upon the first reading by the advantage it hath from the embellishments of your stile or your artificial disposition of the whole but he that duly considers the premises will find no more And indeed it is only a sham way of arguing just as afterwards you tell the History of your Irenicum where not one word you say comes up to the point under debate The reality of the Controversie betwixt us which you say I have with so much folly and malice and unskilfulness made and the world will laugh at me for only the comfort is they must first discern it with your Eyes lying here whether you have in your latter Writings given sufficient evidence to the World of the change of your judgment as to these Points of Church Power in general and Episcopacy in particular or as in the words of your Epistle you are not still the same Enemy to the very being of Churches in general and to the constitution of this Church in particular that I own I once did represent you to be for which I gave my reasons in my Book and private Letter since Printed before it but never had any Answer unless you shall be pleased to say that this Epistle Dedicatory is an Answer and yet I hear you do say so which is indeed a Libel Besides it did not come forth until two full Years after So then the ground is laid out and the Controversie stated You affirm I deny I shall put it upon a fair Tryal your own writings shall be my Evidence and the Readers the Jury You continue on and object That I produce not one considerable Argument which I did not steal out of a Discourse of yours but this must never be taken notice of Dr. Burnet and Mr. Dean of St. Pauls have sufficiently blazon'd me abroad for a Fool and non-sensical fellow and truly with reason too if you could prove me so silly as to steal and tell When my Papers came first to London in order to the Press and you with some others had got them into your hands the artifice then used whereby to bespatter me about the Town was to tell it abroad That I was not the Author of them And there was it seems other grounds for it than we were at that time aware of because they were yours But when Men are in the Net the more they struggle the more they are entangled I confess you owed me a turn for I had peremptorily accused you for stealing out of Robert Parker and pointed you to the very time Book Chapter and Margin when and where he was transcribed by you And certainly nothing was ever more imprudent if not unpardonable than for you to take his credit and testimony against our Church and Episcopacy who professedly design'd their defamation and destruction and really was the greatest Incendiary and most malicious implacable Schismatick that appear'd in his time against us or perhaps that had appear'd since our Reformation excepting Thomas Cartwright A Man could in Conscience do no less than expose you for it And if you had but dealt as candidly with me and named the particular time Book c. your Accusation would have had greater weight and my Vindication might have been more particular and satisfactory whereas now I can only proceed upon Conjectures I remember once being assaulted by an impertinent Quaker amongst other stuff he told me That I was a thief the reason that he gave for it was because I stole all my Learning from Books Now in this sense I confess my self a thief and in particular that I stole my Book out of the Fathers Councils Church-History c. and more that I might possibly steal now and then out of your Irenicum it being such a Farce of all manner of Quotations that it is a hard matter to miss of some of them And I will say thus much That if those Quotations were as aptly apply'd as they are numerous you might at that time have been placed in the first file of Learned Men. I have been inform'd That the Regalia of France publish'd some time since by your Friend Dr. Burnet in his own name were the labours and collections of Mr. Brisbon his Country-man who delivered his Papers unto him and desired his judgment of them but the wise Doctor whose Back is of steel as his Face is of brass liked them so well that he went not to bed till he had transcribed them and immediately Printed them for his own Now this is thieving in our profession Your next Objection is level'd against my stile that it is without embellishments that I follow the Schoolmen only in Two things viz. A barbarous stile and a rude way of disputing with my Brethren And you engage that posterity will not make me their pattern And Dr. Burnet has insisted on the same subject before you with enlargements and in the close of his Letter dated Decemb. 20. 1684. this is one of the two short advices he is so kind as to give me That if you intend to write any more you will learn first to write true English and then to write good sense but I believe this will prove so very hard a task that the best and easiest advice can be given you is That you would write none at all So that in plain English you give me the character Luther once gave Carolostadius viz. That I have neither Sense nor Words Res verba Philippus res sine verbis Lutherus Verba sine re Erasmus nec res nec verba Carolostadius As to the former I have put my self upon my tryal which is God and my Country only you and Dr. Burnet are excepted out of the Jury because Men so notoriously incapacitated to be there through manifest prejudice and interest As to the latter I plead in some measure guilty acknowledging my defect and that I have been less careful and industrious therein than I ought and might have been And yet I cannot say under my present circumstances to be sure That I really repent of it for these two Reasons 1. Because you had thereby lost an opportunity of making this Objection against my Book and so much less of your Passion in opposing me must have appear'd which is really my advantage 2. If my stile had been agreeable with your embellishments and smoother polite phrases how can I tell but that you might have taken all my Book away from me especially since you have laid actual claim already to my considerable Arguments But as to the Schoolmen in particular I must confess That I am no admirer of their Terms and Niceties yet I cannot condemn all but if my little skill in them do not deceive me their rude way of disputing such as it is might become both your own and others imitation For they are seldom guilty of the embellishments of soul language very rarely name persons but when the case necessarily requires it and avoiding all personal heats and quarrels keep themselves close
to their Matter and Argument but never repute a nick-name or cramp Epithete a Confutation of their Adversary And again I less admire your inconsiderateness in that you accuse so eminent an Order of Divines of rudeness in their disputations at the same time when you implead me as guilty of the same misdemeanor in respect of your self and aggravate it against me as the greatest crime Besides you seem mostly peccant herein having been so peculiarly beholden to the Schoolmen for your palmarium argumentum or capital Argument as you call it for the mixt and communicative power of Bishops and Presbyters for they were the first that set that design on foot and their Arguments still support it to which you adhere to this day Do you not boast and value your self upon that one adventure It appears by the Epistle Dedicatory that you do where you tell us That the design of it was to gain upon Dissenters from our Church and it did not want success that way both here and in a neighbour Kingdom I thought our Church and the Pope of Rome had never gain'd Proselytes one and the same way All that can with any shew be pleaded for you is you look'd upon Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas the Master of the Sentences and the Angelical Doctor to be Country Vicars or to be no Deans and upon your self as under no obligation of gratitude or common civility towards them for that only reason and hence concluded that you had a right to theirs equally as to my Arguments and so much the more because you can put them into better words your stile is less barbarous or has more embellishments And if you hope this way to recommend your self as a pattern to posterity tho' my Charity obliges me to wish them better presidents to copy after I shall not envy your acquisitions I assure you the bar you have put that I may not be the like pattern is no ways ingrateful to me All that I aim at is to appear to posterity an honest Man in my profession your giant Objection will then be on my side And admit my stile to be as rude and barbarous as your Eloquence can represent it to be the advantage will be the greater thereby to that truth which tho' so rudely composed the greatest Orators have offer'd so little against And this point once gain'd I value no more the repute of a Grammarian or Elegant Composer than the Grammarian in Aelian valued Helena's Picture that was drawn by Zeuxes the Painter who discern'd no one feature in it being a Gramarian no Limner as the reason is given And yet if we consider a little farther another reason may be given for this your Master-Objection You were an early Disciple of David Blondel's and the rest of that Tribe who assaulted the Epistles of the most Holy and Primitive Martyr St. Ignatius at the same rate And among those many Arguments from whence he concluded them to be spurious wherein you have particularly concurr'd with him in your Irenicum and I wish it were all the rubbish he bequeathed to you there are some à dictione petita from his unusual and uncouth stile which he defames and renders contemptible being unmindful of that of St. Jerome Scio inter Christianos verborum vitia non solere reprehendi as the late most Learned Bishop of Chester reproves him for it from the authority of that excellent Father in his Vindiciae Ignatianae And Blondell is so insolent and puffed up with a conceit of his success herein against the Apostolical Martyr that in his Praefatio ad Apologiam pro sententia Hieronymi pag. 52. he sets upon Franciscus de Clara in the same way and concludes himself to have baffled his Apology for Bishops only by giving an account of his solecisms in Grammar and other barbarities of which I have here given a taste * En Barbarismos viz. Satis testium sunt Zelotes In recto regiam petierunt Majestatem Veriverbium sonat Ecclesiae gubernium Primitas Practica Ecclesiae Maxima id est axioma Verbulum Dubiolum vocat quod postea pro grandi objectione habet Nihil sanxierunt Epilogat Amonibiles c. Though I cannot tell whether something else might not be at the bottom For de Clara writes himself Minoritarum which sounds like a Vicar I have sometimes met with more solid and grave Divines or at least that believ'd themselves such who call their Adversaries Grammarians thereby implying the contempt they had of their persons as altogether unqualified for those performances in Divinity in which they had engaged themselves As I remember either Blondell or Salmasius or both thus revile Dr. Hammond But for certain Salmasius is thus upbraided by John Milton who thought himself somebody in his Pro populo Anglicano defensio as also our most learned Bishop Montacute by Labbee in his Dissertatio Historica de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis But your greatness or Typus Theologicus takes a contrary method becomes Splenetick and swells and insults over me with this term of disgrace No Grammarian and because I have less regarded words and embellishments since matter of Fact and Argument are the only object of my search and enquiry to which you have not made one exception But my matter is accused as unintelligible to which I 'll return the Answer Mr. Thorndike gave for himself upon the same occasion in the Preface to his Epilogue The obscurity of my matter I am not sorry for if writing in English because here the occasion commenceth the reasons if the consequence of it in some matters seem obscure I conceive it ought to teach the world That the People are made parties to those Disputes whereof they are not able to be judges and I am willing to bear the blame of obscure if that lesson may be learned by the People My crime is more heightned yet in that I am not only rude with my Brethren but with two Archbishops and a Bishop viz. Whitgift Bancroft and Bilson whom I remarque for writing inconsiderately I am sorry that a Man of your Dignity and reputed Learning in the Church should be brought so low as to stand in need of such a palpable Cavil or groundless Accusation as this is your case surely is the same with that of a great person you elsewhere mention who when he had undertaken to manage an ill cause before a publick audience and one of his Friends asked him what he meant by it replied Trouble not your self our own side will believe me Only such a presumption could put you upon this particular indictment of me In plea to which I will only tell the naked story and leave the Reader to judge of your candid dealings with me Robert Parker one that ought not to be named by an honest Man but with a mark of infamy accused these eminent Bishops for placing the Church Authority in the Prince I vindicated them as well as I could and as I thought satisfactorily All that
I there said of them appearingly capable of an exception was That in laying their Argument they did not consider that so ill-natured a Man as Parker might at some time or other have advantage against them And I am so far from acknowledging it a fault that I accuse them of more inconsiderateness of the same nature you may make it their fault if you can in that they did not foresee also That such a Book as the Irenicum would come into the world taking occasion from their writings and by their authority to degrade and depose them expresly making them a party against themselves and the institution of their Episcopal Order and with as much perverseness and ill nature as ever Robert Parker acted against them And now you see my crime it is well if the offence does not lye the other way in that I made Parker appear a defamer the familiarities one that I know once had with his writings taking them for his own gives a shrewd suspicion of it Yes but I lay to their charge the bringing in a new sort of Henrician Heresie which is as new to me as the name it goes under Henrician Heresie I am at a loss to find who this Henricius or Henricianus the Author of an old Heresie is I have consulted all my Books as Epiphanius St. Austin with others of the Ancients that wrote of Hereticks as Irenaeus Tertullian and particularly the Notes of Pamelius upon Tertullian's Prescriptions against Hereticks where the Catalogue of them is explained and am still as ignorant as when I first set out Who can this Haeresiarcha be I consider'd a little farther and the word appearing Novel I consulted my modern Authors down to Edward's Gangraena but neither fell nor fall appear'd here either At last reading Dr. Stillingfleet's Answer to Mr. Cressey's Epistle Apologetical pag. 406. I found the Man but in great obscurity among the mouldy Papers in the Cottonian Library And truly Sir tho' I will not presume to offer to you any advice of my own yet I will venture to recommend the advice which an excellent Friend of yours gave to me as he supposed in the like case and because I appear'd to him unintelligible it is your Advocate Dr. Burnet's in his Letter that he was pleased once to write to me pag. 7. You had best to do as another Emperor did write of your self and illustrate your Epistle with Annotations That which comes next is a flight of your wit upon the Vicar of Cosmus Blene and the Vicar at Rome but falls as much short of it as Cosmus Blene and Rome are distant from one another But more ill nature accompanies it without which some have no wit at all and you insinuate that to attack you is to be a Papist or at least to be their Friend as certainly as the Devil is known by his cloven foot for so Dr. Burnet speaks out in his last Letter and farther adds That we equally degrade Kings from their Ecclesiastical Supremacy and at length will make them Reign at the mercy of the Church and at the Pope's courtesie The Doctor was in a heat during the whole time of his Epistolizing and did not consider immediate consequences for he brings Mr. Dean of St. Paul's as evidently into the praemunire as he does me and accuses him of the same Popery who has declared himself to be of my judgment and that the Church is a distinct Society And further That I have not produced one considerable Argument which he had not made use of to that purpose in a Discourse published above Twenty years since But if the Doctor and the Dean have no better Arguments to prove us Papists as we are very well assured they have not we may better bear the charge I 'll add Or than these which are farther produced in the following part of the Paragraph tho' once thought to be very good ones 'till my great humility in writing my self Vicar of Cosmus Blene better inform'd you As Because I proceed so like a judge in Controversies and after an imperious manner summon by a kind of Citation c. It seems then that every judge of Controversies is a Pope and each Citation is a Bull from Rome or else that my private Letter begging a more full information from your own hand for that was all which I desired of you in my Letter is of the same nature as a Summons or Citation from the Courts Ecclesiastical and you suspected lest an Answer to it had been a declining your Diocesan's Authority and Jurisdiction One of these or all you must be interpreted to mean if you mean any thing and choose whether you please it is pure Irenicum all over or the very Weapon-salve Doctrine and Argumentation Thus Men usually run into the contrary extream thinking thereby to atone for the first Error And you who have before asserted your Bishop to be really void of Power or a mere name without Authority now enlarge his Power as much too far and make it a breach of Canonical Obedience to Write or Answer a Private Letter without his knowledge and Licence However notwithstanding the danger of Popery for you will certainly say again That I proceed like a judge of Controversies and summon you after an imperious manner by a kind of Citation and you may as well say so now as before I 'll venture to ask you Two Questions more 1. Where the crime really lyes in proceeding like a judge of Controversies does not every one that writes of Controversies become a judge of them he ought to be so or else he ought not to write about them And if you had laid your calumny here That I am not fit to write Controversies but undertake to be a judge when I am not qualified for one and proved it you had done something more than every Traducer can do Your Objection seems co-incident with Dr. Burnet's in his rude Letter which he sent me December 20. 1684. Because I published my Book after a course of studies upon full thoughts and a thorow consideration or that I did not Print it as he does Manuscripts without fear or wit or as he did his Letters in their defence with such rash heady precipitancie that he is forced to retract in one what he wrote in another and each contradicts the other as will appear in due place 2. Admit that I had sent you a summons by citation to Answer such Questions as I should demand of you supposing you in great Errors and the Church of God had received great damages by your publication of them you of all Men ought to have taken the least exceptions against me for it who in your Irenicum have enstated me as a Presbyter and by virtue of my Orders in full power for the doing of it as to superintend inspect preside over and govern the Churches and from the best authority and precedents Ecclesiastical So that if I had transgressed since Dr. Stillingfleet led me
to it he need not have been so very harsh and severe upon me for it Especially since the utmost of my crime can amount no higher than that it was done unclassically I 'll only repeat your own Words for my authority Irenic pag. 355. That they viz. the Presbyters concurred in governing the Church and not only by their Council but Authority appears from the general sence of the Church of God even when Episcopacy was at the highest Nazianzen speaking of the Office of Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he knew not whether to call it Ministry or Superintendency the lofty Superintendant of Cosmus Blene And those who are made Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from being ruled they ascend to be Rulers themselves And their power by him is in several places called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They are called by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysostom gives this as a reason of St. Paul's passing over from Bishops to Deacons without naming Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because there is no great matter of difference betwixt a Bishop and Presbyters For those likewise have the instruction and charge of the Church committed unto them With more to this purpose produced by you to shew that the Presbyter's power is every way equal to the Bishop's even to summon and censure the disobedient And consequently upon your own terms the lofty Superintendent of Cosmus Blene went not beyond his commission if it were true as you scandalize him that he did actually Summon and Cite you in order to a recantation of your Error as publickly as the error scandal and offence given by it The next Character you affix upon me is not so easily to be born or pardon'd This accuser of his Brethren because the character which is given to the Devil Rev. xij 10. and you repeat it over again as my accuser calls it I have made a very strict examination of my self in that performance and cannot find that I have given any occasion why you should expose me to mankind under so odious a Character I am so confident of my Innocency that in order to my Vindication I 'll here also tell the naked Story and make my Enemies my Judges Sixteen years after the first publication of your Irenicum for which as you say well many Men made allowance considering the scepticalness and injudiciousness of Youth and the prejudices of Education the Manuscript that is there and the most Scandalous part of it made more Scandalous by your declaring it to be the Sense of our Church was reprinted with your order in Doctor Burnet's History of the Reformation as an authentick Record and with the Approbation of both Houses of Parliament by the undue procurement of your Party affixed unto it which by the way you have declared to be the Mouth of the Church of England And this was done without any caution or alteration excepting for the worse because concealing Cranmer's probable at least Retractation And about this time also Mr. Dean of Canterbury Preached before the Court and afterward Printed Doctrines to the same purpose or rather more offensive Hereupon I apprehended a farther design than many were aware off and not without Reason For what appearingly adds more to the confirmation of these Doctrines as the Sense of our Church than the approbation of both Houses of Parliament and the popular names of Dr. Tillotson and Dr. Stillingfleet and all this might make a greater impression upon me than on some others because I had for many years applied my Studies to search after the Rights of the Church and that Power which our Saviour had vested her withal and appointed to be continued till his coming again Especially I being not in the number of those Subscribers who believe themselves no ways obliged to defend what they have assented and consented unto I therefore revised my Collections and digested them in that order according to which they have since been Printed where as I make some reflections upon you so I always refer to your own Words and Sense to vouch them And yet when my Papers came to London all the Objections that I found to be made against them by some Learned Men into whose hands they lighted were occasion'd by reason of your self and Doctor Tillotson on whom I seemed in their Eyes to reflect over-severely Hereupon I wrote a private Letter to you since Printed before my Book the summ of which is to tell you the ground of that Charge I had laid against you and that I conceiv'd Posterity would be concerned by reason of your Writings in this Cause not in my Writings as you are pleased to misreport me if no Publick acknowledgment of the error be made by you further adding and desiring that you would inform me wherein I had wrongfully accused you engaging upon due notice that I would expunge whatever was in my Papers relating that way To this you vouchsafed me no Answer unless Scorn and Contempt enough of which came abroad every day are to be reputed one or the Epistle Dedicatory published two years after which is only a Defamatory Libel And now I appeal to the whole World Whether there is any thing in all this on my part that is Diabolical or that may fix upon me the Character of ACCVSER in Capital Letters As also how unjustly you have farther slander'd me with the Epithets of Implacable Whom no recantation will do good Vntractable c. or wherein any publick scandal or offence is given by me If the Scandal and offence be laid here and some have so laid it as exposing our own Members to the scorn of the common Adversary especially in these divided times Or if it be farther pleaded That since our Church is well known to have neither published nor countenanced any such Doctrines in her Articles Homilies Canons Rubricks c. it had been much better and safer to have passed over and concealed some few tho' heterodox Opinions of one or more particular Doctors which cannot be supposed to influence and debauch mankind against the judgment of a whole Church to the contrary To this I answer Those always have been observed as the worst of Hereticks that arise among our selves and within the Bowels of a particular Church and they have the greatest advantage to delude and seduce St. Paul therefore gives Directions for severe proceedings against those that are within 1 Cor. 5. and by the parity of Reason the Rule is to extend to other offenders than those there mention'd by him And as to my own particular I do here produce these following instances whereby it will appear that other Writers have taken the same course and method before me 1. And Dr. Stillingfleet shall be the first in his General Preface to an Answer to several late Treatises c. The learned Doctor having at large discovered several corruptions among the Romanists and more particularly in the point of Repentance they endeavor to clear the honour of their Church and
is You make Bishops for her as the Common-wealth-men make Kings by Accumulation not Deprivation in your Expressions just now mention'd and consequently retaining the Power entire to themselves they unmake them again when they please or to express it farther in your own words which are the aptest I have met withal When Persons and Circumstances Prudence and Discretion or the Interest of the Government requires it And so the Bishop like those inferior Officers of old as Sub-Deacons Acolouthi Door-keepers c. may be outed as the Perpetual Presbyter shall see occasion Mr. Prolocutor to the Assembly-men at Westminster never spake more bravely to the point And to fix all this surely on the less wary and inconsiderate Reader as a Nail driven by the Masters of our Assembly also you bring in several of our own Bishops for evidence against themselves and their Order in the days of Edward VI. and our whole Church establish'd by Law in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth As is to be seen in your Manuscripts and those other Citations throughout your last Chapter And when you had with so much ease and scorn rejected the Doctrines of all the Primitive Bishops in the case it was no small piece of confidence to think to carry your Cause by the testimony whether true or false of our own Prelates of the last Age. But you are not content to overthrow their Order unless you may fix such a Scandal upon their Persons as the Betrayers of it And indeed your stating this case of the mutability of Episcopacy can be only a design to fool and baffle it and thereby render it a very Babel or Idol in the language of its madder Adversaries and in the conception of every one else so trivially accidental a thing that it cannot be really contended for upon a Church account every accident giving occasion though Prudence will always be pretended for its abolition And it is observable That there are not any of your judgment that conclude themselves under an obligation to adhere unto it any longer than it supports and serves them by the advantage of the secular Power As the Church is that Tree in the Psalmist so Episcopacy is one of its bearing Boughs in which you can be content to sit and sing so long as you fill your Pockets but when the gathering time is over it is to be cut down as that which cumbereth the ground And you plead the same express directions for it our Saviour once gave concerning the Fig-tree in the Gospel I 'll state it together with the Presbyterian and Episcopal Hypotheses thereby to make it obvious upon the naked prospect The Presbyterian asserts That each Presbyter hath the whole Power of the Ministry and is enabled to discharge every Church-Office and that a restraint or enlargement is sinful The Episcoparian asserts That this Power is placed in the Bishop and Presbyter but unequally And that the Bishop hath some instances of it peculiar to his Order as Prerogatives and Incommunicable which if laid aside will be Sacrilege in him as also if assumed by the Presbyter You assert all that in the Presbyter and lose all that from the Bishop that the Presbyter desires and contends for only here is the difference You allow the Presbytery upon some occasions and in some instances of their Office to make a Deputy with a reserved Power to recal the Deputation at pleasure or upon each suspicion of his undue behaviour And this is the honour and service you do the Church of England These the Dissenters you tell us you design'd to gain upon and that your design did not want success both here and in a neighbouring Kingdom If you mean our Northern Neighbours I hope Episcopacy is setled there upon better grounds if it be not some of the thanks for it are due to you If you mean our Neighbours in the South they came over indeed but it is with their own Presbyterian Orders which they still adhere to as their commission from Christ The Episcopal Ordination which they receive here only enabling them for the Loaves to which they could have no right otherways by the Laws of our Kingdom And accordingly D. Blondel first offer'd his assistance to Archbishop Laud to write in defence of our Episcopacy whilst it was uppermost but upon the ensuing Rebellion he deserted it nay he turn'd his weapons against it Witness his Apologia pro Hieronymo which he Dedicated to the Rebellious Parliament and Schismatical Assembly at Westminster owning thereby the Vsurpation of the Regal Power in one and of the Episcopal in the other Salmasius did in effect the same and within the space of four Years both applauds and condemns Episcopacy and the Rump Parliament for removing it according to his present subject and design and John Milton the worst of Men takes from thence a just occasion to harangue and vilifie him in the Preface to his worst of Books Entituled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio And the reasons for it are plain as themselves state the case the Bishop's Consecration being only an humane Rite performed at his Deputation and Enlargment to the execution of that Power which he had before when he was made a Presbyter by virtue of which there is no farther power conferr'd but only a Church Blessing with Imposition of Hands a legally qualifying him for possession according to the particular custom of that Kingdom in which he is to exercise his Episcopal Function And lastly for our own Country-men it may be wished some of them have not on this score also received Episcopal Ordination and then they may be bound to thank you because they kept their Benefices thereby and had farther accession of Church Dignities upon his late Majesty's blessed return But I cannot think it is for this that your Superiors in the Church have for so long a time been pleased to treat you with that kindness you seem to boast of Sure I am all the kindness you have done hereby to the Church of England and her Bishops may be put in their Eyes and they see never the worse for it Tho' I will not say so of the unkindness she hath received from you Besides it will farther appear with what affection and byass you wrote this Treatise if we consider your different behaviour to the Bishops and Doctors of the Church of England and the Presbyterians Independents even Anabaptists and Quakers upon each occasion It is but a little to reflect upon those slender civilities which you shew all along to that great and eminent Divine Dr. Henry Hammond one that was every ways great and considerable provoking reverence and respect from his Adversaries that were in any measure civilized Such was his Learning Integrity Courage in those perillous times he lived in the Ark it self rested peculiarly upon his Shoulders But I say your unhandsom behaviour to him may easier be passed by because he was but one single Doctor in our Church you seem to treat him with
disdain tho' all things consider'd there was then as great a distance betwixt him and the Rector of Sutton as there is now betwixt the Vicar of Cosmus Blene and the Dean of St. Paul's you reject at once his Five and thirty Testimonies produced out of St. Ignatius in the behalf of Episcopacy as inconluding Even that one which seems to have some Semblance you say is clearly mistaken and your proof is so precarious and inconsistent that there needs no other evidence of your partiality and that your Plot was only to expose Him and the Cause Part. II. c. 6. § 17. p. 309. And no wonder when you have rejected Ignatius himself as Spurious and Counterfeit and the story of him as much as it is defended with his Epistles as not to seem any of the most probable placing it among the uncertain fabulous narrations of Antiquity § 16. p. 298. When you have derided all Antiquity at once you go on against our most worthy Doctor rejecting what is offer'd by him as that which hath neither evidence nor pertinency enough to stop the passage of one who is returning to his former matter that is in plain English it is not worth the consideration of your pondering self imployed on a more pertinent and advantageous subject and which hath better motives of credibility Sect. 9. pag. 260. You farther yet represent him if possible more contemptible and as one that betrays the Reformation by his infirm Hypothesis which was built upon reasons of greater strength and evidence than what he hath pleaded § 9. p. 258. Once more and which may go for all You represent him as a Rattle Head without any shew or appearance of Reason and his performance with the embellishment of your rare Similitude is thus expressed Only the Wind-Egg of a working Fancy that wants a shell of Reason to cover it When all may be true that he there asserts notwithstanding your Eight Reasons that are brought against it Cap. 6. § 3. However your Metaphor is to be admired especially for the great humility of it It is not like that lofty Similitude some have used borrowed from a Crowned Head but from an Egg shell and nothing but another of your own can parallel it only the strain is a little higher and you strike at all Mankind therewith which doth not think opine reason in the words of the Leviathan and with the same haughtiness as you do Which prejudice being the Yellow-Jaundice of the Soul leaves such a Tincture upon the Eyes of the understanding that till it be cured of that Icterism it cannot see things in their proper colours Sect. 2. c. 5. p. 200. You go on from Dr. Hammond to the whole Church of England which you hit at one blow and enquiring more strictly into the causes of the great Distances and Animosities which have risen upon this Controversie you fix upon the Episcopal Men as the Troublers of Israel whom you thus divide Those whom the prevalency of Faction and Interest over-ruled their Revenues having come from the Rents of the Church which is the odious old way of Characterizing for scorn and contempt to the People the ancient and zealous Bishops and Clergy of our Church and others of greater Integrity you mean that were less Covetous and Rapacious and believed their Order to be more than their Revenues but descend also with this false Principle or Hypothesis which Men are apt to take for granted without proving it viz. That it is in no case lawful to vary from that Form which by obscure and uncertain Conjectures they conceive to have been the Primitive Practice Part I. c. 1. § 1. p. 4. And as you begin so you end fixing this farther Character upon them in your last Chapter I know it is the last Asylum which many run to meaning such as found all things upon a Divine Right when they are beaten off from their Imaginary Fancies by pregnant testimonies of Scripture and Reason to shelter themselves under the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of some particular persons to which their understandings are bored in perpetual Slavery But if Men would once think their understandings at age to judge for themselves and not make them live under a perpetual Pupillage c. rendering hereby our most eminent Clergy as such Ignaro's that they understand not the State of their own Church which they have Subscribed and Sworn unto and as she determined in the days of Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth from pag. 384. to p. 394. And the greatest part of that Chapter is spent in representing our Bishops and Doctors to be against themselves to their manifest injury reproach and dishonour as I shall make it appear in publick in a very little time if God continue me Life and Health And if at any time you give a Church of England Man his due or a favourable Character it is when he is on your side or the question of Divine Right is not under debate or you design thereby to advance your own cause and you range him with our Reverend and Learned Mr. Baxter in his Christian Concord and then he must be a pure Church of England Man in your conceptions of him But when you have to deal with any of the other Parties even to Anabaptists and Quakers your behaviour towards them is after another rate you argue as one that is evidently biassed and with apparent shews of tenderness and affection the same hand and at the same time grants their pardon that contends with and opposes them They are not represented to be the Men that are over-ruled by Faction and Interest or their Church Rents with understandings bored in perpetual slavery but as Men of great Moderation whose Errors are the Religious weakness of well-meaning but less knowing People Part I. c. 2. § 11. pag. 63. to 70. c. 6. § 4.7 pag. 122 128 c. Part II. c. 7. § 2. pag. 339 348 c. In short in the very first Chapter of your Book you appear particularly cautious of preserving your reputation entire with the Presbyterian Party at least the mobile of them and confess so much in your Epistle Dedicatory to my Lord of London acquainting his Lordship That when you set your self to answer their Arguments for a Perpetual Right of Presbyterian Parity you did it without mentioning their Books The meaning of which can only be this That it was done with as little disadvantage to the Party as you could That you made no such signal Remarks Exclamations and Excursions against the Divine Right of Presbytery and its Maintainers as you did against the Divine Right of Episcopacy and those that asserted it Nay you state the case and apply it directly and solely against Episcopacy or a Superiority of Order and Jurisdiction over the Pastors of the Church Sect. 8. p. 25. which was not fair nor consequently a due means to bring those over to a compliance to the Church of England then likely to be re-established
who stood upon the supposition That Christ had appointed a Presbyterian Government to be always continued in his Church And it is easily observable that you have omitted nothing that was pleaded by them whereby Prelacy might be rendered detestable as an unlawful Vsurpation but whether you have done the same thereby to render Presbytery as such I appeal to that very Chapter You are so far from it that the same design is managed throughout the whole Book where your Plea is against the Divine Right of any one individual Form of Government but the instance is mostly against Episcopacy Presbytery is seldom mentioned with any mark of disrespect or if it be it is accidentally I do not remember any one set discourse particularly levelled against it as there is sometimes against the Independents but all along against the Church of England both in this and several other of her most considerable Tenents and Articles Nay you expresly and in so many words give the precedency to Presbytery founding it upon one of your necessary and unalterable Divine Rights Part I. c. 1. § 7 8. pag. 23 26. and say That the Presbyterians seem more generally to own the use of General Rules and the light of Nature in order to the Form of Church-Government as in the Subordination of Courts Classical Assemblies and the more moderate sort as to Lay-Elders And to the Independents in the next place who plead the general Rules of Scripture and evidence of natural Reason Now all this you must be supposed to remove from the Episcoparians because therein you place the opposition if you do any thing And besides you say further The Episcopal Men will hardly find any evidence in Scripture or the Practice of the Apostles for Churches consisting of many Congregations for Worship under the charge of one Person in the Primitive Church for the Ordination of a Bishop without the preceeding Election of the Clergy and at least consent and approbation of the People and neither in Scripture nor Antiquity the least Footstep of a delegation of Church-Power and leave them no other Foundation but the Principles of humane Prudence and those not very well observed Pag. 416 417. So then upon the winding up of your Book the Church of England is represented without evidence of natural Reason and the Rules of the Light of Nature with little evidence from Scripture or the Practice of the Apostles in some instances of her Worship and Discipline but with none in others neither is Prudence her constant Guide And was not this a hopeful way and delicate means to bring over Dissenters to a compliance with the Church of England then likely to be established But none of it is to be wonder'd at if we consider the account you have given of the Government of our Church in the name of the Foreign Divines a little before pag. 409. and the inconveniencies it is liable unto as a step to Pride and Ambition and an occasion whereby Men might do the Church injury by the excess of their Power if they were not Men of excellent Temper and Moderation insomuch that our Bishops are begg'd rather to lay down their Power than to transmit that Power to those after them who it may be were not like to succeed them in their Meekness and Moderation and at last they are left to the Judgment of those who have the Power not only to redress but prevent abuses incroaching by an irregular Power And yet you have not left her barely to her Judges or the Civil Magistrate for such you can be interpreted only to mean to stand and fall at their discretion your self appear as Council against her prepossessing them with new fears and jealousies to which purpose you produce a ridiculous Prediction of Padre Paulo viz. That the Church of England would then find the inconveniencies of Episcopacy when an high Spirited Bishop should come once to rule the Church A Prophecy that in all likelihood was forged in the Brain of some Puritan and my reason for it is Because I find it placed in the front of a Latin Treatise writ by one of great intemperance and violence against the Church of England the Title whereof is Irenaei Philadelphi Epistola ad Renatum Virideum in qua aperitur mysterium iniquitatis novissimè in Anglia redivivum excutitur liber Josephi Hall quo asseritur Episcopatum esse Juris Divini Eleutheropoli 1641. The design of it is to inveigh against the praetorian Authority of Bishops with their Pride and Usurpation over the Clergy and he states the case just as you have done in your Irenicum viz. against their Solitary appropriated Power by Divine Right allowing a Ministry by the Law of Christ and that general Rules are given in Scripture for the great ends of Peace and Order But the particular Form depends upon the choice of the Presbyters and as they do judge it best agreeing with that Kingdom or Common-Wealth in which it is setled So then it seems the Presbyterians first instructed and brought over you not you them as you told my Lord of London And this also confirms what I said before viz. That you come up to the principles of them all excepting some of the rigider Scots who believe that no Church is duly administred where there are Bishops from whom my Worshipful Author declares his dissent tho' he is never the nearer to the Church of England for it that is purely your mistake and he notwithstanding follows on his design against our Church with all manner of indecency and dirty Language He begins with Arch-Bishop Land and takes occasion to vilifie him by reason of his Book against Fisher as worth no Man's reading and that it is unsaleable (a) Quis enim operam perdere voluerit in evolvendo hoc libro quem audio fidum esse custodem officinae bibliopolaâ—um thence he goes on to Richard Montacute Bishop of Norwich upon whom he empties his Spleen calling him a Chief Coal-blower (b) 〈◊〉 ciniflones Archiepiscopalis culinae primas tenet in the Archbishop's Kitchin reviling him as wise in his (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 own Eyes swelled with Pride and Malice with a little learning but more of self-conceit Bishop Andrews is his next Man whom he accuses of Plagiarism and for stealing his determination against Vsury out of Rivette upbraiding him for his ill stile (d) De ferreo stilo per scabra decurrente adding that Du Moulin and Rivette are as much before him in Learning as he thinks a Bishop to be above a Presbyter and placeth him at length amongst the Men mediocris Doctrinae of mean Learning The last I shall produce tho' there be many more against whom he raves at the same rate is Bishop Hall and he impleads him for want of Prudence in that he wrote his Book of Episcopacy carried on to it with an unseasonable itch of Scribbling casting Oyl thereby on that pyle in which the
your Younger years were seasoned with such kind of Authors as they appear to have been I 'll instance only in two Irenaeus Philadelphus and Robert Parker unless Martin Mar-Prelate be adjoyned Men so unplacably seditious and revengeful against our Church especially since you are to this day of an Opinion That you served the Church of England in writing your Irenicum An Erynnicum is more likely to be an effect of such studies And I wish that Book had made less heart-burnings and contentions among us and you had less promoted them by so many Impressions In fine if such a procedure as I have in part made yours already appear to be and shall more fully declare in this Epistle be the way to re-establish the Church of England and your Zeal and Affections be thus only indicated then they were for the Succession of the Crown who still attended the Earl of Shaftsbury and dined twice a Week with the Lord Russel making the rest of that Conspiracy their daily Associates and Confidents who kept the Green-Ribbon Clubb sided all along with Ignoramus Jury-men and abhorr'd all Mankind besides That supplyed Johnson's courses that he might with more Dispatch answer Dr. Hicks and defend his Julian lest the Party complain and grow weary of their tedious carryings on or be discouraged and beat off by the Strength of the Doctors reasonings and demonstrations against it who had West for their standing Council and Rumball for their Malt-Man and bought their Tables and Wainscot of the Protestant Joiner as we know he declared at the Gallows at Oxford of whom he had some of his Doctrines Thirdly You take all Power out of the hands of the Church Officers for determining Indifferencies and making occasional Laws for the better Ruling and Governing their Body and ending Controversies as they arise and place it wholly and solely in the Magistrate or Secular Governor as the only Power and Person that can make Church-Laws binding the Conscience And this you have done deliberately upon full thoughts and after a thorow enquiry and debate in order as you tell us to the laying a Foundation for Peace and Vnion Part I. c. 2. § 6 7. and c. 6. § 7. pag. 106 127 131. I 'll recite these principal passages for the satisfaction of the Reader You place in him the external Imperative Power of Jurisdiction concerning matters of the Church or as you explain your self the Nomothetical Legislative Power as it is distinguished from that which is properly called Politicial And you say the same again in matters undetermined by the word concerning the external Polity of the Church of God the Magistrate hath Power of determining things so they be agreeable to the Word of God. That no other Persons have power to make Laws binding Men to obedience but only the Civil Magistrate with-holding nothing from him but Preaching the Gospel and Administring the Sacraments in which two things you say consists the Authoritative Exercise of the Ministerial Function derived by Christ unto his Ministers making the Magistrate his own Guide according to the Word of God in the Administration of his Function and by consequence his own Preacher not subject to the Power of the Ministers that is he is to interpret the Scriptures to himself which comes very near to that of Mr. Hobbs in his Leviathan Part III. c. 4. p. 252. No Man ought in the Interpretation of Scripture to proceed farther than the bounds that are set by their several Sovereigns As also p. 295. c. 42. That the right of judging what Doctrines are fit for Peace and to be taught by Subjects is in all Commonwealths inseparably annexed to the Sovereign Power Civil whether it be in one Man or in one Assembly of Men. You go on at the same rate and say The Power of declaring the Obligation of former Laws and of consulting and advising the Magistrate for setling of new Laws for the Polity of the Church belongs to the Pastors and Governors of the Church of God but they have no more Authority to make any new Laws or Constitutions binding Mens Consciences than a command from the Supreme Authority that inferior Magistrates should be obeyed doth imply in them any Power to make new Laws to bind them Power arising from mutual compact and consent of parties is most agreeable to the nature of Church-Power being not coactive but directive And such was the confederate discipline of the Primitive Church before they had any Christian Magistrate thence the decrees of Councils were called Canons and not Laws The great use of Synods and Assemblies of Pastors of Churches is to be as the Council of the Church to the King in matters belonging to the Church as the Parliament is in matters of Civil Concernment Elective Synods substituted in the place of Authoritative Power to determine Controversies are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will never be soveraign enough to cure the distemper it is brought for that is reserved for your Weapon-Salve and bind no farther than the party concern'd doth judge the Sentence equal and just So that they help us with no ways to end Controversies in the Church any farther than the Persons engaged are willing to account that just which shall be judged in their Case they having no juridical Power The Church Power as to divine Law is only directive and declarative but being confirmed by a Civil Sanction is juridical and obligatory As for that time when the Church was without Magistrates ruling in it in those things undetermined by the Word of God they acted out of principles of Christian Prudence and from the principles of the Law of Nature And the reasons that you give for all this are many I 'll instance in but two First Because Church-men have no Authority but are bound up to the commands of Christ already laid down in his Word and why may not the same be said of the Magistrates and that they are equally tied up to the Laws of Christ For a Power to bind Mens Consciences to their determinations lodged in the Officers of the Church must be derived either from a Law of God giving them this Right or else from consent of Parties For any Law of God there is none produced with probability of reason but that Obey those that are over you in the Lord. But that implies no more than submitting to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Gospel and to those whom Christ hath constituted as Pastors of his Church wherein the Law of Christ doth require Obedience to them that is looking upon them and owning them in their Relations to them as Pastors but that gives no Authority to make Laws c. Secondly He who can null and declare all other Obligations void done without his Power hath the only Power to oblige for whatsoever destroys a former Obligation must of necessity imply a Power to oblige because I am bound to obey him in the abstaining from that I was formerly obliged to But this Power belongs
St. Cyprian with St. Augustin and St. Jerom are brought for farther instances of this supposed admirable Temper in the Primitive Church and for freely allowing Liberty to Dissenters from them in matters of Liberty and Practice whom you hope our Church of England then upon its re-establishment will follow in not imposing Rites but leaving Men to be won by the observing the true order and decency of Churches whereby those that act upon a true principle of Christian ingenuity may be sooner drawn to a compliance in all lawful things than by force and rigorous Impositions notwithstanding those Testimonies of St. Austin c. speak as if they had foreseen the case of our Church and had design'd so to determine on her side as to stop the mouths of all gain-sayers For as they allow of different Rites in things not unlawful in distinct Churches so they as strictly require compliance from all the Members of a Church with the Rites of its own Church and they are so far from allowing any difference as to these matters in one and the same particular Church that in case any of their Members travel to another Church they are directed to comply with the lawful Rites of that Church although different from the Rites of that Church of which they more particularly own themselves that so no division might be made And this I take to be the Doctrine of the Church of England and the very way of arguing and the occasion and the design of those Testimonies do so palpably confirm it that nothing but a Man who had Sacrificed his Judgment either to his Passion or the humour of a Party would have set himself to pervert them thus quite contrary to their meaning 5. You tell us That those who first brake this Order in the Church were Arians Donatists and Circumcellians whilst the true Church was known by its Pristine Moderation and Sweetness of Deportment towards all its Members So that the worst of Hereticks the worst of Christians and the worst of Men and such were these three Sects are the only persons to be found in all Antiquity that restrained Men by Laws from being of what Religion they pleased and reduced them to an Vniformity in the Worship of God. Or thus That Church-Laws laying limits to Mens practice in God's Service are from the same rise as Usurpation Rebellion Murder Burglary Schism Sacrilege Church-robbing Spoiling Men of their Possessions all manner of Profanation of Holy Things and Persons forcing Mankind to Heterodoxies in Religion Immorality in Manners and Rebellion in Government Perjury Hypocrisie Deceit for these were the constant Practices of those three Sects and the Laws and Rules that they proceeded by in their pretended Reformations and attempts to reduce what they called Christianity And the Canons Rubricks and Injunctions of our Church and the whole Christian World beside take away and invade Christian Property and Liberty equally as those worst of Hereticks and Schismaticks did I do not now wonder that you have shew'd so much dislike to that part of Dr. Parker's Book of Religion and Loyalty where he makes it appear That Eusebius and his followers that Spawn of the Arian Heresie were for Comprehension and therefore opposed the Holy Athanasius and the first Council of Nice because limiting the Christian profession of Faith to Laws and Canons and denounced the Anathema's of the Church against all such as should violate them 6. And lastly You magnifie the indulgence which was granted at Breda by King Charles II. as the effect of his excellent Prudence and Moderation when it was purely his misfortune and necessity that engaged him to it occasion'd by a sort of Men in this Nation no ways behind the Arians Donatists and Circumcellians those Cut-throats of Christendom and therefore the Wisdom of the Nation to whom he at first referr'd it immediately advised him against its farther establishment and it was re-called Neither was he the first Christian Prince that complyed with the like necessity the very Gentile Worship having been indulged for some time and for the same reasons and by good Emperors by Constantine himself as is evident in Church-Story And your self would deride your own inference if another did make it viz. That therefore the Heathen Worship ought not afterward to have been silenced and that the succeeding Imperial Laws to that purpose were unwarrantable Innovations And so you have my account of this your unlucky Book I own that it was not my first design to make it thus publick and I had not done it now had I not been provoked to it in part by your indirect and unscholar-like dealings with me in that instead of an answer to matter of Fact and Argument you have only Libelled me to a principal Bishop of our Church in a Two-Penny Paper to which is tacked and therein your farther disingenuity appears one of your Four-Penny Sermons that it may with the greater dispatch and advantage be posted over the Kingdom and I be certainly condemned by Bell Book and Candle of those even your Female Admirers into whose hands the main Controversie never came nor indeed are they competent judges of it And whether my stile or your usage of me in this affair be more Barbarous I appeal to the common Reader You have out-done Dr. Burnet's rudeness who only cried me about London Streets tho' these Artifices never take long and a due discovery only breaks their Necks more surely But I was mostly prevailed with in that you have not only defamed me but vindicated this Book to that eminent Bishop your Diocesan as serviceable to the Church of England and designed to that end by you If this be to serve our Church by using and urging all sorts of Arguments whereby her Form of Government by Bishops is represented without any bottom and foundation as from Christ cheap and contemptible their Offices rendred suspicious to the Civil Magistrate and as his Supplanter their abetters and maintainers slighted and ridicul'd their manner of Worship vilified and described as set up in opposition to the Primitive Example their power wholly taken from them and a Liberty granted to all Pretenders In a word Where your chief design seems to be levelled against them then you have done it in the Irenicum and yet these are not all the Heterodoxies and dangerous Doctrines therein contained It is a Hotch-potch or mixture of all Religions in which something is to be found for the defence of each Sect that hath infested us since the Reformation and only the Church of England is constantly opposed I may safely say It has perverted many Thousands should I add Millions I did not exceed which otherwise would have been true Sons and Adherers to her Doctrine and Worship and Discipline It is the very center of Puritanism and Epitome of Fanatick madness rendring us guilty of the same Schism in respect of the Dissenters as the Church of Rome is charged with in respect of us If it be objected
this that treats of the same subject And it may be expected to find some amends here if ever you have made or design'd any because it seems to be added to the Irenicum on purpose to rectifie what appear'd amiss or to supply something wanting in it Now he that duly and seriously considers it will find the whole performance to consist of these two Heads And that you there assert the Church a distinct Society from the State always to subsist by a Charter from Christ in the outward visible profession of Christianity tho' the Powers and Laws of the World are against it and this in opposition to the Leviathan who says That the precepts of the Gospel are not Law till enacted by Civil Authority And your arguments are common but good by which you prove it which he that treats on the same point cannot well omit all agreeing so far that really own Christianity Again you farther assert That our Saviour by a special Charter also hath enabled some of this Society to govern commanding all the Members of it to obey and which comes to the very point now in hand But this Power which is fixed by you on the Pastors of the Church is also limited to the Power of Excommunication as the argument of it answering to the Title speaks but you leave all other Acts and Offices of the Church where you had placed them before in the main Treatise i. e. excepting the Offices of Teaching and Administring the Sacraments in the hands of the Civil Magistrate So that as I said above the Power over Sacred Things is annexed entirely to the Civil Power And the Church Governors are only to administer in the Offices of them without any Power whereby to punish offenders against the Laws of Religion And this is with Dr. Stillingfleet To defend the fundamental Rights of the Church or his asserting the just Power of the Magistrate in Ecclesiasticks as well as Civils in opposition to the extravagances of those who screwed up the Church-Power to so high a peg that it was thought to make perpetual discord with the Commonwealth and others that melted down all Spiritual Power into the Civil State and dissolved the Church into the Commonwealth as you tell us in the entrance to the Treatise And so tho' the discourse as to the main is Sound and Orthodox yet in the present design of it it is a collusion and fallacy put upon the Reader It seems of the same nature with that lye of Ananias and it is to the Holy Ghost whereby as he kept back part of that possession which he sold for the use of the Church and said it was the whole so have you kept back part of the Power of the Church and said you have given in the whole And the reply that Peter gave to Ananias may not unfitly be returned to you also Why hast thou conceived this thing in thine Heart Thou hast not lyed unto Men but unto God. Acts 5.1 2 3 4. The next Treatise that I have made enquiry into for the finding out your after judgment in these points is Your Vindication of Archbishop Laud in which I find little amends for these your Erroneous Irenicum Doctrines but rather an evident confirmation of many of them if not doing worse In your First Part. Cap. 2. Sect. 2 3 4 5 c. your work is to overthrow that Erroneous Assertion in the Church of Rome viz. That the Definitions of the Church are to be believed to be as necessary to Salvation as the Articles of the Creed In order to which you take a most secure and effectual way and assert That the Being of the Church it self is not necessary to Salvation meaning thereby the Church Organical consisting of set Officers as may be gather'd from your following Discourse tho' you ought to have set out the opposition in the entrance of it for want of which the terms in your conclusion are perplexed and involved and you talk of a Church antecedent to a Church and of a true Church out of a true Church without any Specifications for the proving of which you take a great deal of pains to inform us what things are necessary to the Salvation of Men as such or considered in their single and private Capacities or in your own words and sense out of the Church Society or Ecclesiastical Communion And having concluded That believing in Christ and walking in him or an hearty assent to the Doctrine of Christ and a conscientious walking according to the precepts of it are that Faith and Duty indispensably necessary to the Salvation of Private Persons You then add That that which we call the Catholick Church or as you farther speak the being of a Church supposes this antecedent belief in Christians as to these things necessary to Salvation it being only a combination of Men together upon that belief and for the performance of those Acts of Worship which are suitable thereto You go on and say whatever Church owns these things where by a Church you can only mean those which are not a Church but out of the combination and in their private capacities or antecedent to it but you are to look to your terms not I which are antecedently necessary to the being of a Church cannot so long cease to be a true Church where the contradiction recurs and you ought thus to have expressed it That Men in their private and personal capacities believing these necessary things cannot cease to be true Christians tho' out of that Church and Combination for such is your meaning because it retains the foundation of the being of the Catholick Church Again the distinction that you use is equally unintelligible and contradictory viz. Here we must distinguish those things in the Catholique Church which give it its being from those things which are the proper acts of it as the Catholique Church As to this latter the solemn Worship of God in the way prescribed by him is necessary in order to which there must be supposed lawful Officers set in the Church Sacraments duely Administred but these I say are rather the exercise of the Catholique Church than that which gives it its being which is the belief of that Religion whereon its subsistence and unity depends and as long as a Church retains this it keeps its being tho' the integrity and perfection of it depend upon the due exercise of all Acts of Communion in it How these things can be said to be in the Catholick Church and give it its being as Faith c. whose being you told us a little before supposed them and to which they are antecedent you not I are to make out when you can Or how the exercise of Church Communion is the perfection of Faith and good Works I have always learnt the contrary viz. That Faith and good Works are the perfection of Church Communion in attendance to the ordinances You say farther That the Vnion of the Catholique Church depends upon
LICENSED July 19. 1686. A LETTER TO Edw. Stillingfleet D. D. c. In ANSWER to the Epistle Dedicatory before his SERMON Preached at a Publick Ordination at St. Peter's Cornhil March 15. 1684 / 5. TOGETHER WITH Some Reflections upon certain LETTERS which Dr. Burnet wrote on the same occasion By SIMON LOWTH Vicar of Cosmus Blene in the Diocess of Canterbury Sed non idcirco frater charissime relinquenda est Ecclesiastica disciplina aut sacerdotalis solvenda est censura quoniam convitiis infestamur aut erroribus quatimur B. Cyprianus Ep. 55. ad Cornelium Impp. Honorius Theodos A. A. Anthemio P. F. P. Hirenarcharum vocabula quae adsimulata provincialium tutela quietis ac pacis per singula territoria haud sinunt stare concordiam radicitùs amputanda sunt Cesset igitur genus perniciosum reipublicae Cesset rescriptorum Hirenarchas circiter inconsulta simplicitas celsitudinis tuae sedes provinciarum defendenda suscipiat pacis hujusmodi locupletioribus commissura praesidia 12. Cod. Theodos Tit. 14. LONDON Printed by J. L. and are to be Sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers-Hall in Amen-Corner MDCLXXXVII A LETTER TO Dr. Stillingfleet In ANSWER to his Epistle Dedicatory prefixed to his SERMON Preached at a Publick Ordination in the Church of St. Peter's Cornhil March 15. 1684 / 5 Reverend Sir HAVING perused your angry Epistle I am now abundantly satisfied that after all the clamorous Objections and riotous Noises against my Book of Church-Power raised and kept up by Men of your Party and Complexion and all the endeavours of such Champions as your self and that renowned Hero the famous Dr. Burnett you have been able to say nothing in reply to it besides personal remarks and accusations I might add choice Epithets and embellishments of Wit that might have become a Tripas Exercise in the Sophister's Schools but by no means the Gravity of an old exercised Master of Polemicks If you can reap any satisfaction from loading me with the general Titles of a Plagiary ridiculous fool malicious unskillful maker of Controversies a barbarous and rude Disputer with his Brethren an accuser of his Brethren an implacable man uncharitable unjust slanderer proud void of prudence and common discretion the usual Complements you are pleased to bestow upon me you may be happy in the enjoyment of your humor though it hath not an Irenical Complexion But I that design nothing but the pursuit of Truth and Honesty shall only endeavour in an easie method and plain words to come to the true state of the Controversie between us and my reply you may be pleased to take in this order First I shall presume to make some return to those little Pleas and Excuses that you give in for your self and those Accusations of any weight that you are pleased to bring in against me and withal take the liberty to reflect a little upon the Treatment I have received from your Friend and Advocate Dr. Burnett upon the same occasion For I foresee that opportunity will be offer'd Secondly I shall make it appear That the account you give of your Irenicum is not fair nor true and that you conceal your Crime in the very confession of it The whole design and plot being meerly laid against the Re-establishment of the Church of England Thirdly I shall enquire more particularly how far you have recall'd and recanted the principal Errors of it and particularly the Imposture of your Manuscript not doubting to make it appear That you still owe a publick Recantation for it not to the poor Vicar of Cosmus Blene but to the Church of England First I shall consider herein the little pleas you make use of for your self and your trifling Accusations against me together with your Characters of me and also take the liberty of some Reflections upon Dr. Burnet And here your failure is so evident and notorious at the very entrance and your conclusion so inconsequential that it plainly appears you began your Epistle in a passion and without a due consideration of those things which in course follow upon one another Otherwise how could you say to your most Reverend Diocesan That as you have the satisfaction of doing your duty in obeying his Lordship's command for Printing the Sermon you Preached at his last solemn Ordination so you hope others will have so much at least in Reading of it as to be convinced how unjustly you have been not long since represented to the world as an enemy to the very being of Churches in general and to the constitution of this Church in particular Pray how does it follow because you Preached sound and orthodox Divinity at that one time that you had never Preached or Printed any thing Erroneous or Heretical before Or what connexion is there in this such a one is now a sound Divine and therefore he was so always Had you in that Sermon made it appear that my Accusation was not True or that I had said you would never retract those unsound tenents that I accused you of then you might have depended with some tolerable assurance upon the Reader 's conviction of the injustice I had done you But since so it is that you neither attempted to clear your self concerning those things I accused you of neither did I say you would never retract them to infer injustice on my part because some years after that I had accused you you Preached a Sermon which was Orthodox in those points wherein I said you were once defective is a conclusion he alone can be guilty of whose common perceptions are choaked with Choler No Man could suspect that Dr. Stillingfleet made it had not the following part of the Epistle been of his Composure also consisting mostly of the like undecencies I said you were guilty of such Doctrines at the time when I Printed my Book but I did not say you would never retract them It was part of my design in writing that Book to inform you better and that you might come to a sense of those Errors which I apprehended at that time you were not sensible of I told you I judged a retractation necessary and that you ought to make one which was my crime in that I spake so plainly and boldly to you and no Man rejoyces more or thanks you more than I do for what you have performed of that nature in your Sermon You argue on at the same rate and say That my Calumny as you are pleased to call it is groundless and ridiculous because you have since proved the Church a distinct Society and vindicated her power in general and the particular constitution of this Church Now this supposes the truth of my accusation and that you once had asserted the contrary only I am so disingenuous that I take no notice of your retractation but still urge that first Error against you and this is the full of all that you can be interpreted to plead for your self The conclusion indeed seems larger
thus argue That where the Church hath defined nothing in her Councils it is to no purpose to object that such Doctrines are taught in it for those who defend their Separation from the Communion of a Church by reason of its Corrupt and Erroneous Doctrines must make it appear those are taught by it and the belief of them also exacted by its subjects To whom he thus replies But supposing there were no such foundation for this Doctrine in the Council of Trent as we see there is would there be no danger to Men's Salvation if their Confessors generally told them these things and they knew it to be the general Opinion among them Is there no danger of falling into the Ditch when the blind lead the blind unless a General Council expresly allow of it Is there no danger of Empiricks and Mountebanks unless the whole College of Physicians approve them And then he adds farther I confess when we debate the causes of separation from their Communion we think it then reasonable to alledge no more than what they impose on all to believe and practise and we have enough of all Conscience without going any farther but when we present the hazard of Salvation to particular Persons we may then justly charge them with pernicious Doctrines and Practices which are received and allow'd among them although not decreed by the Church in Councils For otherwise it would be just as if one should say to a Man that asked him whether he might safely Travel through such a Country Yes without doubt you may for although there be abundance of Thieves and High-way Men yet the Prince or the State never approved them nor gave them liberty to rob Travellers Do you think any Man would venture his Person or his Purse on no better security yet such security is all they can give as to the Roman Church for they dare not deny the bad consequence of the Doctrines and Practices charged upon them but only say The Church hath not decreed them 2. When Doctor Jeremy Taylor published some Tenents concerning Original Sin which opposed the Doctrine of our Church Doctor Warner Lord Bishop of Rochester wrote a Treatise against him and detected his error as openly as he had divulged it A great deal might have been pleaded in the Doctor 's behalf as much nay more than can be pleaded for any Man now a days such was his eminency in all Learning his great and daily service for the Church in her present distress he standing almost alone in the gap and in opposition to her many Enemies ready to devour her and still gaping with their Mouths upon her She was at a very low Ebb and the Channels were seen at God's chiding at the rebuke of the blast of his Displeasure But none of these things moved the excellent Bishop or diverted his purpose He knew full well that such breaches were advantageous to the common Enemy and therefore the healing them by due Argument and Authority was the only way to stop their Mouths And I have been informed those few Bishops surviving in that dismal overthrow of our Church Summon'd the Doctor to the house of Doctor Duppa at Richmond who was then Lord Bishop of Sarum where he submitted and made his acknowledgment 3. When some Puritanes at Frankford had opposed the Government and Liturgy of our Church and set up their own in its room Doctor Cox first and then Dr. Horn undertook them notwithstanding they were little better than banished Men and the Marian Persecution raged at home which made England too hot for them all No pleas of Peace and Unity ought to prevail for the complying with and countenancing those who oppose the received Doctrines and Constitutions of that Church whereof they are Members every good and knowing Man will withstand such to the face although they do in many things unite with him against the common Adversary And those that understand the nature and constitution of the Church of Christ as a distinct Society and its obligations upon Christians believe also its Laws equally established and binding when the Secular Power frowns upon and disowns her as when it maintains and protects her and that confusion in all things as you are pleased to express it or a Laxation of outward reward or penalties gives no liberty to any one man to choose his own way but much less does it authorize and indemnifie any one particular Doctor or more to draw up new Schemes and Modes of Worship or make easier Terms than were before required for the bringing Men in unto them Under these circumstances Dissenters are least of all to be born with and tenderness towards them is to have no place And it is judiciously observed by the Author of Religion and Loyalty Part 1. p. 566. that under the Reign of Julian the Apostate the Church more strictly united than she had done before in executing her Discipline and that power which Christ had enstated on her she then put an end to the vexatious Arian Controversie established the Nicene Faith over all the Christian World and prevented new Schisms and Factions that were at that time breaking out in the Christian World. And then to be sure the Eusebian Latitude-Trimmers had no favour shewed them because of the present Confusion 4. The Romish Doctors themselves gave us these like instances and the most sober of them do not think that their Unity in which they so much boast is violated or any occasion of Scandal and Offence given to those which are without in that the errors of particular Doctors tho' otherwise deserving from their Church are openly taken notice of and refuted but on the other hand conclude such proceedings necessary and useful for the preserving their Faith laudable in the unity and peace of it It is but the other day that Mr. White and Mr. Sargent who are known to have been great Zealots for Rome in this Kingdom published some Tenents injurious as it was thought to the Romish Faith for this they were severely censured and a Book came out against them Autore M. Lomino Theologo Printed at Gaunt 1675. whose Title is Blackloanae Haeresis Historia Confutatio so called from Blacklo a name by which White used sometimes to be called Upon this Publication the Blackloists made great clamors and not only they but the Roman Catholicks at large and who were not engaged in the Controversie As That these were not times for Catholicks to write one against another admonishing that Tempori ac Haeresi cedendum way is to be given to the Time and the Heresie together the danger of Schism is now hanging over our heads and that the Orthodox will be hereby laugh'd at by the Protestants because disagreeing To whom Lominus in his Preface gives this answer which being of so full weight and able to satisfie any Man in this or the like case I will here Transcribe thus Translated Doleo vehementer hoc unicum Blackloistarum effugium ultimum
Reformation had been a more apt and proper Epithete Furthermore I will appeal to the whole World whether it be not more pardonable to imitate a King in his laudable Actions and Policies performable by him as a Man than to resemble him to so base and abject a person as a Postillion is known to be The Doctor very well knows that this is one rule always to be observed in taking a Metaphor That it be not from any thing filthy or sordid especially when the Translation is to Kings and it is very much to his disrepute that he who values himself at so great a rate for his stile and oratory should so grosly fail in the common and known rule of a Similitude And yet I will not be over rash and impute all to his mistake The intimacy that he says he had with Mr. William Petit Councellor of the Inner-Temple and that he had his Assistance and Directions as to the Laws and Customs of this Nation in writing his History of the Reformation give some suspicion that he might have no very high thoughts of our Kings Mr. Petit's late Printed Book indicates too much of his Temper and his choice of Doctor Burnet for the digesting and publishing his Collections argue too much of Doctor Bunnet's also and there 's no question to be made but that they consulted together as in order to the composing of the History of the Reformation of the Church so for the writing of that History of the Reformation of Kings which Mr. Petit a little after published under the Title of The Ancient Rights of the Commons of England c. in the Preface to which he delivers this as an undoubted and authentique story Apud Britannos populus magna ex parte principatum tenet pag. 4. and pag. 6. De minoribus rebus principes consultant de majoribus omnes Among the Britains the People have the Government for the most part The Princes consult concerning the lesser things but All concerning the greater And further says That Parliaments were instituted to hear and determine the Complaints and the wrongful Acts of the King the Queen and their Children Now all this very well agrees with the Metaphor of the Postillion and we may also hence conclude That it was not from the Doctor 's principles of Government but some other particular interest which is easily discerned that he publickly declared at the King's-Bench in Westminster-Hall He did not believe that part of the late most hellish Plot against the Person and Dignities of our late Sovereign King Charles II. of blessed Memory which was laid for seizing his Person and giving him only some due Chastisement Your disingenuity to your Superiors in the Church is as great as your injustice to King Charles the First of which an higher instance cannot be given than to represent them as Patrons to your Errors because they have been civil to your Person There is I see great care to be taken of treating some Men with common kindness And the arguing seems more particularly unbecoming those of your Complexion or Moderation whose temperamentum ad pondus or just mixture consists in this viz. To indulge every Man in his particular judgment and treat him with a fair converse when retaining quite different sentiments from him And I am very confident that your self will take it very ill from that Man which shall call you Phanatick because you have trimmed for them and drawn up a scheme of comprehension and had so frequent meetings with them at Doctor Burton's Chamber Besides the grand Case at the King's Bench-Bar at Westminster-Hall last Summer has made it fully appear That a Man may be under a heavy guilt and yet such be the circumstances as to persons and things that his Superiors cannot with prudence call him to an account and retribute to him his condign punishment nay farther so hard may the necessity be as to enforce from them a civil treat and with more especial kindness You plead That before the Church was re-established you received Episcopal Orders from an excellent Bishop of this Church which may be true and I question not but that it is But it is no proof that you were then an Episcopal Divine Several in those days took that prudent way upon this consideration because tho' some denied a Presbyter to be a Bishop yet all own'd a Bishop to be a Presbyter and consequently must accept of your Ordination The divine appropriated Right of the Bishop and singular Power enstated on him by Christ might not be considered by you in that action And in the last place you are very unjust to me in adding to all your other Calumnies this one viz. That I am therefore so severe unto you and enhaunse your supposed crime because an Offender my self as if it were some atonement for my own miscarriages to be always finding fault with my Brethren And tho' this Scandal be of less concern to the publick than those other which you laid upon the Royal Martyr and your Church Governors yet it is every way as groundless and false Whatever my other failings have been yet I dare appeal to and do provoke my greatest Enemies to produce one instance wherein I have declined or warped from any one publick duty interpretable to be incumbent upon me as a Subject or a Church-man But those Men that answer Books by Reproaches and purge themselves by Recriminations must be allowed to make use of all the Topicks that are within that compass and to improve their design by the general advantages it tenders to them A method used by your predecessor Dr. Burnet who after this manner discharges his Gall upon me You are pleased to acquaint the world That you received Episcopal Orders in the late Confusion and think it sufficient to vouch your early Zeal for our Church and Episcopacy I can say more That in the year 1658 I was made a Deacon by that most worthy Father and reverend Prelate Brian then Lord Bishop of Sarum and within that year had the further Power of the Priesthood conferr'd upon me And by virtue of this power I served the Church in the daily Ministrations according to the Rubricks and Law established but not protected among us the secular Power being disenabled to do it by reason of that most horrid Rebellion which was then prosperous I served the Church when she was not able to reward me when without a prospect of it and have had the honour to attend Mr. Peter Gunning at Exeter Chapel with the Chalice One that then look'd the Tyrant in the face 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Strom. 4. p. 480. and whom the Church of God in antient times would have placed among her most renowned Martyrs tho' he died in his Bed full of years and honour but the other day being Lord Bishop of Ely. And thus I have answered those little pleas you have given in for your self and wiped off those Calumnies that you laid upon me
and finished my first part Secondly I shall make it appear that the account you give of your Irenicum is not fair nor true and that you conceal your crime as much as in you lies in the representation the Design and Plot of it being mostly laid if not altogether against the Church of England And this I undertake to make good in these following Particulars 1. The main subject of your present debate you say is this Whether any one particular Form of Church-Government be setled upon an unalterable divine Right by Virtue whereof all Churches are bound to observe that individual Form or Whether it be left to the prudence of every particular Church to agree upon that Form of Government which it judgeth most conduceable within it self to attain the end of Government the Peace Order Tranquillity Setlement of the Church as is to be seen in the latter end of your Preface and Part 1. c. 1. Sect. 1. pag. 4. The first you determine in the Negative the second in the Affirmative the issue of both is this That God by his own Laws hath given Men a Power and Liberty to determine the particular Form of Church-Government among them you had done well if you had produced this Law of God and what the express words of it are none other being sufficient for a lasting divine institution by your own Rules but this is your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That tho' one Form of Government be agreeable to the word it doth not follow that another is not or because one is lawful another is unlawful but one Form may be more agreeable to some parts places people and time than others are That the case is the same as to Church Government whether by many joyn'd together in an equality or by subordination of some persons unto others as it is to dipping or sprinkling in Baptism whether thrice or once As to attending the Lords Table whether at Supper time or in the Morning fasting or after meat You add whether kneeling or sitting or leaning and as to preaching the word you mean doubtless Whether by an Hour-glass or not Vid. Part I. Cap. 1. Sect. 1. pag. 3. § 2. p. 9 10. Part. II. Cap. 4. § 2. c. And hence it is as plain and obvious as words and consequences can make it That by the Law of God enstating Mankind with this perpetual indefectible Power the Independant Congregational Form of Government is equally to be received as the Presbyterian and Classical and either of them as the Episcopal and the Papal hath as firm a bottom as any of them all any one of them ought to be called and really is the Church of England and of God within this Dominion if the Pastors or the Magistrate or when these are knockt o' th' head the People or any one prevailing interest or faction shall appoint and setle it among us So that now you are for a Toleration of several Forms of Government by the Authority of the Church of England And it is plain whence our Sects had it when with so much confidence they said upon each occasion having obtained an indulgence from his late Majesty That they were the Church of England they meant according to Dr. Stilling fleet 's Irenicum And indeed according to this Principle of yours Richard Baxter's Conventicle in St. Martin's Parish in the Fields was once as much of the Church of England as Dr. Stilling fleet 's Church in St. Andrew's Holborn Neither is this the only Case that they use your Authority in thereby to rend in pieces this Church and I did not speak improperly nor without reason when I called that Treatise an unlucky Book This issue is plainly and clearly set down by Mr. Hobbs in his Leviathan Part III. Cap. 42. pag. 299 300. and upon your very Principles to whom you had an Ear no doubt From this consolidation of the Rights Politick and Ecclesiastick in Christian Sovereigns it is evident they have all manner of Power over their Subjects that can be given to Man for the Government of Mens external Actions both in Policy and Religion and may make such Laws as themselves shall judge fittest for the Government of their own Subjects both as they are the Common-Wealth and as they are the Church For both Church and State are the same Men which is your very notion as will appear anon If they please therefore they may as many Christian Kings now do commit the Government of their Subjects in matters of Religion to the Pope but then the Pope is in that point subordinate to them and exercises that charge in anothers Dominion jure civili in the right of the civil Sovereign not jure divino in God's right and may therefore be discharged of that office when the Sovereign for the good of his Subjects shall think it necessary They may also if they please commit the care of Religion to one supreme Pastor or to an Assembly of Pastors and give them what power over the Church or over one another they think most convenient and what Titles of Honour as of Bishops Archbishops Priests or Presbyters they will and these Rights are incident to all Severeigns whether Monarchs or Assemblies For they that are representants of a Christian People are representants of the Church for a Church and a Commonwealth of Christian People are the same thing The inconsistences and most pernicious insufferable consequents of this Principle are abundantly represented to the World by a most judicious Hand in the Case of the Church of England Part III. more particularly pag. 246 247 c. 2. You deny Episcopacy in particular or a Disparity of Power in the Ministry to be by the Laws of Christ always binding and immutable wherein you oppose to be sure the Church of England And further the overthrowing the immutable Right of Episcopacy seems to be the main thing you aim at throughout the whole Discourse tho' you pretend more for the management of which you all along mingle Fire and Water together urging any thing that will give a varnish or make a shew of Argument in order to it tho' really destructive to the common Christianity we all profess but either lightly touch or designedly pass by the most credible motives even demonstrations to the contrary even those which have been own'd for such by your self in the like cases This will appear to him that weighs these following Considerations To avoid this prelatical Power or Superiority of our Bishops you tell us That tho' it be proved that the Apostles had a Superiority of Order and Jurisdiction over the Pastors of the Church by an Act of Christ yet it must be farther proved That it was Christ's intention that Superiority should continue in their Successors or it makes nothing to the purpose Part I. Cap. 1. § 8. pag. 25. Where you do not consider That tho' it be proved that St. Peter and the other Apostles had by an Act of Christ the power of the
Keys delivered unto them and thereby were invested in their Persons with the Ministerial Authority yet upon the same terms it must be farther proved That it was Christ's Intention that the same power should continue in their Successors or it makes no more to the purpose for a settled Ministery than it does for a fixed Episcopacy and this same Argument which overthrows a Superiority of Church-men over one another for want of an Express of Christs intention to continue it always overthrows also the Ministry it self both having the same bottom and alike promises This the Independant and Socinian saw and consider'd full well and upon your own grounds reject them both together with the two Sacraments because there are no express Texts declaring their Perpetuity But this is agreeable enough with the Rector of Sutton who as he makes all Gospel-Laws for Church-Government an Escheat to Westminster-Hall so is he to be supposed to receive none as perpetually obliging except those that are made and conveyed in the Hall-Phrase and by its Precedents with an express Declaration Entailing them upon the Heirs and Successors for ever But because Apostolical practice still presses you hard whose force apart from the Act and Donation of our Saviour seems to infer a divine Right the matter of Fact being apparent and beyond contradiction That the Apostles were invested with a Superiority beyond Bishops and Presbyters and did accordingly execute it Hereupon with a deep design but very Superficial Policy that is easily seen through and baffled you place their juridical consistorial Acts and Practices amongst those other Acts and Practices of theirs that were purely occasional and with regard to the present times and circumstances such as abstaining from Blood and things strangled eating or not eating the order of Widows the Love-Kiss Celibacy St. Paul's working with his own Hands Preaching the Gospel freely Circumcising Timothy c. all which are confessedly mutable and did alter in a very little time both in their Practice and Obligation But your Error is not only in ranging these quite different Practices under the same head and order whose distant natures are so plain and obvious but in that you do not consider that the Lord's Day and Infant-Baptism will for the same reason come under that head of Indifferencies and Practices mutable and therein besides the ill consequences in Religion you plainly contradict your self who tell us at the same time and in the same Section and in doing of it dart your self through with your own Weapon That tho' there be no particular express Revelation for the Lord's Day and Infant-Baptism yet Practice Apostolical or of Persons guided by an Infallible Spirit is sufficient to enact and declare them perpetually obliging For surely Apostolical practice guided by an infallible Spirit is equally manifest son a Superiority in the Ministry as for those two It is far more notorious and frequent but your Plot that was laid against the Immutability of Episcopacy engaged you to take no notice of it vid. Part I. Sect. 3. Part. II. § 20. Farther yet That you may be every ways secure in your design and wholly baffle and defeat all Plea for a divine and immutable Right from Apostolical Practice in the point of Episcopacy you go on in a sure way treading Antiquity under your Foot and impleading the most holy Primitive Bishops and Confessors of Defectiveness Ambiguity Partiality and Repugnancy that hereby you may root out their Order and destroy it from the Face of the Earth and you say in so many words That we cannot have that certainty of Apostolical Practice as to constitute a Divine Right It is not my business to argue points but to collect your particular Opinions or rather to write the History of your Theology otherwise I might here reply by demanding How and by what hands it is that we have any certainty of the Apostolical Writings or know their minds and intentions there The Church hath all along received the Canon and Sense of the Scriptures from the Faith and certainty of Antiquity and the repute and integrity of these holy Bishops Martyrs and Confessors Our Church of England certainly does so and they are her Rule in Reforming as to both and when the Authority of some Books of the New Testament were called in question the Tradition of Faith alone declared them Canonical and they remain such upon that Testimony in the account of the whole Christian World to this day And why then is the same evidence defective and less authoritative concerning their practice and sense in the point of Government But thus you expose the Scriptures their Authority their Sense to every Atheist and Enthusiust to uncertainties and conjectures or at the best to the intemperance of each violent heady and sceptical undertaker And thus it comes to pass that so much work is made for a Nicephorus Calisthus a Simeon Metaphrastes the very Jacobus de Voragine of the Greek Church those Tinkers that think to mend a hole and make three instead of it you taking away hereby the great evidence and muniments of our Christianity both as to the matter of Fact and the intent of it that which is next to the Foundation is cast down and what can the Righteous do Hence so many Whimsies and Forgeries of Mens Brains and monstrous Opinions fill up our Bodies of Divinity and your many forms of Government as by Divine Right are no less portentous than any of them as Geographers do Maps with some fabulous Creatures of their own Inventions Our Church of England I say in her Reformation supposes certainty and sufficiency in the Records of the Primitive Church and that matter of Fact is faithfully transmitted down unto us with the true sense of the Scriptures and Apostolical Practice both in matter of Doctrine and Government and her Reformation is receiv'd by the Civil Power and made Law in the Kingdom upon these terms alone viz. As bottom'd on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and what the Catholick Fathers and ancient Bishops have thence collected particularly in the Four first General Councils or any other Council X. Elizabethae Cap. I. Sect. xxxvi And yet upon a Scandalous Interpretation of Eusebius Hist Eccles Lib. 3. Cap. 4. perverting his Sense quite contrary to his plain words and design which is to set forth the Succession of Bishops immediately from the Apostles over the known Parts of Christendom you blast the credit of all Antiquity and that with as much show of rancor and contempt as the scornfullest manner of expressing your self can declare What becomes then with our Rector of Sutton of our unquestionable Line of Succession of Bishops of several Churches and the large Diagram made of Apostolical Churches with every ones name set down in his order as if the Writer had been Clarenceaux to the Apostles themselves Is it come to this at last that we have nothing certain but what we have in the Scriptures And must then
Church of England was burning and thereby had cut off all hope of a Reconciliation your Plot then it seems was not like to have Success and that the Bishop of Exon had not duly consulted the Reputation of Joseph Hall. And tho' it is really sad to consider That such eminent Professors are thus rudely treated yet there is some pleasure in reflecting with what sort of Arguments our Episcopacy was encountred in 1641. and the multitude thereby incensed and enraged against it and to me there is something peculiar in it because that your Advocate Dr. Burnet and your self have treated and opposed me at the same rate and upon the same occasion viz. Because I wrote as Bishop Hall did all the other concurring with him in defence of the Divine Right of Church-Power and Episcopacy How frequently do you upbraid me also in the same manner As that I am wanting of Prudence and common Discretion That few read my Book It can hurt no body but the Bookseller and my self but mostly the Bookseller because you have not heard that the Chancery ever gave Equity against an Author for an unsaleable Book That I and my Book are under great neglect That I discharge my spleen on two such eminent Men whose Works as well as their Persons will be had in honour long after both I and my Book shall be forgotten That I am indeed proud of assaulting two such eminent Men. My stile is unintelligible barbarous whose embellishments are not to be envied It is indeed hairy all over And so rough is the shag that it will not submit to the Discipline of a Comb. It is overgrown with Hair. In short I write neither True English nor Good Sense I do not produce one considerable Argument which you had not made use of to that purpose in a Discourse published above twenty years since But the Malice and Rage of Philadelphus doth not rest here in that he hath thus revileâ—â—he Persons of so many of our most eminent Church men and represented them in their Offices as Tyrants and Usurpers over their fellow Brethren the Pastors of the Church but he goes on raving and running mad upon them as dangerous in respect of the State also to Kings and Secular Governours out of whose hands the Scepter will be wrested by them with the first opportunity as they have already snatch'd the Government of the Church from their fellow Presbyters so that the Kings of England are in danger by reason of the Episcopal Power here among us The Horse is already equipped and the Rider hath one foot in the stirrup And for proof of which he produces the very same impertinent Prophecy of Padre Paulo which you thought so considerable that it is in effect translated in the Irenicum and urged for the same purpose and withal to let the World know that it was the Opinion of wiser heads than your own That the Episcopacy in England was dangerous to the Monarchy of it as a step to that Pride and Ambition which at length would get the upper hand of it And all the difference betwixt you and him seems to be but this He had more discretion than to put his right Name to it I will here transcribe the whole Prophecy as it is placed in the Wast-page of his Book and leave it to others to judge how far thereby you have served the Church of England or rather Faction and Sedition and Schism and the Opposer of it tho' you pretend quite otherwise in your Epistle Dedicatory Anglis ego timeo Episcoporum magna illa potestas licet sub Rege prorsus mihi suspecta est ubi vel Regem facilem nacti fuerint vel magni spiritus Archiepiscopum habuerint Regia autoritas pessundabitur Episcopi ad absolutam Dominationem aspirabunt Ego equum ephippiatum in Anglia videre videor ascensurum propediem equitem antiquum divino Verum omma Divinae Providentiae subsunt But there is no wind that blows not some profit and I have hereby another advantage as to my own particular for nothing is more certain than that I did not take all those considerable Arguments which you allow to be in my Book out of the Irenicum it being my design and business there for several Sections to make it evident That Kings are in no danger by the Episcopal Power but on the contrary Episcopacy and Monarchy are every ways compitable and consistent they strengthen and support one another and were own'd so to be and to do by the Empire it self Dr. Burnet seems the honestest Man of the three because speaking out his mind and plainly unless he speak your sense too in that Paragraph and that he may easily be supposed to have done to be sure you approve of it in the Epistle Dedicatory and 't is very likely he was but your Journey-man for in his last Letter he tells us whose the Horse is thus fatal to our Troy and who equipped him and the particular Place and Person that our Bishops are riding whip and spur unto As for the Zeal that all this sort of Men pretend for the Crown the Book that is the foundation of this stir is a good indication of it There is another Sect besides Presbytery that has first wholly degraded Kings from their Ecclesiastical Supremacy and after that point was gain'd made them Reign at the mercy of the Church and at the Pope's courtesie It were too bold to attempt both at once and it is ingeniously enough done to seem to yield up the one wholly till the other is gain'd Pure Irenaeus Philadelphus who together with Doctor Burnet and the Rector of Sutton are the Triumvirate in the cause But as long as Archbishop Laud Bishop Montacute Bishop Andrews and Bishop Hall ride along with us we are well enough there is no true Church of England man will be ashamed of their company but will repute it his greatest honour and triumph And as to that which the Doctor adds here viz. That I fall so evidently under a Praemunire as he hears an honourable person has observed That I owe my not being questioned for it to his Majesty's Clemency I could Cap it with that I heard an honourable person observe upon him That for Six Pence Barbara a noted Scold in the neighborhood would answer my Book better than he hath done But I am not now inclined to so much mirth Tho' it may not be in raillery to consider what black guilt and worser malignancy Dr. Burnet's Crimes were made up of which Charles the Merciful could not forgive but banished him his Royal Palaces of Whitehal and St. James's many years since and a little before his death by his own Royal Edict silenced him at the Rolls and since England is become too hot for him But what can be expected from Men of this complexion who answer Books made up of matter of Fact and Argument with only Revilings and personal Defamations Or indeed from your self in particular when
Providence of God making way concurr'd to their restauration like another Sanballat using this common high-way insinuation thereunto taken from the scandalous Rabble and worst of our Enemies And I have been credibly told That your self did neither Subscribe nor Read the Service-Book till that fatal as some call it St. Bartholomew and you had otherwise been deprived of your Rectory of Sutton And this subject you reassume in your Preface spending a great part of it with a vehement zeal and ardency in defence of Libertinism so far as That no Church Laws ought to be enjoyned as Terms of Communion but those which Christ hath himself given us or those that were immediately directed by the guidance of the Spirit of God. Those things you say are sufficient for that which are laid down as the necessary Duties of Christianity by our Lord and Saviour in his Word which are sufficient for Salvation Would there be ever the less Peace and Vnity in a Church if diversity were allow'd as to practices supposed indifferent Yea there would be so much the more as there was a mutual forbearance and condescension as to such things The Vnity of the Church is an Vnity of Love and Affection c. Doctrines that are justly called Damnable by the Vniversity of Oxford and condemned with certain pernicious Books in their Judgment and Decree past in Convocation July 21. 1683. as destructive to the sacred Persons of Princes their State and Government and of Humane Society and presented to his late Majesty of blessed Memory July 24. in the Twenty first and Twenty second Propositions and in these words viz. It is not lawful for Superiors to impose any thing in the Worship of God that is not Antecedently necessary The Duty of not offending a weak Brother is inconsistent with all humane authority of making Laws concerning indifferent things But yet you endeavour to make them good from these several Topicks 1. From the Design and Example of our Saviour whose business was to ease Men of their former Burthens and not to lay on more The Duties he required were no other but such as were necessary He that came to take away the unsupportable Yoke of the Jewish Ceremonies certainly did never intend to gall the Necks of his Disciples with another instead of it What Charter hath Christ given the Church to bind Men up to more than himself hath done Or to exclude those from his Society who may be admitted into Heaven 2. From the Example of his Apostles who do not warrant any such rigorous Impositions either We never read of the Apostles making Laws but of things supposed necessary When the Council of the Apostles met at Jerusalem for deciding a case that disturbed the Churches Peace we see they would lay on no other burthen besides the necessary things Acts xv 29. It was not enough for them that the things would be necessary when they had required them but they looked on an antecedent necessity either absolute or for the present state which was the only ground of their imposing those Commands upon the Gentile Christians All that the Apostles required as to these was a mutual forbearance and condescension towards each other in them 3. You parallel the Laws of our Church as to indifferencies and in limiting of them in particular practices with those Impositions of Rome as to the Rule of Faith and her other Idolatrous Superstitious Practices 4. From the Example of the Primitive Church which you say deserves greater imitation by us in nothing more than in that admirable temper moderation and condescension which was used in it towards all the members of it It was never thought by her worth the while to make any standing Laws for Rites and Customs that had no other original but Tradition much less to suspend Men her Communion for not observing them And you instance in that objected case related by Sozomen Eccl. Hist l. 7. c. 19. and the same is in Socrates Hist l. 5. c. 22. which every one rallies our Church withal that can but read the Historian in English or the Libellers of our Church who in their Pamphlets represent her to them as you do here to her disadvantage It is granted that these Churches there mentioned as Antioch Rome Aegypt Thessaly and Caesarea did differ from one another in divers Customs and Rites as in times of Fasting manner of Meats c. and therein they were not to judge or condemn one another But you must prove that Antioch Rome c. did allow different Rites in their particular Churches which you cannot do from that place the contrary is evident there For the examples you bring That there were divers Rites and Customs not only in different Churches but in different places belonging to the same Church and many Cities and Villages in Aegypt differ'd from the Mother Church of Alexandria prove nothing against us For the Diocess of Aegypt as the Notitia informs us had abundance of Provinces in it which had also their distinct Metropolitans and Laws And Alexandria however it might be the Patriarchical See or Mother Church in relation to them all was otherwise but the first Church in one of these Provinces called Provincia Aegypti primae and so a Sister Church And Socrates farther tells us That the People of Thebais which is a distinct Province also of Aegypt with its Metropolitan had this different custom from Alexandria And those whom he calls Neighbours to the Alexandrians were in all likelihood another of the Aegyptian Provinces Socrates plainly severs them one from another as distinct Provinces All this will be fully exemplified in the Diocess of Carthage in the days of St. Cyprian where there were several Provinces with their particular Bishops whose Primate he was But yet every one of those Bishops had his distinct and appropriated Power in his Province Neque quisquam nostrum se Episcopum Episcoporum constituit Quando habet omnis Episcopus libertatis suae arbitrium proprium c. Vid. Concil Carthag de haeret baptizand inter opera Cypriani But then tho' the Bishop had this Power in his own Province to establish what Rites and ways of Worship he judged most convenient yet no Man but your self or with your design ever hence asserted that each Village or Parish Church in the Province had the same Power or might erect their own mode of Worship also I remember immediately after the Conference at the Savoy which was the first Summer upon his late Majesty's happy return there came forth a large stitch'd Quarto containing the Dissenters Reasons and Argumentations against the re-establishment of our Church it was without a name but drawn up as was supposed by Richard Baxter And one of his principal heads which he much insisted on was this passage in Sozomen and Socrates I fear me you had been dabling here and so transcribed it for authentique History in their sense of it a thing in those days too usual with you And yet
your account of it being only this That by the hand of Providence it happily came to your hands which account is very scandalous Providence being the Sanctuary for every Impostor is placed in the History of the Reformation of the Church of England with the time and year when the Conference was held and hath the Character as well it may upon your terms of an Authentique Writing and hereby Dr. Burnet is equally dishonoured as an Historian with your self as a Divine of the Church of England And first that your own reputation as a Divine of the Church of England must be shrewdly called in question hereby is most manifest because this Manuscript upon your alone authority and with the Character of stupendae eruditionis theologum is made use of by the most rigid and rude of the Presbyterian Party to prove That our first Reformers did not believe a Bishop and a Presbyter to be two distinct Orders but that it is in the power and at the pleasure of the Prince to Govern by Bishops and Presbyters or by Presbyters without them And they farther hereupon assert That our own Divines were generally of the same Opinion during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth tho' Bancroft and Laud have since maintained the contrary and asserted Bishops to be by Divine Right and a distinct Order This is to be seen in Mr. Hickman's Apologia pro ejectis in Anglia ministris vulgò Non-conformistis but a particular of this passage in it is given by the Reverend Dean of Windsor Dr. Durell in his Ecclesiae Anglicanae Vindiciae cap. 28. I might add because the Erastian Party is hereby much confirmed and strengthned Now can any Man think that a true Son of the Church of England who by his relation to her alone must be supposed to believe that the Power of the Prince is quite another thing from the Power of the Church as also the Power of a Bishop from the Power of a Presbyter would willingly and under such circumstances as these have given this great advantage to the Adversary that you so manifestly have done by reprinting this Manuscript and with the approbation of the two Houses of Parliament and not add one Note in the Margent disowning the evil consequents have been drawn from it Is it not rather a yielding to them and complying with the objection giving new Strength and Sinews unto it Or is it not a thankful acceptance of the honour that was done you by the Presbyterians in the Quotation And I fear you were over-tickled with that higher Eulogy and wonderful commendation they bestow'd upon you Sure I am you could not have served them and their design more advantageously I must confess I was startled at the first reading of it Again the reputation of Dr. Burnet is equally at the Stake also as an Historian The grounds and reasons produced by the Dean of Windsor in his forementioned Vindiciae cap. 28. upon which he suspects the Manuscript to be a fraud and not the writings and determinations of Cranmer and those others whose names it bears seems to me very considerable they amount indeed to a demonstration his words are these Nam quifactum c. For how comes it to pass that these things in that Manuscript were altogether unknown to John Fox that most diligent compiler of the Acts and Monuments of Cranmer and the other Martyrs a Man over much addicted to the Faction of the Puritans and the other most diligent writers of the Church of England Whence is it that Cartwright and other ancienter Puritans heard nothing of them And they are to be believed to have heard nothing since they have made no mention of them How happens it that no one Historiographer of that time hath remembred so memorable a thing as was that Conference of so many illustrious Men concerning the affairs of so great moment For if we may believe the Manuscript there was enquiry of many and the principal heads of Religion as of the Rights of the higher Powers about holy things and those most eminent Men and learned Prelates did there dispute of them all I 'll add how came Mr. Hobbs not to find it out He was a Man well acquainted with English Story and the concurrence of Arch-Bishop Cranmer and so many of our first Reformers in his Scheme of Government which I have shew'd to be the same with this in the Manuscript would have been very pleasing unto him He did not hate our Church and Divines so much but that he was glad on each occasion to serve himself of them and did so Surely a wise Man would have consider'd these things some way or other the Doctor wanted full thoughts and a thorough consideration here to be sure and it shall go for part of his punishment for that he hath so much despised them in others Surely no one would have gone to the Press without laying these things together and their consequences but he who looks upon himself as the very Pillar of Truth which will bear out any inscription it is entituled withal and his own Authority as sufficient to make credible whatever he shall think fit to recommend to Mankind And this his Arbitrary Precarious Self-authoritative way of writing History and Record-making is so much the more culpable in the Doctor because he hath particularly blamed Peter Heylin a Man much better and honester than himself upon the like as he supposed occasion His words in his Preface after many severer Animadversions upon him are these In one thing he is not to be excused that he never vouched any Authority for what he writ which is not to be forgiven any who write of Transactions beyond their own time and deliver new things not known before so that upon what grounds he wrote the greatest part of his Book we can only conjecture For surely it is much safer and a great deal less disingenuous to produce no Authority but leave Men to their own conjectures than to produce and vouch that Authority which is false and hath no bottom at all except that of one single Doctor or in his own Language a Sceptical injudicious Youth who vouches Providence for it by which he can only mean that the Manuscript came to his hands immediately from Heaven for no humane hand reacht it unto him All Historians all Men of what sort soever that can be conceived to have been concerned in things relating that way being altogether silent about it And I shall hereafter no more believe him in whatever it is that he delivers unless I see the originals with mine own Eyes or have them vouched by a better Authority than his own than I believed the late Dialogue between him and the Groaning-Board The old malicious Fable of the Nag's-Head-Ordination by which the Emissaries of Rome defamed our Church one way as you have by your Manuscript another carries much more likelihood of truth and credibility in it For our Bishops and Divines had a meeting at the
the agreement of it in making the Foundations of its being that is Believing in Christ and walking in him to be the grounds of its Communion From whence it necessarily follows that whatsoever Church imposeth the belief of other things as necessary Articles of Faith and not only agreements for the Churches Peace which were not so antecedently necessary to the being of the Catholick Church doth as much as in it lies break the Vnity of it and those Churches who desire to preserve its Vnity are bound thereby not to have Communion with it so long as it doth so To which you add That nothing ought to be imposed as a necessary Article of Faith to be believed by all but what may be evidently propounded to all persons as a thing which God did require the explicite belief of As also That nothing ought to be required as a necessary Article of Faith but what hath been believed and received for such by the Catholick Church of all Ages All which whoso please may read more at large from Page 48. to Page 57. I having only digested it and put in as narrow a room and with as much perspecuity as I could For since the rule is He that gives must take I venture to be so bold as to tell you It is there all along very roughly and incoherently both as to matter and form even contradictorily put together by you tho' not altogether so unintelligibly but that it is plain and evident that you have quite overthrown the Jesuite For as I said before If all Articles of Faith necessary to Salvation be antecedent to the being of the Church and its Governors the Pastors of it they cannot then how great soever that Power is wherewith they are enstated by Christ be conceived to have created any one of them But the main doubt is How you will answer for those many and palpable injuries our common Christianity suffers thereby and rescue your self from the perverser conclusions which are the immediate result of your Arguing As 1. That a Man may be a Christian and not a Church Member 2. That true Faith and Obedience may be attained out of the Church 3. That the being of the Church is not necessary to Salvation 4. That the Church is a subsequent Combination for Acts of Worship 5. That Church Officers are not of the essence of the Church 6. That the exercise of the Communion of the Catholick Church adds only to her perfection And by consequence 7. That the Church doth not cease to be a Church without it any other ways than a Man ceaseth to be a Man without a Hand or a Foot. 8. That the Union of the Catholick Church depends upon its agreement in the Foundation or in that assent and belief which is antecedaneous unto it Or thus 9. That Schism which is a breach of the Churches Union does not relate to Church Officers in their Church Laws and Canons 10. That all necessary Articles of Faith are antecedent to the Catholick Church and consequently that Article of the Holy Catholick Church in our Creed 11. That the being of a Ministry is not the object of a Christian Man's Faith so as necessarily to be believed by him 12. That that Church which imposeth it as such as much as in it lies breaks the Unity of the Church And other Churches are not bound to have Communion with it so long as it does so 13. That the Church Explanations of Faith are not a necessary object of Faith. 14. That the Church ought not to explicate any one Article of Faith or deliver and recommend it in any other words for the assent of Faith than those we find in Scripture 15. That when any such Explication of Faith is made it must be made evident to all persons that God did command that Explication and require the explicite belief of it 16. That the determinations of Faith made by any Council but more particularly by the Four first General Councils are an Usurpation and Imposition upon Christendom because there is no Declaration of God's will that those higher Articles should be so explained and imposed on Christians as in those Councils they are determined 17. That Athanasius and the Homoousians were the imposers upon the Church of God in that great Controversie betwixt them and the Arians 18. That Universality as to persons time and place is not that which makes a necessary Article of Faith because all necessary Articles of Faith are supposed by you to have been antecedent to the Catholick Church as to persons time and place and consequently you must either say That the Article of the Catholick Church is no necessary Article or object of Faith or those conditions are not necessary to the making such 19. That the placing some Books of the New Testament in the Canon which were not once there for some time of the Church is an imposition 20. That all the Laws and Definitions of the Church concerning the highest Articles of Faith oblige no otherwise than when concerning an ordinary Ceremony 21. That there is no more guilt in denying the Doctrine of one Substance than in not standing up when the Nicene Creed is said supposing that a Rubrick hath injoyned it 22. That the Church of England hath put the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds into her Church service and enjoined them for an instance of her Confession of Faith when she does not require that we believe them or if she do she goes beyond her Authority 23. That she greatly erres not only in imposing the Athanasian Creed for our Confession of Faith which either she does not require us to believe or if she does we ought not to believe but turns out the Apostles Creed upon certain days to bring that in its room 24. That her breach of trust together with the affront is much more unpardonable because the Athanasian Creed is commanded to be said in the room of the Apostles on the highest days and in the highest Offices of our Christian Service and Worship viz. The great Festivals of the Year as Christmas-day Easter-day Ascension-day Whitsunday Trinity-Sunday when a more particular signal Confession of our Faith with the greatest Zeal and Ardency Courage and Resolution is implied to be a Christian Man's Duty And lastly That herein and hereby you give support and countenance to the many Sectaries that are among us as Anabaptists Socinians Independents Quakers who upon these very grounds that you have laid down to oppose the Church of Rome quite fling off the Ministry or Church of God as altogether useless as to its publick Acts of Worship or Decrees and Declarations Or else they to be sure look upon it as that which cannot be supposed absolutely necessary to Salvation And indeed the consequence comes unavoidable upon you for if that which is necessary to the Salvation of all Men be antecedent to Church Society or Ecclesiastical Communion and attainable without it you will find very little left whereby to
perswade Men to submit to that Society It is yielded that Believers in some sense are antecedent to the Church viz. as the Church is a Society vested by God with Power to oblige the whole because this Power cannot be received and vouched as true and not an imposture but upon a presumption of the Scriptures being God's revealed Word approved as such by Signs and Wonders to the Sense and Reason of all Men there being no other way whereby the truth of any Power pretending from Heaven can be tried and vouched That by which a thing is tried and made manifest must be before that which is tried by it We must first believe that God hath erected such a Society or incorporation ere we can be satisfied that it is our duty and interest to enter into it But surely no Man was ever reputed a Christian or Society of Men a Church till actually enter'd into that Church Communion and Combination nothing less can be interpreted believing in Christ and walking in Christ in the ordinary way and of extraordinary or exempt cases you cannot be understood for that would be no answer to this Adversary who was disputing of what was or ought to be ordinarily nor is there any coming to Heaven in a personal capacity i. e. not a Church Member And that Doctrine which maintains otherwise is the center of all Enthusiastical Fanatick madness to talk of a true Church with all things necessary to the being of a Church antecedent to this Church-Membership and not in relation to visible Communion and visible Duties under visible Officers and Persons is an Eutopian Scheme or building of Castles in the air Those that expect any benefit by the Redemption of Jesus out of the visible Church would do well to plead with those Gnosticks in Irenaeus That they are rendred invisible to their Judge also at the last day Adv. Haeres lib. 4. c. 9. You are so ingenuous in your Irenicum Pag. 32. as to caution the Reader That all the Rules and Practicks you there draw from the Laws of Nature were but the fictions of your own Brain and a Scheme of Nothings Your words are these A State of Nature I look upon as an Imaginary State for it is confessed by the great asserters of it That the Relations of Parents and Children cannot be conceived in a State of natural Liberty because Children so soon as Born are actually under the Power and Authority of their Parents And it is some ingagement in order to the obtaining his pardon for the impertinence and extravagances in that nature he was to meet with I think the same caution would have been equally seasonable here also for your State of Nature is not more Imaginary than your State of Grace And it will be as difficult to meet with a Christian out of the Church and independent to his Spiritual Father and Governor as to find a Child without a Father or in no tye of Duty to him Christianity is a Body by God's institution and command and not purely by after voluntary Acts of Men it can neither suppose nor leave Men at Liberty no Man lays limits to the Power and Mercy of God those that have no Law he may save without the Law and those Christians whose unhappy circumstances and harder necessity have cast them into that dry Land where no Water is or out of Church Privileges and it was not in their choice to obviate and prevent it will be saved by the Mercy of God. But then no Man ought to enlarge that which God by his Revealed Will hath bound up and limited or where his Church in her Offices and Administrations is in actual being and setled give to any the promise and assurance of Salvation out of it and take upon them the confidence to prescribe what things are necessary to the Salvation of Men as such or considered in their single and private capacities or out of the Church Society and Ecclesiastical Communion It is your own observation from Father Layne the Jesuite at the Council of Trent Iren. p. 133. That it is not with the Church as with other Societies which are first themselves and then constitute the Governors But the Governor of this Society was first himself and he appointed what Orders Rules and Laws should govern this Society And wherein he hath determined any thing we are bound to look upon that as necessary to the maintaining that Society And as our Saviour had all Power in Heaven and Earth committed to him of the Father and to him alone it was confined to his person as Mediator so he transmitted it to a certain Succession of Men only viz. the Apostles who were Governors of his Church in his absence and derived the same Power to their Successors to be continued till his coming again for the governing and guiding Mankind into all truth that brings Salvation And so far were the first Propagaters and Planters of Christianity from consenting to your methods of Salvation antecedent to this Ministry or Government that they pitcht upon the quite contrary Rules and Church combination under its Officers and in its Ordinances seems to be the first Christian Principle they taught those Candidates to whom they were sent and their first work was to setle a Ministry So St. Clemens in his Epistle to the Corinthians tells us That they constituted approved Men to be Bishops and Deacons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 over those Regions and Persons that had submitted to the truth of the Gospel upon its general motives and designed to go on to perfection unto which they could alone attain i. e. to a believing in Christ and walking in him by the help and co-operation of their Ministry And when St. John returned out of Patmos it is said That he betook himself to the Neighbouring Provinces and constituted Bishops setting whole Churches in order Euseb Eccl. Hist l. 3. c. 23. And the only notion that the Ancients have of a Church is as made up of Pastor and People Ecclesia in Episcopo Clero omnibus stantibus Cypr. Ep. 27. Ecclesiam esse plebem Sacerdoti suo adunatam gregem suo pastori adhaerentem Ep. 69. Ecclesiam non esse quae non habet Sacerdotem Hieron Adv. Lucifer Ecclesia sumitur pro coetu fidelium cum Episcopo sine quibus privatim congregare Anathema esse Conc. Gangr Can. 6. An Essential Church that is not organical appear'd not in these Coasts I confess your unusual improvement of this Argument against the Church of Rome with so much disadvantage to the Church of England was so surprizing unto me that I was inclinable to perswade my self the Fairies had changed these particular Sheets as some talk they do Children at Nurse or else that some unlucky Jesuite had Transubstantiated them But reading on I met with Reasons that made me believe it might be the Genuine Product of your own Brain you having farther declared your self with the like Liberty in these following
particulars As That the Church hath no declarative Power in matters of Faith or supposing any Article obscure to us or inverted and involved by Hereticks so that the matter of it hath not been explicitly acknowledged in all Ages of the Church anteceeding when the present Church gives the true meaning of it according to the tradition of Faith evidencing thereby the Sense of the Article or which is the same the sense of Scripture on which the Article is founded and engages the assent of all Christians thereunto That hereby she creates a new Article of Faith pag. 75 945. as if there were no mean betwixt the Power of the single Church of Rome who resolves all her actings into her own immediate Authority and the true Power of the Catholick Church of God which determines antecedent truths that were tho' less known or misinterpreted from the beginning and when the reason of her decree is not from her own Authority but the Tradition of Faith delivering the sense of the Holy Ghost down unto us That the Church representing and the Church diffusive are all one nothing can make the Church teaching and representative but the belief of what is necessary to Salvation Pag. 86 87. I thought a distant Power by Ordination had constituted the Pastors of the Church You go on at the same confused rate Pag. 251 252. I 'll only write out your words at large and let the Reader judge of them That which being supposed a Church is and being distroyed it ceaseth to be is the formal constitution of it but thus it is as to the Church The belief of Fundamentals makes it a Church and the not believing them makes it cease to be a Christian Church I speak of an essential not an organical Church And I know not who those persons are who out of those places Luk. 10.16 Matth. 28.19 20. Joh. 14.16 do infer the perpetuity of an organical Church nor if they did doth it thence follow they must suppose an infallible assistance beyond an essential 't is strange that nothing should be found betwixt these two in your own sense of them to constitute Pastors of Christ's own sending to make it an organical Church for I cannot imagine what necessity can be supposed of infallibility in order to that which may be sufficiently constituted without it The perpetuity of the Church doth rather argue the infallibility of the promise than of the Church Supposing then that the promises by you insisted on should be so far extended as to imply a perpetuity of a Christian Church what doth that argue but only this that to make it appear that promise is infallibly true there shall always be a Succession of Christians in the World Suppose I grant that the being of a Christian Church doth suppose the assistance of God's Spirit is there no assistance but what is infallible If not no one can be a Christian without infallibility for we speak of no other assistance but what is necessary to make Men Christians for what makes them such severally take them conjunctly makes them a Church But if you besides what assistance is requisite to make Men Christians do suppose somewhat more to make them a Church I pray name what it is And whatever it be it will not be own'd by such who infer a Perpetuity But if in order to that no more be meant as no more can be meant than what is necessary to make Men Christians then infallibility will grow so cheap and common I add and Church-Power and Offices together with it it will not be worth challenging by you for your Church neither will a Ministry be worth challenging by us either But this is agreeable enough with the Title you still give the Archbishop in this Treatise and as if he had no other Prelation but what is derived from his Majesty and is purely Secular you call him his Lordship only I much question Whether it might not have discomposed the Calm that most exemplary Prelate died in upon the Scaffold at Tower-Hill if he could then have been aware that he should have had such a Vindicator I cannot here but repeat it again tho' it be so very Offensive How gladly I should see the Church of Rome opposed and our common Christianity not struck at with the same blow and hand Surely the due Power of God's Church might have been vindicated and Rome's Usurpations rejected without this intermingling all as one both Priest and People as you have done here most Scandalously And at the same rate you dispute also against the Monarchical Government of the Church and an infallible judge Pag. 464. because Christ no where that we read of took care that we should be freed from all kind of Controversies and we no where find such a State of Christian Church described or promised where Men shall be of one mind only that peace and brotherly love continue is all that Christians are bound to and that every Man have the same Vnderstanding Which Arguments conclude as forcibly against any other Government even that of our Saviour himself and his Apostles were they upon Earth again and in the same circumstances as when here before Nay you have used these very Arguments against all manner of Government in your Irenicum And farther Pag. 172. you infer Because it is not in the Power of the Church of Rome judicially and authoritatively to determine what Books belong to the Canon of Scripture and what not Therefore the Church in this case is but a Jury of grand Inquest to search into matters of Fact and not a Judge upon the Bench to determine in point of Law And thereby take away all judicial Power from the Church to oblige her Members or Subjects by for their assent and submission to her Acts and Decrees upon a due search of matter of Fact and full evidence of the Truth and Certainty of those Articles Rules and Canons enjoin'd and commanded And thus you particularly affront the Practice of our own Church she having made it Law that only such a certain number of Books of the Old and New Testament be accounted and received as Canonical and withal requiring Subscription thereunto as a judge upon a Bench to be sure by all that are admitted by her into holy Orders And as you have before concluded That whatever Power can be supposed by Christ to be promised and derived to his Church from Matt. 28.19 20. c. is that which each private Christian partakes of So again Pag. 516. you say That whatever Power can be supposed in a General Council must be first in the Church diffusive and from thence be derived to the Council Which in effect is thus That the Bishops of Christendom who by right are only to sit in Council and such Presbyters as have sat and acted there did it only as their Substitutes and by virtue of their deputation receive their Power either from the Presbyters and Deacons or which is worse from the Laity
or Believers in common The Presbyters indeed make the lower House of Convocation in our Church of England but the reason of that is from a particular Law in our Kingdom which imbodies no Canons giving to them the Secular protection but such as pass the Votes of all the inferior Clergy of the Nation represented by the Presbyters that sit there as well as the Votes of the upper Clergy or Bishops Such Stuff have you put together and yet there is worse for you add The utmost then can be supposed in this case is That the parts of the Church may voluntarily consent to accept the decrees of such a Council and by that voluntary act or by the Supreme Authority enjoining it such decrees may become Obligatory As pure Irenicum as any in the World. I 'll add but one instance more by which it will farther appear how you run against or at least evade the true Power of the Bishops and Pastors of the Church vested in them by Christ for the obliging the whole and it is that of Schism which in prosecution of your foregoing notion you assert pag. 290. to be a violation of that Communion which Christians are obliged to upon the acknowledgment of the truth of Christian Religion or upon owning Christianity the way to true Happiness Quisquis ille est qualiscunque est Christianus non est qui in Ecclesia Christi non est Cypr. de Novato Ep. 52. Inde enim schismata haereses oboriuntur dum Episcopus qui unus est Ecclesiae preest superba quorundam praesumptione contemnitur Et homo dignatione Dei honoratus indignus hominibus judicatur Idem Ep. 171. Et non attendisti inter schismaticos haereticos quam magna distantia sit inde est quod ignoras quae sit sancta Ecclesia omnia miscuisti Optat. cont Parmen Donatist lib. 1. Catholicum facit simplex verus intellectus singulare verum sacramentum unitas animorum Schisma verò sparso coagulo pacis generatur deserta matre Catholica impii filii dum foras exeunt se separant à radice matris Ecclesiae invidiae falcibus amputati errando rebelles abscedunt nec possunt novum aliquid aut aliud agere quam quod jamdudum apud suam matrem didicerunt Haeretici veritatis exules sacri symboli desertores c. de se nosci voluerunt ideo falsum habent Baptisma Vobis vero Schismaticis quamvis in Catholica non sitis haec negari non possunt quia nobiscum vera communia traxistis Sacramenta ibid. the very Schism in the days of St. Paul at Corinth For if he that cometh Preacheth another Jesus whom we have not Preached or if ye receive another Spirit which ye have not received or another Gospel which ye have not accepted ye might well bear with him 2 Cor. 11.4 Immanes non habentes Dei dilectionem suam utilitatem potius considerantes quam unitatem Ecclesiae propter modicas quaslibet causas magnum gloriosum corpus Christi conscindunt dividunt quantum in ipsis est interficiunt pacem loquentes bellum operantes vere liquantes culicem camelum diglutientes Nulla enim ab iis tanta fieri potest correptio quanta est Schismatis corruptio Irenaeus l. 4. c. 62. Sed crimine Schismatis à quo immanissimo Sacrilegio nemo vestrum se dicere potest immunem quamdiu non communicat unitati omnium gentium Aug. l. 2. Cont. Petil. Donatist c. 96. Quid ergò prodest homini vel sana fides vel sanum fortasse solum fidei Sacramentum Vbi letali vulnere Schismatis perempta est sanitas charitatis per cujus solius peremptionem etiam illa integra trabuntur ad mortem Idem l. 1. de Baptismo contra Donatist c. 8. Nobiscum enim estis in Baptismo in Symbolo in caeteris dominicis Sacramentis in Spiritu autem unitatis in ipsa denique Catholica Ecclesia nobiscum non estis Ep 48. Vincentio Quisquis ab hac Ecclesia Catholica fuerit separatus quantumlibet laudabiliter se vivere existimet hoc solo scelere quod à Christi unitate disjunctus est non habebit vitam sed ira Dei manet supra eum Ep. 152. And so in the Apostles Canons Can 31. The Schismatick is he that altare aliud erigit nolente Episcopo Can. 6. Conc. Constant 2. Gen. The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are called Schismaticks tho' of a sound Faith. Schisma est recessio à proprio Episcopo Can. 13. Conc. 1 2 Constantinop And to the same effect Can. 10. Conc Carthag 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 contra proprium Episcopum I 'll add but this one Authority more and it is St. Basil ad Amphiloc Can. 1. Haereses quidem eos qui omnino abrupti sunt in ipsa fide sunt abalienati Schismata autem propter aliquas Ecclesiasticas causas medicabiles questiones inter se dissident Schisma autem est de penitentia dissentire ab iis qui sunt ex Ecclesia Haereses autem ut Manichaeorum Valentinorum Marcionistarum c. statim enim de ipsa in deum fide est dissentio herein contradicting all the ancient Fathers Doctors and Teachers of the Church of God and the whole current of Theology who still speak of Schism as a breach of the Laws and Canons Ecclesiastical of which those are guilty who receive and own the Foundation or the Scriptures as the indispensable Rule of Faith and Manners but recede from their Pastors or Bishop that break the outward peace when owning the same Articles of Faith and for little things make divisions And in this respect it is that St. Austin lays such blame upon the Donatists telling them That a true Faith will avail them nothing nay that they are worse than Idolaters Dr. Hammond in his Book of Schism considers it also in this Ecclesiastical notion and therefore concludes us to be no Schismaticks not because retaining your essentials or being of a Church consisting in a belief in Christ and walking in him but because keeping those due Subordinations in which our Christianity placed us in respect of our Church-Governors whether to the Deacon or Presbyter or Bishop Metropolitan Exarch or Patriarch as also that due co-ordination as fellow Christians without breaches of Charity made upon one another And to what end you should give this notion of it differing both from the Church of God and our own Doctors is not conceiveable only that you designed thereby to gratifie and comply with those amongst us whose Maxime is That to strike a Schismatick is to hit a Saint That Schism in this Church-Sense of it is a meer Chimera invented only by Church-men to keep the People in Dependence and Subjection unto them that Vnity does not consist in Vniformity but in owning the general Truths of the Gospel and obeying them or believing in Christ and walking
you have Mountebank'd and Quack'd for full Five and twenty Years and find your Patient worse and worse under your hands and that you are unable to work a Cure you then return him to the Church and her Laws of Discipline for a just Habit and Temperature The College of Physicians I am sure would not think themselves beholden to such an Empirick 2. The reason which you give for that great tenderness you shew'd to Dissenters when writing the Irenicum Preface pag. 84. or that plenary Toleration all Men ought to have is because the Laws were not then Established and return it upon them that they have not very well requited you for the tenderness and pity you had for them and the concernment you expressed to have brought them in upon easier terms than were since required But pray was not the Church of England the same under the Rump Parliament and Cromwel and the Committee of Safety as it now is And what had you to do to enlarge or limit her terms then more than now It was then a Pragmatick Encroachment and so it is now I do not believe that Bishop of this Church from whom you say you received in those days Episcopal Orders gave you any such Directions I am sure you received no such Authority at your Ordination by him When the Empire frowns upon the Church or Anarchy relaxates the due Exercise of her Worship and Discipline Church-men and every good Christian are to consider what is most necessary to be practised And some directions are given in the case by the Author of the Discourse of Church-Power c. cap. 5. But none are to think themselves acquitted of their Obedience to Church-Laws during the Suspension or Interregnum much less that they are Authorized to prescribe easier terms and acquit the first Obligation Besides this Answer and Practice is no ways agreeing with him who hath told us That the Church is a peculiar Society in its own Nature distinct from the Commonwealth subsisting by Powers of its own apart from it subjected in the hands of its own Officers by a Charter from Christ never to be divorced but remaining formally in the Church after its being incorporated into the Commonwealth For how can this Church be disestablished by any confusions in the State or lose this Power All that can be said in your behalf is this and I am resolved to say what is to be said for you That according to this reason you do not believe the Power that is enstated on the Officers in this Body and Association for governing the whole to extend to Acts and Laws restraining their Liberties in these cases or that the Church is a Body subsisting by her own Laws but assert the Legislative Power in the Secular Hand which being at that time so much lessened in this Church and Kingdom you thereby amongst the rest of the Arbitrary Subjects became at liberty to act apart and did so conceiving that no Law as a Church-man or in Episcopal Orders did enjoin you the contrary And hence it 's plain why in the Appendix to the Irenicum where we have also the above-mentioned Definition of a Church you say That you have slit the Hair betwixt the Church and State adjusting to each that Power which belongs to them when you name only Excommunication and Administration of the Sacraments as her Rites And hence it is as evident also as any thing can be That I did not Steal my considerable Arguments out of this Appendix which I used in behalf of that other instance of the Power of the Church viz. to govern her own Body by her own Laws the asserting whereof makes up the Body of my Discourse And it farther appears That that was not one of those points concerning which you saw reason to alter your Judgment in Twenty Years time As in the Preface to the Vnreasonableness c. 3. In that Preface pag. 53. upon the clamors of Dissenters by reason of your Sermon against Separation and that you Preached not for Abatements and Alterations and taking away Ceremonies and Subscriptions and leaving them full Liberty to do what they pleased by which you might have gained their good Opinion and have been thought to have Preach'd a very seasonable Sermon Or in plain English because you did not make Proposals for Toleration as you did a little after To all this you suggest supposing my private Opinion were never so much for some Abatements to be made that might tend to strengthen and unite Protestants and were consistent with our Nations setlement had it been seasonable to have spoken of the alteration of Laws before Magistrates and Judges who are tied up to the Laws in being What the Power of Magistrates and Judges is relating to Church-Laws I have shew'd at large elsewhere and that according to the constitution of the Empire when Christian and the Statute Book of our Kingdom since the Reformation And I do allow your Plea to be just and good Christian Magistrates always were and still are Preservers and Executors of Church-Laws the Church owes her support in a great measure unto them And it is impious as well as unseasonable for a private Man but much more for a Man in the Pulpit to make Proposals for Nullities and Repeals of those Laws and Enfranchisements which the Religious favour of the Prince hath granted God's Church and the Zeal and Vigilance of good Magistrates take care to preserve entire and serviceable unto her But yet this is not all the guilt that is contracted or undecency that is committed by such attempts There is a Church-Power which you have defined to be distinct from the State and remaining in the Church after its Incorporation into the Commonwealth And no other reason can be given why your doing the same before these Magistrates and Judges had not been alike unseasonable or why you pleaded not the equal regard which you ought to have to them also only that you in reality are still of your Irenicum judgment viz. That the other Magistrates are the Church and all Power to make Church-Laws or execute them relating to outward decency and order is invested in them and that there is no Legislative Power enstated by Christ on his Officers You who could tell your Story and defame me to your Bishop whom I honour as one that is vested with the utmost of Power that our Saviour was pleased to have continued in his Church till his coming again and do owe an Obedience in special unto him and all that are of that Sacred and Superior Order in God's Church in your Epistle Dedicatory might have consider'd also that he was your Diocesan or that Spiritual Magistrate to whom you owe a more immediate Subjection and in respect of whom an attempt to alter Establish'd Laws had been equally unseasonable Neither did the absence of his Person at the Guild-Hall Chapel render him less awful and tremendous unto you 4. When you come to the Discourse
it self Pag. 134. you seem at least too unwary in your Expression asserting That if the whole Nation in Parliament consent to the passing a Law for removal of Pastors and putting in of others this is sufficient for the satisfaction of that People to whom they are appointed as Pastors by virtue of that Power or for the making them true Pastors I yield that the right of Investiture is originally in the Secular hand and by consequence the right of deprivation upon the breach of those terms on which the Investiture is made Thus Abiathar was removed and Zadok put in his room But the question is supposing Zadok had not been of the Priestly Line Whether Solomon's placing him in the High-Priest's Chair did by virtue of his Kingly Power alone create him High-Priest and the People were thereupon bound to own and submit to his Ministry Or to bring an instance nearer home supposing an Act of Parliament appoint a certain Person to be Minister in such a Parish when he is really no Minister because without Ordination from a Bishop Whether by virtue of that Law he is made a true Minister and ought to be received as such by that People to whom by Act of Parliament he is sent No understanding Christian will own him as his Minister upon such terms We have a great instance of this nature in the Church of Scotland about Fourteen Years since The Secular Power commanded Dr. Burnet Archbishop of St. Andrews to admit into particular Churches and in the relation of Ministers certain Men that had no Episcopal Orders and by consequence were not of the Gospel Priesthood the most excellent and exemplary Prelate refused for this reason Because the Prince may promote to what temporal Possessions he please but he cannot promote to the Authority which is Spiritual as to the former he must be submitted to but not as to the latter And his Lordship was a great example of the last case for denying their Institution he was Suspended from his Bishoprick and sustained it with a due resignation tho' the Government upon second thoughts restored him with greater honour and estimation in which he died But as to the more immediate question and which occasioned this Section you ought to have urged That the consent of the People did not constitute a Minister neither was it any necessary qualification in order to it as Mr. Baxter and his Combination pretended But instead of doing this you reply That an Act of Parliament is sufficient to constitute him such which savours too much of the old Vessel I confess the consequents would be really evil in the Government both of Church and State if he be an Usurper in a Parish to whom the People do not consent the disorders thereby must become intolerable and the consequents would be as noxious on the other hand if the Parliament had the Power of qualifying for it For then the Ministry will be quite swallowed up in the State and every Usurper be his Religion what it will may alter the Priesthood or as in the days of Jeroboam make Priests of whom he please But thus it fares with your Arguments and it is their usual fault That they prove too much You take away Infallibility and the Ministry at once in other places and maintain here the Secular Power to the destruction of the Spiritual I 'll receive him in Seculars whom my Prince is pleased to set over me but none in Spirituals who hath not an Authority which the Secular hand cannot derive unto him 5. But that which crowns all is Pag. 300. when you scatter those mists which some pretend to have before their Eyes that they cannot clearly see what we mean by the Church of England and tell us it is so called because it was received by the common consent of the whole Nation in Parliament Surely if now we be not a Parliament Church we never were in the opinion of any nor ever shall be Should any Man ask me what the Church of England is I would tell him It is that due Succession of Authority Doctrine Worship and Discipline which are now made Law in the Kingdom of England but if that Law ceaseth to own and protest them I should not thereby think it to become less the Church of England For certain there was a Church of England when there was no Parliaments in England according to those who carry their aera or date to the highest pitch And we say There was the very Church of England that now is and neither Parliament nor Pope had appeared in our Coast Besides What if the Parliament of England pass a Bill of Abjuration against the present Church as they did the other day against the Crown of England The Rump Parliament did it Why then your definition of the Church of England is much at the same as Socrates defined a Man Homo est Animal bipes implume A Man is a living Creature with two Feet and without Feathers Diogenes's Jackdaw was as good a Man when he had pluckt his Feathers off The being of the Church of England does not depend upon any such outward advantages or upon the Votes of the People whether in Parliament or out of it We thankfully own the outward advantages she has had and now enjoys by Parliaments but we own withal her separate Being abstracted from them the Church of God here in England is antecedent to them all One while I was willing to think That this Book was wrote by you at a time when the general design was on Foot for enlarging the Privileges of Parliaments or rather of the House of Commons by the Men of Shaftsbury and you might think your self engaged to cast in something and if so you add that which is very considerable making the Being of the Church of England to depend upon their owning and acceptance of it The Kingdom must have Parliaments once a Year at least only for this for otherwise we may have no Church once a Year But then again this seems not to be the reason because I find you to have been of the same Judgment some years before and you reckon up this among the Encroachments and Usurpations of the Bishop of Rome and spoil thereby a good cause viz. That Acts of Parliament were no certain indications of the Judgment of the Church or the generality of the People in that time Answer to Mr. Cressy's Epistle Apologetical c. pag. 448. I must therefore conclude that you were somewhat discomposed neither is this the only unwary expression you have let fall within the distance of one or two Pages For you there mix the Pastors and People together as of the same Church diffusive You say farther That to assert in every Church a constitutive regent part as essential to it is the same as the Pope's universal Pastorship And again That the Acts of the Convocation are to be allow'd and enacted by the King and the three States of the Kingdom Flatly against the King's Prerogative in making Church-Laws by the Convocation alone As also your term National Church is as incongruous as any National Congregational Classical are Relatives and give life to one another 6. It doth not appear why you Reprinted that scandalous Manuscript which so immediately opposeth all Church-Power in the utmost latitude of it and by the Authority of so many of our most eminent Reformers Nay farther with an artifice to conceal Archbishop Cranmer's Retraction unless it be to give all the seeming Authority you could to the Doctrines there asserted There is not one Note in the Margent by which it appears that you had then altered your first conceptions of it as Printed in the Irenicum Nay you have own'd and justified it in part in your Epistle to my Lord of London or if there be any alteration made it is least there might be occasion to suspect that Cranmer had deserted you 3. And in the last place you have made no satisfaction at all to the Church of God for that Irenicum Doctrine which equals the Presbyter with the Bishop There is not any thing like amends for it in all your writings that I have met with It is true you often speak of Episcopacy as the most ancient Government derivable from the Apostles But you have not any where asserted it in the number of those Institutions and Practices Apostolical which are perpetual and immutable And until you say this all you can say besides is to no purpose The Bishop is notwithstanding at the mercy of your Prince or your Presbyters when their prudence sees fit to degrade and depose him There is no more Obligation to continue the distinct order of Bishops than that order of Widows in the Epistle to Timothy And thus Sir I have shew'd that you have not made due satisfaction for those errors in your Irenicum concerning the Power of the Church in general and the constitution of our Church in particular of which I accused you in my Letter dated May 1. 1682. I have also shew'd more at large the grounds of my Accusation I beg only this Favour of you That if you think fit to return an Answer you will do it in a Scholar-like way i. e. by Argument and Matter of Fact not Raylings and Nick-names it is really below your quality in the Church to Act Andrew Marvel It was thought by J. O. to be a thing below him And therefore we know on whom he set that Buffoon when his case was much at one with yours and he wanted argument Besides tho' Dr. Burnet was pleased to assign me the Province yet I am not at leasure to catch Flies But if you keep to these terms I shall certainly make a reply and you will thereby oblige Novemb. 6. 1685. Reverend Sir Your Humble Servant SIMON LOWTH FINIS