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A42255
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An answer to Mr. Lowth's letter to Dr. Stillingfleet in another letter to a friend.
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Grove, Robert, 1634-1696.
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1687
(1687)
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Wing G2147; ESTC R31522
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34,417
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38
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Licensed April 1. 1687. AN ANSWER TO Mr. Lowth's LETTER TO Dr. Stillingfleet In another Letter to a FRIEND LONDON Printed for Randal Taylor near Stationers Hall. MDCLXXXVII An Answer c. SIR BEcause you had so often desired it I have at last forced my self to turn over Mr. Lowth's Letter to Dr. Stillingsleet I found it a very tedious and uneasie Task You had been almost as kind if you had chang'd your Pennance and ordered me to walk to Highgate with Pease in my Shooes The Way you sent me proved so rugged and uneven that every step I took I fancyed I was treading upon Cinders and Pibble-stones But I am resolved to be revenged I 'le send you another Letter that shall be as troublesome to you as that was to me But I 'le promise you for your Comfort it shall be scarce half so long and not above a quarter so Ill-natured I cannot imagine what should move Mr. Lowth to fall upon the Dean in such a manner If it were pure Zeal 't is great pity it had not been tempered with more discresion if there were any thing of particular Pique in the Case it was not managed with Artifice enough The World will never swallow the Potion when the Venom swims on the top of the Cup. The first known occasion of Mr. Lowth's ingaging of Dr. Stillingsleet was the Pretence of the Irenicum A Book set out by the Dean in his younger Years in which were many passages which his riper Judgment could not approve And this he had signified to the World in other Writings which came abroad before the Publication of Mr. Lowth's Papers But here you must note the grand Objection against the Irenicum had been formerly made by T. G. and his Companions they had found as they pretended that the Design of it was only to Ruine and destroy the Church of England And that was a thing which they Good men were not able to indure and therefore out of pure kindness no doubt they discover the Plot and warn us of the danger we had cause to apprehend from this young brisk Presbyterian that had disguised himself in Irenicum Armour The Truth of it is they had reason enough to be very desirous to be delivered from a troublesome Adversary They saw by experience they were not able to oppose his force and to secure themselves they found it necessary if possible to give him a Diversion And this seasonable assistance Mr. Lowth very wisely affords them by fomenting the Jealousies they had cunningly raised In his Treatise concerning the Subject of Church-Power besides some insinuations in the Book it self to the same purpose there is a Letter to Dr. Stillingfleet c. Printed after that to the Reader wherein he is imperiously Summoned and little less than Commanded to satisfy the Church of God by a recantation as publick as his Error Scandal and Offence And then he is gravely admonished to consider that he has not erred in the Leviora Evangelii and that the Point is whether God has a Church on Earth with its peculiar appropriated Power or not This bold and importunate demand of Satisfaction seconded with so heavy a Charge urged upon him with so much fierceness after he had given sufficient Evidence of the contrary and done the Church very considerable Service upon several occasions could not choose but incline the Dean to reject the Calumny with some degree of just resentment Which he did in a short Epistle to my Lord Bishop of London where you may see that he was not wholly insensible of the abuse but yet notwithstanding the great Provocation he had received he could not be tempted to any rude and undecent expressions Though Mr. Lowth has snatched up some of them in haste and by the help of a rare Art of Composure which he has gotten has mixed and altered and jumbled them together I know not how till he has made a shift at last to make them look almost as oddly as some of his own This you will find he has done about the beginning of this Letter which he tells us is In answer to the Deans Epistle Dedicatory For it was the gentle rebuke which had been given him in that Two-penny Letter as he elegantly calls it that put him out of all Patience and set his Blood into such a violent fermentation that I cannot observe any great abatement of the Paroxysme for eighty four Pages together It seems to be little else but a continued sit of Passion and the Dean is all along treated with that gross disrespect that it must needs be a very pleasing entertainment to the Gentlemen of the Romish Perswasion to see him who had frequently baffled the subtillest Advocates they could find not confuted but abused and affronted by an angry Man of our own Church This is certain they were the only Men I ever heard of that applauded the Letter when it came abroad His other Friends who were not much displeased with his first Book were quite ashamed when they saw This they had not a word that they could offer in defence of it The most partial Readers were not able to frame any Apology for so much rudeness That you may not think I load it with prejudice without a Cause I will make it evident in some Reflections upon a few passages of the Letter and then consider the business of the Irenicum which gave the occasion to the whole Debate If you look into the Dean's Epistle you may observe that he has expressed a due sense of the injury done him but never let fall a word any ways unbecoming a Person of Civil and Ingenuous Education But Mr. Lowth as I intimated before has raked together some scattered expressions and by a strange Liberty of adding altering and misapplying as he thought best for his purpose would make the World believe that the Dean had represented him in a woful scandalous manner After some general flourishes of Clamorous Objections riotous Pag. 12. Noises choice Epithets and the like he goes on thus If you can reap any satisfaction from loading me with the general Titles of a Plagiary ridiculous fool malicious unskillful maker of Controversies a barbarous and rude Disputer with his Brethren an accuser of his Brethren an implacable Man uncharitable unjust Slanderer proud void of Prudence and common discretion the usual Complements you are pleased to bestow upon me you may be happy in the injoyment of your humour though it hath not an Irenical Complection But I that design nothing but the pursuit of Truth and Honesty c. And a very good Design really it is and I hope he will be careful to keep it always in his eye But I must look a little and inquire into the Titles of Honour he says he is loaded with Plagiary I cannot find this Title in all the Dean's Epistle nor any thing from whence it may be gathered without mightily straining of his words It has been always accounted an ill
Article or any other but only to the Last which must be understood to have been done in confirmation of all the rest as well as that and there both their Names are still to be seen in Dr. Burnet's Printed Collection How many voluntary mistakes does he run into that he may accuse his Adversaries of Vnfaithfulness when by that very attempt he makes himself guilty of it in in a very high degree But yet he will plead they have heen Vnfaithful too because they have not acquainted the World with Cranmer's Retractation of his former Opinion To this it may be replyed that if Cranmer's Subscription to Leighton's Paper did imply such a Retractation then they have acquainted the World with it by the publication of that Subscription if it did not then it was well done not to impose upon the World as he would have them by false Glosses and forced Interpretations But did not Cranmer retract his first Opinion then without doubt he did Why then was this wholly omitted whatever Mr. Lowth may pretend it was not Dr. Burnet had given an express account of it in the proper place as he knows and used a more convincing argument to prove it than that Subscription in the very Page wherein he refers to the Record we are contending about His words are these In Cranmer's Paper some singular opinions of his about Hist Râ—f Book 1st the Nature of Ecclesiastical Offices will be found but as they are delivered by him with all possible modesty So they were not established as the Doctrine of the Church but laid aside as particular conceits of his own and it seems that afterward he CHANGED his opinion For he Subscribed the Bock that was soon after set out which is directly contrary to those Opinions set down in these Papers This passage Mr. Lowth could not be ignorant of but he cunningly slides over it because he saw it was not for his purpose And this I think may be enough to shew that Cranmer's Subscription to Leighton's Paper was not omitted nor his Retractation otherwise concealed But indeed it was not any thing of this nature that was the real ground of the quarrel it is the bare Publishing of the Manuscript that seems to have made Mr. Lowth so angry he would have had it otherwise disposed of and he insinuates his mind in a Story out of Livy which he thus relates In the ground of Petilius the Scribe were found two Chests the one had a bundle in it containing Seven Books in Latine de Pag. 60. jure Pontificio or relating to Religious matters they were perused by several and at last read to the Senators who immediately condemned them to the Fire and they were accordingly burnt before the People because in many things tending to the dissolution of their Religion This is a way of proceeding would have fitted the Conclave as well as it did the Senate 'T is probable that City has been under the Influence of the same cautious Planet from the very beginning but I did not think before that the way of dealing with Heretical Manuscripts could have been proved by such ancient Tradition Well! but what thinks Mr. Lowth of this Why he admires it much and esteems it a choice Example of an extraordinary Prudence For so he goes on The Wisdom of that Government knew full well the ill consequences of admitting such looser Papers into competition with their received Worship c. But I hope their Case and ours are something different A false Religion may have reason to be jealous of all Opposition and do that by Fire which it cannot by Argument but the true One has no need to be so extreamly apprehensive of danger It knows it self to be built upon so firm a Foundation that it cannot be easily shaken and therefore it is not afraid of what can be objected against it Whatever others may be forced to do the Church of England has no occasion for any unwarrantable Artifice to support it self we are not put to a necessity of forging or suppressing any Writings to maintain our Cause We do deservedly retain a very great Veneration for Arch-Bishop Cranmer but we do not think we can suffer so much by any private Opinion of his that we should be tempted to Destroy his Papers for the sake of that especially when it was subscribed with so much Dubiousness and deliberately Retracted not very long after And when all is done I am verily perswaded that the Generality of the Church of England are better satisfied to see the Manuscript Published as it is than if it had been Burnt as Mr. Lowth advises very gravely like a Roman Senator The next thing wherein he imagines the Dean has not given sufficient satisfaction is The Power of Church-Officers And to make this out he undertakes to examine some of his Books where he might have found many things that way which he thinks fit to take no notice of and for what he has chosen out he very often either mistakes or else wilfully perverts the sense Sometimes 't is pleasant to see how he will be Tutoring Pag. 66. the Dean and shewing him how he should have expressed himself But I must not trouble you with such Observations as these that were Pag. 64. an Argument too Copious The first Treatise he pitches upon is the Appendix to the Irenicum where he acknowledges the Arguments for Church-Power are common but good This is a very kind concession for Him. But then the exception is that this is limited to the Power of Excommunication Why then that was Competently well done so far And that was the Subject to be treated of and to have extended it farther in that place had been little to the purpose And the Dean I believe can hardly be sorry yet that he was not impertinent though that it should seem had been the only way to have pleased Mr. Lowth The next Treatise he falls upou is The Vindication of Arch-Bishop Lawd the same which he thinks might have discomposed him upon the Pag. 65. Scaffold if he could hve been aware of it and it is not strange if all be true which he says In which I sind little amends for these your Irenicum Doctrines but rather an evident confirmation of many of them if not doing worse That must be very bad indeed at least in his esteem but then the wonder is that none of these very ill things should be discovered by the Reverend Prelate that licensed the Book who in his time was taken for as Wise and Learned a Man as Mr. Lowth and had certainly done and suffered as much forthe Church Nay besides this publick approbation of so eminent a Person and other acknowledgments which some of his Graces near and Learned Relations thought sit to make all the Bishops of that time were pleased to give the Dean their particular thanks for the Work An Honour I believe that has not yet been conferred upon the Author of