Suar. Tolet. Cajet alii quos citat sequitur Bonac tract de decalog d. 3. q. 9. pu unic prop. 3. nu 4. 5. according to the Catholick doctrine to relie for it is a mortal sin to tempt God by expectation of miracles And is there any man of sense will say That a dispensation which draweth along with it so much evil could either be in it self just or have a just cause specially where the cause pretended is the declining of a sin in adhering to a Cessation wherein or in which adhering we have manifestly proved no sin could be committed Nay We have evinced the said Cessation could not be not adhered unto or could not be rejected by the Council and Confederates without most grievous and fearful sins and we have shewed this to be the constant doctrine of the Catholick Divines and of the Church of God and that when the contrary was practised through ignorance and temerity the experience was fatal and cost them dear Thirdly By reason of the disesteem it would bring upon all Confederacy and of the unsecurity manifest danger and confusion it would bring upon and throw into all Christian States and Governments For if by such dispensations and upon such grounds the common Subject could be withdrawn from his Allegiance and with a good Conscience rebel what Prince what State or Republick nay what private man could live one day in security whereas they often see before their faces such boundless enraged ambition and such cruel designs of some Prelates may this be spoken without disparagement to so many other great and good Prelates who by their vertuous lives and apostolical doctrine support States Kingdoms and Monarchies of Christianity as in particular several are seen to use with us at this present such praise-worthy endeavours for the preservation of the Confederates If together with this example it were maintained as a Catholick Tenet That such Prelates or Churchmen could at their pleasure or upon such designs challenge and assume a power of the Fortunes Estates Crowns Lives of Kings and Republicks by dispensing with particulars or promiscuously with the multitude or any other in their due obedience and Oaths of Allegiance what should not be hourly feared Lastly which is hence consequent by reason of the aversion and hatred it would breed in all Infidels and Sectaries against our Religion For what Prince State or Commonwealth of any other Religion would admit of ours if our doctrine of dispensations in the Subjects Allegiance were so destructive of all Policy and good Government and so cruelly wicked Let us therefore here and evermore stop our Christian ears from such blasphemies against the Law of God and the Faith of the Holy Roman and Universal Church in all Ages to this present time And let us leave such Antichristian principles to Luther Calvin and such other infernal Furies who covered a great part of Europe with the blood of Christians by doctrine in substance not unlike this but certainly no worse than this and whereby they at their pleasures armed the Subject against the Prince and the People against the Magistrate for the destruction of Christianity and of the Church of God Read the Catholick Author who writ on Fox's Kalendar of Martyrs where he at large rehearseth the dangerous anarchical and bloody principles of late Sectaries specially of Puritans The Seventh and last Querie answered AS the present proceedings of the Lord Nuncio highly entrench with submissive reverence to his Grace we say it on all Supreme Governors on the Law of Nations the Honour of the Confederates and brings a scandal on our Holy Mother the Catholick Church which contrary to his Lordships proceedings teacheth and warranteth Promises Leagues Contracts Cessations and Peace made with Hereticks to be Religiously performed as we have seen in the second Supposition made in our Answer to the first Querie and in the Authors there cited and teacheth as we have seen before that all Subjects both Laicks and Ecclesiasticks Priests Fryers Jesuites Bishops Archbishops Patriarchs Cardinals are bound under mortal sin and eternal damnation to obey all Orders of the Civil Magistrate wherein evil and sin doth not manifestly appear which we have sufficiently proved not to appear in their orders concerning this great difference so it must follow that none of either state Temporal or Ecclesiastical may without shipwrack of his Conscience and loss of his Soul disobey the orders of the Supreme Council on sole pretence of the present proceedings of the Lord Nuncio these proceedings being now declared by strong and insoluble reasons to be unjust illegal invalid sinful commanding and enforcing to most enormous and execrable sins of Infidelity Perjury Rebellion Treason and to so many other abominable Crimes which stream out of these evil sources Whence is apparent how unsatisfactory and ignorant their Answer is who to excuse their disobedience to the Council alledge the Commands of their spiritual Superiours Guardians Pryors Provincials Bishops the Lord Nuncio c. to the contrary as if such Commands or of such Superiours or of any else whosoever temporal or spiritual were of more force to oblige their Consciences than the Commandments of God and than his Law which according to the Declaration made thereof unto us by St. Paul the Apostle Rom. 13. and by the doctrine of the Church of God the Holy Fathers and Catholick Doctors in all Ages on pain of eternal damnation enjoin both them and all such their Superiours whatsoever either of the Secular or Regular Clergy to obey the Council in all matters where manifest sin doth not appear And that sin doth not appear in any of the Commands of the Council concerning the faithful observation of this Agreement made with Inchiquyn yea notwithstanding any Censures of the Lord Nuncio we have more than sufficiently manifested and they who make this ignorant answer confess in regard it could not be hitherto found what Article or part of the Cessation might be with reason maintained to be sinful as by their flying to this strait they are constrained Otherwise certainly if they could shew any evil or sin therein they would rather make use of so reasonable an excuse for opposing the Decrees of the Council than of so bad a pretext as blind obedience to the Commands of Superiours who are as they obliged by the Law of God to be wholly subject to the Council for what concerns the peace and tranquility of the Commonwealth Wherefore what they call obedience to their Superiours is no true nor vertuous obedience but vitious but sinful but against their Conscience but damnation to their Souls as the Apostle hath because it implies plain disobedience to and transgression of the Commands of God who must be obeyed before all men of the earth Will any even of themselves deny but their obedience to the Commands of their Superiours enjoining them Rapine Theft Murther Adultery Sacriledge c. or enjoing them never to confess their sins never to pray
in his own Conscience and both before God and man confess it when he reflected on so many Texts of Holy Scripture especially on that of St. Paul 13 Rom. and on the Doctrine and Expositions of all the Holy Fathers and on the practice not only of the Primitive Church but of all ensuing Churches throughout the World and of both Laity and Clergy until Gregory the VII time some Ten entire Ages after Christ and all for the independency of the civil Power of Princes from the Church as also for the subjection of the Church in civil matters to earthly Princes Humane nay and daily humane Experience also forasmuch as we see it Taught by so many famous Divines and read in their Books That it is not alwayes safe in point of Conscience to follow that opinion in practice which in pure speculation seems probable to us nay or even that which so seems the more probable whereof I could instance a variety of Examples and see it taught and read in them consequently That some may have a pure speculative opinion as probable nay as the more probable to them for such or such a power to be in the Church in actu primo and yet not this other annexed consideratis omnibus That it is lawful for the Church to proceed at any time to the execution of it And forasmuch also as all Ghostly Fathers or the Judicious and who are of a timorous Conscience nay and others too besides Ghostly Fathers daily find it so in themselves at least in such cases wherein they know that if possibly they should err and transgress against the objective Truth of Things and Laws by following in practice such a speculation as upon some ground or other seems to them to be probable or even the more probable they may run a great hazard to undergo the punishment due in the justice of God for such breach whereas they are absolutely certain that whether their such speculation be true or false yet if they in practice follow the contrary opinion or speculation there is no Law at all as much as objectively taken which may be transgressed by them As for Example in case of such a pure speculative opinion of a power in ones self to force away his Horse or Purse or House or Lands or Lordship or Principality from another who both himself and Predecessors was and were ever till then bona fide in peaceable possession and were so if it was a Lordship or Lands c. for a Thousand years For in such a case there can be no sin no breach of any Law in not Conforming in practice to the speculation but there may be in Conforming And consequently common experience also in the daily regulation of our own Conscience tells us there must not of necessity be such a connexion of dictates Besides who sees not that whether so or no there was not in England at least in the dayes of Thomas of Canterbury any Law making it Treason to hold That the Christian Church in some extraordinary case might transfer the Right of that Crown from Henry the Second As for Example in case he had really Apostatized and not only from the true Papacy or from Pope Alexander to the Anti-Pope Victor but even from Christianity it self as some of his Ambassadors to Rome and the Bishop of London in some of his Letters extant in Hoveden seemed to Threaten either the one or the other T is true I am against the Doctrine which attributes any such power to the Church as a Church or to it at all de jure divino and much more against the lawfulness of putting such pretence in execution But hence it doth not follow That as much as in my judgment the Doctrine of such power or of such practick lawfulness is Treasonable at least in all Times and all Countries For the Church may some time and in some Countrey have such a power by meer humane Right And whether she have or no where the Law of the Countrey doth not make the practice Treason or the Doctrine or Dictate Treasonable neither can be so Each or both may be unconscientious erroneous injurious and wicked at least according to the objective Truth of Things and Laws of God in themselves but to be Treason or Treasonable is another thing I said That in the dayes of Thomas there was no such Law in England for I leave it to the Learned and Reverend Judges of England to determine Whether after the Laws of Praemunire by Edward the Third and Richard the Second were made and that Declaration in this of Richard the Second made by joint consent of the Bishops too That the Crown of England is subject to none but God it be Treasonable Doctrine in England to teach the contrary I am sure the like in France and of France though extremely and most justly too censured by all the Universities of France and the Abettors or Teachers of such degraded lately in Schools and otherwise punished yet Cardinal Peron's interposition in the time of Henry the Third of France by his fine speech in the Assembly of Estates hinderâ—d it from being then declared Treason or Treasonable or Heresie or Heretical and ever since from being accounted or punished as Treason or Treasonable though of late severely and I think justly proceeded against as at least false erroneous scandalous dangerous against the Word of God c. And yet I am sure also That whether it be so or no at this time either in France or England St. Thomas of Canterbury cannot be said to have been or to be concern'd You will say again perhaps objecting your very last and strongest reserve That whatever may be said to excuse his principles of Judgment or Doctrine from being Treasonable for that I mean which appears in any of his Epistles or in that Speech of his at Chinun or other extant nothing can be said to excuse him from actual Treason which is more and worse For you will say That the Archbishop of York and Bishop of London and Salisbury did so charge him when after his return he refused to absolve them but on such a condition as they would not lie under without the Kings consent and when therefore they having cross'd the Sea to the old King the Father to Normandy they sent an Express back to England and to the young King to persuade the said young King That Thomas had sought and endeavoured to depose him Qui ei persuaderent sayes Spondanus out of Baronius and Baronius out of the Saints own 73 Epist which was his last to Pope Alexander Thomam quaesivisse cum deponere But I answer That such a charge of his such publick and profess'd Enemies was not is not to be at all believed without other proof than their own such private suggestion of it by their own Messenger to the young timorous King That no Relation or History makes mention not only not of any proof but not as much as of any
sense of them and moreover also their doctrine or perswasion of the exemption of Clergy-men in particular from the Secular or civil Power and Laws as will at large appear in the end of this discourse give just occasion to believe they do not mean any obligation under pain of sin by that theirs of conscience I say that not to take notice of these or of any more such of lesser moment or less appearing changes either in the words or sense I observe secondly the great and clear and most material change can be in four several Instances and this partly by a manifest and purposed omission and partly by equivocation First Instance That the former printed Remonstrance of 61. hath in clear express words Line the 2 3 and 4. a Declaration of a tye under pain of sin on the Catholick Subjects to be obedient in all civil and temporal things to his Majesty as much as the Laws and rules of Government in this Kingdom require at their hands For the words of the former as to this point are these And therefore we acknowledge our selves to be obliged under pain of sin to obey your Majesty in all civil and temporal affairs as much as any other of your Majesties Subjects and as the Laws and rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at our hands This later hath of set purpose and to evade the acknowledgment of of any tye of conscience what ever they mean by conscience from the Laws of the Land or rules of Government hath I say changed that clause and formed it thus Consequently we confess our selves obliged in conscience to be as obedient to your Majesty in all civil and temporal affairs as any Subject ought to be to his Prince and as the Laws of God and nature require at our hands Declining so of purpose the Laws of the Land or the municipal and humane politick Laws whether those are called common or those are termed statute-Statute-laws and all other rules of State-government by Proclamations or otherwise for the peace of the Country ordained by men whether ecclesiastical or civil And consequently declining the acknowledgment of any obligation of conscience on the Subscribers to this later form from such humane laws and rules For although according to the doctrine and conscience of the former Subscribers to the first Protestation or that of 61. the very laws of God and nature oblige them to be obedient to the King in all civil and temporal affairs even according to the humane laws and rules of Government of the Land albeit they had never expressed it in their Protestation which yet they did of purpose to avoid all jealousies of equivocation or mental reservation and to declare expresly against the ill grounded opinions or doctrines in that point of some late School-men and Writers of their Church whereof some vainly teach the civil Power and Laws cannot oblige any under pain of sin Others no less vainly that at least they cannot so oblige Clergy-men as being no way subject to the coercive part or power of them but at most and only ex aequo bono to their direction yet according to the publickly declared judgment and doctrine of these other Subscribers or the late Assembly subscribing this their own other form and according their judgment I say on the very point and contradiction of it they will have themselves so understood as that they conceive and believe that neither the laws of God or nature oblige them in conscience so to obey his Majesty either by an active or passive obedience in all civil or temporal affairs or to obey him as much as the laws and rules of Government in this Kingdom do require at their hands but on the contrary speak and teach even many of them publickly and almost all universally in private that they do not oblige them in conscience to be so obedient which is the reason they found this change of this clause very material Second Instance is In the total change of the two next and most material clauses of all those contained in that former Protestation of 61. I mean those And that notwithstanding any power or pretension of the Pope or See of Rome or any sentence or declaration of what kind or quality soever given or to be given by the Pope his Predecessors or Successors or by any authority spiritual or temporal proceeding or derived from him or his See against your Majesty or your Royal Authority we will still acknowledge and perform to the uttermost of our abilities our faithful loyalty and true allegiance to your Majesty And we openly disclaim and renounce all forrain power be it either Papal or Princely spiritual or temporal in as much as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this obligation or shall any way give us leave or licence to raise tumults bear arms or offer any violence to your Majesties person Royal Authority or to the State or Government And this Instance further is in the clear omission not only of this passage in the next period of that Remonstrance of 61. line the 12. Be they framed or sent under what pretence or patronized by what forrein power or authority whatsoever but also in the like wilfull omission of the two intire periods immediatly following viz. And further we profess that all absolute Princes and supream Governours of what religion soever they be are Gods Lieutenants on earth and that obedience is due to them according to the laws of each Commonwealth respectively in all civil and temporal affairs And therefore we do here protest against all doctrine and authority to the contrary All which four intire periods besides that part here likewise noted of a fifth the only material clauses or declarations not only of that Remonstrance of 61. but which might or may be of any other home to the purpose this Congregation of Dublin in 66. wittingly and willingly and purposely and obstinatly would and have accordingly omitted in their Protestation and would have it so notwithstanding so many convincing reasons given them publickly and privatly for six dayes together and notwithstanding that both the expedience and absolute necessity was so declared unto them why they should and ought by such express clauses renounce the doctrines whence their own so well known so late and so fatal practises of the generality of the Clergie of Ireland since 41. but more especially since the congregations of Waterford in 46. and Jamesstown in 50. did flow and so refused to insert them and as well for any part as the whole of them either in word or sense in their own form which they framed or fixed on of purpose to decline both the words and sense and as well the sense as words of those four several periods as likewise of any other material expressions in the Remonstrance of 61. and so I say fixed on this form which now they call their own because signed by them although not framed
free to disown and disacknowledge him at such times and to such persons as they shall think good or expedient And so I conclude this my second and long Instance The third Instance briefly is in their voluntary and purposed omission and even upon the contradictory question both privatly and publickly so often made to them about this omission of the immediate preamble that in the Remonstrance of 61. goes before the Protestation therein inserted We know what odium all the Catholick Clergie lies under by reason of the calumnies with which our tenets in religion and our dependence upon the Popes Authority are aspersed And we humbly begg your Majesties pardon to vindicate both by the ensuing Protestation which we make in the sight of Heaven and in the presence of your Majesty sincerely and truly without equivocation or mental reservation Their omission I say of this preamble as to the last words without equivocation or mental reservation or of any other words in lieu thereof that might signifie or import so much Which voluntary purposed omission of theirs at least in so much contradiction of it and in the present circumstances evidently confirms the reasonableness of all the several exceptions made hitherto all along this Paper And that they did omit these words or any equivalent of set purpose to reserve unto themselves a liberty of equivocation and mental reservation in all and every the several clauses of theirs just as those Fathers of the Franciscan Order in their meeting at Killiby 1665. and in their framing there another though fan better Remonstrance that which they sent under the great Seal of their Province to my Lord Lieutenant then at London expresly refused to insert therein any word at all against equivocation or mental reservation nor could by any reasons be induced to insert such as those that were present with them do testifie In imitation or pursuance of which omission and refusal of the said Franciscans and for the same ends proposed by them unto themselves this General Congregation of these Representatives of the whole Irish Clergie both Secular and Regular hath done the like here Which being so I would faine know of themselves again as it hath been several times already demanded of them publickly in their said meeting but never answered to what purpose is their Protestation or what assurance of their fidelity can the King derive from thence Fourth and last instance is in their omission likewise of the sequel or of the final petitionary address and resignation in the Remonstrance of 61. and I mean their omission of the last passage only or of the two last lines which contained the foresaid resignation But that I may be the better understood in this matter I must give first the genuine words and whole tenor of that sequel petition and resignation which the Remonstrants of 61. made thus These being the tenents of our Religion in point of loyalty and submission to your Majesties commands and our dependence of the See of Rome no way intrenching upon that perfect obedience which by our birth by all lawes divine and humane we are bound to pay to your Majestie our natural and lawful Soveraign we humbly begg prostrat at your Majesties feet That you be pleased to protect us from the severe persecution we suffer meerly for our profession in Religion leaving those that are or hereafter shall be guilty of other crimes and there have been such in all times as well by their pens as by their actions to the punishment prescribed by the law Now it is to be observed that one of the very first and greatest exceptions by several Priests and Church-men of Ireland against that Remonstrance then was That in these two last lines was contained though not so clearly and expresly yet virtually or implicitly a resignation or renunciation of Ecclesiastical Immunitie or which is the same thing a subjection of Priests and Bishops and other Clergie-men and this by their own free offer to the punishment of secular Courts and Magistrats and even to the punishment of such Courts and Magistrats as are not of their own Religion That such resignation is unlawful or sinful against the lawes of God and holy Church That by these lawes of the Church nay and according to the opinion or Doctrine of great Divines of the Roman Communion by the very lawes of God Clergie-men are exempt from the secular power lawes tribunals as at least to any Coercion or punishment to be inflicted on them by such That Clergie-men are not obliged to own any other subjection to the civil lawes courts power Magistrat or Prince but that of a meer passive direction not of coaction or coercion at all That by the directive part or virtue of the civil law they are not bound in conscience or under pain of sin but only ex aequo et bono That finally being the civil lawes and power cannot bind them in conscience under pain of sin but where the lawes of God positive or natural or the Canons of the Church joyntly bind them and for as much only and solely as such lawes of God or Canons of the Church bind them and being these Canons of the Church or Papal constitutions do not only not bind them for they do not seem once to reflect on the lawes of God as they are sufficiently declared in holy Scripture and positive in binding them to subject themselves to Kings or their lawes at least as to the coercive power of such but expresly bind them to the contrary and excommunicat them if they subject themselves so or at least their persons what ever be said of lands or goods which in all cases are by the said constitutions wholy exempt until after degradation they be freely delivered over by the Ecclesiastical Judge to the secular power and being moreover that it is an act of such transcendent virtue to oppose the secular power intrenching on at least these personal immunities or exemption of Clergie-men that St. Thomas of Canterbury was therefore canonized a martyr and hath been these 400. years by the Catholick Church publickly invoked as such with God in glory it must follow consequently out of all here said that the said resigning perclose of that Remonstrance of 61. must have been sinful and scandalous All which objections having been made use of by many these 4. years past upon several occasions though without sufficient ground in the foresaid passage words or any proper meaning of them conceivable by unbyassed Readers for to such I am sure those words can import no more than a resolution in the subscribers not to interpose for any of their Country and Communion that should happen thenceforth to be punishable by the lawes for other crimes then such only as by the letter of the law are accompted or presumed crimes for professing and serving God according to the belief rites and manner of worship used throughout the world amongst Catholicks that communicat with the See of Rome not
all the Municipal Laws and Oecumenical Canons too summon'd to Rome by His Holiness and are bound in Conscience to obey yea notwithstanding any command of the King or supreme temporal Magistrate to the contrary That not only the Commands of His Holiness but those also of His Delegates for example the Generals of Orders are to be in the same manner punctually obey'd by their respective Inferiours notwithstanding any contradiction of the Laws or King or any other onely the Pope excepted still who countermands all both men and Laws at His pleasure That He can suspend correct alter and utterly abolish any Imperial Royal or Municipal Constitution Custom or Law whatsoever in any State or Kingdom of the World as He shall think expedient That even so He may all Church-Canons of Discipline or Reformation whether they were made by a Diocesan or Provincial or National or even Oecumenical Synod truly such That neither the very Canons of Faith agreed upon by the most truly Oecumenical Council that ever was or can be are of any force if He alone dissent though otherwise all the Bishops Priests Doctors and People too of the Christian World every one had unanimously consented to them That His Papal Decretals Constitutions or Bulls from the instant that they are publish'd or fix'd up in acie Campi Florae or wherever else He ordains do according to their tenour presently oblige in Conscience all the Faithful throughout the whole Earth or such as are respectively concerned That He alone hath the absolute power of bestowing all Ecclesiastical Titles Benefices Offices Jurisdictions Cures from the Patriarchical to the Parochial and that being otherwise given than from Him or assumed otherwise than by His Authority they are Nullites before God and ought to be so reputed by all men and that whosoever denies this to be so is an Heretick That He alone hath likewise the absolute power not of translating only but of suspending excommunicating deposing and degrading all of them even the very Patriarchs themselves without being tyed in such procedure to the formality of Laws or Canons That He alone hath power to erect New Bishopricks unite and divide the Old give the Pall priviledge Vniversities create new Religious Orders multiplies them to what number He please extinguish them when He will c. exempt them and whom He please besides from the jurisdiction of Bishops Ordinaries and all other Persons and Powers except from Himself and His Authority That finally He alone is the Vicar of Christ on Earth And therefore in the first place He must have not a Paternal power only but a Despotical Princely and absolute Lordly power in and over the Church Militant and consequently over all General Councils to do therein what seems fit to Him in the second place His jurisdictional Authority must extend to Heaven and Hell and Purgatory thirdly without any question He hath a never-failing assistance of the Holy Ghost so that all His definitions at least in matters of Faith (a) The Colledge of the French Jesuites a Clermont in their printed Theses of the 12th of December 1662 held That the Pope is Infallible also in matters of Faith XIX Christum nos ita caput agnoscimus ut illius Regimen dum in Coelos abiit primum Petro tum deinde Successoribus commiserit eamdem quam habuit Ipse Insallibilitatem concesserit quoties ex Cathedra loquerentur XX. Datur ergo in Ecclesia Romana Controversiarum Fidei Judex Infallibilis etiam extra Concilium Generale tum in Questionibus Juris tum Facti c. Propagnabuntur Deo Duce auspice Virgine in Aula Claromontani Collegii Societatis Jesu die xii Decembris 1661. are and must be universally and perpetually true and Himself an infallible Judge in them in the fourth place which is consequent to the other He hath owing to Him from all Mortals such a perfect nay such a blind obedience That if He define Virtue to be Vice and Vice to be Virtue they ought to believe Him and if they do not they cannot be saved unless peradventure invincible ignorance excuse them and lastly to sum all in a word He is Dominus Deus noster Papa our Lord God the Pope as the Glossator (b) Zenzelinus de Cassanis in fine Glossae extravag Cum inter de verb. signif of His own Canon Law stiles Him * Aâ—stimant Papam esse unum Deum qui habet potestatem omnem in Coelo in Terra Johan Gerson Tom. ii circa materiam Excommunicationum Irregularitat Consider 11. V. That notwithstanding the incredibility of these and some other such vain Positions and of all and every of their necessary antecedents and consequents yet they all and especially the Monarchical or Despotical or rather indeed Tyrannical I am sure unreasonable and very destructive Powers ascribed in them to the Pope are every one with no lower pretence than of Divine Right and Immediate Institution of Christ maintain'd either in formal or virtual terms nay in formal the chiefest of them and such as infer the rest not only by too many of our most Famous and most Classical Authors (c) For Authors at this time Cardinal Peter Bertrand onely who lived 300 years ago may suffice whom a numberless number have ever since followed in his pernicious Doctrine which you may read Addit ad Gloss Extr. unam Sanctum de Major Obed. of all sorts Canonists Historians and Divines since the Schools began but also by the far greater authority of the Roman Bishops (d) For Popes also in this place let Boniface VIII alone suffice both in his said Extravag unam Sanctam and in many other Decretals but especially in his famed Letter to Philip Le Bel of France themselves since Pope Hildebrand's time And three only but wretchedly abused Texts of the Gospel viz. Ecce duo gladii Luc. 22.38 and Quodcunque ligaveris c. Mat. 16.19 and Pasce Oves meas Joan. 21.17 must serve the turn however against the plain design of the whole Gospel it self to drive directly by such Positions at the proper scope of the Alcoran and establish in the Church of Christ a worser Tyranny than that of Mahumetans and Mamalukes VI. That Cardinal Caesar Baronius the famous Ecclesiastical Annalist who seems in truth to have had no other end so much to heart in writing his twelve laborious Tomes as to heap together how well or ill soever all the Topicks he could imagine for asserting to the Bishops of Rome the foresaid universal Monarchy both in Spirituals and Temporals over the whole Earth yet fearing his Arguments driving at and deriving from or grounding it on a Jus Divinum or Divine Right and immediate institution of Christ would not convince any labours at last exceedingly though all in vain in several of his said Tomes of Annals to entitle His Holiness at least by Humane Right or Humane Title as for Example by Donation or Oblation or Submission or Prescription
defiled but certainly hold upon that matter in 〈◊〉 To be 〈◊〉 the Answers were 1. That it very ill â—â—ted with the profession of the followers of Christ and Successors of his Apostles and Disciples or the function of Priests of God and Preachers of Evangelical tâ—â—â—â— by their calling for any earthly regard or ambitious aim of titles or diguleies either 〈…〉 of the Church to decline the declaration of their conscience or of the doctrine of Christ whereby the stocks on people 〈◊〉 their charge or to whom they were sent might be sâ—â—â—dly and sufficiently instructed that to embrace 〈…〉 to 〈◊〉 as prescribed by the law of God That besides they were altogether ouâ— in their way to those worldly and they proposed themselves with so little regard of their duty or conscience That the case was much altered 〈◊〉 that hath been these hundred years pasts And that if they expected a greater liberty they should withal expect a more arrow inspection from the Prince or State into their affairs and Government and to the persons amongst them advanced 〈◊〉 others and to the means and wayes of their advancement hereafter and their 〈◊〉 its consequently principles and faithfulness to the Crown 2. That 〈◊〉 of them as formerly had been so with â—unate and indeed most of them were so as to have been pactiâ—â—s in the Nunâ—â—o's and other annexed quarrels against the brights of the Crown 〈…〉 of the Kingdom had the 〈◊〉 reason now to be forward to embrace the opportunity given them of meâ—â—ing hereafter a better opinion and removing as well as they might out of His Majesties breast Lord Lieutenants and even out of all the rest of their fellow Subjects especially Protestants the jealousies and suspicions their former actions continue yet in them and must alwayes continue if they refuse to give so lawful and dutiful so catholick and conscientious an argument of their change and repentance as their subscription to the said Remonstrance must be reputed 3. That for those others of them who in the 〈…〉 him been honest and loyal all along they should 〈…〉 the fair hope they had of a â—ew 〈…〉 its a 〈…〉 then this for their further good 〈…〉 their profession and â—â—â—ingâ—ed 〈◊〉 of their 〈…〉 uniform in in their doctrine and life according to the law of God in all sentiâ—â—â— that Time servers nor Wealth â—â—ckâ— That besides they should confides the streight the King was in but with so 〈…〉 the impossibility of satisfying 〈…〉 happen in such a case that of this Countrey but why 〈…〉 That to the publick good and gâ—â—â— parts of the Kingdom 〈…〉 of particular could not be preferred That they 〈…〉 be of the necessities of the publick for disposition And if the King or now Laws did wrong any even of the best deserving of their friends their religion and their conscience and principles told them and their function or calling peculiarly they nor other Subjects had in such a case other remedy but prayers and tears and supplications to Him that can believe the oppressed when he please in this world and will certainly 〈…〉 in Christian patience in a better Finally that the liberty 〈◊〉 exercise of Religion and of indoctrinating the People in the wayes to heaten were the markâ— propâ—r 〈◊〉 them to shoâ— at and to this end they were called not to contend for partitions of earthly patrimonies And that where one Proprietor 〈◊〉 his â—and a thousand Catholicks would loose their souls if they would not pursue in 〈◊〉 even course the principles of the Religion and a good Conscience and by their concurrence wipe off the jealousies raised against and scandals aspersed on it by the doctrine and practises which that Remonstrance did condemn on disown 4. To those that had ingrafted in them an aversioâ— against all was called or reputed the Interest of the Crown of England in this Countrey it was seriously inculcated how unfortunate both themselves and predecessors had been therein during the revolâ—â—â—â—s and various attempts in prâ—secution thereof these 500 years past since Hâ—â—ty the 2d And how the principles and arguments they made use of to flatten themselves to some kind of â—â—â—â—fulness which indeed 〈◊〉 a pitiful and in point of conscienâ—â— were such as chose and no other then those which Father Charles 〈◊〉 Mahâ—n the Mâ—â—er Jesuit hath in his wicked Apology set out in Portugal however pretended to have been printed at Frandâ—fords and dispersed here amongst the Confederate though publickly burn'd by the hand of a hangman at Kilkenny and by the authority also of the said Confederate and against which the Proculator himself by the command of to then supream Council preach't nine Sermons five Sundays one after another in St. Kennys Church on that text of Jeremiah Quis est 〈◊〉 vobis sap â—â—siqui considerat hoc quare perierit terra Even such as would involve by consequence all Kingdoms and States in the whole earth whereinto my Forreigner ever enter'd as any time in perpetual war and blood shed Such as would beâ—â—â—ve of all right all conquering Nations let the causes of the invasion be never so just or continued-possession after be never so long and the submission of the conquer'd never so voluntary for what can appear to the eyes of man And such also as would arm even themselves who made use of such arguments one against another while the world did stand Nay and such too as being prest on by contrary arguments would make them confess consequently as indeed they did such of them as were ingenuous and freely spoke their minds to the Procurator urging them in point of reason that it were not a sin against the law of God for any to involve the whole Kingdom iâ— was again if he could to recover only for himself a small patrimony even of a much as twenty pounds a year whereof he had been in his own privat judgement dispossesâ—â—d unjustly in the late plantations made before the wars It was further laid open to such men how their sin entertaining such mâ—râ—â—â—es and harbouring such designs was by so much the more abominable before God and man by how much they were themselves Hypocritical in pretending only to others that knew them not a speciousness of Religion and that of the Church of God and interest of the Pope Then which or any of all which God knowes they intended nothing less but where it brought or could bring their other truly intended worke about 5. To the Regulars in general it was answer'd That they knew better their own strength and their own exemption and their own priviledges then so That they often engage against the whole body of the secular Clergie in matters wherein they are sure to offend them more and have more opposition from them and less support from others either in their own Country at home or abroad in forraign parts or even at Rome And they were sure enough the Pope would be wiser then to discountenance such a numerous body
sinful obedience to the will of others Because the Procurator had out of a particular regard of such honest men of their Society in Ireland as joyn'd with him formerly in the differences with the Nuntio and out of an esteem and affection also for their Society in it self as considered in its primitive foundation institution and observance and in its labours for the training up of youth laying aside the latter prejudices brought upon it by those inconsiderat works of some though too many of their chief writers because I say the Procurator had for those reasons ventur'd so fairly and earnestly both in his More Ample Account and in his private discourses lately and earnestly with some persons of highest rank in both Kingdoms to vindicate as much as in him lay the Irish Jesuits though not every individual of them from those aspersions the generality of that Order lyes under amongst Protestants at least in England and from such aspersions indeed against their practises and against their principles or doctrine not of deposition only but of equivocation mental reservation and of the lawfulness of changing opinions resolutions and practices too at pleasure according to their other maximes of extrinsick probability and in all matters whatsoever and because he had done so much herein that whereas before those great persons had no inclination at all to receive any kind of declaration of Allegiance or faithfulness from men of such principles as the foresaid printed Authors argue in their opinions the Society in general to be yet he prevailed so far with them as not to involve the Fathers in Ireland in the same esteem with such others of the same Order in some other Countries as had so justly deserved their blame and censure 9. To that other excuse common to the three late Orders as well Capuchins and Carmelits as Jesuits the answer was That the Princes or States permission of or connivence with them should more be regarded then that either of Ordinaries or pre-existent Regulars or of the Court of Rome it self And this they could not expect in reason if they they appeared not zealous of His Majesties lawful rights and prerogatives in all temporal matters and for the peace and safety of his People and Kingdoms at least if they shewed themselves perverse and peevish against either or against so lawful and necessary a duty as is a bare naked Remonstrance or Declaration of their loyal principles and affections where and when so justly expected from them by and to assure His Majesty of their better carriage hereafter then Himself or his Father of glorious memory had found in the late wars of their Countrey And if by their cheerful hearty concurrence to such demonstrations of duty they merited a better opinion hereafter to be had of them by His Majesty and great Ministers of State and such as would really deserve protection they needed not fear the opposition of others whatsoever whiles they behaved themselves as men of discretion and their profession should 10. To that Bugbear which those of the Secular Clergy alledged to excuse themselves it was said That they very well knew it was a meer pretence That the Shoo did not really pinch them there That albeit the Regulars were numerous and of esteem yet not of so great or prevalent as in such a matter or any at all which had reason for it and for the Secular Clergy could any way bear them down even in case the Regulars did not concur with them That they were the Pastors and Leaders of the Flock by power command and law of the Church and their authority and jurisdiction established by the Canons from the very beginning That the Regulars had no such authoritative commanding power nor subjection due unto them from the people but was voluntary in the internal Court of Conscience in foro paenitentiali or only in the private auricular confessional seat That besides it had no kind of colour but their example would be immediatly followed by all Regulars by some freely and heartily who were otherwise themselves our of judgment and affection too so principled and so affected and only expected their authority to back them by others out of shame and fear to see by any further opposition themselves reduced to a streight of giving other reasons then such as they could not own or maintain and of discovering so the true cause rebellious principles and affections and consequently of seeing themselves houted at by all sober and good people even of their own religion and communion And as for the false aspersion and scandal raised against that Remonstrance amongst some of the Commons as if it signified in effect as much as the Oath of Supremacy it was themselves suffered that of meer purpose to go oâ— and they might with one single declaration as easily disabuse all pâ—ssessed therewith as it was raised without any ground That no Church-man even the most malicious would before any understanding man own the raising or forwarding of it however it was known that some few of them in private corners did whisper it to the illiterate as I could name a certain Prior of the Dominicans Order Father Michael Fullam to have done most unconscientiously that I may say no more though chiefly of purpose to excuse by such diabolical forgeries their own opposition when upbraided therewith by good honest wel-meaning people as some few others of them had the impudence and I could instance Father W. L. of the Society and Father D. D. of the Franciscans for a long time to say and aver too that the King as being a Protestant should not be prayed for at all by Catholicks either publickly or privatly though some few others also and somwhat more warily though erroneously enough too and against plain Scriptures both in the Old and new Testament and the continued practice of the primitive Church distinguish'd the manner of praying for him and a long time held and indoctrinated others that he should not be prayed for so as to desire the temporal safety of his Crown or Person victory over his enemies or any prosperous earthly success unto him at all but his conversion only and repentance in this life and salvation in the next without any further addition That as this heretical doctrine was soon and quite beaten down by the contrary practice of the whole Clergy both Secular and Regular which now we see and hear at all Chappels and Altars so that calumny and scandal would throughout the Kingdom cease in one fortnight if they pleased to declare it such as they are bound in conscience truth and honesty to do 11. As for the pick of some to the Procurator whom they falsely suppose to be the Author of the Remonstrance though had he been so he would rather glory therein then be ashamed thereof or of the Declaration of loyalty inserted in that Remonstrance if not peradventure for being any way or in part defective or not home enough in some things
and grace and above all of his Holinesse's they were certain for their opposition to the Remonstrance as the Promoters of it should be certain of all kind of disfavour and so certain thereof that they could hardly ever expect any promotion or preferment in the Church or in their own Orders and that the Dissenters not only had that great advantage as to Church preferments and with the Distributers of such but no less certainly perswaded themselves to be equal in time at home even with the first Subscribers and even I say as to all protection and liberty from the King and State if they should be forced at last to subscribe such however compelled subscription sufficing the King of one side and excusing them on the other with the Pope and others beyond Seas and albeit the Procurator saw as clearly as consequently that the rest of the Romish Clergy throughout all other parts of the Countrey in the several Provinces received their punctual directions from those at Dublin some from one Order and some from another and others from the Parish-priests and accordingly guided themselves and therefore saw the necessity of prevailing first with those of Dublin notwithstanding and though he laboured much and often with every Order of them severally and Parish-Priests also yet he made it his chief work and for the reasons before given to perswade the Fathers of the Society Which alone was almost his only care for many weeks together XXV The progress and issue of all which was That by their own acknowledgment he cleared all the pretended conscientious scruples of those of them that treated with him That after this Father Iohn â—albot assured him that neither himself nor others of that Society who had past their last vows or fourth profession and consequently could not be ejected at the pleasure of the General or upon other less accounts then other Regulars would any longer delay their subscription then the Procurator had got the positive answer of their Superiour Father Shelton what ever his answer were And further that they would justifie by Letters to Rome and to their General and own publickly to him such their proceedings or subscription That having several times discoursed with the said Father Shelton and by Letter at last urged him to a resolution he before he would resolve sent these two or three Queries in â—â—iâ—ing to the Procurator desiring an answer to them in writing also Whether the Pope hath a perswasive and directive power over temporal Princes in temporal matters pro bono Ecclesiae And whether temporal Princes in such cases may lawfully obey him or are bound to obey him according to that of St. Bernard Converte gladium tuum in vaginam Tuus ergo ipse tuo forsitan nutu si non tua manu evaginandus Uterque ergo Ecclesiae spiritualis scilicet gladius materialis Sed is quidem pro Ecclesiâ ille vero ab Ecclesiâ exerendus est Ille Sacerdotis is militis manu sed sane ad nutum Sacerdotis XXVI That the Procurator answered this paper of Quaeries by another of Resolves And to the first Quaerie That not only the Pope but inferiour Bishops nay Ghostly Fathers have a perswasive and directive power of temporal Princes even in temporal matters and not only pro bono Ecclesiae but for the particular spiritual advantage of such Princes even such a perswasive or directive power as his Holiness and other Bishops Curats and Ghostly Fathers have respectively in temporal matters life death war peace estates inheritances c. of all Christians respectively subject to them for spiritual direction And therefore no such directive power of Princes in such matters even pro bono Ecclesiae as carries along with it a coercive power in the strict and proper sense of coercive but only a coercive power secundum quid that is by inflicting spiritual punishments and inflicting them only in a spiritual way or by spiritual means although it be confessed that sometimes or in some cases corporal punishments or temporal may be prescribed Yet inasmuch as these cannot be inflicted on the delinquent by the Church or which is the same thing that the Church hath no power from Christ to make use of corporal strength external force coaction or the material sword to execute on the Delinquent such punishments if himself do not freely consent therefore it is that we cannot allow even his Holiness as he is Vicar of Christ or Successor of St. Peter any coercive power properly or strictly such over any man much less in the temporal affairs of temporal Princes but only a coercive power by means or wayes that are purely spiritual that is by precepts and censures and these too only when they are ad edificationem non ad destructionem For it is manifest that although the particular Bishops of Diocesses have a perswasive and directive power of their respective temporal Diocesans what ever you say of Parish-priests and Ghostly Fathers in foro paenitentiae even I say in temporal things in that sense the Pope hath of the universal body of the faithful yet such particular Bishops cannot use external coaction force or the material sword by virtue I mean of their power from Christ or from the Church too as such to give any mans possessions and actually really transfer them to another although peradventure or in some contingency they may ex vi persuasiva and directiva even enjoyn any to a voluntary translation of all his rights as in case of necessary restitution In which case the Bishop notwithstanding would have as much power of coercion which would be necessary or essential to the directive as his Holiness And yet no coercive power simply such that is to force restitution by the material sword but secundum quid to wit by spiritual commands and prohibition or exclusion by such commands only from the Sacraments and from the Communion of the faithful Where indeed the directive and coercive power of the Church if you must needs use the word coercive so and attribute it to the Church doth and must end To the second Quaerie or the first part of the next disjunctive question the answer was affirmative whensoever Princes find not apparently oâ— clearly a contradiction in their commands perswasions or directions to the Commandements of God or Canons of the Church or find them evidently hazardous or destructive of their Kingdoms or People or of any other against the law of nature and reason or conscience And hence To the third Quaerie or second part of the complex or disjunctive question the Resolve was negative specially in all those excepted cases of a contradiction to the Commands of God or Canons of the Church or hazzards of their Crowns Kingdom or people or manifest wrong to any other against the law of nature and reason All which Princes are not bound to judge of according to the temporal interests or pretences of either his Holiness or other Bishop To
the authority or passage alledg'd out of St. Bernard the answer is 1. That it is curtail'd by the Quoter the words immediatly following part of the same sentence and last period of that passage being purposely omitted That period being thus concluded by the Saint Séd sanè ad nutum sacerdotis jussum imperatoris Where he manifestly shews the difference betwixt the direction of the Priest and command in the Emperour over the temporal or material sword 2. That St. Bernard never mean'd to impose any any necessity of conscience on the Prince to draw his sword whensoever and as often soever as the Priest or Bishop would becken or nod or which is the same thing would advise counsel or endeavour to perswade him But mean'd only that the material sword should indeed be drawn by the Emperours command in such controversies or quarrels as the Priest might and ought in conscience to justifie according to the laws of God And that temporal Princes in undertaking war or in matter of publick or private justice where they must use the sword or force should if their be any doubt whether the undertaking or execution be according to the law of God or no and if themselves cannot resolve themselves should I say in such cases advise with or consult the Priest in that which belongs to conscience The Saint without any question supposing what the Prophet Malachy speaks That the lips of the Priest shall preserve knowledge and others shall demand of him the law of truth 3. That were St. Bernard speaking to the Bishops of Milan Constantinople Alexandria Antioch Ierusalem or to him of Paris London Toledo or Triers or to any other particular Bishop in the world that had a temporal Prince or General of War within his Diocess he might and would have said so much to him nay to the Priests that are no Bishops at all I mean the Ghostly Fathers or Spiritual Directors of Princes 4. That this very Saint himself doth abundantly clear all scruples in this matter For not to take notice of those words tuo forsitan nutu to quit the advantage of these other jussum Imperatoris both in this very passage quoted against me that other in his first book of Considerations to the same Pope Eugenius c. 5. is abundantly sufficient Non monstrabunt puto sayes he ubi aliquando quispiam Apostolorum Iudex sederit hominum aut divisor terminorum aut distributor tèrrà rum stetisse denique ego Apostolos judicandos sedisse judicantes non lego c. Ergo in criminibus non in possessionibus potestas vestra quoniam propter illa non propter has accepistis claves regni caelorum praevaricatores utique exclusuri non possessores Quaenam tihi major videtur dignitas potestas dimittendi peccata an praedia dividendi sed non est comparatio Habent haec infima terrena judices suos Reges Principes terrae Quid fines alienos invaditis After all which he gave in the same paper of his answers that is in the skirt of it this Advertisement The Reader may be pleased to take notice That however this be or whatever may be thought of this doctrine yet the Subscribers to the Protestation are not any way engaged either in the affirmative or Negative it being manifest that the protestation in it self abstracts from either part and consequently both from these Answers and the Queries too XXVII That besides and after sending the foresaid two or three Quaeries to the Procurator the Jesuits now I remember not which of them or by whom sent him this other of one single Quaerie and reasons for the Affirmative Which because it and the former were the only papers and indeed only Quaeries and Reasons either by paper or without paper insisted on seriously by them or any others in Ireland ever since this dispute concerning the Remonstrance began And none else but those Fathers of the Society and in this manner only insisted on them so I give wholly and exactly as in the original given me without any subscription Whether a temporal or corporal punishment may be inflicted by virtue of a spiritual power Some reasons offered for the Affirmative First it is a maxime of Aristotle and allowed of by all Statists Doctors of the Civil and Canon Law and by all Divines that frustra datur potestas directiva sine coerciva The spiritual power is directiva Therefore in all reason we must allow potestas coerciva or a coactive power I know the answer of such as hold the negative is that potestas directiva hath a coactive power intra eandem sphaeram that is to say when the potestas directiva is spiritual it must have potestas coerciva or a coactive power ejusdem generis of the same kind and therefore spiritual punishments are allowed to the potestas directiva spiritually as Excommunications interdicts c. but no temporal punishments To this I reply that they can scarce produce one Classick Author of any note that giveth this exposition and they that hold the affirmative may produce as many as ever wrote ex professo of this matter for the contrary teste Basilio Pontio one of the most eminent men of this age who expressis verbis saith haec est communis omnium Catholicorum opinio Secondly omitting many other proofs it is the opinion of two General Councils that of Lyons and that of Lateran though perhaps not enacted per modum decreti But because General Councils are undervalued by some that believe that only the diffusive Church is infallible I will stand to the general practice of the diffusive Church which is the surest way to know its opinion When any person is nominatim Excommunicatus he is not only put from Mass and deprived of the suffrages of the faithful but also he is forbidden any civil commerce and conversation with the faithful he must not eat or drink with them he must not discourse nor be saluted by them besides they are whipped and commanded to undergo austere penances But all these are corporal punishments Therefore the opinion of the Diffusive Church is that a spiritual power can inflict corporal punishments And this being once granted it must be also allowed that the corporal punishment may be the greater pro qualitate delicti and consequently when the crimes are great it is in the power of the Church to inflict great punishments corporal and temporal Thirdly It is recounted 2. Machab. cap. 2. that Antiochus being King of the Jews the Priest Mathathias seeing a Jew by the Kings command ready to offer sacrifice to the Idols killed both the Jew and him who by the Kings command did compel the Jews to sacrifice Is it found in Scripture that this act is reprehended or doth any of the holy Fathers condemn Mathathias of unlawful murther in this case The same Mathathias being ready to depart this world and give an account to God of all his actions exhorteth his Sons to take arms
Res ignorata Necesse Mihi tamen multo firmior ac tutior regula videtur esse ut ubi jus naturae certat cum jure positivo Ecclesiastico hoc illi cedat Fr. Petrus Valesius in Opero Theologico seu Responsionibus ad Quaesita Ministri Provincialis Respons ad Quaes Tertium XXXIII In so many instances they could find their Allegations to be false if they did but a little seriously consider them Now for their unconcluding ones I take in the first place their allegation of the Faithful's being whipped by the Church and commanded to undergoe austere pennances But to conclude hence that therefore a corporal punishment may be inflicted by virtue of a spiritual power so as this spiritual power be properly or truly coercive or inflictive and not directive onely or meerly of such corporal punishments whether the patient will or not or so that it is authorized by God or by it self in its own nature of a spiritual power to proceed in a meer compulsory way to the actual execution of such punishments or to use corporal force compulsion or coaction to inflict such on him that otherwise refuses to undergoe them is a strange way of argueing Every ghostly Father may in some cases enjoyn his penitent such punishments and by virtue of his meer spiritual power may do so but can inflict none either by himself or by an other if the penitent will be refractory And not onely the Pope not only the Bishop but every inferiour Priest may in foro confessionali enjoyn his penitent even how great soever otherwise even a King or Emperour what ever is judg'd necessary for his eternal Salvation and consequently in some cases a deposition of themselves even from their whole temporal estates Kingdoms or Empires as in that of tyrannical and manifest usurpation and of necessary restitution the true and legal heire surviving and known and possible to be admitted without subversion of the State or people much more where it may be availeable to the support of both Yet I hope the Author of this Querie and reasons for the affirmative will not say that every such ghostly Father can proceed to execution whether their penitents will or no or can by force of Arms or other corporal means devest them respectively of their ill-gotten goods estates Kingdoms Empires though only to put the lawfull proprietors in possession thereof And yet the power in every such Confessour to enjoyn such temporal restitutions dispositions or even depositions and deprivations respectively to be undergone and executed by the penitents themselves and by virtue also of such injunction cannot be denied to be both truly spiritual and very legal too in the nature of a spiritual power Therefore spiritual directions injunctions prescriptions or commands of corporal punishments or of disposing so or so of our temporal estates allowed of or granted to be proper to a spiritual power is a very unconcluding argument That a real execution either immediate or mediate by corporal compulsory means coaction or force belongs to the same power And yet it is granted still that the spiritual power considered as directive hath a proportionable coercive power to witt meerly spiritual annexed inseparably and therefore no other execution but by meer spiritual wayes or means that is by denying of communion in meer spiritual matters For it is a most certain Christian and Catholick maxime That the Church of Christ as such meerly hath neither territory nor sword understanding those which are properly such or the material carnal civil or temporal sword XXXIV In the next place who sees not the inconsequence of his example out of 1. Mac. 2 Mattathias the Priest under the dispensations of the old Testament killed the Jew that offered Sacrifice to Idols and took arms against Antiochus and is not reproved therefore but rather renowned Therefore now under the new Testament corporal and mortal punishments may be forcibly inflicted and rebellion raysed against a lawful Prince by vertue only of the spiritual power of Christian Priests How many gross mistakes in this application and conclusion The Testaments are different and so are the means of planting establishing propagating or observing them no less different The former had promises of temporal blessings the later of purely spiritual The former had by special warrant of the God of Hosts a carnal sword to maintain it the later a spiritual word only Besides it appears no where that Mattathias killed that Sacrificeing Jew or took arms against Antiochus by vertue of his religious Priestly function or that he did either but in a meer natural or civil capacity as a chief member of the temporal common-wealth of the Jews albeit his motive was mixed with religious considerations And if it did as certainly it does not we know the law whereby he was to govern himself in point of conscience was that of Moyses which as to the express letter did warrant both his killing the Idolatrous Jew and his rebelling against that heathen and Alien tyrannizing usurper Therefore to conclude hence That when there is an other Testament Law Priesthood of a quite other nature each and those old ones of Moyses quite abolished by an equal power with that authorized them that now under the new testament law and priesthood of Christ no more a God of Hosts but suffering Saviour and now under that Ghospel which directs it self to be planted preserved restored not by the sword but by the word not by fighting but by suffering which gives no temporal power but meerly spiritual nor contains any promises of earthly rewards but celestial alone therefore I say to conclude from that example of the Macchabees that now this spiritual power of Christian Priests can warrant killing and rebelling by its own proper authority is nothing less absurd then what the most unconcluding argument would conclude All which I doubt not the authors of this Querie and reasons for the affirmative would have had understood more easily if they had had reflected on them a little more coolely But their interest or passion or both shut all the avenues to a serious recollection or which is worse made then guilty of horrible not only dissimulation but opposition of such known truths in matter of conscience and Christian Faith and consequently of that sin against the Holy Ghost which shall neither be forgiven in this world nor in the world to come And if they had had understood or reflected so they needed not to have been driven to such a pitiful and shameful shift as to quote so falsely or imperfectly the Author of The More Ample Account's answer to that objection of the Macchabees warre Which answer yet how satisfactory soever in the judgment of others or unsatisfactory in theirs was not by me in that place or book to any such weak argument as they frame here on the Macchabaean warre not at all to invalidate their now pretence of a power in either Christian or Moysaycal Priest to kill and rebell
your Majesty our natural and lawful Soveraign we humbly beg prostrate at your Majesties feet that you would be pleased to protect us from the severe persecution we suffer meerly for our profession in Religion leaving those that are or hereafter shall be guilty of other crimes and there have been such in all times as well by their pens as by their actions to the punishment prescribed by the law Against these very last lines of this Petition or against this final perclose of of all leaving those that are or hereafter shall be guilty of other crimes c. to the punishment prescribed by the law our Adversaries labour so mightily to except as unlawful to be owned or subscribed at least by Catholick Priests or as acknowledging Clergy-men subject to the Secular Court and consequently as either disacknowledging or at least renouncing the priviledge of their Order whereby they are for their persons especially in criminal causes wholy exempt from the jurisdiction of Lay Judges let the crimes be never so hainous until they be first judged in the Ecclesiastick Court before their own proper competent Ecclesiastick Superiours or spiritual Judges and before they be further condemned by such and after all degraded or at least delivered over also by such to the Secular Court or Lay Judges But who sees not the vanity and nullity of this objection or of this consecution Who sees not the Objectors were resolved to seek here a knot in the bul-rush Clergy-men of the Romish Communion living in a Country where all the laws are against their very profession where all the prejudices imaginable were and with much ground too against the very persons of many as enemies to the Crown and State and where as yet no endeauours had been used by them to secure the State of as much as their Allegiance only for the very future and in a Countrey also where no such priviledge at least as to them is or hath been owned by the Kings Laws Magistrates or Judges for a whole century of years such Clergy-men I say and such of them too I mean as find themselves not guilty of other crime then that which according to the law of God is no crime at all addressing themselves to a just and merciful Prince but a Prince nevertheless that is not of their communion nor doth acknowledge or admit of such their Exemption and attempting by a declaration and promise of their future Allegiance to free themselves from a severe persecution raised against them cannot such Clergy-men as observe strictly and religiously that precept in particular of St. Peter to all Christians in general whether Lay-men or Clergy-men Nemo autem vestrum patiatur ut homicida aut fur aut maledicus aut alienorum appetitor let none of you suffer as a murderer or as a thief or as a rayler or as a coveter of other mens Goods 1 Pet. 4. Cannot such Clergy-men I say and cannot they too according to all the rules of prudence and conscience intreat and implore the Princes compassionat regard of their innocent profession and harmless behaviour in the pure exercise of a holy Religion and humbly beg his protection of them from suffering on that account only and for a further inducement of such Princes favouring them on that account remonstrate also unto him what should and ought to be consequent in the case that they are not Supplyants for any of their function who is or shall be hereafter guilty of any true crimes as theft murder sedition rebellion c. but only for such as are or shall be charged with such matters as only in the presumption of the present laws of the Land are crimes and only too even by such presumption religious crimes Or cannot they in such a Countrey and circumstances prudently and lawfully too for what concerns conscience do so and remonstrate so especially in such discreet wary general terms as these leaving those that are or shall be hereafter guilty of other crimes c. to the punishment prescribed by the law without dis-acknowledging or even renouncing even as much as to themselves alone where they can choose the priviledge or pretence of priviledge of Clergy-men for being exempt Or must it follow that they acknowledge that priviledge whatever it be or how ever expounded or extended by some not due to them by any law divine or humane civil or ecclesiastical Or must it follow that they do absolutely renounce it either for themselves or others if it be probable or possible they may to any real purpose challenge the benefit thereof Or rather is it not manifest and as clear as the Sun that no such consequence follows out of such Remonstrance or such words or such leaving in the circumstances or cases but at most and at worst a conditional resignation of their own souls or conditional renuntiation of such priviledge or pretence thereof and as to themselves alone and in such circumstances only or while the laws of the Land are such and the Prince and People observant of such laws and that Romish Clergy-men must will they nill they be judged by and according to such laws And consequently too as clear as the Sun that those words above leaving c. which end that petition and whole paper of that of 61. and which are the only pretended ground of that objection cannot be justly taxed at least in the case or circumstances with other meaning or sense then can be justly derived from this other expression which might be of it in these other words we do not beg your Majesty to protect us from any persecution can be against us upon account of Theft Murder Treason Rebellion or any other of those true crimes crimes which are otherwise stiled in the Canons lay-crimes nor we intercede or supplicate for any persons guilty of or in as much as they shall be charged with any such true crime but for what concerns us resolve to let all such answer for themselves and stand or fall according to law Now it is plain that all this imports no more then a greater detestation of such crimes in Clergiemen and of the persons of Clergiemen as guilty of such And further and at most and worst but a resolution not to be concern'd in such nor to petition the King in their behalf nor to interpose at all twixt them and the law though meaning without any peradventure that which is by His Majesty understood the law For they exclude above expresly all equivocation And yet the Divines of Lovaine and sticklers for them in Ireland must needs censure so harmless so prudent and so necessary a petition or expression and censure it as renouncing or declaring against Ecclesiastical Immunity and further censure it as even sacrilegious and containing somewhat against the sincerity of Catholick Faith Certainly if so or if they be not abused by misinformation or misrepresentation of their grounds of censure I cannot otherwise judge of them but that they have been
Valentinian and with his Arrian Mother about the giving up a Church in Milan to thense of the Arrians did not I say this so great and so holy and so knowing Ambrose tell the Emperour that indeed the lands of the Church were under his power and therefore payed him tribute but that the Church it self was not for such an impious use Therefore our learned Cardinal is much out in his collection here from this Canon of the Apostles when he sayes that by natural reason because the goods or lands of the Church are called Dominicae therefore the cannot in any wise or for any use or in any case be subject to the supream lay Jurisdiction To his fifth and last argument I need not say much because it so little requires other answer than That it is the very worst sort of argument he could use for his Ecclesiastical Immunity and for the being of it as such from the very law of Nations and Nature For to pretend or alledge even true miraculous extraordinary judgments or punishments from God on the Profaners of holy places or even too on the tyrannical Oppressors of holy or Ecclesiastical Persons as also on a Prince or People for having made first or observed after out of covetousness hatred envy pride ambition or any other sinful end such laws as naturally must lessen the holiness or esteem or reverence which must be due to either such places or such persons what hath this to do with the religious worshippers of such places and with the careful protectors of such persons or with either Prince or People that for a just and holy end make a wholsome law which being observed by Church-men will make them more holy and more reverend Besides how often have we read of extraordinary judgments of God pursuing presently the injustice committed by either Prince or People against meer lay men and against such as could pretend no such exemption and against such too as had no right of their side but from the positive civil Institutions or Laws made by other meer lay-men If our most eminent Cardinal had alledged and proved but one only miracle wrought in the case that is wrought by the invocation of God and either expresly or even tacitly for the confirmation of his Thesis or the being of Clergymen so exempt as he would have them in all cases and all respects from the supream civil jurisdiction of lay Princes then indeed he might have had some colour to amuse the Reader with that his fifth Argument Albeit yet such miracle would not be home enough unless withal it appeared wrought to confirm their being so exempt by the law of Nations and Nature But neither for Churchmen or Church doth he as much as pretend to any such material miracle or any such extraordinary punishments from God And good God! what is it to prove such exemption as he pretends That the sacrilegious robbers or any other wicked prophaners of a Church dyed presently That a passionat wicked Prince who did without any form of justice without any just cause at all and who did even against his own laws and his own conscience persecute to death a Religious Prelate or Priest onely for having been a good Prelate or good Priest in reprehending wickedness that I say such a Prince had an evil or strange and suddain end Certainly were it acknowledged of all sides did God himself now expresly and intelligibly and evidently reveal it to all the world that notwithstanding any pretence or even any positive laws of men hitherto all kind of Churchmen and Churches and their persons goods lands houses c. were as other men in all kind of temporal matters subject to the disposition and coercion of not only the supream but also of the inferiour civil Magistrate yet from the providence and goodness and justice also of God we might rationally expect sometime and pray sometime also for such extraordinary and exemplary miraculous punishment of such as would abuse that right or that power given them by God to govern well questionless to govern holily and justly the Church of God and Ministers and lands and revenues of it Besides how often have such extraordinary miraculous punishments seized on the very Ecclesiastical Governours themselves and even on the very supream Ecclesiastical Governours who have oppressed the inferiour Clergie And yet there was no exemption of this inferiour Clergie from them concluded thence Lastly how knows for what injustice in particular did those extraordinary punishments from God and let us suppose them still truly miraculous and from God in a special way which yet will be hardly proved of most of them seize upon such as were said to have violated Churches or Churchmen against that which this learned Cardinal pretends to be Ecclesiastical Immunity Exemption or Liberty Did God reveal it was particularly for infringing that or infringing any part of all that which Bellarmine understands or pretends to be of true and due Ecclesiastical exemption and was moreover to shew by a testimony from Heaven That this Ecclesiastical Immunity of his must be admitted to be such by the law of Nations and Nature Or did God reveal it was not perhaps for some other indeed more unquestionably exorbitant wickedness of those very men so punished miroculously Or must the single conjecture of Basilius Porphyrogenitus be to us a certainty that indeed those evils happened at that time to the Constantinopolitan Empire by reason or because of that law whatever it was made by Nicephorus Phocas and further yet a concluding argument for the being of Bellarmine's such pretended Ecclesiastical Immunity from the law of Nations and Nature which onely is our present business or dispute Nay must we not rather according to reason attribute those very plagues or judgments from God at that time to other causes that is to the undoubted uncontroverted injustices and wrongs done by Nicephorus Phocas in using ill and abusing very much the supream power he had over the Clergie if I say there was any thing extraordinary in those plagues or if they were such as the like or farre worse did not fall on that people or Emperour of Constantinople very often before that law was made and after that law was again abolished and when Ecclesiastical Immunity was as strictly and religiously observed as ever or when the supream civil power as rightly used as ever for the veneration of holy places and holy persons Do not the Greek Historians of those times Curopolates and Cedrenus Zonaras and Glycas do not Baronius and his Abbreviator Spendanus ad Annum Christi 962. 964. confess with those Greeks That Nicephorus Phocas though otherwise an excellent and victorious Prince had been charged with several other exorbitances as with having suffered himself after the death of Romanus to be chosen Emperour by the Army notwithstanding that Basilius and Constantinus both lawful Sons to the deceased Emperour Romanus were yet alive and lawful Heirs of the Empire and
sayes right and speaks truth for so much yet sayes no more by adding congruentes then he had before by the word necessariae But if by leges congruentes laws congruent he mean laws which many or most Churchmen conceive or perhaps others too esteem of as much conducing to the splendour of the Church and execution of her commands or of other former or after laws but not as necessary to either then without doubt or in such meaning of this word congruent the proposition universally taken is in it self absolutely or simply false Because neither Pope nor Church can on any such pretext make laws to the prejudice of the civil rights of others without their own consent albeit laws which may otherwise conduce very much to the splendour and majesty of the Church nay and also not seldom to the greater perfection of holiness amongst the people For as the spiritual power â— in its own kind ordained by God and obliged to provide carefully for the observance of all the laws of God so is the temporal power also in its own kind both ordained by the same God and likewise obliged to see a due observance of the same laws of God And as notwithstanding this equal tye on the temporal power you cannot conclude it may enact laws in meer and pure ecclesiastical or spiritual Church matters although beleeving at the same time nay knowing such matters and such laws in such matters to conduce very much not to the greatness only of it self in the nature of a temporal power and to a more effectual observance of its own proper laws but to the better observance also of the very known laws of God himself so neither can you conclude that for the like end the power Ecclesiastical may at pleasure enact laws in temporal or civil matters In the making of laws by either part there is no difference in that For though it be true the Power Ecclesiastical be not bound to obey the temporal when this commands any thing against the commands of God nay that in such case the spiritual power may substract all its own proper and purely spiritual commodities or benefits from the Temporal it is also true that in like manner the Temporal is not bound to obey the spiritual when by laws or edicts of the Pope or Church invaded in its own proper temporal rights nay and that if necessary it may deprive the Ecclesiastical of all temporal commodities during such invasion or until the errour be corrected effectually When therefore any law or rather canon Ecclesiastical entrenches on the temporal power though under pretext of a spiritual advantage as for example when it prescribes or circumscribes or lessens the temporal jurisdiction which by the law of God was allowed or when it prescribes in the point of politick affairs or civil customs or manner of living civilly such prescriptions must not be acknowledged as proceeding from the true spiritual power but onely from the pleasure and sanction of spiritual or Ecclesiastical persons not acting in so much by any kind of power in them Ecclesiastical or not Ecclesiastical other then a meer usurped power but acting so as the true temporal power the secular Princes and Magistrats may oppose and correct them whereas in temporal matters or in any matters purely civil which are not necessary to salvation at least where the civil rights acquired already to a third and acquired without any injustice are taken away without the consent of such third person or of the supream civil Magistrat and civil laws by which onely all civil rights are confirmed or infirmed given at first or changed after it is most certain the Church can do nothing oblige no man without the temporal powers concurrence Otherwise who sees not that if the power Ecclesiastical make a law for levelling estates amongst the Layety or a law commanding every secular person that hath any goods to bestow every year on the poor the one entire half of his profits nay actually the one entire half of his lands for pious uses who sees not I say but that such law must in conscience bind all men Nay and should it make an other law too for appointing holy devout Churchmen to be superintendents or Stewards under the Pope in every Parish to dispose of all the goods of laymen to more holy uses then the laymen themselves do at present But if neither Soto nor any other Divine or Canonist nor Bellarmine himself nor any sticklers for his opinions will have the confidence to attribute the power of making such laws to the Church notwithstanding that such laws if submitted unto duely executed might questionless be esteemed by some or many or most or all Churchmen and by most of other men also to be very congruent for the greater splendour of the Church and more holy perfect observation of the Gospel and if to the Church they will deny such a power and deny it on that account only which I have presently given how can they but consequently deny to the same Church a power of making laws for exempting all Clerks from Princes without the consent of Princes Is not this a law made in a temporal matter and a matter unnecessary to salvation Was not the temporal subjection of the persons of Clerks or their subjection to Princes in temporal matters a meer temporal duty which sometime at least they owed to Princes Was not the right Princes had to govern and punish them a meer temporal right Was it not formerly acquired and legally settled from the beginning in Princes How then could the Princes be deprived thereof without their own consent by any law of the Church Or if so why not also of their other temporal rights and of their other Subjects and of their Lands c Or could not the makers of such pretend motives of piety and of the greater glory of God and greater splendour of the Church of God for making them and for proving them to be congruent Nay do we not know they pretend such motives to assert the temporal Monarchy of the whole earth to the Pope as if having it de facto or de jure and even without any such laws Why therefore may not they proportionable motives for his making in every Kingdom Province County Barrony City Parish Village Lieutenants of his own Ecclesiastical Function and consequently motives of congruency to transferr all the very individual otherwise temporal or civil rights of lay-men to Churchmen and so further consequently exempt all kind of lay-men as well as Clergiemen from the Jurisdiction of meer lay Judge if not of such as the Pope himself alone would make Judges But forasmuch as Dominick Soto notwithstanding so much evidence against even the congruency of Ecclesiastical exemption from all kind of civil Power or rather against his ill consequences deduced from his congruency must also affirm such Exemption to be necessary let us consider his five mediums to prove this whereof the three
the Romans that by the law of God Clerks are bound in conscience to pay tribute understand you if not dispensed with by the Princes Therefore in his doctrine it is not necessary that they do not pay tribute And consequently in his doctrine t is not necessary that the Church have power to exempt Clerks from tribute whether Princes will or not Moreover and for the natural equity or congruity it self which we confess may be for the exemption of Clerks from tribute alleadged out of St. Thomas and with due restrictions pleaded also from natural reason doth either tell us of Soto's even sole congruency for such exemption to be made by the sole power of the Church and not rather by the Princes themselves Or will not this allegation of natural equity or congruitâ— be satisfied if Clergiemen be freed by the secular Princes themselves and onely too in such cases as these Princes shall not upon rational and evident grounds find it necessary for the defence of other good of both Clerks and Laicks to sess the Clerks for some time again and for what they can well spare without any hinderance to divine service Finally have not Clerks in regard or lieu of their labours received so many other great and rich and excellent and superabundant compensations as well by lands and revenues as by other priviledges or will nothing els serve them but a total exemption from the royalty of Princes and of those very goods and lands too which the same Princes gave them and which the same Princes continue and protect them in all ways Behold as from or for what concerns those arguments of Soto how farr it is from necessary that either the goods or persons of Clergiemen should be exempt by the power of the Church nay indeed or by any other from the supream civil Magistrat But as an addition to all I have allready said I demand yet when it began to be necessary that either goods or persons should be so exempt For it is manifest that neither hath been allways or in all ages of Christianity from the beginning nor even from the beginning of those very ages or that very time wherein Christian Religion was by law established publickly neither so exempt I say by either Pope or Prince And I demand also whether before they were exempted any thing necessary was wanting to the Church or after this time any thing at all times necessary accrued to the Church And as Soto must answer affirmatively to both these last demands whether he can answer or no to the first so I must out of his affirmations conclude presently That neither in the days of the Apostles nor during five hundred years after and more the Church had all necessaries to attain her own proper end which is no other but salvation Then which nothing can be said more impious and horrible by Soto or any other To the first reason of Franciscus Victoria wherein he discourseth thus that because the Republick Ecclesiastical is perfect and sufficient for it self that is sufficiently empowr'd to attain its own ends therefore it hath power to make such laws as are convenient for the administration of the Church and therefore also consequently if the exemption of Clerks be so convenient this Republick may enact laws for such exemption I answer 1. That for this which is a Republick to be perfect and sufficient or simply to the perfection and sufficiency of a Republick is not required that it may enact all such laws as make for its greater splendour and glory but onely such as are necessary for its being safety and condition And that I have shewed already heer in this section That laws of Ecclesiastical exemption are not such that is are not necessary for its being c. nay or either for its well being safety and condition as it drives to its own proper ends 2. And that if this be not admitted which I say in this my first answer it must follow out of this reason of Victoria which himself too a little after it confesses to follow That the politick temporal or civil commonwealth whereas it is also perfect and self sufficient vz. in its own nature of such a commonwealth may also make laws to the prejudice of the spiritual if such laws do seem convenient to the decor and Majesty of the civil Nay this conveniency doth wholly ruine their purpose For I demand whether is most convenient that secular Princes and for the security of their secular principalities and greater splendour and Majesty of them still retain that civil power over Clerks which the laws of God and nations give them over Clerks or that the Church to the end her self may seem or be more adorned and more dignified bereave Princes of that power even against their known will and maugre all their opposition by laws and arms What if the Church shall find it sometime convenient also to subtract from the yoake or obedience of Princes even a great part of the very meerest Laicks to be as emancipated persons or freemen evermore at the pleasure of the Church ready to serve her as the Patroness of their freedom and serve her too against their former Lords That convenient is of too great and too too dangerous extension To the second reason of the same Francis Victoria which was that the Pope might by his own proper authority choose Ecclesiastical Ministers notwithstanding any contradiction of the civil power And therefore may upon the same ground exempt such Ministers from secular iudicatories The answer is that the reason is vain First because we know that no man is bound to be a Clerk not even albeit the Pope should elect or appoint him for Clerkship Or which is that I mean that it is not in the Popes power to fix on this or that meer Layman and force or command him to Clerkship at least to such Clerkship as hath so many burdens annexed to it by the positive canons of the Church onely Although I confess it is in the Popes power as belonging properly to his office to choose out of the whole number of such as freely offer themselves whom he shall think fittest and have these ordered and appointed Ministers of the Church Secondly because we know and that in the primitive Ages of Christianity when established by law as the religion of the Empire such have not been admitted to Clerkship whom the Emperours prohibited or by their laws incapacitated as much as they could from that course of life For hence it is we read so many laws in the Code of Theodosius and Justinian concerning such as ought not to be admitted to Clerkship and commanding such to be degraded and secularized again who were admitted contrary to such laws even laws made by most Christian and most Orthodox Princes the Roman Emperours Constantine the Great Valentinian the elder Arcadius and Honorius Theodosius the younger Leo and Iustinian T is a clear case ex C. Theodos. Tit. de Episcop
by whom or wherein Thomas of Canterbury after some ages and upon a review of his life or actions and knowledge of his nefarious turbulencies and tragedies and of his intollerable arrogancy in raising himself above the royal power laws and dignity as he sayes was so condemn'd It seems he was either ashamed to name the person or raign of Henry the eight in such a matter and in opposition to such a Saint or verely he would impose on his unskilfull Reader and make him think it might peradventure have been so by a King and so in a time that was not reputed Schismatical by the Romanist's themselves and thereby would wholly undermine the credit of a Saint who certainly could be no true Saint if Parker was either a true Bishop in the truth and unity of the Catholick Church or true Christian in the truth and integrity of the Catholick Religion And I give it moreover to take notice of his wilful imposture where he sayes that that nameless King found out what kind of man Thomas was what evilt he had raised c. and sayes also that that nameless King found out all this in a great Conneil of all the Prelats and Peers of the Kingdom meaning so to impose on his Reader as a truth without as much as the authority of any writer for he quotes none in this nor could but against all truth that the Bishops of England in that Kings time concurr'd with him in his judgment or condemnation of Thomas of Canterbury for a traytor viz. against the Kings person or people of England or their laws or all three For certainly he could not be on any rational ground declared traytor or even to have been such at any time in his life not to speak now of the instance of his death or of any time after his reconciliation to Henry the Second but upon one of these three grounds or as having acted either against the Kings own person or royal rights or against the liberties of the people or against the sanctions of the municipal laws of England And O God of truth who is that is versed in the Chronicles of England can imagine any truth in this sly insinuation of Parker concerning that of the Bishops to have concurr'd with Henry the Eight in the condemnation or prophanation and sacriledge committed against St. Thomas of Canterbury so many hundred years after his holy life and death and so many hundred years after he had possessed not England alone but all the Christian world with the certain perswasion of his sanctity attested so even after his death by such stupendious miracles at his tomb and wrought there at or upon his invocation and by such stupendious and known miracles I say that Parker himself hath not the confidence as much as to mutter one word against the truth and certainty of their having been or having been such Nay who is it can upon a a sober reflection perswade himself that either Henry the Eight himself or any other whatever and how even soever atheistical Councellor of his could pretend any as much as probable ground in natural reason laying aside now all principles of Religion to declare this Thomas of Canterbury so long after his death to have dyed a traytor nay I say more or to have lived so or to have been so at any time in his life T is true that in all branches and each branch of the five membred complex of those first original and lesser differences which preceded that great one of the sixteen customs he for some part did not comply with the Kings expectation and for other parts positively refused to obey the Kings pleasure or even command But so might any other Subject and might I say without being therefore guilty of treason nay without being guilty of any other breach of law or conscience had he the law of the land and liberty of a Subject of his side as Thomas of Canterbury had in each of these five original differences And that he had so the law of the land for him even in that very point of them which Henry the Second took most to heart that I mean of the two criminal Clergymen besides all what I have given before at large of those very laws to prove it this also is an argument convincing enough that Henry the Second was not where he had the law of his side a man to be baffled by any Subject whatsoever nor would be so ceremonious as to call so many Councils or Parliaments of Bishops and other Estates to begg that which by law he had already in his power without their consent And therefore certainly had the law of the land been at that time for him that is for the ordinary coercion of criminal Clerks in his lay Courts and in what case soever or even in case of felony or murder committed by Clerks he had without any further ceremony at least after he saw the Archbishop refuse to comply with his desire or obey his command and after he saw also the Priest was in the very Ecclesiastical Court convict of murder sent his own Officials to force him away to and before the lay Judges and sent his Guards too or Souldiers were this necessary Neither of which he as much as attempted to do And therefore had we no other argument who sees not that it is clear enough out of this very procedure that the Archbishop committed no treason in this very matter wherein of any of also the branches of that whole five membred complex he most positively and plainly opposed that King though by such a kind of opposition as might become a Subject that is by an opposition of dissent without any interposition of arms or force 2. T is true also that after this Thomas of Canterbury opposed mightily but with such a kind opposition as I have now said all those sixteen heads of Henry the Second pretended by him to have been the Royal Costoms of his Grandfather and that after giving a forced consent and taking a forc'd oath to maintain them he retracted again freely and conscientiously his said consent and oath and refused to give his hand or seal for introducing or establishing them But I am sure there was no treason in this not only because he saw or apprehended they were against the former laws and for an evil end too press'd by that King so violently but also because he saw or apprehended that the very pretence was false that is that some of them had never been customes Is it not lawful without treason nay or other breach of law for any Peer and so great a Peer as the Archbishop of Canterbury to deny his own assent in Parliament or even to revoke and for as much as belongs to himself his own former assent at least when otherwise his conscience is wounded and when he proceeds no further by force of arms and that the laws is yet only in deliberation to be establish'd but not
own King sent Embassadors both to Lewis of France and to the Pope to accuse him and pray them especially the King of France not to harbour him at all and partly also to be recommended by them or either of them to some pious refuge where he might serve God in a retired life and in safety from the power of his own incensed King and might not want necessary sustenance being he had nothing left him of his own to live upon Was there or could there be any treason in this He represented the quarrel so and those 16 Heads or customes controverted 'twixt his King and himself so that the Pope and Cardinals with one voyce condemnd them and consequently his King for contriving and forcing them on him and on the rest of England for municipal Laws and Customes But so did Henry also by his own Letters and Embassadours to the same Pope and Cardinals endeavour to get those Customes approved and Thomas in the same manner indirectly condemned for opposing them And as such application to the Pope and Cardinals by the Kings of England at that time was not unlawful not even I mean by the very Laws of England so neither was it as much as by the same Laws unlawful much less treasonable for the Archbishop of Canterbury to declare his Conscience before the Pope and in matter of such or other whatsoever pretended or intruded or forced Laws or Customes whatsoever or either treasonable or unlawful for him to be with the Pope and his Cardinals the cause or primary Instrument of such a condemnation as is proper to the Pope and Cardinals by a meer spiritual sentence or judgment or reprobation or not allowance for as much as belong'd to them or as their such opinion or sentence was desired of such Laws Besides we know that Histories make no mention at all of any Brief or Bull or other authentick Declaration set out by that Pope of his Cardinals or by any other Pope either procured by Thomas or not procured by him against those pretended Customes or against that King for them only and meerly Moreover we know it is no treason for any Bishop Subject to any Prince whatsoever to declare his own Conscience against whatsoever Laws which are desired by the Prince to be establisht for Laws and received especially when the Bishop sees there were no former Laws of the Land obliging him under pain of treason not to oppose such other Laws or Customes or pretended Customes as the Prince would establish for Laws Nay it is plain there could be nor can be in any Common-wealth or Kingdome such former Laws so obliging Bishops or indeed any other Subjects because such would be against the Law of God and Nature and would oblige men to consent to the making even of the most wicked and impious Laws imaginable or at least would oblige those who are in Parliament concern'd to oppose wicked Laws not to oppose them 5. He took a Legatine power from the Pope over England and the Kings person too even in the time of his exile or proscription We find no proscription of him but a voluntary yet for himself necessary exile though we find Edicts and Sanctions against those in England who would receive any Mandats from him or even from the Pope in his cause during that time of his exile And we know it was neither treasonable nor otherwise unlawful by any even Law of England at that time for an English Bishop especially the Archbishop of Canterbury to receive a Legatine power from the Pope over England The Archbishops of Canterbury were both before St. Thomas and after him some of them Legati nati and others Legati dati and other Bishops too in England were sometimes Legati dati and both those and these sometimes at the Kings desire made or with his knowledge and consent and sometimes also without the Kings previous knowledge or desire at all The Laws indeed of Provisors or Premunire obstructed the Custome of procuring or receiving such Legatine Commissions without the Kings permission and approbation But these Laws were made long after i. e. in the Reigns of Edward the Third and Richard the Second We know also the Legatine power was not of its own nature but in meer Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or in such as the Law and Customes of the Land then did allow it to be and to be without any derogation to the Kings Majesty or Peoples safety And that if at any time otherwise exercised it was the fault of the Legat and neglect of the Prince to suffer such exercise For so the very ordinary Episcopal power of even inferiour English Bishops might be abused by the Bishops Yet the Law did allow their power though not the abuse of it Nor was it treasonable nor otherwise unlawful not even by the laws of England then that a Commission of meer Spiritual or Ecclesiastical power and cognizance extending to the Kings own very Person should be received without his consent nay or against his consent from Rome however perhaps it might be imprudential in a subject to receive it so For the very ordinary power of a Bishop where-ever the King resides in his Diocess extends so also to the Kings own Person that laying aside some particular priviledge or exemption given by a superiour Church-power to the King from the spiritual cognizance or jurisdiction of such a Bishop he may if just cause be proceed spiritually against the King himself by name and so proceed that in case of necessity and expediency he may either interdict him from the Church or even also excommunicate him Evangelically that is declare him separated from the spiritual Communion of all the Faithful and may do all this without any treason at all For a pure Evangelical excommunication or such I mean as is grounded in the Gospel whatever be said of Papal excommunication or of excommunication taken with all its rigour extention or effects according to some Papal Canons or Constitutions entrenches not upon the temporal rights of any nor separates any from such civil Communion of the faithful as the same faithful or any or some of them are otherwise bound by the law of God or man or nature to pay to another And consequently pronounced by a Bishop against his Kings own Person by name cannot be any way a diminution of Royal Majesty being this requires not to be exempt from the power or even effect of such an excommunication which hath no temporal effect nor bereaves of any temporal power at all nor consequently can by any just law amongst Christians be made treasonable not even in an Ordinary Bishop who is the Ordinary of the Diocess and hath not his Episcopal power restrained by any Cannon or any command of a superiour Bishop But whether it can or no I am sure there was no Law then in England making it treason in a Bishop as I have stated the case much less in a Canterbury Archbishop Legat. 6. He
the Canons or Laws of the Catholick Church viz. fidelity and obedience in spiritual things and pure spiritual commands which are just or which are given according to the Canons clave non errante Now being that both these Declarations are lawful just and honest in point of Conscience because they are both warranted by the Laws of God and Reason and the latter without any diminution of the true Royal power or any opposition to His Majesties just Laws or Commands and the former also without prejudice to the true Papal power or just Papal commands and whereas the very self-same form of expression is observed in them which you have seen in the above third Clause of our Remonstrance it is plain by all consequence of Reason that for such expression that Clause or the Remonstrance for it may not justly be censured to signifie at all or even as much as by any kind of probable consequence how far fetch'd soever to signifie any thing against the Popes true power or against his just sentence declaration or determination whatsoever being indeed it declares for no other power in the King or faith or obedience in the Subjects to the King but for such as are at the same time consistent without any contradiction contrariety or opposition with acknowledging the true Papal power and obeying all just Papal commands or being it declares only for a Supreme temporal power in the King and for the obedience of His Subjects to Him in Temporal things neither of which nor both together oppose a pure and true Supreme spiritual power in the Pope above the same Subjects and King too nor their obedience to the just commands of the Pope in meer spiritual matters Fourth Period or Clause is in these words And we openly disclaim and renounce all Forreign power be it either Papal or Princely Spiritual or Temporal inasmuch as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this Obligation or shall any way give us leave or licence to raise Tumults bear Arms or offer any violence to Your Majesties Person Royal Authority or to the State or Government In which Clause or words of it albeit the Clause and the words of our Remonstrance which above any other in it our Adversaries pretend to be the stumbling Block and Rock of Scandal to the more ignorant Readers yet even not only our said very Adversaries do confess but are forced by manifest Reason and Construction of those very words to confess that herein is neither Block nor Rock but to such as wilfully frame one to themselves nor as much as a virtual declaration for any other power in our King or obedience due by His Subjects but for the Supreme politick Civil or Temporal in Him in His own Kingdoms For no Forreign power Papal or Princely Spiritual or Temporal or other specificatively taken as Logicians speak but only reduplicatively taken is at all openly or not openly disclaimed or renounced in this Clause or words or sense thereof that is none at all simply or absolutely taken or taken without any modification or restriction is disclaimed or renounced but diminutively conditionally and modificatively taken or taken with that extreme modification and restriction imported by the words Inasmuch as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from this Obligation For who sees not that these additional words are meerly and purely reduplicative that is diminutive modificative restraining and limiting the sense of the former words Papal Princely Spiritual Temporal and confining it to that only of such Forreign power pretending or of such only as pretending to dispense with Subjects in their natural or bounden Duty of Allegiance and Subjection to their Prince And who sees not but that the two examples given a little before by me in my explanation of the former third Clause may as well be made use of here nay and many other such to justifie this expression too of this fourth Clause As for instance or example here If any should say and subscribe this Proposition We disclaim and renounce all either Forreign or even not Forreign power Papal or Princely Spiritual or Temporal inasmuch as it may seem able or shall pretend to free discharge or absolve us from the Obligation we have on us by the Law of God and Nature to honour our natural Parents to sanctifie the Lords day as we are bound by his Law to worship God alone with divine worship not to take his Name in vain not to Kill Steal commit Adultery nor hear false Witness nor covet our Neighbours Goods c. not to do I mean any such thing in any case wherein we are prohibited by the Law of God I say That if any should say so and subscribe this grand complex Proposition or any one single therein contained I am sure there is none of our Opposers but must notwithstanding confess That such Subscribers could not therefore be said to disclaim or renounce at all simply or absolutely or any way indeed the true either Papal or Royal power And why so marrie because they would say and truly say the words Inasmuch as it may seem able or shall pretend both diminish restrain limit and determine the signification of the former words Papal and Royal Power to another thing quite different from that which is truly such and determine it to that which is only such in a false imagination as the word pictus added to homo in this Oration or Complex homo pictus alters the signification of homo or signifies not a true man but a painted man only Besides who sees not that the words shall free discharge or absolve us from this Obligation or even these last two words this Obligation as in this fourth Clause import no other kind of Obligation but that of Allegiance and Loyalty as formerly mentionâ—d in Temporal or Civil Affairs for the word this must be Relative and the relation of it as in this clause and whole form can be to no other obedience but what is in meer Temporal and Civil Affairs being no other obedience is expresly or tacitly mention'd before as neither any where after And who sees not moreover That the following last words or part of this same fourth Period to wit these or shall any way give us leave or licence to raise Tumults bear Arms or offer any violence to Your Majesties Person Royal Authority or to the State or Government confirm all what I have said hitherto on this self-same whole fourth Period That is to say That they shew manifestly we disclaim not simply nor absolutely renounce thereby any other proper but only secundum quid or inasmuch as they are falsly pretended powers for such a wicked sinful end And yet shew manifestly we do not own or acknowledge other power in the King or State or other obedience due from our selves to either but that power in Temporals which is in all Kings and States over their own respective
people and that obedience also in Temporals which is in all other Subjects to their own respective Princes and States or an obedience which tyes them not to raise Tumults bear Arms c. against the Princes Person Royal Authority c Lastly Who sees not there was very much both expediency and necessity in these Kingdoms of England Ireland and Scotland but more especially in Ireland for Catholick Priests amongst such a world of Sectaries and under a Protestant King and State to make such a Remonstrance or one in such even formal words of disclaiming and renouncing in so much any Forreign power being the generality of Romish Priests in these Kingdoms or at least in Ireland have been these many Years and are as yet upon so many sufficient grounds suspected to own such a Forreign power both Papal and Princely Spiritual and Temporal as in their opinion at least may seem nay is able and may even justly pretend to free discharge and absolve them from all obligation of Loyalty even in the most Civil and Temporal Affairs whatsoever and give them leave and licence to raise Tumults bear Arms and offer violence to His Majesties Person Royal Authority and to the State and Government of both Ireland Scotland and England So that from first to last you see by this Discourse even the very grand Block of stumbling and chief Rock of scandal quite removed or rather see there hath never been any such at all in the Remonstrance being this fourth Clause or Period of it is free of any such and hath neither Block nor Rock in it self at all the Block and Rock being onely in false and even wilfully and maliciously false Representations of it by perverse Interpreters Fifth Period or Clause follows Being all of us ready not only to discover and make known to Your Majesty and to Your Ministers all the Treasons made against Your Majesty or them which shall come to our hearing but also to lose our Lives in the defence of Your Majesties Person and Royal Authority and to resist with our best endeavours all Conspiracies and Attempts against Your Majesty be they framed or sent under what pretence or patronized by what Forreign Power or Authority whatsoever But certainly here is nothing else Remonstrated but their being ready to perform their Duty in meer Civil or Temporal Affairs or which is the same thing I mean to perform a meer Civil and Temporal Duty and to perform it in a meer Civil way as all Subjects ought to their meer Civil or Temporal Prince To reveal Treason and defend the Kings Person Royal Authority and State even with the hazard of their Lives Are not both meer Civil and Temporal Duties As for that which some either too grosly stupid or too ridiculously malicious object 1. That Confessors who subscribe this Period or Clause of the Remonstrance declare they are ready and oblige themselves thereby to reveal in some case Sacramental Confessions and break the Sacred Seal of such Confessions made to them forasmuch as they say here They are ready to reveal all Treasons which shall come to their hearing And 2. That all sorts of Catholicks both Laymen and Clergymen subscribing this Clause bind themselves thereby to reveal that also which they cannot in Conscience reveal forasmuch as this Clause binds them to reveal all Treasons and we know 't is Treason by the Law at least in England 't is so to Reconcile any man to the Pope or to be Reconciled so to be made a Priest beyond the Seas by the Popes Authority and afterwards to return to the Kingdom of England as it is also Treason to deny that the King's Majesty of England is Supreme Governor in His Kingdom even in Ecclesiastical Causes and yet 't is plain they cannot nor ought not by any Law of Conscience as it stands not with the Laws of their Communion or Religion to reveal such matters To the first or that of Confessors I have already of purpose and at large answered in my LV Section where I Treated this Subject against the Third ground of the Louain Censure And to the Second or that of all Catholicks generally I say in brief here That Widdrington hath in his Theological Disputation Cap. 4. Sect. 3. upon the Oath of Allegiance most learnedly clearly and even diffusely answered this very Objection made in his time by some especially by Antonius Capellus Controvers 1. Cap. 2. pag. 30 seq against which or in answer to which the learned Widdrington or whoever was Author of those Works which go under his name in effect sayes That neither King James himself nor His Oath of Allegiance nor the Statute thereupon by the Clause of that Oath which tyes to the discovery of Treason did intend to bind or does indeed any way bind to the discovery of other Treason or Trayterous Conspiracy than that which is truly such by the Laws of God Nature and Nations even that which is truly such in all Catholick Nations against Catholick Princes but by no means to the discovery of such matters as are only of late by the peculiar Law of England called or made Treasons Treasonable or Trayterous Conspiracies and are not otherwise in their own nature against the natural Allegiance Truth Fidelity and Obedience of Subjects to their Prince And I say besides that neither any indifferent Catholick or even Protestant ever yet understood by the word Treason in such a Clause whereby Catholicks in an Oath or Declaration especially made by themselves oblige themselves to discover all Treasons any other kind of Treason but that which is such of it 's own nature or by all the Laws of God Nature and Nations or that which is such in all Catholick States and Kingdoms not that which is such by the positive Law of only this or that Kingdom or is only such by Laws made against even the very profession of the Roman Catholick Religion for such might be made Treasonable by an unjust Law of men were it left to the greater vote at least in some Contingencies and in some Countries And I say in the last place That words bind not against or besides the intention of such as speak or subscribe them not are by any Rule of Reason or Law to be construed so to bind whensoever the obvious and common sense of such words in all Nations or in the generality of Nations and Religions require no other intention but may subsist very well without any other intention and the Speakers and Subscribers of such words be thought to deal honestly and conscientiously and to be without fraud equivocation or mental reservation in such their speaking and subscribing Out of all which jointly taken with what I have said before on the other Clauses it is apparent enough That notwithstanding such capricious and foolish Objections the fifth Period contains no other than a promise or purpose of the Subscribers of being faithful in performing their natural Duty in Temporal matters without any kind
Kings and the Abbot who Teaches Treachery The Abbot who approves Subjection and the Abbot who approves Rebellion The Abbot who writes for Truth and the Abbot who writes for Lyes for Vanity Falshood and most dangerous Errours Lastly the Abbot who leads to Life and the Abbot who leads to Death both temporal of the body in this World and eternal of the Soul in the next I have spoken freely I must confess but not more freely than truly nor is the freedom I take more then necessary Your Lordship is the Assailant I only defend my self and that with the moderation of an unblameable defence A defence not of my self alone but of many others of thousands of almost all the Catholicks of Ireland England Scotland nay of the universal Church wheresoever diffused For that speech of yours that judgment rashly given of Gearnon has injur'd all wheresoever they live who are against the temporal Monarchy of the Pope And those former practises and attempts of yours as likewise of his Eminence Cardinal Barberin by so many Epistles and Emissaries by which you have rendred all His Majesties Catholick Subjects suspected beyond measure in the point of Allegiance and continued them under the yoke of most severe Laws have dejected afflicted and for the present quite ruin'd them all And what we had done by that publick Declaration of our Allegiance with a good Conscience and right Faith and a good and necessary end namely to clear Catholick Religion from the scandal and infamy especially amongst Sectaries of the most odious Tenets of King-deposition and King-deprivation nay and King-killing too at the will of the Pope in order to Spirituals by a pretended either direct or indirect power and besides to get those Laws taken away which have long been made against Catholicks in these Kingdoms and principally against the abettors and believers of such most wicked assertions your Lordship and his Eminence have suddenly blown away and by those Epistles of yours so busily dispers't through Ireland and England reproved either of Lying or Errour Then which in the circumstances in which things then were nothing could come to the hands of those Protestants who were enemies to Catholicks more acceptable or more wish't for nothing more contrary to the Orthodox nay or such even Heterodox as being moderate and well-affected desired a Repeal of Laws made against Religion Those being overjoy'd they had now got out of your Letters evident as they thought Arguments to overthrow or obstruct the end and scope of our Form of Protestation and prove that Catholick Religion is wholly inconsistent and incompatible with the absolute and indispensable allegiance of Subjects and the safety of the King and State especially in a Kingdom of a contrary communion These on the other side dejected with extreme grief to fall thus from their hopes when they saw that must happen which did namely That the Catholick Clergy at least in Ireland would by such Letters break into Parties and by consequence would not so unanimously freely seasonably and ingenuously give such assurance of their Allegiance for the future by subscribing the Protestation as might stop the mouths of all their Adversaries and open those of their Friends and which our good King and his principal Ministers would admit as sufficient Wherefore 't is Hierom Abbot of Mount Royal and Cardinal Francis Barberin who for the present have cast down afflicted and ruined the Catholick interest and hopes thereof in Ireland principally And consequently only you two and your credulous Clients and Zealots after you for the most part over-ignorant dull and envious not Caron nor Walsh nor any other of the Subscribers either singly or altogether you two I say are the men who in the British Empire and chiefly Ireland have raised to the Catholick Church of Christ not only troubles but mischiefs to be deplored for ever unless the mercy of God and a good King divert them and we are chiefly they who have prescribâ—d remedies against those troubles and mischiefs You two alone more than all the rest have bravely bestirr'd your selves and to your power endeavoured to obstruct all peaceable and Christian nay even in any sort probable or apparent ways to a Catholick people not only for restoring Orthodox Religion and Faith but re-establishing also the Papal Rights I mean those are truly such We are they who have laid open the onely lawful honest holy peaceable evangelical way of entirely restoring both viz. the ancient Religion and Papal Jurisdiction As far namely as that Jurisdiction is true not pretended as 't is admitted by the Canons of the universal Church not usurped against and above them as 't is purely spiritual and of the keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven not temporal not mixt not confused not of the ensigns of a certain worldly Dominion and to speak in one word as far as 't is either acknowledged or received by all other Roman Catholicks of Europe Lastly you alone have been the leaders of those who as the Samaritans and Idumaeans of old look with malicious eyes upon the repairing the Holy Temple under our Cyrus and run headlong upon and with all sorts of weapons fiercely fight and this almost daily and hourly against the builders of the walls We are they who with one hand lay stones in the holy wall with the other drive back the enemy Let the Church of God and our Holy Father the Pope himself consider in equity and justice what thanks what rewards belong to you what crime is to be imputed and what punishment inflicted on us Confidently and undoubtedly I speak it If we who have subscribed that Protestation have not been nor shall be able to restore the veneration due to his Holiness by the way we have taken that is an Apostolical Christian way a way of Allegiance in Subjects peace to the People and all manner of security to Princes it will never be restored by that contrary way of yours which you have hitherto shewn us that is by Anti-apostolical Anti-evangelical Antichristian doctrines and practices both of Tumults Seditions Conspiracies Rapines Perjury Homicide nay Regicide too of Treasons and Rebellions and by consequence of acting in a most impious War and cruel Murthers and more then cruel effusion of innocent blood My Lord there has been tryal enough of that execrable way of yours enough of Attempts enough of Rebellion enough and more then enough of War Of all which Ireland alone is and to all Ages will be a sad argument for History God who is good not being inclined to give a blessing or wish't success to wicked arts or means used either in a pretended or even truly intended quarrel of Religion Nor our humble Saviour Jesus Christ crucified being pleased that his Religion should be restored by other wayes than what he first ordained or any other indeed than that of Humility and the Cross as that alone which he both in life and death in word and work shew'd his ungrateful people the Jews
Subjects though it be evident that neither of these positions can be deduced from the words of that Oath or their true genuine plain natural and proper sense or any sense but strain'd by a malicious or at least erroneous interpretation nor even from the intent and end of the Oath even extrinsecal end I mean or that given it by the Legislators as far I say as is possible for any other man to know and after all since 't is manifest that there has not been so much as any rumour spread that any one or more determinate and individual Proposition or Propositions is couch'd in ours which can agree with that one or more in the Oath of King James which Paul the V I do not say censured but which He but intended desired or willed so to censure which intention nevertheless desire or will He did not express in any manner sufficient to condemn any determinate Proposition and consequently either to inform the faithful what was just what unjust what holy what wicked of the matters contain'd in that Oath or to oblige any of the faithful although other conditions had not been wanting to reject any particular or individual Proposition nay peradventure not so much as in general and indefinitely or undeterminately and confusedly and farther because 't is equally and most evidently manifest that the power of the Pope is not touch't so much as afar off either directly or indirectly or by any consequence nor any truly spiritual power of any other one or more Bishops or Ecclesiasticks that is that no such power is either wholly or in part deny'd by our Form much less either the Primacy of the Pope or his power of making any properly Ecclesiastical censure against any whosoever even Kings lastly because t is manifest that that Brief of Paul the V. is in truth purely declarative and no way constitutive of new right and that declaratory Letters Bulls or whatever Papal Laws do not oblige in conscience if they relie upon a false doubtful or only probable ground and that the aforesaid Brief relies upon a doubtful at best or only probable if not plainly a manifestly false reason to wit that which is given above since I say the truth of all these things is abundantly manifest I do not see how your Lordship can without injury to our Holy Father Alexander the VII write every whither as for these three whole years you have done that such is His judgment and that He answered as above That t was needless for Him to censure our Protestation of new the censure given by Paul the V. c. being sufficient However this be i. e. whether your Lordship have in this particular done well or ill whether his Holiness said so or no in or out of Consistory whether He writ in his own hand or in another hand with his name to it or only caus'd his mind opinion and judgment to be intimated to your Lordship or neither writ nor caus'd such intimation to be given the matter is not great because as I said before your Lordship produces no Original or Copy of such Letters by which the oral judgment of the Pope Vivae vocis craculo as they call it may appear And because besides it may be reasonably presumed from the allegation it self especially if the circumstances be weigh'd with it that our Holy Father Alexander was deceiv'd by the like bad interpretation as well of the sense of the words as of the intention scope and end of our Form made by the Divines of his Court to whom he committed the business as Paul the V. was by his eight Divines who blasted the Oath of King James Lastly because that judgment of the Pope supposing it true as is alledged did not proceed ex Cathedra From the nature of which last exception I confess it follows that although in this or the like Controversie you should produce some private Letter of his Holiness himself even under his own hand we should yet think it free for us to put in our exceptions For however we should respect and kiss the Seal of his Holiness yet in such a private Letter we should acknowledge the judgment of Alexander as a private man not as Pope and should take it for the opinion of a particular Divine or Canonist not for a determination of the Judge of the Universal Church giving sentence in his sacred Tribunal and consequently should deny any manner of prejudice could thence arise to our cause Neither can your Lordship wonder at this For if the Briefs themselves of Popes though directed to a People Kingdom or entire Nation so they be not directed to all the faithful of Christ over all the world pass for private Letters of the Pope as Eudaemon-Joannes himself in the Preface to the Parallel of Tortus confesses otherwise a keen maintainer not of the Rights only but of all Pretensions of Popes or if as is in some manner touch't before such kind of Apostolical Letters that is Briefs and likewise Bulls directed to some one Province or Kingdom whether they be called private or publick are not esteemed of themselves alone to oblige any body to assent to the matters declared upon which ground amongst many others the Catholicks of England now for these Fifty years and more are not moved by that above-mentioned declaratory Brief of Paul the V. though dated at Rome and under the Seal of the Fisher why should your Lordship think that in the present Controversie any one should be moved by Letters without comparison more private and less inducing certainty as being written by the Pope to a single person and that his own Internuncio And I confess besides that to this t is consequent that although it were wholly certain that He had so judged and judged with truth that is that certain Propositions of King James's Oath had been condemn'd by Paul the V. and that the same were contained in our Protestation and it were no less certain that such censure of His were directed by an Apostolical Brief either to the English alone or Irish or both but not to all Christians over the world lastly that it were likewise certain that these Apostolical Letters in form of Brief or Bull had not been procured by concealing any thing true or alledging any thing false or by any other fraud nor granted out of anger hatred ambition fear c. nor any way extorted but proceeded from certain knowledge and the proper motion of his Holiness and that all usual formality and all solemnity of publication and promulgation according to custom had been observ'd we should yet think is free likewise for Walsh and the rest of the Subscribers and any other Divines vers't in the present Controversie so they preserve the reverence due to his Holiness and the first See to dissent except expostulate unless his Holiness or some body else should happen in those or other Letters or some other way to convince by irrefragable Reasons the
Bishop that a little before or after for I remember not exactly which at a set meeting in Galway with the then new pretended Provincial Francis Suillevan whom I acknowledg'd not canonically nor validly chosen as neither did I the Provincial Chapter of Kilconel whereby he was chosen to have been legal or canonical or at all of force and a meeting held also in presence of the Archbishop of Dublin Thomas Flemming and the Bishop of Cluanmacnoise Antony Mageoghegan besides himself the said Imly and after his demanding of me whether I had not written in my Book of Queries That even in case the Pope had given sentence against the Appeal of the Supreme Council yet it might and should be lawful and just for them to oppose such a sentence and proceed as if it never had been given and after I had acknowledg'd this passage to be in my Book rose up presently and retorting only in a furious manner That surely the Devil was in me when I writ those lines departed immediately without staying for answer though I often pray'd him to stay and hear patiently what I could say for answer nay without coming any more to that meeting But now to return to my discourse of the sufferings abroad and to conclude it for the present with one instance more I could in the last place very particularly and singularly name Edmund O Duyr Bishop of Limmerick who not even after his death at Brussels no not even for the point of Christian burial there could be secured against the eternal malice of those no less ignorant than inhumane Nuntiotist zealots They would have hinder'd his dead Corps and labour'd mightily for hindring it from being buried in Church or Church-yard or any consecrated ground at all pretending forsooth he had formerly fallen into the Nuncio's Excommunication and Interdict fulminated in Ireland in the year 1648. against all those adhered to the Cessation of Arms concluded with the Baron of Inchiquin and that he had never been in his life absolved from those Censures Whereby you see 1. That neither quick nor dead could scape their malice 2. That no other expiation of so great a crime as they pretended in that opposition though in it self both Loyal and Christian made to the Nuncio could prevail to asswage their malice but onely such expiation as they themselves would prescribe viz. to acknowledge at the Bar and to be absolved in forma Ecclesia consueta And what this would amount unto few are so ignorant as not to know For if any other expiation might surely that should which the Bishops formerly adhering to the Supreme Council in that opposition gave sufficient testimonies of in concurring at Jamestown in the year 1650. with the other Bishops that had been alwayes of the Nuncio party and concurring with them both in their Declaration against the Kings Lieutenant and their Excommunication too against all Roman-Catholicks obeying him any longer And it was and is manifest That the foresaid Bishop of Limmerick had been one of the five Bishops remaining or continuing at or come to Galway when or after the Congregation of the rest at Jamestown was held who in that very Town of Galway and on August 23. 1650 sign'd both Instruments dated before by the rest at Jamestown on the 12 of the same Month. 3. How ignorant also in the Canons of the very Pope those fiery Zealots were in this matter against the said Bishop For by those Canons no Ecclesiastical censure of either Excommunication or Interdict generally fulminated comprehends or touches any Bishop unless Bishops be in the sentence specifically expressâ—d as concern'd and commanded in such censure or sentence and under it to observe it But it is manifest out of the very form of that sentence of the Nuncio and of his few associate pretended Delegates of Irish Bishops there was no such specifical extension therein Nor can it be alledged That participatio in crimine criminoso as the Canonists and Summists speak not even I say albeit such participation were granted in the case could excuse their said enormous fact against the dead Bishop Because it is too well known that neither he nor indeed any other at least any other of all the Bishops had ever been nominatim denounced excommunicate and because that with any whether living or dead not so denounc'd nominatim it is lawful ever since the extravagant of Martin the V. in the Council of Constance that which begins Ad evitanda scandala to communicate even in all divine Things Rites and the very Sacraments too So that of necessity it must follow That those fiery Zealots have been in that barbarous inhumane Act either shamefully ignorant of the very known Laws of their own Church or which is yet far worse even to a prodigious excess superlatively both malicious and impudent in pretending Conscience though a cruel hideous savage one where themselves knew there was no cause at all to pretend any I could further add one memorable instance more of the enraged malice of those hypocritical Irish Nuntiotist Zealots at Rome against even Father Luke Wadding himself Even I say against that very Wadding who had been for so many years before continually at Rome and both for his writings and prudence besides other Books he writ eight Tomes in fol. of the Franciscan Orders History which are call'd Annales Minorum the most famous the most esteem'd and honour'd Ecclesiastick of the Irish Nation and that both by Cardinals Embassadors of Princes and States and by the Popes themselves Who had been so long the onely chief man that above any other in the Affairs of Ireland was consulted by them Who had so often even in former times excused himself from accepting not only any titular Bishoprick or Archbishoprick of those in his own Countrey Ireland but not even any of those other really and richly beneficed and endowed which were offered him elsewhere Who at least for Thirty years had been in the vogue of the Papal Courtiers as having both highly merited and been designed for a Cardinalship And which is above all who in his own dayes and at least continually for Thirty years of them had seen and heard his own Annals with so much esteem daily read during that long extent of time in the publick Refectory Pulpits of above Forty thousand Franciscan Monasteries throughout all Parts of the Christian world Good God! that the hoary hairs of so venerable so great and good a man should be led to the Grave in grief aspersed even with the blackest of Calumnies which the malice of those ungrateful Nuntiotists even of those also I mean who had otherwise been educated by himself bred in his own bosome and lived by his industry care and study and labours could invent Yet so it was Witness the wicked Troop of some Irish Franciscans of his own Colledge of St. Isidore others young others old but all headed by Francis MaGruairck who placing themselves on their knees in a publick way
as others is quod sit potestas in summo Pontifice puniendi omnes mortales ratione delicti which they aver to be St. Thomas his opinion speciatim in cap. decimo de Institutione Principis This say they is the power Innocentius III. meant when intermedling between the Kings of France and England nimirum quando ad illum Rex Angliae detulit Regem Galliae he said non intendimus judicare de feudo sed decernere de peccato cujus ad nos pertinet sine dubitatione censura quam in quemlibet exercere possumus debemus For further proof of this power they produce Translationem Imperii and affirm this power of the Pope hath taken prescription for many Ages which they declare out of several Historians Many of them will not be persuaded that ye have a probable opinion for your doings But I have as I think manifestly shewed out of the little Book you saw with me called Strena Catholica that the learned School of Paris holds the same opinion you relie upon in the signature of your Protestation This being so it could not be denied I conceived it so but the opinion was probable that had for it the authority of so famous a School quia probabilitas opinionis desumenda est ex principiis extrinsecis After a view of what I pointed out in the said Book some of them held that the said opinion had lost its probability by what Paulus V. declared in duobus Brevibus contra juramentum fidelitatis Regis Angliae tanquam continens multa quae saluti fidei adversantur Now your Protestation being the said in substance cum isto juramento fidelitatis that Declaration of Paulus Quintus is against your Protestation as well as against the said Oath What shall I say more the Schoolmen of France and Spain if I rightly understand them disagree as much about the lawfulness and matter of the Protestation as both the Nations do in their humors For my part I confess learned Suarez his Arguments and Reasons in defensione fidei adversus errores Secta Anglicanae praecipue quae ab eo dicuntur in lib. tertio de primatu Pontificis lib. 6. de juramento fidelitatis Regis Angliae are of great strength and force Yet for all that I am ready and heartily willing to yield my Prince all obedience and fidelity all honest Bishops and Priests have done to their Princes in all ages and times keeping ever to that old and sound rule of Tertullian nimirum sic colere Imperatorem quomodo Christianis licet illi expedit and I abhor and detest from my heart that impious and heretical Doctrine of John Wickliff to wit That a Prince if he rule ill or fall into mortal sin is no longer Prince but that his Subjects may rise against him and punish him at their pleasures Is it not a wonder the Kings Bishops do not pull this Hypocrite out of their Calendar of Saints where Fox placed him in red Letters for a Martyr though he dyed upon his Bed for being Author of so pestiferous a Doctrine I also abhor the impious dogma of the great Rabin of Geneva teaching That Princes Laws bind not Subjects to obedience in Conscience but only for external and temporal respect whereby this precious Doctor of the Protestants sets the People loose for a Rebellion when they shall please and find an occasion expresly against St. Pauls doctrine Cal. lib. 4. inst cap. 10. cap. 13. ad Rom. Ideo necessitate Subditi estote non solum propter iram sed etiam propter conscientiam This is the man so much esteemed by the Protestant Divines of England who notwithstanding dared pronounce that dangerous position for Princes in his expounding the Prophet Daniel Abdicant se saith he terreni Principes dum insurgunt contra Deum imo indigni sunt qui censeantur in hominum numero Potius ergo conspuere oportet in illorum capita quam illis parere ubi sic proterviunt velint spoliare Deum suo jure The world may see how civil a man this delicate Prophet using this fine phrase conspuere oportet in principum capita and is not this a learned Homily to teach Subjects obedience but if a man ask Calvin who shall be Judge between God and Kings an insurgunt in Deum spoliant eum jure suo he will allow of no Judge in this high matter but himself all one and consequently when he shall so please will stir the people to a rebellion against their King and depose or make Him away as they list because Calvin told them spoliavit Deum jure suo which is a sad lesson for Kings A late Letter from France tells that Tuam and the rest of my Brethren there have consented to subscribe your Protestation Believe me they would not do so here nor dare do it for many reasons I think not fit to commit to this Paper but you may believe me it is so hoc sapienti sat est c. For the rest were onely private business and salutes to Friends After which he subscribes thus My dear Companion Your ever true Friend to serve you Nico Fernen His Letter to my self from the said place dated 19 Sept. 1665. Reverend Father Walsh THither goeth the submissive Letter that lay upon my hands hard upon Twenty months waiting for a sercue conveyance The Contents thereof are I conceive reasonable and sufficient to give his Grace the contentment I desire I am able to say no more against my self then said Letter doth express without belying my Conscience and betraying my Fame which I presume his Grace would not have me do Vpon this affair that is of so tender a concernment I make this Discourse Or the Letter will give clear satisfaction or it will not If the first I shall be much joyed and do my best to be there soon depending with all confidence upon his Graces clemency and protection as by your Letter you have insinuated I well may of me and mine whereof my upright dealing and demeanour will still keep me capable exercising secretly and warily my Function and giving by Gods blessing no kind of occasion of disturbing the peace of the Countrey or offending the State and Government and so shall all do upon whom I shall have influence and if any change or revolution shall happen in the Land it may happen so though I have no ground at present for divining such a matter his Excellency will find me as trusty as any of the Kings own Bishops I bring not with me the spirit of Dissention or Ambition I aim not at Honour or worldly Commodities for I enjoy more here for subsisting me than I can do there that I seek after God is my witness is onely and solely my dear Lambs and Flock their fleece and milk are in another hand if he will content himself with both and seek not to vex me I will be patient with the lack of both and
ignorance to assert nay and endeavour also even before his own face to maintain That because the King was out of the Roman-Catholick Church it was not lawful to pray for him at all or at least not publickly on any other day in the year than good Friday nor then in particular for him but in general only i. e. forasmuch as he was comprehended amongst the great generality of Infidels or of Jews Mahumetans Pagans and Hereticks for whom altogether the Church prayed on good Friday as being the Aniversary of that day whereon our Saviour dyed for all the Children of Adam in general nor yet then or so to pray for him without some further qualification and restriction of what we should beg of God or wish from Heaven to him i. e. to pray only for what concern'd the Spiritual welfare of his Soul and therefore only to pray for his Conversion to the Roman-Catholick Church but not for his Temporal prosperity in this world until he be a true Member of the only true Church 2. That although his own endeavours partly and partly those not only of the rest of the former Remonstrants but of other good men who albeit they had through fear of the Roman Court and other Ecclesiastical Superiours not subscribed the Formulary or Remonstrance of the year 1661 yet in their Souls and where they durst both in word and deed too approve it had prevailed in most parts of the Kingdom against this wicked Heresie of not praying as they ought for the Supream Temporal Powers he knew notwithstanding too too well that all opposers were not yet perswaded to decry this errour down or to practice against it 3. That notwithstanding the ignorance or malice of such disaffected Church-men the Holy Scriptures to speak nothing at all of Natural Reason in the case or I mean of that reason which directs us to wish well to all men and love our Neighbours as our selves were plain enough both for Praying and Sacrificeing too even for Idolatruos and Heathen yea persecuting Heathen Princes and not only for their Spiritual welfare but their Temporal as Baruch 1.11 and 2 Timoth 2.1 at least joyned together manifestly prove For certainly the Princes and Kings for whom Paul desires Timothy and all other Christians to pray for Heathens and Nero amongst them was the very first Persecuting Roman Emperour And no less certainly both Nabuchodonozor and Baltassar in the Prophet Baruch were Heathen Princes and the former He that sacrilegiously robâ—d the Holy Temple nay utterly in his time subverted the Kingdom of the chosen People of God and carried the miserable remainders of them Captive to Babilon 4. That no Church-canon or Custom or Rubrick or Reason or Doctrine or Practice hath any power to prescribe against the Laws of God or their eternal reason declared in both the New and Old Testaments 5. And Lastly That nothing could more justly render us to all Protestants both suspected of disloyalty and odious for immorality than such our scandalous either opposing or omitting so known a duty Secondly for the later or second part of that same first of those Three Heads he let them know likewise That although not even the Subscribers of the very former Remonstrance or of that of the year 1661 may be thought to be obliged by the only precise contents of that Formulary To acknowledg either the Kings Authority in commanding any meer spiritual duties or the Peoples obligation in point of Conscience to obey the King in such commands yet no man of knowledge will thence conclude that the intention or design of that Formulary or Subscription of it was either formally or virtually i. e. tacitly and consequently to deny all such Authority in the King or all such obligation of conscience on either Lay people or Clergy but only in plain and express terms to acknowledge the Kings other kind of independent Authority viz That in Temporals and for commanding in all Temporals universally according to the Laws of the Land of the misbelief or denyal and rejection of which even Vniversal and Independent Authority in Temporals it behooved the Subscribers to clear themselves or at least those in general in whose behalf they Subscribed and Remonstrated That such concern and such intention or design is very far from any consequution or sequel implying their denyal of the Kings Authority for commanding some Spirituals even truly such nay or of his Authority for commanding Vniversally all Spirituals whether not purely or purely such to be duly perform'd by all Subjects both Lay and Ecclesiastical respectively as they are in their several capacities by the Laws of God and man directed enabled and obliged to perform and discharge them and therefore also very far from any conseqution implying their denial either of Peoples or Clergys obligation in point of conscience to obey the King whensoever He commands a due and holy observance or performance and discharge of such Spiritual works which neither of their own nature nor by any icrcumstances or ends prescribed by Him are vitiated or against the Laws of God but are in every such respect acts of true Religion Piety and Holiness For who sees not That a general affirmation of one sort of Authority in Kings and of a correspondent tye of obedience thereunto in Subjects must not infer a general renunciation or denyal of another kind of Authority in the one and tye on the other when these latter can not be truly said to be inconsistent with those other That both the Examples even of the most religious holy Kings either amongst the Jews and Israelites in the Old Testament or amongst Christians under the dispensation of the New yea in the more early times thereof and the Doctrin of the Fathers and natural reason too in the case manifestly prove this Authority in all Kings for commanding even such spiritual duties and consequently this obligation of and tye of Conscience on all Subjects of whatever Religion true or false the same or different from that professed by their Kings to obey them even in all such their commands whither given by Law or by Proclamation or other temporary Precept That to this purpose the Books of Paralipomenon do furnish us plentifully with the examples of David (a) 1 Parlip cap. 23 cap. 28. 2 Paralip 8 Ezechias (b) 2 Paralip 29. and Josias (c) Ibid. 35. to say nothing now of Joas adhuc dum bonum (d) Ibid 24. faceret coram domino nothing of Salomon (e) 3. Reg. 2. Vide etiam 4. Reg. 18 23. cap. 2 Paralip 19 34 35. cap. Et Mac. 4.59 Ester 9.26 Dan. 3 19. â—on 3.7 c. and the Civil Laws of the Christian Emperours of Rome the Books of the Code Pandects and Authenticks furnish us no less plentifully with examples of Constantine the Great Theodosius both the older and younger Honorius Martianus Justinian Heracliuus Leo and many more amongst whom Carolus Magnus and
c. in this particular They do not say they do From performing their duty of true Obedience and Allegiance to their Prince But what Obedience and Allegiance they adjudge to be a duty and true they do not declare but leave that under the uncertainty of their own interpretation That any private Subject The King is not secured by this against either Pope or against any private Subject that may be employed to that horrid work by any pretended Authority for then he ceaseth to be a private Person The Anointed of God If the Pope Excommunicates him and deposes him will they accompt him still the Anointed of God or his Prince They have not yet told us so in this Remonstrance So that this specious Protestation of Duty falls very much shorter of the former Remonstrance and is so doubtfully exprest that it lookt rather like a fallacy to deceive the Prince than any clear asserted Loyalty to found thereon any confidence of their Obedience 3. That withall at the same time and by occasion of shewing me these Animadversions His Grace told me That being the Lords of the Council who saw that new Remonstrance and other Papers presented from the Congregation upon first sight so clearly discerned their Juggle it became me to give throughly and clearly all Exceptions at large which might or ought in reason be made against the same Remonstrance and Act of Recognition and moreover to give candidly the true import of the three first Sorbon Declarations as applied and sign'd by the Congregation or as proceeding from them as likewise to give a full and clear and satisfactory Answer to the said Congregation's third Paper or that containing their Reasons why they sign'd not the three last of those late six Sorbon Declarations 4. That in obedience to such His Graces Commands for I took such intimations for sufficient Commands from Him I put my self presently to write the three next following Treatises of this Book or the Second Third and Fourth thereof viz. answering so exactly the number of material Papers given by or presented as from the Congregation to His Grace Which Papers were only three for I look not on their Petitions as any way material 5. That besides the bare motive of obeying His Grace I had these other strong inducements to write on that Subject First I consider'd That by my being backward or if I did shew my self backward in such a matter occasion might be thence taken and peradventure justly too by the foresaid Lords of the Council and consequently by all others of their communion to suspect me also and together with me even all other Subscribers of the former Remonstrance how otherwise Loyal soever Next I remembred what my Lord Lieutenant was pleased some few dayes before to tell me of the Earl of Anglesey's new Sentiments i. e. better opinion of and more favourable inclinations to the Subscribers of the First Remonstrance than his Lordship had formerly had viz. How the said Earl having seen the originals of the late Letters come from the Court of Rome i. e. from Cardinal Francis Barberin and the then Internuncio of Burgundy and Low-countries James Rospigliosi now Cardinal Rospigliosi against the said former Remonstrance and Subscribers thereof had thereupon declared to His Grace the Lord Lieutenant 1. That himself was now at last by the said Letters fully convinced That that former Remonstrance and Controversie about it was no Juggle that Peter Walsh the chief promoter of it was no Cheat but rather on the contrary that indeed the Controversie was real and the Subscribers of that first Formulary as many of them as bore up constantly and unalterably against the Court of Rome in that point were in truth honest for so much And 2. therefore that he for his own part would be thenceforth for repealing the sanguinary and mulctative Laws in order to such constant Professors and unalterable performers of their due Allegiance to the King in all Temporal things whatsoever according to the Laws of the Land Now when I remembred this of my Lord Anglesey I then also consider'd further nay persuaded my self That the more clearly and ingenuously I declared my self on that Subject of the Remonstrance according to my own inward Conscience but regulated still by the unerring Rule of Holy Scripture and Universal Tradition besides natural Reason in the case the more also I should at least of my part really and effectually serve the Roman-Catholicks both Clergy and People of Ireland whose true common good next unto the discharge of a good Conscience and the glory of God by the defence of Truth I alwayes proposed to my self as at least one of the chiefest ends in this World of all my labours For I doubted not but with the blessing of God what I was then to write and now have on that Subject would in time reduce many even of as well the most ignorant as most obstinate of them i. e. some to a right understanding of the principles of Christianity and Reason others to a better compliance with what in truth they understand already but through depravation of will and byas of private interest will not seem or confess they understand Nor doubted but I would confirm many more in that which they themselves already both understand and will according to their own coolest thoughts and more natural inclinations and yet after all were like to be as indeed they have lately been under strong temptations to renounce for ever both And however these matters depending on these or those Irish Clergymen themselves do or prove I must confess I never once question'd then nor do at present but that I should by my writings on that Subject not only continue but encrease those good inclinations which I had already then â—nderstood to be in the foresaid Earl of Anglesey and not in him only but in many other Moderate Noble and Illustrious persons of the Protestant Church for repealing the sanguinary and mulctative Laws in order to such persons of the Roman-Catholick Church as have already or shall hereafter capacitate themselves for so great a favour and I know they all every one may do so without quitting one article word or syllable of the Roman-Catholick Religion as professed in any other Countrey of that same Religion abroad in the world In fine I at least hoped very much to see in my own dayes even the very unexpected fruits of such good inclinations in those illustrious moderate persons that really commiserate the case not only of all such Roman-Catholick Priests of those Dominions as only for their declared Loyal principles and affections to the King are persecuted continually in their own Church and yet not protected by his Laws but likewise of so many Thousands of poor innocent well-principled and well-affected Laicks men and women who sometimes smart by and alwayes lie under the severity of the same Laws And yet after all I will not deny but I had some consideration also of defending
protestation and promoters of any other short and unsignificant one as to the points controverted and the chief speakers for and interpreters of this in their congregation and Committees have declared themselves very conversant should serve them in such cases to shew there would be no kind of tye on them And those last words too That comes to our knowledge or the single word comes importing only in rigor and strictness of speech and sense such conspiracies only as came at that present time for it is a verb of the then present time as they would perhaps interpret it would help to free them of further scruple being they as it may be well thought and rationally suspected of equivocators of purpose omitted or changed the words of the former protestation of 61. relating to this point which were in the future tense and thus which shall come to our hearing into these of the present which comes c. To what more or better purpose then is their final addition and conclusion of all their specious promises which they give thus Finally as we hold the premises to be agreeable to a good conscience so we religiously swear the due observance thereof to our utmost and will teach and preach the same to our respective flocks in testimony whereof we have hereunto subscribed c. There would be no other observance due but that which remains after so many distinctions and evasions And if that secures the King of them let any rational indifferent man be judge And even that if it signifie any kind of thing at all would not be due if the Pope declared against the duty thereof for they were dissolved for their peremptory refusal to give under their hands that they would stand to their Remonstrance in case the Pope should declare against it All which rightly considered makes me in the conclusion of the second instance reflect a little back on the very first beginning of their Remonstrance their owning or acknowledging of the King in these words We your Majesties Subjects the Roman Catholick Clergie of Ireland together assembled do hereby declare and Solemnly protest before God and his holy Angels that we own and acknowledge your Majestie to be our true and lawful King supream Lord and undoubted Soveraign as well of this Realm of Ireland as of all other your Majesties Dominions From well meaning men sincere and plain or from such as intend heartily to shutt their eyes and thoughts to all subtle interpretations reservations abstractions school-distinctions and equivocations or in an age time Country and circumstances wherein and by very many of those very Remonstrants and upon the contradictory question the Popes pretences as well by Divine as by humane right to the very temporal supream power of the Crowns of England and Ireland had not been by reason of their own either publick or private discontents or interests so stiffely maintained though in private only these four years past and is to this very day from such well-meaning men I say and in another age that form of Recognition might perhaps be sufficient But as the case stands at present not at all The Divines on whose explication they chiefly relie are so conversant in Bellarmine and Suarez and their distinctions and meanings and sophistry that as I have already above observed as the word undoubted is not home enough from them to the point so neither are those other our true and lawful King They will say first when they find it convenient That one may be their true and lawful King though an Usurper Yet as Richard the Third was he may be in fact and possession only or by presumption or provision only of the temporary Law of the Land their true and lawful King but not so according to the rules of right-reason and Justice prescribed by the eternal Laws of God and Nature which are above all the laws of man And they will yet further â—ay That although they now admit or would in their conscience admit Charles the Second to be their true and lawful King according to all kind of Laws both of God and man yet he might or may in these cases they exempt from the general rule cease hereafter to be any more their true and lawful King and cease I mean to be so without and against his own consent and himself yet living and even still possessing his Fathers Throne to wit in the cases of the sentences of Deposition or of Excommunication of the people for obeying or acknowledging him the right being transferred to another And they will moreover say that he may be their true and lawful King in actu primo or as to the habit or essence of regal rights but not in actu secundo not as to the exercise of any Jurisdiction over them of which exercise he may as Bellarmine and Suarez and such other Patrons of that way both Divines and Canonists affirm be deprived by a bare Excommunication of him or injunction laid on his people not to obey him being in such a case absolved from all tyes even of sworn Allegiance according to the express Canons of several Popes in the very body of the Canon Law Can. Nos sanctorum and Can. Juratos 15. q. 6. and Can. Absolutos Extra De Haereticis by Gregory the Seventh and Gregory the Ninth as the foresaid Patrons of that way interpret or understand these Canons As for their owning him their Supream Lord which indeed amongst men of the golden age were enough to shew their denial of his Majesties sub-ordination in his Temporals to any other besides God alone even in any case imaginable yet now in this age and this conjuncture and after so many Books written by Roman Catholicks on both sides pro con for and against the Oath of Allegiance that I mean enacted by law under King James some fifty years since and after so much contradiction of late and these four years past all along of the Remonstrance of 61. and by reason of the Letters and Censures procured from Bruxels Rome and Lovain from both the Inter-nuncius's at Bruxels from Cardinal Francis Barbarin both now of late at Rome in the moneths of April and May 66. as before in the moneth of July 62. and from the Faculty Theological at Lovain in the moneth of December the same year 62. in the procurement of which Letters and Censures some of the Members of this very Congregation had been chief Actors and Agents and because this very Congregation by the great influence of some of them on the rest would choose rather to run any hazzard loose all their hopes of prevailing with his Majesty for the greatest good their Country and Religion expected from him that which they and their Predecessors so mightily longed for these hundred years would rather I say loose all the present fair hopes thereof then not conform to such Letters and Censures which yet are in substance and effect against that plain obvious meaning amongst honest men of
determining at all whether the King or his inferior Courts or Judges may or may not justly and by their own proper supream or subordinat civil authority and expresly against the Popes decrees proceed against such criminals according to the present municipal lawes of the land nor determining whether such Ecclesiastick criminals may in conscience where they may or can choose subject themselves in such cases as wherein by the Canons of the Roman Church they are exempt from the power and punishment of the secular Magistrat and his lawes unless or until they be delivered over to him by the Church albeit the subscribers of that Remonstrance of 61. were then are now and will so continue principled in conscience and doctrine that by the lawes of God no Canons of the Church may exempt any Church-men of what rank or degree soever no more then they can meer Lay-men from either the directive or coercive supream temporal power of such Kings as have not any other superior in their temporals but God alone nor against their wills or lawes from their courts or subordinat Judges though it be most conformable to the law of God and nature that Princes should for the reverence of the sacred function exempt them generally from the power of inferior or subordinat judicatures and leave them to be punished by their own Ecclesiastical superiors if not in such cases or contingencies as they shall find their said Ecclesiastical superiors to be unwilling or unfitting or to be involved themselves in the same crimes or the chief Patrons of them But however this be in truth and whatever the subscribers of 61. think or think not of this matter and whether the foresaid two lines which finally conclude their said sequel petition and resignation imply formally or virtually or any way at all such renunciation of Ecclesiastical immunity or implye it not in any kind of manner yet for as much as upon many occasions great use has been made as I have said before of the above objections though as often cleerly and throughly solved as made against the Remonstrance of 61. and that in this other of 66. the contrivers and promoters of it have intirely omitted that passage both as to the words and sense and I mean that sense which they themselves conceive or certainly would have others conceive of purpose to render that passage and by and for it the whole foresaid Remonstrance of 61. odious and scandalous and for as much also as from persons so principled in that point of Clergie mens exemption there can be no assurance to the King by general words and notions or by such too too general acknowledgements protestations declarations and promises of any real true and significant subjection intended or promised by them but such only as leaves them alwayes at liberty that is free from the supream temporal Coercive power of the King and his laws and leaves them not so much as under an inward obligation of sin to conform outwardly or submit as much as to the direction or directive part virtue or power of any kind of Temporal or civil Magistrat or laws but only under such an unsignificant obligation as these words ex aequo et bono import and for as much further as until they declare sufficiently that is cleerly expresly and particularly against this dangerous false and scandalous doctrine it must in reason be to no purpose for them to offer or for His Majestie to receive any kind of Protestation of Allegiance from them therefore I found this alteration and omission of the said two lines nothing equivalent as to that sense how injuriously or invidiously soever conceived by them being in their own Remonstrance given in lieu thereof I say I found that change a most material exception and if not a greater at least as great as any of all the former Leaving to the judicious Reader to be considered soberly and coolely what according to such doctrine of the exemption or immunity of Clergy-men signifies any word acknowledgment protestation declaration or promise as from such Clergy-men in their Remonstrance even in case there had been no other Exception to it What those words which are their very first beginning of it We your Majesties Subjects the Roman Catholtck Clergy of Ireland c Or whether from such men so principled in this matter these words must be construed or understood to import any more then that they profess themselves verbally not really equivocally not univocally Subjects Or do not they withal and at the same time perswade themselves and stiffely maintain that however in word they complement yet in deed they are not Subjects either in soul or body not even in any kind of case to any civil or temporal power or law on earth as barely such Or doth the Kings Majesty pretend his own to be other then barely and only such that is temporal and civil And so I conclude all my four Instances Which especially the second and fourth or this last I confess might be comprized in a fewer Lines But I chose this method of purpose to make the weaker sort of capacities to understand at large the causes of dissatisfaction my Lord Lieutenant and Council have in this Remonstrance of the foresaid late Assembly how specious soever it may appear at first reading to such as are not throughly acquainted with the intrigues And now to those Instances and Exceptions will only add in brief two Observations more Which especially the first of them confirm evidently enough to any indifferent man that is not a fool how little how weak and frail and false the assurance is the King can derive from such a Remonstrance of such men and in such a country and time as this First Observation That upon the sole account of their express refusal on the contradictory publick debate in the Assembly to petition his Majesty as you have seen at large in the Narrative whlch goes before the Exceptions for pardon of those crimes or offences chargable on them as committed by them or any of them or any else of the Irish Clergie by reason or occasion of the first Insurrection 23. Octob. in 41. or of the after conjunction of the rest of the Irish Catholicks the same or following year in a social war with the first Insurrectors or by reason or occasion in particular of the Clergies general Congregation at Waterford under the Nuncios Authority and their Declaration therein and those other actings afterwards in pursuance thereof in the next general Assembly of the three Estates in Kilkenny against the peace of 46. or of the total breach and publick rejection of it in all parts of the Kingdom or by reason or occasion also of the Declarations of the Bishops at Jamesstown against the second Peace or that which followed in 48. and of the consequent breaches thereof by so many other persons and parties and in so many other Provinces and Counties of the Kingdom I say that upon the sole account of
their or hinderance to annoy them Yet for ample satisfaction we further say to the first part of this Objection that as doubtless it concerns more nearly the Supreme Council to know the condition of the Countrey as who only were then and are yet entrusted with the Government were and are more often and more particularly inform'd so it belong'd and yet belongs to them of right to declare the ability or disability of the Countrey for War and the necessity and profit of either Cessation or Peace and consequently to conclude a Cessation and Peace or continue War we mean so far as the General Assembly furnisheth them with power as in this particular of concluding the present Cessation they have Unto which determination of theirs and unto all other in matters meerly civil such as this is where manifest sin doth not appear as in this business appears not the Lords Spiritual and both Clergies Regular and Secular are to obey as Subjects bound hereunto in Conscience and under mortal sin according to the consent of Holy Fathers and Divines where the matter is of moment and specially when it concerns the peace of the Commonwealth and allegiance to the Crown or Kingdom not to resist as Judges (q) See the Fathers and Expositors on Rom. 13.2 Oecumenius Theophilactus Augustine Ambrose Bernard with Cornelius a Lapide Omniâ— anima sayes Chrysostom potestatibus supereminentibus subdita su sive Apostolum sis sive Evangelista sive Propheta c. All other Fathers and Expositors together with Chrysostom understanding the same passage of St. Paul of obedience due to the Civil Magistrate and due unto them even by Churchmen With this sense of Fathers and Expositors all Catholick Divines agree See them together with Canon 〈◊〉 and Canons â—o this purpose in great numbers with Laymaâ— 1. l. 1. Tract 4. c. 13. and Becan in his Sum. Theol. de Leg. ham c. 6. qâ—â—i Nay that not only the Civil power obligeth thus indirectâ—y but also directly by their Laws or Commands Victoria Soto Medina and many others maintain However this be all confess that Cleâ—ks are bound in Conscience to obey the just Ordinances of the Commonwealth and undoubted it is that they are to be accounted just until manifestly they appear unjust That the Civil Laws and civil Commands of the Commonwealth or of the Civil Authority do bind Consciences to their performance under mortal sin if the thing commanded be of moment Vasquez teacheth d. 18. c. 4. and other with him Suar. l. 3. c. 27 n. 4. who are cited and followed by Becan in Sum. Theol. de Leg. hun c. 6 q. 3. n. â—i â—ii As for the second part of the said Objection it cannot be more cleared than it hath been by your Lordships in your printed answers to the Lord Nuncio 's Propositions and in your printed Declarations in pursuance of the said Answers in both which you declare unto the World and oblige your selves not to receive any other Peace but that which hath been agreed upon by the last Assembly and transmitted with the Agents unless peradventure the Kingdom and Assembly shall otherwise decree for the good of the Commonwealth Unto which Decree you are by Oath as other Confederates to conform and submit your own judgments And verily what could be more expected from your Lordships you are Confederates you took the Oath of Association you were thought worthy by both Estates Ecclesiastical and Temporal in a general Assembly to have the Kingdom put into your hands and the power of concluding a Cessation residing only in your breasts you were esteemed per consequence by the Nation to be men of honour wisdom and conscience finally what your Honours did in this business was through the vehement desires of the Provinces and known necessities of the Confederates and hath been likewise generally approved of and received by all the Catholick party in Ireland yea with joyes and thanks as the only mean of their preservation only a few refractories oppose it men without any rashness but with much grief we speak it who seem to have the evil of proper interest before their eyes unconscionable designs in their hearts and who have for such unworthy ends sufficiently discovered themselves enemies of all publick quiet and happiness of the Nation What the seditious Libellist Author of the Vindication who by that scurvy piece hath nothing served but much disserved the Nuncio here objects against the opinion we are to hold of your integrity and likewise against even your authority or power in signing the Cessation where he sayes 't was only concluded by a malignant infamous perjur'd Party of the Supreme Council by others inveigled by them and by some who officiously signed being no members of the Council this forged Calumny we say might be contemn'd and in regard it is so known to be a meer fiction of a Libellist not otherwise answered than that his Pen had too much gall and poyson and his matter neither rime nor reason Yet to undeceive the deceived if any be such and to prevent or take away the impression which perhaps the reading or hearing of this unknown detracter might give or hath given some simple Souls we thought fit to insert in this place two Acts of General Assemblies whereby this Impostor may be confounded The first is a Declaration made by the universal vote of the Kingdom in the year 1646. Febr. 2. vindicating these members of the Supreme Council from these aspersions of Perjury and Disloyalty then first endeavoured to be cast upon them by their Adversaries but now revived again from Hell by the Libellist in their negotiating with the Marquess of Ormond the rejected Peace The words of the Declaration are these And this Assembly do hereby likewise declare That the said Council Committee of Instructions and Commissioners of the Treaty have faithfully and sincerely carried and demeaned themselves in their said Negotiation pursuant and according to the trust reposed in them and gave thereof a due and acceptable account to this Assembly Given at Kilkenny the 2d day of February 1646. Surely this Declaration made after exact debate of the matter by the Lords Spiritual Temporal and Commons in a general Assembly of the whole Kingdom must be of more weight and power to persuade any reasonable creature than a passionate and obscure Libellists bare assertion At least the new and legal establishment of such members in their former dignity and government of the Kingdom notwithstanding all the opposition made and labours taken by their Adversaries to brand them with some character whereby to render them incapable must convince any judgment Is there any likelihood that a whole Nation in its Representative body the General Assembly and ever since in all its real parts in all Provinces Counties Cities Towns yea and Armies would have tyed themselves and sworn to obey them whom they had either proved or justly suspected not to have discharged the trust imposed or therefore had been
give their own way any other than extrinsecal probability even this extrinsecal probability now ceasing where the reasons to the contrary are so manifestly insoluble and an Errour with reverence still to their dignities proved in their proceedings and sentence for what concerns Conscience since they have no power to make it an Article of our Belief that the Cessation is against Conscience Nay this Controversie being wholly or principally depending on a question of Fact cannot by any power on earth be so defined Vid. Bellarm. supra but that it may be lawful to follow the contrary opinion which defends it to be conscionable The Third Querie answered TO the Third That your Lordships printed Answers to the Propositions of the Lord Nuncio are not so short or unsatisfactory in any point as they might afford just ground for an Excommunication The reasons of which resolution are apparent in our Answers to the two former Questions and likewise hence That the Lord Nuncio in his Propositions inserted nothing but what did meerly belong to the Civil Government wherein notwithstanding if any Errour could be declared to have been committed your Lordships were content upon manifestation thereof to amend it or else what was provided for sufficiently before those Propositions were offered The Fourth Querie answered THat whereas the Oath of Association tyes all the Confederates to be dutifully obedient and observant of your Lordships just Orders and Decrees and whereas in our Answer to the first Querie it is sufficiently proved That the present Cessation is most just and lawful and by consequence your Orders and Decrees commanding the Confederates to accept and obey the Cessation must be just it follows That disobedience to such your Lordships Commands in not adhering to the Cessation is Perjury The Fifth Querie answered THat if it shall be found that the Excommunication and Interdict of the Lord Nuncio is against the fundamental Laws of the Kingdom and which the Prelates have sworn by the Oath of Association to maintain it is not lawful for them to publish or countenance the said Censures contrary to your Lordships positive Orders Neither do we see how can any of the Prelates otherwise answer if they condemn not the Oath of Association of injustice and themselves of having done ill in taking or approving it The Sixth Querie answered Bonac tom â— d. 4. q. 1. pun ultim n. 8. citans Suar. c. 41. Sanch. l. 1. de Matr. dis 32. Filluc tra 23. c. 9. q. 10. nu 279. IT being the common sense of Divines that in an Oath lawfully taken for the good and profit of another none can dispense without his privity and consent unto whom it was sworn but in certain cases exprest by the Authors cited in the margent and the Oath of Association being in it self lawful and sworn to the Kingdom for the publick good of the Nation and of each Confederate in particular certainly a dispensation cannot be given to any person or parties of the Confederates to break the said Oath or to take away the obligation of it without the consent of the Assembly unto which by a special clause of the said Oath and this is to be well noted the alteration or dissolution of the Oath is reserved none of the cases excepted by Authors having place in this matter Wherefore if any other of what power soever though it were His Holiness did otherwise attempt to dispense with any of the sworn Confederates both the Dispenser and dispensed would hereby transgress the Law of God and incur the guilt of a mortal and most heinous crime Besides that such a dispensation would be of its own nature invalid void and no way securing for the future the Conscience of the dispensed and consequently this party dispensed withall must of necessity as often as he makes use of such a dispensation so many times commit a mortal sin the Dispenser likewise and without question participating by his first action of the same evils All and every branch and particular of which resolution followeth by necessary inference out of the common and certain doctrine of Classick Authors who without controversie teach That the obligation of a lawful Oath is in a weighty matter under mortal sin and de jure divino by the Law divine natural and positive and that even His Holiness cannot without a manifestly just cause Vid. Bonaci tract de legi disp 1. q. 2. pu 3. prop. 2. nu 14. 15. uâ—i citâ—t Reginal Sanch. Sal. Valeâ— Toâ—e Vasq Cajet Sylv. Nava Sotum c. dispense in any obligation of the Law divine and that if he should otherwise his dispensation would be in it self void sinful and no way securing the Conscience of the party dispensed withal Which doctrine they make evident with many strong and perspicuous reasons unnecessary to be now rehearsed and specially declare it out of Holy Scripture 2 Cor. 13.10 where St. Paul tells That Christ consigned his power unto the Prelates of the Church non in destructionem sed in aedificationem not for destruction but for edification But who sees not that this power would be abused for destruction and not for edification if on pretence of it and without a manifestly just cause dispensations should be granted in the Law divine positive and natural And who is it that looks on the Confederates and their present condition with an impartial eye but will conceive that there cannot be a just cause for dispensing with them or particulars of them in their Oath of Association or with them in their obedience due by the said Oath to the Government established First In regard the sole cause pretended is the Cessation made and observed with Inchiquyn which we have notwithstanding proved to have been lawful necessary profitable and much to the advancement of the Catholick cause were it obeyed by refractories and per consequence of the glory of God How then could it be a just cause for dispensing with any in the Oath of Association or in the obedience due by the said Oath to all Orders of the Supreme Council or all such Orders as do not manifestly appear to be sinful Secondly Because such a dispensation breeds Sedition stirs Rebellion commenceth a Civil War and divides the Confederates into Parties throws fire and blood into their very entrals and by their own hands finally weakens them so by these wayes of mutual enmities and hostilities as hereby in reason they should be thought to be exposed as a prey to the common enemy of our Religion specially their disability when they were entire being considered and the prime scope of their Confederacy which is the propagation and glory of Catholick Religion very unlikely to be attained but rather despaired of Is there any one knows Ireland but should in reason have persuaded himself That all these evils should have followed such a dispensation if God did not prevent them by a miracle and on miracles we are not S. Tho. Val. Sanch. Lessi
hisce subscripsimus Kilkenniae 28 Januarii 1648. Jo Archiepiscopus Tuamen Fran Aladen Ed Limericensis THE ARTICLES OF PEACE Made and Concluded by his Excellency JAMES LORD Marquess of Ormond LORD LIEUTENANT GENERAL AND General Governour of His Majesties Kingdom of Ireland on the behalf of His Majesty WITH THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY of the Roman-Catholicks of the said Kingdom on the behalf of His Majesties Roman-Catholick Subjects of the same Re-printed in the Year M.DC.LXXIII BY THE LORD LIEVTENANT GENERAL AND General Governour Of the Kingdom of IRELAND ORMONDE VVHEREAS Articles of Peace are made concluded accorded and agreed upon by and between Vs JAMES Lord Marquess of Ormond Lord Lieutenant General and General Governour of His Majesties Kingdom of Ireland by vertue of the Authority wherewith We are entrusted for and on the behalf of His Most Excellent Majesty of the one part and the General Assembly of the Roman-Catholicks of the said Kingdom for and on the behalf of His Majesties Roman-Catholick Subjects of the same on the other part A true Copy of which Articles of Peace is hereunto annexed We the Lord Lieutenant do by this Proclamation in His Majesties Name publish the same and do in His Majesties Name strictly charge and command all His Majesties Subjects and all others inhabiting or residing within His Majesties said Kingdom of Ireland to take notice thereof and to render due Obedience to the same in all the parts thereof And as His Majesty hath been induced to this Peace out of a deep sense of the miseries and calamities brought upon this His Kingdom and People and out of a hope conceived by His Majesty that it may prevent the further effusion of His Subjects Blood redeem them out of all the miseries and calamities under which they now suffer restore them to all quietness and happiness under His Majesties most gracious Government deliver the Kingdom in general from those Slaughters Depredations Rapines and Spoils which alwayes accompany a War encourage the Subjects and others with comfort to betake themselves to Trade Traffick Commerce Manufacture and all other things which uninterrupted may increase the wealth and strength of the Kingdom beget in all His Majesties Subjects of this Kingdom a perfect unity amongst themselves after the too long continued division amongst them So His Majesty assures Himself that all His Subjects of this His Kingdom duly considering the great and inestimable benefits which they may find in this Peace will with all duty render due Obedience thereunto And We in His Majesties Name do hereby declare That all persons so rendring due Obedience to the said Peace shall be protected cherished countenanced and supported by His Majesty and His Royal Authority according to the true intent and meaning of the said Articles of Peace Given at Our Castle of Kilkenny the Seventeenth day of January 1648. GOD SAVE THE KING ARTICLES of Peace made concluded accorded and agreed upon by and between his Excellency JAMES Lord Marquess of Ormond Lord Lieutenant General and General Governour of His Majesties Kingdom of Ireland for and on the behalf of His Most Excellent Majesty by vertue of the Authority wherewith the said Lord Lieutenant is intrusted on the one part And the GEMERAL ASSEMBLY of the Roman Catholicks of the said Kingdom for and on the behalf of His Majesties Roman Catholick Subjects of the same on the other part HIS Majesties Roman Catholick Subjects as thereunto bound by Allegiance Duty and Nature do most humbly and freely acknowledge and recognize their Sovereign Lord King Charles to be lawful and undoubted King of this Kingdom of Ireland and other His Highness Realms and Dominions And His Majesties said Roman Catholick Subjects apprehending with a deep sense the sad condition whereunto His Majesty is reduced as a further humble Testimony of their Loyalty do declare That they and their Posterity for ever to the uttermost of their power even to the expence of their blood and fortunes will maintain and uphold His Majesty His Heirs and lawful Successors their Rights Prerogatives Government and Authority and thereunto freely and heartily will render all due obedience OF which faithful and loyal Recognition and Declaration so seasonably made by the said Roman Catholicks His Majesty is graciously pleased to accept and accordingly to own them his loyal and dutiful Subjects and is further graciously pleased to extend unto them the following graces and securities I. IMprimis It is concluded accorded and agreed upon by and betweeen the said Lord Lieutenant for and on the behalf of His most Excellent Majesty and the said General Assembly for and on the behalf of the said Roman Catholick Subjects And His Majesty is graciously pleased that it shall be Enacted by Act to be past in the next Parliament to be held in this Kingdom That all and every the Professors of the Roman Catholick Religion within the said Kingdom shall be free and exempt from all Mulcts Penalties Restraints and Inhibitions that are or may be imposed upon them by any Law Statute Usage or Custom whatsoever for or concerning the free exercise of the Roman Catholick Religion And that it shall be likewise Enacted That the said Roman Catholicks or any of them shall not be questioned or molested in their Persons Goods or Estates for any matter or cause whatsoever for concerning or by reason of the free exercise of their Religion by vertue of any Power Authority Statute Law or Usage whatsoever And that it shall be further Enacted That no Roman Catholick in this Kingdom shall be compelled to exercise any Religion Form of Devotion or Divine Service other than such as shall be agreeable to their Conscience and that they shall not be prejudiced or molested in their Persons Goods or Estates for not observing using or hearing the Book of Common Prayer or any other Form of Devotion or Divine Service by vertue or colour of any Statute made in the second year of Queen Elizabeth or by vertue or colour of any other Law Declaration of Law Statute Custom or Usage whatsoever made or declared to be made or declared And that it shall be further Enacted That the Professors of the Roman Catholick Religion or any of them be not bound or obliged to take the Oath commonly called the Oath of Supremacy expressed in the Statute of Secundo Eliz. cap. 10. or in any other Statute or Statutes and that the said Oath shall not be tendred to them and that the refusal of the said Oath shall not redound to the prejudice of them or any of them they taking the Oath of Allegiance in haec verba viz. I A. B. do truly acknowledge profess testifie and declare in my Conscience before God and the World That our Sovereign Lord King CHARLES is lawful and rightful King of this Realm and of other His Majesties Dominions and Countries and I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to His Majesty His Heirs and Successors and Him and Them will defend to the uttermost of my
and for his own Names sake will deliver us Deus Eliae the God of wonders and miracles erit etiam nunc apud Hibernos if our Faith prove strong and our actions sound and sincere We will conclude with St. Paul that Ocean of Wisdom and Doctor of Nations Si Deus pro nobis quis contra nos Quis accusabit adversus electos Dei Deus qui justificat quis est qui condemnat Quis ergo nos separabit a charitate Christi Tribulatio an angustia an fames an nuditas an periculum persecutio an gladius sed in his omnibus superamus propter eum qui dilexit nos Let nothing separate you from the burning charity of Christ and God will ever preserve protect and bless you SIGNED Nicolaus Fernensis Procurator Dubliniensis Fr Antonius Cloanmacnoisensis Walterus Clonfertensis Procurator Laghlinensis Fr Arthurus Dunensis Connorensis Procurator Dromorensis Carolus Kelly S. T. D. Decanus Tuamensis Fr Bernardus Egan Procurator R. admodum P. Provincialis Fratrum Minorum Fr Ricardus O Kelly Procurator Vicarii Generalii Kildariensis Prior Rathbran Ordinis Praedicatorum Lucas Plunket S.T.D. Protonot Apostol Rector Collegii de Kilecu Exercitus Lageniae Capellanus Major Hugo Ardmaghanus Joannes Archiepiscopus Tuamensis Joannes Rapotensis Eugenius Kilmorensis Franciscus Aladensis Fr Gulielmus de Burgo Provincialis Ordinis Praedicatorum Jacobus Abbas de Conga Commissarius Generalis Can. Reg. S. Augustin Walterus Enos S. T. D. Protonotarius Apost Thesaurar Fernensis Procurator Ecclesiae Collegiatae Galviensis Thadaeus Eganus S. T. D. Praepositus Tuamensis Joannes Doulaeus Juris Doctor Abbas de Cilmanagh unus ex Procuratoribus Capitali Cleri Tuamensis And we the undernamed sitting at Galway with the Committee authorized by the Congregation held at Jamestown the 6th of Aug. currentis do concur with the above Archbishops Bishops and other Prelates and Dignitaries in the above Declaration and withal do now make firm the same as an Act of our own by our several Subscriptions this 23d of August 1650. Fr Terentius Imolacensis Jacobus Fallonus Vicarius Apostolicus Accadensis Thomas Casselensis Joannes Laonensis Edmundus Lymericensis Robertus Corcagiensis Cloanensis ANSWER This Conclusion of their Declaration is a general recapitulation of the miseries and desolation fallen upon the Kingdom and People in Tragical and passionate expressions endeavouring to infuse into them a belief that all those Afflictions are thorough Our means fallen upon them whereas We suppose We have made it evident That next to the good pleasure of God to chastise the Nation the reason thereof may most reasonably be attributed to the Sedition Disloyalty Pride Covetousness and Ambition to Rule of these Declarers whom VVe challenge to instance whom VVe have born down that would have fought for them or whom cherished or advanced that would or did betray them And where they say That some are inclining to submit to those they call the Parliament persuading themselves that there can be no safety under Our Government attended by fate and disaster as they express themselves more like Heathen Poets than Christian Bishops and Churchmen it is known to some there That to Our certain knowledge divers persons and places of consideration would have submitted to the Enemy if We had gone rather than live under the Tyranny and confusion of the Government projected by these Declarers which was the principal reason of Our stay as will We fear be too evidently verified when We are gone unless that Assembly prevent it by more prudent temperate and solid determinations than these men are capable of giving or receiving Next they say That for prevention of those evils and that the Kingdom should not be utterly lost to His Majesty and His Catholick Subjects they found themselves bound in Conscience to declare against the continuance of His Majesties Authority in Vs and accordingly in their own Name and in the Name of the rest of the Catholicks of the Kingdom they do declare against the continuance of His Majesties Authority in Vs having by Our misgovernment and ill conduct of the Army and breach of Publick Faith rendred Our Self uncapable of continuing that great Trust any longer To which We answer That to prevent the loss of the Kingdom to His Majesty they take the Kingdom to themselves and without so much as making any address to Him or pretending to have received any direction or Commission from Him they declare to the People that they are no longer obliged to obey any Orders or Commands of the person by Commission authorized from him but until a General Assembly may conveniently be called or until upon application to His Majesty he settle the same elsewhere to observe the form of Government the said Congregation shall prescribe Whereby is to be observed That as they take it upon them when they please and in the highest Temporal affairs in the world to declare the sense of the People without their consent a thing that We have never read or heard was ever till now pretended to by King Pope or Clergy so they evidently assume the power of dissolving and erecting the Temporal Government of the Kingdom And this they say they found themselves bound in Conscience to do Which being a pretence inscrutable and at all times readily to be taken up can only be answered by the Laws of the Land that will not allow the excuse of Conscience for taking a Purse on the Highway or to come home to this matter for Acts of High Treason For the Clause viz. or until upon application to His Majesty he settle the same elsewhere it is inserted with purpose to abuse the People with a belief of their Loyalty when they have first incited them to Rebellion Touching the complaint they say will make against Vs to His Mejesty it should in reason and justice have preceded their Declaration And if either His Majesty had refused them hearing and justice or if We had not submitted to His determination there had been some colour for their proceeding as they did In the last part of their Conclusion they prepare the People with an Apology of the desperate state the Kingdom is left in by Us to bear the more patiently the utter loss of it under the Government they would set up and with a touch indeed of Episcopal counsel to amend their lives and depend upon Gods providence and protection they dismiss them Wherein what example they have given them We leave to the judgment of God the Searcher of hearts and the impartial Judge of the thoughts and actions of men In the Order attested by the Bishop of Clonfert for publication of the Excommunication which publication was made at Laghreogh the 15th of September it is expressed that the Order given to the Committee of Bishops at Galway by the Congregation at Jamestown was That in case VVe would not depart the Kingdom upon their advice and depute the Kings Authority with persons of Trust or that We denied to depart
Magin one of Her Majesties Chaplains coming along with his Lordship and being present all the Discourse but none else besides the said Father Redmund Caron How this Discourse continued three hours from Ten a Clock in the morning to One in the Afternoon How therein after due Salutes the Procurator immediately gave his Lordship a full account of the occasion motives ends and effects too of the Remonstrance continuing his Speech for half an hour or thereabouts and concluding That being it was apparent enough that in the said Remonstrance or Act of Recognition and Petition thereunto annexed there was nothing but what was consonant to Christian Religion and as such maintain'd expresly even in our dayes and at that very present by the Gallican Church and Universities he could not but wonder much his Lordship and Cardinal Francis Barberin should write such Letters as they had to the Nobility Gentry and Clergy of Ireland against that innocent Formulary How the Internuncio answering That his Holiness had condemn'd it the Procurator replied That besides the Non-appearance of any such Papal condemnation it was plain enough his Holiness was misinformed not only concerning the occasion expediency necessity ends and use of that Instrument but the very matter also contained therein even as Paul the V. formerly in Anno 1606. in those of the Oath of Allegiance had been misinformed and consequently abused by Father Parsons the English Jesuite and by Cardinal Bellarmine and those other six or seven Theologues deputed by that Pope to report their sense of the said Oath of Allegiance made by King James by occasion of the Powder-plot Treason How hereupon the Internuncio with some anger rejoin'd shortly Ego informavi I am he that inform'd his Holiness and the Brocurator to him again near as shortly But with your good leave my Lord you have not rightly nor well informed giving withal his convincing Reasons How Father Caron adding to the Procurator's answer and in short desiring the Internuncio to point out the Proposition or Clause one or more in that Formulary against Catholick Faith and finally concluding and asserting the said Formulary to be in all parts and all respects intirely conformable to Christian Doctrine and Catholick Faith the Internuncio had no more to say but Vos ita censetis Sedes autem Apostolica aliter censet yea think so but the See Apostolick otherwise How when both Caron and Walsh had again replied That general Allegations without particular proof of the See Apostolick's sense were to no purpose That the original or at least authentick Copy should be produced That credit in such matters was not to be given not even to the Letters of the very Cardinals as both Civilians and Canonists do teach That the Popes own acknowledg'd private Letters in case there had been such have no binding force no nor even his Briefs or Bulls in the present or other such Controversies That the point of the Popes Infallibility was no matter of Christian or Catholick Faith That the See Apostolick Roman Court and Catholick Church of Christ were three different things finally that together with all now said the reverence and obedience to his Holiness did very well consist how I say this Replication being made the Internuncio looking no more as superciliously or high as he had till then begun to speak to Father Walsh after another manner i. e. moderately and by way rather of Entreaty and Prayer than Command or Empire How this was to desire the said Father Walsh to lay by thenceforward all thoughts of that Remonstrance and think rather of any other medium whereby to obtain His MAJESTIES gracious propension to look mercifully and favourably on the Clergy of Ireland notwithstanding any thing formerly acted by them How when Father Walsh had briefly answer'd That really he knew no means could serve that end without some such Act of Recognition as the Remonstrance was the Internuncio replied He himself then would propose one and how accordingly he did this viz. Sanctissimus Dominus meus c. My most Holy Lord sayes he shall issue a Bull to all the Irish commanding them under pain of Excommunication to be henceforth and continue faithful and obedient to the King How the Procurator saying presently hereunto That indeed my Lord is the medium which if accepted would make His MAJESTY a down-right Vassal to the Pope and a very King of Cards but I hope His MAJESTY hath some better and surer means to rely on for keeping that Kingdom in peace than any kind of Bull or other even Letters Patent from his Holiness the Internuncio presently again Then sayes he I propose this other medium viz. Sanctissimus Dominus meus c. My most Holy Lord shall grant and create as many Bishops and Archbishops for Ireland as His Majesty and His Vice-Roy or Lieutenant in Ireland the Duke of Ormond will desire and those very persons they shall fix upon and moreover shall empower those persons so created Prelates to dismiss and send away out of Ireland all Clergymen whatsoever whom they shall find to be disloyal to the King How moreover the said Procurator to this also replied That although it was much more specious than the former yet considering His MAJESTIES Religion and the Laws now as yet in force and other Affairs too it seem'd impracticable for the present That were His MAJESTY even of the Roman communion nay and being what He is there was nothing offered by this medium but what was and is His own by ancient Right I mean the naming of all Prelates and suffering no other such but of His own Nomination And for banishing Disturbers away That sure He could Himself do that without the help of either Pope or inferiour Bishops whenever he should find such Proscriptions necessary And further That if He could not at least by the Authority of His own Laws or must or would admit of the Popes Authority therein as necessary then surely he must also or would in so much and that an essential point of Temporal Sovereignty acknowledge His own dependance from a Forreign power which questionless He neither would nor could Therefore considering all this besides the strict Oath of Allegiance and Obedience which even such Archbishops and Bishops must before their Consecration take to the Pope and not they alone but all sorts of beneficed persons according to the present practice and Rules of the Roman Church or prescript of their Pontificals and other Canons and must take also even expresly against all those they call or esteem Hereticks the last proposed medium could be no medium at all not as much as any kind of way probable if the Remonstrance and all such other Recognitions were by the self-same Prelates and all other inferiour Irish Clergymen laid by Especially considering that the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance both Enacted by the municipal Laws here had been long since by the Popes and Court of Rome and by all their fast Friends or maintainers of
their pretences for all both spiritual and temporal Jurisdiction condemn'd as both unlawful in point of Conscience and as Heretical too So that from first to last this second medium would prove in effect only a medium to fortifie the Popes pretences and set all Irish Catholicks loose from any kind of tye of Allegiance to the King But more especially their Clergy being it is known that every Clergy-man of the Roman Communion is either by solemn vow or promise or oath and by the tye also of so many other both general and particular Canons and Statutes tyed and fast enough bound already to the Pope And yet this medium would have them not bound at all unto the King by any as much as a simple Declaration of their Allegiance or a simple promise to continue or prove hereafter obedient or Loyal Subjects to His MAJESTY Finally how after these Answers it being One a Clock the Conference ended without other Conclusion or Agreement Now what opinion this Internuncio de Vecchiis entertained or had after this Conference of the said Fathers Caron and Walsh I know not certainly But have been told he said this much of them to Father Philip Howard with whom he went that day to Dinner That they seemed not to him as if they did pretend or intend any Schism or Sect. However I am sure that at least before that Conference his Lordship seemed by his Letters against the Formulary and Authors or promoters of it to have endeavoured mightily they should have been otherwise thought of amongst the Roman Catholicks of Ireland One of those Letters you have before in the vii Section 16 page of this First Part. And now for your further satisfaction in this point I add here two more whereof the first was to Father Matthew Duff one of the first Franciscan Subscribers of the Formulary at London and one the said Internuncio had by commerce of Letters and otherwise some acquaintance with formerly Which was the reason the Procurator Father Walsh desired him when the said Formulary first came out in Print to send a Copy of it to this Lord Internuncio to Bruxels and by Letter to sound his judgment thereof As he did also desire the Lord Bishop of Dromore at the same time and to the same end to write The Internuncio answered both in two distinct Letters the very Originals whereof I my self had in my custody But desired after by the said Lord of Dromore to give them to the Chancellor of England I did so reserving only Copies to my self The Copy of that to the Bishop I have lost as I did likewise mislay that of the other And therefore could not give either in their due place But now finding by chance amongst my Papers the Copy of the other to Father Duff alias Lyons I give it here hoping also to have for my Latin work both those very Originals Internuncio de Vecchiis's Latin Letter to Father Matthew Duff against the Formulary or Remonstrance Reverende in Christo Pater PRiores vestras litteras cum charâ—â—s Anglicis recepi eisque non respondi quod praeviderem quidem non tamen plene scirem mentem Sanctissimi Domini Nostri Interim professionis vestrae formula Romam delata est mature illic discussa atque omnino reprobata Scribit sua Sanctitas illam sibi gravissime displicere esse intollerabilem cum qua nullatenus possit conveniri Atque hoc vult omnibus insinuatum consonat enim Professioni quam olim admodum doluit ac damnavit Paulus V. Pontifex nuper denuo Innocentius decimus Porro Regiae Majestati Sua Sanctitas a vobis deferri vult omne officii fidei atque obedientiae genus vos istbic esse vult istarum erga Regem virtutum exemplar etiam ipsis Hereticis atque ita in loco tenebroso lumen mnndi Admodum sentit admiratur sua Sanctitas a vobis Sacerdotibus atque Religiosis manasse originem ex qua etiam Laici Nobiles sunt in hanc professionem inducti Quocirca aliud non possum quam rogare Deum omnipotentem ur vos illuminet doceatque viam qua sic Regi reddatis quae sunt Regis ut Deo non auferatis quae sunt Dei Bruxellis 22. Julii 1662. Paternitatis Vestrae Amantissimus in Domino Hieronymus de Vecchiis c. In English thus Reverend Father in Christ YOur former Letters with the English Papers I have received but not answer'd because that although I did indeed foresee yet I did not fully know the mind of our most holy Lord. In the mean while the Formulary of your profession was brought to Rome maturely there discussed and utterly disallowed His Holiness writes it to displease himself most grievously to be in it self intolerable and such as cannot in any manner be allowed And his pleasure is that this be insinuated or made known unto all For it the said Formulary agrees with that Profession which heretofore hath so much grieved and was condemned by Pope Paul the V and lately again by Innocent the X. And yet withall it is his Holiness 's pleasure That you do pay to Royal Majesty all kind of Duty Faith and Obedience and his Will is that you be there of these vertues towards the King exemplars even to the very Hereticks and so in a place of darkness be the light of the World His Holiness very exceedingly both resents and admires That from you Priests and Regular persons the very first off-spring should proceed whence also the Lay Nobility and Gentry have been induced to this profession Wherefore I can do no other than pray the Almighty God that he enlighten you and teach you the way whereby you may so render to the King what belongs to the King that you take not from God what belongs to God Bruxels 22. July 1662. Your Paternities Most loving in the Lord Hierom de Vecchiis c. The second Letter was in the year following by the same Internuncio written to Father Bonaventure alias Flann O or â—â—â—ac Bruodin to Paris at the said Father's return to Ireland whereof I have the very Original given me at Dublin by himself that very or I am sure at least next year upon his Landing there from France Of him you have before in the beginning of this Work Sect. xii page 42. and Sect. xxxi page 70. sequenâ—thus a further account This Letter is word by word thus Reverende in Christo Pater AMicissimas Paternitatis Vestrae Parisiis 20. lapsi datas accepi quibus nunciat se iterum Hiberniam cogitare Quocirca faelicissimum ipsi iter exopto ac Facultates Missionarii Apostolici transmitto Quod autem subjungit de periculo confusionis in eo Regno occasione Visitatoris proxime instituendi vellem me particularius desuper informaret ut re plene intellecta consulere opportune possem Nil mihi occurrit quod Paternitati Vestrae in praesens commendem Summa autem in eo est ut Conterraneos suos tam