or Policy may not become a Case of Conscience in a Kingdom as well as in a Family College or Diocese and whether Questions about Right and Wrong Lawful and Unlawful Just and Unjust may not happen to arise in a Point or Act of State as well as in other practical Points Was not the Engagement a State-point in those times And did not the Presbyterians make a Case of Conscience of it and chose many of them to suffer rather than to take it because they thought the matter of it Sinful Was it not a State-point with the Loyal Nobility Gentry and Clergy whether they should turn Liege-subject to Oliver And yet because it was not a mere State-point but such an one as touched their Consciences they chose to be sequestred rather than sin in closing with the Usurpers and transfer their Allegiance from the King to whom they thought it due The Clergy also then set up separate Meetings from the Churches and Private Worship in opposition to the Publick in many places of the Kingdom as Dr. Wild and Dr. Gunning in London and Dr. Fell in Oxon for then they thought it was not the Place or the Numbers but the Cause that made the Separation a Schisme and the Jacobites in like manner think how truly I shall not now dispute that they have just Cause of Separation given them and that therefore their Separation is no Schism The New Oath of Allegiance which you intimate to be a mere State-point they think withall to be a great Point of Religion in which the Interests of Truth Justice and moral Honesty are concerned and they verily believe they cannot take it without breaking three or four of the Commandments which they think to be as sacred in themselves and as dear to God that made them as any Articles in the Creed For the same Reason they profess they cannot join in the Prayers as they stand altered nor with the additional Prayers and to speak my own Judgment I think no Party of Men ever made a more plausible Apology or Defence for themselves than is made for them in a Book called Christian Prudence to which I refer your Grace and I dare say you will not think your Pains ill spent in reading of it if you please to peruse it with a free and unprejudicate Mind But my Lord besides that which you call a State-point there is also a Church-point of which you take no notice though it be another known Cause of their Separation and that is the putting of New Bishops into the Thrones of the Old ones whose Deprivation they pretend to be null and unjust and give such Reasons for it as the tender Regard I have for the Government and these Erastian Times will not suffer me to recite I have urged the Authority of the Baroccian Manuscript against them but to that they answer many ways very well and which troubles me not a little they assure from their Friends at Oxford that Mr. Hody hath not printed the whole Manuscript but omitted a Collection of Canons which immediately follows where he left off written in the same Hand which shews that the Author is to be understood of Synodical Deprivations and if this be so indeed as I fear it is then I must say that Mr. Hody hath not strictly kept his ‡ Jam ad alia Lector procedas at priusquam procedas Votorum quorundam mihi testis esto olim si unquam violavero Monitor Vo torum quorundam eruditis Viris proh dolor hucusque ignotorum sed quae ego pertetuò à primis literis ut facio feci ex Corde Faxit Numen Vt vel aeterno ego silentio inter non scribentes deliteseam Vel semper ut virum ingenuum liberalis ac generosae Educationis Veraeque Philosopiae studiâ—sum decet scribam Veritaâ—is unicae Indagator Absique omni Styli Acerbitate Mitis urbanus candidus Ad id quod indecens est adeo non pronus ut nec movendus Nugarum demque Contemptor I do not know whether Ger. Joh. and Isaac Vossius Uther and Dodwell ever made such a Vow but this I dare say if they had printed this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Manuscript they would have had so much Ingenuity as to have printed the whole at least to have given Reasons to the World why they did not Thus my Lord you see that the Non-compliance and Separation of our New Nonconformists is not grounded upon a mere State point so neither merely upon a Point of State and they think they have Râ—â—sâ—n to expect satisfaction from your Grace not onely for wrong assigning one Cause of their Separation but also for not assigning both I confess their Opinion is dreadfull in its consequence as being like to involve all the Nation except themselves in Schism and I have been so free as to tell them of it and also prayed them to consider what an Odium they will bring upon themselves by it but to that they say they cannot hinder the Consequences of things and wished me to conside That as a Nation or Province may fall into Indolatry Rebellion or Sacrilege so also into Schism and that our Nation fell into the first of those Sins in the time of Queen Mary into the second and third in the time of the Rump and Cronâ—well and if they now charge it with the fourth Sin it is no more than what your Grace and your complying Brethren do for Scotland and the same Apology they think will serve for both though of the two they acknowledge the Scottish to be the more grievous Schism Thus much my Lord I have said by way of Enquiry into the Grounds of the Separation of the Jacobites to acquit them from the Charge of Faction and Schism I now come to your Reflections which they say are as unjust as your Charge and as groundless and impertinent as it You represent them in p. 26. as Men that have different Notions about Politicks and framers of Hypotheses about Government To which they reply That if you mean that their Notions of Politicks are different from yours that they confess to be true but if you mean that their Notions about Politicks are different from the true English Polity or antient Government of this Kingdom or that they frame any other Hypothesis about it than what the Law hath framed this they deny and desire all the World to take notice That they are by Principle so far from making Hypotheses against the Government of England or Alterations in it that they suffer both as Christians and Englishmen for their strict adherence to it and that you are the Men that have different Notions of Politicks from the National Polity or Constitution and that you have actually framed six or seven Hypotheses about Government as different from one another as from the Law it self For the truth of this they appeal to your own Writings out of which they intend to collect such notorious Schemes of State-Notions
and Doctrines of Politicks that they that dwell on the Earth shall wonder at them as at the Beast in the Revelations when they behold them One of them as I am told hath been at the pains to compare Dr. Sherlock's Notions about Politicks with those of Julian Johnson's and can make it appear from that Collation that Julian is much the better Church-man and the more Orthodox Apostate of the two In short my Lord in answer to this Reflexion upon them as Coiners of Nations about Politicks they stick not to say that you are the Statists and Polincians who with your humane Policies have corrupted your Religion defiled the Priesthood dishonoured the Church scandalized her Friends and caused her Enemies to triumph In the next Paragraph you say That it is very grievous for those that promote a Separation Page 27. who have always declared themselves Friends to the Church and Enemies to Schism To this Reflexion they reply That they are still as much Friends of the Church and Enemies of Schism as ever but then by the Church they understand the True Old Church of England with all her venerable Doctrines of Faith Justice and moral Honesty and all her strict Decrees against the resisting deposing and forferting Doctrines the Church of England with all her plain Primitive Doctrines of Christian Honesty and Simplicity against Equivocations and Mental Reservations the Church that always abhorred Treason and Perjury as well as Idolatry that never allowed her Children to do any moral Evil for a good End or with a good Intention In a word the Church that equally condemus both the Parts of Popery that which teaches us to be false to Men as well as that which is injurious to God that which pollutes our Morals as well as that which pollutes our Faith and Worship This pure Virgin Church which they think is now driven once more into the Wilderness they say is the Church which they adhere to and to which they think you ought to have adhered with them and that you have separated from her and them and not they from you For they say they are just where they were when you were last with them and have not budged a Foot since from that Church and that you cannot say they have broken from you unless you will affirm that when a Ship breaks from the Shoar where she lay at Anchor the Shoar removes from her and not she from the Shoar And then as to the next Reflexion of being distasted at the establisht Worship for which they were zealous before they say they are as zealous for it as ever as far as the Matter of the Prayers is the same but the Matter of some of the old Prayers they say is changed and this Matter with that of all the New ones being the subject Matter of the New Oath of Allegiance they have the same difficulty of Conscience upon them as to saying of these as taking of those Wherefore in Answer to your fallacious Question about the Liturgie and Prayers they desire to know if you put the Question of the whole Liturgie and all the Prayers in it or not If not then the Question is not to your purpose but if you indeed mean the whole Liturgy and all the Prayers in it as you would be understood then they say they must tell you that the Liturgy and Prayers are not the same they were and by consequence that the Proposition implied in your Question is false For as Changing the Name of God for the Virgin Mary in the invocatory part of any Collect in the Liturgy would change the Object of Worship and make it not as it was a Prayer to God but to the Virgin so changing the Name of a Man for that of his Enemy in the petitionary part of any Collect makes it quite another Prayer not for the Man as it was before the Change of Names but for his Enemy and by consequence alteration of Names alters the Matter and Intention of the Prayer and makes it as different from it self as the two Men and their Interests happen to be They suppose that if a Man should raze the Names out of a Petition to their Majesties and put the French King's Name in their place that it would no longer be a Petition to them but to their mortal Enemy and therefore in Reply to the next Question which follows about the same Liturgie they say this change of Names has changed the Prayers in the Liturgie and that this change disgusts their Consciences and helps to drive them from your Churches being one cause of their Separation from the Publick and but one for as I just now shewed your Grace there was another of which you were pleased to take no notice Ay but you say they proceed so far as to declare open War and set up separate Congregations in opposition to the publick To this they say for the foresaid Reasons That they did not begin this spiritual War which on their side is purely Defensive because they are driven from the Publick and that the same Reasons that will justifie their Separation from it will also justifie setting up separate Meetings in opposition to it in which they think the pure Church of England with her pure Worship may be seen and heard like the Church of Jerusalem in the first persecution of Christianity in the upper rooms And in reply to the great Emphasis which to supply the want of Argument you put upon Separating from the Publick and Setting up Congregations in opposition to the Publick they pray you to consider That the Multitude or great Majority which usually makes the Publick is often in the wrong You will not deny but the Multitude or Publick are now the Schismaticks in Scotland they were so under the Donatist Bishops in Africk they were so in England under the Popish Marian Bishops they were so under Aaron in the business of the Calf they were so in Israel under Ahab and the Idolatrous Priests and lastly they were so under the Arian Emperours and Bishops throughout the whole Roman Empire In short my Lord they say when the Publick is in the right and gives no just cause of separating from it that then it is a great Sin to set up private Meetings against it but when it is in the wrong and gives just cause of separating it then becomes innocent and a Duty to doe so though the Publick be in Possession of all the Churches as it usually is when Safety Honour and Riches attend the erring side I hope by this time my Lord you understand what their Meaning is in Setting up separate Congregations for it is the Cause and not the local Churches and Revenues that make say they a true Church and therefore in Answer to your Question they pray your Grace to consider that Men that have been branders of Schism may think it not onely innocent but their Duty to separate from the Publick or publick Worship without changing
their Principles Nay sometimes their Principles unless they can change them will oblige them to doe so though they do not think Schism can change its Nature and this they think is their own Case and therefore they challenge you and the whole Regnant Church of England with all the advantage if its Churches and Revenues but more particularly the Intruders as they do not stick to call them and all their Electors and Consecrators to prove that their Separation is a Schism All your Arguments about it are couched in a few trifling Questions of which this that follows is a terrible one Have we not the sam Government in Church and State that we formerly had And they appeal to your Grace's Conscience upon second Thoughts and as you expect to be called to Account for the Sincerity of your Ansiver at the dreadfull Tribunal of God if we have the same Government we formerly had Do you know of no Changes it hath undergone which may reasonably aflect the Mind of every true Englishman as well as the Conscience of a good Subject Was there no substantial Reason for throwing the Word rightfull out of the New Oath of Allegiance Or for the Declaration that so many made for the ease of their Consciences at the taking of it And do not many among you still complain in private of the Alterations that the Revolution hath made in the Government and wish them unmade again You cannot but know they say that there are many Grumbletonians and half Penitents among you and therefore they wonder with what Confidence you could put this Question about the Government as well as that about the Prayers But they say your Question is fallacious because it is not to be put about the Government but about the Governours and they think you will not say that they are the same They also make some distinctions about Things and Titles which I shall not here recite because I believe your Grace hath heard of them and knows them to be very material in Controversies of Allegiance of which Praying for the King next to Fighting for him is a principal part and therefore they say that in contests about Crowns in Christian Kingdoms the Subjects at the peril of their Souls are bound to consider for which of the contesting Princes it is their Duty to pray as well as for which it is to fight The next Question to this say they is as little to the purpose wherein you ask Have we not the same Articles and Doctrines of Religion publickly owned and professed and taught without the least alteration To this they Answer That there are many Doctrines relating to the Controvertie between you and them taught licensed and allowed which have been condemned by your Predecessors of the Church of England in the late Usurparion and formerly and of late censured by the famous University of Oxford and which they verily believe a free Convocation would yet censure as contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England such as these are the Resisting the Deposing the Forfeiting Doctrines which are to be seen in your licensed Tracts The Doctrine in behalf of bare Possession that it gives a Right to a Crown to which another King hath a legal Title that will justifie a recuperative War the Doctrine of Providence and actual Administration the Doctrine which makes War God's Court and Victory his Sentence lately asserted by the Bishop of St. Asaph The Doctrine of laying aside Kings for Mocal Incapacity and another fine Doctrine that Force from what Cause soever will disengage Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance and justifie their entring into contrary Obligations and they appeal to your Grace's Conscience if these Doctrines not to mention others which used to be so much branded and decryed by our Divines in Popish and Presbyterian Writers be Articles of our Religion or Doctrines of the Church of England and the Preaching and Printing these Doctrines with Allowance not mentioning the Preferments Men have for Teaching of them is an Argument they say that the Articles and Doctrines you speak of are not owned but disowned not professed but suppressed and that they are not taught so publickly as formerly because they are not pleasing and some Men you know do not love to teach displeasing Things though they be true lovely honest and just But say you again What Government is there in the World will not meet with such Subjects that are not satisfied with it and if that disaffection be a just Reason to break Communion with the Established Church what Ligaments have we to tie Christians together Here they say my Lord you couch a Fallacy which it did not become your Grace to make for the dissatisfaction of Subjects or rather if you please of the People against any Government is they say of two sorts one upon the account of want of a good Title in the Governours and another upon the account of want of good Administration and with respect to the later they acknowledge there are very few Governments which have not in some measure dissatisfied their Subjects but this sort of dissatisfaction they say is very consistent with Church Communion under any Government though the Church-men should happen to favour the Male-administration as sometimes they chance to do But then with respect to the former sort of dissatisfaction which is upon a moral Account they say it becomes a just Reason to break off Communion with the Church when an acknowledgment of Right in wrongful Governours at whom they are so dissatisfied is made a condition or part of the Communion in the Prayers and Sacraments of the Church in the partaking of which Communion doth consift In this case they say the change of Names in the Prayers as to the use of them affects the Consciences of People as much as the change of them in the Oath of Allegiance and therfore for the People to joyn in them would not be to hold the unity of the Spirit but to make themselves Parties to that which they think an unrighteous Usurpation which would be a great Sin But you tell us again That great Revolutions have happened in all Ages and Countries and that you believe it will not easily be found that ever any Christians separated from the Church upon the account of them Here my Lord they distinguish again and say that Revolutions of Government are also of two sorts one in which the new Governours happen to acquire a clear and undoubted Title to the Government and the other when they acquire the Government without a clear and undoubted Title which happens when another claims it by a clearer Title and prosecutes his Claim As to the first sort of Revolutions they acknowledged with your Grace that never any Christians did or ought to separate from the Church upon the account of them But as to the second they assert that they commence just Causes as of Non-subjection so of Separation when owning the Right of the new Governours
against the better Title becomes not only a Condition to the Clergy of exercising their Ministry but also a part both in Prayers and Sacraments of the daily Offices of the Church This my Lord is their Opinion and had this ever been the Case of the Primitive Christians as you wrongfully suggest it was they doubt not but their Practice would have been answerable thereunto For the Primitive Christians say they were Christians all over who served God faithfully in the most difficult as well as most easie parts of Religion they were as zealous for the practical as the speculative Doctrines of Christianity and stood up as much for probity of Life as purity of Faith and Worship In a word they were as Righteous towards their Kings as towards God and would have suffered as much for the Third Fifth Sixth and Eighth Commandments as for the First or Second or any Doctrine of the Creed I have now my Lord repeated all the Answers which I have heard your Adversaries make to your Querres and I must needs beg so much favour from you as to consider me as the bare recite of them for the sufficiency of which it is their part to undertake and not mine But if they chance to prove sufficient Answers to say no more of them then to espouse the Party of those Men will not as you tell your Parishoners be to espouse a Faction or a Communion which is not the Communion of the Church But you tell them how uneasie soever some of them may be in joyning with the altered and additiona Prayers then it seems some are uneasie at the Prayers and what is the reason of that that but they will be ten times more uneasie in separating from you which may be true say they with respect to outward ease but not to the ease that is within And truly my Lord they themselves are a sensible Example of what they say for you may read perfect Contentment in their looks and perceive by conversing with them that they enjoy their Deprivations more than ever they enjoyed the Possessions of which they are depriv'd Oh! my Lord had you seen Him of Palsgrave-Court after his Extrution you would have seen him look more Chearful and Great and Venerable than ever and I seriously profess to you I had rather have his inward Peace and Satisfaction than his Throne with all its Revenues and be in his Condition rather than that of any arrogant intruding Politician who can scoff at him now to whom he would have formerly cringed and from whom before the Revolution he would have counted a smile a great favour I wish the time may come when both the insulting Scoffers may repent of it least another time should come upon them like travel a Woman when they shall say in anguish of Spirit O let me die the Death of That righteous Man and let my latter end be like his Fathermore you tell your Parishoners of the Heat and Turbulency the Passion and Peevishness the bitter Zeal and Vncharitableness that the being of a Party doth naturally engage Men in This my Lord they acknowledge to be true in all Church and State Divisions especially with respect to them that are engaged on the wrong Side It is not my undertaking now to determine in this Division of our Church-men which Side is in the right but this I can say by experience from their Conversation that those who have separated from the Publick have for the kind as few and for the degree as little of those troublesome Passions as any sort of Men in the World I appeal to your worthy Successor in St. Giles's-Parish if one of the new Bishops was not in a very disturbed and uneasie paroxism of Spirit about accepting his Bishoprick and whether in a great heat of Passion he was not ready to go to her Majesty like Dr. B. to desire to be excused None of the deprived Bishops parted with their Bishopricks with half that reluctancy that some of the accepters took them The Episcopal Seals were bespoke and unbespoke and at last after many Agonies and Fluctuations finally bespoke again But the deprived are calm and smooth and uniform within their Hearts are fixt on God and their good Principles they are as free from bitter Zeal as from Shame and Remorse and if you do not envy the Felicity of their Deprivations I dare say they do not envy you their Revenues and think you no reproach to them if you do not think them so to you But farther my Lord be the Passions never so great on both or either side upon the account of the Separation Who must answer for that Casnists say that those that are the Cause of any War must answer to God for all the Blood that is shed and all the Devastations that are committed in it and so I think those that are the Cause of any Separation must answer to the God of Peace and Unity for the Division and all the Heats and Passions and irregular Zeal and Uncharitableness on both sides that 's occasioned thereby When there is Pope against Pope Bishop against Bishop there will be Feuds and Animosities this is now the sad Condition of our other World and let them look to it who have set up the Seconds who in the Judgment of the African Church are none at all But you call the deprived warm Men and some that is a few warm Men. But as for their fewness my Lord they say as the Orthodox or Catholicks used to say to the World of Arians That no Cause is to be tried by Numbers that the Number is often in the wrong and that they are but some that will be saved for the Truth of this I refer to their former instances with which you used to stop the Mouths of the Papists when they boasted of their Numbers but I perceive from your Writers that Numbers and the Publick are now become excellent Arguments for Truth But then as for the imputation of heat as they think it signifies not much so they wonder you should reproach them as hot Men who apparently have so many Hot-heads among your selves Certainly my Lord had you called to mind your PP cks and T ns and P ns and F rs and H ns and W ms you would have spoken more respectfully of heat and not have been so ready to reproach the Jacobites as warm Men For the Philosophers my Lord that treat of the Passions and the Use of them tell us that Heat is the active Principle and as necessary in the moral as in the natural World and a very cool Man who since proved a Jacobite once saying to another Brother Brother God send you Patience Brother replied the warm Gentleman God send you more Passion I am zealously affected in a good thing and I wish you were so too And I remember your good old Friend Dr. Calamy reflecting on some Men whom you know who condemned others as Hot-heads for preaching against the Faction in the Popish Plot-time Discourse about a Scrupulous Conscience Epist Dedicatory preach'd at Aldermanbury 1683. said I am very sensible that in this Age we live in some are so extraordinary Wise and Wary as to censure and discourage all Men that speak roundly and act vigorously for the King and Church as being more forward and busie than is needful but I am also sensible that if some Men had not shewn more Courage and Honesty than those prudent Persons bot would have been by this time in far greater Danger than at this present thanks be to God they are But now my Lord to apologize no longer for Heat which is good or bad as the Occasion upon or the Cause in which it is used I appeal to your own Conscience Whether you do not know among the Jacobeans as cool and as considering Tempers as any you know among your Acquaintance who yet separate from the Publick upon the same Pretences which you tell the People some warm Men suggest I wish my Lord for the future you would take the Counsel of Gamaliel and let these Men alone for if this Counsel or this Work of theirs be but the effect of Heat or ‡ Page 29. unaccountable Humour it will come to naught of it self but if it be of God ye cannot overthrow it though you may persecute them to destruction lest haply ye be found to fight against God I have now given your Grace an occasion to review your Faremwel-Sermon in which by the leave of the Gentlemen of the Vestry I must needs say I think you have reasoned very indifferently and-noot like your self And though those Gentlemen through the great veneration they deservedly had for you did not perceive the weakness of your Reasoning yet many others who can distinguish betwixt the Speaker and what is spoken did Nay I can assure you that some of the weaker Sex were sensible of it Madam said a Lady to another of great Quality You hear what my Lord says Yes saith she I have heard what be says as well as your Ladiship but he hath said nothing to convince me And if this be all he hath to say I shall be more confirmed than I was for I think I am able to answer all that I heard him say To this purpose spoke that Noble and most Vertuous Lady and I could do no less then tell your Grace of it that hereafter you may take care to print none but rational Sermons which it concerns you to do not only as a Person of most venerable Character but as a great pretender to Reason who in a certain time and place doubted if the Bishops then suspended were good Reasoners though you could not but grant that they were good Men. My Lord I am your most faithful Monitor and obedient Servant FINIS