. Burnet's History of the Reformation had appeared without its taking the least notice of that Work which hath been so well received so much read and which seems to be so well confirmed by the Proofs that accompany it that few Books of History have gained a more general Reputation than it hath done and as none of the Roman-Communion have been able hitherto to say any thing for the Disparagement of that Work except Mr. Varillas so he hath been so severely exposed by the Dr. that this attempt hath raised its Credit instead of lessening of it It is true This Book seems to be a part of a great Work and to have been writ many years ago For as this appears in many Parts of it so more remarkably in one Passage that shews it was written in the Interval between His Late Majesties being re-established in his Throne and the Restauration of Bishops and therefore when this Book was writ the Author could not vouch other Historians than such as had then appeared Yet since the printing of it was delayed so long and since it is believed that the Author and the Publisher is the same Person he might have given himself the trouble to have reviewed his Work or at least to have added some Appendix relating to that more copious and authentical Account which Dr. Burnet hath given us of our Reformation For if the Dr. hath deceived the World by a false Representation of Matters yet it must be confessed that he hath done it with so good a Grace and with such appearances of Sincerity and of proving what he relates and that both our Countrymen and Forreigners have read that Work so much as appears by the several Impressions at home and the several Translations that have been printed beyond Sea that it was too great an Omission in the Author of this Recital if he be still alive that he hath never mentioned that History nor said any thing to ruin the Reputation it hath gained I am I confess much inclined to believe that he who hath published this Book could not have writ it For as there is nothing in it that answers the Reputation he hath in the World so the time of writing it seems a Demonstration that he cannot be the Author of it For what Opinion can we have of a mans Conscience of his Probity or his Honour that could write such a Book against the Reformation and the Church of England in the year 1660. and yet could continue in the Communion of our Church concurring not only in the Acts of our daily Worship but mixing with us in the Holy Sacrament twenty five years after this Such a Criminal Compliance hath so many foul Characters upon it that after all the Charity to which a man can carry his thoughts he can scarce know how to have one good thought of a person capable of so black and such a long continued dissimulation both towards God and Man. Whether Oaths and Subscriptions have not come in wise to enhance the guilt of so horrid a Dissimulation I do not know but even tho that hath not been in the case God and Man hath been sufficiently mocked This is that which makes me very unwilling to believe that the Author of this Book could continue in all the Acts of visible Communion with this Church so many years after he writ it tho I confess he speaks so softly and with so little Detestation of the compliance of the Popish Clergy in Edward the 6th's time that this looks too like a man that was resolved to venture on the same guilt for he tells us in his harsh Stile That the perpetual outward compliance of some other Bishops contrarily affected since there preceded before it penalties and Fears and the seeing of the prime Bishops to be imprisoned and ejected for standing out is far from an authentical Consent and unjustly reckoned as such For tho none can know mens Hearts but by their outward appearances yet where mens Votes are asked after Penalties Imprisonments of others Threats c. which are so strong motives of Dissimulation Now all that conform in these are to be presumed Compliers and none free Voters And afterwards without expressing any horror at it he owns That many of the inferior Clergy remained still of the old Religion which he goes about to prove by several Reasons And yet after all this there was nothing to be apprehended in K. Edward's days by such of the Clergy as would not receive the Reformation but the loss of their Benefices which if we are not mistaken in the Man our Author felt to be such a strong motive of Dissimulation that he resolved to be overcome by it If a single Act of impious Worship against a mans Conscience was thought so heinous a crime by the Primitive Church that it could not be expiated but by a Penitence of many years continuance then certainly the same Sin repeated in the course of so many years against such clear Convictions of Conscience must be confessed to be so heinous a Transgression that according to the Spirit of the Primitive Times such an Offender could have expected no other Grace but to obtain the Peace of the Church in his last agonies To see a man change is natural especially where
of ours XIX Our Author excepts to King Henry the Eighth's abrogating those Laws That were established by the Authority of the Bishops of Rome as if this included all those Laws that were passed by the Councils in which Popes presided since the Canon-Law is composed of Synodal as well as of Pontifical Laws In this we will freely own to him that since the time that the Popes have so far enslaved the Bishops as to make them swear Obedience to them we look upon all the Laws that have been made in Synods composed of men so pre-engaged as Papal Laws but this doth not at all touch those Laws that passed before that Authority was claimed And indeed there never was a grosser Abuse put on the World than the whole Canon Law. For as for the first and soundest part of it which is Gratian's Decree it was only a Common-place Book drawn up by a Man that was indeed considering the Age in which he lived of great Learning and good Judgment But he was at that time so ill furnished with all necessary helps to make him judg a right of his Matter that it is an impudent thing in the Ages of more Knowledg to pretend to keep up the Credit of a Book that was compiled in so dark and so corrupt a Time. The rest is yet worst made up of Papal Constitutions or the Decrees of those ignorant and packt Assemblies that had met for the three Ages preceding the Reformation If King Henry had abrogated the Ancient Canons our Author might have had some Colour for his Complaints But the total abrogating of that course Compilation of the Canon-Laws which never was founded on any good Authority was so just a thing that there are very few Learned Men in the Roman Communion at present that will not say it were well for the Church if it were quite laid aside since now all men but such as our Author are ashamed of it XX. Our Author writes as if he intended to do Honour to the Memory of King Henry For he cites these Words out of his Preface to his Injunctions Which Agreement of the Clergy for as much as we think to have proceeded of a good right and true Iudgment and to be agreeable to the Laws and Ordinances of God He thereupon ordered it to be published An ordinary man would be upon this induced to approve mightily of the King's method First to Authorize the Clergy to examine those Matters and after that to review their Determinations himself before he gave his Civil Sanction to them Would our Author have a Prince rely blindly on a National Clergy which is subject to Error as is acknowledged by all the World What Judgment then can he follow but his own The Civil Power must be applied in matters of Religion as is acknowledged on all hands upon the Judgment of the Prince For he can follow no other even in the Principles of the Church of Rome except when he is determined by an Infallible Court which is only in a General Council XXI Among the other Exorbitances of the King's Supremacy one reckoned up by our Author is his taking away the Pope's Authority as Patriarch in confirming the Metropolitan and his requiring his Clergy under the pains of Premunire to consecrate into Bishopricks any that he shall nominate It is great Ignorance or somewhat worse in our Author if he will pretend that the Authority of the Patriarchs over Metropolitans was of Primitive Antiquity for by the Council of Nice every Province was an intire Body within it self if the Clergy is under some servitude as to the promoting those nominated by the King the Pope is under the same to the King of France by the Concordate and our subjection in this Point does not bind our Consciences but lies only on our Persons and Benefices and therefore when a case of Persecution comes we must resolve to venture on a Premunire and worse things too if we are pressed hard XXII He adds to this another gross mistake in History intimating that the Suppression of Monasteries was done by virtue of this Supremacy upon which he runs out into a long deduction of many Particulars relating to that Affair but this is all so false that the Supremacy was not so much as once pretended in it it went all upon Acts of Parliament and the surrenders of the Monks If the King acted violently and unjustly in this matter it doth not at all concern the Reformation and much less his Supremacy and as for all the Topicks of Sacriledg and Profanation and the alienation of Things and the violation of Persons Sacred these are general and dreadful words which lose their Horror when it is considered That the vast endowments of Monasteries were the effects of the Superstition of those Ages in which the belief of the Redemption out of Purgatory by the saying of so many Masses together with many false Miracles had prevailed so far on the Ignorance and Credulity of the World as to draw the best part of the Wealth of Europe into those Houses when I say not only the scandalous Lives of many Monks which were indeed but Personal Things but their false Miracles and Relicks and above all the falshood of redeeming men out of Purgatory by their means were discovered no doubt it was lawful to dissolve all those Endowments and to turn their Wealth to better uses and if the King did not enough that way it was so much the worse for him but that doth not at all blemish the Reformation So that all the long digression he makes upon this Head is impertinent to the business in hand which is the Supremacy XXIII He says That the Pope pretends no such Power as to alienate the Church-Revenues for to spend them himself or to dispose of them in what manner or to what Persons he pleases but only for some just Cause that is in a prudential Arbitration for an equal or greater benefit accruing to the Church or Christianity I do not know if the D's of Parma or a great many other Princes that have been raised out of the Patrimony of the Church would judg this to be good Doctrine and if the Church is always a minor so that the Bargains made in her name may be ever recalled it would be hard to find what Benefit hath arisen to the Church or Christianity out of the Robberies that Popes have made to raise their Families and it is a strange piece of Impudence in these men who are always reproaching us with what some of our Princes did in the time of the Reformation when all that put together doth not amount to the Injustices that have been committed in one single Pontificate of those whom they would have us look on as God's Trustees and as Christ's Vicars if they are not concerned in those who are the Spiritual Heads of their Church much less are we bound to justifie all the Actions of those who are only
here while he is in England he will condemn these treasonable Doctrines The ground upon which he condemns them is also suitable to the Condemnation it self For he says that this is the Opinion of several Catholicks This was modestly expressed For tho it is true that several of those he calls Catholicks are of this mind yet all Catholicks are not of it So that the Doctrine of murdering Kings is at least a probable one and since the Decrees of the Church of Rome for the deposing of Princes fall not only on those that are Hereticks themselves but even on the Fautors and Favourers of Hereticks I do not see how his Majesty's Life is secured For besides the Protection and Liberty that he grants to Hereticks of his own Dominions he hath received and encouraged the Refuges of another Prince which is to be a Favourer of Heresy of the worst sort So that if Innuendoes were in fashion I do not see how our Author could defend himself against an Indictment of Treason or at least against an Information Our Author to let us see how wary he is in his Concessions as he calls them ends the Paragraph with another It shall be granted here For it is plain he will not loose an inch of all the Papal Pretensions but will preserve them entire to a better time XXXIX Our Author pretends that Q. Elizabeth's Supremacy was carried much higher than had been granted by the former Clergy under K. Henry the 8th The Allegation is false for the Supremacy was carried much higher under King Henry than it was under Queen Elizabeth who as she would not accept of the Title of Head of the Church so she explained her Supremacy both in her own Injunctions and in the Acts of Convocation and Parliament that followed in so unexceptionable a manner that our Author himself hath nothing to object to it He seems also to infinuate as if the King's Supremacy were asserted by us as a Grant of the Clergy whereas we pretend to no such thing The Civil Supremacy that we ascribe to our Princes is founded on the Laws of God on the Rules of Humane Society on the Laws of England and on the Practice of the Church for many Ages and King Henry receiv'd no new strengthning of his Title by the Act of the Clergy which did not confer any new Authority on him but only declared that which was already inherent in him XL. Our Author enters into a long Discourse to prove the Invalidity of Orders granted in our Church which he doth so weakly and yet as he doth all other things so tediously and with so much Confusion that I have no mind to follow him in all his wandrings He seems to question the Authority of Suffragan Bishops who though they were limited as to their Iurisdiction yet as to their Order they were the same with the other Bishops The Proceedings in Queen Mary's Time were too full of Irregularity and Violence to be brought as Proofs that the Orders given by King Edward's Book were not valid In a word the Foundation of that false Opinion of some of the Church of Rome was that ever since the Time of the Council of Florence the Form in which Priests Orders were conferred was believed to be the delivering the Sacred Vessels with a power to offer Sacrifices for the Dead and Living So they reckoned that we had no true Priests since that Ceremony was struck out of our Ordinal But the folly of all this is apparent since Men began to examine the Ancient Rituals and those which have been published by Morinus shew that as this Rite is peculiar to the Roman Church so it was not received before the Ninth Century And since all Ordinations during the first Eight Centuries were done by the Imposition of Hands and Prayer then there can be no reason to question our Orders since we retain still all that the Ancient Church thought necessary As for the common Observation of our Ordinals not being enacted by Queen Elizabeth before the Eighth Year of her Reign it hath been so oft made and answered that I am 〈…〉 see our Author urge it any further Would he that hath disputed so much against the Civil Authorities medling in Matters Sacred annul our Orders because the Law was not so clearly worded with relation to that part of our Offices The most that can possibly be made out of this is that the Ordinations were not quite legal so that one might have disputed the paiment of the Fruits But this hath no relation to us as we are a Church in that the Book of Ordinations having been annexed to the Book of Common-Prayer in King Edward the Sixth's Time the reviving of the Book of Common-Prayer in Queen Elizabeth's Time was considered as including the Book of Ordinations Though it s not being expresly named this gave occasion to Bonner to question the validity of them in Law. Upon which the Explanatory Act passed declaring that it had been the Intention of the Parliament to include that in the Book of Common-Prayer So that this Act only declared the Law but did not create any new Right I have now gone over all that I judged most material in this tedious Book The darkness of the stile the many unfinished Periods the frequent Repetitions the many long Quotations to very little purpose above all the intricate way of Reasoning made it a very ungrateful thing to me to wrestle through it In it one may see how much a Man may labour and study to very little purpose For how unhappy soever the Author hath been in his pains it cannot be denied but he hath been at a great deal to compass it But a Man that neither sees things distinctly nor judges well of them the more he toils about them he entangles himself and his Reader so much the more So that never was so much pains taken to less purpose If our Author gives us many more Books of this size both as to Sincerity and good Reasoning he will quickly cure the World of the Mistake in which they were concerning him He passed once for a Learned Man and he had passed so still if he had not taken care to let the World see by so many repeated Essays how false a Title he hath to that Reputation which had fallen upon him But it seems his Sincerity and good Judgment are of a piece Otherwise as he could not obtrude on the World the falsehoods concerning latter times and the Ignorance of Antiquity that appears in all his Books so when so many have been at the pains to discover both his Mistakes and his Impostures He would either have confessed them or some way excused them But it is no wonder to see a Man that dissembled so long with God and that lied so oft to him serve the World now as he did his God for so many Years I pray God touch his Heart and give him a Repentance proportioned to the heinousness of his Sins by which he hath given so much Scandal to the Atheistical sort of Men who from him must be tempted to draw strange Consequences And he hath certainly brought a greater Reproach on that Church to which he hath gone over than all the Services he can ever render them in his useless and confounded Writings will be able to wipe off But to whom sovever he hath been a Reproach our Church hath no share in it since of him and of such as he is we must say They went out from us but they were not of us For if they had been of us they would no doubt have continued with us but they went out that it might be made manifest that they were not all of us FINIS P. 82. ad finem From p. 140. Page 141. Adorat of the Euchar. p. 28. P. 139. Ephes. 5. 24. Col. 3. 20. Page 87 88. 2 Chron. 17. 7. 2 Chron 9. 5 8. V. 11. 2 Chron. 29. 5. V. 34. 2 Chron. 30. 23. Numb 9. 10. Ezra 7. 25. Nehem. 13. 28. Ludolph P. 20. lin 12. P. 21. Hist. Reform P. 1. Re◠Bo. 2. n. 10. Ibid n. 24. Nam qui Reginae odio vel speratae sec dum forsan notae futurae conjugis illecib◠titillatione Regem agi putant ij ex cordes plane toto quod aiunt coelo errare videntur Ibid. P. 22. Cott. Lib. Vit. B. 13. P. 23. ◠25. Printed in the Cabala P. 26. P. 28. P. 39. 25 Henry 8th n. 14. P. 41. Hist. Reform Rec. b. 2. n. 37 38 39. P. 51. P. 78 79. P. 57. P. 58. P. 64. P. 68. P. 71. P. ibid. P. 72. P. 84. P. 90. P. 93. P. 9◠P. ibid. P. 108. P. 110. P. 111. P. 119. P. 127. P. 134. P. 135. P. 142. P. 157. P. 160. Ibid. Tolet. can 10. §. 75. c. 13. 1040. Vita Gul. Abb. Dijon c. 4. P. 162. P. 176 273. P. 187. P. 208. P. 120. P. 2.