Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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A56736
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An answer to Vox cleri, &c. examining the reasons against making any alterations and abatements, in order to a comprehension and shewing the expediency thereof.
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Payne, William, 1650-1696.
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1690
(1690)
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Wing P896; ESTC R36661
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22,857
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39
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him my thanks for instead of an Answer to them or would have done my best to have written a Panegyrick upon that Noble Motto Nolumus mutare Leges Angliae That after all is the onely mighty and irresistable Argument that remains to be answered in this matter but I wont undertake it since it has been done to my hands by all the Parliaments and all the Convocations in England ever since the Barons wars unless by the present Convocation which has done nothing whose mind we do not yet know and till we doe it may pass for an infallible Council for surely Vox Cleri is not the mouth of it nor is our Author to be taken as the Churches Representative or Procurator General or to be allowed so many Proxies as shall make up a House But though he calls his Book Vox Cleri yet Tuba Stentorophonica Balaam's Ass prophesying or the like Title might have been as significant and suited it as well Having seen what he has to say on one side I am now to consider what has been or may be offered on the other and what he has to say against them The Reasons for some Abatements and Alterations at this time are so plain and considerable so great and important as shows the manifest expediency if not necessity of doing it and our Author has so little to say against it though he was bound to say what he could that he has thereby done more to give up the cause and satisfie every impartial man about it than if he had industriously pleaded for it though I will not say as he does of one of the Letters that a man would think this Writer to have been hired to betray the cause by his weak and impertinent arguments for its Defence for I believe our Author does honestly what he can and I don't suspect any treachery at all in his writing unless it be between his Will and his Understanding and I doubt the one does a little trick and impose upon the other for were it not for his implacable aversion and ill-will to the Fanaticks and Latitudinarians I am very confident that his Reason is for Alterations and Abatements by the little he has to say to the contrary and to the obvious and important reasons for them and because he himself so often and so expresly declares for them in his good moods and lucid intervals The first objection which he makes to himself and which rose up in his own thoughts for 't is not in answer to any of the Letters is this p. 5. Herein we may please the King the Parliament and a great part of the dissenting Laity which if it be true is very considerable Now as to the latter the dissenting Laity I don't know what to say to the great ones and the Politico's among them who are for keeping up a Separate Party as a Civil Faction in the State whom they who are the Heads of it and would make but an inconsiderable figure without it can manage upon occasion and have it ready raised and formed for their designs and I doubt they will not be so well pleased to have this and therefore themselves lessened by lessening the strength and number of the Separation as I hope the best and most honest of the Dissenting Laity will who are more concerned for the sincere good of Religion than carrying on Designs and Intrigues who will no doubt follow and accompany their Leaders into the Church as they went out with them But this I hope will be so far from being an objection to our Author or any Church of England man against Alterations and a Comprehension that it must be a very strong Argument for it since 't is the Schism and Separation in the Church that keeps up those Parties and Factions in the State which help to disturb the civil peace and quiet of the Kingdom and has been the cause of the greatest confusions in it so that whoever is a lover of the Church or Kingdom must be desirous to have an end put to them as far as is possible that we may unite in one religious and civil Interest As to the pleasing the King and Parliament hereby that I think is not to be doubted since the Parliament addressed to the King for calling a Convocation and the King was pleased thereupon to call one for this very end and design and to grant a Commission as has been usual in the like case to prepare things in order to it so that 't is to be feared that some men who are no great friends to the present settlement and constitution and who are upon some account angry and discontented are at the bottom of all this heat and stiffness against Alterations and who make use of others as Tools to work and hammer out their Designs by or at least to keep up a noise and disturbance among us as if great numbers were dissatisfied because they themselves are so for private reasons These men are mighty zealous against the Churches making any Alterations in the Circumstantials of Religion till the Court makes some Alterations in the Substantial places of profit I know we complain on all sides of being made and used as Tools as if this were the Fate of Churchmen and Religion were only an Engine in their hands charged with the terrors of another world to doe Execution only in this Our Author wishes he could leave his Countrey Minister who wrote one of the Letters well in his wits to consider whether he be not used as a Tool to destroy the established Church p. 42. by some who think themselves mighty Politicians Nay he tells us That the Authors of the two Letters may be Papists who by such Arts seek to divide that they may destroy us Now this is the deepest Plot of the Papists if it be one that ever was laid to destroy and blow up the Church and if those who are for Alterations in order to unite Protestants and strengthen the Church are Tools in the hands of Papists or other Politicians to destroy it the Church is in a lamentable condition and must necessarily be destroyed both by its friends and its enemies too and by those ways which in all appearance tend most to preserve it and the Design is laid so secretly and to be wrought so strangely that 't is impossible to prevent it On the other side 't is plain and notorious matter of fact that some Great Discontented Lay-men though not so Great as they would be did manage several of our stiff men against Alterations It was not so much behind the Curtain but the hands were seen if not the wires which moved the Puppets besides the dissatisfied Bishops and Clergy who have not taken the Oaths nor will own the present Government had more influence upon those who have sworn to the present King and Queen and most solemnly recognized them in the name of the Church of England than could be expected that men of such
against the Assaults of Men and Devils if these things seem necessary to any man it will also seem necessary to that man to admit such Changes as he is perswaded will conduce to such ends (a) p. 8. I have now done with the Cause and leave it to any man who reads his Book and this whether any thing loosely and scatteringly offered in the one has not had its full force fairly given it and as full and complete an Answer returned to it by the other But I have a word or two of Friendly Advice to our Author before I have done with him as a parting civility 1. First then I would advise him not to speak so loudly and openly against the Toleration for fear the Parliament should hear him as he does upon all occasions telling us the Reasons against it are irrefragable that it used to be granted at the instance and for the sake of professed Papists that it is a greater favour than was granted the Church Party in the late Wars I hoped those old Sores had been healed or however that we should not take example of our Enemies ill usage and cruelty to revenge the same upon them The Papists were never for a Toleration of Protestants only as we have it now with exclusion to themselves and they were as much for putting the Penal Laws in execution at one time as they were for Toleration in another so that they have been playing their game on both sides and both have been tricked by them But with submission to the Irrefragable Reasons of the Parliament in 1662. we have since sufficiently tryed other methods and found them not only ineffectual but mischievous so that some such Expedient as a Toleration was absolutely necessary either to prevent on one side the scandalous unsuccesfull prosecution of weak and wilfull men or on the other the King 's illegal dispensing with over severe Laws I see the mischief of a boundless and unlimited Toleration but whether the mischiefs of Persecution i. e. Extreme penalties for the sake of Religion be not greater I leave to experience and the judgment of our Governours to determine However it does not become Clergymen who should use the other methods of Tenderness and Perswasion more proper to the Gospel and their Office to grudge and repine at the favour of the State to those who differ from them and thereby discover their angry and revengefull Resentment and their good will to use other methods if it were in their power 2. I would never have a man that writes against all Alterations at the same time propose any especially such strange ones as reading in our Churches the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp or some select Chapters out of King Charles the Martyr's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 (a) p. 26. For since he knows some People are greatly offended at the Apocryphal Lessons and would have nothing read in the Church but what is undoubtedly Canonical it will look very odly to make such a Proposal to the Convocation at its next sitting and therefore I would desire him not to move any such thing though perhaps the thing might take with some men if others were much against it and out of mere spite to the design of Alterations they might clog the Bill with such an Incumbrance I do not intend to examine particular Alterations but shall leave them to the wisdom of the Church i. e. the Convocation and the wisdom of the Nation i. e. the Parliament to agree and settle them as they shall think fit I am for making some few Alterations but am by no means for this of our Authour 's proposing of reading Ignatius and Polycarp and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in our Churches though I like them almost as well as Tobit and his Dog or Bell and the Dragon however some question whether they are all genuine 3. Above all I would advise our Authour when he writes again never to make Comparisons between men because he knows by the old Proverb they are odious and nothing can excuse them but when a necessary defence calls for them Thus though Dr. Jane be a very worthy person and fills both the Professor's and Prolocutor's Chair very well and gracefully yet why he and his Neighbour Clergy should be in such mighty Joy and Triumph because he was chosen rather than Dr. Tillotson and look upon this as a good Omen for the good of the Church * p. 1. as if the choice of the other would have foreboded some mischief to the Church this is so unmannerly rude and reflecting that it requires the temper of that excellent Man to forgive it who has done as much good to Religion and the Church as half a Convocation Prolocutor and all But I perceive the bottom of the pique our Author has a most ill opinion of Sermons on Week-days Lectures and the Dean has been a Preacher of such and has thereby provoked some but taught more to Preach well and to Live well than any man perhaps since the Apostles but why has our Authour and some others who are not much for Preaching on any day such a spite against Sermons on the Week-days Lectures why he tells us because in those many great Absurdities tonding to Schism and Sedition are injected into the minds of the People (b) p. 26. and cannot they be as well injected on Sunday Lectures if Men have a mind as well as on Week-days Lectures nay I know no absolute Preservative but that they may be injected in Sermons on Sunday morning as well as at any other times if the Preachers be very much inclined to it I will by no means dispute with our Author whether there be not in the Countrey many Ministers who for their Learning may be without disparagement compared with most of the City Ministers (c) p. 15. that they may I 'll assure him and very much exceed them too if he be a Countrey Minister himself as I have two or three Reasons besides his Latine Sayings which are far beyond the learning of most City Ministers to believe him to be But why must he be comparing the Countrey and City Ministers like the Countrey and City Mouse as to the great ease and pleaty of living * p. 37. I perceive he has been searching not only into their Vestries where they sometimes tarry he says till Prayers be ended he might have added where they drink Sack too sometimes after Sermon which they don 't in the Countrey but into their very Kitchings and so far as I know he might be for Reforming of those were he not against all Alterations and Amendments whatsoever What brave Stories does he carry down I warrant you and tell his Neighbours in the Countrey of the City Ministers plentifull eating and seldom preaching having such frequent Supplies besides Lectures and Readers * Ibid. whereas the whole burthen lies upon them in the Countrey of studying carefully and accurately penning their Sermons and then preaching them in great Churches besides writing against Popery and defending at all times the Cause of the Church and Religion Further It ought to be considered he says that a great part of the Countrey Ministers have travelled some an hundred some near two hundred miles but not the Apostolical way of footing it I suppose to meet in Convocation for the benefit of the Clergy and I hope the great good they have done there is a sufficient reward for all their pains and sit sometimes near the whole day in the depth of Winter but they were hot enough they say for all this and I pray where do the City Clergy of the Convocation sit then in a Vestry or some other warm place One would think a man doated either with age or some other feebleness who would thus trifle and expose himself by such drivelling and ridiculous malice This is so below Don Quixot and Fur Praedestinatus to which he mighty wittily compares the Authors of the two Letters p. 56. but with an unaccountable impertinence and silliness that I can think of nothing for a New years gift for him but a Coat with long Sleeves and this Badge upon it Nolumus mutare Leges Angliae So I take my leave of him and wish him and his Neighbours a merry New Year FINIS ADVERTISEMENTS THere is newly Printed a Large Folio Bible of a fair new Roman Letter with Annotations and Parallel Scriptures or References some Thousands more than are in the Cambridge Oxford or any other Bible yet Extant To which is annexed the Harmony of the Gospels As also a Reduction of the Jewish Weight Coins and Measures to our English Standards And a Table of the Promises in Scripture In One intire Volume containing 325 Sheets Printed for Richard Chiswell Jonathan Robinson and Brabazon Aylmer Allegiance Vindicated or the Takers of the New Oath of Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary justified and the Lawfulness of taking it asserted in its consistency with our former Oaths and also with the Doctrine of the Reformed Church of England concerning Non-resistance and Passive Obedience By a Divine of the Church of England Printed for Brabazon Aylmer