in Church and State as free God knows from Superstition or Will-worship or unlawful humane Inventions as some other mens affected words and modes ceremonies and forms are in their eyes hands speeches and gesticulations When His Majesty Your Lordships and the Worthy Gentlemen of the House of Commons together with all the sober English World shall see Us Bishops demeaning our selves as they would have Us and as you have deserved of Us in the way of great and good examples proportionable to our pious and venerable Predecessors before and since the Reformation no doubt Your Lordships and all Worthy Persons will be as far from repenting of Your restoring Bishops to their government and jurisdiction also to their ancient honour and capacity of Sitting in the House of Peers and therein of restoring this Church and Christian Kingdom to their pristine honour peace and safety by Gods blessing as some others are from rejoycing or not repining at Gods mercy the Kings benignity this Parliaments generosity and piety as well as policy and discretion in preferring the gray head of primitive and venerable Episcopacy before the beardless striplings of Presbytery and Independency with which new wines if any weak heads in England be still so in love as to chuse them before the old wine which is better certainly they will have this happiness in their unlucky errour as to have no learned and honest man to be their rival If any things have seemingly or really been amiss in any of our Predecessors or our selves through humane frailty or passion which easily besets the best of men in this life as our desire is not to deny or dissemble them so truly they cannot now with any modesty be remembred or objected by these Adversaries against Us or any Bishops heretofore since the covetousness ambition pride tyranny cruelty and implacableness of some Anti-Episcopal and Anarchical spirits have been so excessively insolent and outragious even to a wantonness of wickedness and to all manner of injastice far beyond the worst actions of the worst of Bishops in the worst of times since the Reformation But whatever hath really been amiss our caution shall be to avoid or amend all faults as much as Your charity and Nobleness hath this day covered and forgot both their infirmities and any of our failings What was eminent as much was in many of them and commendable in most of them our endeavour shall be to imitate where we despair to exceed That while Your Lordships or others behold us either in the Parliament or the Pulpit or the Press or the Consistory you may not have much cause to deplore the absence of our famous Predecessors whom you cannot but love and admire as we do for their piety learning industry and charity In sum we shall strive that neither Bishops nor Episcopacy shall be any burthen but a great blessing as it hath been to this Church and Kingdome to King and Subjects to the good and bad to encourage the former and to restrain and amend the latter Which happy effects will easily be attained First If we may be guided and circumscribed by good Laws and Canons beyond or short of which no Presbyter or Bishop may go no not in any exemplary ceremony or affected novelty to a super-conformity Secondly If we may be defended in doing our duties by his Majesties just power without cramping or benumming the sinnews of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction by needless prohibitions Thirdly If we may be still assisted and adorned with your Lordships and the other Gentlemens love and favour Fourthly If we may be duly fortified by the desired counsel and meet assistance of our aged learned and reverend brethren of the Clergy Lastly If we may be daily commended as the Church-Liturgy hath appointed and for which passages it is so unwelcome to many who love Church Lands better than they do the best Church men or Bishops more devoted to prey upon them than for them to the marvellous workings of Gods grace by the prayers of all good Christians which we do not more want than passionately and humbly desire That since we the Bishops of this Church are again brought to this high mountain and thus transfigured our faces may so shine in good words and works that your Lordships and all this Church of England may glorifie our Father which is in heaven That we may abhor that Soloecism of Honor sublimis vita deformis Lordly Titles and Peasantly actions And since there is no greater sign of a thankful heart for mercies which our selves have received than a charitable sense of our Brethrens miseries that in the day of our Exaltation as Bishops to Estates and Honours we may not forget the depressions and afflictions of others Give leave to as many of us as are thus compassionate to present our supplication to your Honours the two Houses of Parliament and by your mediation to his Majesty A great one indeed it is and therefore worthy of so great an address to persons of large hearts and hands who are ready to answer great desires and to effect great designs It is in the behalf of many of our poor Brethren the Clergy of England and Wales That there may be some effectual means used worthy of the Wisdom Piety and Charity of His Majesty and His Two Houses of Parliament to relieve the meanness tenuity and incompetency of their scandalous livings which makes many of them as more needing so less capable of Discipline Objects also of vulgar contempt depressing their spirits starving their studies discouraging them in their duties betraying them to sordidness of living exposing them to many temptations and lastly subjecting them to all popular servilities complacencies and dependancies which are the nests and brests the seminaries and nurseries of all faction There is no way to redeem them their Ministry and this Reformed Church from these burthens and chains that enter into the very souls of many at first ingenious Scholars and hopeful Ministers but by making small livings somwhat competent His Majesty hath set a great example in this kind commanding augmentations to be allowed out of his own and the Churches impropriations But this bounty cometh short of at least 3000 livings which still remain in ENGLAND and WALES as Flats or shallows in the Sea upon which when the necessities of many young men and hopeful Scholars once drive them they seldom ever get off without shipwrack of Morals or Intellectualls However it is such a stop and hinderance to the proficiency of their studies also to the authority and efficacy of their Ministry that they seldom or never make a Prosperous voyage ever conflicting with difficulties and many times conquered by them not only to a meanness but an immorality of living It is a work worthy of His Majesties greatness and your goodness to apply in Gods good time some meet help to this crying Malady which first began by the Popes unhappy alienating of Tythes from the Incumbents or Rectors and annexing them
Assemblies to repair those breaches which were made by the free Votes as it seems of but a few Lords and Commons compared to the integral numbers of either House and that in very tumultuating broken and boisterous Times whose imperious and impetuous Fury would not be satiated or stayed till they had destroyed in new ways of Judicature without any former president or future parallel we hope first a prime Counsellor of State next the chief Bishop of this Church and lastly the best of Kings in the World So fatal and unhappy it is for men either to neglect Gods ends or to vary from his means to use the Devils engines for Gods edifice doing real evil that imaginary good may come thereby Indeed the blessed God hath in the midst of his Judgements remembred Mercy HE HE hath commanded the Whales which had devoured our Jonah's the Bishops and other dignified Clergy of England with all their Cathedral Churches Honors and Revenues to cast them up again upon dry Land HE HE hath sent his good Angels even the King and his faithful Forerunner who are in this respect as Angels or Messengers of God to stop those Lions mouths who thought they had us all alive between their Teeth breaking our bones that they might more securely eat our flesh He he hath stirred up the Heart of our gracious Sovereign with this loyal Parliament as he did the Hearts of Cyrus and Darius Kings of the East to turn the Captivity of the Church of the Clergy and of the Bishops of England to make our latter end better than our beginning no less for inward Graces which we hope and pray than for outward Mercies as he did to holy and patient Job Indeed the Mercy of God is so miraculous and the Favor of King and Parliament is so remarkable to us That many of those ambiguous friends to the Church of England to Bishops and to Episcopacy who formerly stood as Jobs miserable Comforters afar off amazed to see that amidst Christians and Protestants and zealous Pretenders to Reformation such eminent Learning such powerful Eloquence such venerable Years such admirable Piety such oracular Prudence such splendid Virtues such useful Abilities and such deserved Honors as were to be seen in the late Learned and Reformed Bishops and Clergy of ENGLAND should be forced to embrace the Dunghil to be trampled upon terrified scorned and cast out as the off-scouring of all things by men some of them viler than the earth who certainly would not have used Christ and his Apostles much better had they appeared among them such as indeed they were Bishops or chief Pastors and Shepherds of the Churches Even those dubious Spectators of the late Trials and cruel Mockings put upon the Bishops and Clergy of ENGLAND do now many of them turn their Amazement of Horror to an Extasie and Jubile of Joy while they see what a Wonderful Change God hath made commanding dry bones to live giving beauty for ashes and the oyl of gladness for the garment of Heaviness rebuking at once the Raging of the Sea and the madness of the People which nothing but Omnipotent Goodness can tame or set bounds unto as he hath now done among us Many of those wary Christians and superpolitick Professors who heretosore were afraid lest by their compassionate and kinde Aspect they should adopt the unjust Calamities of godly Bishops and other Worthy Church-men These now begin to look serenely and without sqinting on the Episcopal Dignity they speak reverently of and kindly to the venerable Bishops and the other industrious Episcopal Clergy They behave themselves with filial Respects to their Mother the Church of ENGLAND speaking comfortably to her and telling her That her Warfare is accomplished assuring us Bishops and all other Worthy Ministers of the Church That our Troubles are finished if our Hearts be refined our Lusts mortified our Passions conquered and our Lives amended That the former Terrors Afllictions and sad Desolations shall be requited with double Honor if we all unanimously return with double Diligence to do our Duties to God and Man That those vast Ruines which Schism Sacriledge Rebellion and other crying sins have made shall be abundantly repaired by the Justice Piety and Munificence of the King the Parliament and People of ENGLAND who have lived to see all the Vizars and Masks of Angels of Light now quite taken off from the Faces of those Satans who under the clamors of violent Non-conformity and under the colours of illegal unreasonable and deforming Reformations are found the greatest Adversaries to Law and Justice to true Reason and sober Religion to necessary Order and good Government which are the solid Foundations and onely Pillars of publique Peace of sober and lasting Reformation God himself I say hath at last pleaded by the seasonable Intervention of the King and Parliament the Cause of this Church against all its cruel Calumniators and causless Adversaries whose late sacrilegious Depredations dreadful Oppressions and endless Vastations sprang first from the root of scrupulous or sullen or scandalous Non-conformity to the Laws At length they all nestled themselves under the popular Shadow or in the spreading Branches of an Anti-episcopal novel illegal and Headless Presbytery At last they brought forth those bitter fruits and sowre Grapes which set all our teeth on edge by the Anarchy and Confusion the Waste and Ruine of this Church and Kingdom This Royal Munificence and Favor of his present Majesty is by the former Insolencies and Calamities that befel this Church and Clergy as by so many black foils and dark shadows the more set off to be as indeed it is so great so unwonted so wonderful so kingly so christian so divine so proportionable in this point for gratitude and munificence to Gods extraordinary Providences oft preserving and at last restoring his Majesty to his Kingdoms That no instance in any Age or History can parallel it nor can any thing be said worthy of it but this It is an act of magnificent Piety worthy of such a King and the Son of such a Father The Father chose to lose all his Crowns Estate and Life rather than rob God and the Church The Son when God had restored all to him as to our lawful Cesar takes care to restore all to God that is his and his Churches Give me leave to take a more leasurely and exact view of his Majesties Bounty and Justice to the Church and Clergy of ENGLAND For its Dimensions like those of the Pyramids and Colosses which were among the Wonders of the World merit more than a transient Aspect When his Majesties own Royal Estate by long Usurpation and Banishment had been wholly detained from him and much exhausted when he was now under the necessity of many and great Expences publique and private for the Payment of his Royal Navy and for the Disbanding of his Armies now His by a most happy Revolt and loyal Apostacy When He had Power as He pleased to recruit
A Pillar of Gratitude HUMBLY DEDICATED To the GLORY of GOD The HONOUR Of His MAJESTY The RENOWN of this Present Legal Loyal Full and Free PARLIAMENT Upon Their Restoring the CHURCH of ENGLAND To the Primitive Government of EPISCOPACY And Re-investing Bishops Into Their Pristine Honour and Authority Anno 1661. Aarons Rod. BLESSED and FLORID Num. 17. 8. Barren Fig-Tree CURSED and WITHERED Mat. â—1 19. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Luke 17. 14. Giving Thanks always for all things Ephes 5. 20. Nemo gratus malus Nemo malus gratus Perditissimum censuerunt Veteres quem ingratum dixerunt London Printed by J. M. for Andrew Crook at the Green-Dragon in St Pauls Church-yard 1661. To the Right Honorable and most Noble Princes Dukes Marquesses Earls Viscounts and Lords Barons and Peers of the Parliament of England Together with the other honorable Gentlemen Knights and Burgesses of the House of Commons THere shall need no other Apology for the erecting and thus dedicating this PILLAR of GRATITUDE than that which all Justice and Ingenuity do make for the Archbishops and Bishops with all the Orderly Clergy of the Church of England Who must cease to be Christians and Men Religious and Rational just and ingenuous if we should not be highly sensible how much we are commanded by all the Laws of Gratitude to God and Man to express in some publique and solemn manner the humble sense of our thankful Hearts for that great Mercy signal Honor and eminent Favor which the good Providence of God by the Graciousness of the Kings Majesty by the Nobleness of the House of Peers and by the Generosity of the present House of Commons yea we hope by the desire and consent of all wise sober and just men in this Church and Kingdom hath restored as the other dignified Clergy to their respective Dignities so us the Archbishops and Bishops not onely to the exercise of our Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction but also to the ancient Honor when his Majesty shall please to call us of sitting consulting and voting in the House of Peers Senatus quo Sol augustiorem in orbe non vidit as the most learned Bishop Andrews writes in his Tortura Torti A Court and Council in its full and free Constitution not to be exceeded hardly equalled in all the World for number and for grandeur for the conspicuity of its Wisdom for the majesty of its Presence and for the Eminency no less than Antiquity of its Authority Agreeable to that of Fortescue cited by Sir Edward Coke in his Institutes l. 4. c. 1. Si Antiquitatem spectes est vetustissima si Dignitatem est honoratissima si Jurisdictionem est capacissima Nor do We the Bishops with all our Brethren of the Clergy more congratulate our own Reception to our pristine station after fifteen years absence than your LORDSHIPS safe Return after twelve years Banishment to the enjoyment of your native Right and hereditary Honor of sitting in Parliament as Barons and Peers And no less do we celebrate with joy the renewed priviledge of the free-born Commons of England to sit and suffragate in their honorable House by their chosen Deputies the Knights and Burgesses after they had for many years been baffled with Tumults broken by Factions bastinadoed with Truncheons and beaten with Swords in order forsooth to preserve the Liberty of the Subject the Priviledges of Parliament and the Reformed Religion Above all for in that one all your Honors all our civil Freedoms and temporal Happinesses are included we of the Clergy beyond all men have cause anew to solemnize this Day with Faelix faustúmque a peculiar joy and jubile to Gods glory the Churches peace and the Kingdoms prosperity the happy Return of his SACRED MAJESTY to his rightful Throne as the Sun to his proper Orb or Sphere after the dreadful Overthrow of our late Phaetons Who having set this English World on fire and quenched the other two British Kingdoms of Scotland and Ireland with their blood ashes and ruines had this onely honor for their Epitaph Magnis excidere ausis That they justly fell from most audacious adventures arrogant usurpations and impudent impieties smitten at length as with the Conscience of their own enormious wickednesses so with the Thunder and Lightning the terror and consternation of that divine vengeance which when they least dreamed of did wonderfully overtake them after they had a long time flattered themselves in Providences and by the delusion of Successes had blasphemed the most high holy and righteous God as if he were such an one as themselves a lover of perfidy perjury and hypocrisie Which vengeance was also on the sudden executed upon them as by the loyal Prayers and pious Impatiences of all his Majesties good Subjects so chiefly by the honest Policies and prudent Conduct of one wise and valiant General who as Samson caught those subtile Foxes and tied them tail to tail but without any other firebrands than themselves taking the crafty in their own devices and pulling down the proud from their seats of scorn and Tyranny May his heroick name be written in the Book of Life as it is in that of worldly Honor with an indeleble Character because he did not pervert to private ambition as others had foolishly and falsly done the rare opportunity of doing Actions of incomparable Loyalty to his Prince and of Love to his Country Those Scandals and Reproaches to all true Honor and Religion those pests and shame to all good Government being once gone with Judas to their own places after they had filled the three Kingdoms with blood barbarity and confusion and the measure of their iniquity up to the brim by a wanton superfluity of folly and madness wickedness and hypocrisie at last this grand Theater of Wisdom and Honor the Parliament of England was left free for the joyful Reception of its ancient Inhabitants King Lords and Commons there to sit with Freedom and Honor never again we hope and pray to be divided scattered confounded and destroyed Whose Piety and Justice not satisfied with their own Return to this Throne of Majesty this sanctuary of Religion this seat of Honor this Citadel of all legal and ingenuous Liberties are pleased still to express a sense of solitude until they had compleated More majorum after the ancient patern of English Parliaments their honorable society with the Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales That so in this as in all other instances of true Honor they might not come short of the Piety and Prudence of their noble Ancestors who thought that a Parliament of England without Bishops was as a City without a Temple or as a Temple without an Altar or as an Altar without a Sacrifice or as all these without a duly consecrated Priest or as he and they too would be without the true Worship of the true God And thus have we lived to see by merciful and miraculous Revolutions a plenary Restauration of the Majesty Honor Piety and
Clergy-men who a long time stood in the breach till there was no remedy but Sin and Judgement brake in upon them and all Estates as a mighty Torrent In which many of them lost more then all they had for the contagion of their calamities reached even to their Children Friends and Acquaintance the envy and fury of their Enemies seeking to exhaust all their Relations lest there should be any to relieve them with any thing but empty-handed pity I knew some Bishops and those of the first three whom I cannot mention without Honor nor remember their Enemies Cruelty without Horror who were in their old age reduced to live in great part as the Clergy did in Primitive Persecutions ex Donis Oblationibus by Alms and charitable Contributions So did the incomparable Lord Primate of Armagh Bishop Ussher and the most accomplished Bishop Brownrig Nor was the excellently learned and very aged Bishop of Durham Doctor Morton far from being an Object of meer Charity I am sure equal shame and grief mixed with just indignation affects me when I read expressed in his own words the churlish Cainish and contemptuous Carriage of some men to the late venerable Bishop of Norâ—â—ch Doctor Hall whose admired eloquence and meekness was capable like Orpheus his Harp to have charmed all wilde Beasts except bipedes Lupos two-legged Wolves I need not add to this Catalogue the acurate Doctor Prideaux late Bishop of Worcester verus librorum helluo who having first by indefatigable studies digested his excellent Library into his Minde was after forced again to devour all his Books with his Teeth turning them by a miraculous Faith and Patience into Bread for himself and his Children to whom he left no Legacy but pious Poverty Gods Blessing and a Fathers Prayers as appears in his last Will and Testament Blessed God! Who will not learn yea covet to want as well as to abound from these great Examples which are capable to render Indigence it self venerable Poverty desirable and Affliction lovely Since God never takes the good things of this World from so good men but as an indulgent Father he intends to give them better Physick for a time in stead of Food as he did to Job at last he repairs them with Pearls for Pebbles and with eternal Treasures for temporary trash How justly these Afflictions befel very worthy Bishops and other excellent Ministers then flourishing to a great number in the Church of ENGLAND as from the Hand of God their own Humility and Charity their Patience and Silence commands me neither to doubt nor dispute It befits us all to give glory to God to take shame to our selves to say it is of the Lords mercy that we are not utterly consumed that there is yet a Remnant that hath escaped But how unjustly as to the Hand of Man all these burdens of disgrace and indigence were cast upon such venerable Persons in their old age and infirmity I leave to the sober and equanimous World to judge when much evil was for many years inflicted upon them all and no malicious evil of fact was ever proved against one of ten of them They were all condemned but never tried deprived of their Ecclesiastical Rights in Law but not according to any known Law of God or Man Their great offence was that they did not think themselves wiser than the Laws of the Land and Canons of the Church That they would not divide what God had joined together Religion and Loyalty to fear God and honor the King That they chose suffering rather than sinning That they were not willing to have themselves with all the Clergy and the Gentry the Nobility and the Majesty of the Kings of ENGLAND forced to truckle under the Iron Bedstead of Presbytery or to tremble under the Wooden Ferula of Ruling Lay-Elders either Dependents or Independents whose insolency was more intolerable than that of an handmaid which was become heir to her Mistriss The unpardonable sin of those Reverend Fathers was that they chose rather to obey God and the King according to known Laws than to flatter or humor any Popular Faction how potent or prevalent soever still esteeming true piety and virtue in the midst of adversity to be more amiable than the most prosperous Impiety or triumphant Hypocrisie As the three innocent persons were less hurt by the Fire than those who cast them into the Furnace these were consumed the other not singed As no doubt those great Sufferers the Bishops of this Church willingly forgave their Persecutors and committed their Cause to Gods Pleading having no other care but this not to suffer as evil doers or as busie bodies or as perturbers of Church or State So they now greatly rejoyce in their past afflictions not onely for the good which they and others may have gained by them and for the gracious end which the LORD hath as we hope now put to them but also for those great and glorious Advantages which their former many long and sore calamities do now give to the present conspicuity of his Majesties goodness to the splendor of your Lordships noble favors and to the generosity of the House of Commons Thus by a most magnificent and illustrious Opportunity to express His Munificence and Your Kindness to the dejected Bishops to the oppressed Clergy and to the almost desolated Church of ENGLAND suitable to and in some respect far exceeding the pristine Examples of his Majesties Royal your Lordships and other Gentlemens loyal and religious Ancestors who were so far from casting the Bishops or chief Pilots of the Church over-board that they never thought themselves safer from shipwrack than when they were embarqued in the same Ship with Saint Paul and his pious Companions Your Lordships and the other worthy Gentlemen well know as I touched that Bishops in England have ever been contemporary with Parliaments time out of minde as they have been in all Christian Empires and Kingdoms Germany France Spain Sweden Denmark Hungary and others present and assistant in all their Diets and National Conventions So that our former Kings according to their Coronation Oaths and Parliaments according to Law did constantly indeed preserve Bishops in those ancient places and priviledges Immunities and Honors where they found them But You the present Lords and Commons concurrent with his Majesties Goodness have the singular Glory and Happiness to restore them to those ancient Dignities which they never forfeited and so were never before deprived of till their legal and deserved Honor was become their Sin and Crime till their good Manors made them guilty and their Revenues were counted their Delinquency lastly till their having of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction was ground enough to devest them of all Authority and the Church of all Order and Government It is the singular Honor of this compleat Parliament which sits as it began with all that fulness of Authority and Liberty which is the life and soul the crown and glory of such august