Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A63916
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A second representation of the hospitaller of St. Thomas Southwark's case in an humble address to the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Pilkinton, lord mayor of the city of London / by J.T.
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Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.
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1689
(1689)
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Wing T3316; ESTC R26335
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41,508
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50
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draw up an invidious impeachment against me which reflects back again from whence it came with much more severity and justice upon himself For if the account I have given your Lordship and the Court in my former Paper be true and I will be answerable for the truth of it however mean and unworthy I may be in my self yet upon a fair hearing of the matter between both Parties upon a true representation of the management of this House so far as the spiritual Province is concerned in Mr. Hughes his time and mine I doubt not nay I am very well assured though he were to pack and pick a Pannel of his own Friends to try the Issue betwixt us that the Verdict would and must be very much to my advantage and Mr. Hughes may see if he will cast his Eye that way That I am no such lazy unperforming Creature as he would represent me by this my double Apology for my self and defence of my most just and righteous Cause against the injustice and barbarity of his which he will never be able to answer while he lives and by not answering confesseth that he hath done me wrong and that he puts your Lordship and the Honourable Bench upon doing those things in his favour by the mist which he hath cast before the Truth of the matter which he himself cannot justifie to himself or you My Lord I am very sensible that Mr. Hughes values himself very much upon his Preaching and that it is some defect of mine in this part of my Employment which is the ground and root of that unfitness for which he would eject me and will most certainly if ever he be advanced to the formidable stile and dignity of a tryer but in the mean time my Lord let us play a Prize of Preaching if you please upon a Text and Subject whch your Lordship shall assign and if I do not pass upon the comparison for a pretty midling Divine and Mr. Hughes for the same Tub-preacher that ever he was then he shall eject me and do what else he pleaseth to gratifie this Christian zeal of his though he can get nothing but infamy by the bargain My Lord I do not pretend to great things but plain Sermons among plain People are best and several such I have preached if Mr. Hughes after a long course of Hypocrisie and time have arrived to a greater Perfection than simple Men pretend to in the two great Accomplishments of Cant and Grimace I can as little help and do as little envy his Attainments as I am Master of them but true Edification if I take it right is onely to be had from sober sense from plain and instructive Discourses otherwise Men may edifie that is they may without question work themselves into a serious and devout temper by worshipping of Images and Relicks by sprinkling with holy Water or whipping with a Cat of Nine-Tails and by many other extravagancies of the Church of Rome but a Man is not edified every time he thinks or vainly conceits he is upon grounds of meer Fansie and Imagination but when he understands his Duty and the reasons of it and upon this is excited to a Manly Repentance and to a wise resolution of amendment but after all the good that is attained by one Man's affected Tone or by anothers Gesture and Phrase though it may possibly have an wholesom influence upon the lives and manners of some men yet in it self it is an edg-tool dangerous to meddle with it is the method by which all religious madness and Enthusiasm proceeds and he that affixes Edification or Salvation to any such Whimsies as these for in very truth and reality they are no better after all his bitter Invectives against Popery is himself nothing else but a worshipper of Idols It is very strange to me how Mr. Hughes should bring so much Conscience with him out of the Countrey when he carried so little with him thither one great reason of his ejectment from hence and by consequence of what followed after it his going into the Countrey was because of his gross neglect in the discharge of his Duty and now he would be thought to return because of mine and how very likely it is that the neglect of my Duty if any such there were should go so near his Heart when for four years together he never had any sence of his own I leave it to your Lordship and to all Mankind to determine How little sence of Religion and even of common Honesty Mr. Hughes carried down with him to his Country Living for an Example to the Flock committed to his care may be gessed from his usage of the Reverend Incumbent to whom he succeeded in it whom he had the Grace to Persecute and it is thought would have prosecuted for dilapidations notwithstanding he resigned a considerable time and quitted all Profits before he need to have done it to Mr. Hughes his incomparably greater benefit and advantage for the sum he demanded was no more than fifteen Pounds though this is the more remarkable by what hath hapned since that this was the very same Sum which the other day he had the confidence to demand of mine it being my last Quarters Salary for this House which I earned every penny without any assistance of his And our Saviour himself tells us applying what he saith to our very Function and Business That the Labourer is worthy of his hire He did not so much as put in his claim to my Place till two thirds or more of the Quarter were expired and he may remember a My Order was dated November 13. 1683. that is six weeks before Quarter day tho I did not enter upon the Place so soon that upon his own Resignation which was somewhat above a Fortnight before the Quarter day he had the whole Salary of that Quarter allowed him though about fifty Shillings of it in strictness would have been mine and now he would have all my Salary for doing nothing which was so far from the usage that I have offered others that upon the late Incumbent of St. Thomas's Death I allowed the whole Salary of the next Quarter to the Widow as I thought in custom and civility I ought to do he dying somewhat after Quarter day though I took care of that whole Quarter my self and paid the Curate out of my own Pocket I am not ignorant he pretends an Order of Court and for ought I know he doth but pretend it for the Original I never saw nor any Copy well attested for his excuse in this matter but I am so well satisfied of the Honour of that Illustrious Body notwithstanding they have been very much imposed upon by false Representations and through multitiplicity of Business at this time have not had the leisure to enter into the merits of so inconsiderable a Cause as this is I say I am so well satisfied that I am sure they would not have passed an Order
of this nature but only for these two Reasons First That they thought upon the mistaken Suggestions that had been made to them that the undoubted Right was in Mr. Hughes and therefore they gave this Order in terrorem that so his Right might take place and I be compelled or at least very strongly enclined to pay an Obedience to it out of a prospect of advantage on the one hand or else of punishment for my Contempt on the other not that they intended this Order should ever be executed in its literal strictness and severity but it was by way of Experiment or by way of valeat quantum valere potest to try what I would do upon the Advertisement I received of it and indeed I had submitted to it and I should still be very willing to do the same but only for these two Considerations first That by so doing I should seem to allow that the Authority that made this Order for the Quarters salary becoming due at the Feast of the Annunciation last past which I had earned with my Labours in this House might with equal Reason make another to entitle him to all the mean Profits for these five years together which I must either obey or go to Prison for not doing it if such an Order had been good in Law which tho I did not believe that ever it would be done yet not to dispute this Order was in effect to acknowledge the Legality of that and to call my self by those names which Mr. Hughes only deserves for having unjustly received the Wages of this House for so many years together neither would it be prudent or adviseable in any Man in the World out of a too profuse respect and deference to any limited Authority whatsoever to run the hazard of the minutest possibility of such a fatal Consequence as this That your Lordship and the Court did not intend to use all that extremity of Rigour with me which such an Order at first view might seem to threaten me with appears very plain and evident to me by this that Mr. Hughes was denied his Money when he came for it and Mr. Hughes by claiming it so contrary to Sense and Justice hath pronounced a greater Satyr against himself than it is possible for Wit and Indignation in confederacy together to write or invent against him and your Lordship I hope will be pleased for the future having made this Experiment of Mr. Hughes as well as me not to hearken too much to his clamorous Pretences of a legal Claim when you see so plainly that all is Fish with him that comes to Net and that his legal Claims have no other bound or measure than the Arbitrary Dependences of the French King that is every thing is his and legally too by the general Law that runs through all his designs and equally justifies every thing he does which he can grasp or come at at the instigation of a will that admits no practical Conscience for its guide and by the help of all the little Power he is Master of and all the crafty circumventing Arts he can use The second thing besides the uncertainty of the Order it self which does not yet appear to me to be authentick why I neither did nor could pay it that submission which otherwise no Man should have done more chearfully than my self was that it seemed to me to be too hard measure while I am under the apprehension that my Possession is legal for me to submit to an Order which with all humble Duty and submission I must affirm I cannot believe to be so which would be for me to justifie by my own act of consent and in a manner to acknowledg the legality of a proceeding against my Conscience and my Interest together which is too great an hardship even for Slaves and Vassals to endure but if the Law will eject me currat lex I desire no other favour than what the Law will afford me but in all other things I am and shall always be ready to pay my lawful Superiours all possible obedience so far as is consistent with my honest Interest in conjunction with my unquestionable Duty For my Lord I have a Family to provide for besides my self and it is therefore my duty to assert any lawful Interest that may tend to our common support but in any other case where my Duty and my present advantage cut upon and interfere with one another I hope I shall always have the grace to look to the peace of my Conscience the honour of my Profession the reputation of my Name among good Men and so to consider my whole interest together which my Antagonist does not seem to do as not to forfeit my Title to a blessed immortality and my prospect of seeing the face of God with comfort for the sake of any perishing and momentany advantage May it please your Lordship when I began this my humble Representation and Address which I did not intend to spin out to so great a length in the midst of so great importunities of publick business as every moment sollicit and invite your care I mentioned these two considerations as the reasons why I did not pay that deference to the Orders of the Honourable Court for my Ejectment which was expected from me The first That the said Orders proceeded upon a wrong bottom of the restitution of the Charter And secondly upon a defective Jurisdiction which could not legally extend it self so far as to the making or passing any Order of this nature The first of these after all that hath been said upon it is I presume so clear if there be any such thing as Law or Reason in the World that I hope your Lordship and the Court will be throughly satisfied as to that point that Mr. Hughes hath no legal Right naturally accruing to and devolving upon him by this new and happy settlement of Affairs upon their ancient Basis and Foundation so that so far as your Lordship and the Court of Aldermens Jurisdiction is concerned if there were no Superiour Authority no higher Appeal it is a matter of Equity that lies before you betwixt Mr. Hughes and my self whether he should be restored or I continued in the Possession I have and I am willing to refer my self after a due Reflection upon what I have here humbly represented to your Lordship to Mr. Hughes himself who shall be Judge and Party in his own Cause whether all the equitable Pretensions are not mine or whether it be possible in point of Equity which is the Law of Conscience the Light of Nature the bless'd result of Goodness and Justice together for any Cause to have more to be said in its defence than mine hath or more to be said against it than his As to the second point of defective Jurisdiction I must again take the Liberty and I hope I shall do it without Offence to your Lordship any just and unprovoked Occasion of which I am