in this point Which the Church of England will hardly trouble her self about because she likes her old Principles of Loyalty very well and is not given to change but knows when she is well In the mean time this Author tells us very plainly and expresly enough that till the Church of England change their old Principles of Loyalty and take example by their Catholick Neighbours they are to be lookt upon as a Snake in his Majesties Bosome and cannot expect to be protected Alas this Gentleman is utterly mistaken For a Legal Establishment has a Right to a Legal Protection and the King is bound both by his Oath and by the duty of his Kingly Office to protect the Church of England as it is by Law established And therefore to talk of withdrawing Protection from the Church of England is to talk of removing the Thames to York But we are so much used to such empty threatnings and flashes in the Pan that we know they will not kill So the Reply to the Oxford Reasons against Addressing threatens the Church of England that by the Prerogative in Matters Ecclesiastical it may be in great measure Legally Subverted p. 4. A Legal Establishment even while it remains such Legally Subverted They would make us believe that the Laws of England were made up of Jesuitical Equivocations and did blow Hot and Cold with the same mouth But besides That Replyer should be told that a thousand more of his pompous Quotations which were written in the time of the High Commission will not Revive that Branch of the Statute 1 Eliz. upon which the High Commission Court was erected And likewise he should be told that a Power given by One Statute and taken away afterwards by Two is certainly reduced to its Primitive nothingness But I return to our present Author only to take my leave of him which he has done of the Church of England in these words And now let us leave the Holy Mother Church at liberty to consult what new Measures of Loyalty she ought to take for her own dear Interest and for ought I know it may be worth her serious consideration I am in hopes That this Church of God which he hath purchased with his own Blood though this Author be pleased to trample upon her with so much Scorn and Insolence will take occasion even at an Enemies bidding to consult what New Measures of Loyalty she ought to take for her own dear Interest and for the Interest of Posterity which is much dearer and for the Everlasting Interest of both which is dearest of all And will humbly and heartily Bewail her Disloyalty to her great Lord and Master and those many and great and open Transgressions and Violations of his most Holy and Righteous Laws which are amongst us And O that every member of that Communion in particular would speedily repent and return to his Duty and persevere in a course of Holy Obedience to his lives end This is the Loyalty that is too much wanting in the Church of England which is due to the Laws of our Blessed Saviour who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords As for her Earthly Lords They cannot charge her with any Disobedient or Lawless carriage towards them or with any Disregard to the Laws unless perhaps in some unwarrantable Officious Instances which it would hardly be Proper for them to Object against her And to the end that both we and our Children after us may be Better Subjects to our Blessed Lord than hitherto we have been I am in hopes That the Church of England will lay a dead Hold upon that great Depositum which the Laws have put into her hands which is the only Instrument of our Reformation I mean the English Bible We are very bad now But what would become of us if we should likewise be deprived of the only means to make us better If all the Laws of the Land were Abolished there could be no Loyalty And if the Gospel were taken away which is the Laws and Statutes of Heaven how were it possible for us to be the Subjects of Jesus Christ We might indeed be the Servants of Men and Vassals to the Pope but we could not possibly obey the Gospel of Christ if it were taken and hid from us We remember full well who they were that would not suffer an English Bible to be in this Kingdom for very many Ages together And if any Devout and Religious Soul who desired to know his Master's will had gotten but the Lord's Prayer or Ten Commandments in English it cost him his life We shall never forget the Seven Coventry Martyrs who were Burned all together in the little Park the 4th of April 1519. for teaching their Children and Family the Lord's Prayer and Ten Commandments in English Nor shall we ever forget how the poor Children were sent for and charged in no wise to meddle any more with those very small Scriptures upon pain of suffering the same Death with their Parents What is once made Heresie by an Infallible Church must be always and every-where Heresie though Heresie indeed is not every-where Burning for want of opportunity Thanks be to God and our good Laws that it is not so here And I hope the Church of England will always be careful to assert the Authority and Majesty of the Laws which are so much to be preferred and valued above our Lives in as much as by them we enjoy both our Lives and the Protestant Religion together May God be entreated to continue this Unvaluable and Undeserved Blessing to us and to our Posterity Amen Some Reflections upon the Additional LIBEL intituled An Instance of the Church of England 's Loyalty IT is a just Judgment upon those who have Renounced their Reason to embrace Transubstantiation and thereby have distorted their natural faculties that their Understandings stand awry for ever after and we cannot expect so much as Common sense from them any more From thenceforward they Write as well as Believe contradictious Mysteries and he that means to comprehend their awkerd and perverse Reasonings must stand upon his Head. We need not go far to fetch Examples of this for the late Instance of the Church of England 's Loyalty is a remarkable Instance of all that I have said Wherein there are these following Absurdities delivered in a way of much smartness and with the appearance of very close Reasoning 1. The Articles and Canons of the Church of England are set aside and some few Addresses in this present Reign are made the Standard of the Doctrine of the Church of England 2. The Bishops and Clergy of several Convocations who have been Dead these Hundred years are rendred Disloyal for not governing themselves by these Addresses two years ago which they knew not of 3. Mary Queen of Scots is made Queen of England by such an Argument as makes her No Queen of Scots and by giving her anothers Kingdom takes away her own 4. Mary
Queen of Scots is made Queen of England upon the Hypothesis of the Paternal Right when upon that Hypothesis she was disinherited and foreclosed from the Crown of England by two successive Patriarchs Henry the 8th and Edward the 6th I should think for that very reason that the Hypothesis of the Laws had been a much better Hypothesis In the opening a little and shewing these Absurdities I suppose I shall meet with all that is remarkable in that Paper 1. The Articles and Canons of the Church of England are set aside and some few Addresses in this present Reign are made the standard of the Doctrine of the Church of England p. 3. and 5. Is this arguing from the Church of England's Own Principles which he says is the design of his Paper p. 6. Is it the Principle of any one Clergyman in England that the Doctrine of the Church of England is to be sought for and found out in Addresses Or in any thing but the Liturgy and Homilies the Articles and Canons of the Church which have the publick Sanction and the Universal consent of the whole Clergy If he had found materials out of any of these to make good his charge of disloyalty he had done like a Man and the Church of England had been condemned out of her own mouth but if he cannot do this at present we will have patience to stay till he can and in the mean time he had done wiselier to have said nothing 2. The Bishops aad Clergy of several Convocations who have been dead these hundred years are rendred disloyal for not governing themselves by these Addresses two years ago which they knew not of This is a great hardship indeed that men shall be tryed and condemned by Laws which were not promulged till an hundred years after their death The present Church of England has a very great Reverence for those Bishops and Clergy who were the Restorers of the Protestant Religion to this Kingdom and who had formerly hazarded their lives for it and will be very loth to see them pass under the Character of Traytors and Rebels And when we demand what Laws of the Land or what Principles of the Church of England they had transgressed we are in effect told that they were Rebels against some chosen expressions in very modern Addresses The instance which he gives is the Church of England's behaviour towards Mary Queen of Scots above an hundred years ago now mark his words p. 5. But yet because I am about to give a notorious instance of their Receding from this Principle namely the Divine Right of Succession when the practice of it thwarted their Interest it will not be amiss to observe that they have acknowledged in their several Addresses to his present Majesty upon his Accession to the Crown the Unalterable and Inherent Right of Succession Now this is the Reasoning which as I said before would make a Man stand upon his Head. Besides How could they Recede or go back from a Principle which they never came to and were never nearer it than at an Hundred years Distance For their Opinion or Principle call it what you will was this as appears by the 27. Eliz. That in case an Heir in Remainder killed the present lawfull Possessor of the Crown that person had not a Divine Right of Succession And that neither God nor the Laws ever meant to Reward the falshood of Treason and the bloody Usurpation of a Crown with so much the Earlier possession of it My business is not to concern my self about either of these Principles or Opinions but only to shew the absurd Reasoning of this Writer 3. Mary Queen of Scots is made Queen of England by such an Argument as makes her no Queen of Scots and by giving her another's Kingdom takes away her own The Argument is this That Queen Elizabeth being Illegitimate and only an Act-of-Parliament-Queen could not interpose betwixt the Crown of England and Mary Queen of Scots who was Heir by Inherent Birth-right Now does not all the World know That all the Title that Mary Queen of Scots had to the Kingdom of Scotland was an Act of Parliament made at Scone in the time of Robert the First whereby his Issue by Elizabeth Moore his Concubine whom he never Married but who was afterwards Married to one Giffard a Gentleman of Louthien were made Inheritable to the Crown and at the same time all his legitimate Children by his lawfull Queen Eupheme were set aside These men take just the same measures as their Father Garnet did in the Gun powder Treason who Resolved That in order to blow up the Hereticks they might lawfully blow up their Catholick Friends too Nay all that this Instancer says against Queen Elizabeth admitting it to be True which we do not bears much harder upon the Title of Mary Queen of Scots Was Queen Anns Marriage with Hen. 8. naught But in Elizabeth Moores Case there was no Marriage at all Or was King Edward set aside to make way for Illegitimate Elizabeth But so it was done by the Act at Scone Every body understands the English of Queen Ann Bolens Precontract when they remember That King Henry the 8th was Married again to the Lady Jane Seymour within Three days after the Beheading of that Queen 4. Mary Queen of Scots is made Queen of England upon the Hypothesis of the Paternal Right p. 3. and 5. when upon that Hypothesis she was disinherited and foreclosed from the Crown of England by two Successive Patriarchs Henry the 8th and Edward the 6th Henry the 8th by his last Will and Testament excluded the House of Scotland and Edward the 6th by his Will excluded both that and his own Sisters likewise But as the Bishop of Ross argued against the first Will that it was not subscribed by his Graces own hand-writing as was directed by the Act of Parliament but only signed with a stamp of his Name so King Edward was never enabled by an Act of Parliament to dispose of the Crown at all And so neither of these Wills signified any thing because the Prince has no Power but what the Law gives him Whereas if these foresaid Princes had been Patriarchs and full of Inherent Paternal Power they could have Disinherited without an Act of Parliament For if a Father cannot Disinherit much less has he Power of Life and Death It were endless to reckon up all the awkerd and wilfull mistakes which fill up that Sheet of Paper As where he insinuates p. 7. That the 3th of Elizabeth was owing to the Queens Consciousness of the Insufficiency of her Title It is nothing so But it was made for the Preservation of her Person and that no body presuming upon an Unalterable and Unforfeitable Title in Reversion might immediately destroy her An Act it is which is Law to this day and was recited 13 Caroli 2. and there Expresly made a Pattern for the 13th of his Reign And whereas he says p. 8. That before
AN Eighth Collection OF PAPERS Relating to the Present Juncture of Affairs in England VIZ. I. The Tryal and Examination of the Test of the Church of England's Loyalty II. Some Reflections upon the Additional Libel intituled An Instance of the Church of England 's Loyalty III. The Pedigree of Popery or Genealogy of Antichrist IV. A Letter to a Person of Quality occasion'd by the News of the Ensuing Parliament V. Father La Chaise's Project for the Extirpation of Hereticks In a Letter from him to Father Petres VI. An Account of the Papers that have been Collected relating to the present Juncture of Affairs Licensed according to Order LONDON Printed Anno Domini 1689. The Tryal and Examination of a late Libel intituled A New Test of the Church of England's Loyalty With some Reflections upon the Additional Libel intituled An Instance of the Church of England's Loyalty THE Church of England has of late years especially been on the charitable side towards the Papists and has allowed them to be Christians and not Anti-Christians nay to be a true Church and not the Synagogue of Satan and seemed to have utterly forgotten the two fundamental points of Popery That Hereticks are to be pursued with Fire and Sword which was determined by the Lateran Council under Innocent the Third and conscientiously practised ever since And that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks which the Council of Constance determined in the case of John Huss and Jerome of Prague And in this excess of Charity which hopeth all things and believeth all things they have hoped against hope and have exercised strong acts of Faith where no Faith is neither have they had any apprehensions of being destroyed but rather of being saved and protected with Fire and Sword. But finding in great measure their Charity mistaken to the end that all their disappointments may seem just upon them they are presently taxed with Disloyalty So Aesops Lamb when she was to be eaten was charged by the Wolf for muddying the upper part of the stream which was far above her In Vindication therefore of the Church of England and to shew her innocency in this point I shall examine this new Test of the Church of England's Loyalty where she is tried and cast weighed in the Balance and found light but to our comfort it is by deceitfull weights and measures The first device is to pretend That the Church of England appropriate to themselves alone the principles of true Loyalty and that no other Church or Communion on earth can be consistent with Monarchy or indeed with any Government This is a presumption of so high a nature that it renders the Church of England a despicable Enemy to the rest of mankind To which I answer That the Church of England is here represented by that which is the true Character of the Church of Rome which has all along been a known Engrosser Which pretends to have all Faith and all Holiness and will have all Heaven to her self and pretending to have the Keys of it will suffer none other to come thither Whereas the Church of England allows not only that all Protestants have true Faith and true Loyalty as well as she and the same Faith and Loyalty as appears by the Harmony of their Confessions but also that Pagans are capable of moral vertue such as Loyalty is and have heretofore been great examples of it Many of them have lookt upon themselves as not born for themselves but for their Country and were strict observers of the Laws And it is well known that Socrates in particular had that Reverence for the Laws that though he was put upon it by his Friends yet he would not break them to save his Life His Bones and Sinews as his words are in Plato's Phaedo could easily have carried him into a Foreign Country but he would not suffer them to do it And therefore this Author in saying that the Church of England averrs That no other Sect or Community on Earth from the Rising to the Setting Sun can be capable of this singular gift of Loyalty betrays his malice and ignorance together and plainly shews that though he make new Tests of Loyalty yet he does not know what Loyalty is The word Loyal is a Term of Law and is indifferently applied to things as well as Persons So a Loyal Judgment is a Judgment according to Law and is opposed to a false Judgment A Loyal contract is a lawfull bargain A Man buys an Horse in a Market and then he has a Loyal Title a Legal Title to him So again a Person behaves himself according to Law and observes the Laws of the Land and then he is a Loyal Man he is Legalis Homo as a Juryman is required to be that is such a one as cannot be challenged for a Criminal or a breaker of the Laws And in case a Man's Behaviour be according to Law it is Loyal whether it respect a Superiour or an Inferiour Action nest autre chose que Loial demand de son droit An action is nothing else but the Loyal Demand of a Man's Right Mirror p. 115 and p. 122. A Serjeant at Law shall not use any deceits in his practice nor consent to them mes Loyalment maintiendra le droit de son Client c. But shall Loyally maintain the Right of his Client so that it be not overthrown by any folly negligence or default of his From hence it follows that Loyalty can have no other rule or measure but the Law for though some Men love to have confused notions of things and speak of Loyalty as if it were a thing in the Clouds and some abstruse matter over our Heads yet it appears to be plain thing and of easie comprehension for it is nothing else but Conformity to the Laws The plain English of Loyalty is lawfulness and it is utterly impossible that there should be any other Test or Touchstone any other measure or standard of lawfulness but the Law it self For if there had been no Law as there had been no Transgression nor Violation of it so there had been no Loyalty nor Conformity to it And therefore Loyalty against Law is a contradiction it is obedience made up of disobedience The Law is that which makes the King our Liege Lord and us his Liege People and accordingly both Prince and People are mutually sworn to the keeping of it and our Allegiance binds us to an obedience according to Law and not otherwise To obey the King himself contrary to Law is Disloyalty and to disobey the King in obedience to the Laws is Loyalty If it be not thus then all the Judges of England for these 340 Years and upwards have been all Sworn to be Disloyal For they are sworn to proceed according to Law though the King by his Letters or Writs under the great Seal or under the little Seal or by his own mouth should command them the contrary 2. 18. 20. Ed.