follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a foreign Prince and when he comes tho' with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their Treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with a Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his illgotten Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher It confessedly seems as I stated the Proposition you cannot deny the perspicuity of its Truth and therefore you invert it to an invidious Paraphrase which in many parts of it is not truly applicable to that which was the Subject of my Apology viz. the Authority of the Convention For all your aggravated Invitations Combinations Revolts Treacheries and Derelictions allowing or supposing them to be no other than you describe them are not chargeable on the whole Estates of the Land especially when in Convention And even thus I will renew my Position That by the Laws of Nations if a foreign Prince procure the Revolt of a vast part of another Princes Subjects thro' the terror of which the helpless Prince leaves his Kingdoms in Anarchy under the Army of the foreign Potentate who thereupon calls the Estates of such deserted Nation to treat for a Settlement they may convene and treat with him upon such invitation For it is the necessity the subject Nation stands in for a Settlement that warrants and legitimates such Treaties by what means soever those exigencies are introduced whether by foreign Force or intestine Commotions jointly or severally throwing all into Anarchy and Disorder But if the charge of the Revolt preclude the legality of any mans Session that incapacity ought to have been objected and if over-ruled protested against in Convention as I have already told you which not being done they were all in Law Reason and Civil Construction lawful Agents and Councellors As to the word Unresisted Power I confess I used care indeed but no trick for it was too hard for me to judge whether the Prince's Power were irresistible or no and so it is in many cases in which Parties yield rather than run the hazard of a Battle But every one can tell when it is or is not actually resisted and the Proposition is as true of an unresisted as well as irresistible Power Tho' take you all the Forces foreign and domestick joyned to the Prince when the Convention was called you will think it hard for any Subjects to have resisted them when the King himself long before durst not but disbanded and quitted thereby all pretensible Duties in the Subjects to take Arms. And the Conventioners deserve to be your humble Servants for putting them upon such an Essay But if you will require where the fault of this non-resistance really lies I think you may find it in him that neither could be induced to call a Parliament nor to fight it out After which double miscarriage and flight out of the Kingdom I think no man was obliged to resist or take up Arms but to desire such a Settlement as the State of Affairs would admit As for the Wars we maintain with our Purses against all the Enemies of our present Settlement they are just according to all the Rules and Forms of Civil Laws to which you your selves contribute as well as we only with more Crime as doing that against your Consciences which we admit upon Principles to us appearing good But if you think your Exigencies legitimate your payment of Taxes to prevent new danger so we think the general Exigencies of the Nation did legitimate this Settlement and do still justifie our plenary Submission thereunto according to the Sense Laws and Usages of all Nations As for those you call Revolters they were not the Subject of my Discourse whom I therefore leave to God who as he saw the provocations so did he also every mans purposes and trains of thought in that Insurrection according to which at the last day they shall each man be judged But for those that lay still I know no legal summons they had from King James to rise in Arms to make that quietness a breach of Allegiance in which certainly you Jacobites are as culpable as the others and in one degree more in that when you might and upon your Principles ought to have taken Arms for him you would not and now when you neither can nor ought clamour for new Seditions and Commotions by which we must inevitably fall a prey to France and a Burnt-Sacrifice to Rome Dyscher I will now for the present intermit the Remarks I collected at Gilman's Coffee-House and bestow some other impartial Reflexions on your Grand State-Principle on which you raise your other Arguments Here then I must tell you That you set up new Principles which the Church of England hath always declared to be erroncous and grounds of Rebellion viz. you set up the Parliament above the King and that we must take our measures of obedience only from the Parliament * Sol. Ab. p. 31. to whose Judgment say you in all Civils all Subjects must submit And upon this you Ground all your Superstructure as that King James's * Ibid. p. 8. Tenure has been publickly judged by this Natition to be extinct * p. 9. and that this Nation hath justified King William 's Cause which is to conclude upon us Beyond this you allow no no man to look or enquire The whole Body of the Church are to be taught by the Parliament and to have an implicit faith in them against the King in all Cases whatsoever so that * Ibid. p. 4. the Churches Loyalty is to follow the Civil Judgment concerning the Object of our Allegiance and the Tenure of Sovereignty And by this Rule if a Parliament change a King every day the Church is bound to swear to every one the Parliament can solve their Oaths But there was a time when the Church thought it their Duty to be Teachers and particularly as to Loyalty as being a principal part of Religion and even against a Parliament Here unfortunately four or five lines were broken off the MS. Reflections but as I well remember the sense was such as is included within these brackers and their Doctrine was owned by all true Sons of the Church of England I mean the Old Church of England in the Reign of King Charles II. This was their Doctrine and Practice and generally of the whole Church of England ever since the Reformation as is plain in her Homilies Articles and Canons c. And you do not attempt to disprove these but only assert the contrary and so leave it as a thing settled and sure MS. Reflections That the Churches Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true Constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slur upon us that it is to
the Quarrel of which mens private Opinions are most times very contrary but can hardly ever be sure or unanimous And by this Rule all Nations go and there is no better tho' God forbid that any man should be obliged to think all the Spoils of War and Law to be really honest and morally rightful Now according to these Rules and Distinctions I asserted that Extra-lineal Kings may be Lawful Successors in Cases Extra-ordinary and I will add upon Causes really Just Rightful Successors too And lest you should quarrel at this Distinction as of private Invention but no publick Character I refer you to the late Oath of Allegiance in the first Paragraph where our late Sovereign Lord K. J. is declared Lawful and Rightful King of this Realm c. that he might be taken for not only de facto but de jure King But amidst all this Dust of what use is a General Question or Position except it properly affects our particular Cases So that in order to the Censure you design upon King William you ought to have charged all the Facts in your stated Question directly upon him in the Course of the Revolution with exact congruity and accuracy that you might have evinced his Illegality or Incapacity of Right in the Possession of this Crown But this you perhaps fancy every body can do But I will in truth try whether it can be done or no. I allow you then in the foundation that the Prince of Orange at his Descent as he had no Right so he pretended none to this Crown and declared his Intentions not to injure King James in any his Personal or Royal Rights whatsoever but then I deny that the Prince seized the Crown by ill Arts or any breach of publick Protestations For when he came in the Head of an armed Force he declared that he came not for the Crown but a Decision of his Cause in Parliament to which end he sent the King fair Articles of Truce and Treaty during the Session But the King refuses or neglects the Proposals and leaves the Kingdom in Anarchy Now all such Declarations in War have this natural obvious and perpetual intention that if the matters in Controversie be adjusted as demanded the Prince demandant will be fully satisfied as having no design to seize his Adversaries Dominions if he will right the Causes of Hostility in the manner claimed but otherwise the very form and Face of War and Arms is in Fact an open Declaration to vanquish out dethrone and crush the Adversary by all Martial and Hostile Methods whatsoever So that King James nglecting his Demands in not calling a Parliament to satisfie the Prince cannot complain that he has broken his Faith or Declaration in taking his Crown And further when the King was gone there appeared no Force or Fraud in the Prince's Actions with the Convention to whose Judgment he fairly left the whole Cause and State of Affairs and they having maturely and peaceably debated all things judge King James's Desertion with respect to all antecedent passages to be an Abdication of the Government and withal they judge the Prince's Succours to have merited the Crown which with the amicable Concession of the two next Heirs they cheerfully offer up to him which he then accepted when a fair Capacity and title was thus legally opened to him So that tho' at first he had no form of Title Pretentions or Designs for this Crown during King James his Right yet when this determined and no other Legal Obstacles interposed there was a fair Reason to accept that then which it was not lawful in Conscience for him before to covet or design Dyscher Your instance in the Houses of York and Lancaster comes not up to so plain a Case as this Where things are obscure and dark as that Title was and perhaps still is to most men great allowance is to be made Lancaster had the more obvious York the better Title * Here T. B. very charitably makes the excellent Bishop of Worcâ—ster to deserve a Gallows instead of a Bishoprick p. 22. But what means this preaching up Confusion The Nation then weltered in Blood and Gore till an undoubted Title put an End to that quarrel But you would have us obstinately maintain a bad Title that our Miseries might have no End A rare Example of Justice and Love to your Country T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21 22. Eucher It seems then it was lawful for the Nation to admit the House of Lancaster against the better Title in the House of York or else what allowances do you make upon the Obscurities of the Title But does it follow that the House of Lancaster had a real Right If so then an extra-lineal King may be Rightful If not then Allegiance may be lawfully yielded by the Nation to extra-lineals who are in by legal Forms of Settlement and Recognition tho not really Rightful or Lineal Heirs For so upon your great allowances the House of Lancaster when enthroned was visibly Legal tho not lineally Rightful and does not this then come full up to all the purpose I designed For it was not meer obscurity of the Descent tho' much involved before the common World by contrary Pretensions that warranted the People in these Submissions but the necessity of ending Spoils Rapines and effusions of Blood For if the competitor Houses would have acquiesced in the judgment of the Estates they could well have determined for the better title upon a fair Heraldry or production of Descents But the Families as opportunities offered themselves were generally restless under the Superiour House but those stirs were legally ended toties quoties by Parliamentary Recognitions But the final end was not procured by the clearness of an undoubted Title but by the Marriage of the Lancastrian King Henry VII with the Lineal Heiress of the House of York by which all competitions closed but Henry stood upon his own bottom in the National Recognition through all his Reign and neither yielded subjection to nor derived his Title from his Queen But yet let us see in dubitable cases how great your allowances would be and particularly in the Lancastrian Reigns Supposing then the Title between the two Houses dubitable or doubted only with one part of the Nation but certain to the rest shall both these Parts swear one Allegiance to the Title which is doubted by one Part against that Title which the other Part is certain of If so then you allow one Part of the Nation to swear against a Title which they know to be certainly Right Or must the doubting Part concede to the Title which others know to be Right If so then the Lancastrian Line cannot be admitted or capable of any your allowances Or must there in this Case be two Kings for the two Parties and two Allegiances in this one Realm Or what if the Competitors and Doubts multiply where shall these and their Divisions end But suppose the whole Nation to
interrupt you did you not deny * Sol. Ab. pag. 23. Zadok's Title to be derived from the Kings donation tho' the Scripture expressly affirms that K. Solomon did put Zadok the Priest in the room of Abiathar I Kings 2.35 And do you now on a sudden put all the power of disposing that Priesthood in the arbitrary will of their Sovereigns that so you may oppose the Drs. Principles Dyscher What I delivered then can well consist with my present Sentiments which I offer not in an itch of contradicting the Doctor but upon the reasonableness of the thing it self For in Solomon's time the Genealogies were extant and the due course of Succession obvious on which account I take it Zadok had before in David's time been admitted under Abiathar into the communicable Offices of the Pontificate in order perhaps to the next plenary Succession after the death of Abiathar which Succession now commenced on Abiathar's remove before the time preintended by the actual introduction of him by King Solomon into the possession of what he had an antecedent Title to upon the next vacancy either by the right of Primogeniture which the antient Jews have owned from the first Patriarchs and the Law Lev. 16.32 or upon an ordination by the Ecclesiastic Powers of the Sanhedrin as men of Talmudic learning have conjectured Now it is certain that their native Kings of God's own appointment were obliged to keep the Law and every man's Rights established by it and the doing otherwise was really sinful and offensive tho' such unjust acts of Kings had among them the effectum juris as appears in the sentence of David between Ziba and Mephibosheth If therefore Solomon had rejected Zadok as well as Abiathar such causeless procedure in my opinion had been unjust but yet valid as being not subject to any Tribunal and presumable for just and done upon reasonable although secret Causes But when the Sovereignty fell into the hands of gentile Princes not tyed to the Mosaic Constitutions as their native Kings were and the Genealogies were lost and the Legal Successors unknown or absent the necessity of some high-Priest made the person upon each such vacancy Elective by the Supreme power or with the permission thereof by the priests and people as appears in the Maccabâ—ic History and Josephus Amongst which instances there is one above all most considerable viz. that of Simon who was made high-Priest by the Jews and Priest for ever until there should arise a faithful Prophet 1 Maccab. 14.41 to discover the lineal Successor as also to shew them what to do 〈◊〉 the defiled Stones of the Sanctuary 1 Maccab. 4.46 Whence it appears the sense of that people from the constitution of that Priesthood in Simon and his heirs for want of the true Proprietary Family First that there was an absolute necesity of the high-priesthood Secondly that it legally belonged to Aarons lineal heirs Thirdly that in want of them they if they had freedom were to elect another Family for that Succession All which set together discovers Zadok to be the next regular Successor to Abiathar since the Scriptures impeach not the King of any irregular and despotic injuries against the Laws of the high Priesthood Eucher But what say you to that note of the Dr that it was of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the annual Expiation performed by one apointed to it by God Does not this argue the Deposition of such a one null and yet upon necessity God permitted the Jews to own the Successor coming in by mere intrusion Dyscher To this I answer that if God himself allowed the Jews to admit such intruders then it appears that it was not of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the Expiation performed by one to whom it belonged by the constitution of the Law For if the Intruders Expiations were effectually acceptable they did the business as well as the Liturgy of the legal Proprietor But further Gods admission of the Intruder after Intrusion takes off his irregularity ratifies his Title and vacates that of the ejected and so is of Gods particular occasional appointment for the time being tho' not by the original designation of the Law and so this is nothing to the Drs. Hypothesis or Cause And this is in fact the real state of that Case in such Changes The State Civil first intruded Successors into the room of the expelled but this not creating any Plenitude or Sanctity of Title God made up this defect by giving the Intruders the Spirit of Prophecy which supervening made them also Gods high-priests to all Sacred as well as Civil purposes Which act of Gods was not a mere acknowledgment of their antecedent Authority but an efficient thereof to all the intents of the Levitic Law tho' the Dr. would fain perswade us to a contrary notion herein Yet had it been a mere consequent acknowledgment of their Priest hood held only by Intrusion as * Case of Sees c. Ch. 3. § 3. the Dr. intimates it had been nothing to his purpose because upon the Extinction of the Genealogies and Ignorance of the lineal Heirs and the more plenary Subjection therefore of that pontificate to the Gentile Sovereigns who were despotic and free from all the ordinary Rules that obliged their native Kings this had made these Changes of High-Priests in the potificate being an office carnal and temporal even in its Religious acts formally valid and authoritative for that these Gentile powers came into the Sovereignty of their native Kings or perhaps a greater to whom God at their request had subjected the Hierarchy after the manner of the Nations And a great deal of this I told you * Sol. Ab. pag. 24. in our last Conference which no doubt you consulted your Dr. upon tho' he takes no notice of it And I then drop'd another note perhaps worth a second Rumen with you that those Intrusions tho' thus admitted by God were signs of a broken Church and State hastening to its last Dissolution and so no just Precedent for the Christian Church to follow which is to continue to the End of all things except we must yield to methods of Violation that lead to our Extinction And I leave it to the pious consideration of every Religious Conscience to judge whether those servile Submissions to Imperial violences in the instances of the Baroccian Treatise and the others produced by the Learned Dr. against his Opponents did not properly lead to the ruin of the Church into which the Greeks from these precedents are fallen under Mahometan powers all which had been effectually obviated had the Church stuck to the Laws and Canons of the Christian Hierarchy and Communion against the encroachments of wicked Emperors against which it is the Duty of all Churches obstare principiis in contempt of persecutions Hereby and hereby alone shall we be able to stifle all Erastian and Antichristian Arts with which their concomitant persecutions
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever
Allegiance to the * Lib. 1. Can. 27. King de facto * Ibid. Chap. 28. tho' he come into the full Settlement by wrong and injurious means and requires only a National Submission or a continuance of quiet possession to the form of * Ibid. Chap. 30. a full and thorow Settlement owning the original wickedness of the seizure to be no Legal Bar or impeachment to the Authority of their Government into which they are formally and fully settled And such was the State of the Caesars in the Empire when the two great Apostles required Christian Subjection to them not on the moral justice of their Titles of which they could be no Judges but on their actual settlement in the Concession and Submission of the Senate and other popular Powers And such also was the reason of subjection in those instanced Changes on which that Convocation wisely grounded this their now celebrious Determination But since you have again upbraided me with Mr. Johnson I cannot choose but observe how naturally men that run into contrary extreams do meet in the other side of the Sphere as you and your greatest Adversaries do in this present Controversie And you both therefore fall into the same absurdities Now here Mr. Johnson either understands not the formal Nature of a full Settlement of if he does he is inconsistent with himself For if as I have proved a National Admission constitutes a Settlement how can Mr. Johnson explode Settlement when he places the Right of Kings in the Admission of the People But if he requires any moral justice to make the Act of the People Rightful then if the People fail in that moral Justice how can their Constitution be really Right by which Justice it self is violated And such failure in a People is no impossibility except you will entitle them to an infallible Sanctity in all popular Actions As for example Mr. Johnson produces but one Authority * Arg. 1. p. 50 51. out of Knyghton to prove that Kings acting perversly against the Laws may be deposed and some one of the Royal Race advanced by the Peers and People I will not now strive to weaken the Authority and Credit of the Author herein nor the Truth of that Power which the then Lords and Commons claimed against their King neither will I alledge the many Changes and Statutes since that seem to have abrogated the popular right of Abrogation but suppose that this still is the Right of the Nation against their Kings yet if the People should on false pretences and imputations abrogate their King this Act could not be morally Just and Right tho' it were in form legal and if the Subjects that are innocent are not to admit what is thus externally Legal except it be also altogether Rightful then are they not bound to stand by any Popular Abrogations which they know or judge to be morally faulty and consequently may oppose all new Titles if they are founded in the real Right of such Abrogations And to come close home to the Case if King James were not really guilty of every one of those Enormities to a Title upon which such Statute did legitimate the Abrogation and the Convention had really abrogated their King without accurate conviction of all those guilts recited by that lost or undiscoverable Statute quoted by Knyghton then had their Abrogation been a nullity as not being Rightful But further if men shall object that Knyghtons relation of a Statute not seen by himself but only said to be objected by the Peers and the Commons is not a Record nor a valid Testimony to any Civil Consequences as being not upon Oath liable to Error and uncapable of judicial forms of Discussion besides its singularity where shall we find a bottom to authorize King James's abrogation For 't is not enough to a Judicial Conviction or effect or surmise that Richard destroyed that Statute in the Tower upon such a general crimination that he defaced Statutes of which there is no particular form of Conviction extant no not in Knyghton who yet is the only Traditor of this Transaction but you must bring us legal proof for what must legally concern us And yet nothing else that Mr. Johnson hath cited out of Law Books nor King John's Charter in the Pastoral Letter doth amount to a Popular Right of Abrogation but only to a limited power of resisting Kings on their oppression of the Laws and Constitutions So that whatsoever has in fact been done toward our several Changes must not all be taken or sworn to as Right but the consequent Settlements by National Acts must be taken for formally Legal for the time being and submitted to under that Notion leaving the real Right of the procedures to Gods judgment because there is none other under Heaven to adjust it above the National Sanctions Dyscher I did not interject the mention of Mr. Johnson to justifie all his Principles but only to alledge for our Cause those Right Concessions of our greatest Enemies as more candid and clear from jugling than you even in his greatest bitterness I will now dismiss him and produce you what a Friend of mine impartially reflected on this pretended Authority in the Judicial Opinions of Parliaments viz. that you cannot but know that this Power of Parliaments is absolutely denied by that Party against whom you dispute and we do not think it reasonable to be convinced without proof viz. that what is thus done is agreeable to the Laws of England MS. Reflect Eucher If you are not inwardly convinced of the truth of their Judgment upon their Power and of the lawfulness of their Constitution founded thereupon I cannot help that Neither is the Care of the State so much concerned to enforce such an inward conviction tho' it is to perswade it and to silence Contradictions But as I have often told you Judicial Opinions must overbear all private ones to the contrary as to all Civil Consequences This the peace of mankind the necessity of ending Controversies and the fundamental Reasons of Government do universally require so that you must assign some Superior Court or Judge within the Kingdom to be determined by if you will not stand to their Judgment or expose all to private judgments the first of which is impossible to be sworn and the later impracticable in a Society And to turn the dull point of this Objection on your self the Parliament doth not think it reasonable to be determined by Private Judgments especially those of the professed Enemies of their long-settled and immemorial Authority And what if I oppose the general Trust of the Nation in Civils to the publick Judgment of our Parliaments rather than the contrary Decisions of some private Zealots and Casuists whose Senses are seldom uniform often impracticable and always inauthoritative Will you here set your Private Judgments in battle array against the Authority and Judgment of the whole Nation and the Publick Estates thereof Or whether
remind me of your own Principles and Senses I fear I shall fall into the Spirit of T. B. again and not use you very partially in some of my Reflexions Eucher I am sensible by experience of your infirmity And since good natur'd Men are sometimes passionate I know how to bear as well as to correct a little rudeness I pray good Brother let me know what 't is now that begins to provoke your choler Dyscher When you had spent a great many Arguments drawn out with much Pomp and Ostentation being basted in them you grow weary with strugling and fairly give up all and acknowledg that †Sol. ab pag. 27.29 an Act of State Christian cannot alone vacate a Spiritual Charge Charge by any Divine Law primitive Canon or Prescription This is as full as can be worded against the Power of the State to deprive Bishops Now see how you come about again in the very next words Yet such an Act received and admitted by the Church may from her concurrence have a just and legal Effect And then upon this Notion the Statute of Deprivation ipso facto must be taken as a Law upon the Church to reject the Recusants totally from their Stations Here you will not have the Deprivation to proceed from the Act of the State alone but to save some Honour to the Clergy you make their Deprivation valid by their Concurrence to the Act of Deprivation But I pray how did they concur Was it otherwise than by submitting to the Act when it was made And is such Submission any Authority I thought they had been quite different things Did the Clergy shew any signs or make any protestations for their Right viz. that the Act of Parliament for the Deprivation of the Bishops was not valid without their Concurrence No not a word but when it is done they submit to it and acknowledg it And you would make a Protestation against Fact that their Concurrence was necessary to it that themselves did not pretend nor dare they do it to this day It is certain the Parliament thought their own Authority sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask or think they needed the Concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid On the contrary no Clergy-men have dared to dispute it but those who are deprived And for others to imagin to come in by their Concurrence into a share of the Authority is like the fly on a Wheel of the Chariot that thought he contributed to the dust that was raised for he too gave his concurrence It is possible such Men as you should not see how contemptible it renders them to pretend to an Authority they dare not avow And upon this Foundation to raise Arguments to justify their proceedings which they cannot maintain any other way For these Men to deny themselves to be Erastians or ever to name any Ecclesiastical Authority I had almost said to call them a Church Or to speak as †Sol. c. Ab. Pag. 29. you do that the Church ought not to admit Deprivations on improper or unreasonable Demands As if the Parliament did request it from the Convocation or left it to their admitting or not admitting As if they durst dispute the validity of an Act of Parliament for want of their Concurrence As if any of them durst let such a word come out of their Mouth Behold the Ghost the Echo of a Church c. M. S. Reflex and that the consent publick and actual Concurrence of the Church is necessary to give an Ecclesiastical Effect to Civil Ordinances in Matters of the Church Now this Concession overthrows your whole Cause and being placed after the main Body of your Arguments is it self an Argument that you had little faith in them So then our Bishops being never Canonically Deprived are the yet proper Bishops of their Sees But you come like a Spiritual Jugler and perswade us that this hath been Canonically done For the Church say you ought to empty the Sees of such Incumbents that are dangerous to the Civil State But Sir must the Church cast out her Bishops as oft as they will not comply with Vsurpers c. But you say this was done by Acts of Separation properly Ecclesiastical the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church taking the Jurisdiction till the Chapter elect and Bishops consecrate another But Sir you cannot but know that the Dean and Chapter have no Jurisdiction over their Metropolitane and the See must be vacant before they can proceed to Election T. B. Sect. Pag. 37.38 Eucher I have heard with much patience yea pleasure all your Noble strains of Rhetoric and need only say If I have spoken evil bare witness to the evil but if well why smitest thou me For if the Deprived assert the Churches Concurrence necessary to give Acts of State an Ecclesiastical Effect and I grant it what Cause have you to fly in my face for even that very Concession But for you to upbraid me with my Candour who are so heedless in attending to my words as to take or set them off in other Senses than rationally can be fixed on them in their clear account of this Concurrence is neither very courteous nor prudential Let us therefore again look over these oversights and see whether we can come again to our selves First then I never said that the Concurrence of the Church was necessary either to make an Act of Parliament or to make it valid in Ecclesiasticals and particularly in Acts of Deprivation But I admitted your Principle so far and no further that her Concurrence is necessary to give Statutes an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue For an Act of Parliament may justly require of the Church some certain Ecclesiastical proceedings without any joynt Session or Consultation of the Church And such Acts shall be just and valid of themselves to oblige the Conscience of the Church to obedience or executive Concurrence As suppose an Act of Parliament repealing all the Statutes of Premunire which cramp the liberties of the Church in the Episcopal Successions and Synodical Consultations for a perfect reformation to a Primitive purity should consequently require our Bishops or Convocations to proceed upon such relaxation to provide and execute better rules of Discipline on the morals and duties of the Christian Church under their care and to renew the Commercium formatarum with foreign Churches for a general Restitution of Piety and Order to its Primitive State such a Law I think would valioly oblige the Church to Concurrence without which however actually given it could not have its Ecclesiastical Effect When King Joash commanded the Priests to employ the sacred Money to the reparation of the Lords House it was a valid command to oblige but while the Priests neglected it it had no Sacred effect 2 King 12. So when Moses spake unto Aaron Eleazar and Ithamar to eat the meat offering and heave shoulder according to set Rules the precept was very
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood
For if all the Bishops Priests and Christian Laity with them will adhere to those whom the Statute dooms to Deprivation how can the Statute pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect And so the Church ought always to do if they shall apparently persecute her Bishops for Righteousness sake to hinder their temporal Laws from attaining an Ecclesiastical Effect against the innocent whatsoever afflictions they may suffer for the opposition And if ever Popery Arianism Socinianism or Erastianism should which God forbid press it self upon us by Act of Parliament I doubt not but our Church also will herein become Recusant against such Laws and seal their Integrity with their Blood So that in our Case the only Question herein is whether this Law upon the Church to admit the Deprivation be unjust or no If it be in the Churches Judgment she ought to refuse it if not unjust 't is admissible Now this we believe and you the contrary and God must judge between us but in the mean time the church must act according to her present Convictions Dyscher But the form of the Statute is that the Recusants shall be ipso facto Deprived which must import the actual Deprivation to be completed purely by the mere virtue of this Act antecedently to the Concurrence of the Church Eucher I would willingly allow you that this is the Sense of the Parliament if you can clear it from Non-sense of which I am not willing that great Assembly should be impeached And I will also grant you that the mere Virtue of the Statute alone can deprive them of their Temporalities without the Churches Concurrence But perhaps all Decrees of Humane Power in things dubious and future have this tacit yet necessary Supposition quantum in nobis est as much as in them lies for farther certainly no Power can go And further as to the Spiritualties 't is possible the Parliament might intend no more than this that the Recusants should be ejected or quitted by the Church upon and undoubted presumption of her submissive Concurrence or the Recusants own Cession when the Temporalities were gone and their Non-resistance to such necessary and valid Laws But the Senses of Statutes I leave to the Parliament and the Judges while yet you and I know our Ecclesiastical Principles and Obligations in matters truly Spiritual and Christian and must act accordingly whatsoever Lay-men or Lawyers think hereupon And agreeably the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church looking upon the Sees of the Recusant Bishops de jure vacant discharged the Recusants of their Authority by taking the Jurisdiction to themselves which in such Cases they judged lawful by the Laws of God as well as Man as also Canonical according to our Constitutions tho' herein they assume no ordinary or proper form of Jurisdiction over Bishops not fallen de jure from their Sees and you may very well remember that I noted against this expected Objection in our last Conference †Sol. Ab. pag. 29. that this was and might be done upon judgment of Conscience for themselves and the Church but not of ordinary Jurisdiction over the Bishop And therefore you ought not to have charged this upon us as if we herein own such a Jurisdiction which we disclaim but have proved that the Church may not upon just and necessary Causes desert her Bishop over whom otherwise she confessedly has no proper formal or ordinary Jurisdiction It is most evidently plain that if the Causes be just our Canonical and Legal Constitutions not only allow but require such a Divorce from the fallen Bishop and assign the Jurisdiction to the Church Metropolitical Now if this our Constitution be irregular and invalid why did the Deprived ever own it till now the operation of it came upon them And therefore whether this imports such a formal Jurisdiction or no which yet I deny it cannot be reproached for Uncanonical without condemning our first Reformation and those Models to which your selves have hitherto sworn Canonical observance Dyscher What I have said saves me the pains of reflecting further on what you say in calling the Concurrence of some of the Clergy the Act and Concurrence of the whole Church of England But how the whole Church of England can be represented not only without the Metropolitan and many of his Suffragan Bishops by anumber no matter how many of the inferior Clergy in direct opposition and rebellion against their Lawful Superiors how this can be justified to be a true and Canonical Repre-sentation of the Church of England I leave to you to explain and to distinguish from the gainsaying of Korah Ms Reflex Eucher Except I much forget my self I never asserted any number of inferiour Clergy-men to be Representatives to the whole Church of England nor yet that the Bishops were deprived by the Representative Body of the whole Church but this I say that the actual Ecclesiastical ejection is performed successively by several Representative parts of the whole Church as first by the Metropolitical Church and then the Diocesan Chapters representing their respective Province and Dioceses Now upon an Act for Deprivation the See upon just causes becoming de jure vacant the Course of our Ecclesiastical Politie is such The Metropolitical Church first takes and deputes the jurisdiction the Diocesan Chapters omit their acknowledgments of their former Bishops and at length upon precept proceed to a new Election Bishops upon this except in mere Translations consecrate the Elected thence the whole Episcopal Colledge own the new as do the Cathedral Clergy in their offices and devotions and all the Clergy in person and the Laity by their representative Churchwardens in admitting the Visitations of the new Prelates and executing their precepts Ecclesiastical and all Lay-men personally own them that recieve their Confirmations Benedictions or any other Sacred Ordinances from them or with them as Bishops All which being uniformly and peaceably promoted by these gradations if of much more Weight and Efficacie than a mere Synodical Censure before it has attained to such an actual consequent Reception in the whole Church And therefore when this Process is complete we may truly say the Bishops are Ecclesiastically outed not by the Church representative but by the Church original And hence such a plenary consent of the Church diffusive against a few Bishops and Clergy on the account of their Recusancy must in legal and equitable construction be presumed to proceed from a common uniform Sense of their notorious incapacity and ineptitude of guiding Consciences and exercising Episcopal Functions and Authorities under the present State And upon notorious incapacities the Church may alienate her self from the incapacitated and recurr to other Bishops for new Consecrations or Investitures especially when justly required thereto by the offended Powers And if any incapacity of exercising the Pontifical Authority had been upon Aaron especially from disowning the Principality of Moses which is or comes very near your Case and Korah had opposed him
the Convocation in their Judgment were to yield to or oppose for 't is impossible but they must judge one or the other to be their Duty Now if they had been of opinion for the opposition this must have been done by Synodical Remonstrance if their Judgments was for the Submission then they were to break no Silence to the contrary Now then is not their actual Silence hereupon a legal token that they thought it their Duty to yield in Silence Except we will perversly judge them silent against the Dictates of their Conscience which if you will it will lye upon you to prove it out Whensoever things are brought into such a Strait that either Silence or Contradiction must become a Duty there Silence is as moral a Token of Consent as Contradiction is of Dissent And in all cases where either Assent or Dissent is inevitably requisite and the Rule is that all Dissents must be express and protested as the forms are in the Lord's House and process of Actions in the Civil Law there Silence in Law is taken for Consent But here is yet more the King had graciously conceded a liberty to the Convocation to propose their Grievances in order to his Royal Redress So that tho' they had no Civil or Legal Liberty to remonstrate against the Statute yet they had an opportunity to have presented an humble Supplication for a relaxing Expedient or a Temperament on just Security for the inoffensiveness of the suspended Yet neither did they think themselves obliged in Duty so much as to break Silence in this manner herein And must not the State then conclude that the Church by this Silence thought it fit to yield However I hope you do not think in good sadness that their Silence did signifie indignation scorn sullenness or denial to the State For 't is true in cases of request and contract Silence is no grant of a Proposal but Silence under a Law together with a consequent Obedience to the Precept thereof is an indubitable Token of Consent which was the Churches case here while silent in her Convocation and obedient in her Metropolitical and Diocesan Bodies So much then for Consent next for the Authority which you say is not asserted but betrayed by this Silence But neither here can I agree with you For as I never said that Silence asserts Authority so neither does it betray it For your instance from the Peers does not import a Right betrayed but only a Vote consented to by Silence and this confirms my Observation and refutes you For as the Silence of a Peer surrenders not his Peerage so neither does such Silence in the Church forfeit or vacate her Authority No tho' the Church had had Right to have entred the Parliament House with Votes and Protestations But suppose it for once that the Churches Silence had betrayed her Right see upon whom the Treachery must be most unfortunately charged Did the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and his other Recusant Colleagues that had a legal Right of Session in the Lord's House enter and enter a Protestation against the Validity of that Act as wanting their and the Churches Suffrage or Synodical Concurrence No not a jot of this And yet they by their Station as well as Cause ought to have been the first in the Protestation which if they would not make for themselevs and the Churches Rights then according to you they are Proditors and so 't is unreasonable in them or you to require the Protestation of others less concerned or obliged by their Order Cause and Principles But the truth is we had no just Cause or legal Authority of making such Remonstrant Protestations and so our Silence is not perfidious but dutiful Now this being so clearly stated all your childish trifling upon French Subjects and Turkey Mutes is very idle and impertinent since Silence does not indeed import Authority against but Submission under Laws Yet even in these French and Turkish oppressions the Silence argues an opinion that they either in Duty or Prudence are to be silent and quietly submissive And this certainly was the Sense of our Saviour in his Silence when he was led as a Lamb to the Slaughter But to deal plainly these Instances pertain not to our present Case for here ours was Silence and obedient Submission to the Commands of the State the comporting with which in Silence is a Consent to and Comprobation of its Justice and is more than a meer silent Patience under unjust Oppressions So inartificial and improper is the Objection from these poor Mutes and Vassals Thirdly you assure me that Silence is no Deprivation No verily nor did I ever hear that it was But to intercept your hast whose Silence was I speaking of And to whom did I ascribe the Ecclesiastical Acts of Deprivation Why truly I spake of the Silence in Convocation as importing their Opinion that they ought not to oppose the Laws of the State But I never said that the Convocation did deprive the Deprived No surely they sate not at the time or on the Day of Deprivation But I told you before that the Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Acts of Deprivation consisted in the Metropolitical and Diocesan Alienations effected not by mere Silence but Canonical Acts and forms of procedure And now let us see whether my Memory hath failed me any more than my Cause I here assert the Silence of the Convocation but afterward told you * Sol. Ab. Pag. 34. that a Motion for a Petition was stifled in the Lower House of Convocation †T. B. Repeats it thus You tell us of a Motion in the lower House of Convocation but leaves out the word Stifled fraudulently tho' you clip my words on purpose to abuse me For a Motion may be stifled before it is offered by one that knows that it is intended to be made But however an actual Motion of one Member may consist with the Silence of the whole Body For if the Majority Vote Silence against the Motion for a Petition the Convocation is silent and silenceth all its Members as to the Petition it self tho' some brake Silence in the silenced Motion but keep it after thro' voluntary desistence or Canonical Order Now here in fact a Motion was offered by one excellent Person but upon the report then tendred to him of my Lord Archbishop Sancroft's request to the contrary he desisted in Silence tho' you however in this Conference have thus barbarously bespatter'd him when there was just reason for your Silence But however herein you own T. B. has a very contracted Memory too when †T. B. See Lett. Pag. 42. he endeavours to discredit the Story of this Motion so stifled on the said Report But you have one Argument that will confound me into Eternal Silence or Amazement namely that they that refused Dr. Tillotson for their Prolocutor would not have consented to have had him their Archbishop Well be it so what then Perhaps if
the Election of Bishops had been freely left to our Convocations they would have admitted few or none of those whom our Kings have advanced but yet the Chapters electing have consented to the Legality of those Nominations which they have not always judged so expedient and the Episcopal Colledge have consented to their Communion with the rest of the Clergy as well in as out of Convocation as no doubt they will with the new Archbishop at their next meeting without breaking any Silence against him by way of Dissent And now at last I am come to your Questions about the Deposition of Episcopacy And first you say the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland are silent under the Abolition of Episcopacy it self and twit me that hereby belike they concur to that Act of Abolition No Brother this does not follow from me but according to you their Silence is a betraying their Right But here again you cannot distinguish the Case of quitting a Personal Right to an Authority which is our Case from the Abolition of the Authority it self Universally which is the Case of Scotland For they that can legally do the former may not legally do the latter For the King can depose the Judges but not the Courts and dismiss other Officers whose Offices he cannot abrogate And the Church can depose Priests and Bishops but not the Priesthood or Episcopacy And whether any Civil State has more intrinsick Power in the Spirituals of the Church than the Church her self ever had in most perfect Freedom judge you But here I must Advocate for the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland against your Calumnies For tho' they made no formal Protestation at Parliament yet they assert their Episcopacy by an avowed Communion of their own and a renunciation of the Presbyterian Model But as to the Civil Power of abrogating Episcopacy here I answer 't is as great as 't is any where but I find not our Parliaments to pretend to the same Opinions here as they do in Scotland and I hope you will not require me to justifie Scottish Pretensions I think the Constitutions of our Orders are founded on Divine Rules and have descended to us by Traditions truly Catholic and Primitive which here we are not so rude to profane or violate by any wanton Claims of Arbitrary Power and in my Opinion the Scots will never acquit themselves well to God his Church and the King till they copy after us where Episcopacy is as well secured as the Scriptures and Sacraments and all the most essential Parts of Christianity But if any of these ever happen to be persecuted here I hope we shall remember Him who on all such Occasions requires us to take up the Cross and follow him And now we are upon this melancholy Speculation of the Church of Scotland I fear the Presages you have made from their fall have been most influential with you to your present Recusancy to those Powers from whom you expect our Dissolution This I confess is a very deplorable jealousie for which if there had been sufficient ground as there was not yet this will not justifie Recusancy to the Civil Powers But the mischief of it is more than Personal and Temporary For hereby the Deprived Fathers who by their glorious merits in the last Reign might have been useful Mediators for the Scotch Church and Promoters of our own are now become uncapable of this second Glory and useless to the Churches happiness by this unfortunate Recusancy But herein I charge no man's Conscience but only bewail the infelicity And shall pray that the Goodness of God will so graciously dispose our Tempers and Affairs as in his own good time to set all things at Right and shew us at length the Light of his countenance Dyscher But let me put these things closely to your Conscience do you verily believe that your Church and Chapters admit the Ecclesiastical Change upon the merits of the Cause and not merely on the fear or acknowledged Authority of the State Eucher I do believe so in very deed just as I have spoken and my reason is because had the Act of Deprivation past for recusancy of Mahometism c. and the Church would never have forsaken their Diocesans nor elected any other even Orthodox Bishops the Act for Deprivation being impious and for that cause unobliging and as loose as Dr. Hody's Rules and as strait as your Principles are I put it close home to his and your Consciences whether on a Case so put or supposed you can think the contrary Dyscher Your jumble of Queen Mary's and Queen Elizabeth Bishops I shall not examine because a full answer to that either already is or suddenly will come abroad Eucher This is what above all I have ever greatly coveted and I have of late been so lucky as to meet with the Sense of †Part 2. Chap. 3. Pag. 33 34. your excellent Author of Christian Communion on this point But because you have hinted to me my shortness of memory I had rather have it repeated from your memory that we may discuss it Dyscher Indeed it was almost lapsed but now upon your Suggestion I have recovered it and will accordingly lay it before you As to this Case of the Marian Bishops saith he or of other Popish Bishops ander Edward the Sixth two things are to be noted in their removal and ejection out of their Bishoprick's One is from the Temporalities the Benefices and Preferments thereof and these Temporal Endowments are directly subjects to the Temporal Power c. The other is from the Spiritual adherence and dependence of the People on them as on heads of Church unity and Communion for religious ministrations And this there was no need to deprive the Popish Bishops of for they had already deprived themselves of it by their own Corruptions both in Doctrines and Devotions Adulterations of Religion and corrupt ministrations of the word of Prayers and Sacraments break the Ligaments which tye on People to this adherence to any Bishops or Pastors yea tho' they were Apostles themselves Tho' we or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be anathema or accursed saith St. Paul Gal. 1.8 When therefore any Bishops and Pastors instead of heading Christian Truth appear at the head of Vn-Christian Errors the people are discharged from their Obligation and Dependence upon them and are to unite themselves as they can to others who still keep firm to that necessary Truth and Gospel Worship which they have forsaken And this was done by the Popish Bishops who fed the people with false Doctrines and polluted Prayers and Ministrations which left no need of any thing more to deprive them of the Peoples Communion and Dependence these Papal Corruptions of Religious Ministrations being enough to discharge and drive them away of themselves So that the reformed Bishops when they were set at the heads of those Dioceses called
none away nor made them break off from any just and due Spiritual Dependence on their former Bishops whose own heretical Doctrine and corrupt Ministrations had made the people cease from depending any longer in Conscience upon them They wanted only to be Lawfully empowered and regularly ordained themselves by Episcopal Imposition of hands as all those reformed Bishops plainly were and so were no Spiritual Intruders nor guilty of any Civil Vsurpation or Injustice But where Bishops are Orthodox and are deprived for their adherence to Truth and Righteousness both in their private Practice and Publick Ministrations the people are still left Spiritually to depend on them And so we our selves should have thought at least we all seem as if we should if by Gods Providence the Civil State had gone on to ddprive our reformed Bishops for sticking to the Doctrines and Worship of the Reformation and had set up Popish Bishops in their places c. Vide. Eucher This Doctrine of that learned Person must be admitted with a grain of Salt or else it will be very unwholesom and prove very convulsive in the Ecclesiastick Body For tho every single Christian is to abhor and defie all false Doctrine condemned by the unanimous Sense and suffrage of the Universal Church from Divine Authorities yet single Persons cannot distributively and alone reject their Bishops as not Bishops for heretical Opinions or corrupt Ministrations which the general Body and all Orders of the Church do not uniformly censure irregular and renounce their Authors except a just and regular Sentence pass in form against them When Churches are concorporated into Provincial and Diocesan Unions there must be some public conduct for the diffusive multitude to a due discussion of Principles in order to such Divorces Thus of old when grievances arose from suspected Bishops the people appealed to Synods to judge upon their Cause but in Cases notorious they addressed to other Churches Bishops and Synods to allow their necessary Rejection of their irregular Bishop and ordain them others And this usage was as common as useful till the Papal Usurpations rendred it impracticable in the Western Church and so necessitated extraordinary forms of reformation For here the Prince and the People and a great Body of the Clergy having an Ecclesiastical Cause of Controversie against the Marian Bishops unrelievable by any fair domestic or foreign Synod were forced upon the Notoriety of the Evil to use extraordinary measures of purgation not by rabble or incoherent Partitions but by a National Judgment in Parliament as a middle expedient as well against intestine Schisms as Romish abuses upon which discharge of Papal Tyranny a way was opened to that true and uniform Sense of true Religion which the whole emancipated Church presently received with a glad and chearful Uniformity which was a felicity however not atchievable by a loose unorganized Multitude Since then the whole People of this Land did in their National Senate Vindicate the pure Religion established in former Convocations from the Marian Bishops the enacted Deprivation was designed more against their Spiritual Conduct than their Temporal fortunes and the People followed that publick intention not their own private counsel in the reception of new Bishops and the models of reformation And herein such measures of prudence were observed which cannot be secured in a promiscuous multitude which I wonder that Author did not consider For a Priest is not immediatly upon dropping of an Error materially heretical to be taken by all at random for a formal and self-deprived heretic or Anathema but he must be previously heard and admonished and only upon incorrigible Obstinacy to be rejected with appeal unto God and an apology to all Churches or Spiritual Fathers unconcerned and untainted But then this is a Canonical form of exauctoration by the Church not a formal Self-deprivation otherwise upon this Authors Principle all the Hierarchy of the Romish Communion was long self-deprived before the Reformation and totally exauctorated and how then will he justify our Episcopal Succession For such ipso facto irregularities that are so in their own nature and not by mere Canonical Ordinance degrade as well as deprive from not only Order but Communion to which of old upon Penitence they were wont to be restored not as Priests but as Laymen for that such a fall was an ipso facto Degradation of Order in which there were to be no public Penitents But now if we make such Deprivation the Act of the Christian People as we must then it and all the previous process thereunto must be executed by some formed Session or Council for the Place and People concerned but for the whole People of this Land we have no Council but that of Parliament And here it must be noted that a Christian Parliament hath as much Spiritual Right against heretical Priests as the common Christian Multitude and if the Multitude may on such notorious Corruptions eject one and procure another Bishop even without the Consent of civil Powers according to this Authors Doctrine surely such Right much more belongs to the Christian Legislative to which the Care of Religion does by Divine Ordinances belong as well as to the Hierarchy and common Multitude which had a real need of their Counsel and Conduct in so great a Difficulty The People therefore in Parliament did their Part in the Ejection of the Marian Bishops and all the Chapters and other Ecclesiastical Orders sequaciously concurred and completed the Design of that Act in their Alienation from the condemned Recusants And tho' all this was done for refusing the Oath of Supremacy yet that Recusancy being grounded on false Principles in Religion and maintained in Defence of the Romish Usurpations and Corruptions the Statute of Deprivation had not only a civil Intention but Religious also and was received accordingly But all this while I find no Answer to that famous Passage quoted by me †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 32. out of Dr. Hammond's Tract of Schism tho' of so great Moment and of so great Strength to justifie such Statutes of Deprivation for the Security of the civil Government against Seducements and Seditions But if you would take my Counsel I would advise you not to lay the Cause of this Controversie in Points of Religion nor make common People the Judges of them for fear of a Snap that perhaps you are not aware of Dyscher What what do you mean I am a little startled at this Suggestion since we are where we were and have neither altered the old Doctrines nor the Practices they direct to Eucher Do not you remember that that great Man who wrote the Vindication of the Deprived Bishops vehemently argues †Vindic. of Depr Bish pag. 24.25 26 27. that not only Errors whether great or small but even unnecessary Truths become Heresies when they are made the Causes or Characters of different Communions And such all Principles and Rules of Christian Morals inforced on peril of Sin