abrogate them he can in time of necessity Govern by the Laws of Reason without any written Law and he is Judge of the necessity and in all this he warrants him as the Canon does by the Power which the Kings of Judah had and in the later end of that Chapter says that this Prerogative of Kings is not against Law but by Law and that the Laws themselves imply so much and have given this leave The same Loyal Bishop in the said Treatise further notes the great submission which the Bishops of Rome themselves made to the Imperial Laws and that even when they liked them and when they lik'd them not and of all most material says he is the Obedience of St. Gregory the Great to Mauritius the Emperor who made a Law that no Soldier should turn Monk without his leave This St. Gregory esteem'd to be an impious Law he modestly admonished the Emperor of the irreligion of it But Maurice nevertheless commanded him to publish that Law. The good Bishop knew his Duty obeyed his Prince sent it up and down the Empire and gave this account of it Vtrobique quae debui exolvi qui Imperat ri obedientiam praebui pro Deo quod sensi minimè tacui I have done both my Duties I have declared my Mind for God and have paid my Duty and Obedience to the Emperor Ductor Dubit Vol. 3. Lib. 2. p. 176. This that Learned and Loyal Bishop remarks as a president to Guide and Govern Church-men in the like Cases And by the way we may note upon the Story that in those days when St. Gregory publish'd an Edict of the Emperor's which to him seemed impious Reading was not thought to be Teaching If you reply that the model and measures of our Government are different and will not admit of so high a Prerogative in our Princes as was exercised in those unbounded and absolute Monarchies What! not in Causes Ecclesiastical Was it well done then of the arch-Arch-Bishops and Bishops of our Church in Convocation to run the parallel of that Obedience we owe to His Majesty in Causes Ecclesiastical up to the height of what was used by the Godly Kings among the Jews and Christian Emperors of the Primitive Church and to hold him Excommunicate ipso facto Whosoever should affirm the contrary and not restored but only by the Archbishop after his Repentance and publick Revocation of those his wicked Errors And had not you better have held your peace than on this occasion to have medled with the Constitution of the Church of England to which you have subscribed I think this a time to have been more reserved 2. Your Second Reason wherefore we cannot Consent and consequently not Read follows Because it is to Teach an unlimited and universal Toleration which the Parliament in 72 Declared illegal and which has been condemned in the Christian Church in all ages How well you have reasoned from the Constitution of the Church of England in such points of it as relate to this matter let others Judge Your next proof is drawn from the Civil Constitution with Respect to the Parliament of England that says it is illegal How the Parliament of England Where are the Three Estates Where the King Did all these Declare it illegal I wonder you will so much reproach the Clergy of England with whom you deal in this Discourse as to think them such as may be shammed again with the old Wheadle of 41. No no Sir we know enough and have felt enough and too lately yet to forget it of such Parliaments as would have their Votes and Ordinances Obligatory to the Subject without the Assent and Authority of the King And yet this is the Authority and the best you have to alledge or say for yourself in justification of your Disobedience and Opposition to His Majesty in this Affair The Parliament say you in 72. Declared it illegal What then What is the Parliaments Declaration to us in this or in any other matter so as to make it illegal ever the more without the King Is this after the Constitution of a Monarchical Government Does not a pretence to such a Power in a Parliament without the concurrent Authority of the King subvert the Fundamental Laws of this Kingdom But I assure myself that they in that matter assumed not to themselves such a Power as your Letter would give them Why may not a Vote of the House of Lords and Commons in 41. the King dissenting be as good an Authority as one in 72. the King dissenting On the same grounds you may as well determine against the Kings Soveraign and his Negative Voice as his dispensing Power For it was then resolved and while they were yet a legal Parliament as that in I mean that of 41. That the Sovereign Power resides in both Houses and that the King ought to have no Negative Voice Resolved also That whatsoever they Declared to be Law ought not to be questioned by the King. But to these Votes the King never gave his Assent wherefore they signifie nothing to us but the Opinion of those men at that time The Sovereign Power and the Negative Voice and the Authority of Declaring what is Law and what is not Law standing where it did before for all their Declaring otherwise then or the Parliament in 72. Declaring afterward But I humbly conceive as I said before that the Parliament in 72. never meant to extend their Vote to the Uses you have made of it in your Letter The worst which can be made of it is no more than that the Question being at that time moved about the Dispensing Power in the King they shewed their Judgment but left the matter remaining undertermin'd For you must know it was no more than the Opinion and not the Sentence of Illegality which was passed on the King's Dispensing Power at that time They knew well enough that to be an Unparliamentary proceeding and that they had no Authority to drive that business so far without the joynt Concurrence of the King only it is some Mens presumption or ignorance to give them more Where there is a matter of Question or Doubt between the King and the Parliament the House of Lords or the House of Commons or both having by the King's leave the liberty of free speaking there may give their Judgment by passing a Vote so as to incline to their Opinion and obtain the Kings if they can to a Consent and Concurrence with them but not so as to bind the Subject or to defend them in their Disobedience to the King In the mean time till the matter be more Legally and Authentically according to the Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom determined which can be no otherwise than with the joynt consent of the King and His two Houses of Parliament together Till then however problematically illegal the thing is not Authoritatively illegal and so however shaken by the Opinions of some Great
easily seen whither you would drive us If you are as you pretend your self a Son of that Church an unspotted Loyalty has hitherto been accounted Her indeleble Character I am sorry to find so little of it in your Letter you have by it outdone the subtilty and cruelty of all Her Enemies Never was so deadly a stroke given nor so natural and effectual to Her Ruine as that which you commend to us for the only method of saving Her. I am charitably minded you have done this nevertheless of a good Intent crowded along with the zealous Hurry of a Popular Mistake And the rather because I see your Letter makes a better ending than a beginning and that notwithstanding your positiveness all the way you are not so satisfied in your own Reasonings but you relent at last into that good Nature and Temper which for your Honour I will Remark in your own Words thus This Sir is our Case in short the difficulties are great on both Sides and therefore now if ever we ought to Besiege Heaven with our Prayers for Wisdom Counsel and Courage c. To clear then the difficulties which you acknowledge in this Case I shall apply my self touching upon the most material parts of your Letter Our Enemies you say who have given our Gracious King this Council against us have taken the most effectual way not only to Ruine us but to make us appear the Instruments of our own Ruine that what course soever we take we shall be undone and one side or other will conclude we have undone our Selves and fall like Fools By our Enemies I conceive you can mean no other than the Kings Friends whom I believe no further our Enemies than what amounts to a bare Se Defendendo Where they meet us in opposition to what necessarily conduces to the preservation of Themselves their Lives their Fortunes you must not blame them but the common instinct of Nature that they are so far our Enemies In all other Cases they are our Friends beyond our Expectations Enemics short I am sure of our Fears and of what was heretofore in publick Print our own Character and Prospect of a Popish Successor As for the Free and Undisturbed Exercise of our Religion our Churches our Revenues our Dignities we enjoy them all And we have further the Kings Gracious Offer of whatsoever other Assurances we can excogitate against our Fears and Jealousies lest they should not continue I know no cause of this great Out-cry against the King and His Friends on account that they are our Enemies nor where we are hurt unless by the holding our Hands from flying at one anothers Throats We are enabled by these Laws so soon as we may to let loose our too prurient Rage one upon the other but especially upon the Kings Friends whom we I think therefore call our Enemies We can hardly forbear already and aloud to foretell what must become of them afterwards what Gibbets and Axes and Confiscations are provided for them for His Majesties Commissioners Judges Military Officers Papists in Mascarade and out of Mascarade and whoever else have not dared to deny their Obedience to His Majesties Moral Commands or to leave him Solitary and Destitute of Servants to Guard and Attend him What else means this our so tenacious sticking to these Undoing and Sanguinary Laws And how pitifully are the Claws hid of such as pretend them to be the only possible expedient of their own Security Now to repress the violent and blind Zeal of such Men for the Established Laws without abatement or allowance of any thing to the Vicissitude which the Providence of God has made among us from a Protestant to a Prince of the Catholick Communion is I assure my self all His Majesty designs by His Endeavor to get our good Will toward the remove of the Test and Penal Laws And if I thought any Clergy of the Church of England or other of that Communion compliant with the King in this his charitable undertaking should suffer in the least Hair of his Head or lose by it any the least Liberty becoming a Christian to own in such a Juncture I should not have opened my Mouth to have been an Advocate in this Cause And whosoever thinks otherwise if he consider he will find he cannot do it without Reflection of most vile ill Names upon his Majesties Honour and Blaspheming the Sacredness of his Royal Promise So that Sir I think you might have spared His Majesties Friends and His Council and have allowed them a milder Character than our Enemies and such as seek our Ruine by that Name exposing them in the very Head of your Letter to the Rage and Odium of the People who are so far from being Enemies to us that themselves are the Persons in distress and danger from us And having now a time to Speak do request of us without any injury to our selves that we will please to remove no other but those Laws to which not only their Fortunes but their Lives lay every Hour Obnoxious and only for serving God according to their Consciences and their King at his Command according to their natural Allegiance But these Enemies of ours since you will have them so you note further and to our greater misfortune to be of that base and ignoble kind as having us in their Claws they must divert themselves a little in Play with us as the Cat does with the Mouse before they devour us our Gracious King the while looking on and so comes in the business of the Declaration The Reading of which in our Churches and Chapels you intimate to be contrived as it were for nothing in the World but to make our Enemies Sport For the main work of our Undoing you account is over and the trick of this Declaration no other Than while themselves are the Authors to make us appear nevertheless the Instruments of our own Ruine In good earnest Sir and is this the likeliest reason you could Excogitate Had you but a little of what St. Paul tells us thinketh no evil that would have suggested to you some more charitable account of His Majesties together with his Councils proceeds in this Affair If you had not been so hasty as to take what lay uppermost in a Mind possest with Passion and Prejudice you might have thought of that His Majesty Himself publishes in the front of His Declaration in these words Our Conduct has been such in all times as ought to have perswaded the World that We are firm and constant to Our Resolutions Yet that easie People may not be abused by the Malice of crafty wicked Men We think fit to declare That Our Intentions are not changed since the Fourth of April 1687. when We issued out Our Declaration for Liberty of Conscience How the easie People have been wrought upon since that time to lessen their Opinion of His Majesties Sincerity in that Declaration is too notorious And what Insinuations of the daily progress
Consent nor Read. Nevertheless the Basis or Ground-work on which you Rear the whole Superstructure of your Letter is a supposition That no Minister of the Church of England can give his Consent to the Declaration What! Not to a thing in which if there be any Fault it is of his own making Is our thinking some one way some the other enough to turn the Scale so as what were otherwise no fault at all becomes presently contrary to the Laws of God and Laws of the Land as you say afterward Point to that matter of the Declaration which cannot be approved by a Minister of the Church of England on account of its being contrary to or prohibited by the Laws of God. This indeed would make it matter of Conscience which to render it the more odious you here and there slily suggest without offering at the least mannâ—â— of Proof for you know well enough there is none His Majesty by this 〈◊〉 Declaration requires us to signifie to His People a method which in this juncture he Judges most expedient to be taken for the securing the Crown and the Persons of our Kings from those apparent Dangers to which they have been frequently exposed by our Dissentions in matters of Religion and for the common Peace and Good of all His Subjects Some approve it and some do not according as their Humour their Interest or their Parts serve and as ordinarily Mens Censures pass on other Affairs of State. But so to Reprobate it as a Mulum in se as a Pest to the Publick as an Abomination and Prophanation of our Churches and not fit to be heard by Christian Ears is such a hard straining of the case as brings along with iâ— the very dregs of Passion and Party We cannot approve of the matter of it you say it may be so Men doâ—câ— always disapprove or deny their Consent to what is proposed because it is evil but because they have no mind to it and so the consequence will be applying it to the matter in Hand That the Authority of His Majesty over a Minister of the Church of England does not to extend so far as to injoyn him to Read the Declaration when he has no mind to it For I doubt there is with a great many more of Stomach in the refusal than Conscience but this not to appear above board One thing though I perceive you have a great mind to which is that we would grant you your supposition before you prove it namely That no Minister of the Church of England can give Consent to the Declaration and then let you alone to make good your Inference that he cannot Read it Now Sir I do not think you have us so much upon the Hanck as you imagine should I grant your Supposition But I see you care not whither we do or no for you presently fall hot upon the Work to prove the Conclusion Ergo He cannot Read for that is interpretative Consent Now for my part I confess to you I turn over the Leaf knowing how many soever your Arguments be to prove it they would not satisfie me nor I think any reasonable Man till he see first how well bottom'd your Hypothesis be from which you borrow your Inference I would fain see your Reasons first Why a Minister of the Church of England cannot Consent before I grant what you are so hasty to suppose Why that I shall by and by but you will prove first That Reading is Consenting Reading is Teaching which is as odd an Hysteron Proteron as Hanging and Trying afterwards Let Reading be Consenting or not Consenting without troubling your self till I hear whether I may Consent or Not. Wherefore I must beg your Favour to let me depart from your method and turn over two or three Pages further to examine your Reasons wherefore we cannot Consent 1. Your first is That it is against the Constitution of the Church of England which is established by Law and to which I have subscribed and therefore am bound to teach nothing contrary to it so long as this Obligation lasts The Constitution of the Church of England as it is now a Protestant Church distinct from what it was before consists in various Acts of Parliament made especially in the beginning of the Reformation But I know of no Subscriptions required of the Clergy to such Acts of Parliament There is a Book intituled Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical Treated upon by the Bishop of London c. Anno Domini 1603. Which Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical are in Number CXLI These I think you must mean by your saying to which you have subscribed But you have not pleased to tell us against which of them it is we offend by Reading the Kings Declaration So that this Argument does nothing but lead us into a Wood and there leave us to be lost Is there any Constitution or Canon Ecclesiastical which bars the King from extending Clemency even to His Dissenting Subjects where He sees a reasonable and honourable Occasion for it Much less where the Necessity of His Affairs drive Him to it His Honour His Conscience the Preservation of Himself and His Friends and the common Peace of all I dare trust King JAMES the First for that without troubling my self to look over all the Hundred and Forty One Canons He had more King-craft than to part with such a Jewel out of the Crown to adorn the Crosier of the Church of England The Constitution you mention here is to what you have subscribed you say By the 36 Canon Subscription is required not to the whole Book but only to three Articles in that Canon mentioned By the first We acknowledge the Kings Supremacy By the second The lawful use of the Common-Prayer By the third An Allowance is made of the 39 Articles Upon any of which I cannot imagine how you ground your Reason wherefore we cannot consent to the Declaration unless you had told us If you were to prove the contrary from these Constitutions there seems to be something accommodate for your purpose in the first and second Canons All Archbishops Bishops c. are obliged by the first to keep and observe all and singular the Laws made for restoring to the Crown of this Kingdom the Antient Jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical Which Antient Jurisdiction in the Second Canon is resembled to the same Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical which the godly Kings had among the Jews and Christian Emperors of the Primitive Church Now if the Parallel run so high as to the Antient Jurisdiction of this Crown how Antient does it mean Certainly before any pretence of the Invasion of it by the Bishop of Rome Wherefore that being a Work too big for a Letter I will give but one or two Instances and those so far back as to be out of suspicion of any such Foreign Invasion The Government or Jurisdiction of this Crown if inherent in it was and of right ought to be