is You make Bishops for her as the Common-wealth-men make Kings by Accumulation not Deprivation in your Expressions just now mention'd and consequently retaining the Power entire to themselves they unmake them again when they please or to express it farther in your own words which are the aptest I have met withal When Persons and Circumstances Prudence and Discretion or the Interest of the Government requires it And so the Bishop like those inferior Officers of old as Sub-Deacons Acolouthi Door-keepers c. may be outed as the Perpetual Presbyter shall see occasion Mr. Prolocutor to the Assembly-men at Westminster never spake more bravely to the point And to fix all this surely on the less wary and inconsiderate Reader as a Nail driven by the Masters of our Assembly also you bring in several of our own Bishops for evidence against themselves and their Order in the days of Edward VI. and our whole Church establish'd by Law in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth As is to be seen in your Manuscripts and those other Citations throughout your last Chapter And when you had with so much ease and scorn rejected the Doctrines of all the Primitive Bishops in the case it was no small piece of confidence to think to carry your Cause by the testimony whether true or false of our own Prelates of the last Age. But you are not content to overthrow their Order unless you may fix such a Scandal upon their Persons as the Betrayers of it And indeed your stating this case of the mutability of Episcopacy can be only a design to fool and baffle it and thereby render it a very Babel or Idol in the language of its madder Adversaries and in the conception of every one else so trivially accidental a thing that it cannot be really contended for upon a Church account every accident giving occasion though Prudence will always be pretended for its abolition And it is observable That there are not any of your judgment that conclude themselves under an obligation to adhere unto it any longer than it supports and serves them by the advantage of the secular Power As the Church is that Tree in the Psalmist so Episcopacy is one of its bearing Boughs in which you can be content to sit and sing so long as you fill your Pockets but when the gathering time is over it is to be cut down as that which cumbereth the ground And you plead the same express directions for it our Saviour once gave concerning the Fig-tree in the Gospel I 'll state it together with the Presbyterian and Episcopal Hypotheses thereby to make it obvious upon the naked prospect The Presbyterian asserts That each Presbyter hath the whole Power of the Ministry and is enabled to discharge every Church-Office and that a restraint or enlargement is sinful The Episcoparian asserts That this Power is placed in the Bishop and Presbyter but unequally And that the Bishop hath some instances of it peculiar to his Order as Prerogatives and Incommunicable which if laid aside will be Sacrilege in him as also if assumed by the Presbyter You assert all that in the Presbyter and lose all that from the Bishop that the Presbyter desires and contends for only here is the difference You allow the Presbytery upon some occasions and in some instances of their Office to make a Deputy with a reserved Power to recal the Deputation at pleasure or upon each suspicion of his undue behaviour And this is the honour and service you do the Church of England These the Dissenters you tell us you design'd to gain upon and that your design did not want success both here and in a neighbouring Kingdom If you mean our Northern Neighbours I hope Episcopacy is setled there upon better grounds if it be not some of the thanks for it are due to you If you mean our Neighbours in the South they came over indeed but it is with their own Presbyterian Orders which they still adhere to as their commission from Christ The Episcopal Ordination which they receive here only enabling them for the Loaves to which they could have no right otherways by the Laws of our Kingdom And accordingly D. Blondel first offer'd his assistance to Archbishop Laud to write in defence of our Episcopacy whilst it was uppermost but upon the ensuing Rebellion he deserted it nay he turn'd his weapons against it Witness his Apologia pro Hieronymo which he Dedicated to the Rebellious Parliament and Schismatical Assembly at Westminster owning thereby the Vsurpation of the Regal Power in one and of the Episcopal in the other Salmasius did in effect the same and within the space of four Years both applauds and condemns Episcopacy and the Rump Parliament for removing it according to his present subject and design and John Milton the worst of Men takes from thence a just occasion to harangue and vilifie him in the Preface to his worst of Books Entituled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio And the reasons for it are plain as themselves state the case the Bishop's Consecration being only an humane Rite performed at his Deputation and Enlargment to the execution of that Power which he had before when he was made a Presbyter by virtue of which there is no farther power conferr'd but only a Church Blessing with Imposition of Hands a legally qualifying him for possession according to the particular custom of that Kingdom in which he is to exercise his Episcopal Function And lastly for our own Country-men it may be wished some of them have not on this score also received Episcopal Ordination and then they may be bound to thank you because they kept their Benefices thereby and had farther accession of Church Dignities upon his late Majesty's blessed return But I cannot think it is for this that your Superiors in the Church have for so long a time been pleased to treat you with that kindness you seem to boast of Sure I am all the kindness you have done hereby to the Church of England and her Bishops may be put in their Eyes and they see never the worse for it Tho' I will not say so of the unkindness she hath received from you Besides it will farther appear with what affection and byass you wrote this Treatise if we consider your different behaviour to the Bishops and Doctors of the Church of England and the Presbyterians Independents even Anabaptists and Quakers upon each occasion It is but a little to reflect upon those slender civilities which you shew all along to that great and eminent Divine Dr. Henry Hammond one that was every ways great and considerable provoking reverence and respect from his Adversaries that were in any measure civilized Such was his Learning Integrity Courage in those perillous times he lived in the Ark it self rested peculiarly upon his Shoulders But I say your unhandsom behaviour to him may easier be passed by because he was but one single Doctor in our Church you seem to treat him with
disdain tho' all things consider'd there was then as great a distance betwixt him and the Rector of Sutton as there is now betwixt the Vicar of Cosmus Blene and the Dean of St. Paul's you reject at once his Five and thirty Testimonies produced out of St. Ignatius in the behalf of Episcopacy as inconluding Even that one which seems to have some Semblance you say is clearly mistaken and your proof is so precarious and inconsistent that there needs no other evidence of your partiality and that your Plot was only to expose Him and the Cause Part. II. c. 6. § 17. p. 309. And no wonder when you have rejected Ignatius himself as Spurious and Counterfeit and the story of him as much as it is defended with his Epistles as not to seem any of the most probable placing it among the uncertain fabulous narrations of Antiquity § 16. p. 298. When you have derided all Antiquity at once you go on against our most worthy Doctor rejecting what is offer'd by him as that which hath neither evidence nor pertinency enough to stop the passage of one who is returning to his former matter that is in plain English it is not worth the consideration of your pondering self imployed on a more pertinent and advantageous subject and which hath better motives of credibility Sect. 9. pag. 260. You farther yet represent him if possible more contemptible and as one that betrays the Reformation by his infirm Hypothesis which was built upon reasons of greater strength and evidence than what he hath pleaded § 9. p. 258. Once more and which may go for all You represent him as a Rattle Head without any shew or appearance of Reason and his performance with the embellishment of your rare Similitude is thus expressed Only the Wind-Egg of a working Fancy that wants a shell of Reason to cover it When all may be true that he there asserts notwithstanding your Eight Reasons that are brought against it Cap. 6. § 3. However your Metaphor is to be admired especially for the great humility of it It is not like that lofty Similitude some have used borrowed from a Crowned Head but from an Egg shell and nothing but another of your own can parallel it only the strain is a little higher and you strike at all Mankind therewith which doth not think opine reason in the words of the Leviathan and with the same haughtiness as you do Which prejudice being the Yellow-Jaundice of the Soul leaves such a Tincture upon the Eyes of the understanding that till it be cured of that Icterism it cannot see things in their proper colours Sect. 2. c. 5. p. 200. You go on from Dr. Hammond to the whole Church of England which you hit at one blow and enquiring more strictly into the causes of the great Distances and Animosities which have risen upon this Controversie you fix upon the Episcopal Men as the Troublers of Israel whom you thus divide Those whom the prevalency of Faction and Interest over-ruled their Revenues having come from the Rents of the Church which is the odious old way of Characterizing for scorn and contempt to the People the ancient and zealous Bishops and Clergy of our Church and others of greater Integrity you mean that were less Covetous and Rapacious and believed their Order to be more than their Revenues but descend also with this false Principle or Hypothesis which Men are apt to take for granted without proving it viz. That it is in no case lawful to vary from that Form which by obscure and uncertain Conjectures they conceive to have been the Primitive Practice Part I. c. 1. § 1. p. 4. And as you begin so you end fixing this farther Character upon them in your last Chapter I know it is the last Asylum which many run to meaning such as found all things upon a Divine Right when they are beaten off from their Imaginary Fancies by pregnant testimonies of Scripture and Reason to shelter themselves under the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of some particular persons to which their understandings are bored in perpetual Slavery But if Men would once think their understandings at age to judge for themselves and not make them live under a perpetual Pupillage c. rendering hereby our most eminent Clergy as such Ignaro's that they understand not the State of their own Church which they have Subscribed and Sworn unto and as she determined in the days of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth from pag. 384. to p. 394. And the greatest part of that Chapter is spent in representing our Bishops and Doctors to be against themselves to their manifest injury reproach and dishonour as I shall make it appear in publick in a very little time if God continue me Life and Health And if at any time you give a Church of England Man his due or a favourable Character it is when he is on your side or the question of Divine Right is not under debate or you design thereby to advance your own cause and you range him with our Reverend and Learned Mr. Baxter in his Christian Concord and then he must be a pure Church of England Man in your conceptions of him But when you have to deal with any of the other Parties even to Anabaptists and Quakers your behaviour towards them is after another rate you argue as one that is evidently biassed and with apparent shews of tenderness and affection the same hand and at the same time grants their pardon that contends with and opposes them They are not represented to be the Men that are over-ruled by Faction and Interest or their Church Rents with understandings bored in perpetual slavery but as Men of great Moderation whose Errors are the Religious weakness of well-meaning but less knowing People Part I. c. 2. § 11. pag. 63. to 70. c. 6. § 4.7 pag. 122 128 c. Part II. c. 7. § 2. pag. 339 348 c. In short in the very first Chapter of your Book you appear particularly cautious of preserving your reputation entire with the Presbyterian Party at least the mobile of them and confess so much in your Epistle Dedicatory to my Lord of London acquainting his Lordship That when you set your self to answer their Arguments for a Perpetual Right of Presbyterian Parity you did it without mentioning their Books The meaning of which can only be this That it was done with as little disadvantage to the Party as you could That you made no such signal Remarks Exclamations and Excursions against the Divine Right of Presbytery and its Maintainers as you did against the Divine Right of Episcopacy and those that asserted it Nay you state the case and apply it directly and solely against Episcopacy or a Superiority of Order and Jurisdiction over the Pastors of the Church Sect. 8. p. 25. which was not fair nor consequently a due means to bring those over to a compliance to the Church of England then likely to be re-established
it self Pag. 134. you seem at least too unwary in your Expression asserting That if the whole Nation in Parliament consent to the passing a Law for removal of Pastors and putting in of others this is sufficient for the satisfaction of that People to whom they are appointed as Pastors by virtue of that Power or for the making them true Pastors I yield that the right of Investiture is originally in the Secular hand and by consequence the right of deprivation upon the breach of those terms on which the Investiture is made Thus Abiathar was removed and Zadok put in his room But the question is supposing Zadok had not been of the Priestly Line Whether Solomon's placing him in the High-Priest's Chair did by virtue of his Kingly Power alone create him High-Priest and the People were thereupon bound to own and submit to his Ministry Or to bring an instance nearer home supposing an Act of Parliament appoint a certain Person to be Minister in such a Parish when he is really no Minister because without Ordination from a Bishop Whether by virtue of that Law he is made a true Minister and ought to be received as such by that People to whom by Act of Parliament he is sent No understanding Christian will own him as his Minister upon such terms We have a great instance of this nature in the Church of Scotland about Fourteen Years since The Secular Power commanded Dr. Burnet Archbishop of St. Andrews to admit into particular Churches and in the relation of Ministers certain Men that had no Episcopal Orders and by consequence were not of the Gospel Priesthood the most excellent and exemplary Prelate refused for this reason Because the Prince may promote to what temporal Possessions he please but he cannot promote to the Authority which is Spiritual as to the former he must be submitted to but not as to the latter And his Lordship was a great example of the last case for denying their Institution he was Suspended from his Bishoprick and sustained it with a due resignation tho' the Government upon second thoughts restored him with greater honour and estimation in which he died But as to the more immediate question and which occasioned this Section you ought to have urged That the consent of the People did not constitute a Minister neither was it any necessary qualification in order to it as Mr. Baxter and his Combination pretended But instead of doing this you reply That an Act of Parliament is sufficient to constitute him such which savours too much of the old Vessel I confess the consequents would be really evil in the Government both of Church and State if he be an Usurper in a Parish to whom the People do not consent the disorders thereby must become intolerable and the consequents would be as noxious on the other hand if the Parliament had the Power of qualifying for it For then the Ministry will be quite swallowed up in the State and every Usurper be his Religion what it will may alter the Priesthood or as in the days of Jeroboam make Priests of whom he please But thus it fares with your Arguments and it is their usual fault That they prove too much You take away Infallibility and the Ministry at once in other places and maintain here the Secular Power to the destruction of the Spiritual I 'll receive him in Seculars whom my Prince is pleased to set over me but none in Spirituals who hath not an Authority which the Secular hand cannot derive unto him 5. But that which crowns all is Pag. 300. when you scatter those mists which some pretend to have before their Eyes that they cannot clearly see what we mean by the Church of England and tell us it is so called because it was received by the common consent of the whole Nation in Parliament Surely if now we be not a Parliament Church we never were in the opinion of any nor ever shall be Should any Man ask me what the Church of England is I would tell him It is that due Succession of Authority Doctrine Worship and Discipline which are now made Law in the Kingdom of England but if that Law ceaseth to own and protest them I should not thereby think it to become less the Church of England For certain there was a Church of England when there was no Parliaments in England according to those who carry their aera or date to the highest pitch And we say There was the very Church of England that now is and neither Parliament nor Pope had appeared in our Coast Besides What if the Parliament of England pass a Bill of Abjuration against the present Church as they did the other day against the Crown of England The Rump Parliament did it Why then your definition of the Church of England is much at the same as Socrates defined a Man Homo est Animal bipes implume A Man is a living Creature with two Feet and without Feathers Diogenes's Jackdaw was as good a Man when he had pluckt his Feathers off The being of the Church of England does not depend upon any such outward advantages or upon the Votes of the People whether in Parliament or out of it We thankfully own the outward advantages she has had and now enjoys by Parliaments but we own withal her separate Being abstracted from them the Church of God here in England is antecedent to them all One while I was willing to think That this Book was wrote by you at a time when the general design was on Foot for enlarging the Privileges of Parliaments or rather of the House of Commons by the Men of Shaftsbury and you might think your self engaged to cast in something and if so you add that which is very considerable making the Being of the Church of England to depend upon their owning and acceptance of it The Kingdom must have Parliaments once a Year at least only for this for otherwise we may have no Church once a Year But then again this seems not to be the reason because I find you to have been of the same Judgment some years before and you reckon up this among the Encroachments and Usurpations of the Bishop of Rome and spoil thereby a good cause viz. That Acts of Parliament were no certain indications of the Judgment of the Church or the generality of the People in that time Answer to Mr. Cressy's Epistle Apologetical c. pag. 448. I must therefore conclude that you were somewhat discomposed neither is this the only unwary expression you have let fall within the distance of one or two Pages For you there mix the Pastors and People together as of the same Church diffusive You say farther That to assert in every Church a constitutive regent part as essential to it is the same as the Pope's universal Pastorship And again That the Acts of the Convocation are to be allow'd and enacted by the King and the three States of the Kingdom Flatly against the King's Prerogative in making Church-Laws by the Convocation alone As also your term National Church is as incongruous as any National Congregational Classical are Relatives and give life to one another 6. It doth not appear why you Reprinted that scandalous Manuscript which so immediately opposeth all Church-Power in the utmost latitude of it and by the Authority of so many of our most eminent Reformers Nay farther with an artifice to conceal Archbishop Cranmer's Retraction unless it be to give all the seeming Authority you could to the Doctrines there asserted There is not one Note in the Margent by which it appears that you had then altered your first conceptions of it as Printed in the Irenicum Nay you have own'd and justified it in part in your Epistle to my Lord of London or if there be any alteration made it is least there might be occasion to suspect that Cranmer had deserted you 3. And in the last place you have made no satisfaction at all to the Church of God for that Irenicum Doctrine which equals the Presbyter with the Bishop There is not any thing like amends for it in all your writings that I have met with It is true you often speak of Episcopacy as the most ancient Government derivable from the Apostles But you have not any where asserted it in the number of those Institutions and Practices Apostolical which are perpetual and immutable And until you say this all you can say besides is to no purpose The Bishop is notwithstanding at the mercy of your Prince or your Presbyters when their prudence sees fit to degrade and depose him There is no more Obligation to continue the distinct order of Bishops than that order of Widows in the Epistle to Timothy And thus Sir I have shew'd that you have not made due satisfaction for those errors in your Irenicum concerning the Power of the Church in general and the constitution of our Church in particular of which I accused you in my Letter dated May 1. 1682. I have also shew'd more at large the grounds of my Accusation I beg only this Favour of you That if you think fit to return an Answer you will do it in a Scholar-like way i. e. by Argument and Matter of Fact not Raylings and Nick-names it is really below your quality in the Church to Act Andrew Marvel It was thought by J. O. to be a thing below him And therefore we know on whom he set that Buffoon when his case was much at one with yours and he wanted argument Besides tho' Dr. Burnet was pleased to assign me the Province yet I am not at leasure to catch Flies But if you keep to these terms I shall certainly make a reply and you will thereby oblige Novemb. 6. 1685. Reverend Sir Your Humble Servant SIMON LOWTH FINIS
in him to which every Man may attain by his personal Capacity antecedent to the being of a Church and Church-Governors Or in the words of Mr. Hales made your own by citing of them in your Irenicum pag. 108. Schism is but a Theological Scar-crow set up by such as hold a Party in Religion And by consequence the Church of England is upon the same terms in respect of the Church of Rome as the Dissenters are in respect of the Church of England The Impositions of both are alike Anti-Christian which is again the very Doctrine of the Irenicum Your Answer to several Treatises c. is the next of your Writings that I have pitcht upon whence to inform my self and others of your particular Judgment in these points of Church-Power and its Obligation And that which I hence report will be so much more satisfactory because in your Answer to Mr. Cressy's Epistle Apologetical c. you refer him hither from pag 260. to pag. 291. as those Pages in which you maintain as much Authority in the Church of England as ever the Church of England challenged to her self But here you have left the Church in the same condition you had placed her in before and altogether without Power to make her Declarations Law whether in Council or out of it and the Office assigned by you to her Pastors is to Teach Instruct Propose and Recommend engaging them in Toil and Labour enough in order to the search of Truth but they are no where vested with an Authority to oblige the whole Body of Christians or the Church diffusive Each Private Man is left at Liberty to receive or reject according to his Eye-sight and as he apprehends the Reasons Motives Tradition Context Criticism or inward Revelation of that which is delivered And you say withal That the ancient Church did not pretend to more Authority as is to be seen in the Pages foregoing As for that branch of Authority you assign her in making Rules and Canons about matters of Order and Decency in the Church it is no more than in effect you had said before in your Irenicum and accordingly you refer to it in the point in the Preface to the Vnreasonableness of Separation where notwithstanding you contend with all might and main sometimes against the Laws themselves as Anti-Christian sometimes against the execution of them that they be not imposed upon doubtful Consciences as I have already shew'd And you have since been engaged for a Toleration or Non-execution of Church-Laws in the said Preface pag. 83 84 85. then when you had Preached but a little before against Separation and this is the last and all the account that I can give of you in this affair He that is most favourable to you must yield that you are wavering and unfixed in your Judgment And did you really believe that there is an advantage on the side of Authority which ought to over-rule the Practice of such who are the Members of that Church where the Authority is exercised as you speak you would also be so kind to Dissenters as to urge with more constancy upon them their duty in obeying as a Private Man you ought to propose nothing less unto them Tho' I cannot see why we should less doubt of your good will to them and their Cause when you drew up those Terms and Articles of Toleration than of Coleman's kindness to the Papists when he drew up his Declaration for Dissolving the Long Parliament in order to a Toleration also And it will be difficult to determine which of the two was more presumptuous I know what course the Ancient Church would have taken with a Private Presbyter who after a full debate in Council seconded with a Church Sanction and confirmed by the Imperial Constitution should have dared to have made Proposals or draw up Rules and Limitations and make them publick in opposition thereunto and yet this was not your first attempt of this nature your good will to Comprehension Latitudinarian Principles hath all along been manifest and notorious Those many Meetings which you and your Church of England and Mr. Baxter and his Church of England had were not so private but that some took notice of them where you made Proposals for altering the Church Government setled and confirmed by all that is sacred in Church and State. And the reason is plain why those Men afterwards dealt so severely with you of which you complain in the above-mentioned Preface upon that Sermon which was Preached before my Lord Mayor because after your healing Condescensions in private you appear'd a Revolter and Apostate and they were to deal with you as one that had broken his Faith. If some other had Preached that Sermon they might possibly have born with him he acting according to his principles when you were not to be endured tu Brute their Friend with whom they took sweet Council together concerning the House of God. I add farther 1. That in your Treatise of the Vnreasonableness of Separation you no where that I could take notice of have pressed Christians to Obedience as they are a Corporation imbodied under Governors and Laws of their own which is the original and fundamental Obligation to submission and conformity arising from the nature of that Kingdom which Christ erected by the promulgation of the Gospel of which Kingdom every true Christian is a Subject I do not deny but that your performance is competently well done upon your principles and so far as it reacheth You have abundantly set forth the reasonableness of our Book of Common-Prayer in the Administration of the Sacraments and other Rites and Ceremonies and urged Obedience thereunto from the destructive consequences that must inevitably follow in that Church or Society of Christians which retains not an Vniformity of Worship and more especially this reasonable one that we have in our Church of England But all is left still as matter of Dispute like the Corporation it self as Arbitrary and at the pleasure of its Subjects to retain or reject them and he that sees not with your Eyes by your own principles hath no Obligation for Obedience and Conformity to any one Rubrick Law or Injunction therein contained And it is observable in your Epistle Dedicatory that you beg pardon indeed of your Superiors for going beyond your bounds in your projects of accommodation But it is not for any one reason relating to them as your Governors or because you have been injurious thereby to their Power and Government in the Church of God which you in so doing had inroaded and invaded But because forsooth the Dissenters would not come up to you and their untractableness rendred your Project useless admit you had jump'd together and united in the project What then Why you had never begged their pardon And it was success not design was wanting by your own confession The very case of Coleman Besides is not this a delicate Apology for your self After