TWO LETTERS WRITTEN To the AUTHOR of a PAMPHLET ENTITULED Solomon and Abiathar OR The CASE of the Deprived Bishops and Clergy DISCUSSED PSAL. 50. 18. When thou sawest a Thief then thou consentedst with him and hast been Partaker with Adulterers LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCII The First LETTER SIR ENcouraged by your Preface I take the freedom to send you these few lines You acknowledge some such defects as to your self that you cannot make a satisfactory reply to your own Conscience and I am sorry you should Print a Case for the Information of others of which you was never throughly satisfied your self That you have sufficiently consulted our Adversaries I make no doubt because I find in your Book those two main things wherein their great strength consists Lyes and Disguises As for the first they have plainly imposed upon you contrary to their own Knowledge and Conscience and as to the other they have instilled into you their very Art But had you taken Astraea's Motto along with you Audi alteram partem and as freely consulted some of my suffering Brethren as you have done their sly but implacable Foes I am confident you had set this Controversie in a much clearer light and not written as you intimate you have now done with a reluctancy of Mind and Conscience But since you call us in to your aid though so very late we are willing as becomes Christians to comply with your honest request and I scruple not in behalf of my Brethren to promise you full information and that the matter shall be handled mildly closely and fairly all personal Quarrels and Reflections laid aside provided that you will procure us the priviledge of the Press in this particular We may reasonably hope that we shall not be denied in this for else why do you in Print call on us for Information and tell us that your design in so doing is not only to quiet your own Conscience but also to provoke the Learned to offer such Discourses thereupon to the publick as may settle others besides it will be disingenuous and base in Carolus Alston to license these Hue and Cries after us to vindicate our Cause and yet not suffer us to print a line in answer to those whom he licenseth thus to call on us But if after all we meet with a sham you must pardon me if I plainly tell you that I shall look on all your pretences as an artificial Contrivance and an extraordinary Strain of of supersine Hypocrisie worthy of this more than Pharisaical Age For what else can be the meaning of it but to keep us in hand and employ us in looking after I know not whom whilst your Book uncontradicted slies abroad and not only misrepresents our Cause but exposeth us as if we neither could nor would write in its behalf being so solemnly called on And there is this more to engage you to assist our Request to the utmost that if there be any errors in your Book as I am sure there are some very gross ones it will highly concern you that Truth may with all speed follow at the heels of it to prevent if possible that mischief which otherwise it may do and for which at the great day of Accounts you must in a great measure answer as uhe primary Cause and Author But if we must be mock'd with Calls whilst it is intended that we shall never be suffered to return any Answer you may justly expect that if ever we can put the blind upon your Watch-men we shall not only defend our Cause but also expose their profound Hypocrisy who like Joab kiss and stab and never pretend to be possessed with a fit of tenderness or kindness for us but with a design to put a Cheat upon Mankind and push on our utter Ruine and Destruction Sir Pray think of these things with due care and let me have your Answer with speed and thereby you will much oblige Sir Your unknown Friend and Servant T. B. June 28. 1692. An ADVERTISEMENT to the Reader The foregoing Letter was sent acording to the Author 's direction and pretended request and therewith plain instructions how to return an Answer but he not vouchsafing one syllable after two months waiting I thought fit to send both this and the following Letter by the Press seeing he would take no notice of the Post The Second LETTER SIR YOur Preface savouring something of a Tender and Christian Spirit made me read your little Tract with the greater care but when I had throughly perused it I not only sound my expectation sadly baffled but stood amazed to see all the Marks and Tokens of a most Wicked and Malicious Design carried on under such plausible melting Pretences If therefore you are not conscious to your self of any Insincerity it will concern you to vindicate your self by publishing an Ingenuous and Fair Answer to the following Objections wherewith to me you seem justly chargeable And in the first place I cannot altogether acquit you Partiality and Unkindness in assigning the Names of the Speakers in your Dialogue for not to concern my self with Mr. Easy and Mr. Troublesome who chime so neatly under the Greek disguise of Dyscheres and Eucheres that which I think I except against not without just cause is that you call one a Conformist the other a Recusant now Conformist is in it self an honest word and of good reputation and heretofore was used to signifie a person who approved and complied with the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England but by it you plainly mean the Good Old Cause Men newly come again in fashion who have set aside God's Commandments and live in the open breach of them without the least remorse of Conscience who have not only departed from but with all their might wickedly set themselves against those Doctrines which the Church of England always valued as her Characteristical Mark and for which she was esteemed all the World over who have enervated her Discipline made wicked additions to her Prayers and attempted to make such alterations as would not leave her the same Church if it could deserve the Name of any and though they failed to obtain this last by English Interest yet they comfort themselves with no small hopes that e're long they shall compass it by a Sherlockian Authority Now some few years since we were accustomed to call such Men as these Conformists but if by Conformists you mean persons that will comply with or do any thing for base ends then I shall not envy them the Title and I think you may have bestowed it on them not unfitly Then as to the Name Recusant you know it is most commonly applied to Papists in which sense it is as falsly as maliciously cast upon us and indeed if we either were Papists or your Party did but so much as think us such they would use us better for though the hideous Names of Popery and Papists be made use of to
the Savoy if he dare speak Truth and by the way I must tell you that he is a bold Man who dare speak such a Truth at this time and he can tell you how they were sent and who sent them and that those whom you call Recusant Bishops were purposely kept ignorant that they might not be able to give any obstructions to the business And now Sir do not you think that you have acted a very mannerly part to our Reverend Fathers in exclaiming against them and comparing them to winking Watchmen and dumb Dogs because they do not get up o' th' top o' th' Monument and baul out against a thing which they knew nothing of It could not be done before and since it hath been cried out against sufficiently have they not suffered enough already unless you may persecute them with calumnies But you are not alone in this case for they are seldom mentioned in any Papers referring to this Revolution but they are fouly abused and charged with things which they were never guilty of by which means they are falsly represented even to good Men and suffer in their good Names as well as their Persons and Estates this in a great measure I my self could prove But Sir I will no farther concern my self with you than as you wrongfully charge them and that only in the proper places you seem to be offended that there has not been cry enough against Perjury others if we mention it say we are Uncharitable Censorious Proud Peevish Rash and all the ill-natured Titles their Schismatical Candor can afford us Thus it is impossible to please you whether we speak or hold our Tongues but for your own part since you are for such loud crying out against the fin I hope you will not be offended if hereafter you hear of Perjury more often Your Plea that you do not sine ratione insanire had been better let alone it being generally a rul'd case that those are incurable who do cum ratione insanire Another reason though you shusfle both together why we may lawfully join in those Prayers is because as you would persuade us King James and your King William are very good Friends truly this is the first time I have heard of it and I could wish it were true on good terms But let us see how you prove it why 't is certain the Prayers express him not very true and it is very rare because odious that Enemies are particularly named but if general Prayers do not mean something for or against particular persons though not particularly named the greatest part not only of the Liturgy but of all Prayers whatsoever are to no purpose but though they were not arrived to that unheard of impudence as to name him as an Enemy in their Prayers yet he is revil'd bely'd defam'd and bitterly cursed in Coffee-houses and even in the open streets that is not only suffered but encouraged or if any Man should chance to drink the Health of this good Friend of yours and your King it perhaps might cost him a Fine of 200 Marks beside other ill usage Sir if you use your Friends thus I desire to be none of them but you are resolved they must and shall be Friends for you flatly say That you do not rank him among the number of your K. William 's Enemies for an Enemy is one that desireth to injure a Man and we are not sure that King JAMES doth so design against King William And do you think King James to be that Good and rigorously Just Person who would do no wrong even to that Man who by Treachery defrauded him of two Kingdoms and then by sorce drove him from the third and with the utmost malice still prosecutes him and all that adhere to him and can you at the same time justifie the Wrongs and Barbarities he hath received Must a Man be abused for his Goodness Methinks this makes but a scurvy Plea for the late proceedings But if you do not believe this of King James I do but still it will do you no service for 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 though the King of France be such an abominable Enemy he should soon be esteemed the best Friend in the World if he would but renounce the Interest of King James and support the Usurpation of the Prince of Orange I did expect something concerning the Ammunition Prayers but you leave them to shift for themselves and yet you think there is a 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 Or did you ever know any sober Society that gave their Members liberty at pleasure to take and refuse of their 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 need of your License and you ought not to expect it from those who will think their Authority hereby invaded But yet you think we need not be so very coy as to the Prayer for you say That you have been assured by a Good Father that the Recusant Bishops did not at first stick at that 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 thus deputed Sir if I should say your Good Father was an arrant lying Knave and prove him so 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 As for any of their consenting or sending it is only the former falshood repeated which I have answered already and as for this pretended deputation I will set before you the true story and then you and all Men may judge how candidly our suffering Fathers are dealt with On the 28th of Jan. the Bishop of London and St. Asaph and some others presented themselves before your mighty King William with a mournful Address in behalf of our Reverend Fathers then drawing near to a Civil Suspension and since more than uncivilly deprived This was the pretence but it is reasonable to think that it was a complotted thing and that the real design was to get their Authorities deputed in such sure Hands as might effectually
well to answer these and the like reasons before you so peremptorily assert any inferiour Courts to be authentick Interpreters of publick Oaths You had best have a care that you be not followed with a cry of Priviledge of Parliament and indeed that legislative Power is little better than ridiculous which may be authentically evaded or made quite another thing by the inferior Ministers of it and after all the Interpretations of those Courts will not excuse you from Insincerity and prevaricating with the State as you seem to fear p. 10. For if those Courts did give a lower and more easie sense of the Oaths than could reasonably be thought was intended by the Imposers you ought not to catch at that for an advantage which they had no Power to give nor ought you to joyn with them in eluding the Oath but to take care of your selves that they neither cosen you nor you others for an Oath ought to be taken in Judgment Truth and Righteousness in all which points you will fail if you take this course But have a care you do not gull your self at the last for what is that innocent sense which the most tender Recusant might have sworn to Truly I think the secret is worth Money and poor as I am I would have given something to know it but that we may not trisle with our Consciences I desire you and all your innocent Brethren to give me any one innocent sense wherein an Oath may be taken to an Usurper in order to the maintaining his Usurpation against the lawfull King and though I do not believe that either you or they though Men of admirable invention can ever do it yet if you could it would not do your work for it is not what sense you give or take but what they impose But Sir whilst you plead for others Sincerity you render your own very suspicious for why are you so scrupulous about the sense of the Oath Do not you insolently charge King James with a Cession Do not you thence ground a Vacancy Do not you assert William to be admitted according to the Laws and Constitutions and by the proper Judges Now though these things be never so false yet if you believe them true you believe him to be your Lawful King and therefore according to your declared Judgment may without scruple take the Oath in as severe a sense as ever any Oath of Allegiance has been given in amongst us and therefore for you to make such a pother about Senses and to look about so sharp for an innocent Sense is enough to make a Man suspect that you do not deal bona side but that there is something still gauls you and that your Conscience lies snarling within whilst you make such fair weather abroad The Impiety of the Revolution hath been already considered and your Question about Settlement answered your pitty we scorn and whether we or you be the Men whose Minds are intangled with wrong Notions that they can act well no way you ought to have considered that such Men's Infirmities have less right to overthrow than to obstruct publick Constitutions you shall have free leave to object the latter to us when you have cleared your selves of the former Whereas you think those tame Persons who submit to be one sort of the meek who shall inherit the Earth though I do not take such easie Submitters to wickedness to be any of God's meek yet I believe you have hit the true reason of most Men's submission and upon the Principles many have proceeded we may have as occasion serves meek Forswearers meek Rebels meek Traytors yea meek Jews meek Turks meek Renegadoes and all to inherit the Earth yet after this slender return as if our Mouths were quite stop'd and we had nothing to say you make us as it were to threaten a better Plea for our Cause if ever King James return The Scoff is not worth Thanks but Sir may King James return assoon as God pleases we need not stay till then but can make our Plea now and need not your help who take so much pains to spoil it and this your Godly Brethren are too well aware of which makes them so strictly guard the Press and be so very cruel to all on whom they can fasten any thing in the least tending that way witness the barbarous Usage of a poor Boy whose Mother a Widdow is not able to find him Bread who by the sly arts of your never-forgiving High-Priest hath in spite of all honest endeavours been kept in New-gate near a year and half and there lies still and like to lie to rot or starve meerly for going on an Errand and carrying he knew not what As justly in a manner might an illiterate Man be hanged for carrying the Greek Testament as a poor Boy thus used for delivering a Paper not knowing what was in it Surely he hath forgot that there is a God who hath both promised to hear the Cry and revenge the Wrongs of the Widdow and Fatherless It is a material Question By what Authority you transferred your Allegiance without his i. e. King James will And it is no trifling Objection That you were sworn to him not to the Estates of this Realm But the Answer is amazing That you had his authentick Grant for so doing p. 11. If this could be produced it would go a great way though it would not fully do the business but see what a cunning Man can do that which no body else thought on he hath found in King James 's Declaration of Indulgence where you say he does dispense with the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to all his Subjects I am not bound to defend every act either of him or you however that act is far from destroying his right for the dispensing with a thing is not the giving an Order and Grant to transfer it to another And farther you ought to consider that it is one thing to dispense with an Oath of Allegiance another thing to dispense with the Allegiance it self an Oath may give a farther enforcement to Allegiance but the Allegiance it self is antecedent to it and arises from the natural relation betwixt Subject and Prince he might be unwilling that every disloyal act of a fickle rash People should seem to be aggravated with the horrid crime of Perjury but he never discharged them of the Allegiance it self for that had been to un-king himself which certainly never entred into his thoughts for after that he reigned as King and required and used the Allegiance of his Subjects as before But if he had done more than you say and not only dispensed with but acquitted and absolved all his Subjects not only from the Oath but the Allegiance it self it would not help your Cause for though he might de-throne himself yet immediately thereupon our Constitutions which admit no interregnum had transplanted our Allegiance and given it to the next Heir For if a King die or
resign we are not left to our selves to pay our Allegiance to whom we will but under the penalty of Treason are confined to the Lawful Successor And thus you see we are no way obliged to plead that That act was ineffectual and null in it self as being contrary to Law which is that you say for us with the design to draw on us the odium of censuring the Actions of an afflicted Prince But I find you are a Man tam Marte quam Mercurio otherwise called an Ambodexter for if you cannot perswade us you will affrigt us into the Oath or any thing else for you endeavour to possess us with an Opinion that King James if ever he return will hang all that do not Swear and pay Allegiance to K. William a hard case that a Man can be no way honest without hanging But why this extream severity Why Because the lineal Heir may hang a Man as a Traytor for breach of Allegiance to an extralineal King p. 12. 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 joyned Battle against Henry the Sixth do 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 the Sixth who here appears in the Field against us and keeps me from it Such perswasions could not fail to prevail with Men to fight to the last drop of Blood But Sir though I do think that a Man may do that under an Usurpation for which he may deserve to be hanged afterwards and that an exil'd Prince at his return may justly punish wickedness done in his absence yet 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 But in truth all this hanging stuff seems to have another design and not to tell what King James may do but what you would have others to do as if they were excuseable for any severity towards those who deny them that for which as you say even King James himself may punish them It is a pious hint to your Government and your Mobb We are a living shame and reproach to you you cannot see speak or hear of us but bitterness of Spirit and pangs of Conscience seize you the Devil tempts you to think your Sin unpardonable and that your only security is in making all others as bad as your selves and therefore you would have none find Mercy who will not cast in their Lot among you I know not how Lucifer might hug such a Privy Counsellor but I must tell you that this ill becomes your Coat especially being a Man that pretends to so much compassion and tenderness of Conscience Whereas it is alledged that this would make Subjection due to O. C. you produce several arguments to prove the disparity betwixt him and the P. of O. whereas there is scarce any arguments of them that is not equally valid against the one as the other nay I am sure some are more valid against the P. of O. then O. C. but this hath been clearly done by so many Hands already that I am ashamed to repeat them but they ought to be a stark shame to you who pretend to be a Seeker of Satisfaction and will take no notice of them which looks as if you were rather resolved to deceive both your self and others and to cloak it over with sham pretences Hitherto the Arguments have been generally drawn from the Power of the Civil Magistrate or rather from the pretended power of those who are no Magistrates to us and you would perswade Dyscheres to admit these for true and consequently your inferences but you will find that you have reckoned without your Host and by that time you have read their Answers you may easily perceive that I am as ready to conclude the quite contrary That the Church remains with us with whom is the true Authority that in erecting Altar against Altar you are become formal Schismaticks having cut off your selves from the Church in forsaking the true Ecclesiastical Authority and adhering to and supporting the false against it and that as you are Schismaticks we ought not to frequent your Publick Assemblies nor have any Ecclesiastical Communion with you other than to convince you of your Sin and perswade you to Repentance Now I beseech you as you have any tenderness for your own and others Souls that you will seriously consider these things This must be the case on the one side or the other and though Interest Plenty and Ease may put a specious gloss upon weak Arguments yet at the great Day of Accompts all false glosses will be taken off and things will appear as they are and therefore what temptations soever we may otherwise have it is our highest concern to take them so now Having thus as you vainly think made sure of your inferences you take leave of Civil and enter upon Ecclesiastical Arguments Now it is a sad thing that a Man should have two Strings to his Bow and both rotten for here you make more woful work than before the most specious of all your Arguments being either manifest Mistakes or notorious Slanders The First Objection is concerning the Prayers which might have been put much more fully and strongly but being a thing so well known I shall only take notice of your Answers And First you say The Prayers were consented to by all the Recusant-Bishops and by them for their Officers without any prohibition sent to the Clergy of every Diocess and by them generally received the Bishops were present at them directed their Clergy upon Consultation to use them and thus things stood till the day of their Suspension and no blowing the Trumpet against Perjury c. p. 14. Now if this were true yet if the Prayers are truly chargeable with something unlawful and wicked that is such a daring affront to God Almighty that neither any act or neglect of theirs can justifie either yours or my concurrence in them and therefore I wonder why you should make such a Lye when it will not serve you for a Reason for it is well known to all who frequented their Communion that they never read or used those Prayers and that is no improbable argument that they neither consented to them nor sent them abroad But the truth is that they were so far from either consenting to them or sending them to their Clergy that they had no certainty of the thing till it was done and past and whether some-body told you this Lye or you made it your self if you please to consult the Printer in