will remain Sacred and Venerable whatever I have proved him to be nor lose any more of the respect which is due to it because he is a Bishop than human Nature can lose of the Honour and Dignity which is due to it because he is a Man Though Bishops turn Rebels and make Rebels and Outlaws Bishops yet I must reverence the Function by reason I think it of Divine Institution But notwithstanding all my Reverence for it I think it ought not to be a Cover and Protection for ill Men who pervert whole Nations and Churches especially for insolent and cruel Men who persecute their Brethren for no other Reason but because they profess and practise the same Doctrines which they themselves formerly taught the People and because they have endeavoured to convince the World by their Books That these Men are Apostates and have done both our Church and Religion much more harm than they can do it good These are the Traytors to that very Order which some of them have Usurped and seem ready to give up the uninterrupted Succession upon which the Priesthood depends if they may but by gaining one Sort of Dissenters better secure their Baronies and Revenues which they mind more than the Honour of their Order or the Catholick Rights of the Church What else means their Courting at such a fulsom Rate those in one Kingdom who have destroyed it in another Why else are they so ready to treat it away under a Pretence of Union with Dissenters and in Complement to Foreign Churches Why contrary to former Times do they suffer some French Ministers who have not had Episcopal Ordination to Preach and Administer the Sacraments at the Church in the Savoy and its Dependences which by the Act of Uniformity is a Member of the Church of England What means this new Discovery of Comprehension in so many of the late Funeral Sermons which the Convocation rejected Why do they exhort Lay-men to support and Clergy-men to comply with Presbytery in Scotland as I have shewed our Preacher and his Heroe did Or lastly What means the new Hypothesis of * See the Book of the Revelation paraphrased with Annotations on each Chapter Lond. printed by Rich. Wellington at the Lute in St. Paul's Churchyard 1694. Witnessing Churches That because the Churches in Savoy and France which have no Bishops have born their Testimony against Popery therefore Bishops by uninterrupted Succession and Priests of Episcopal Ordination which have been the signal Blessing of the Church of England are not necessary to the Church At the Rate that Annotator writes in very many Places of his Book and Preface we must blend our pure Orders and Priesthood not only with Ministers who derive their Mission from Presbyters but with Ministers who derive them ultimately from meer Lay-men as many of the first Reformers both in France and Savoy were Nay at this rate of talking I know not what is necessary to Christianity either as a Sect professing Doctrines or a Society which Antiquity so much undervalued by him called the Catholick Church For Anabaptists Quakers and Socinians have born their Testimony against Popery and will bear it and therefore in his wild way of Writing not only Bishops but Priests nor Episcopal Orders only but all Orders with Infant Baptism and the Lord's Supper may be parted with as Temporary Ordinances for comprehension of all Sects that pretend to be Christian and witnesses against the Church of Rome Nay this dangerous Hypothesis of the witnessing Churches may for any Thing I see to the contrary be improved to the Advantage of the Jews to prove them to be the Church of God For they have born and will bear their Testimony against Popery and great Numbers of them have died Martyrs against it in the Inquisition I need but mention the Mahumetans who abhor Popery for its Image-Worship and the Invocation of Saints as much as the Witnessing Churches And therefore it is a mad way of arguing to cure us of our Fondness as he is pleased to call it for our uninterrupted Episcopal Succession because the Witnessing Churches have the Misfortune to want it This is the Argument of the Fox in the Fable who had lost his Tail and had Men argued in this manner in the Primitive Times they might have laid aside both the Sacraments in the Church because great Numbers of Catechumens died Martyrs or Witnesses against the Idolatry of Rome Pagan which notwithstanding all the Comments and Annotations of some Men I believe was much more Abominable than that of the modern Papal Rome This Annotator I take to be one of those Men who drive on for Comprehension and with those Latitudinarians it was and more particularly Dr. Tillotson that Dr. Sherlock (a) Temple Serm. upon the Death of the Queen p. 16 17. saith Their Majesties and more particularly the Queen who had more leisure for such Thoughts were inspired with great and pious Designs to serve the Church of England whatever some Men might suspect though it may be not perfectly in their own way But why does he not tell us what this way was And whether it was consistent with his Queries his Book of Union and Communion and his Defence of Dr. Stillingfleet's unreasonableness of Separation from the Church of England Dr. Bates the Non-conformist tells us (b) Sermon upon the Death of the Queen p. 20. It was to unite Christians in Things essential to Christianity but he doth not tell us what those Essential Things were or whether they were Things Essential to Christianity as a Society as well as a Sect. But I desire plainly to know what those Things were which they thought Essential to Christianity and in which they were to be United For I am afraid they had a Design to form an Union against the Catholick Church and in order to it give up some Things as not Essential which many as learned and good Men as Dr. T. and these Doctors would have thought Essential to Christianity and that their parting with them would have involved in it a parting with the Lord's Day and Infant Baptism nay all Baptism and the Lord's Supper with the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity and have done no good Office to the Power of the Keys nor to the Divine Authority of the holy Scriptures which depends so much upon Tradition That they themselves alone are not alone sufficient to prove it without the Testimony of the Church It was my Design in writing these Discourses to aim at all the Men of this broad Way of Union as well as against those Two whom I have detected and thereby to warn the rest of the Clergy against them For God be thanked the main Body of our Clergy are Men of quite different Spirits they do not persecute their old Brethren for their strict Doctrines but pity and help to support them They know by Experience how hard it was for Conscience to overcome the Difficulties of the new Oath and therefore
St. Ambrose and St. Augustin but more especially one that desired to be an Orthodox Divine should methinks have well studied the Clements the Ignatius's the Polycarps the Irenaeus's the Tertullians and the Cyprians who (c) Ibid. he saith were the Glories of the Golden Age of the Church He had better by much have studied all them than all the Ancient Philosophers and had he went into all the best Things of those Fathers as it seems he did into all the best Things of Bishop Wilkins I need not fear to say he had been a much surer Guide as well as a more learned and profound Divine and had not been so ready at all times to treat away those Things with Dissenters which give such an Advantage to the Church of England above all the Reformed and more particularly enable her to answer that unhappy Question of our common Adversaries Where is your Mission The not being able to answer which as we can do hath contributed more to the Ruin of the French Reformed Church than all the late Persecution For he would have learned in those Fathers who lived nearest to the Times of the Apostles that Bishops were their Successors and next under Christ the Heads of their particular Dioceses From whom the Presbyters derived their Powers and to whom they and the People were to be subject for Christ's sake Had he thoroughly learned and imbibed this Doctrine which is best learned from those Fathers he would in all likelihood have been as loth to part from it as those the Latitudinarian Projectors are apt to call narrow and angry Men because they are not for Treaties of Comprehension with Dissenters upon such Terms as are not consistent with the Catholick and Apostolick Tradition concerning Episcopacy and Episcopal Ordinations and which if yielded to would be of more dangerous Consequence to the Religion we profess than all our Dissenters are or can be Notwithstanding all this our Preacher cannot but tell us (a) P. 17. of his tender Method of treating with Dissenters and of his Endeavours to extinguish that Fire and to unite us among our selves But he doth not tell us what were the Principles and Terms of Union upon which we were to be united nor how many of the Dissenters were to be taken in I can tell one Project which will take them all in and Roman Catholicks with them and that is to comprehend all who will subscribe to the Divine Authority of the Scriptures and all the Doctrines contained therein And if he shall say That such a Comprehension is too wide and such an Union more than all Divisions I am afraid when we shall know what this Man 's tender Method of Union or pious Designs as (b) Temp. Ch. Serm. preached Dec. 30. 1694 p. 17. Dr. Sherlock calls them were there will be Reason to say the same Thing of it and them For I make no difficulty to confess to the Reverend Doctor That I am one of those many Thousands who suspect his admirable Primates pious Designs of serving the Church his own way For he was always for blending of Orders under Pretence of Union and since he commenced admirable Primate he was wont to advise the Scottish Episcopal Clergy-men to submit to their Presbyterians and do all Acts of Compliance to their pretended Authority which was in effect to advise them not only to commit the highest Act of Disobedience and Schism against their own Bishops but to abjure Episcopacy with those who detest and abjure it as an Antichristian Usurpation over the Church of God The good Lord of his Mercy deliver his Church from such admirable Primates and Bishops as are Traytors to their own Order and from such tender Methods of Union and pious Designs of serving the Church as they may without breach of Charity be supposed to have Our Preacher as well as his Heroe may be numbred among those pious Designers for going to wait upon the Duke of Hamilton when he was last in London some days before he went for Scotland He took upon him to tell his Grace That he would ruin his Interest if he did not stick fast to the Presbyterian Cause for they began to fear that he was not for it to them And thereupon he advised him as he regarded his own Standing and the Kings Favour to be sure to promote the Presbyterian Interest This the Duke told to a Person of Honour before he left the Town And now hear O ye * See the Pref. before Bedel's Life Clements Ignatius's Polycarps Deny's Irenaeus's and Cyprians of the Golden Age of the Church was not this Apostolical Councel in a Man that bears your holy Character Could he do any Thing more unworthy of it than to advise a Prince of his Country to support those and stick to these who have declared your Holy Order to be Antichristian and abolished it as an Usurpation and deprived your Successors as much as in them lies for Usurpers over the Church of God Nay let all Men that read this Story consider it a little in its just Consequences and Reflections upon this wretched Man as he is a Bishop and a Bishop who formerly asserted the Office of a Bishop to be an Apostolical Institution Read what he hath wrote for it in his Preface to Bishop Bedel's Life It is not possible to think that a Government can be Criminal under which the World received the Christian Religion and that in a Course of many Ages in which as all the Corners of the Christian Church so all the Parts of it the Sound as well as the Unsound that is the Orthodox as well as the Hereticks and Schismaticks agreed The Persecutions that then lay so heavy upon the Church made it no desirable Thing for a Man to be exposed to their first Fury which was always the Bishops Portion And that in a Course of many Centuries in which there was nothing but Poverty and Labour to be got by the Employment There being no Princes to set it on as an Engin of Government and no Synods of Clergy men gathered to assume that Authority to themselves by joynt Designs and Endeavours And can it be imagined that in all that glorious Cloud of Witnesses to the Truth of the Christian Religion there should not so much as one single Person be found on whom either a Love of Truth or an Envy of the Advancement of others prevailed so far as to declare against such an early and universal Corruption if it is to be esteemed one When all this is complicated together it is really of so great Authority that I love not to give the proper Name to that Temper that can withstand so plain a Demonstration For what can a Man even herited with all the Force of Imagination and possessed with all the Sharpness of Prejudice except to the Inference made from these Premisses That a Form so soon introduced and so wonderfully blest could not be contrary to the Rules of the Gospel
Erubescet But if he will not be ashamed I know no reason why any Man that would not be deceived should take Things upon Trust from such a shameless Writer whom an impenitent Conscience hath hardened against the Confusion of Remorse and Blushing and made one of the greatest Examples of Impudence that ever dishonoured the Lawn Sleeves I hope it is a just Indignation that forces this Reflexion from me but if it seems too severe I beg the Reader 's Patience till I lay before him another of this unhappy Man's Books intituled A Vindication of the Authority c. of the Church and State of Scotland Printed 1673. This Book is full of very many Doctrins Rules and Precepts to which the Author's Life and all his Books since the beginning of the Revolution have been an open Contradiction In the Entrance of his Preface to the Reader saith he How sad but how full a Commentary doth the Age we live in give of those Words of our Lord I am come to send Fire on Earth Suppose you that I am come to give Peace upon Earth I tell you nay but rather Division Do we not see the Father divided against the Son and the Son against the Father and engaging into such angry Heats and mortal Feuds upon Colours of Religion as if the Seed of the Word of God like Cadmus Teeth had spawned a Generation of Cruel and Blood thirsty Men But how surprizing is the Wonder when Religion becomes the Pretence And after this Among all the Heresies this Age hath spawned there is not one more contrary to the whole Design of Religion and more destructive of Mankind than is that bloody Opinion of defending Religion by Arms and of forceable Resistance upon the Colour of preserving Religion The Wisdom of this Policy is Earthly Sensual and Devillish savouring of a carnal unmortified and unpatient Mind that cannot bear the Cross nor trust to the Providence of God Religion then as well as since was the Civil Property of these Kingdoms but at the time of the Revolution (a) In his Enquiry into the Measures of Submission to the Supreme Authority he distinguished the Christian Religion from it self as Religion and as it was one of the principal Rights and Properties of the Subject and though as Religion it ought not to be defended by Arms yet he affirmed That as a Civil Right and Property it might Would any Man but such a Bishop have had the Confidence to say That it was Lawful to sight for Religion as a Civil Right and Property who had published the Book above-mentioned and I know not how many after it to prove it Unlawful for Subjects to take up Arms in defence or under pretence of defending any Right or Property whatsoever Let such a Man say of Things or Persons or of Persons Dead or Living what he pleases he shall never be believed by me farther than he brings Proof The Passages of his forecited Book which now stare him in the Face are very many and very Emphatical and there is scarce a Page in it which is not a Record against him I must take notice of some and recommend (b) P. 8. to p. 18. p 35. 39. 40. 41. 42. 46. 47. those in the Margent to the curious Reader 's perusal at his leasure that he may make the same use of them that I am going to do of those that follow In the 68th Page of that Book he makes it of more dangerous Consequence to place the Deposing Power in the People than in the Pope Less Disorder saith he may be apprehended from the Pretensions of the Roman Bishops than from those Maxims that put the Power of Judging and Controuling the Magistrate in the Peoples hands which opens a Door to endless Confusion and sets every private Person in the Throne These Consequences of placing the Deposing Power in the People we have seen verified by Experience and still shall be more convinced of the Truth of them but yet his Enquiry into the Measures of Submission and Obedience which he owns among his 18 Papers and the Enquiry into the present State of Affairs which is his though he does not own it were both written upon the Principles of the Resisting and Deposing Power For in the one he Exhorts the People to resist the King as having fallen from his Authority and in the other to take upon them the Power and Authority of Deposing of him And to encourage them the more to it he doth affirm That the Power of the People of Judging the King in Parliament is a part of the Law of England and goes about to prove it from the Sentence of Deposition against King Edward the Second and Richard the Second which contrary to the Truth of History and I am confident of his own Knowledge he saith were never annulled by any subsequent Parliaments and therefore remain part of our Law Such an impudent Assertion contrary to so many Acts of Parliament printed in the Statute Books and (a) In Pryn's Jurisdiction of the Lords elsewhere would as Monsieur le Grand saith of him upon another Occasion (b) J'avoue qu'en faisant ces remarquâ—s je suis dans une veritable Contrainte de ne pas appeller M. Burnet de tous les Noms quile merite Lettre de M. Burnet a M. Thavenot avec les remarques de MLG. p. 33. Provoke a Man to call him by all the Names that he deserves But I pass on to the second Thing I intended to note in that Book and it is his own Answer to the Arguments for Resistance which in the first Conference he puts in the Mouth of Isotimus the Presbyterian to justify taking up Arms against our Lawful Governors from the Example of the Maccabees rising up in Arms against Antiochus and of the Christians who under Constantine the Great made no difficulty of fighting against the other Emperour his Colleague Licinius These Arguments he there pursues as far as they will go in the Mouth of Isotimus and then Answers them fully in the Person of Basilius the Royalist by whom he represents himself yet he lately made use of the very same Arguments to perswade his Clergy of the Lawfulness of taking up Arms against the King to bring about the Revolution and of the Obligations they were under to submit to it and support it without either retracting the Answer which he had made to those Arguments and which he might suppose some of them had read or replying to them or so much as mentioning of them but tells them in his Preface to his four Discourses That they had heard him urge them with seeming Satisfaction which I suppose was one sort of Satisfaction and Admiration too in many of them which I had rather hint than Name The third great Instance of that Book in which he hath contradicted himself is his Arguing for the Duty of Nonresistance from the Example of the Thebean Legion p. 58. which I cannot forbear to
repeat in his own Words Saith he There is no Piece of Story which I read with such Pleasure as the Accounts given of the Martyrs for methinks they leave a Fervour upon my Mind which I meet with in no Study that of the Scriptures excepted Say not then They were not able to have stood to their Defence when it appears how great their Numbers were or shall I here tell you the known Story of the Thebean Legion which Consisted of 6666. c. In the Year 1673. the Stories of the Primitive Martyrs and this in particular left a Fervour upon his Mind which he never felt in his usual Studies but in 1687 the Year before the Revolution he stages it for a copious and incredible Legend in his Preface before Lactantius without so much as telling the World that he had been in that common Errour of the Learned and thought the Fable true The Arguments with which he Assaults it are all Negative and such as one would think he could not believe himself First he argues against it from the Silence of Eusebius though (a) Hist Eccl. l. 8. c. 13. Eusebius in his History of the Dioclesian Persecution professes to omit many of the Conflicts of those who suffered in divers Parts of the Empire leaving them to be described by those that were Eye witnesses to them Secondly from the Silence of Sulpitius Severus who mentions not one single Fact of that Persecution saying no more of it than that it continued X Years in which time the whole World was Dyed with the Blood of the Martyrs The Christians then striving for Martyrdom which he saith was more sought for among them than Bishopricks by the ambitious Clergy of his time from whence it came to pass That the World was never so much wasted by any War that stands upon Record in History as by that Persecution successively for X Years in which the Christians had so many Triumphs The Famous Martyrdoms of that time are yet extant which I shall not set down here because I would keep within the small Compass of this little Work This is the short Account of that Persecution in Sulpitius and if the Christians of the Empire then strove for Martyrdom upon the stupid Principle of Non-resistance why might not a Christian Legion under the Conduct of a Non-resisting Leader grow as stupid as other Christians And if all the World which is the Phrase for all the Empire was Dyed with Christian Blood why might not Agaunum have as deep a Tincture as any other Place But Agaunum was in Gaul and Lactantius says he excepts the Gauls from Persecution But the Thebean Legion were Strangers and not Gauls and though Constantius might protect the Gauls he had no Right to protect them or if he had he could not prevent what happen'd to them their Execution being not a State of Persecution but a Casual unforeseen Days-work of Military Discipline on the Edge of Gaul where Constantius was not present to countermand or oppose it But if he had been present he could have had no Authority to have hinder'd it because it was done by the Command of Maximian who was Augustus and as Augustus had Authority over Constantius who was then but Cesar and so by the Dioclesian Constitution of the Empire was subject to his Authority But he saith Lanctantius must needs have heard of so remarkable a Transaction as the Passion of this Legion if it were true Here is the Negative Argument again but I say it might be true and he yet not hear of it For it was but a few hours work of military Discipline in an obscure Corner of the Alps and Lactantius was at that time in Africk where to use his own Argument upon another Occasion (a) A Relation of a Conference had about Religion by Edward Stillingfleet and Gilbert Burnet p. 119. there was neither Printing nor Stages for Pacquets nor Publishing of Mercuries Gazettes and Journals and Men were not wont to amuse themselves at what was doing in the World I could tell him of a Mornings Work in the High-lands of his own Country not much unlike this in Cruelty and done about Three years ago which half of this Nation and of the Clergy themselves have not yet heard of and of those that have if they were to write an History of the Revolution few of them would mention it not excepting our Funeral Orator who I have Reason to think would be content to pass it over in Silence though I do believe Tradition from Father to Son will preserve an Account of it in the Valley of Glancow as it did that of the Thebean Legion till the time of Euchâ—…ius who was the first that committed it to Writing But in one Word the Silence of Lactantius is no Argument against the Truth of it who in his History passed over whole Persecutions which one would think he must needs have heard of and who in the Reign of Dioclesian describing only the Decennial Persecution which began at Nicomedia could not by the terms of his Account mention the Massacre of the Thebean Legion which was done so many Years before No Man would reasonably expect an Account of the fatal and bloody Fight at Edge Hill from an Historian that commences his History from the Tryal of Charles the First or the Restauration of his Son and therefore if our Panegyrist hath no better Arguments against the truth of that Story of the Thebean Legion he may read it still with his old wonted Fervour or if he thinks it worth his pains he may proceed to find out new Arguments against it which such learned Men as Grotius and Vsher have not yet found out but though I have a great Deference for their Authority and that Story upon the Account of it yet I am unconcern'd whether it be Truth or a Fiction and will only put him in Mind that the very Fiction of it proves that the Doctrine of Non-resistance however now exploded by him was the general Belief and Practise of the Antient Christians and a Badg of their Profession in Times of Persecution as much as Baptism it self or any Article in their Creed They call'd it the Doctrine of the Cross and he once pretended to be all Primitive and all Christian for it It used to create a Fervour in his Blood but now he is turned Apostate from it and from the Church of England although he pretends to be a Bishop of it according to his own Words (a) Serm on the 30 of January 1672. p. 36. This Doctrine we justly Glory in and if any who have had their Baptism and Education in our Church have turn'd RENEGADOS from it They prov'd no less Enemies to the Church herself than to the Civil Authority So that their APOSTACY leaves no Blame upon our Church No indeed His Apostacy leaves no Blame on it but however it is such a Blot upon himself that if I were one of those as I profess I am