and in their visible Communion During this Tract of time can any Man think that no Clergy Men had any Conferences with their Dissenting Bishops hereupon And in those Conferences did those Fathers Condemn and forbid these Prayers at which themselves were daily present No I believe no where and somewhere in several instances I know the contrary that directions have been given to use our present Forms But one thing I will further tell you that these innocent Fathers were not so gulled as you pretend in the first motions For upon the Enthroning of their present Majesties and the Change of the Prayers and Oath of new Allegiance the Recusant Bishops met together in Consultation how to act in these Affairs and after all Debates agitated they came to this Resolution that they would not oppose the Prayers for that it would seem too invidious and uncharitable to deny their Majesties our Devotions but determined only to stick at the Oath This I presume those Fathers will not deny and if any of them should hereafter challenge me for this Report I will give them my Author whom I presume no Man can Impeach of falsehood or Detraction But I would not have mentioned this had not you reproached me with the Lye even while you endeavour to cover the most evident Truths with Clouds and Darkness Nor do I mention this to cast a blemish on them For did not their Deprivations seem to them Schismatical I believe they would not have repudiated our Communion upon the mere account of our Prayers as neither did your great Coryphaeus till the Deprivation of the Primate All which is open Truth tho' these Fathers never read these Prayers which I never charged on them since 't is otherwise very rare to hear Bishops reading the Prayers in any Church whatsoever And this Concession to these Prayers being past on their most serious considerations there was no Cause why they should blow the Trumpet against what they judged lawful But had they really judged the contrary this concurrence had been worse than the neglect of winking Watch-Men or the silence of dumb Dogs to which I never compared them tho' your Censorious Rigours must brand this moderation with more infamous Characters as is evident from this Discourse of yours and the second Chapter of the first Part of your Treatise of Christian Communion And having thus vindicated their Equity and my Reverence thereof methinks such a Man of Manners as you have approved your self hitherto to be should have besprinkled our Fathers also a little more decently and not as generally you do with Tinctures drawn from the Lake of Sodom But to leave you to the felicity of your own good Humours I shall only observe what a silly innuendo you flurt upon the Secretaries or Council of State that they were in great fear what stirs these Bishops would make had they not concerted with Mr. Jones at the Savoy to carry on this Religious Intrigue in the Blind whereas these Fathers expected their determined Fate with all imaginable calmness and serenity as Men that well understood the patience of Saints And in that exemplary Patience they were impatient at those who thro' too great bitterness called our Conformity the Apostacy of the Church of England for the truth of which if you will not believe me I hope you will Mr. Dodwell to whom I therefore refer you for satisfaction And therefore you that would raise you a Monument out of those Flames you kindle by reproaching us with infamous Imputations recede from the pattern and act without the direction of your Fathers Dyscher Another Reason why we may lawfully join in those Prayers is because as you would Perswade us King James and your King William are very good Friends That King James is not among the number of King William and Queen Mary's Enemies MS. Reflex And you prove it for that the Prayers express him not and that you rank him not among the number of King William and Queen Mrry's Enemies For an Enemy is one that designeth to injure a Man and we are not sure that King James doth so design against King William But do you not verily believe that K. James would willingly regain his Crown if he could and consequently dispossess King William Or do you think this no Injury to K. William And no more say you can be intended in those Prayers of the Liturgy for King William than to defeat him King James in that Injurious intention For we pray for no Mans nor Kings Destruction or hurt These are * Sol. Ab. pag. 14. your reasons why no Jacobite ought to Scruple to join with you in the Common-Prayers for King William viz. To strengthen him that he may Vanquish and overcome all his Enemies because King James intends him no Injury Transubstantiation is easie to this This is perswading us out of all our Senses at once King James and King William appear upon the Head of two Armies * These two words might well have been spared to cover c. and Fight and each calls those Rebels that adhere to the other and yet they are not Enemies It is no hurt to the one if the other get the Victory and therefore you may Pray for Victory to King William without meaning any hurt to King James Why then are you offended at those that Pray for Victory to King James against King William Here is no Injury intended to King William only that King James may have a Victory that is all Is this the Argument to perswade Mens Consciences to join in your Common Prayers Is this the strength of your Cause The strong and solid Conviction of the sincerity and plainness of your Dealing MS. Reflex But supposing he will do no Wrong yet sure he may demand and endeavour to recover his Right And I am apt to think that your little ambitious Dutch Saviour would think no Man in the World so much his Enemy as he that demands three Kingdoms from him Nor do we call only those Enemies who design Injuries but even all who actually oppose each other or between whom there is any Contest let their Designs be what they will or their Cause right or wrong And after all your daubing he certainly is accounted the greatest Enemy for whose sake all others are judged Enemies Now tho' the King of France be such an abominable Enemy he should soon he esteemed the best Friend if he would but renounce the Interest of K. James and suport the Usurpation of the Prince of Orange T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 32 33. Eucher In this Triumphant and fastidious Harangue these things severally offer themselves to our Consideration 1st Whether the Strength of our Cause lies in this Account of our Prayers 2dly Whether this be not the Sense of many Jacobites 3dly What is the full importance of the word Enemy 4thly What the importance of Vanquishment and overcoming 5thly What really is the lawful Sense of these words in the
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
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
their Cause as if it needed any Advocateship especially such as mine For truly they that write honestly for a public Constitution must not pretend a service to Authority but the Benefit only of those that are under it So I resolved to seek a Patron among the other unconcerned Bishops with whom I could hope my Principles would find favour and so adventured it into the Hands of a Prelate whose universal merits are superior to his Character by him it was recommended to my own Right Reverend Diocesan and he by Letters from London acquaints me with his desire of seeing it and as my Duty was to obey herein I sent it him Upon the reading of it he greatly inclined me to the Publication yet withal forewarning me that it would stir up Adversaries he would not press me against my own Judgment During this intercourse the other Book was in the Press and almost finished and as yet my Diocesan knew nothing of it Whereupon I Wrote to his Lordship that I was engaged for the Faith for which I expected much trouble and I knew not what would become of me but his Lordship not knowing any thing more particularly in the matter supposed my fears as he reputed them causeless Upon which I conceded to what his Lordship pleased to do or have done He thereupon puts it under the judgment of other learned Men and it being by them well liked designed with some little variations offered me that it should be Printed In the mean while the storm pursued me without any hopes or intermission and it was loudly given out that it was intended by the agreement of the Bishops that I should be suspended by my Bishop and Prosecuted upon the ruining Statute except I would prevent it by Humiliation c. The good Offices of Friendship that were really done me among several of my Lords the Bishops were concealed from me and so I expected nothing else but an Excommunication or such a Persecution for the Faith as must have forced me from the present Communion Whereupon I had many causes to stop the Publication of this Book for having but bad Eyes to engage in long Studies and against many Adversaries and under such prospects of Expulsion cut of this Church I thought it not only imprudent to draw on me more quarrels in the defense of a Communion from which I expected ejection but ridiculous also which I am resolved no terrors nor Persecutions by God's help shall render me But I must with Honour acknowledg that all this Authors incentives have not been able to whet my Metropolitan nor any others that I know of to that Spirit of Persecution which this Postscript has ascribed to him so that I have no need of a Sanctuary among the Jacobites tho' I hereupon shall take occasion to let this Author know that such as steer by their private Interest in their choice of Parties and are as ready to change their Faith as their Allegiance and dispose Men by the same Arts to follow them in Ecclesiastical as well as Civil Turns do make more Jacobites by their Prevarications and thereby become more injurious to the public Peace and Powers by far than any the most important and importunate Remonstrants against the Government I have but one thing more to add in a Apology for the Air and Structure of this Book I hope there is no Man no not the raging T. B. nor the more raging Postscriber will be able henceforth to call the Style Brutal I press indeed the Arguments between the Parties and their principal Authors with the utmost Vigour as without any Incivility so without any partiality to either side and this not only as a Disputant but as a Casuist which ought to drive on all considerations home thro' and thro' the Conscience This Justice requires in a Dialogue between Parties where not only the reasons are to be stretched to the utmost but the Zeal of them also personated In this T. B. pretended Solomon and Abiathar to be defective and treacherous which Accusation tho' false and causeless yet has made me to carry on their Person here with much more Acrimony against their Opponents than otherwise I should have done This may indeed displease the Learned Men concerned herein against them for ought I know but to convert the divided I thought it expedient to shew my self severely equal and indifferent in speaking for them in their own Spirit rather than my own and freely owning their Truths as well as ours And if this does not satisfy the great Men whose Hypotheses are here necessarily dismissed I hope they will consider however that I have a Right to defend my own Principles in Solomon and Abiathar with as much strength and ardour as they have asserted theirs And they that have particularly and by name taxed that Pamphlet who were never touched by me for any of their Writings before must concede me a liberty to examin what they have said against it and it's Principle It is an unhappy Misfortune that two of the greatest Ornaments of the Nation should herein run so widely to the Extremes the one so far as to overthrow the Right of the English Reformation the other to the prostitution of the Powers Hirarchical to Rapine and Violence by laying Principles which yet both of them think necessary to the Churches Preservation I have gone the middle way between these admirable Men who are indeed above all the praises that I can give them and since I find that a new Disputation will be moved herein I do most heartily beseech those two great Men calmly and candidly to treat of their Principles and their Consequences in private first and equally endeavour to remove all Prejudices and to quit whatsoever mistakes shall be joyntly discovered between them and when that is done shew such an example of mutual Charity and Self-denial as may render them if possible more admirable to the World than they already are that so we may hasten with all possible earnestness to an happy Union or at least that the fairest grounds may be laid for it The Edition of this Book is indeed very uneasie to me but since necessity is laid upon me to publish it and that as it was Written I shall be glad if it may prevent a reen-flamed Controversie which is threatned in Print by a Learned Jacobite or may offer any such notices as may contribute to their exacter considerations But for my own part I resolve never to appear in this Controversie more for as it may be easie for learned Men to refute and inform me so I can bear instruction not only with ease but with gratitude also Whereupon I have nothing more to offer to all Authors of worth concerned but that they will not think themselves wronged till they have throughly discussed the matters between us impartially and if after that I shall appear to seem to have done amiss I do hereby proleptically beg their forgiveness and upon the discovery
seasonably tell you that the alteration of our Sovereigns was more legal than the change of the Theocracy to Chaldaean Persian Graecian and Roman Sovereigns yet even for these the Jews were to offer Prayers and Sacrifices and so is the Greek Church to pray for the new Grand Seigniors brought into the Sovereignty upon the rebellious expulsion of the former yet surviving in Bonds and Prison without any scruple of Allegiance to their new Master hereupon Now if they ought to make an Ecclesiastical Opposition to such an Imperial Change then their ready conformity thereto puts them into that same state of sinful Religion which you charge upon us and how then are they in and we out of Right to Ecclesical Communion But to speak truth I could not have thought that men of such Primitive Rigour and Purity could Ligitimate that great corruption in the Greek Church which tho' of it self it doth not actually and totally Unchurch them yet it is a most deplorable profanation of the supreamest Order in their Hierarchy and such as a General Council upon the perpetual Sense and Principles of the Church Catholick cannot but condemn for impious and irregular But now I am under a passionate concern for this Author lest this Principle of his bring him under that Heresie which your learned Vindicator of the deprived Bishops if he keeps up an impregnable impartiality against all Errors will be apt to find in it Sure I am here is laid a Rule for our Church to admit from the State even the most arbitrary removes and changes of Bishops for no cause at all but only to humour the State in Tyranny or Simony according to Doct. Hody's Doctrine and here is conceded far more than was by the subscription of a Popish Convocation for fear of a Premunire and more than the Pope or Henry VIII ever arrogated to their Headship or Supremacy and to use your former words * Sol. Ab. p. 29. a blemish not to be endured in any Church whatsoever it incurs for the Opposition But so it is and so it will be when men are pressed too hard in point of Argument that to avoid one absurdity they run into another which is many times worse and more notoriously offensive Dyscher Well then we 'll let alone the Greek Church herein to Gods Judgment But as for you that think to shelter your selves under their shade you are not capable of that their Plea For I do not know that we want an Ecclesiastical Judge Our Metropolitan with his Suffragans are a sufficient and proper Judge And if they have not lata sententia which there may be great Reason to forbear yet in Praxi their Judgments are sufficiently declared T. B's 2d Lett. p. â—1 Eucher That the deprived Metropolitan and Fathers are a proper Court or Council of Ecclesiastical Judges upon all conforming Bishops Clergy and Laity of the Realm I do utterly deny for many Reasons In the Province of York they have no jurisdiction nor can they make a distinct Synod from the rest of their Colleagues within the Province of Canterbury So that had a Synod of meer Bishops been called therein before any Bishops made by King William this had been a Synod against which no Uncanonical Ordination or Enthronement could have been objected and yet the Majority of these would have condemned their Recusancy if we may judge of their Sentence by their Conformity But further by our Constitution the Body of the Clergy are concerned in our Synods and which way think you would your Cause have gone in a full and Canonical Convocation This your wife Author of Christian Communion well saw and therefore would not adventure the issue * Part 2. Ch. 4. to a Synodical Determination But yet neither have these Fathers given a definitive Sentence of Excision upon us which yet is necessary where the actual Excision passes not meerly on the uncontested notoriety and malignity of the Crime which we suppose at present not to be our State And let the Reasons of their forbearing Sentence be what they will yet as long as we are not self-condemned but stand upon our Defence we are not yet actually excommunicate by any effectual judgment of these Fathers Nor can their practice amount to so much either Legally or intentionally Time was and yet is I believe when several of these Fathers would not censure our Submission to the present Civil Government as criminal and heinous And one of those Prelates in a publick Oration to his Clergy strictly charged them to abstain from all oblique Reflections on each other for refusing or admitting the Oath of New Allegiance but to retain Charitable Opinions each toward the other which being a publick act of that Father 's at the head of his Diocess will not I hope be denyed as a Lye nor may I be condemned for uncovering a secret since this was not such nor transacted in a corner nor need that Reverend Father be ashamed or unwilling to own it since it was a most Illustrious Indication of his Excellent Piety and Moderation but withal a clear confutation of that pretended censure which you place in their Practice For the Practice of not Swearing may in several Men have several causes some may condemn the Allegiance some may doubt only some may have aspects on another Revolution others to the reproach of our and to the esteem of another Party some to their former Writings or Pretensions points of honour or the Fatigues of a Publick Station So that except one unanimous Sentence against the Allegiance be judicially given the argument from practice is very unconcluding But besides the Practice of the Majority will as much condemn them as theirs can us if this be of any such importance toward a Judicial Excommunication So silly it is for Men to hunt after such feeble Cavils on purpose that they may seem to have somewhat to say and not be born down by that Truth against which they have formed a Faction Dyscher Well However I told you that there is danger in your Communion and I should have added that the sin is unavoidable in it because the Secession was on your side from us and Righteousness we still continuing as we were but see I pray what answer you made me hereupon that I may take off the vizor and lay open your Hypocrisie You say * Sol. Ab. p. 6. that though our Church Justly and Absolutely rejects the Roman Monarchy yet she will not refuse any Lawful Communion or correspondence with it in any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations consistent with Integrity saving still a Publick Remonstrance to all her Pollutions What can be the meaning of this but that your Church is ready and willing to joyn in Communion with the Church of Rome as many of your Brethren take the Oath with a Declaration This and no other can be your meaning else your Argument and Parallel is sensless and insignificant for thus it follows so should you
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
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
Heb. 11.1 but in an apparent explicit and authentick Determination as all other Duties pursuant to Laws and Publick Judgments are and no otherwise And you that will allow the Churches Loyalty as to the Object to be guided by the true Constitution of the State but not by every Civil Judgment have need to explain your self what shall he the Supream Civil Judgment for you concerning the Laws and Constitutions of our State in rare unusual and dangerous Cases of Desertion and Anarchy For if you assert to every man a practical Judgment upon our Laws and Rights in such Cases and that even against a National Judgment the Confusions must be eternal If there must be a Civil Council I pray assign me any other like that of the Estates in Convention who indeed as often as such Cases call upon them are the Supream Judges of the Constitutions and Rights of the Nation and Arbiters of our Settlement concluded thereupon And if you will not yield to every such Civil Judgment you may as well say you will yield to none excepe it comports with your private Humours or Persuasions which is the true and plain English of your Answer herein if I may use the freedom you take with me of being your Paraphrast or Interpreter and is a wonderful Expedient to settle us by eternal and unreconcilable discords in Opinion and Practice Dyscher Let us now see what a fine account you give us of the Laws and Rules of our Succession and hereon you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 4. That the general and ordinary Rule of Succession to this Crown is Hereditary but in extraordinary Interruptions and Convulsions of State against the ordinary Course our Laws and Constitutions do allow the Estates such a King as can be actually had for the time being till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered Now if a man were to speak this in plain English it would be thus By our Laws and Constitutions the Crown is Hereditary but if any Vsurper or Traytor will not suffer it to be so but puts by the Right Heir and gets possession himself the Laws and Constitutions allow him to be King yes marry and a Lawful King too i. e. the Crown goes in a Lineal Succession while people are peaceable and Obedient but if they be troublesome and rebellious it is catch as catch can and he had Right and Law on his side who gets Possession and so will another and another without end who can successively wrest the Possession from those who had the Right whilst they could keep Possession Did ever any Body hear of such a Constitution as this Or was any thing better fitted to produce eternal Confusions Certainly you have a mind to persuade us that our Constitutions were made by the Wise Men of Goatham or the Wiser Men of Bedlam T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher You frequently use a suspicious Artifice of travesteering what cannot be plainly answered into farce and mishapen figures and then expose it in Ridicule By which however you call upon you the Sentence of the Psalmist What shall be done unto thee thou false Tongue Mighty and sharp Arrows with hot burning Coals For if I may be my own Paraphrast my Sense is that all Estates and Subjects are to their utmost obliged to preserve together the Sovereign and the Sovereignty and the established forms of Government according to the precise constitution of the Laws but if these be irresistibly overborn or the Sovereign abdicates all to Anarchy then it is Lawful for the Estates to settle under such Sovereigns as can be actually had for the time being till the old Rules can be fairly recovered which being positive must give place to a temporal necessity But did I ever say that Tyrants or Traytors getting into Possession by meer Force had Right and Law on their side No sure for they may break all Law Right and antecedent Rules of Obligation and yet the oppressed Estates may lawfully admit the Oppressive Power when it appears too formidable under prospects of further inevitable Ruins This I expresly and cautiously told you in these words * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or right of War yet if he doth do so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself on the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not on them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things and again * Ibid. p. 6. Wars and victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the wrong lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And could such a Confessor for Conscience Truth and Piety put lying Senses on my words without any remorses or touches of Conscience More integrity was due and becoming such starched or sacred pretensions But I have well learned that Faction leavens the Soul not only with sowerness but with insincerity also But as I truly stated and have now explained the Nature and Duties of our Constitution I assert it a Fundamental Law to all Civil Societies except perhaps that pair of dissyllable Seigniories which you mention where the Politcks Logicks and Ethicks suit with your and where unless you 'll to the Antyceryae I must leave you And since all Kingdoms and Empires are by the just and adorable Counsels of Gods Providence subject to such various Turns of Fate all Princes that take Crowns upon them take them with the Laws of their fortune and a concession to the regular consequences of such Change under which they acquit the innocent Subjects under new submissions tho' they condemn and being reduced prosecuted all those that enforced the Change But as long as the Duties of Subjection are such as I have described intestine changes and disorders cannot arise from them And while Princes minister Justice and Judgment to their People and make their Prosperity the Royal Care they are seldom threatned with Commotions But yet it sometimes happens that for unsearchable tho' Just Reasons the Judgment of God permits the most innocent Princes to intestine as well as foreign troubles which yet however they that promote shall not escape Divine Vengeance And yet after the determination of such Wars it can be no sin to acquiesce under those forms of Settlement which our Estates can procure for the time being tho' different from the ordinary Course And there is no other Rule to recover the Civil Felicity of Nations but by these Principles which every Princely Spirit must be presumed to allow in equity and compassion to all his good Subjects to rescue them from utter extirpation or perpetual misery Dyscher At last you are willing to qualifie the matter and
Queen Mary upon her Fathers Abdication Now when you or your Prompters perform either of these Exploits then use your invective Powers even unto hoarsness but till then 't will not be prudent at the same time to be censorious rude and insincere too But I will not discourage you from going on I pray proceed in your Charge Dyscher When you had asserted that Extra-lineal Successors may in extra-ordinary Cases be Legal * Sol. Ab. p. 5. I pressed you to shew how he can be Legal that thrusts out the Legal King or Legal Successor And you strained a point to make him so But let us see your fine Art of proving Right Wrong and Wrong Right Your Discourse of Kings thrusting out Kings is a direct thrusting out Right and encouraging and justifying Ambitious Persons in embroyling the World in perpetual Wars and Confusions But I shall not expose it as it deserves because it is nothing to the purpose of a plain known Right and no Right T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Sir I think my self obliged to scrape a Leg once or twice to you for your eminent tenderness in exposing my designs in inverting the Characters of Right and Wrong But I pray what fouler exposition had you behind the Veil than this that I thrust out Right and animate men to embroil the World in Blood and Ruins If your Razor be tender yet you have a pretty close Hand which yet I am willing to bear considering that your Cause is in ipsâ acie novaculae But if I may expound your word Expose in your true sense it will signifie Answer and then on my Conscience you were in the Right of it For to answer it as it deserves is either to confute or confess it but you are not ingenious enough to do one and less ingenuous than to do the other But perhaps it was an inconsiderable piece of Impiety Let us see then what was this Draconick Incendiary Mormo of mine Why this verily * Sol. Ab. p. 5. One King by a Legal War may thrust out him that till he was thrust out was Legal King of his own People For the first offending Prince loses not his Sovereignty to the offended meerly by the offence till actually thrust out by the offended This I think is the general Law of the Trumpet and allowed for valid among all Nations But if you doubt let us refer the point to the French King whom You cannot suspect of Unfaithfulness to You or Your Cause But if the War be altogether Legal upon Offences that will warrant all the process of it till the Offender leaves his Dominions in the hands of the injured Conqueror a Just Change may follow here without justifying Illegal Wars and Rapins of unprovoked and injurious Powers Which tho' it be a Truth most clearly innocent yet a calumny was necessary to keep up the Ball and use a Talent But let this be I pray Sir how shew you that this is nothing to our purpose Dyscher If you would make a fair answer here you ought to give a direct Answer to this Question If a Person having really no Right doth disclaim any Right to a thing and by publick Declarations doth profess that he makes no Pretentions to it nor hath any Design to disturb another in his Right I say if this Person shall by ill Arts seize it doth this notwithstanding all his Protestations and Declarations to the contrary even against all Right and Reason create him a Right whether he will or no c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 21. Eucher Here I confess you have taken a secure way to enclose my Answer to your side And as you have set the Question in learned light I answer to your Hearts content that such a Person shall hereby have no Right either with or against his will And to all such Questions I had given you a round and comprehensive Answer before to the same purpose tho' it so often escapes your notice belike for its inconsiderableness Yet it being a right Answer you shall have it in both Ears whether you will or no. And it was such * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or Right of War yet if he doth so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself upon the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practices of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determin for us in such Exigences as is manifest in the long Contentions and many Turns between the Houses of York and Lancaster and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things And again * Sol. Ab. p. 6. Wars and Victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the injury lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission So that taking Right for a Title founded in real Justice no man really can have Right in the sight of God by a meer unjust Act or Acquisition And yet tho' the preparations to acquire new Kingdoms or Dominions be unjust if that very constituent Act which transfers the Possession does at the same time infringe no mans present and permanent Right such possession becomes Rightful But all this is nothing to the purpose For our Question is only of who or what is formally legal not what is in real honesty morally Rightful For all Possession which a man obtains by legal forms of Process either in War or Peace is formally and apparently Legal to all Civil Purposes and Constitutions tho' the Cause obtaining be far from being really and morally right And a man by legal Judgment may de facto be put into possession of what another man hath a real Right to so that the possessor shall have the Legal Form of Title in what is really anothers Due And in all such Cases all Affairs belonging to such Estate follow the Legal Tenure of the Possessor who is therefore in Law taken as bonae fidei possessor And even antecedently to Judgement quiet possession in a private Estate tho' slipt into by cunning Frauds and Artifices against which there is no Civil Law is taken by the Law for formally Legal till the Occupant loses it either by Art or Judgment Now all independent Persons and Princes that are subject to no Judicial Tribunal contend by War not Law and what they settle themselves in by the forms consequent upon War they have such a formal Title to as the Laws of War and Revolutions yield them and no other tho' whether Cause is just and consequently thereupon whose Possession is honestly rightful none can effectually judge but God amidst so many pretensions And in such Turns the Subject People must or may lawfully yield to the formal Titles or Fates of War since they are not authoritative Judges on the Causes or Rights of
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
penal sanction but positive local and judicial does not oblige us but the natural reason substrate thereto supposes and indicates all obligations of Duty from all Relations whatsoever forfeited by Atheism and avowed Irreligion And accordingly Asa dishonoured his Mother in devesting her of her Royal Dignity because she had made an Idol in a Grove 1 King 15.13 2 Chron. 15.16 Nor is this any breach of the Law of Nature but the observation of it for the Law of Nature being nothing else but pure Abstract Reason and Equity whatsoever is consonant to this Equity comports with the Laws of our Nature By these Laws the sins of Men-rescind their Rights in many benefits which had been due to them in a state of Innocency The Law of God requires us simply to honour all men it being the natural due of our beings framed after the Image of God and yet wicked and ungodly men are to be shunned as spots and blemishes by the Law of Nature and to be made Anathema by the Censure of the Church For the Foundation of all Authority whatsoever is God and all Obligations to all Duties Civil Moral and Religious are founded in him so that an avowed rejection of God puts men out of all claims of Authority which alone is originally Gods for a renunciation of God is an effectual renunciation of all just and real Authority whatsoever The Fifth Commandment therefore being not a meer positive Precept but a dictate of Natural Equity is interpretable to particular Acts according to the Rules of Equity and must concede to superiour and more important Obligations which will sometimes require us to hate Father and Mother that is to disregard their Commands and forsake their Persons to keep Gods Commandments Luke 14.26 If a Son be a King and the Father a Subject he must deal with his own Father as a Subject in Civil Causes nay as a Malefactor if necessity requires A Son is bound to defend even by the Sword if there be no other way his Wife and Children from the Sword of his Father and to save his Country by the Detection of his Fathers Treasons And many such Cases more there may be wherein intolerable wickedness on one hand and greater Obligations on the other cut off the Ties of Honour and Union between Parents and Children Husbands and Wives and all other Temporal Relations since what separates men from God may well disengage them one from another And to put a particular Case if a Prince marry a Kings Daughter and Heiress and the King after becomes suspected of an Imposture to pervert that Daughters inheritance and upon demand will not refer that doubt to the Arbitration of his own Senate but to elude the Hopes and just Expectations of his Son in Law Daughter and his own People in this and other momentous Concernments he puts all the Laws Liberties and Religion of his Kingdoms in a Course of Subversion and ruin under Arbitrary and Foreign Powers may not such a Son in Law endeavour to put a stop to these Measures and to force such a King to do right And is such Prince's Wife bound to oppose her Husband in these just Causes to abet her Fathers injustice and unnatural Impiety And if the Father being thus pressed by the Son in Law rather than do the justice demanded will fly for the succour of his injustice to another unjust King the Enemy of his People and in the mean time leave his Kingdom in Confusion which shall subject it more effectually to his Scourge upon his return with Foreign Forces may not such Prince and such Kings Daughter and a confused Nation unite and settle it against the ruins otherwise inevitable to them all For if Natural Ties sometimes give place to Civils of greater weight here surely is as fair and just an instance for it as well can be imagined or alledged out of History And that Civil Obligations of greater moment do preponderate against Natural you your self confess when you rightly say had not the constitution been for the time being lawfully altered the Crown coming to the Princess of Orange by meer Descent the Prince here must have been her Subject tho' by the Matrimonial Laws of Nature he is her Lord. It is indeed a melancholy Speculation when the impieties of such near Relations break off all the Natural Links of Duty and Union which must never be receded from as long as the Union is tolerable and consistent with Superior Obligations but of two Evils the least is always to be chosen and where two Offices are incompetible the more important is to be prosecuted And yet tho' this be lawful and necessary 't is sometimes a Tragical Scene under which even the Righteous Parties are to mourn and lament their infelicity in falling into such Straits and Temptations and are incessantly to pray that God would put a just and good End to the Disaster and in the mean time to make necessary Justice and Piety the only Rule and Reason of their Actions in such a State of Division and inevitable Contention And such being the form of the present Affairs if you needs will censure the Morals of your Sovereigns you ought to allow their Measures all the Charity the Case will bear which hitherto seems the Care of Gods Especial Providence for us And if it be so it is a dangerous thing to Curse whom the Lord hath Blessed But I have told you these things concern not us in our Civils and it is therefore best to leave things secret and above us unto God the Lord and Judge of all men But as to the Change it self it is an apparent delivery and blessing to the Nation in the best manner attainable by any means less than supernatural For a deliverance it is plain we needed which could never have been secured had King James continued undisturbed in his Reign Now if an unrelated Prince had desired to help us yet he had had no Civil Interests to have grounded a defence or rescue us from any Civil Laws or Laws of War Then the Sovereignty given to a Stranger had been a cutting off the Line Royal which neither Atwood or Johnson have * Since Johnson will give Richard Rich a Right yet asserted lawful by our Rules It would also have been a punishing the sins of the Father upon the Children and inevitably have involved us in intestine Wars Then again if the Princess of Orange had invaded her Fathers Kingdom and Crown by any Hostile Forms this would have looked more violent and unnatural and seems more than the Princely Lady in Temper or Duty could well or easily have attempted Time was before a calm and thorow consideration of things that matters seemed hard but I am now convinced that no other Person under Heaven could in human prospect be so proper a Redeemer as his present Majesty nor any Form of Settlement devised to fore-fend the Ruin of this Nation upon whose Strength the Security of
all Christendom at this day principally seemeth to depend And this and all that I have said to you I speak with all sincerity which if it persuade not you I cannot help that but I think it is a reasonable ground for that Allegiance which I have not carelesly or inconsiderately given Dyscher You do us manifest injustice when you suppose or feign that we admit no Settlement under Powers procured by the breach of Gods Commandments And this in all reason you must do knowingly and wilfully because I think there is not one who on our behalf hath concerned himself in the matter of the Convocation-Book but hath stated this Question and always admitted a thorow Settlement whatever were the means whereby it was procured 'T is true we neither commend nor encourage such wicked doings but on the other hand we do not think Dominion to be founded in Grace and that a man cannot have a good Title unless he be a good Christian We can mourn over the bad man whilst we submit to the good Title But we complain that we have no Settlement nor any thing like a good Title to which we may submit For who can own that to be a good Title against which there are prior and better Titles in being contesting and claiming Or who can take that for a Settlement where a bad Title by bad means is maintained against a just and good Title T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. We say that a full Settlement in one while another who has Right claims and endavours to recover his Right is contradictory nonsense T.B. ibid. p. 40. Eucher I very well know and freely own that all your Disputations upon the Convocation-Book do in terms allow a full Settlement however procured tho' you contradict the Convocation in your notions of a thorow Settlement But it does not therefore follow that all of your Party think so The most that I have orally discoursed stand upon the breach of the Moral Laws as the grand exception against the Right on which only they can swear Allegiance since say they Allegiance follows Right and Right cannot be founded in Acts morally Evil Note That in Sol. Ab. p. 8. I did not make Dyscheres positively to deny Submission to all Settlements procured by breach of Gods Commandments because I know they do not all deny it but because it is the common Objection with most of them in point of Conscience I made Dyscheres reply not should say No and essentially injurious and consequently by such there be be no full or thorow form of Settlement And if you will give me leave to deliver my Opinion I think if Gods Providence had not so disposed of things as to bring that absolutely No but what if I Book into publick Light by the hand of my Lord Arch-Bishop Sancroft in this very Juncture all your Pleas would have chiefly stuck in the Laws of God whose violation with you should have been alone sufficient to have nulled all Rights and Titles But now as it is you are pinched by the Authority and the Edition of that Book and forced against your wills to own it and have no relief but in forced Arts of Evasion Such is that demure Protestation that you do not think Dominion founded in Grace which you know was and is a pretence toto coelo distant from our matter as claiming all Secular Rights by virtue of their Religious Character or Election But will you allow that a full and legal form of Settlement can be founded in any Act really injurious I would have you speak out without boggling or clouting your Tongue If not then the Defect of Plenitude in such Settlements stands in the iniquity and breach of moral Justice and Gods Commandments And in truth this at last is the true English of all those Reasons on which you complain that we have no Settlement nor any thing like a good Title tho' those Reasons are wrapped up in forms of words chiefly relating to Civil Laws For the sum of all is the Possession of another mans Right is no full Settlement because it has no good Title as being a violation of Right and Gods Commandments Of which I shall have occasion perhaps to discourse more anon In the mean time as I have already given you part of my sense herein so will I now deliver and settle it as full viz. That when several persons claim Right then pendente lite either in Law or War the Legal Presumption of Right must be for the quiet Possessor but after judgment given to be in the person to whom it is adjudged till reverse of judgement and all other antecedent Titles and Pretensions are to be deemed null and cessant to all Civil Effects and Constructions whatsoever the Errors or mens private Senses herein may be and the condemned Titles must not be taken to be good and still in being tho' new claims and contestations may be promoted by the outed Party Which being premised I can easily yield you that that can be no good Title against which there are prior or better Titles apparently in being contesting and claiming and that it is no full and Legal Settlement where an apparently bad Title is by bad means apparently maintained against a Title apparently just and good But this is not to be taken in a judged Cause But who was Judge between King James and King William while the former disputed the new Possession of the later with the Sword to determine the Civil Practice of the Nation If none then were we to abide by King Williams quiet form of possession If there were any Judge it was foreign or domestick Now there neither was nor could be a foreign Judge to oblige us if domestick it was either private or publick if private that cannot oblige the whole Nation if publick then it was in the Estates convened but they have judged King James's Title void and Cessant and not in being and so tho' extrajudicially claimed neither just nor good But if you will neither allow quiet Possession nor publick Judgment as a Rule to State Titles Legally but will throw up all to private Opinions or Humours you dissolve all the ties of Civil Society into Eternal Wars and Commotions But because you clamour that we have no Settlement I will make further Advances and prove the Admission of their Majesties by the Estates of this Land to be a full and proper Settlement tho' against King James's claim and contest from the Laws of this Land the universal Usage of all Nations natural Reason and Holy Scripture Dyscher This is a teeming Promise have a care lest the Production be ridiculous Eucher First then I begin with the common Laws of this Nation which are nothing else but the constant and general Customs of England which Lawyers justifie for good and binding upon a fair presumption of their Descent to us from some immemorial Compositions Real and National made by our Fore-fathers whose Acts and Contracts
the Learned Casuist to Suit his Principles if he can with the Conditions and Capacities of Human Life and after Good endeavours this way he will find that these Civil Questions are not of Private Determination But if there be such Dreadful Dangers of Immoral Devotions on such Contested Rights of Government they Naturally ly on them who in Civil matters Oppose their Private Conceptions and Practices to Publick and Judicial Constitutions which is a Course in its own Nature formally Seditious and for that cause Un-Christian and may too truly and sadly Corrupt their Communion and Defile their Devotions who will not know the ways of Peace Dyscher You will needs suppose that if it be the Life of King James then it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Prince of this Crown But why may not both do it For because the Lawful King is Living and Claiming therefore the Commandments of God require of all his Subjects that they Pay him their Dutiful and Loyal Obedience They ought by all means to Support him in his Throne or Restore him to it as his Condition requires T. B. 2d Let. p. 20. Eucher In the Murther of a Parent King by his Son and Heir * Sol. Ab. p. 8. I proved that the sin did not Incapacitate the Parricide but that our Constitutions admit him to the Crown which you not being able to deny I conclude that Breach of Gods Commandments Nulls not a Title procured thereby And then you Assign the cause hereof that the Parent and all his Rights are Extinct by his Death but King James's Life and Contestation Diversifies his Case Then I rejoyn that it is not the Breach of Gods Commandments that Incapacitates the Princes of this Crown but the Life and Contention of King James And is not this an Accurate and an undeniable Observation For if Breach of Gods Commandments either alone creates or with other Causes concurs to a Civil Incapacity then such Breach doth either partially or solely obstruct such capacity And if so the Murther of a Royal Father must be some Bar to the Succession of the Parricide But if it be none at all in that Case why should a less Sin against God Preclude a Title in another Case in Conjunction with another Cause which yet your selves will not dare deny to be alone Enclusive of King Williams Title Here then I will sift you upon this Point Would the continued being and Claim of King James Incapacitate King William of the Royal Title if King William had never broken any Commandment of God or No If you say Yea then the Breach of Gods Commandments Contributes nothing to King Williams Incapacity which alone ariseth by it self from the Life and Claim of King James it being Naturally impossible for two Men to be Total and Separate Proprietors of the same Right at one time a truth not at all belonging to Ethic's or Divinity If you say No then you yield that King William may be Entitled to King James's his Throne without breaking Gods Commandments even during the permanency of King James his Life and Right And han't you hereby well amended the matter But such are the results of affected Sophistries especially when they are Impertinent also Now that yours are so will be hence Manifest For our Question last was whether no Settlements procured by Breach of Gods Commandments must be Submitted to and particularly such as follow the Extinction of the former Proprietors Tenure and Title through such ill means And now you Answer me that Gods Commandments do Incapacitate King William of King James's Crown because King James's Title is not Extinct but Lives with him Which if it had been true I should also have denied King William a capacity to the Title not from the Moral Law but from Natural and Legal Impossibility And therefore I suppose King James's Tenure first Extinct when I say * Sol. Ab. p. 8. But if His Tenure be Extinct as it hath been Publickly judged by this Nation our Oath to him Ceases tho' be contend never so much for the Recovery And there I take it for necessary that the Judgment of the Nation must overballance all your contrary private Opinions as to all our publick Duties and Obligations Now when your words are disinvolved they amount to no more than this that the Law of God forbids one Man to seize on another Mans Permanent Right and Title in which as it is nothing to the Rhombus so you have no adversary But this is not your second or single Failure but here appears a third point of Ignorance for our Question was not what Gods Comments do forbid but whether the doing what God forbids in order to the procuring formal Titles and Tenures in Law by the real or Judicial Extinction of another Mans Tenures does Create a Civil Incapacity or Nullity in the Tenure so acquired This is what I deny and I defie you to Prove The instance of a Royal Heir upon the Murther of his Father is an unmovable Argument for me for tho' the Laws of God forbid him to procure the Crown that way yet if he violates those Duties the Laws of God do not null the Tenure acquired by forbidden Wickedness The Law of God forbad David to Usurp Vriah's wife while the Hittite's Title in her continued with his Life and the King might actually keep her but by no Legal form of Tenure The same Law of God forbad the King to Murther Vriah with the Sword of the Children of Ammon in order to a Matrimonial Tenure of his wife Yet when that wickedness was compleated the Title of the King in Bathsheba was Legal and valid even by the Judgment and Ratification of God himself Nay when Ahab had slain Naboth by Judicial Condemnation for falsly imputed Blasphemy the form of Title by which he after enjoyed Naboths Vine yard was Legal by Judicial Forfeiture tho' it were Morally unjust in the sight of God for had there been a Civil Nullity therein it had been necessary for him to have compassed Naboths Death by Capital Sentence in order to a Civil Title which Jezebel procured for him this way to avoid the Odium of open and formal Un-entitled Usurpation So that had your Loud Obloquies against their Majesties morals been never so true Yet King James's Tenure being Extinct doth not preclude a Civil Title in their present Majesties which we are now to abide by and defend by the greatest Suffrage of Gods Laws Reason and the Laws of Nations at which expression I have heard that your Friend T. B. winds up his Mouth and * T. B's 2d Lett. p. 26. thanks God he hath not so Learned Jesus Christ And it is like to be true for he seems to have Learn'd but little of him at least in his Doctrine Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly of heart and ye shall find rest to your Souls Dyscher To the Objection that Allegiance seemeth to imply
which they accept for their Majesties under that Interpretation contracts no Evil he thereupon takes in their Sense as judicially Legal and no other This I think is no Cozening of the State in the Swearer but a fair sincerity before God and the World and answerable at any Tribunal whatsoever Have you any thing more to say upon this Point Dyscher My Friend T. B. suggested no more matter of Arguments to me hereupon but only huffed and laid about him what that innocent Sense might be and the double boil'd Crambe of Swearing to Usurpers to maintain their Usurpations that while you make such a Pother about Senses your Conscience lies snarling within as he does without when he scorns your Pity and stiles you meek For-swearers meek Rebels meek Traitors meek Turks meek Jews meek Renegadoes and taxes your Merciless High-Priest for want of Bowels to a poor Boy whom it seems some of his Party had imployed in carrying Seditious Libels I will not tell you the manner of his Fury but it so startled me that I thought verily I must have sent for the Doctor Ser. J. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27 28. Eucher But what say you to the danger of the Law even when King James returns if you treasonably break your Allegiance to King William Dyscher In this I find you are a Man tam Marti quam Mercurio otherwise called an Ambodexter For if you cannot perswade us you will affright us into the Oath or any thing else For you endeavour to possess us with an Opinion that King James if ever he returns will hang all them that do not Swear and pay Allegiance to William An hard Case that a Man can't be Wise and Honest without Hanging But why this extreme Severity Why Because the Lineal Heir may hang a Man as a Traytor for breach of Allegiance to an extralineal King Well but if King James should hang up all that did not pay Allegiance to William one would think he should not spare those who would not pay Allegiance to himself and this would make clear Work When Edward the Fourth first joined Battle against Henry the Sixth did not you think this would have made a powerful Speech for him to his Souldiers Gentlemen go on couragiously your Cause is good the Crown is evidently my Right and if I can recover it by your assistance I will certainly hang you up every Man for fighting against the extralineal King Henry Sixth who here appears in the Field against us and keeps me from it Sir I do not believe there is any Law to hang a Man for Loyalty and of all Men living I least fear it from King James T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. And I appeal to your self whether you can believe that Interpretation you put upon our Laws * Sol. Ab. pag. 12. viz. That King James may Hang Men as Traitors for breaking their Allegiance to King William This is the same as if King Charles the Second should have Hanged Men as Traitors to the Common-Wealth of England who restored him to his Crown M. S. Reflex But in Truth all this Hanging stuff seems to have another Design not to tell what K. James may do but what you would have others to do as if they were excusable for any severity towards those who deny them that for which even King James himself may punish them It is a pious hint to your Government and your Mob T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. Eucher I was willing to have saved you if it had been possible out of Error that so I might have kept you out of Danger But if there be no such Danger I am very glad of it What King James will do I am no Arbiter nor did I ever assume upon me to discover his Intentions I only minded you what by our Laws he may do if you are guilty of Treason against Allegiance required by our Laws to the present Sovereign But you according to the sincerity of a Zealot repeat me to have said that King James may hang you for not taking the present Oath that I may stir up the Powers and Mobb to do so presently But I thank God for your sake that tho' the Laws are severe upon unhappy Clergy-Men that cannot conform to the Oath yet such Recusancy does not by any Law make Men Traitors as not being made Treason If you live otherwise quietly and contrive no Seditions neither I nor the Laws can touch your Lives either now or hereafter in any Revolution But if you will incur Treason against extralineal Kings the Law since Henry the Seventh may be in force against you under the recover'd Reign of the Lineal however they stood in the Days of Henry the Sixth 'T is true Heirs Lineal that promote such Treasons may and no doubt always do stake Faith and Troth not only to indemnify but prefer their Adherents But in Edward the Fourth's Age and Army the Souldiers were not Lollards and Hereticks with whom the most Holy See and the more Holy Society will keep no Faith especially to succour and secure their Heresie He that hath seen what has been may easily see what will be if he will not shut his Eyes * See the state of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James And in England among all other advances remember the Fanatick Commissions for enquiry into past tho' legal Prosecutions against Conventicles on purpose to enrage them to join their Skeems with the Papists to cut our Throats who had but just before saved the Kings own Throat from the same Hands But if the Old prudent Câ—ution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will produce no faith in you I leave you to your own Paradise Dreams and Dotages since the sagacious Observation of the Poets never quadrated so well to any person or purpose as me and mine upon this occasion invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti And yet for all my good will the sport you make with me in your Edward the Fourths Martial Oration exposes your Principles perhaps more than my Law For by the straiâ—s you have made upon the Duties of Christian subjection which Custom has named Passive Obedience Edward the Fourth's Souldiers had been bound to have fought for him tho' he had made them such an Oration which could not have been imprudent upon your Principles of Christian Loyalty But if such an Oration would have justified the consequent Revolt or recession of his Army then is this Nation and all the Protestants of King James's Army justified in their leaving him and going over to the Prince since his assumed Dispensing Power and superlative Prerogatives the Obedience contracted to the Sec of Rome and the Society of Jesus and all his hasty steps he made to the dissolution of our Laws Liberties and Religion were a Proclamation as fatal to this Kingdom and his Protestant Souldiers as the Speech you have framed for King Edward And they took the Language and intention of his Actions accordingly
But could O. C. otherwise think the Lords needless to his Legitimation upon this empty and impertinent Speculation that there could be no Lords in the Original Contract Which can be true neither in any other sense but this that in the first Constitution of Civil Government in this Land there could be no House of Lords No verily for before or till then they were in a mere rustic Pastoral and agricolarian Habit Quality and Condition But since that there have been many Changes of Governments and in them of Sovereigns by National Contract And hence I say ever since there have been Baronies and Peerage in England in every settled Change of Government and Sovereigns made by National Contract the Lords were in those Acts that originated those Settlements Titles and Sovereigns and so would have been originally necessary to an Original Contract for O. C's Constitution tho once in a state of Rebellion a seditious Party of the Commons voted them useless But I ask you fairly Was that Vote of theirs Truth or Law If so why have the Kings and Commons ever since admitted their Use as well as Right If not why did you alledge it in Bar to the Rights of Peer rage But supposing that wicked Vote had been at that time true yet who had made them so useless but they by seditious Violences Now would you think it reasonable to cut off a Man's Hands and then reproach him and cast him out as useless But I will beat back this dull Weapon on your own Head and mind you that these County City and Burrough-Charters of sending Representatives could not be in the first Original Contract for Civil Government as being also of later Extraction So that upon your Theory O. C. must think them also needless in order to his Constitution who pleasantly new named Magna Charta Magna F ta And so at last the Truth will come about unawares that O. C. had no form of Title from King Lords or Commons of England Again if the Lords House should upon a critical Juncture turn Demagogue and rabble the Commons out of Heart and House would it be fair for the Lords hereupon to vote them off as useless 'T is scandalous therefore to draw Arguments from Confessed and notorious Violences to justifie a wrong Cause and therefore henceforward give us in Truth what you seem to Challenge and glory in just Weights and Measures at least be not so shamefully disloyal as to dry up in the King that Fountain of Honour by which he Creates the Peerage and who is the original Founder of all Charters As for the Lords not assuming to give away the Peoples Money as not being their Representatives 't is nothing to the purpose against their concurring Interest in Contracting for new Constitutions tho' neither House can separately give away the Peoples Money altho' those Bills are by regular custom prepared in the Lower House Nor are these Rights of the Peerage so alien from the good of the general Body but that we and the better part of the lower House have sensibly owed our Peace and Preservation to the Integrity Care Wisdom and Honour of that Upper House when many of our own over-heated Charioteers have been furiously driving on all to the Precipice Dyscher We will then dismiss the Lords in peace and come to the Commons on whom O. C. relyed and Whereas you say O. C. had no free House of Commons I answer first he did not pretend that which is a sufficient Answer thereto MS. Reflex Eucher Are you awaked in good sober sadness or have you almost talked your self into sleep and Dreams For tho' your Answer be sufficient to some purpose yet 't is so to mine not yours For not having a just freedom as well as Title to act for the Interest and Sense of the People their Acts were not the Acts of the People but either private Acts of Cowardise or rather the Acts of him that forced or managed them to his own Counsels and had no more legal validity than what meer Force and Fraud could give them Dyscher All that I will further say to this point is that they called themselves free and no Man durst say the contrary While they had the Power O. C. owned them and they owned him and he had as Universal and seeming a Consent of the Nation as can well be imagined he was obeyed at home and owned abroad if not in all yet in most of the Courts in Christendome Eucher How your Discourse consents to it self I do not well understand Just now you said O. C. did not pretend to have a free House of Commons now in the same Breath you say they called themselves free and no Man durst say the contrary and O. C. owned them Now did he own them to be free as they called themselves If so then he pretended to have a free House of Commons contrary to what you say If he did not own them as free as they owned themselves he must then either not own them at all or only as Vassals and I leave it to your Choice to take either of those Handles for there is no way to extricate you from the ties of Contradiction But whatsoever freedom this knot of Men had it could amount to no more than the freedom of Banditi or Rapparees or any unsuppressible Rout which is but a mere impunity to do Evil and wrong the innocent But the freedom we are speaking of is Civil consisting in the Popular liberty of Election Session Debates and Votes Yet the very House that Constituted him Protector was first purged of all suspected Members and upon their after admission his Constitution began to be questioned as much and for this O. C. dissolved them in most sacred Rage And for the truth hereof also I call in Testimony the Sense of the whole Nation who as soon as opportunity offer'd it self by Monk declared for and after met in a free Parliament which before they had long wanted And hence it appears also the Sense of the Nation that neither the Rights of Peerage nor the Freedom of Corporations had been Legally vacated by the former Tyranny As for the Negotiations of Foreign Courts they are no Demonstrations of a National Contract or Form of Legal Settlement here For as Foreigners are no Judges of our Tenures so they meddle not with them but only treat with the actual prevailing Powers whether Legal or Usurpant Tyrants or Rebels it s almost all one to Strangers They give them all good words to serve themselves of them but if disgusted they then change the Tune into all the juster Names and Titles of Oppression and Villany if they can do it safely So that there is no concludency in this sort of Reasoning tho' yet at the best his Complices and Strangers owned him no otherwise than he stiled himself not the Sovereign but the Protector only of the People But the boldest stroke of all is that he had as universal
Liturgy 6thly What is the Reason why Kings are particularly Named in National Prayers 7thly Whether our Prayers for King William must inevitably strike at King James 1. Then the strength of our Cause lies not herein nor fails in the Defects of this Account For in blunt Truth if King William and Queen Mary be our Sovereign Lord and Lady the same Prayers in the same full Sense are to be used for them in which they were used for all their Predecessors So that if King James comes into the Number of their Enemies against whom the perpetual Sense of those Prayers lies we cannot help that while we innocently perform our Duties The greatest Objection against this that I know is what your great Author of the Christian Communion herein offers that they that look upon new Sovereigns only as Kings de facto do herein pray for the Subversion of Right and him that has it and these make up a great Number of the present Conformists But that question properly comes under dispute upon the Notion of Enemies and Victory in our Prayers and on that Head it shall be considered The only question here is if a King de facto can be our Sovereign Lord This I know you deny and if your denial be good it presses our Prayers much if offered for a King by us taken for de facto only But if the Nation hath a lawful Right upon great Exigences to admit a Person into the Sovereignty who had no Right to enforce them thereto then as to the Nations part they have lawfully admitted him to be their Sovereign Lord and have yielded him all that Authority over us that the Laws of the Land in such Necessity allow us to concede And such is the Case in all Submissions upon new Conquests tho' injuriously gotten For in such Cases the submitting People being no Authentic Judges upon the Cause of the new Potentate can only judge for themselves what they may lawfully do and leave his Cause to God whether he on his Part takes the Crown de jure or no. Thus before the Recognition this Nation had de facto admitted K. William and every Person was bound to receive him at least for such and had there never been any Recognition de jure no Man was an habil Judge to have condemned the jus whatsoever Mens various Opinions in private might have been on which they ought to have laid no stress but to have received him as their actually settled and constituted Sovereign Lord and required no more since no more was determinately required of them If a Captive in Algiers c. be required to pray for his Lord and Master that is so only de facto he may certainly do so under those Titles and is bound to do so upon command if he has contracted Service I know you will here say this Contract gives the Tyrant Right But then you must grant that the Submission of a Nation passes Right ipso facto and then you put the Nation de facto only clear out of doors Here you will reply that such Submission cannot be de jure as being injurious to the present Right of another But then so will I say the Captives Submission and Contract is against the permanent Right of his Parents or former Master who thereby may lawfully rescue him by force of Arms. And yet notwithstanding this the poor Slave may thus pray for the Captivant as his Lord nay even that he may vanquish and overcome all his Enemies even while the former Proprietors are fighting for his Rescue in the same Sense we intend in our Prayers for our most rightful Sovereigns as shall clearly appear on the fifth Head of this Answer King William therefore being actually our Sovereign Lord even by our own warrantable Contract we may lawfully use these Prayers for him and on his Command are bound to do so even tho' he were only King de facto in the legal Sense of this Term and not altogether as we have owned him de pleno jure because it will appear that these Prayers are not levelled against any Man's Right tho' they are against all his Enemies Now the truth is the Relation we lately stood in to K. James as our then Sovereign makes tender hearted Men pity his whole personal History and consequently unwilling to pray against him if there be any fair or lawful way to avoid it which there is not if he comes not into the Number of those Enemies which we are to pray against Such also is the Temper of poor People under new Conquests toward their former Sovereigns when obliged to pray for the new that appear no otherwise than de facto such against all their Enemies Yet this is only an Operation of Bowels and good Nature but not of strict and impartial Reason tho' it influences much upon Men's Spirits but is to be guided and corrected in its Excesses thereby Hence upon the beginning of this Change an excellent Person that was easily satisfied in owning their Majesties Title Sovereign in the Prayers yet stumbled at the Passages about Enemies till he receiv'd with much pleasure this very Answer for which you deride me But as I have now said the only material Question here is if K. William and Q. Mary actually are our Sovereigns for this being granted all the rest follows of due Course without respect of Persons whosoever be their Enemies without exception But I confess I was willing to give you as healing a Lenitive as I could that I might not widen the Wound nor exasperate the Division but it seems while I labour for Peace you make you ready for Battel Secondly This seemeth to be the Sense of many learned Jacobites without which I see not how their Practices can be justified For not to repeat the Consent and Communion of the Deprived Fathers in these Prayers before the Day of their Suspension there are yet many moderate Men among you that read these Prayers tho' deprived for filing the Oath Now do you think that these Men direct their Prayers against K. James If they do then upon your Principles they break their Allegiance and Oath to him which they judge oblige them to this very Day Which methinks should make you less lavish of your perjurious Imputations upon others whose Principles acquit them from wilful and intended Perjury Yet there is no way for these Men of yours to avoid this Charge upon your Principles but by such a Sense of Enemies in which it is possible K. James may not be included But if they intend not their Prayers at K. James how are we charged for praying against him when we and these Jacobites in the same Words may sincerely use the same Sense so that in good truth the Account I gave of these Prayers becomes a Plea necessary not so much to us as to your own more moderate and equal Brethren against whom therefore for the future you must turn your Style and Acrimony Thirdly I will now
of humane Confederacies And truly if K. William himself would upon reference made deliver his sense he would declare K. Lewis more injurious than K. James in this war for K. James seems to have some colour for provocation but K. Lewis had none to engage in K. James's quarrels But if he engages on other Reasons then he is not an enemy on K. James's account but his own And if K. James and K. Lewis should ever happen to come into K. Williams hands there would be so sensible a difference in his respects toward them as would discover his resentments of French injuries as greater than K. James's tho' unquestionably he would shew a Royal compassion to them both And now I am provided with a Reason why I dislike your Prayers for victory to the late K. James against K. William First because your Prayers assert the late K. James to be our present King and import K. William to be the Nations Enemy whereby you condemn and pray against the present Constitution of which by our Law and consequently God's Law you are subjects not Judges nor de jure Adversaries Again you confess you pray absolutely against K. William as K. James's Enemy And this you must judge of him either in the moral or military sense If in the moral you must then do it either of infallible certainty or opinion only The former the matter is not capable of because of the darkness of men's interiour passions and the disputable nature of Civil Titles But upon mere opinions you ought not to pass absolute Censure upon any mans Conscience and become his utter Enemy by your own choice And yet were K. William infallibly and certainly injurious to K. James yet since K. James's Cessation of war to pray for such victories of blood which you alone account victory is to pray for a return of a Cessant War in order to a sanguinary Victory and its Consequences If you take K. William only as a military Enemy he was then innocent and so your Prayers then aimed at the ruine of the innocent and his Cause But now he is no military Enemy to K. James 't is more impious to pray for his Ruine which K. James himself does not now attempt Upon which even K. James himself has opened our Church-Doors to you to joyn with us in our Prayers for King William and Queen Mary But if you take the French War to be K. James's we have all reason to thank you kindly for your Prayers in a time of such a dangerous War as not only affects all our Temporals but our very Church and Religion the noblest Structure and Bulwark of the Reformation Of which God in mercy make you truly sensible and even in this respect turn the hearts of the Fathers to the Children and the disobedient to the Wisdom of the Just Amen Dyscher Yet I find you are not so confident for all your forms of Devotion For †Sol. and Ab. pag. 15. You think there is one Prayer on the 29th of May so dangerous that you graciously give us leave to forbear to be present at it But Sir who gave you Authority to dispense with terms of Communion You have done more I fear than you will receive any thanks for None you are like to have from us who have no â—eed of your License and you ought not to expect it from those who will think their Authority hereby invaded T. B. See Lett. pag. 33. Eucher This I confess is a dangerous foyl Nor was I well aware of that nasute quickness which appears in this Stricture But as argute as you are was it I that thought this Prayer dangerous or my brother Dyscheres Was it not you that complained that in that Prayer there is a vow of Allegiance to K. William and Queen Mary which upon your Principles you cannot be present at or concede Well then this was so and what said I Then forbear to be present at it But must this presently be interpreted to an Act or Power dispensing with the Duty Truly I intended no more but to yield that therein you must be left to act according to your own Principles and Convictions and adventure the Displeasure of the Powers and legal Consequences thereupon whom and which I believe you would not much more exasperate by this one omission once a year if you constantly joyned in all our other daily Prayers and otherwise live inoffensively So it is ordinary to use the Imperative in a bare permissive without a concessive Sense as Do if you will since you cannot be perswaded take your own Course run your own risks play your own game take your own fortune counsels c. And tho I confess this is form of permission that merits no thanks so neither did I court any thanks herein either from you or the Public For as for you in this hard time you are not very liberal in point of gratitude as I have found by my own experience And I pray God you fail not in this Duty towards God for his mercies to the Nation as you do towards those that wish you well because they run not with you into your unaccountable excesses But as to our Governours if I have not hereby arrogated the dispensing Power I hope I have not much offended them If I have for your ungrateful sakes I will endeavour to atone for this one offence and have a Care how I ensnare my self again upon your Score Dyscher But yet you think we need not be so very coy as to this Prayer For you say that you have been assured by a good Author that the Recusant Bishops did not all stick at it but that some gave directions and consent to the use of it and also before their Suspension deputed Persons to administer the Oath in the Execution of the Authorities and Offices Episcopal Sir If I should say your good Author was an arrant lying knave I hope you would not only pardon my bluntness but also be more careful for the future how you gave any credit to such Persons T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 33. Eucher Indeed Sir if you prove that excellent Person whom you know not to have deceived me with a lye I am your humble servant But I cannot but smile within my self to think how when this your treatment comes to his knowledge that religious and prudent person will entertain the blunt Character considering his most tender Compassions to the Condition of the Deprived But in truth the reasons of his discovering this advice and consent were not calumnious but conscientious as exhibiting matter in a religious Conference for consideration and practice in these various turns of things humors and sentiments But I have been told that in Law negatives cannot be proved but by inference from positives which I doubt will hold you a tugg tho' your tongue be all teeth and jawbones Dyscher As for this pretended Deputation I will set before you the true story and then you and
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
will all cease and sink of Course when once men see we scorn them For Shame Conviction and Reproach of Conscience upon the sense of our magnanimous and meek Patience will naturally quench the Spirit of persecution and open a glorious liberty and venerable Authority to the Church of God But our base fears of worldly greatness on one hand and the baser affectation of it on the other hath universally effaced all the glories of Religion and Piety throughout the world and looks like a gloomy prognostic of Ecclesiastical Ruines and Confusion But that †This is the strain of Dr. Hody's great adversary Clergy men themselves should court and invite an Hierarchical servitude and apply the bowstring to the throat of their holy Mother by Principles contrived to strangle all her Apostolical Powers and Authorities is such a daring presumption as needs a greater than the annual Expiation And if the Dr. should live to see his Principles pursued by either Civil or Tyrannical Powers to the arbitrary Subversions of Gods Priests or if otherwise he shall live to think feelingly of that most holy Authority vested in Bishops by God himself whose Ambassadours Vicegerents and Representatives they are the contempt of whom affronts even Christ himself he will not think every violent Intruder that like a Robber comes not in by the door to be a regular Messenger of the Lord of Hosts and that the most audacious Sacriledge hath entitled him to a Divine Character and consecrated his Authority and Communion He will then with sighs and unappeasable groans of Spirit anathematize the instances and design of his Baroccian Treatise and the ill use of his own infinite reading and diligence to recommend the baseness and villanies of degenerous Churches concerning which at present I leave him and his Adversaries to fight it out at Argument In the mean time I will only note that tho' Civil power or force may put intruding Bishops into the Palaces and Revenues of the Bishopric's by un-canonical Violences yet they cannot be possessed of Spiritual Authorities by any mere secular or incompetent Power or Authority and so we on our part deny the Drs. Intruders the present possessors of the real Episcopacy in the abused Dioceses Eucher If the Dr. should hear you talk at this rate he would not take it very kindly I believe But I will make proof of your prowess against him in the famous instance of Solomon and Abiathar For the Dr. having asserted Abiathar properly deposed by the mere Royal act and power of Solomon refutes five or six principal opinions to the contrary and among them yours of Cession with such a contemptuous turn of hand as exposes it for ridiculous For he utterly baffles you with the bare repetition of the LXXII version on which you seem to lay the greatest stress and force of your opinion And it is no small impeachment of your understanding to take that as an Argument for your Cause which it notoriously condemns Let me therefore clear up your eyes with some of the Doctors Arguments You therefore say that * Sol. Ab. pag. 22. King Solomon did not properly and judicially deprive Abiathar of the High-Priesthood but only commanded or required him to quit it on pain of death And to this purpose you quote the words of Solomon to Abiathar according to the Hebrew and the LXXII which latter you paraphrase so as to infer an option in Abiathar whether he would with dishonour retire from his Office or suffer death this latter being in the rightful Power of the King if Abiathar would not yield in the former So that Abiathars Priesthood determined on his own volutary Cession not the Kings Ecclesiastical sure Now how does the Dr. cut off this * Case of Sees pag. 18. In answer to this saith he I need but produce the words of the LXXII 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This excepting the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are removed from the latter Clause to the antecedent agrees exactly with the Hebrew and the natural Sense of these words is no other than what we have in our English Translation with which all Interpreters agree Josephus as is plain * Case of Sees pag. 18. from his words above produced the Chaldee Paraphrast the Syriac and the Arabic and the old Latin Translators who all understand the Texts of a Positive and Authoritative ejectment And that it was a positive command not an Opinion proposed to Abiathar but an absolute Deprivation is yet more plain from the words which immediately follow so Solomon thrust out Abiathar in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. So the Doctor Dyscher 'T is strange that so Learned a man could fancy this to be an answer especially since I see not how he can clear himself from inconsistency or open error For if it were a positive command to Abiathar as he grants how could it be an absolute Deprivation which he asserts I owned it to be a command as positive and requiring as the Dr. but for that very reason denyed it to be a proper Act of Judicial Deprivation because judicial Sentences are not direct commands on the Offenders to excuse their own punishments but decrees of punishments to be executed by other hands as in Joabs Case which so apparently differs in Form from this of Abiathar Besides a command of self-execution as it may actually so may it lawfully be disobeyed and rendred ineffectual and it is in any such mans choice whether he will submit to it or no and the truth is no man will yield thereto but for fear of greater Danger Now if there had been no other prospect of Danger Abiathar would not have obeyed this so positive command of Solomon and if he had not actually obeyed the mere command being frustrate by his neglect had not been an absolute Deprivation that then which in it self was no absolute Deprivation without Abiathars consent and obedience which was not alone so as the Dr. contends and his office became void by Cession not mere Deprivation For it is a great mistake in the Dr. to imagine that positive commands destroy Option For tho' the commands of God upon our Practices are all as absolute as possible yet are they proposed to our option Thus saith God in his * Deuteronomy Ch. 30. v. 19. I set before you life and death blessing and cursing therefore choose life that thou and thy seed may live The Law and Gospel though in the preceptive part they are most properly Laws yet have also the nature and form of a Covenant in them and the punishments inflicted by vertue of them are justified not only from the nature of the crimes but our own option But let us see whether this command were so positive as these Laws whether it were so much the declaration of the Kings own will as a concessive indulgence to the will of Abiathar It is plain then herein K. Solomon offered him an easier condition than his
Estate and the Personal Authority Here is a Man that really was and still Asserts himself Christ's Ambassador Residentiary Vicar and Vice-gerent Comes a Tyrant or a Rout and violently expells this Ambassador This is a Crime against the Laws of Nations and the Rights of Royal Majesty and is a direct affront to our Lord Christ But this is not all This Tyrant or Rout corrupts a few of other our Lord's Ministers and they in their Lord's name give Credential Commissions to an impostor set up by these Enemies of our Lord to supply the defect of the ejected Ambassador this augments surely not lessens the insolence and no Prince whatsoever can connive thereat without severe and vindicative Resentments Now whether shall the Church own for Christ's Messenger him that he sent but others barbarously expelled or him that he sent not but others impudently obtruded Doth not our Saviour say to them whom he sent as his Father sent him He that despiseth you despiseth me and he that despiseth 〈◊〉 dâ—spiseth him that sent me And can we admit this contempt upon his Messengers without being Accomplices therein And what if this is necessary for the Clergy at present to save their promotions Must we value these before the Divine Laws of the Hierarchy and Communion Are we thus taught to contemn the World indeed as to quit all the Authorities of our Lord's Dignation rather than loose a little Worldly Interest When our Lord saith He that loveth the World or the things that are in the World more than him the love of the Father is not in him nor can he be Christ's Disciple But however if the Clergy be not degenerous they can preserve their Bishops in the exercise of their Spiritual Auâ—â—oâ—â—ties tho' not in the Enjoyment of their Estates and Temporalities For from what is Spiritual no Secular force can alone Depose them without Câ—usâ— and the concurrence of the Church Shall outward force force us into Intestine Schism or Disorder or can no Division from our Fathers be Schismatical admitted for fear of Temporal force But one thing more will I ask the Dr. whether we must admit such Deposition as violent Power pretends to before a new violent filling of the Sees with others If not then are we not to Sacrifice all the Secular Peace and then the See being not vacant by such pretended Deposition either the Deposition formally consists in the new Intrusion and so the Intrusion must on the Drs. Hypothesis be invalid and so cannot oblige us to admit it or if the Intrusion be not the Deposition then the former Bishop c. is not Deposed and the latter either is not possessed or two Anti-Bishops can be and are joyntly possessed of the same Episcopal See and Authority But if we may or must abide by the pretended Secular Deposition before a new Intruder then what if the Secular Tyranny will not concede us any Bishop Must we Sacrifice here too No here the Dr. is tender and will not Sacrifice he will have some Bishop or other by Mr. Mobs favour whether his Irrestibleship will or no. Now then let us reduce this Prudential Principle into Practice and if you can bear a little teizing I will discuss its Virtue Eucher Proceed Dyscher Suppose then upon an Irretrievable Deposition of Bishops by mere force the Tyrannick Powers neglect to new furnish the Churches what course must they take for a Supply Eucher Petition those Powers thereunto Dyscher What if these Powers Conscious of this your Drs. Principle always give fair Promises but never intend to repair the Breach how long must the Church wait Eucher Till such time as they see no hope of relief and as long as the Church can forbear without damage to the Substance of Religion Dyscher Well then suppose the Church can forbear no longer or the Tyranny absolutely denies to fill the Sees who shall then provide for the Church Eucher The other Undeprived Bishops and Clergy Dyscher But while or before they go about this the Irresistible Irretrievably deprives them also how shall the Cut go then Eucher Then the Church-wardens must try what they can do for their People Dyscher But let them be Irretreivably Deposed too and how then Eucher Then the multitude of Christian Churches Dyscher Tho' here I could demand how an unorganized Multitude can Act Uniformly yet I will not pinch you that way but what Priests must or can they provide the Old that are Deprived or New Eucher The old Case of Sees c. pag. 41. Dyscher What upon their Old Title or your New Investiture Eucher Here I am in a strait but let it be on their Old Title what then Dyscher Then they may not abide by the pretended Forcible Deposition till a new Intrusion nor is that Deposition Irretrievable as the Dr. sometimes supposes it for an Irretrievable Deposition is an effectual one whose effect cannot be vacated or reversed while yet at another time the Dr. allows the Deposition to be Invalid but an Invalid Deposition is null 't is no Deposition whereas an Irretrievable Deposition is a most effectual and real one as I have said Eucher Well then what if to avoid these difficulties we allow the reinvestiture of the former Priests by a new Title Dyscher But they will not accept it as knowing that their old Title is permanent and unimpaired by the null pretended Deposition and consequently that a pretended new Investiture is null because needless and anticipated besides we know that the acts of mere Laity cannot Canonically erect an Hierarchy Eucher Let them then procure a new Sett Dyscher But where will they find Persons qualified or willing to enter into such a deposable Office or to ordain them against Mr. Irresistibles will who will presently Irretrievably Depose them To this issue of Absurdity and Contradiction the Drs. Principle must of necessity bring him And he were better resolve that the Church may admit an open and utter Dissolution of the Hierarchy than dwindle it away after this poor precarious manner of Sophistry Have you any thing more to alledge from the Doctor Eucher Yes yes If the Bishop of a Frontier Town will not own the Authority of a Conqueror and is therefore Deposed by that Conquerour I desire to know of you whether the Clergy of that Town are Perjur'd if they own that Bishop whom the Conqueror thinks fit to set over them Case of Sees p. 6. Dyscher I smell your design well enough to bring me into a snare but I can answer the Dr. upon your Principles For if the Conqueror be not settled in Form of Law all he does is of no Validity and the Clergy are to have no regard to his violences upon the Bishop nor his Illegal intrusion of another But if he upon Conquest hath attained to a Formal Settlement there is a just Cause on the Merits of which the Recusant Bishop at the Command of the Conqueror may be ejected by the Church and
give way to a Successor of the Conquerors Nomination But this the Church is obliged to not for mere wrath but also for Conscience sake towards the reason of the Cause and the Law of God that requires Subjection to humane Constitutions But the Drs. Hypothesis puts the whole Proceeding against the deprived as injust and formally invalid to all intents whatsoever and makes the act of Deposition simply Secular without any Concurrence of the Church Eucher If a Bishop should be by the Civil Power Condâ—mned to perpetual and close Imprisonment or be banished for ever from his Country so that it is impossible for him to perform the Duties of a Bishop or should he be carried away Captive we know not where or from whence we cannot redeem him Nay suppose the Banished the Imprisoned the Captive Bishop should expresly require them upon their Duty oâ— Câ—â—onical Oath never to accept of any other Bishop as long as he by the common Course of Nature may be supposed to be living or till they be assured he is dead what must be done in such Cases c Case of Sees pag. 6 7. Dyscher The Church must abide by the Government of their Clergy in such Cases and in all Cases where the peculiar Office of the Bishops is wanting apply to other Bishops for their Succour and Aid Eucher But what if the Diocese be so set or restrained that the Church cannot have recourse to other Bishops as suppose in the Isle of Man or any other impediments preclude a Capacity of such Negotiations with other Bishops who can bear such an hard saying that the Church must not admit a new Bishop of her own when she may meerly because the ejected Bishop with whom we can have no correspondence is ill natur'd and grudges that benefit to the Church Dyscher I am hard pressed here I pray how will you steer in this dangerous difficulty between the quick Sands that lie on both sides on the Drs. loose Principles for your Cause and the strict Rules of ours Eucher Why truly I must so far concur with the Dr. as to grant that the Church has a Liberty to admit a new Bishop in such Cases if he be otherwise Canonically qualified Dyscher Does Banishment Imprisonment or Captivity cutting off all capacity of commerce vacate the See and exauctorate the injured Bishop Eucher It does render the See actually empty for the time but yet I will allow you that the Bishop is not exauctorated but that upon removal of the impediments his Authority would immediately exert it self and run on in its old Channel and ought to be received on the Original Title as being still Bishop of his Diocese except his supposed prohibition of another substitute Bishop forfeits his Right Title and Authority Dyscher This is odd Doctrine If the Bishop does not forbid the Church to substitute another which not to do may be presumed for a Cession then he still continues Bishop if he forbids a Substitution then he quits it by forfeiture I pray how can you make out these Paradoxes Eucher Thus if a Bishop shall enjoyn Orders to the Dissolution of Discipline he ipso facto becomes irregular and forfeits And such would be the effect of this supposed Prohibition of a Substitute But if he admits a Substitute upon the necessity of Discipline not otherwise to be supported he still continues Bishop and is to be received for such in full Authority immediately upon his enlargment and recovery Dyscher This does not extricate but involve and double the Paradox For thus there may be two Bishops of the same See at once and a Successor to a present Proprietary which Successor is to be again thrust out as uncanonical and no Bishop of such Diocese on the return of the former Eucher Two Bishops there then will be at the same time of one and the same See though not in it But the second will not be a proper Successor but a Sagan or Vicar to the absent and so to give place to the returning Proprietary till the See shall become wholly vacant of the Proprietary Bishop by death or otherwise except there be some other exceptive provision in such extraordinary Cases For according to this Rule of Prudence the Church of Jerusalem proceeded in the case of Narcissus * Case of Sees c. Chap. 1. pag. 6. alledged by the Dr. which is much like this supposed Case before us Oppressed with calumnious Perjuries Narcissus retires from his See to deserts and unknown Fields for many years not plainly renouncing his Station however Upon this the Prelates of the bordering Churches fill his Place with other Successors in all three before his return never undoubtedly designing to exclude Narcissus if he should return whose Glory and Innocency Heaven it self had signally vindicated But so it happen'd that after the death of the third intermediate Bishop Gordius Narcissus returns and the Church requires him to resume the Throne Episcopal not on a new but his old Title But because through the great infirmities of his old Age he could not bear the fatigue of his Office it was agreed that one Alexander should be his Sagan or Partner in that Prelacy the original Authority of Narcissus being thus derived to Alexander and by him to be administred in ease to Narcissus Dyscher But this does no Service in our case for our former Proprietaries are ejected and others set in to exclude them though present and claiming their proper Relation to their Dioceses Nor does this account of yours reach the design of those instances given by the Dr. in which the Intruders asserted a Title against the unjustly and invalidly expelled Proprietors Eucher I am not yet come to those Instances I only tell you what may be done in the Case of a Banished Deprived or Captive Bishop hereby rendred uncapable of his Functions which I here proposed from the Dr. though I confess to you as a Friend that this Plea and Case of the Drs. as well as all his Lay-instances throughout his Book are far more Impertinent to our present Case than as he says your Vindicators discourses were to the Baroccian Hypothesis Dyscher This is pretty Inadvertency if you can make it out Eucher Why look ye Deprivation or Deposition in our Sense and Case is the Divorce or Dissolution of the spiritual Relation between Priest and People but Banishment Imprisonment and Captivity makes no such divorce And this the Dr. Fundamentally grants in supposing his Lay-ejections to be invalid Deprivations or Depositions and though he generally calls these Lay-ejections and Banishments by the name of Depositions yet upon a cogent pinch he grants that Banishment from a Bishoprick though inflicted on purpose to part the Bishop from his people is no Deposition for so he †Case of Sees c. Ch. 4. pag. 56. expresly asserts of S. Hilary that he was never Deposed but only Banished and allows him to be still actual Bishop of Poictiers since there
is still asserted while the people turn to both sides with the Secular Wind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And I believe no body can make it out And I think we must make the Proceedings of the Church at the best to follow the pretended measures of Right and Rule or condemn them for wrong in every Instance produced by the Dr. Dyscher What course then will you take to excuse the Churches in admitting and maintaining Anti-Bishops against the Invalidly ejected Proprietors still claiming Eucher Upon what particular Motives they did Act it is impossible for me to determine but I think I can set such Rules according to which they might act validly not otherwise First then I admit that all the Imperial Ejections were not proper Depositions but either Antecedents or Consequents of them Now if the standing Councils of the Churches find the Bishop wickedly ejected by the Secular Arm or without any declared Cause they ought not to admit any other Bishop without the consent of and during a capacity of Communication with the Ejected or his Deputies But upon defect of such Capacity they may admit an Orthodox Bishop as a Sagan not as an Anti-Bishop to the absent to resign and concede at his return Much of this Photius engaged to the Ignatians under his hand if the Drs. Metrophanes be true in this particular †Case of c. Ch. 14. Pag. 148. * that he would carry himself toward Ignatius as towards an unblamable Patriarch and neither spake any thing against himself nor approve of any that should do so But being hereupon received t is said he took away the Paper he had so Subscribed and then deposed Ignatius He was therefore sensible that such a Subscription would have engaged him to Resign whenever Ignatius should return It being a Contract not to stand as Anti-Patriarch against Ignatius But in Case the Expulsion be for Notorious Villany incompatible with Episcopal Sanctity then even without a Synodical Sentence the Councils of the Church may establish another Successor as in the Case of †Vindic. of Dep. Bâ—sh Pag. 71. c. Case of Sees c. Callinicus Patriarch of Constantinople banished to Rome for open and effectual High-Treason in whose stead Cyrus was admitted And here your Vindicator acknowledges there was no need of a Synod to deprive him upon the notoriety and heinousness of the Guilt and the Dr. rightly observes against him that there was no need of a presumed Cession in Callinicus but then the Church if she acted Piously look'd on more than bare possession in Cyrus namely to the ill Merits as well as Fortunes of Callinicus as the just ground of quitting him for Cyrus Indubitable charges of the Secular Powers removing the impeached Prelate beyond the reach of Ecclesiastical Communication the standing Council of the Church may admit another for the present reserving the Cause of the Ejected to Ecclesiastical Cognisance whensoever there shall be opportunity and Equity binds the Ejected to admit these Ecclesiastical procedures because just and necessary And with this Design the Councils of the Church might admit new Bishops when the former had fallen under Imperial or Civil Condemnations to remote Exiles for Crimes charged on them by the solemn Credit or Averment of the Secular Powers to whose Proceedings and Declarations in the mean time we owe a just Defference and Veneration And if in all those the Drs. Instances wherein heinous crimes are pretended as the true causes of the Exiles the Churches had admitted the new Ones with such a Reservation of trying the Causes perfectly upon a fair opportunity I think their new Admissions had been not only valid but just too and a charitative Presumption of such intention in the Churches Admissions of the New Bishops will I believe excuse those Admissions at our Tribunal from Schism and Invalidity But when all comes to all none of this Hypothesis these Questions or instances are applicable to our Case for our ejected Fathers are not removed from the free presence of and Communication with their Diocesses so that they need not any other Substitute for want of their Presence and Authority from whom if there were no other Cause or Reason we could not recede without their Concession And this is conclusible from †Case of c. Ch. 4. §. 1. Pag. 41. the Drs. own words and instances For saith he should our Magistrates like the Persecutors those Ages viz. the three first centuries endeavour to destroy Christianity by depriving us of our Bishops and by suffering none to be substituted in their Rooms then those Bishops would be our own Bishops and as such we should still adhere to them As the Church of Antioch stuck to Eustathius ejected by an Heretical Synod and banished by the Emperour †Case of Sees c. 〈◊〉 4. §. 1. Pag. 41. till the Catholick Bishop Meletius was settled in his See upon which Eustathius quitted his Episcopal Care and Government and not before Now from hence 't is plain that Civil Separations are not real Deprivations or Depositions and that the Admission of an Heretical Intruder thereupon does not create a Deprivation of a Catholick Bishop from his Church So that all the Question remaining herein is whether the Introduction of an Orthodox Bishop be an effectual Deprivation For if so the Orthodox Church introducing the New Orthodox Bishop must intend to deprive the former Good Persecuted Confessor Bishop but who can think that an Orthodox Church will or can do this according to the Rules of Orthodoxy But then again this is no Lay-Deprivation and yet on the Drs. Hypothesis must be Unjust Invalid and Uncanonical and yet I pray must it be done by an Orthodox Church according to the Rules of Orthodoxy Even so it must be according to the Drs. but not the Catholick Principles But if the Church by the introduction of a New does not intend to deprive the Old then the Old Bishops Title and Relation to his Church is still retained and permanent and the New is no Anti-Bishop to the Old but must resign upon the return of the former except it be otherwise Canonically contracted And in the Drs. own instance who can think that the Catholick Church in Antioch by admitting Meletius did depose Eustathius to whom they ever had so firmly adhered during all the Arian Persecution It must therefore be resolved that Eustathius directed or admitted the Introduction of Meletius in that hereupon he omitted and quitted his Episcopal Care or that the Church admitted him not against Eustathius but in his stead until his Return and Restitution upon which Eustathius wholly Resigned or discontinued and gave place And so the same may be well judged †Case of c. Ch. 17. in the Succession of Macedonius to Euphemius in the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate even as the Case is Stated by the Dr. especially since Macedonius besides other good Offices would not wear his Omophorion in the presence of Euphemius shewing
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
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
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the
A DEBATE ON THE Justice and Piety Of the Present CONSTITUTION UNDER K. William In Two Parts The First relating to the State The Second to the Church BETWEEN Eucheres a CONFORMIST AND Dysoheres a RECUSANT By Samuel Hill Rector of Kilmington Author of Solomon and Abiathar Psal 7.8 Judge me O Lord according to my Righteousness and according to mine Integrity that is in me Inter utrumque tene Obsequium amicos Veritas Odium Parit LONDON Printed for John Everingham at the Star in Ludgate-street 1696. Erudito Reverendo Sanctóque Sacerdotum Collegio Diaecesews Bathoniensis Wellensis Clero florentissimo Post Patrum Primaevorum in causâ fidei Vindicias ab imbelli praevaricatorum nequitiâ Usquequaque tutas adhuc inconcussas Vestro quinetiam pro Authore Suffragio publico Invidiae adversùs obloquii tela Munitas pariter ac cohonestatas Amicas hasce denuò Ecclesiae pariter ac Patriae 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 PacÃsque sacraë conciliatrices Pro Justitiâ publicâ Pietate Contra Seditionis Schismatis Erastianismi dmissi opprobrium admittendÃque periculum susceptas Apologias Integerrimâ fide Summo studio Conscientiâque quà m maximè castâ Votivas dicat Perque gratas optat Vester S. Hill ERRATA PRef p. 1. l. 17. for dismissed r. discussed ibid. l. ult r. appear or seem Booâ— p. 21. l. 14. r. Desertion p. 22. l. 5 6. r. Desertion p. 42. l. 32. r. Anticyrae p. 43. l. 1. r. Prosecute p. 45. l. 27. r. IVs p. 57. l. 24. r. Construction p. 63. l. 26. r. off p. 64. l. 7. for and r. an p. 65. l. 12. dele an p. 71. l. 8. County p. 82. l. 29. r. there can be p. 83. l. 34. r. at full p. 87. l. 25. for thoâ—… r. the oath p. 91. l. 15. r. title ibid. l. 31. r. to surmise p. 95. l. 71. r. to shiâ—… for p. 96. l. 33. r. the moral p. 104. l. 8. r. if we admit p. 105. l. 8. r. say p. 10â—… l. 12. for of Constitions r. of Constitution p. 110. l. 23. r. it had not been p. 15â—… l. 21 22. for excession r. excision p. 156. l. 35. r. invert p. 163. l. 27. for frâ—… r. for p. 165. l. 4. r. takes it in p. 165. l. 31. r. marte p. 168. l. 9. r. Pâ—… p. 170. l. 27. r. imprudently p. 172. l. 3. r. I never look ibid. l. 27. r. Possessâ—… p. 185. l. 9. for sending r. sounding p. 162. l. 8. r. Notion p. 162. l. 37â—… comes into p. 163. l. 32. for using r. refusing p. 167 l. 23. r. presumed p. 17â—… l. 17. r. on evil p. 174. l. 10. r. a form p. 176. l. 10. r. was from p. 172 â—… 17. r. Office p. 8. l. 31. for excuse r. execute p. 199. l. 12. dele which p. 20â—… ult r. Frischmuth p. 205 l. 19. r. peculiarly p. 209. l. 27. r. anothers p. 210 â—… 8. r. procedure p. 211. l. 30 31. r. who thinks the Tenant for sworn for submitâ—… to the new Possessor p. 213. l. 30. r. all to the Secular c. p. 225. l. 6 7. r. sâ—… any thing against him himself ibid. l. 32. r. in dubitable p. 230. l. 36. foâ—… Gase r. the Case p. 231. 32. for and r. am p. 233. l. 31. r. is it p. 235. l. â—… r. validly p. 137. l. 1. dele of p. 239. l. 18. r. Aerianism p. 248. l. 12. â—… and r. an p. 242. l. 22. for if r. is p. 252. l. 30. after c. dele and p. 2â—… l. 8. r. to do good p. 265. for but will r. that will ibid. l. 15. r. Capacity to Ecchâ—… p. 97. l. 13. for might r. weight TO THE READER I Here present thee with a Book which either Destiny or Calumny will drag out into the Public whether I will or no. The pretended University-man in his Remarks upon my Defence of the Fathers having descended to the humble Glory of traducing it and me in his Post-script to Mr. Chiswell by ill Characters and false Histories has enforced this involuntary Publication The Character he gives of it is that it is a Trifle which he presumes of it of his own Sagacity without ever seeing it that he is told by a good Hand that it falls on Mr. Dod ll's Principle with great Fury and treats the Jacobites very brutally The Design herein is to preclude my Interest with the Jacobites to whom he says I am relapsed His historical Account is that it was written and sent up to a Bishop for Publication to divert a Storm expected on the Vindication c. by engaging my Lord of Canterbury and all the Bishops against my Adversary that however finding the Trifle slighted I earnestly desired that Bishop that it might not be printed that so if I could get it again into my Hands I might deny the Writing thereof to the Jacobites as I begin to deny the other The Intention of this is to represent me to all the Powers as an Apostate against the Government Fool and Knave all over that so I may have no Countenance in it but be abandoned by all Mankind Before therefore I offer my own true Account and Apology against this Slander it is easily observable that his Passion has marred his Art of Detraction in giving Marks of its apparent Falshood For what Clergy-man can presume to put a servile Office on a Bishop or what Bishop can be imagined so unresenting as to admit it or after Admission to endure a Countermand from the vain Presumer Besides if it were rejected as a Trifle the Bishop cannot be supposed to promote its Publication without Disgrace and Reproach which none of them have reason to incur for any of their Clergy especially against the Sense of the whole College Episcopal And if so then how could I earnestly desire the Bishop that it might not be printed when it had been before rejected to me as a Trifle He seems as vain also in hopong that that Bishop would keep it from me to refute my supposed denial thereof as if a Trifle were worth a Bishop's keeping or as if any Bishop can be so unjust as to detain from any Man what has been for a while entrusted with him I think this is rather an unhandsome and rude Usage of that Prelate than of me to whom I leave him to make satisfaction The truth is this Book was first written about Whitsuntide Anno 93. before the very Oral Discourse of Warminster it self and while the Heat of its first Conception animated by the Advices of Learned Friends lasted was designed then for the Press But that Ardor being soon cooled I designed to review it and procure a Friend by it if I could among the Fathers not by its Publication but by private Oblation Accordingly after some Deliberation I resolved not to present it any Bishop introduced into a deprived Diocese lest at the same time I should seem to flatter and abuse him with a pretence of bringing succour to