thereof will particularly retract it and never run such an hazard more God of his infinite mercy give us all a temper abstracted from all partial interests and prejudices and a sincere Charity and Equity that may fit us for a right understanding of the things that belong to our Peace and Duty toward God and Man Amen To his very Passionate Adversary T. B. HEALTH and PEACE SIR AS I gave you no provocation to such unhandsome reflexions with which you have bespattered me so 't is the Opinion of wise and learned Men that you are to be neglected as incurably rude and disingenuous And I truly am so far of their Opinion that I ought not to answer you according to your Folly lest I become like unto you But as little regard as is due to the Voice of the Slanderer the Cause of Truth and the Consciences offended by involved Prejudices deserve a tender Deference and Care On which consideration I have throughly traversed all that seems pertinent in your Letters and some M. S. Reflexions sent me I suppose from some other Hand And not only so but I have examined some of the most exquisite Discourses and Principles of your greatest Authors in this Controversie as well as those of your greatest Opponents And I hope in all my Determinations between you and them I have done impartial Justice if not I have exposed my self unto public just and severe Correction Of all your criminal Imputations there is but one that seems to deserve any notice viz. that which taxes me for giving the Dialogists in Solomon and Abiathar those technical Names and Characters Upon which your Complaint being not only loud but in some Degree specious does indeed oblige me to account herein Nor shall I decline whatsoever is reasonable whereupon I sincerely protest that I took the Names from the known Sense each Party has of the others Temper For the Conformists to the present State thinking the Recusants thereof too hard and untractable I from that Notion name my Recufant Dyscheres And the Recusants thinking the others too easie and yielding I from that Apprehension call my Conformist Eucheres And Eucheres has the Character of a Conformist for conforming to the present Constitution and Dyscheres of a Recusant for refusing this particular Conformity And no Man of Sense can really imagine that I had any worse Intention since no Man can think that I would expose the Deprived as Fanatic's and in the Person of Dyscheres I introduce them making a professed Renunciation of Popery in several Places with which they are never charged by my Conformist And now if there be any Grains of Candor and Human Tenderness left in you can you imagine that you used a proper Method to heal or settle my distressed and doubtful Spirit who after several unanswered Letters written to some of the greatest Doctors on both sides of the Division and others of middle Temper was at last upon their neglect forced to turn a Publick Supplicant to the learned World for succour and satisfaction If this be the way of handling tender Consciences if this be the Oyl you pour into their Wounds the good God have more Mercy on the Patient and put him under gentler Hands But if you had judged me an improper Object of your Humanity yet a due concern for the Reputation of your Cause should have influenced you unto more Decency For a good Cause needs no Supplies from a Scavenger's Cart and ill Language ever supplies and discovers Defect of Reason as well as of good Nature and never proselites a calm and thinking Man but rather seals up the Offended in their former Perswasions and alienates mild Tempers from such sower Communion When you have well considered the following Debate you will have occasion for second Thoughts to which in the Interim I leave you and subscribe Sir Your Humble Servant The Ground of the First Part. THat whensoever the Land is brought into a State of Anarchy by any Confusions irremediable by the ordinary Rules of Law thro' the King's Incapacity to govern it upon Departure Oppression or otherwise the Estates of this Nation may admit such a Form of Settlement for the time being as the Exigences of Affairs shall seem to require for the common Preservation and that such Settlement shall oblige the Conscience of the Subject till the old ordinary Rules can be fairly recovered The Ground of the Second Part. 1. THat tho' secular Laws for spiritual Censures cannot pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without the Consent and Executive Concurrence of the Church yet the Conscience of the Church is bound to admit such Laws upon just and necessary Causes 2. That Recusancy to civil Constitutions is a just Cause of spiritual Censures and of Laws requiring them A DEBATE ON THE JUSTICE AND PIETY Of the Present Constitution PART I. Concerning the Civil Change Dyscheres BRother Eucheres I am glad I have found you at home at this time in which I have leisure to receiâ—â—â— those kind Offices which I could not admit at 〈◊〉 time of your first Invitation And I have aâ—â—â—â—nother design in this Visit that we may Reviâ—â— and Reflect upon the matter of our last Conference for though you seemed then to pinch me somewhat hard yet having since imparted your Arguments to my Friends and Consulted their Judgment upon them I find them not so Herculean as you fancy them but very feeble and nerveles when undertaken by abler Masters Eucheres You are doubly welcome on your double Errand but have you examined among you the whole web or only some shreds or fragments of that Discourse Dyscher Though it be not worth my while to ransack it in every part of it yet I do not intend to omit any thing very considerable and I will use my best endeavour not to mistake your Sense c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 6. Eucher Be sure now be as good as your word and withal take care not to pervert as well as not to mistake my Sense for otherwise you will expose both your Understanding and Integrity and I am not yet so dull but I may soon discover you how involved soever your Frauds may be And now upon this Premonition I desire you to sit down and enter upon the Debate Dyscher When I told you nothing but truth that the Present State is worse than a Deluge of Popery for that now the Daughter of Sion is become an Harlot the generailty of her Children Apostate and Vn-churched and that the Faith and Communion is with the few c. You question Whether Submission to the Present Constitution can be proved a Sin As if breaking Lawful and taking Vnlawful Oaths withholding ones Right and giving it to another the overthrowing the constitution of the Kingdom and violating the Laws of God were no Sin Then you further say That admit it to be a crying Sin every such Sin doth not unchurch single Persons or Societies But yet however you ought to Repent and
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
remind me of your own Principles and Senses I fear I shall fall into the Spirit of T. B. again and not use you very partially in some of my Reflexions Eucher I am sensible by experience of your infirmity And since good natur'd Men are sometimes passionate I know how to bear as well as to correct a little rudeness I pray good Brother let me know what 't is now that begins to provoke your choler Dyscher When you had spent a great many Arguments drawn out with much Pomp and Ostentation being basted in them you grow weary with strugling and fairly give up all and acknowledg that †Sol. ab pag. 27.29 an Act of State Christian cannot alone vacate a Spiritual Charge Charge by any Divine Law primitive Canon or Prescription This is as full as can be worded against the Power of the State to deprive Bishops Now see how you come about again in the very next words Yet such an Act received and admitted by the Church may from her concurrence have a just and legal Effect And then upon this Notion the Statute of Deprivation ipso facto must be taken as a Law upon the Church to reject the Recusants totally from their Stations Here you will not have the Deprivation to proceed from the Act of the State alone but to save some Honour to the Clergy you make their Deprivation valid by their Concurrence to the Act of Deprivation But I pray how did they concur Was it otherwise than by submitting to the Act when it was made And is such Submission any Authority I thought they had been quite different things Did the Clergy shew any signs or make any protestations for their Right viz. that the Act of Parliament for the Deprivation of the Bishops was not valid without their Concurrence No not a word but when it is done they submit to it and acknowledg it And you would make a Protestation against Fact that their Concurrence was necessary to it that themselves did not pretend nor dare they do it to this day It is certain the Parliament thought their own Authority sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask or think they needed the Concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid On the contrary no Clergy-men have dared to dispute it but those who are deprived And for others to imagin to come in by their Concurrence into a share of the Authority is like the fly on a Wheel of the Chariot that thought he contributed to the dust that was raised for he too gave his concurrence It is possible such Men as you should not see how contemptible it renders them to pretend to an Authority they dare not avow And upon this Foundation to raise Arguments to justify their proceedings which they cannot maintain any other way For these Men to deny themselves to be Erastians or ever to name any Ecclesiastical Authority I had almost said to call them a Church Or to speak as †Sol. c. Ab. Pag. 29. you do that the Church ought not to admit Deprivations on improper or unreasonable Demands As if the Parliament did request it from the Convocation or left it to their admitting or not admitting As if they durst dispute the validity of an Act of Parliament for want of their Concurrence As if any of them durst let such a word come out of their Mouth Behold the Ghost the Echo of a Church c. M. S. Reflex and that the consent publick and actual Concurrence of the Church is necessary to give an Ecclesiastical Effect to Civil Ordinances in Matters of the Church Now this Concession overthrows your whole Cause and being placed after the main Body of your Arguments is it self an Argument that you had little faith in them So then our Bishops being never Canonically Deprived are the yet proper Bishops of their Sees But you come like a Spiritual Jugler and perswade us that this hath been Canonically done For the Church say you ought to empty the Sees of such Incumbents that are dangerous to the Civil State But Sir must the Church cast out her Bishops as oft as they will not comply with Vsurpers c. But you say this was done by Acts of Separation properly Ecclesiastical the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church taking the Jurisdiction till the Chapter elect and Bishops consecrate another But Sir you cannot but know that the Dean and Chapter have no Jurisdiction over their Metropolitane and the See must be vacant before they can proceed to Election T. B. Sect. Pag. 37.38 Eucher I have heard with much patience yea pleasure all your Noble strains of Rhetoric and need only say If I have spoken evil bare witness to the evil but if well why smitest thou me For if the Deprived assert the Churches Concurrence necessary to give Acts of State an Ecclesiastical Effect and I grant it what Cause have you to fly in my face for even that very Concession But for you to upbraid me with my Candour who are so heedless in attending to my words as to take or set them off in other Senses than rationally can be fixed on them in their clear account of this Concurrence is neither very courteous nor prudential Let us therefore again look over these oversights and see whether we can come again to our selves First then I never said that the Concurrence of the Church was necessary either to make an Act of Parliament or to make it valid in Ecclesiasticals and particularly in Acts of Deprivation But I admitted your Principle so far and no further that her Concurrence is necessary to give Statutes an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue For an Act of Parliament may justly require of the Church some certain Ecclesiastical proceedings without any joynt Session or Consultation of the Church And such Acts shall be just and valid of themselves to oblige the Conscience of the Church to obedience or executive Concurrence As suppose an Act of Parliament repealing all the Statutes of Premunire which cramp the liberties of the Church in the Episcopal Successions and Synodical Consultations for a perfect reformation to a Primitive purity should consequently require our Bishops or Convocations to proceed upon such relaxation to provide and execute better rules of Discipline on the morals and duties of the Christian Church under their care and to renew the Commercium formatarum with foreign Churches for a general Restitution of Piety and Order to its Primitive State such a Law I think would valioly oblige the Church to Concurrence without which however actually given it could not have its Ecclesiastical Effect When King Joash commanded the Priests to employ the sacred Money to the reparation of the Lords House it was a valid command to oblige but while the Priests neglected it it had no Sacred effect 2 King 12. So when Moses spake unto Aaron Eleazar and Ithamar to eat the meat offering and heave shoulder according to set Rules the precept was very
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
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
communicate with us in all that is Lawful Now it is actual Communion in all publick Offices and Worship which you require from us and the reason you give why we should pay it is in the words before cited the sence of which must be that your Church is ready with a Remonstrance to afford the same Communion to the Church of Rome that is Actual Communion in Publick Worship So with an insignificant Remonstrance you can go to Mass and are willing to do it See this and a great deal more such stuff in T. B's 2d Lett. p. 12 13. Eucher This is indeed a notable fetch that I should excite you to rejoyce with us for Redemption from Popery and yet profess a readiness and desire to communicate in it and in that very communion to remonstrate against it This no doubt would be a very pleasant way of accordance with the Roman Forms and yet at last when I invited you to Communicate with us in all that is Lawful I meant only what you think Lawful what is by us both confessed Lawful not to what we only think Lawful against your opinion and to this end * Sol. Ab. p. 3. that you might the better heal what you think we do amiss and so much agreement I confess we owe to all that is good in the Church of Rome and by us acknowledged for such as well by them But that I invited you not to any actual Communion in any thing you judge Unlawful while you judge it so appears in that I required not your presence to * Ibid. page 15. that Prayer of New Allegiance on the 29th of May while you are under the perswasions of its Impiety But in truth having as I thought proved us not to be actually Unchurched I willed that you should yield us so much Communion as may signifie your acknowledgement that we are yet of the Church of Christ viz. in all those Offices which you can Judge Good and Lawful in order to an easier accommodation for so I presume of this Church and of you too that you would not refuse any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations which import some though not a plenary Communion with the Church of Rome in order to a Restitution of the Churches of Christendom to a Primitive Frame were the Church of Rome disposeable thereto And they that will deny this to any corrupt Churches I think are not real Christians nor so much as externally qualified Members of the Church Catholick and to this innocent purpose and consequence only were my words so exactly ordered with a design to stave off all Catches herein that nothing but an inexcusably wretched spite and bitterness could have hewn out of them so perverse and undesigned a construction Dyscher I am not satisfied that you will allow our Deprivation to be a Persecution only on supposition that it be for adherence to the Doctrines of the Church or the Laws of God What if neither the Laws of God nor the Church had been concerned and they had had only occasion to stand to the Laws and Constitutions of the Land which forbid force against and Deposition of Kings and exclusion of the Heir I think this had been no ill Cause c. T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher I did not mention the Laws of the Land because till they are Authentically Vacated the Laws of God and the Doctrines of our Church do assert their obligation on our obedience so far as it is in our power to perform it and a voluntary violation of the Laws and Constitutions of Civil Government is a violation of the Laws of God which the Church Preaches in her Doctrine Therefore I allow you that adherence to the permanent obligation of the standing laws of the Land is a good Cause for the maintenance whereof all Sufferings are Persecutions and all the voluntary Agents in them Persecutors But if the reason or obligation of any Law ceaseth or if you mis-understand Laws and will oppose your private Judgment on them against the received and constant Judgment and Practice of the Nation on our Laws then your Sufferings upon such Prejudices cannot come under that black Character which is a thing enquireable between you and me Dyscher Then I take it for a very odd demand that we must give in a very clear proof that we are Ejected for adhereing to the Laws of God I pray who are they that ought to bring this clear proof I have heard some say that it is an Axiom in Law that they who expect the benefit ought to make the Proof Now you get all into your hands and would you give no Reason for it And yet it would be but to little purpose to prove to a Thief that he has stolen my Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 14. Eucher But do you not consider that in Law and Reason whoever accuses any man before a Judge ought to prove his Bill if the Accused plead Not Guilty And you by complaining to the World of the wrong done to K. James and the Deprived Appeal not to them whom you account Thieves but to all others to avoid their Communion Now to draw off all People from their Communion it is necessary to prove their actions Illegal according to the Laws of Tenure in the Crown and the Ecclesiastical Promotions since they whom you implead challenge those Laws for their Justification And further by your leave he that is out of Possession but lays a claim of Right and expects the benefit of it ought to prove his Claim and the Possession of the Adversary injurious For they that are in peaceable or legal form of Possession have no need to make nor consequently to prove a Claim if not disproved Beside your Case is not concerned meerly in your own personal Right but in the Consciences and Salvation of other mens Souls even of those whom you call Thieves and therefore you are obliged to convince them of the unlawfulness of such Changes which they think lawful and not only so but in the present circumstances necessary Dyscher But I will further examin your own Proposals and Concessions herein * Sol. Ab. p. 4. An untainted Loyalty you approve while the Obligation lasts and we desire no more But then you think the Obligation may cease not only by Death or Resignation but also by Cession Nor do I think it worth while to dispute this with you provided it be real not forced not falsly imputed For so any man that is driven out of his House or takes a Journey from Home may be interpreted to have quitted his Estate by Cession But when Cession is real it can only affect the Party who makes it and ought to be no injury to the next Heir But has that person made a Cession who tho' to preserve his Life he fly from fraud and irresistible force yet all the while claims his right calls on all persons to do him justice and useth all honest means that may be 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
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
and Damnation not required by the word or law of God must in their own nature be And thus in the ancient Church all rigorous Doctrines which made sins where God hath made none draw after them inevitable Separations and so became Heretical Dyscher Well how doth this affect us Eucher I am afraid in all your Principles which make our present Allegiance Illegal and Irreligious Dyscher I pray form them into propositions and make your convictive Strictures upon them if you can Eucher I take no delight in such an Employ It is no pleasure to me to wound or grieve you but as the setting before you the danger of your Principles may correct the precipitancy of your Zeal I will obey and observe your direction First then Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to be subject to the Human Constitution and the Authorities that are as Gods Ordinance teacheth practical Errors Min. But so you teach Men against the present Constitution and Authorities Ergo. Concl. You teach Men practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth it to be Perjury to swear Allegiance to a new settled Sovereign upon the Desertion of the former to whom we had sworn Allegiance teacheth practical Errors Min. But such is your Doctrine contrary to Bishop Overals Convocation book Ergo. Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth to disobey Princes fully settled in a Government procured by ill means teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do ye in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to pray for Kings and all that are in Authority teacheth Men Practical Errors Min. But so teach most of you in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo. Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men presumptuously to speak evil of Dignities teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do most of you Ergo Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever excommunicates or teaches Men to refuse Communion with Men that have sworn Allegiance to Powers fully settled acts upon and teacheth practical Errors Min. But so most of you act and instruct Men against our Communion because we have sworn Allegiance to the Powers fully settled over us Ergo Concl. You act upon and teach Men practical Errors And now considering all wherein I have answered you what can you say hereto Dyscher I answer we do not deny any of your Major and general Propositions but we deny your Minors that we teach such Doctrines for our Recusancy But we teach that those Major Maxims do not affect our particular Case for that these are not Constitutions Authorities or Dignities fully settled on which the Church according to the Apostles requires respect and obedience Eucher This is like those prevaricating Salvo's which your Author of Christian Communion upbraids us with †Part 3. Ch. 5. in eluding general Precepts from influencing in particular Cases but to omit this I have however gained another advantage and success by my Advice viz. that in the matter of Allegiance you must quit your Pretensions to Ecclesiastical Doctrines as the grounds of your Recusancy Deprivation and Separation and consequently there is an End of your low and causeless Clamours for your glorious Passive Doctrines as the Cause of your Sufferings all the remaining Question now being between us whether the present Constitution be fully settled which is a Point of Law not Religion to be resolved by the State not the Church by the Court Civil not the Court Christian And hereupon such Civil Judgments are to be secured by Religion and Conscience while they stand reversed and so you are obliged to acquiesce in the Judgments of our Parliaments in this Point But while you oppose this upon Principles of Conscience consider the Danger of Heresie which lies before you Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men to oppose the Course of public Judgment in Civils upon private Opinions to the contrary teacheth Rules of Sedition against Civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Min. But you teach Men to oppose the public Judgment of the Nation for our full Settlement in the present State Ergo Concl. You teach Rules of Sedition against civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Or thus in another Form Maj. He that teacheth Men to act against confessed Principles of Truth ought to be exauctorated Min. But you teach Men to practice Disobedience contrary to those Principles of Truth which you are forced to confess Ergo Concl. You are to be exauctorated Now I cannot for my part see how you can avoid this Charge which your own rigours against us have extorted from me And yet I have urged it for no ill Ends but only to lay before you the ill Aspects of your Division upon those your very Principles in which you glory For here I can more justly enclose you with your Vindicator's Dilemma viz. that if you separate without Principles you are then Schismatical if upon Principles you incur Heresie But if this be so the Church and State may according to your own Rules eject you without a Synod which I compassionately beg you tenderly to consider Dyscher Well let our Cause be what it will in Fact or Opinion I look upon these Lay and Parliamentary Forms of Deprivation to be very dangerous to the Spiritual Franchises of the Church tho' we suppose that such servile and gradual Concurrences of the Church do give them an Ecclesiastical Effect for that they destroy out of the Faith of Christians the Sense of those Spiritual Liberties and Authorities of the Church that by a Divine Charter and an Apostolic Descent belong to her and instil a fatal Erastianism into men's Principles and for that Cause ought not to be received but censured by the Church for that your Party founds their Authority on this false Proposition that the Church and State of England are the same Society whereas there are many Subjects of the State that are no Members of the Church as Apostates Papists Heretics and all unbaptized Persons Tho' yet were this Hypothesis true that all the same persons were equally Members of the Church and State yet as they are a Church and spiritually sociated they must be governed by a Spiritual Authority and as a State by the Civil Power of the Sword nor must the identity of the People confound the Distinction of Powers Besides as we are a Church we are of Right sociated into the unity of the whole Catholic Church to be maintained by an uniform Ecclesiastical Conduct the only ligament of Catholic Communion but as we are a State the Catholic Church is not concerned with us to take any Cognisance of our Civil Procedures but if as a Church we corrupt the Ecclesiastical Government into Civil we break off and excommunicate our selves from the Catholic Unity by deserting the Catholic Forms and Ties of
sacred Functions the Church upon certain Notoriety of that Guilt Forfeiture and civil Incapacity may elect and consecrate others who have contracted no such Blemish or Incapacity Nor needs there here the Judgment of a Synod as is confessed in the like Case of Callinicus and Cyrus before mentioned which is only necessary to discuss and determine things dubious in Fact or Right So that in such Cases where there is no Rule set to the contrary the Church on her old original Liberties may of her own accord proceed to a new Promotion and I think ought to do so when the Blemish and consequent Incapacity are irremediable And what the Church in freedom may do without Command she may do when commanded even by those Powers which have no direct Right to manage our Ecclesiasticals as Infidel and Un-Christian Powers have not Yet indirectly I grant a new Settlement in the Church may be necessary to the weal of an Un-Christian State which then has an indirect Right to command the Church within it to fill the Vacancies and then she is in Duty bound to obey not only for Wrath but also for Conscience sake whensoever so commanded as having no Authority to oppose those actual Reasons or the civil Causes of such the secular Commands so that in the lawful Vacancy she must be obedient And if this be a just Rule for the Christian Church under Un-Christian Princes much more ought it to be so under Christian ones to whom as nursing Fathers you know our Church gives great Homage and Deference Have you any thing more to object Dyscher Nothing at all except you will hear me repeat the three last Pages of T. B. spent wholly in charging you with soliciting our total Ruin and Misusage of your deprived Metropolitan and Diocesan on their refusal of a Petition with the same pernicious Design but because I must confess you were most carefully tender of censuring the Counsels of those Fathers and T. B. discovers himself too openly calumnious in those Impeachments I have done and commend us all to God's Grace and Mercy Eucher T. B. is one of those Men who love to speak evil of Dignities and the things they know not supplying the Narrowness of his Understanding with Rage and Bitterness for which I heartily remit him to God's Mercy But as for your Fathers and all the venerable Numbers of good Men fallen in this Change I compassionately beseech them tenderly to lay these things to heart and unanimously to think of some healing Expedient for our mutual Peace and Joy There have been who upon the bare dry Inferences of their Arguments have desired them to desist and quit claim only which is to ask not shew them Charity But might it not be thought too assuming I think I could propose such a certain Scheme of Resolutions as would so effectually close up our present Wounds as to turn all our Sighs and Sorrows into Joys and the Voice of Melody But being conscious of my Station and Measures and doubtful of your Misapprehensions I forbear and leave you and your Counsels to the Divine Conduct and your own Piety that you may happily recover that Union from which your Errors and Infirmities have too much alienated you being willing to hope that as St. Paul said of Onesimus Perhaps you are departed from us for a Season that we should receive you again for ever Amen ADVERTISEMENT WHereas T. B. Sec Let. pag. 29. and the impartial Reflecter vehemently contend against my Suggestion in Sol Ab. pag. 11. that K. James's Dispensation with the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy might look like a Concession to us to transfer our Allegiance they dealt with me disingenuously for that I made for them an effectual Answer against that Argument before in which my Conformist silently acquiesced And that Answer I made is stronger and sincerer than theirs which I could teize to purpose were I minded to wrangle But as I made Eucheres abide by just Reason then so will I use no perverseness now And in truth that Passage was brought in not with a Design to insist on it but only to introduce it for a smoother Passage to the Liberties granted us by K. James's Coronation-Oath For which Cause I laying no stress upon that Argument from the Dispensation have wholly omitted to contend with my Adversaries on it in this Debate I hope the wicked Surmise of T. B. that His Majesty would murther the Princess of Denmark and the Duke of Gloucester Sec. Lett. p. 22 if her Royal Highness should outlive the Queen is now fully refuted since her Excellent Majesties Death and it will become T. B. torepent for it in Dust and Ashes A Postscript to Mr. Richard Chiswell SIR SInce I was once an Author of yours in Solomon and Abiathar which you Printed and this very Debate was offered to your Edition once Anno 93 which you declined with thanks to me however for the respect I desire you to consider what an ungrateful office you have undertaken in publishing a Reproach against me and these very Books in the Vniversity Man's Postscript to you I am not offended at this miscarriage in you that are a Man of Interest but yet as you may justly reprove your self and your Sollicitor for this indecent way of abusing your own Authors and Books so I challenge you for a witness of the Falshood he has caused you to Print Look upon my Letter to you sometime in the Summer 93. and therein you will find this Book offered you which this Vniversity Man tells you and by your Press the Nation that it was written since the Book remarked on to secure my self against a Storm I shall makeshort however and desire you to remember my love to him and tell him that it is the most undâ—cent sort of confidence in him of all Men living to despise any Man's Writings for the present Government and to accuse any Pen for Brutality towards the Jacobites He will know the meaning at your first suggestion by the interpreting Conscience within him or that part thereof that is left And so I dismiss you with assurance that I am Your much obliged Servant S. Hill A General Remonstrance to all Good Christians IN the name of God the Sovereign Lord and Judge I remonstrate and protest that I measure not any Men by their Fortunes but their Merits and that the Sufferings of good Men increase my Affections towards them 2. That I published Solomon and Abiathar not for worldly Interest nor with any injurious design nor thro' a vanity of Affectation but on purpose to get satisfaction from the learned in the Right of Communion to the avoiding of Schism 3. That particular provocations made that discussion and it's publication absolutely and inevitably necessary 4. That after its Publication I waited two years for Satisfaction before ever I entred into the present Communion 5. That the Meditations in this Debate have satisfy'd me that our Communion is consistent with the most Catholic and Primitive Rules or else I could not have joyned in it 6. That for my own part I renounce all Ecclesiastic Servitude and all Principles leading thereto and I do declare for an assertion of the Rights and Liberties Hierarchical in contempt of all Persecutions yet not to arrogate that Liberty as a Cloak for Maliciousness 7. That tho' Calumny urged the Publication of this Debate yet that alone should not have prevailed thereunto had I not thought it of good use to reconcile Dissensions and to obviate many growing Prejudices 8. That tho' it be a public blemish that the great Authors of our present Heresies are not yet censured by Authority yet this does not illegitimate our public Communion with the Innocent who have no power to reform it nor can it in the least affect those that make their uttermost remonstrances against it 9. That all Spiteful and Insincere Writers on the point of Communion design to widen our Breaches and are therefore utter Enemies to the Church of God and their Native Country 10. That tho' I had many inducements to have collected all T. B's Flowers of barbarous and unparallelâ—d Railery into one view yet that the odium thereof may not reflect any prejudice on the better part of that side I have forborn remitting him to the friendly correction of his wiser and better Brethren and have so endeavoured to temper this Discourse as that all along Mercy and Truth might meet together that Righteousness and Peace may kiss each other Amen After all whosever is not satisfied to the full may hereby be however induced to beware of censuring us for Men wilfully Perjured and Schismatical since I suppose the reasons here offered are not all contemptible but may justify the Author in his Design of quitting himself from the guilt of those black and horrid Imputations the natural Right of every suspected or accused Innocent FINIS Books Printed for John Everingham at the Star in Ludgate-street THE Spirit of Jacobitism or Remarks upon a Dialogue between K. W. and Benting in a Dialogue between two Friends of the present Government A Sermon Preached before the H. of Lords at the Abbey-Church of St. Peter's Westminster on Thursday the 30th of Jan. 1695 6. being the Martyrdom of K. Ch. I. By the Right Reverend Father in God Humphrey L. Bishop of Bangor A Sermon Preach'd before the House of Lords at the Abbey-church of St. Peter's Westm on Wednesday the 11th of Dec. 1695. being the Day Appointed for a Solemn Fast and Humiliation by the Right Rev. Father in God James L. Bishop of Lincoln Eight Serm. Preach'd on sev Occasions 1. Of the Power and Efficacy of Faith 2. The danger of Mis-informed Conscience or Mistaken Principles in Religion 3. Of the Different Dispensations of Grace and of Impenitency under the best Means of Salvation 4. The Case of a late or Death-bed Repentance 5. The Streight and Certain way to Happiness 6. Of Growth in Grace 7. Of Murther particularly Duelling and Self-Murther 8. Of the Shortness and Instability of Humane Life
not persevere in your Sin since it is one of those Sins that shuts out of the true Chuch of God For if it were necessary I could prove that its Principles destroy the Churches Fundamentals and Structure if such Principles which destroy all Morals and all Faith and Truth among men can be said to do so by which men may exclude themselves as well as be thrown out by others without an Authentick Act of an Ecclesiastick Judic tory and your instance in the Roman Church is Insignificant for we do not communicate with it but that of the Eastern Churches is still less to the purpose for I am not satisfied that either they have condemned us or we them as Schismaticks and Dr. Basier was desired by some of the Greek Clergy to Communicate and Minister among them neither did he refuse it T. B.'s 2d Lett. p. 10 11. Eucher But Brother it is not enough to call things by hard Names but it is necessary to shew wherein the iniquity consists and by what Law For submission to a Civil Constitution after its settlement is no Perjury Robbery Rebellion nor Impiety if men contribute no antecedent Evil to the Change and it is this meer Submission which I undertook to defend as being the only thing that can be charged on the Ecclesiastick Body And tho you pretend it unnecessary yet you can never carry your cause that we are Self Excommunicate upon the malignity of our Principles except you prove it and shew that our Maxims destroy all Morals and all Faith and Truth among Men since you load us with such an heinous and general charge and I know not to what purpose you discoursed me last or discourse me now except it be to convince me of the Reality and Anathematizing guilt of our Sin in this Submission Here then you must to the Law and to the Testimony and make up a very exact proof in order to Conviction for Men are not to be harangued into condemnation by meer unproved and general clamour but by very articulate evidence only which therefore I shall expect from you in the course of this Conference In the mean time when I alledged that we own the Roman and Greek Churches to be Churches notwithstanding their far greater Pollutions and Confusions than can be imagined in our present Ecclesiastical Change that hence I might evince us not to be Unchurched i. e. cut off from being Members of the Church Catholick as not having been condemned out of it by any Ecclesiastical Sentence 't is strange you should censure this instance for impertinent upon these pretensions that we refuse the Roman but admit the Greek Communion for by your favour in order to Unchurching which very intelligibly is the making us no Church of Christ you must have proved our Change more censurable than all the Pollutions of the Roman and Greek Churches And since you accuse us as Self-Excommunicate and therefore uncapable of your Communion which yet you deny not to the Greeks as being with you no Schismaticks the instance of that Churches Corruptions was not less but far more pertinent to our Cause for if their Corruptions are far greater than ours and yet cut them not off from the Right of Catholick Communion I think we are as much entituled to that Communion who have far less and fewer Irregularities So that except you can prove our Change more Irregular than the State of the Greek Church you cannot out us of that Communion you assert to them Here indeed you saw your self pinched and so shift off the matter with a piff as if I would be shaken off with an empty Scoff of Impertinence No no I will sit a little closer on your Skirts and though I shall not exagitate or upbraid all the known disorders in that distressed Church yet will I object to you the many Arbitrary Changes of their Patriarchs made by a Mahometan Emperor and admitted by them toties quoties whensoever the Grand Seignior has a mind to ease their Purses of that money which the new Patriarch is to tax on the Church as the price of his Advancement without any other Provocation or Inducement whatsoever Is not this a greater corruption than any can be imagined in our Change This you know was what I intended and yet you condemn not them as Schismaticks though here are frequent Deprivations and New Advancements admitted by the Greek Church to the Will of an Infidel Prince without any other crime of the Deposed and only for Monys sake Dyscher I did indeed in our last Conference * Sol. Ab. p. 24 29. censure this Blemish in the Greek Church But here I will give you the answer of one of our most puissant Advocates concerning this disorder in the Greek Church with his Apology foâ— the like frequent Depositions of the Jewisâ— High-Priests * Christ Commun Part 2. cap. 3. p. 32. In these alledged State-deprivations of the Jewish High-Priests either of Abiathar by Solomon or after they came under Roman subjection of the Chief Priests by the Roman Procurators there was only a Change of Persons but matters of Religion went on every thing the same in Doctrines Practices Prayers Sacrifices and Services of the Temple and the Synagogues and when these are not corrupted Gods faithful Ministers may yield their personal claims to State-Deprivations to secure Protection and Civil Benefits to the Church This also clears the instance of the Submission of the Greeks on the frequent Deprivations of their Patriarchs by the Turkish Governors The benefits of Incorporation which they propose to secure thereby are not the most tempting lying not so much in being priviledged and beneficed by the State as in not being persecuted but tolerated under it And their submission for keeping on this State-benefit such as it is is not without detriment to the Church tho' their breaking with the State they fear would be more detrimental the Turks making their new Advancements for Mony to be levied on the Church by the new Patriarch to the countenance and growth of great Corruption and to the bringing of the Church in debt But as to the course of Religious Ministrations they are the same under both Patriarchs in the same Doctrines of Faith and Manners Prayers and Publick Offices But now you know with us here is a change in all these parts of our Religion in teaching men to swear falsly to rob our King Bishops and Priests and to pray for Robbers and Usurpers against the just and true Proprietors Eucher But all this Charge of Alteration in Religion is downright Calumny uncapable of any proof in any one particular For we preach only Submission to a Legal Change of Governors and pray for them that are set over us by Legal Rules of Constitution Therefore tho' Governors like the state of all things temporal are liable to changes yet the Rules and Forms of our Religion and Morals are still permanent and unaltered And here I think I may
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
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
inviolate against all routs and tyrannical confusions Will not they think a temporal distress incurred for adherence to the fundamental Laws of Catholic Communion less hurtful than a general and causeless deturbation of the pious and regular Priests of God Almighty Can they think it sinless to permit an arbitrary divorce of themselves from their relation to God and the Souls of their People and to let in greedy wolves who covet nothing but the promotions of the Church and for that Cause will pretend an outside Orthodoxy in all other points For put the Case in Fact that once again an O. C. should oppress all by the Sword and turn out at once all the Bishops and Clergy of this Realm and bring in another Set into their Places must the Christian Laity renounce their Canonical relation to the former and embrace that of the imposed and irregular Ministers Or let us look up unto God and enquire within our selves whether of these will God accept for his Servants Must God submit to an irresistible Mob or Hector too Or must we admit those for Gods Messengers whom God never sent and will never own And must this be yielded by us toties quoties whensoever our too mighty Enemies will sport themselves upon us with such a form of persecution I am afraid if this mysterious Secret had been known in the three first Centuries the Heathen Powers when baffled in their other methods of hostility against the Church would have took up this as the most successful because most Orthodox and Christian way of persecution Now suppose such a design had been projected against the Apostles to deprive them of the places and exercise of their Apostleship and to fill their Room with other Orthodox pretenders would the Apostles in Council have allowed people to reject them and receive the intruding Apostles Or could any intrude by the help of the Secular Powers without Sin and Schism and Sacriledge Or would the Apostles have censured these Invaders and have still maintained their own Functions Eucher As to the Office which was peculiar Apostolic necessity was laid upon them and wo had been unto them had they not preached the Gospel in obedience to God rather than man But in that Office as such there could be no successor and so they were to be continued as foundation stones whereas the Episcopal Office is not peculiarly personal but successive Dyscher I will not here except against the validity of this Distinction in these Offices but will put the Case as you set it Suppose the Heathen Powers had passed Seâ—â—ence on the Apostles that being permitted the functions distinctly Apostolical they should not execute their Episcopal Authorities any where nor be received by the Churches as their Bishops but that others provided by the Heathen Enemies should be vested in their Episcopacy would the Apostles have quitted their Episcopacy to which Christ gave them Commission When St. Paul bids the Elders of the Asian Church to take heed to the Flock of which the Holy Ghost had made them Bishops Act 20.28 must that Authority received from the Holy Spirit have conceded to an enstallment of Nero or Domitian Or would the Holy Ghost have truckled under the persecuting Powers and have hallowed the Intruders and deserted those of his former constitution by Apostolic designation And would the Apostles and their first successors with their flocks have judged persecution of their bodies greater than this of their Spirituals that so they should concur in this to avoid the other and be content to submit to the Conduct and Communion of Neronian Bishops that had dethroned the Apostles of our Blessed Saviour and by the heathen sword assumed a Spiritual Jurisdiction over them When Ignatius says that the Bishop and his Presbytery are to be received as Christ and his Apostles with several other earnest and Seraphic Elogies would he have allowed them to be forsaken at the pleasure of an Heathen Mob or Tyrant in exchange for others set up by Idolatrous craft and force Clemens Romanus would not allow this in a domestic Mob in the Church of Corinth and would he concede it to a Mob of aliens and Pagans Eucher I cannot tell how to answer this but perhaps the Dr. may when it shall be offered him Dyscher In the mean time then I take the Bishops to be the Supreme Ecclesiastic Judges as well in the dispensation with as the execution of all secondary Canons whensoever exigences unforeseen or more important than those Canons require their present Relaxation But such dispensing Power lies not upon the fundamental Rules of their Order and Union to dissolve their own being and Authority at the pleasure of the Churches Enemies for no other motives but those of secular terrour for mere fear whereof no Bishop can dispense with his union towards his Colleagues nor Clergy or People be dispensed with as to the Laws of their subordination in the Ecclesiastic unity Eucher Why then you must bring this admission of new Bishops c. violently obtruded upon the violent expulsion of the former into the Catalogue of Sins which the Dr. excepts out of his Principle But he withal denies such admission to be sinful because they are not against the Law of God nor do they make us accomplices to the injustice nor violate the Obligations to our Canonical Obedience nor is the Ordination of the obtruded a mere nullity Dyscher As to the two last Suggestions I shall say nothing to them if the two former are not provable against the Doctor For my Canonical Obedience belongs to my proper Bishop whoever he be and the Ordination of Anti-Bishops is †Treat of Ch. Com. Part. 3. Ch. 6. not censured for a mere Nullity by all our Worthies tho' it is by our Vindicator Let us then begin with the first Consideration whether it be not a Sin by the Law of God I pray how does the Doctor make out the Negative Eucher He says That the Scripture in our Case is altogether silent 'T is true it bids us be obedient to our Governours and that Command reaches as well to the Spiritual as to the Temporal But when there are two that stand Competitors and both claim our Obedience to which of these two our Obedience ought to be paid it leaves to our Wisdom to determine Dyscher You ought here to observe that our Question runs about the Duty or Lawfulness of admitting Intruders upon an open and contested Expulsion of Right not where the Title or Right is dubitable Now when an Intruder contests for the holding an Ecclesiastical Function against the Rightful Proprietor that is invalidly and uncanonically thrust out doth the Law of God leave it to our Wisdom and not to our Justice to determine or does it leave it to our Wisdom to determine according to regular and confessed Justice or according to irregular and confessed Wrong For the Law of God requires us to render suum cuique every Man his due
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
the Convocation in their Judgment were to yield to or oppose for 't is impossible but they must judge one or the other to be their Duty Now if they had been of opinion for the opposition this must have been done by Synodical Remonstrance if their Judgments was for the Submission then they were to break no Silence to the contrary Now then is not their actual Silence hereupon a legal token that they thought it their Duty to yield in Silence Except we will perversly judge them silent against the Dictates of their Conscience which if you will it will lye upon you to prove it out Whensoever things are brought into such a Strait that either Silence or Contradiction must become a Duty there Silence is as moral a Token of Consent as Contradiction is of Dissent And in all cases where either Assent or Dissent is inevitably requisite and the Rule is that all Dissents must be express and protested as the forms are in the Lord's House and process of Actions in the Civil Law there Silence in Law is taken for Consent But here is yet more the King had graciously conceded a liberty to the Convocation to propose their Grievances in order to his Royal Redress So that tho' they had no Civil or Legal Liberty to remonstrate against the Statute yet they had an opportunity to have presented an humble Supplication for a relaxing Expedient or a Temperament on just Security for the inoffensiveness of the suspended Yet neither did they think themselves obliged in Duty so much as to break Silence in this manner herein And must not the State then conclude that the Church by this Silence thought it fit to yield However I hope you do not think in good sadness that their Silence did signifie indignation scorn sullenness or denial to the State For 't is true in cases of request and contract Silence is no grant of a Proposal but Silence under a Law together with a consequent Obedience to the Precept thereof is an indubitable Token of Consent which was the Churches case here while silent in her Convocation and obedient in her Metropolitical and Diocesan Bodies So much then for Consent next for the Authority which you say is not asserted but betrayed by this Silence But neither here can I agree with you For as I never said that Silence asserts Authority so neither does it betray it For your instance from the Peers does not import a Right betrayed but only a Vote consented to by Silence and this confirms my Observation and refutes you For as the Silence of a Peer surrenders not his Peerage so neither does such Silence in the Church forfeit or vacate her Authority No tho' the Church had had Right to have entred the Parliament House with Votes and Protestations But suppose it for once that the Churches Silence had betrayed her Right see upon whom the Treachery must be most unfortunately charged Did the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and his other Recusant Colleagues that had a legal Right of Session in the Lord's House enter and enter a Protestation against the Validity of that Act as wanting their and the Churches Suffrage or Synodical Concurrence No not a jot of this And yet they by their Station as well as Cause ought to have been the first in the Protestation which if they would not make for themselevs and the Churches Rights then according to you they are Proditors and so 't is unreasonable in them or you to require the Protestation of others less concerned or obliged by their Order Cause and Principles But the truth is we had no just Cause or legal Authority of making such Remonstrant Protestations and so our Silence is not perfidious but dutiful Now this being so clearly stated all your childish trifling upon French Subjects and Turkey Mutes is very idle and impertinent since Silence does not indeed import Authority against but Submission under Laws Yet even in these French and Turkish oppressions the Silence argues an opinion that they either in Duty or Prudence are to be silent and quietly submissive And this certainly was the Sense of our Saviour in his Silence when he was led as a Lamb to the Slaughter But to deal plainly these Instances pertain not to our present Case for here ours was Silence and obedient Submission to the Commands of the State the comporting with which in Silence is a Consent to and Comprobation of its Justice and is more than a meer silent Patience under unjust Oppressions So inartificial and improper is the Objection from these poor Mutes and Vassals Thirdly you assure me that Silence is no Deprivation No verily nor did I ever hear that it was But to intercept your hast whose Silence was I speaking of And to whom did I ascribe the Ecclesiastical Acts of Deprivation Why truly I spake of the Silence in Convocation as importing their Opinion that they ought not to oppose the Laws of the State But I never said that the Convocation did deprive the Deprived No surely they sate not at the time or on the Day of Deprivation But I told you before that the Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Acts of Deprivation consisted in the Metropolitical and Diocesan Alienations effected not by mere Silence but Canonical Acts and forms of procedure And now let us see whether my Memory hath failed me any more than my Cause I here assert the Silence of the Convocation but afterward told you * Sol. Ab. Pag. 34. that a Motion for a Petition was stifled in the Lower House of Convocation †T. B. Repeats it thus You tell us of a Motion in the lower House of Convocation but leaves out the word Stifled fraudulently tho' you clip my words on purpose to abuse me For a Motion may be stifled before it is offered by one that knows that it is intended to be made But however an actual Motion of one Member may consist with the Silence of the whole Body For if the Majority Vote Silence against the Motion for a Petition the Convocation is silent and silenceth all its Members as to the Petition it self tho' some brake Silence in the silenced Motion but keep it after thro' voluntary desistence or Canonical Order Now here in fact a Motion was offered by one excellent Person but upon the report then tendred to him of my Lord Archbishop Sancroft's request to the contrary he desisted in Silence tho' you however in this Conference have thus barbarously bespatter'd him when there was just reason for your Silence But however herein you own T. B. has a very contracted Memory too when †T. B. See Lett. Pag. 42. he endeavours to discredit the Story of this Motion so stifled on the said Report But you have one Argument that will confound me into Eternal Silence or Amazement namely that they that refused Dr. Tillotson for their Prolocutor would not have consented to have had him their Archbishop Well be it so what then Perhaps if
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
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
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