Elizabeth the Church to this day dates from this first of Elizabeth as Rome did formerly ab urbe condita And therefore my Lord Chancellor Finch in an eloquent speech to the Parliament learnedly declared unto them that she was a Church now of above a hundred years standing meaning from this first of Elizabeth Then you see that Dr. Heylin has made it as clear as the sun that there were no Bishops at all at the making of this Church Men of the Gospel now tell me Are not Bishops of the Essence of God's Church no Episcopal man ever deny'd it And men of the Law tell me Are not Bishops so of the Essence of this Government that there can be no Parliament without them no Lawyer can deny it Then here is a Church set up in spite of God and in defiance to the fundamental Laws of the Land And this forsooth is your Church by Law establisht Establisht with a non obstante to the very Essence of the Government by Bishops which God set over his Church and to the Essence and foundation of thâ— Government of this Realm So that unless the deserting of one Church for lust spoil rapin and sacriledge be the setting up making and establishing of another there has been neither Church made nor setled nor establisht since the defection from the Church of Rome in England to this present time Then is it not severe that after all this ado and noise of a Church Articles Tests Laws penal and sanguinary to compel men from their consciences there should not be the least semblance or shadow of a Church to invite them unto Nor had the Queen with her Lay-Parliament any more Power or Authority by the laws of God and his Church founded on Episcopacy to make alter or establish a Church than has the Parliament of Women and the poor man that crys it up and down the Town Power or Authority to make a Religion and establish it when he had done by crying it about the streets Nor do I see how it is possible for any Episcopal man to have confidence to pretend the contrary With good Reason then did the late Dutchess of York of happy memory declare that instead of satisfaction in the History of the Reformation recommended to her for that purpose she found nothing but the description of the horridest sacriledges in the world and could find no Reason why we left the Church but for three the most abominable ones that were ever heard of amongst Christians First Henry 8 th renounces the Popes Authority because he would not give him leave to part with his wife and marry an other in her life time Secondly Edward 6 th was a Child and governed by his Vnkle who made his estate out of Church-Lands and then Queen E. who being no lawful Heiress to the Crown could have no way to keep it but by renouncing a Church that could never suffer so unlawful a thing to be done by one of her Children I confess I cannot think the Holy Ghost could be in such Counsels The Church being thus truly represented and shewed to be nothing it must necessarily follow that her Bishops and Priests are likewise nothing as to any Power or Mission they can pretend to And how shall they Preach unless they be sent For in a Bishop is required not only Ordination but also Spiritual Jurisdiction and Mission and both these are derived not from Kings or Queens but immediately from Christ by succession from the Apostles Then the Church of England being nothing and in Communion with no other Episcopal Church by what succession will her Bishops derive their Powers from the Apostles Do they think the Church of Rome sent them to Preach the Doctrine of the Thirty Nine Articles No it cannot be so imagin'd and therefore the Presbyterians derive their Mission extraordinarily from God by the Spirit well knowing that it were impossible for them to derive it Ordinarily by succession through the Church of Rome from Christ and his Apostles So that 't is a clear Case that the pretended Bishops of England have no Mission nor Power at all to do what they do but from lay Authority But indeed as to the Ordination it is quite an other thing for the Arian and Donatist Bishops were true Bishops as to Ordination tho by Apostacy and Heresie they had lost their Mission And Dr. Heylin pretends the like of the Bishops of the Church of England and to clear all doubts to the contrary tells us that the story of the first four Bishops of his Church being merrily ordained at the Naggs-head Tavern in Cheapside was but the invention chiefly of one Neal once Hebrew reader in Oxford and Chaplain to Bishop Bonner and Dr. Sanders and thus like an erudite Protestant learnedly and compendiously confutes them both Sanders he calls Slanders and as for the other it is enough that he was once Chaplain to Bonner and so their business is soon done He also tells us that George Abbot Archbishop of Canterbury caused several Priests and Jesuits then Prisoners in the Clink to be brought before him Who being brought to Lambeth the Twelfth of May 1613. were suffered in the presence of diverse Bishops to peruse the publick Registers and thereby to satisfy themselves in all particulars concerning the Confirmation and Consecration of Archbishop Parker Dr. Heylin is indeed a very punctual man you see he sets down exactly the day of the Month and the year this happened viz. The Twelfth of May 1613. But Bishop Parker was consecrated in the second year of Queen Elizabeth 1559. Then where were these Registers all this while Dr. Sanders Dr. Harding Dr. Stapleton even in the time of Archbishop Parker and to himself called his Consecration in question and denyed it without any Reply either from himself or any body else in his behalf Then where were at that time these same Registers But suppose these Registers true and that the Consecration was at Lambeth and the Consecration-dinner only at the Naggs-head did not multitudes of people flock to see the great solemnity of Consecrating the first four new Bishops of the Novel Church and was not the Dinner well attended on by multitudes both of men and women for they are also curious especially in Church affairs and were all these men and women dead on a suddain that none should be left alive to witness against Neal and Sanders that they saw Parker Consecrated at Lambeth Or could so great a man as Dr. Sanders have the confidence to broach such a Tale as Dr. Heylin calls it when multitudes of eye-witnesses were alive to give him the lye Had those Registers been found out in any competent time and flapt in the faces of Neal and Sanders and the rest who reproached the Church with her Naggs-head Consecration they might all have been justly called Slanderses but instead of finding such Registers the Church and State politickly combined to renew the statutes against Tellers of
THE Church OF England TRULY Represented According to Dr. Heylins History of the Reformation In Justification Of her Royal Highness the Late Dutchess of YORKS Paper Induantur qui detrahunt mihi pudore operiantur sicut diploide confusione sua Psal. 108. v. 28. LONDON Printed for the Author and Sold by Matthew Turner near Turn-stile in Holbourn 1686. THE Church Of England TRULY Represented c. THe Ignis Fatuus of Reformation struck by Collision out of the lustful and violent desires of King Henry the Eighth and the opposition made to them by the Pope The Riches of Abbeys and Monasteries still administring new matter unto it all the reign of that unhappy Prince grew to the Prodigy of a Comet in the immature years of his Son King Edward the Sixth by many Acts of Spoil and Rapine even to a high degree of Sacriledge on Chanteries Bishopricks Hospitals and Churches and wandering as in Exile all the time of Queen Mary about Zurick Basil Geneva but chiefly about Frankfort is thus again usher'd into the Land by that great Luminary of his Church Dr. Heylin to be refin'd of the filth it had drawn unto it from the Lakes in the Alpes and to be new moulded and formed into a Church by Queen Elizabeth to make good here Legitimation She says he knew full well that her Legitimation and the Popes Supremacy could not stand together and that she could not possibly maintain the one without a discarding of the other And what follows we more feelingly know than Dr. Heylin viz. That the Answer of the Pope according to his accustomed vigour That the Kingdom of England was held in Fee of the Apostolick See that she could not succeed being Illegitimate that he could not contradict the Declarations of Clement the Seventh and Paul the Third That it was a great boldness to assume the Name and Government of it without him was not only the foundation of the Church of England but also of all the Distractions and Miseries this poor Land has suffer'd from that day to this And all this upon a frivolous account of a pretended Donation of this Kingdom to the Pope by King Iohn the usurper which had been equally frivolous had he been never so lawfull a King But what a Bottom is this to build a Church upon And to forsake the Communion of a Church professed so many hundreds of years and established by so many Laws in the Nation because forsooth the Queens Legitimation and the Pope's Supremacy could not stand together We read that the Gates of Hell shall never prevail against the Church of Christ But had the Pope and the Queen known how to have adjusted their differences this Ignis Fatuus had been extinguisht in the Lake of Geneva and the Church of England had never been seen nor heard of in the world And will any man in his wits repose his hopes of salvation in a Church that came from so bare an accident so meer a chance as this midwived into the world by a Maiden Queen to make good her Legitimation Moreover we read that Christ will be with his Church to the end of the world But I pray when did he begin to be with this Church was it when the Queen had made good her Legitimation She has not done it yet But as Dr. Heylin well observes Bacon was not to be told of an old Law-maxime That the Crown takes away all defects Which it seems in the language of the Law was a Tantamount to a Legitimation and on this Tantamount was first erected the Crown and on that the Church as tho' the Law-makers ever meant that that odd scrap of Law should be extended to Legitimate whom the Law had illigitimated which if so might as well have legitimated the Rebellion of Oliver Cromwel had he clapt the Crown on his head and made him a lawful King tho he had been a Bastard into the bargain And now I think here is enough said of the fundamental and final Cause of the Church of England viz. The Pope's accustomed Rigour and the Queens legitimation I will now proceed to consider the Embryo of this Church in the rest of her Causes according to Dr. Heylin and then I hope I shall have truly Represented her according to her best and most beloved Historian I find no greater Enemies to Reformations than Reformers each Reformer like the Ape in the story thinking his own Brat the fairest would have no Reformation stand good but his own and therefore reviles and flouts at the rest as whimseys and phancys as indeed they are no better nor his own neither Who ever saw more bitter scolding than between the Lutherans the Zuinglians and the Calvinists the worst of men cannot be represented greater Villains than they represent each other and if a man considers them rightly he will find no other truth but This in all their Volums and yet some of them are very voluminous too In like manner does the Presbyterian revile and flout at the Church of England in his Cobler of Gloucester and serves Her up to his Readers in whole Cart loads of debauched Ministers and prophane Bishops But indeed the Church of England reviles and ridicules the Presbyterian with much more wit and far greater civility in her Hudibras But with too much Rigour too For she will not allow Sow-Gelders when they wind their horns to geld a Cat to cry Reform Nor an Oyster-wench to shut up shop and trudge about to cry no Bishop as tho' Sow-Gelders might not as well cry Reform the Church of England as a pack of Laymen in Parliament cry Reform the Church of Rome or as tho' an Oyster-Wench might not as well cry No Bishop as Queen Elizabeth cry No Pope How can it enter into the head of an Episcopal man that a Church of so long standing as the R. Catholick Church had been of continuance in England backt by so many Old Laws could on a suddain be lay'd aside with all her Doctrins and a new one foisted into her place with new ones without either Patriark of the West Primates of the Land or Bishops at all to it This is the case of the Church England and Dr. Heylin makes it out as clear as ever the sun shin'd at noon day He tells you that in the beginning of that Parliament 1. Eliz. Which Parliament made and establisht the Church that the Oath of Supremacy was tendered to the Bishops upon the refusal whereof they were cast out of PARLIAMENT all but Bishop Kitching who took the Oath but never was PROTESTANT notwithstanding Then it is evident that the old Bishops were not in Parliament at the devising and making of this Church He begins the 2 d. year of Queen Elizabeth with the consecrating of the new Bishops Parker and the rest then they were not in Parliament neither at the devising and making of this Church for the Church was made and establisht in the first year of Q.
all the Bishops were made in this time and all that pretend to be now Bishops are derived from them Then how sacrilegious were those Bishops that administred the Sacraments and conferred Orders whilst so many Doubts remained Whether they were truly ordained or had any lawful Jurisdiction or not And of this there can be no question nor can any man deny it But now comes the Parliament the Doubts are removed and Horn gets his Cause But how were both Parties heard No nor durst the Parliament hear what Bonner could say for himself nor what his Lawyers could say for him neither who were Eminent Men as Dr. Heylin tells us Wrey Lovelace and Ployden nor is it to be imagined that such Eminent Men would have undertaken so invidious a business to Church and State unless they had foreseen that the Cause was sure enough in their hands It is a received Maxim throughout the world that Qui judicat causa inaudita altera iniquus est Iudex He that judges without hearing both Parties is a wicked Judge But this Parliament judged without hearing both parties then this was iniquum Parliamentum iniquus Iudex a wicked Parliament wicked Judges then what are the Bishops who are no otherwise Bishops than by verdict of such Iniquity But this is not all Either those Bishops of whose Consecration there were so many Doubts were in this Parliament or not Of right they could not be there until the Doubts were removed But either they were or they were not If they were can any thing be more pleasantly ridiculous than to see the very men in question whether Bishops or not sit judging in Parliament and voting themselves to be in very deed and also by Authority hereof that is of themselves declared and enacted to be and shall be Arch-Bishops Bishops c. rightly made consecrated and ordered any thing to the contrary notwithstanding This is far worse than ask my Brother if I am a Thief In fine it is so ridiculous that for soberness sake we will suppose that those pretended Bishops did not sit in that Parliament Then was the Parliament but a pack of Laymen and what have such to do with enacting or declaring of Bishops Bishops derive their ordination and the power that follows it immediately from Christ himself by succession from the Apostles as I said before and not from King nor Queen It is a thing purely spiritual and therefore cannot fall under the cognizance of any Temporal Power So that the pretended Bishops were no more Bishops for this Act of Parliament than they were before For such a Parliament neither had power to enact them Bishops nor to declare them such so that all the former Doubts yet remain and reach our present pretended Bishops equally and as much as they did the former But it is Sacriledge for any pretended Bishop to offer to administer the Sacraments and confer Orders when but one Doubt remains whether he be rightly in Orders himself or have Authority to do it Then greater is the Sacriledge when men offer to administer the Sacraments and confer Orders when so many Doubts remain whether they be in Orders or rightly authorized to do such Acts. And now to conclude how came Dr. Heylin so well acquainted with Bishop Bonner that he should know which were his chief Pleas or what he would chiefly have insisted upon had the weighty matter been suffered to have come to a hearing Did he think the story of the Naggs-head less known to Bonner than it was to Neal and Saunders or can any man in his wits believe that the whole Power of the Realm Queen Church Parliament Council and all were in earnest afraid the weighty matter might miscarry by a County Iury either by Partiality or Insufficiency Was it impossible for the Queen and Church to have found in the whole County of Surry twelve men according to their own hearts And could not they have instructed them as far as they pleased that there could not be any fear of Insufficiency And could not they have made them wholly their own that there could be no fear of Partiality at leastwise towards Bonner And if all other means had failed could not they have brib'd and suborn'd them A more necessary Policy then when the weighty matter was at stake than ever there was occasion for the like since And does Dr. Heylin call the declining of this Tryal sound Advice Certainly when this question was started Bishops or not Bishops And that the Cause debated amongst the Iudges at Serjeants Inn was finally put upon the Issue and the Tryal of that Issue ordered to be committed to a Iury of the County of Surry it was necessary the world should be satisfied But the Queen and Church did foresee either that such things would be brought upon the stage as would be very dishonourable to both or that the pretended Bishop Horn would be cast And then whither would her Majesty have sent for Bishops to Consecrate her new Elects The Catholick Bishops would not do it and of that she had a Tryal in Kitchin The Lutherans would not do it for Dr. Heylin tells us that they would not receive English fugitives in Queen Mary's time and that they called such as dyed here then the Devils Martyrs So that the Church of England must e'en have been an Episcopal Church without Bishops And that had not been more ridiculous than it was infamous and Scandalous to have declined the Tryal That my Reader may the better remember what has been said I thus in short Recapitulate it Thâ— first beginning of Reformation was founded on lust it encreased by Spoil Rapine and Sacriledge it was at last new moulded and formed into a Church to Legitimate the Queen when nothing else could do it it was made and establisht a Church by a Power that had no more Authority to make and establish Churches than has the poor man with his Parliament of women which he crys about the streets Authority to make and establish Religions The pretended Bishops of this pretended Church are no Bishops at all or at the best they can but pretend to be Bishops with many doubts on their backs whether they are Bishops or not and consequently must lye under the guilt of Sacriledge for Administring the Sacraments and conferring Orders those doubts still remaining unclear'd nor possible now ever to be so For no ensuing Parliament can ever do it nor if it could were it ever possible for them to prove by what Lawfully Authorized Successor's of the Apostles they were sent to Preach the Doctrine of the Thirty Nine Articles Thus is the pretended Church of England truly represented throughout all her causes except her Material ones and those I omitted because she has none being only made up but of No's and Negatives of which hereafter In the mean time I defy any man to shew me that I have Slandered her with the least untruth in the world Had not then the good late Dutchess of York just Reason to confess that she could not think the Holy Ghost could ever be in such Counsels FINIS Heylin in pref pag. 131 pag. 275 pag. 294