no reason and against a great many and all by those who are not the proper and immediate Judges to whom the determination of his Cause belongs I see not but a Tenure from the Wind and Weather may be every whit as certain and as firm as this and I perceive I was mistaken when I valued it at a Years Purchase when in reality it is not worth one day Suppose my Lord that the Living of St. Thomas's had not been united to the Hospital in my Person would you then have stript me of this my only dependence for the sake of so small an advantage to Mr. Hughes as it is so plainly demonstrable this will amount to And yet if in strict Justice you had been obliged to do it you would have been equally obliged in that Case as you are in this but if you are not obliged in strict Justice to deal with me after this manner then I hope you will reflect upon the Reasons of Equity which I have offered on my behalf and upon the many Arguments that strike with so much force and unanimity against his Pretensions and shew so plainly beyond all Exception that there is nothing but Injustice and Malice on his part nothing but Fairness and Honesty on mine Besides that he cannot be resident upon both Places at once if he supplies this Place by a Curate as I am just now informed he is about to do and I know the Person who it is * One that cannot attend the Hospital at any time but on Sunday that I hope you will not and I am very sure in so inconsiderable a Preferment but yet requiring so great and constant attendance as this does you ought not to allow Sisters and Cooks and Butlers Helpers have been heard of in this House but the Hospitallers Helper and that in his absence too was never heard of before but if he resides here which I am morally certain he will never do and puts a Curate into his other Place this is directly opposite to the Law against Pluralities which will not permit a Man to be absent and resiant forty Miles from any of his Cures Let us suppose again my Lord I beg your Lordship to excuse the plainness of the Comparison that at the time when you were pleased to make an Order for me to resign up my Place to Mr. Hughes and as I have been inform'd in case of Non-obedience to the said Order on my part that Mr. Hughes should have all past Arrears and all growing Profits becoming due for the future that you had further ordained that I should deliver up my Books and whatsoever else I had in my Possession to him Would it in this Case have been interpreted a Contempt to the Court of Aldermen if I should refuse to do as that Order appointed No certainly but all Men would purge and vindicate me by saying that your Lordship's and the Courts Jurisdiction did not extend so far and that it was no Contempt of a lawful Authority not to obey an Order that was illegal and â—â—ceeded the just bounds and measures of the Court from whence it proceeded so that to apply this matter to the purpose I beseech your Lordship and the rest of the worthy Gentlemen concerned to consider first seriously whether your Order be legal and within the Jurisdiction to which you may justly pretend before you accuse me of a rude Contempt or affronting Disobedience to so great and honourable a Court a thing which I will never be guilty of to any of my Superiours to the best of my Understanding so long as I live and upon this one point my Lord the whole Controversie turns whether your said Order which I cannot help saying is very far equitable be so much as strictly legal or no. And to all this it is still further to be added that Mr. Hughes having received his just doom of ejection from above made his actual Resignation before a general Court and I at the same time was actually substituted in his Room and Place and he afterwards made a Sale of the Furniture of his Chamber to me which I accordingly paid him for So that here were all the Signs and Indications of a voluntary Resignation on his Part who did not stand it out as thinking himself injured as I have done and all the Formalities of a legal and orderly Possession on mine which Possession I am still desirous to keep till I am legally ejected from it Another thing which in point of Argument I shall insist upon shall be taken from an Act of Parliament 25. Car. 2. and entituled an Act for preventing Dangers which may happen from Popish Recusants and in the Preface of the said Act the design of it is said to be for quieting the minds of his Majesties good Subjects by which Act it is ordained and enacted that all and every Person or Persons as well Peers as Commoners that shall bear any Office or Offices Civil or Military or shall receive any Pay Salary Fee or Wages by reason of any Patent or Grant from his Majesty or shall have Command or place of Trust from or under his Majesty or from any of his Majesties Predecessors or by his or their Authority or by Authority derived from him or them within the Realm of England c. or shall be of the Houshold or in the Service or Employment of his Majesty c. should within a time limited be obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and also to receive the Sacrament of the Lords Supper according to the usage of the Church of England publickly on a Lords day commonly called Sunday immediately after divine Service and Sermon within a certain and prefixed time and further at the making and taking of the Oaths aforesaid they should likewise make and subscribe a Declaration in Manner and Form as by the said Act is ordained under the same Penalties and Forfeitures as are appointed by it which said Penalties and Forfeitures were two-fold First that all and every the Person or Persons aforesaid that do or shall neglect or refuse to take the said Oaths and Sacrament in the said Courts and Places and at the respective times aforesaid shall be ipso facto adjudged incapable and disabled in Law to all Inrents and Purposes whatsoever to have occupy or enjoy the said Office or Offices Employment or Employments which shall be void and are hereby adjudged void Secondly it is further enacted that all and every such Person or Persons that shall neglect or refuse to take the said Oaths or the Sacrament as aforesaid within the Times and in the Places aforesaid and in the manner aforesaid and yet after such Neglect and Refusal shall exercise any of the said Offices and Employments after the said times expired wherein he or they ought to have taken the same and being thereupon lawfully convicted c. every such Person or Persons shall be disabled from thenceforth to sue or use any Action
Church and Sir Simon Degg speaking of Donatives as this Chappel is affirms expresly upon good authority besides what I Parson's Councellor par 1. o. 13. p. 164. have already represented in my former Paper that the Patron who is in this Case the King or Court of Aldermen or Governors acting under them cannot collate a Lay-man as some have thought but a Spiritual Person in Holy Orders and to this it is still further to be added that this Hospital being founded by the Piety and Royal Bounty of Edward VI. who was in some sence likewise the Founder and Establisher of the Church of England there being but very little difference between his Reformation and ours as it stands improved and Rectified at this day the design of which Reformation was on the one hand to abolish and extirpate Popery with all its gross Idolatries and Superstitions and on the other to prevent Schism and Disorder from tearing and rending the Seamless Coat of Christ and shattering the Church by infinite Separations it was an affront to the Memory of that Glorious King to put a Man into his House and feed him with his Bread who was as great an Enemy to his Establishment as to Popery it self and thought himself obliged in Conscience if his Heart and his outward Profession went together to pull down one Church as well as the other For in this Case that Will of King Edward which in distinction to written and nuncupatory Wills may be called his Testamentum implicitum his Will or Testament by implication or by way of innuendo was manifestly and foully violated and broken to allow a Dissenting Minister in his own House that would ruine and destroy the Reformation he had made by endeavouring to spread and encourage a departure from it and all this at his proper Cost and Charge out of the publick Revenue being certainly as much against the true meaning and intention of that Prince and of those good Men under him who put him upon this Charitable design and were themselves great Instruments in the Reformation as if a Mass Priest or Popish Monk or Friar had been placed here at the same time for the Medium perfectly by being what it is hath a natural aversion for both of the extremes and cannot comply with or reconcile it self to either of them without quitting its Station and forseiting its Nature so that I cannot understand how Mr. Hughes could be placed here without a plain Contradiction to the certain though implicit Will of our Royal Founder neither can I comprehend how the living discharge their Trust by violating and affronting the Will of the dead especially when the Laws which are always supposed to speak the King's Mind continue still the same as they were before For I grant that in the late Times the Case was otherwise and that it was perhaps better to have a Dissenting Minister in this House than no Minister at all and that in such case such a Dissenting Preacher ought in justice to receive the Wages of the House though he did not do all the work that the Founder himself had he been living would have expected from him or that the Laws put in Execution would have exacted and this was much more true of other Officers belonging to this Place that it was more eligible so they were but honest and fit for their Stations that Dissenters should be trusted than that so useful and so great a Charity should be disappointed I grant still further my Lord that even at this time or at any other before it when the Laws were most rigorously put in Execution yet no man more than usually eminent in the Profession of Physick or in the skill of Surgery or in the dexterity of manual Operation belonging or appertaining to it ought to be or to have been discarded from his Employment meerly for his dissent because this were to do an injury to the House and to deprive it of that benefit which it receives by them but where Men equally or perhaps more skilful and diligent in their Employments may be had that conform to the Establishment as it is setled by Law there it is more agreeable to the Will of our Royal Founder and to the Intention of the Law it self which in no case designs to encourage or reward Disobedience as such that Persons fully qualified by their Conformity to it should be retained in every publick Service and receive the Pentions and Salaries of the State. And it is still more eminently and universally true that in the Patients themselves who are the objects of this Charity the Persons intended to be relieved and succoured by it and for whose sake all Officers and Ministers are employed and paid no Consideration so much as that of Necessity and Want the greater or lesser need that one or other may have of the assistance of this House ought to discriminate one Person from another without any regard to a Religious Perswasion which it would be the worst and most inexcuseable sort of Persecution in such a Case to consider But none of all this was Mr. Hughes his Case the Law allowing no Preacher but a Conformist and much less rewarding him for such his Service out of the publick Revenue and without having recourse to the Implicit will of our Royal Patron and Founder King Edward VI. though that be so manifest by Indications that cannot deceive that there can be no longer doubt of the matter by the plain explicit and positive Institution of his Royal Charter It is ordained among other things that he shall be a Priest or a Person qualified not only to Preach or Pray but also to administer the Sacrament upon occasion and this is an Office which none but a Priest rightly qualified and ordained according to the Constitution of the Church of England can legally perform so that Mr. Hughes was unqualified not only according to the Laws of this Land and the implicit Will but according to the express and positive Institution of that blessed King who had certainly the greatest and most unquestionable Right to impose what lawful terms he pleased upon his Servants and they are all lawful Conditions when we speak in a civil and political Sence that are Conditions according to Law for I do not enter into the merits of the Cause betwixt the Dissenters and us Your Lordship I hope will pardon me that I suggest so many things in this my second Paper that have been already representin my first you may perceive Sir that I do it in a some what different Method from what I did before leaving out those Reflections in this short review which however true and certain in themselves afforded but too much occasion for Offence and starting new matter for Remark and Observation as I go along it being my design to set all things as near as I can in a somewhat clearer light and to contract the whole into a shorter compass that so your Lordship may consider it
not through a Glass darkly but in some competent measure as he is in himself full of his own Excellence and discerned by his own Light by transcribing and transplanting into the habit of our Minds the Image of those Attributes and Perfections we adore And in pursuance of the Reason of this Levitical Institution it was That in all Christian Nations from an high and remote Antiquity to this time there hath been a standing and immoveable Provision for the Clergy out of the Lands Profits and Demesns of Secular and Lay Persons by such and such stated Proportions which may be demanded sued for and recovered by Law as a Due and which are settled upon the respective Incumbents for their Lives if they do not of themselves relinquish their said Preferments or are not guilty of such scandalous and repeated Crimes as to incur Suspension à Beneficio or absolute Deprivation from the exercise of their Office and from the Profits and Emoluments accruing by it they are provided for with a present Subsistence that they may not be diverted by the importunity of emergent Cares from a present actual Attendance upon their Duty and this Subsistence of theirs was made perpetual and was much more competent in the smallest Livings in former Times than it is now that so they might be rendered easie in their Minds and void of an anxious Sollicitude for the future which though not so great an impediment to the discharge of their Office as present want and indigence must in Reason be yet in some lesser Proportion it will always be a Thorn of Vexation in their sides it will affect them more or less according to the different Persons they have to do with and upon whom their dependence relies it will have a great Influence upon some Tempers beyond what it will have upon others and lastly it will be a means of an unreasonable Subjection of the Clergy to the Laity and the occasion of many base Arts and most unworthy Compliances with the Humours and Interests of unreasonable People whereby to reprieve themselves from an impending Ruine and get some further momentany uncertain and despicable Respite in a slavish and arbitrary Dependence fit for none but such wretches as are capable of being molded into all shapes and of receiving all sorts of servile and mean Impressions from ill Men instead of being the happy Instruments of Amendment and Reformation to them by good ones of their own made boldly and frankly without Fear or Favour though not without a becoming Modesty and Discretion upon every fit and suitable Occasion Now the Reason upon which all those Laws were made is every whit as applicable to my own Case though in outward form and appearance I hold by another Tenure as it is to the rest of my Brethren of the Clergy who have a legal Freehold in what they enjoy for Tithes were no otherwise of Divine Right than as they were ordained by God upon an equitable and eternal Reason and are still continued by Men upon the same as to the substantial meaning of the Institution which was the support and maintenance of the Clergy or of that Order of Men as such there ought to be in every Nation that were dedicated and devoted to the Service of God though as to the minute Proportion of such a Maintenance as that is and as to the ways of Levying Collecting or Distributing the same it may admit of Change and Variation in different Times and Places The Law of Tithes obligeth not so much by virtue of that Humane Authority no nor of that Divine Authority neither that first establish'd it either among the Jews or in any other Nation for both of these Authorities as sacred as they are and especially the latter of them yet separate from Nature and eternal Reason they are at best but positive and changeable things but that which gives those Laws in the general considered which are made for the support and subsistence of the Clergy an intrinsick and essential Character of Obligation is the apparent Reasonableness Equity and Justice of them and that Equity appears as much in making the support perpetual as in giving it at all because the design of the one for Reasons that have been given would be defeated and disappointed without the other and if this be equally the Case of all Ecclesiastical Preferments whatsoever where a Subsistence for a Clergy man is appointed in Consideration of a Duty to be done the Tenure by which I hold though it be onely durante beneplacito will not evacuate the general Equity of the Case but all Men that have a Reverence to the Laws a due regard to Religion and the Ministers of it or a due sence of the great and fundamental Reasons upon which Bodies Politick and Societies are built and by which equal Justice is administred to all will never do any thing deliberately and of set purpose against the manifest Equity upon which those Laws are built whose Obligation they will and ought always to acknowledge to be valid and binding upon them even where the positive Letter doth not oblige If a Man keep a Chaplain in his House as his Domestick he may discard him when he pleaseth for no Reason at all unless it be that of retrenching his Expences because the Law doth not oblige him to retain such a Person in his House but yet it must be confessed to be very hard and by Consequence next kin to unjust to turn a Man of that Character out of doors without any other competent Provision after he had deserved well of the Family and his Patron for several years together but where the Publick hath allowed a Maintenance out of the publick Revenue there the Case and the Equity arising from it is plainly as strong and as clearly indispensible in one Ecclesiastical Promotion as in another all which if your Lordship will please candidly and impartially to apply to Mr. Hughes his Circumstances and mine that he was legally ejected for many and great Causes and that I was legally substituted in his Place that he can get nothing by his Restitution and that he hath as little Right to it as he can get profit or advantage by it and that I must only be a great and unreasonable Looser with little or no profit accruing and redounding to him besides many other Reasons which I hope your Lordship will some time or other take the leisure to consider I doubt not but you will recall the Sentence you have past and think it more for the Reputation and Interest of your Court to discard Mr. Hughes than to protect him any longer but if this be the meaning of an Arbitrary Dependence and such I acknowledge mine in some sence to be though by Reason of my Character and Function it be the least Arbitrary of any in this House that it is a dependence so perfectly and entirely holding of unaccountable Will and Pleasure that a Man may be ejected out of it for