Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n
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A65267
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The Right Reverend Doctor John Cosin, late Lord Bishop of Durham his opinion (when Dean of Peterburgh, and in exile) for communicating rather with Geneva than Rome ... / by Ri. Watson ...
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Watson, Richard, 1612-1685.
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1684
(1684)
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Wing W1094; ESTC R15810
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37,284
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110
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The Right Reverend Doctor JOHN COSIN Late LORD BISHOP of DURHAM His OPINION when Dean of Peterburgh and in Exile for Communicating rather with GENEVA than ROME ALSO What slender Authority if any the English Psalms in Rhime and Metre have ever had for the publick use they have obtained in our Churches Freely rendred in two Letters with Annotations on the said Letters AND A short Historical Deduction inserted of the Original Design and Sacrilegious Progress of Metrical Psalms in Vulgar Languages through many parts of France Flanders c. By Ri. WATSON D. D. Recommended for his own Vindication in an Apologetical Letter to his Friend LONDON Printed by F. Leach for Nich. Woolfe at the Seven Stars in Newgate-street MDC LXXXIV For my very Loving Friend Mr. Watson at the Princes Court in Jersey SIR THE Letter that Major Fontane brought from you was very welcome to me the rather for that I had inquir'd after you of many and could never hear of you before since the dispersion at Bristol for though I find your Name now in the review of one of Dr. Clare's Letters yet when I read that Letter at first I took it to have been Dr. VVadson from whom I had not long since received a Letter out of the West but I am glad it is you and that you have a so fair a subsistence for the present under so good a Lord What will become of us all for the future our Lord above knows to whose Providence and Goodness we must recommend our selves You say right Our Church is as much misunderstood and misconstrued here abroad as it is misused and maligned at home and I have had experience enough of both The truth is they are here so exceeding uncharitable and somewhat worse that I know not how any man who understands himself and makes a Conscience of what he does can enter into any Communion with them b in those Doctrines and Practices which they hold necessary to Salvation and wherein they make their essential note of difference their Religion and their Church to consist And that I may answer your demand in brief for they say you are all to come hither it is far less safe to joyn with these men that c alter the Credenda the Vitals of Religion than with those that meddle only with the Agenda and Rules of Religion d if they meddle no farther and where it is not in our power to help it there is no doubt but in these things e God will accept the Will for the Deed if that will without our assent or approbation to the contrary be preserved entire though in the mean while we suffer a little for it oppression must not make us leave our own Church They of Geneva are to blame in f many things and defective in some g they shall never have my approbation of their doings nor let 'um have yours h yet I do not see that they have set up any new Articles of Faith under pain of Damnation to all the World that will not receive them for such Articles and i you know whose case that is Caetera cum veneris or if you come not in other Letters as you shall offer me occasion In the mean while I will be glad to hear of h your resolution still to be constant in the maintetenance of the Ancient Catholick Faith and Government of the Church of Christ which the Church of England hath profess'd and taught us though now there be a Cloud and Storm upon it as upon what Church hath there not been more or less in the several Ages of the World If you know of any thing fit for me to hear concerning our old Friends in England you will do me a favour to impart it to Your assured Loving Friend J. C. St. Germ. Jun. 19. 1646. SIR AS I expose his Reverence's Letters to publick view so I submit my Annotations on them to your favourable censure which are as follow Annotations a AFter Sequestration of his Estate a vast debt incurr'd for advancement of the Kings Interest the sale of most he had in any sort of value even to his Plate and Coach-Horses and the Rebels plunder of what he had left at Torrington our Noble Lord had no fair means of subsistence for himself much less wherewith to exercise his liberality toward the Chaplain and few Servants he had then attending on him whom yet notwithstanding their loss of all likewise at Torrington Divine Providence preserved then and many years after in their state of exile and carried them mercifully through all the difficulties incident thereunto b If we return to them in those Doctrines and Practices whatsoever they are wherein we may which I will not presume to enumerate and moderate our selves in some measure as to the rest by the meek Casfandrian and Grotian Spirit of a mutual charitable inclination toward an amicable reunion though they continue to exclude us their Communion for not subscribing to those new Doctrines and Articles we so far shall lay the Schism at their doors and may rest satisfied in our persevering Members of that Primitive and once Catholick Church which hath prescribed an excellent Canon of Belief and Practice unto us both c For what we suppose they have altered in the old Credenda let us be so exact as we fairly may be yet not over-nicely Critical lest we become uncharitable nor so fond of our own opinions as not to hearken unto the pacific language of the learned Grotius and other eminent persons of his temper a List of whose Names he hath publish'd and whom he directs us to their search and intimacy having perhaps discovered a better meaning than we at more distance can apply to the Letter of their Profession d As I fear they do though not under the Anathema of Damnation denounced against Dissenters if a strict scrutiny were made into the genuine sense of these Confessions with other Books and Writings generally owned by them Beside that they meddle with the Agenda and Rites of Religion without any justifiable Call or Commission for which reason alone were there no other we ought not to join with them in their Publick Worship or Communion e Then God may I doubt not accept the Will for the Deed although we decline Communion or Religious Compliance with either party from both whom we differ and at many their Doctrines or Practices we justly scruple wherein I might well have satisfied my self if I had been so well acquainted then as afterward with the learned Grotius's opinion de Christiano Segrege who himself if he dyed in that state as many that mean thereby to reproach him would have believed departed I make no question a good Member of the Catholick Church and so I hope many of us lived when in our state of Exile wheresoever we found no Oratories of our own we asked admission neither into the Churches of the Roman Catholicks nor the Temples or Meeting-places of the Lay-reformed Calvinists for
great hopes to be instructed that those Psalms had some better authority from above than a bare allowance which hath proved to be none but as the Stationer you find falsly pretends in the Title-page I made no scruple at owning the summ of what he alledged and gave such reasons in my own behalf as I had ready which could be answered with nothing but a popular Custom and insuperable prepossession which cast forth somewhat to this purpose If I had Preached the same in England when times were more Sedate and the Bishop had not censured me he had deserved to have been censured and that rather than the cause should have wanted prosecution himself would have been the Actor to pursue it I was somewhat troubled to see him so far transported as not to take notice that though this practice of Singing the Psalms in Rhime together with some other of Calvin and Beza's forming or countenancing had run many years on in our Church like wild-fire when the train is laid yet no prudent Bishop would urge his Clergy upon pretercanonical usages more than to preter-articulate Doctrines without the publick authority or private permission of the Supreme power that even in Ecclesiasticks is above him But his Honours naming of a Bishop called into my remembrance that the very same words for seldom in such Auditories do I dare at any time to vary from what my Pen prepares I had some years before delivered the same words I say in S. Maries the Right Reverend Doctor Brownrigg then not only Bishop but Vice-Chancellour beside other of the Consistorian Heads being present from none of whom received I any check nor so much as a srown observed when I came out of the Pulpit And a very learned Gentleman now a worthy Prelate of our Church coming a day or two after to my Chamber on a friendly visit moved me to let him read the whole Sermon over which I yeilded the rather because I attributed much to his judgement and was sure of his integrity not to conceal from me what he observed in it liable to censure or capable of construction into an offensive sense whereof nothing at all being spoken I had no reason to forbear the same Language elsewhere upon like occasion what I uttered being only this I am not at leisure now to discuss that opinion of Sanctius for which he citeth Theodoret that Elisha's Minstrel was no other than a Levite who Sung some of Davids Psalms unto him which it may be in their pure natural were by far diviner and chaster Musick than since after the ill handling of some uncouth Poets they became prostitute in the mouths of licentious Zelots and blind Enthusiasts whose sensual appetites too often hire their mercenary tongues to prophane this Musick while their impure thoughts are courting of their Mistress These lines as they lay I read unto his Honour whereby it appeared that I then named not the Paraphrasts as he being over-earnest alledged I did Hopkins at least wherein yet I had not been so bold with his name as the famed Court-Mercury had in the year 43. with that of a greater man in the same case when he writ thus on the Rebels of that time But let them be confident they that are unborn and cannot speak now will declare their admirable Rebellion to posterity so as they will be read upon every Post and Gate in as honourable Rhimes as Mr. Rouse bestowed upon the Singing Psalms a theme one would think which deserves better usage And better usage it had from a better Head and neater Hand of the more elegant Mr. George Sands whose name I then used wishing if a Paraphrase we must have that or some such might be in it wherein I would not refuse to join with the Congregation when authorized to sing it so far was I from declaiming against all Singing of Psalms though I thought it very just and not imprudent at all to incline the people to a dislike of that Paraphrase which had so many absurdities to say no worse in it that I trembled to sing them in the House of God adding that my close invective was meant against them I named not principally the London-Lecturers and other of those times who ordinarily went into the Pulpit with a Singing Psalm neglecting the Liturgy to gain time for their own longer Prayer Against the common practice of Parish Clerks as before-mentioned who upon a Puritannical suggestion or see given by some male-content or ill-principled person would select such a Psalm as the words whereof might be perverted to the encouragement of Sedition or Schism to which said his Honour The more Fools the Ministers that would suffer their Clerks to have the liberty of chusing the Psalms not observing what Ministers I aimed at no whit better not wiser than their Clerks But here he inserted an Interrogative of some terrour What if Mr. Gatford the next Sunday should preach against standing up at Gloria Patri being a thing brought in only by custome not command accordingly as I had newly instanced against the Singing Psalms To which although I could have made a sharp reply knowing what Mr. Gatford had formerly said and done in Sacris not only by the favour of Custome but against Canon Yet I moderated my self to this saying If there were the like reason for the one as the other and the like abuse let him do it for though he might I would not put a pillow under any ones elbow to give him ease with the peril of drawing the Vae in vengeance upon my self for the menace in Ezekiel by consent of many Interpreters extendeth beyond the women of his time though they alone be named and passeth from the Old-Testament Prophets to the Preachers of the New that slay souls by flattery for gain I am ashamed to let Posterity know how little my fair Apology prevailed where none at all ought to have been required for after two or three hours discourse on the Psalms and somewhat else I had preached about the Monastic life of the ancient Prophets who we may be sure were no Papists nor St. Basil and St. Hierome Fathers of the Greek and Latin Church separately taken other than good Catholick Christians although I kept distance enough from what may be controversial in the point yet this person of Honour was pleased to tell me in plain terms That he would have none of these new doctrines imposed upon him in publick as if the whole Assembly were contracted to his single person and if I would not forbear he would refrain coming to Church I presume he meant when he should know I was to preach wherein I left him to his liberty and preserved my own with no intendment to abuse it in any affront to him or others Sir This severe not to say rough dealing I could not well digest with the submission somewhat unreasonably expected but knowing no better remedy at hand than the Catholicon of Patience I made use of it