in his name and Right alone Whereupon his Majesties said Iudges having taken the same into their serious consideration did unanimously concur and agree in opinion and the first day of July last certified under their hands as followeth That Processes may issue out of the Ecclesiastical Courts in the name of the Bishops and that a Patent under the great Seal is not necessary for the keeping of the said Ecclesiastical Courts or for enabling of Citations Suspensions Excommunications and other Censures of the Church And that it is not necessary that Summons Citations or other Processes Ecclesiastical in the said Courts or Institutions or Inductions to Benefices or correction of Ecclesiastical offences by Censure in those Courts be in the Kings name or with the style of the King or under the Kings Seal or that their Seals of Office have in them the Kings Arms And that the Statute of Primo Edvardi Sexti cap. secundo which enacted the contrary is not now in force And that the Bishops Arch-Deacons and other Ecclesiastical persons may keep their Uisitations as usually they have done without Commission under the great Seal of England so to do which opinions and resolutions being declared under the hands of all his Majesties said Iudges and so certified into his Court of Star-Chamber were there recorded and it was by that Court further ordered the fourth day of the said moneth of July that the said certificate should be inrolled in all other his Majesties Courts at Westminster and in the High Commission and other Ecclesiastical Courts for the satisfaction of all men That the proceedings in the High Commission and other Ecclesiastical Courts are agreeable to the Laws and Statutes of the Realm And his Royal Majesty hath thought sit with advice of his Councel that a publick Declaration of these the opinions and resolutions of his Reverend and Learned Iudges being agreeable to the Iudgement and Resolutions of former times should be made known to all his Subjects as well to vindicate the legal proceedings of His Ecclesiastical Courts and Ministers from the unjust and scandalous imputation of invading or entrenching on his Royal Prerogative as to settle the minds and stop the mouths of all unquiet Spirits that for the future they presume not to censure his Ecclesiastical Courts or Ministers in these their Iust and warranted proceedings And hereof his Majesty admonisheth all his Subjects to take warning as they shall answer the contrary at their perils Given at the Court at Lyndhurst the 18. day of August in the 13. year of his Majesties Raign God save the King Imprinted at London by Robert Barker Printer to the Kings most Excellent Majesty and by the Assignes of Iohn Bill 1637. Primo Julii 1637. The Iudges Certificate concerning Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction May it please your Lordships ACcording to your Lordships Order made in his Majesties Court of Star-Chamber the Twelfth of May last we have taken consideration of the particulars wherein our Opinions are required by the said Order and we have all agreed That Processes may issue out of the Ecclesiastical Courts in the name of Bishops and that a Patent under the great Seal is not necessary for the keeping of the said Ecclesiastical Courts or for the enabling of Citations Suspensions Excommunications or other Censures of the Church And that it is not necessary that Summons Citations or other Processes Ecclesiastical in the said Courts or Institutions or Inductions to Benefices or Correction of Ecclesiastical offences by censure in those Courts be in the Kings name or with the Style of the King or under the Kings Seal or that their Seals of Office have in them the Kings Arms. And that the Statute of Primo Edvardi Sexti Cap. 2. which enacted the contrary is not now in force We are also of opinion That the Bishops Archdeacons and other Ecclesiastical persons may keep their Visitations as usually they have done without Commission under the great Seal of England so to do Io. Bramstone Io. Finch Humfrey Davenport Will. Iones Io. Dinham Richard Hutton George Croke Tho. Trevor George Vernon Ro. Berkley Fr. Crawley Ric. Weston Inrolled in the Courts of Exchequer Kings Bench Common Pleas and Registred in the Courts of High Commission and Star-Chamber EPISCOPACY not Prejudicial to Regal Power SECT I. The two great Objections proposed I. HE that shall take the pains to inform himself rightly what power the Kings of England have from time to time claimed and exercised in Causes and over Persons Ecclesiastical as also by whom how and how far forth their said Power hath been from time to time either opposed or maintained shall undoubtedly find that no persons in the world have more freely acknowledged and both by their writings and actions more zealously judiciously and effectually asserted the Soveraign Ecclesiastical power of Kings then the Protestant Bishops and Divines whom our new Masters have been pleased of late to call the Prelatical party in the Church of England have done Yet so far hath prejudice or something else prevailed with some persons of quality in these times of so much loosness and distraction as to suffer themselves to be led into a belief or at leastwise to be willing the people should be deceived into the belief of these two things First that the Opinion which maintaineth the Ius divinum of Episcopacy is destructive of the Regal power And secondly that Episcopal Iurisdiction as it was exercised before and at the beginning of this present Parliament was derogatory from the honour of the King and prejudicial to the just Rights and Prerogatives of his Crown II. Truely they that know any thing of the practises and proceedings of the Anti-prelatical party cannot be ignorant that their aims these or whatsoever other pretensions notwithstanding are clearly to enlarge their own power by lessening the Kings and to raise their own estates upon the ruines of the Bishops And therefore howsoever the aforesaid pretensions may seem at the first appearance to proceed from a sense of Loyalty and a tenderness of suffering any thing to be continued in the kingdom which might tend to the least diminution of his Majesties just power greatness yet till their actions look otherwise then for some time past they have done the pretenders must give us leave to think that their meaning therein is rather to do the Bishops hurt then to do the King service and that their affections so far as by what is visible we are able to judge thereof are much what alike the same towards them both But to leave their Hearts to the judgement of him to whom they must stand or fall for the just defence of truth and that so far as we can help it the people be not abused in this particular also as in sundry others they have been by such men as are content to use the Kings name when it may help on their own designs I shall first set forth the two main Objections severally to the best advantage of
difference is that in bodily diseases this course may be sometimes profitably experimented and with good success not onely out of necessity when there is no other way of cure left as they use to say Desperate diseases must have desperate remedies but also out of choice and in a rational way as Hippocrates adviseth in the case of some cold diseases to cast the patient into a burning feaver which he calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And I remember to have read somewhere to that purpose such an Aphorisme as this Vtile est innasci sebrem in spasmo But for the remedying of Moral or Politick distempers it is neither warrantable nor safe to try such experiments Not warrantable because we have no such rule given us in the Word of God whereby to operate nor safe because herein the Mean onely is commendable all Extreams whether in defect or excess vitious Now what defects or excesses there might be in the Reformation of Religion and the Church within these Realms during the Raigns of K. Henry the Eighth King Edward the Sixth and Queen Elizabeth it doth not become me neither is it needful to examine But sure it is they that had the managery of those affairs in their several respective times were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 made of the same day with other men subject to infirmities and passions and to be byassed with partial affections and those affections capable to be enflamed with zeal cooled with delayes enraged by opposition and allayed by seasonable applications And therefore although we cannot say for certain with what affections those Reformers in the beginning of Edward's Raign were steered in the whole business yet it is very possible and in this particular of the Statutes from the weakness of the reasons therein expressed not improbable that the jealousies they had of the Papal power so lately ejected might make them more abundantly cautelous and sollicitous to secure themselves thereagainst then need required Verily the temper of those times and men and the Reformation made about those times in other countreys considered we have far greater cause to bless God that in their then Reformation in very many things they did not a great deal worse then to blame them that in some few things they did not a little better then they have done XXI It is further considerable Thirdly that where a Reformation is truly intended and the thing it self intended by that Reformation to be established is also within a tolerable compass of Mediocrity there may yet be such errour in the choice of the means to be used for the accomplishing of those intentions as may vitiate the whole work and render it blame-worthy For although it be a truth so expresly affirmed by the Apostle and so agreeable to the dictates of right reason That we may not do any evil thing for any good end as that I should scarce have believed it possible that any man that pretended to be Christian or but reasonable should hold the contrary had I not been advertised by very credible persons that some men of eminent place and power did so by distinguishing but beside the book and where the Law distinguisheth not between a publick and a private good end yet the eagerness of most men in the pursuance of such ends as they are fully bent upon and their pride of spirit disdaining to be crossed in their purposes and impatient of meeting with any opposition putteth them many times upon the use of such means as seem for the present best conducing to the ends they have proposed to themselves without any sufficient care to examine whether such means be lawful or not For either they run on headlong and are resolved not to stick at any niceties of conscience but being ingaged in a design to go through with it per fas nefas measuring honesty by utility or els they gather up any thin fig-leaves where they can meet with them to hide the deformity of their actions if it were possible even from their own eyes and are willing their affections should bribe and cheat their judgements with any weak reasons to pronounce that lawful to be done which they have a mind to do the secret checks and murmurings of their consciences to the contrary notwithstanding Hence it is that whereas men ought to conform all their wills and actions to the exact rule of Gods Word they do so often in stead thereof crooken the rule to make it comply with their actions and desires raising such doctrines and conclusions from the sacred Texts of Scripture by forced inferences as will best serve to give countenance to whatsoever they fancie to be or please to call Reformation and to whatsoever means they should use for the effecting of such Reformation though it were by popular tumults civil war despising Governours breaking Oaths open Rebellion or any other act how unjust soever and full of disloyalty Which made Learned Zanchy observing in his time how Anabaptists and all sorts of Sectaries that attempted to bring in any new and unheard of alteration in Religion into the Churches of Christ by any means though never so seditious and unlawful did yet justifie all their enterprises by this that they were done in order to a more perfect Reformation to cry out Ego non intelligo istam Reformatorum mundi â—â—elogiam Whether this observation be so sitly applyable to those times of King Edwards Reformation as the two former considerations were I know not I am sure it sitteth but too well to these evil times of ours wherein the pretence of a Thorow-Reformation serveth as a foile to set off the blackest crimes that ever the Christian world was guilty of XXII Lastly say there should be nothing amiss in any of the premisses but that the intentions were sincere the proceedings moderate and the means lawful yet since no wit of man is at the present able to foresee all the inconveniences that may ensue upon any great and suddain change of such Lawes and Customes as have been long and generally observed till time and experience discover them it may very well and not seldome doth come to pass that the Reformation intended for the remedying of some one abuse or the preventing of some present apparant inconvenience may open a gap to let in some other abuses or inconveniences which though yet undiscerned may in time prove to be more and greater then those that were sought to be remedyed Physicians tell us that all sudden changes in the body are dangerous and it is no otherwise in the Church and State Which is the ground of that Maxime well approved of all wise men if rightly understood Malum benè positum non movendum and of that other so famous in the Ancient Councels 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let the old Customes be observed And therefore Aristotle gravely censureth that Law made by Hippodamus the Milesian Law-giver That whosoever should devise any new Law for the common good should be rewarded
Fellows and Equals All this great noise and clamour against the pride of the Bishops upon this score proceedeth as I said meerly from the ignorance of the true original cause and ground of that innocent and ancient usage and therefore cannot signify much to any reasonable and considering man when that ground is discovered which is this viz. that every Bishop is in construction of our Laws a Corporation For although the Bishop of himselfe and in his private and personal capacity be but a single person as other men are and accordingly in his letters concerning his own particular affairs and in all other his actings upon his own occasions and as a private person writeth of himselfe in the singular number as other private men do yet for as much as in his publike and politick capacity and as a Bishop in the Church of England he standeth in the eye of the Law as a Corporation the King not only alloweth him acting in that capacity to write of himselfe in the plural number but in all writs directed to him as Bishop as in Presentations and the like bespeaketh him in the plural number Vestrae Diocesis vobis praesentamus c. The Bishop then being a Corporation and that by the Kings authority as all other Corporations whether Simple or Aggregate whether by Charter or Prescription are it is meet he should hold his Courts and proceed therein in the same manner and form where there is no apparent reason to the contrary as other Corporations do And therefore as it would be a high presumption for the Chancellour and Scholars of one of the Universities being a Corporation to whom the King by his Charter hath granted a Court or for the Major and Aldermen of a City for the same reason to issue Writs or do other acts in their Courts in the Kings name not having any authority from the King or his grant or from the Laws and Customs of England so to do so doubtless it would for the same reason be esteemed a presumption no less intolerable for the Bishops to use the Kings name in their processes and judicial acts not having any sufficient legal warrant or authority for so doing IX Which if it were duly considered would induce any reasonable man to beleive and confesse that this manner of proceeding in their own names used by the Bishops in their Courts is so far from trenching upon the Regal power and authority which is the crime charged upon it by the Objectors that the contrary usage unless it were enjoyned by some Law of the Land as it was in the Raign of King Edward the Sixth might far more justly be charged therewithal For the true reason of using the Kings name in any Court is not thereby to acknowledge the emanation of the power or jurisdiction of that Court from or the subordination of that power unto the Kings power or authority as the Objectors seeme to suppose but rather to shew the same Court to be one of the Kings own immediate Courts wherein the King himselfe is supposed in the construction of the Law either by his personal or virtual power to be present And the not using of the Kings name in other Courts doth not infer as if the Iudges of the said Courts did not act by the Kings authority for who can imagine that they who hold a Court by virtue of the Kings grant only should pretend to act by any other then his authority but only that they are no immediate representatives of the Kings person in such their jurisdiction nor have consequently any allowance from him to use his name in the exercise or execution thereof X. Secondly there is another observable difference in this point between the Kings Common-law-Courts such as are most of those afore-mentioned and those Courts that proceed according to the way of the Civil Law If the King appoint a Constable or Earle-Marshal or Admiral of England for as much as all tryals in the Marshals Court commonly called the Court of Honour and in the Admiralty are according to the Civil Law all Processes therefore Sentences and Acts in those Courts go in the names of the Constable Earle-Marshal or Admiral and not in the Kings name Which manner of proceeding constantly used in those Courts sith no man hitherto hath been found to interpret as any diminution at all or dis-acknowledgement of the Kings Soveraignty over the said Courts it were not possible the same manner of proceeding in the Ecclesiastical Courts should be so confidently charged with so heinous a crime did not the intervention of some wicked lust or other prevail with men of corrupt minds to become partial judges of evil thoughts Especially considering that XI Thirdly there is yet a more special and peculiar reason to be given in the behalf of the Bishops for not using the Kings name in their Processes c. in the Ecclesiastical Courts then can be given for the Iudges of any other the above-mentioned Courts either of the Common or Civil Laws in the said respect arising as hath been already in part touched from the different nature of their several respective Iurisdictions Which is that the summons and other proceedings and acts in the Ecclesiastical Courts are for the most part in order to the Ecclesiastical censures and sentences of Excommunication c. The passing of which sentences and other of like kind being a part of the power of the Keyes which our Lord Iesus Christ thought fit to leave in the hands of his Apostles and their Successors and not in the hands of Lay-men the Kings of England never challenged to belong unto themselves but left the exercise of that Power entirely to the Bishops as the lawful Successors of the Apostles and inheritours of their Power The regulating and ordering of that power in sundry circumstances concerning the outward exercise thereof in foro externo the godly Kings of England have thought to belong unto them as in the right of their Crown and have accordingly made Laws concerning the same even as they have done also concerning other matters appertaining to Religion and the worship of God But the substance of that power and the function thereof as they saw it to be altogether improper to their office and calling so they never pretended or laid claim thereunto But on the contrary when by occasion of the title of Supream Head c. assumed by King Henry the Eighth they were charged by the Papists for challenging to themselves such power and authority spiritual they constantly and openly disavowed it to the whole world renouncing all claim to any such power or authority As is manifest not onely from the allowed writings of many godly Bishops eminent for their learning in their several respective times in vindication of the Church of England from that calumny of the Papists as Archbishop Whitgift Bishop Bilson Bishop Andrews Bishop Carleton and others but also by the Injunctions of Queen Elizabeth and the admonition prefixed thereunto