you opened to the liberty and boldness of other men who if they should assume to themselves the same freedom that you have done might say as much with as much reason concerning the pressures of other great Princes abroad that God afflicts them because they will not become Protestants as you can say that God afflicted our late King because he would not turn Papist But if you will not allow his Majesties suffrings to be meerly probatory And if for your satisfaction there must be a weight of sin found out to move the wheel of Gods justice why do you not rather fix upon the body of his Subjects or at least a disloyall part of them Wee confess that the best of us did not deserve such a Jewell Soveraigns may be taken away for the sins of their subjects that God might justly snatch him from us in his wrath for our ingratitude Reason Religion and experience do all teach us that it is usuall with Almighty God to look upon a body politique or Ecclesiastique as one man and to deprive a perverse people of a good and gracious Governour as an expert Physician by opening a vein in one member cures the distempers of another Prov. 28. â— For the Transgressions of a Land many are the Princes thereof It may be that two or three of our Princes at the most the greater part whereof were Roman Catholiques Not above two or three of our Princes called Heads of the Church did stile themselves or give others leave to stile them the Heads of the Church within their Dominions But no man can be so simple as to conceive that they intended a spirituall headship to infuse the life and motion of grace into the hearts of the faithfull such an head is Christ alone No not yet an Ecclesiasticall headship We did never believe that our Kings in their own persons could exercise any act perteining either to the power of Order or Jurisdiction That is onely politicall heads 1 Sam. 15.17 Nothing can give that to another which it hath not it self They meant onely a Civill or Politicall head as Saul is called the Head of the Tribes of Israel to see that publick peace be preserved to see that all Subjects aswell Ecclesiastiques as others do their duties in their severall places to see that all things be managed for that great and Architectonicall end that is the weal and benefit of the whole body politique both for soul and body If you will not trust me Hear our Church it self When we attribute the Sovereign Government of the Church to the King Art 37. we do not give him any power to administer the Word or Sacraments but onely that Prerogative which God in holy Scripture hath alwayes allowed to Godly Princes to see that all Sates and Orders of their Subiects Ecclesiasticall and Civill do their duties and to punish those who are delinquent with the civill Sword Here is no power ascribed Expos Paraphr art Conf. Ang. Art 37. no punishment inflicted but meerly politicall and this is approved and justificed by S. Clara both by reason and by the example of the Parliament of Paris Yet by vertue of this Politicall power he is the Keeper of both Tables the preserver of true piety towards God as well as right Justice towards men And is obliged to take care of the souls aswell as the skins and carkasses of his subjects The Christian Emperours politicall heads This power though not this name the Christian Emperours of old assumed unto themselves to Convocate Synods to preside in Synods to confirm Synods to establish Ecclesiasticall Laws to receive appeals to nominate Bishops to eject Bishops to suppress Heresies to compose Ecclesiasticall differences in Councils out of Councils by themselves by their delegates All which is as clear in the History of the Church as if it were written with a beam of the Sun This power The old Kings of England politicall heads though not this name the Antient Kings of England ever exercised not onely before the Reformation but before the Norman Conquest as appears by the Acts of their great Councills by their Statutes and Articles of the Clergy by so many Laws of provision against the Bishop of Romes conferring Ecclesiasticall dignities and benefices upon foreiners by so many sharp oppositions against the exactions and usurpations of the Court of Rome by so many Laws concerning the Patronage of Bishopricks and Investitures of Bishops by so many examples of Church-men punished by the Civill Magistrate Of all which Jewels the Roman Court had undoubtedly robbed the Crown if the Peers and Prelates of the Kingdom had not come in to the rescue By the antient Laws of England it is death or at least a forfeiture of all his goods for any man to publish the Popes Bull without the Kings Licence The Popes Legate without the Kings leave could not enter into the Realm If an Ordinary did refuse to accept a resignation See Authorities for all these in Cawdries Case in Judge Crook his Reports the King might supply his defect If any Ecclesiasticall Court did exceed the bounds of its just power either in the nature of the cauie or manner of proceeding the Kings Prohibition had place So in effect the Kings of England were alwaies the Politicall heads of the Church within their own Dominions So the Kings of France are at this day But who told you that ever King Charles did call himself the Head of the Church Neither K. Charles K. James nor Queen Elizabeth stiled heads of the Church thereby to merit such an heavy Judgement He did not nor yet King James his Father nor Queen Elizabeth before them both who took Order in her first Parliament to have it left out of her Title They thought that name did sound ill and that it intrenched too far upon the right of their Saviour Therefore they declined it and were called onely Supreme Governours in all Causes over all persons Ecclesiasticall and Civill which is a Title de jure inseparable from the Crown of all soveraign Princes Where it is wanting de facto if any place be so unhappy to want it the King is but half a King and the Common-wealth a Serpent with two Heads Thus you see you are doubly and both wayes miserably mistaken First King Charles did never stile himself Head of the Church nor could with patience endure to hear that Title Secondly a Politicall Headship is not injurious to the Unity or Authority of the Church The Kings of Israel and Judah the Christian Emperours the English Kings before the Reformation yea even before the Conquest and other Soveraign Princes of the Roman Communion have owned it signally But it seems you have been told or have read this in the virulent writings of Sanders or Parsons or have heard of a ludicrous scoffing proposition of a Marriage between the two heads of the two Churches Sixtus Quintus and Queen Elizabeth for
AN ANSWER TO Monseiur de la Militiere his impertinent Dedication of his Imaginary Triumph To the KING of Great Britain to invite him to embrace the Roman Catholick Religion By John Bramhall D. D. and Lord Bishop of Derry HAGUE Printed in the Year 1653. An Answer to Monseiur de la Militiere his Epistle to the King of great Britain wherein he inviteth his Majesty to forsake the Church of England and to embrace the Roman Catholick Religion SIR YOu might long have disputed your Question of Transubstantiation with your learned Adversary and proclamed your own Triumph on a silver Trumpet to the world before any Member of the Church of England had interposed in this present Exigence of our Affairs I know no necessity that Christians must be like Cocks Plut. that when one Crows all the rest must Crow for Company Monseiur Aubertine will not want a surviving friend to teach you what it is to sound a Triumph before you have gained the victory He was no fool that desired no other Epitaph on his Tomb than this Here lyes the Author of this sentence Prurigo Disputandi scabies Ecclesiae Sir Henry Wotton the itch of disputing is the scab of the Church Having viewed all your strength with a single eye I find not one of your Arguments that comes home to Transubstantiation but only to a true reall presence which no genuine Son of the Church of England did ever deny no nor your Adversary himself Christ said This is my Body what he said we do stedfastly believe he said not after this or that manner neque con neque sub neque trans And therefore we place it among the Opinions of the Schools not among the Articles of our Faith The holy Eucharist which is the Sacrament of peace and unity rences in the Church directly about the Sacrament for the first 800. years ought not to be made the matter of strife and contention There wanted not abuses in the Administration of this Sacrament in the most pure and Primitive times as prophaness and uncharitableness among the Corinthians 1 Cor. 11. The Simonians and Menandrians and some other such Imps of Sathan unworthy the name of Christians Theod. ex Ignatio did wholy forbear the use of the Eucharist but it was not for any difference about the Sacrament it self but about the naturall Body of Christ They held that his flesh and Blood and Passion were not true and reall but imaginary and phantasticall things The Maniches did forbear the Cup but it was not for any difference about the Sacrament it self They made two Gods a good God whom they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or light and an evill God whom they tearmed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or darkness which evill God they said did make some creatures of the Dreg or more feculent parts of the matter which were evill and impure And among these evill creatures they esteemed Wine which they called the Gall of the Dragon for this cause not upon any other scruple they either wholy absteined from the Cup Leo. Ser. 4. de quad Epiph. haer 30. 46. or used Water in the place of wine which Epiphanius recordeth among the errors of the Ebionites Aug. li. de Haeres c. 64 and Tacians And St. Austine of the Aquarians Still we doe not find any clashing either in word or writing directly about this Sacrament in the universall Church of Christ much less about the presence of Christ in the Sacrament Bel. l. 1. de Sac. Euch. c. 1. Neque ullus veterum disputat contra hunc errorem primis sex centis Annis The first that are supposed by Bellarmine to have broached any error in the Church about the reall presence were the Iconomachi after 700. years Primi qui veritatem corporis Domini in Eucharistia in quaestionem vecarunt fuerint Iconomachi post Annum Domini 700. Bel ibid. Syn Nic. 2 Act 6. only because they called the Bread and Wine the Image of Christs body This is as great a mistake as the former Their difference was meerly about Images not at all about the Eucharist so much Vasques confesseth Disp 179. c. 1. that In his â—udgement they are not to be numbred with those who deny the presence of Christ in the Eucharist We may well find different observations in those dayes Yet different observations as one Church consecrating leavened Bread another unleavened One Church making use of pure Wine another of Wine mixed with Water One Church admitting Infants to the Communion another not admitting them but without controversies or censures or animosity one against another we find no debates or disputes concerning the presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament and much less concerning the manner of his presence for the first eight hundred years And different expressions Yet all the time we find as different expressions among those Primitive Fathers as among our modern writers at this day some calling the Sacrament the sign of Christs Body the figure of his Body the Symbol of his Body the mystery of his Body the exemplar type and representation of his Body saying that the Elements do not recede from their first nature others naming it the true Body and Blood of Christ changed not in shape but in nature yea doubting not to say that in this Sacrament we see Christ we touch Christ we eat Christ that we fasten our teeth in his very flesh and make our Tongues red in his Bloud Yet notwithansting there were no questions no quarrels no contentions amongst them there needed no Councils to order them no conferences to reconcile them because they contented themselves to believe what Christ had said This is my Body without presuming upon their own heads to determine the manner how it is his Body neither weighing all their own words so exactly before any controversie was raised nor expounding the sayings of other men contrary to the analogy of Faith The first doubt about the The first difference abouâ— the presence of Christ in the Sacrament presence of Christs Body in the Sacrament seems to have been moved not long before the year 900. in the dayes of Bertram and Paschasius but the controversie was not well formed nor this new Article of Transubstantiation sufficiently concocted in the dayes of Berengarius after the year 1050. as appeareth by the gross mistaking and mistating of the question on both sides First Berengarius if we may trust his adversaries knew no mean between a naked figure or empty sign of Christs presence and a corporeall or Locall presence and afterwards fell into another extreme of impanation on the other side the Pope and the Councill made no difference between Consubstantiation and Transubstantiation they understood nothing of the spirituall or indivisible being of the flesh and blood of Christ in the Sacrament as appeareth by that ignorant and Capernaiticall retractation and abjuration which they imposed upon Berengarius Penned by
the reuniting forsooth of Christendome All the satisfaction I should enjoyn you is to perswade the Bishop of Rome if Gregory the Great were living The Authors satisfaction to perswade the Pope to leave that vain Title you could not fail of speeding to imitate the piety and humility of our Princes that is to content himself with his Patriarchicall dignity and primacy of Order Principium unitatis and to quit that much more presumptuous and if a Popes word may pass for current Antichristian terme of the Head of the Catholick Church If the Pope be the Head of the Catholique Church then the Catholique Church is the Popes body which would be but an harsh expression to Christian ears then the Catholick Church should have no Head when there is no Pope two or three Heads when there are two or three Popes an unsound Head when there is an hereticall Pope a broken Head when the Pope is censured or deposed and no Head when the See is vacant If the Church must have one Universall visible Ecclesiasticall Head a generall Councill may best pretend to that Title Neither are you more successfull in your other Reason Hatred of Episcopacy or the true cause why the Parliament persecuted the King why the Parliament persecuted the King Because he mainteined Episcopacy both out of Conscience and Interest which they sought to abolish For though it be easily admitted that some seditious and heterodox persons had an evill eye both against Monarchy and Episcopacy from the very beginning of these troubles either out of fiery zeal or vain affectation of Novelty like those who having the green-sickness prefer chalk and meal in a corner before wholsome meat at their Fathers table or out of a greedy and covetous desire of gathering some sticks for themselves upon the fall of those great Okes yet certainly they who were the contrivers and principall actors in this business did more malign Episcopacy for Monarchy's sake then Monarchie for Episcopacies What end had the Nuncio's faction in Ireland against Episcopacy whose mutinous courses apparantly lost that Kingdom When the Kings consent to the Abolition of Episcopacy in Scotland was extorted from him by the Presbyterian faction which probably the prime authors do rue sufficiently by this time were those Presbyterian Scots any thing more favourable to Monarchy To come to England the chief Scene of this bloody Tragedy If that party in Parliament had at first proposed any such thing as the Abolition either of Monarchy or Episcopacy undoubtedly they had ruined their whole design untill daily tumults and uncontrollable uprores had chased away the greater and sounder part of both Houses Their first Protestation was solemnly made to God both for King and Church as they were by Law established The true causes of the troubles in Englâ—â—d Would you know then what it was that Conjur'd up the storm among us It was some feigned jealousies and fears which the first broachers themselves knew well enough to be fables dispersed cunningly among the people That the King purposed to subvert the fundamentall Lawes of the Kingdome and to reduce the free English Subject to a condition of absolute slavery under an Arbitrary Government For which massy weight of malitious untruth they had no supporters but a few Bull-rushes Secondly that he meant to apostate from the Protestant Religion to Popery and to that end had raised the Irish Rebellion by secret encouragements and Commissions For which monstrous calumny they had no other foundation except the solemn religious Order of divine Service in his own Chappell and Cathedral Churches then some unseasonable disputes about an Altar or a Table and the permission of the Popes Agent to make a short stay in England more for reasons of State than of Religion And some sensless fictions of some Irish Rebels who having a Patent under the great Seal of Ireland for their Lands to colour their barbarous murthers shewed it to the poor simple people as a Commission from the King to levy forces And lastly some impious pious frauds of some of your own partie whose private whispers and printed insinuations did give hopes that the Church of England was comming about to shake hands with the Roman in the points controverted Which was meerly devised to gull some silly creatures whom they found apt to be catched with chaff for which they had no more pretext of truth than you have for your groundless intimations in this unwelcome dedication These suspitions being compounded with Covetousness Ambition Envy Emulation desire of Revenge and discontent were the sourse of all our Calamities Thus much you your self confess in effect that this supposition that the King and Bishops had an intention to re-establish the Roman Catholique Religion was the venom which the Puritan faction infused into the hearts of the people P. 11. to fill them with hatred against a King worthy of love And the Parliament judged it a favourable occasion for their design to advance themselves to Soveraign Authority Be Judge your self how much they are accessary to our sufferings who either were or are the Authors or fomenters of these damnable slanders There was yet one cause more of this cruell persecution which I cannot conceal from you because it concerns some of your old acquaintance There was a Bishop in the world losers must have leave to talk whose privie Purse and subtill Counsells did help to kindle that unnaturall war in his Majesties three Kingdomes Our Cardinall Wolsey complained before his death That he had served his King better than his God But certainly this practise in your friend was neither Good service to his God to be the author of the effusion of so much innocent blood nor yet to his King to let the world see such a dangerous president It is high time for a man to look to himself when his next neighbours house is all on a flame As hitherto I have followed your steps though not altogether in your own Method or rather your own confusion So I shall observe the same course for the future Your discourse is so full of Meanders and windings turnings and returnings you congregate Heterogenious matter and segregate that which is homogeneous as if you had made your Dedication by starts and snatches and never digested your whole discourse On the contrary where I meet with any thing it shall be my desire to dispatch it out of my hands with whatsoever perteins unto it once for all I hope you expect not that I should amuse my self at your Rhetoricall flowers and elegant expressions they agree well enough with the work you were about The Pipe playes sweetly whilst the Fowler is catching his prey Trappings are not to be condemned if the things themselves are good and usefull but I prefer one Pomegranate Tree loaden with good fruit before a whole row of Cypresses that serve onely for shew Be sure of this that where any thing in your Epistle reflects upon the Church
of England I shall not miss it first or last though it be but a loose unjoynted peece and so perhaps hitherto untouched We are onely accused of Schism Amongst other things which you lay to our charge you glance at the least twelve times at our supposed Schism But from first to last never attempt to prove it as if you took it for granted I have shaped a Coat for a Schismatick and had presented it to you in this answer but considering that the matter is of moment and merits as much to be seriously and solidly weighed as your naked Crimination without all pretext of proof deserves to be sleighted lest it might seem here as an impertinent digression to take up too much place in this short discourse I have added it at the Conclusion of this Answer in a short Tract by it self that you may peruse it if you please Presbyterians and Brownists have been Romes best friends You fall heavily in this Discourse upon the Presbyterians Brownists and Independents if they intend to return you any answer they may send it by a messenger of their own As for my part I am not their Proctor I have received no Fee from them And if I should undertake to plead their Cause upon my own head by our old English Law you might call me to accompt for unlawfull maintenance Onely give me leave as a by-stander to wonder why you are so cholerique against them for certainly they have done you more service in England then ever you could have done for your selves And I wonder no less why you call our Reformation a Calvinisticall Reformation brought into England by Bucer and Peter Martyr a blind Reformation yea the intire ruine of the Faith of the very form of the Church and of the civill Government of the Common-wealth instituted by God P. 16. Though you confess again in our favour that if our first Reformers had been interrogated whether they meant P. 19. P. 14. any such thing they would have purged themselves P. 17. and avouched their Innocence with their hands upon the new Gospell The gifts of Enemies are no gifts If such as these are all your courtesies you may be pleased to take them again Our first Reformers might safely swear upon any Gospell old or new that they meant no such thing And we may as securely swear upon all the books of God old or new that there is no such thing But why our Gospell should be younger or newer than Sixtus Quintus his Gospell or Clemens Octavus his Gospell passeth my understanding and yours also Comparisons are odious therefore I will not say that the true English Protestant standing to his own grounds is the best subject in the world But I do say that he is as good a subject as any in the world and our principles as Innocent and as auxiliary to civill Government as the Maximes of any Church under Heaven And more than yours where the clashing of two Supreme Authorities and the exemption of your numerous Clergy from the Coercive power of the Prince and some other novelties which I forbear to mention do alwayes threaten a storm Tell me Sir if you can what Church in Europe hath declared more fully or more favourably for Monarchy than the poor Church of England L. Cant. 1643. C. 1. That the most high and Sacred Order of Kings is of Divine Right being the Ordinance of God himself founded in the prime Lawes of Nature and clearly established by express Texts both of the old and new Testament Moreover that this power is extended over all their Subjects Ecclesiasticall and Civill That to set up any Independent coactive power above them either Papall or popular either directly or indirectly is to undermine their great royall Office and cunningly to overthrow that most Sacred Ordinance which God himself hath established That for their subjects to bear Arms against them Offensive or defensive upon any pretence whatsoever is to resist the powers which are ordeined of God The English Reformation not Calvinist cal And why do you call our Reformation Calvinisticall contrary to your own Conscience contrary to your own confession That in our Reformation we reteined the antient Order of Episcopacy P. 9. as Instituted by divine authority and a Liturgy and Ceremonies whereby we preserved the face or Image of the Catholick Church P. 10. And that for this very cause the disciplinarians of Geneva and the Presbyterians did conceive an implacable hatred against the King for the Churches sake and out of their aversion to it Did they hate their own Reformation so implacably If these things be to be reconciled reddat mihi minam Diogenes He that looks more in disputation to the Advantage of his partie than to the truth of his grounds had need of a strong memory We reteined not onely Episcopacy Liturgy and Ceremonies but all things else that were conformable to the discipline and publick service of the primitive Church rightly understood No Sir we cannot pin our faith upon the sleeve of any particular man as one used to say We love no nismes M. Tho. Sq. neither Calvinism nor Lutheranisme nor Jonsenianism but onely one that we derive from Antioch that is Christianism We honour Learning and Piety in our fellow servants but we desire to wear no other badge or Cognizance than that we received from our own Master at our Baptism Bucer was as fit to be Calvins Master as his Scholar So long as Calvin continued with him in Germany he was for Episcopacy Liturgy and Ceremonies and for assurance thereof subscribed the Augustane Confession and his late learned Successor and assertor in Geneva Monsieur Deodate with sundry others of that Communion were not averse from them Or why do you call our Reformation blind It was not blindness but too much affectation of knowledge and too much peeping into controverted and new fangled Questions that hath endamaged our Religion It is you that teach the Colliers Creed not we Howsoever you pretend to prove that our Reformation was the ruine of the Church and Common-wealth wee expect you should endeavour to prove it You cannot so far mistake your self as to conceive your authority to be the same with us that Pythagoras had among his Scholars to have his Dictates received for Oracles without proof what did I say that you pretend to prove it That 's too low an expression you promise us a demonstration of it P. 19. so lively and evident that no reason shall be able to contradict it Are you not afraid that too much expectation should prejudice your discourse by diminishing our applause Quid tanto dignum feret hic promissor hiatu Do you think of nothing now but Triumphs Lively and evident demonstration not to be contradicted by reason is like the Phenix much talked of but seldom seen Most men when they see a man strip up his sleeves and make too large promises of fair dealing
of that the burn'd child dreads the fire But by a proper new way of refuting old Protestant principles by new Independent practises Why was this Remedy found out no sooner This might have eased the Cardinals in their Consultations about propagating the Faith This might have saved Cardinall Allen all his Machiavillian Instructions to his English Emissaries This may in a short time turn the Inquisitors out of their employment for want of an Object and not leave such a thing as hereticall pravity in the world How must men praise your fortune and applaud your Invention But stay the second thoughts are wiser What if this Chain supposed to be of Adamant should prove a rope of sand And so it is I have seen a Sorites disgraced and hissed out of the Schools for drawing but one lame leg after it This is foundred of all four from the beginning to the end there is nothing in it but future Contingents which are known onely to God not one grain of necessary truth The King of England desires no such Conference First Sir be not angry if a man take away the subject of your whole discourse It is but your officiousness the King desires no such Conference Let them desire Conferences who waver in their faith All these blustering storms have radicated him deeper in his Religion And chiefly that which you make the chiefest motive to his Apostating the Martyrdom of his royall Father and an hereditary love to that Church which he hath justified with his blood Secondly If he should he had neither reason nor need to desert his English Clergy if his Majesty should encline to such a Conference do you think he would desert the English Clergy who have forsaken their Country their Friends their Estates out of their Conscience out of their duty to God and their Soveraign who understand the Constitution of the English Church much better than your self or any Foreiners how sufficient soever and cast himself wholly upon strangers whose Reformation you say is different from that of England in the points of Episcopacy Liturgy and the Ceremonies of the Church Say what was the Reason of this gross Omission were you afraid of that Image of the Church as you call it in a sleighting manner which they reteined Or did you not think any of the English Nation worthy to bear your books at a Conference It hath been otherwise heretofore and you will find it otherwise now when you come to prove it I know not whether England hath been more fortunate or unfortunate since the Reformation in breeding as many able Polemique writers on both sides as any Nation in Europe Stapleton Harding Parsons Sanders Reynolds Bishop c. for the Roman Church Jewell Andrews Abbot Laewd White Field Montague Reynolds Whitaker c. for the English Church I forbear to name those that are living And many more who come not short of these if they had pleased to communicate their Talents to the world This is such a Contumely as reflects upon the Nation and you must be content to be told of it Thirdly Such a Conference not fit to be granted by the King of France how are you sure that the King of France and his Counsell would give way to such a solemn and publique Conference private Insinuations use to prevail much when a man may Laevere tack to and again to compass his ends Authority or the Sword may put an end to Controversies But publick Conferences for the most part do but start new Questions and revive old forgotten animosities What were the Donatists the better for the Collation at Carthage The mind of a man is generous and where it looks for opposition fortifies it self against it Urban the Eighth was the wisest Pope you have had of late who by his moderation and courtesie cooled much of that heat which the violence of his Predecessors had raised against the Court of Rome The mild beams of the Sun were more prevalent than the blustering blasts of the North wind Multiplying of words more commonly engenders strife than peace Fourthly Nor to be accepted by the Ministers of the reformed Church upon what grounds are you so confident that the Ministers of the Reformed Church would admit of such a publick Disputation upon those terms which you propose That is to accept of the Archbishop of Paris and his Coadjutor two persons interessed for competent Judges I am as confident of the contrary that they would rather chuse to suffer than wrong their cause so much Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora It were a readier way for them and but the same in effect to subscribe to a blank paper and to submit without disputation Nor could any such Success be expected from it Fifthly suppose all this notwithstanding such a Conference should hold what reason have you to promise to your self such success as to obtain so easie a Victory You have had Conferences and Conferences again at Poissye and other places and gained by them just as much as you might put in your eye and see never the worse When Conferences are onely made use of as Pageants to grace the Introduction of some new Proselyte and to preserve his Reputation from the aspersion of desultorious Levity they seem much more efficatious than they are As they know well enough who are privie to what is acted in the withdrawing room The time was when you have been as confident in a contrary Opinion that such a free Conference would have sealed the Walls of Rome and levelled the Popes Triple Crown Sixtly The Authors impertinence and sauciness with the King whether the Ministers should accept of such a partiall unequall Conference or not or whatsoever should be the success thereof you trespass too boldly upon his Majesties patience to dictate to him so pragmatically so magisterially what he should do or would do in such a case which is never like to be Doth his Fathers constancy encourage you to believe that He is a Reed shaken with the wind Qui pauca considerat facile pronunciat He that weighs no more circumstances or occurrences than serve for the Advancement of his design pronounceth sentence easily but temerariously and for the most part unsoundly When such a thing as you dream of should happen it were good manners in you to leave his Majesty to his Christian Liberty But to trouble your self and others about the Moons shining in the water so unseasonably so impertinently or with what will come to pass when the sky falls is unbeseeming the Counseller of a King His Pen over â—uns his wit Lastly consider how your pen doth over-run your reason and over-reach all grounds of probability to ascribe unto his Majesties change such an infallible Influence upon all Protestants as to reduce them to the Roman Communion not onely his own subjects but foreiners His blessed Fathers example had not so much influence upon the Scots his native
edge of the razor doth touch the very throats of his servants that the glory of the work may wholy redound to himself We may not limit God to those means which seem most probable in our eyes So long as Joseph trusted to his friend in Court God did forget him when Pharaohs Butler had quite forgotten Joseph then God remembred him God hath nobler wayes of restitution than by Battails and bloudshed that is by changing the hearts of his creatures at his pleasure and turning Esau's vowed revenge into love and kindness I confess P. 74. 75. His Majesties escape out of England almost miraculous his Majesties resolution was great so was his prudence that neither fear which useth to betray the succours of the Soul nor any indiscreet Action or word or gesture in so long a time should either discover him or render him suspected When I consider that the Heir of a Crown in the midst of that Kingdom where he had his breeding whom all mens eyes had used to Court as the rising Sun of no common features or physiognomy at such time when he was not onely believed but known to be among them when every Corner of the Kingdom was full of Spys to search him and every Port and Inne full of Officers to apprehend him I say that he should travail at such a time so long so far so freely in the sight of the Sun exposed to the view of all persons without either discovery or suspition seeme little less than a miracle That God had smitten the eyes of those who met him with blindness as the eyes of the Sodomites that they could not find Lots door or the Syrian Souldiers that were sent to apprehend Elisha This strange escape and that former out of Scotland where his condition was not much better And seems to presage that God hath something to do with him nor his person much safer do seem strangely to presage that God hath yet some great work to be done by him in his own due time You attribute this rare deliverance P. 76. Prayers and tears the proper Arms of woman and the hopes of his conversion in part to the prayers and tears of his Mother prayers and tears were the onely proper Arms of the old Primitive Christians more particularly they are the best and most agreeable defence of that sex but especially the prayers and tears of a Mother for the Son of her desires are most powerfull As it was said of the prayers and tears of Monica Especially of Mothers for St. Austine her Son fieri non potuit ut filius istarum lacrymarum periret It could not be that a Son should perish for whom so many tears were shed God sees her tears and hears her prayers and will grant her request if not according to her will and desire we often ask those things which being granted would prove prejudiciall to our selves and our friends yet ad utilitatem to his Majesties greater advantage which is much better She wisheth him a good Catholick and God will preserve him a good Catholick as he is We do not doubt but the prayers of his Father who now follows the Lamb in his whites for his perseverance Yet not so powerfull as his Fathers intercession now in Heaven will be more effectuall with God than the prayers of his Mother for his change P. 77. The Authors instance of Henry the great not pertinent Your instance of his Majesties Grand-father your grand King Henry the fourth is not so apposite or fit for your purpose He gained his Crown by turning himself towards his people you would perswade his Majesty to turn from his people and to cast away his possibilities of restitution that is Plutarch to cut off a naturall leg and take one of wood To the tears of his Mother you adde the blood of his Father P. 77. 78. The just commendation of K. Charls whom you justly stile happy and say most truly of him that he preferred the Catholick Faith before his Crown his liberty his life and whatsoever was most dear unto him This faith was formerly rooted in his heart by God not secretly and invisibly in the last moments of his life to unite him to the Roman Catholick Church but openly during his whole Reign all which time he lived in the bosom of the true Catholick Church It is gross impudence to feign that he dyed a Roman Catholick Yet you are so extremely partiall to your self that you affirm that he died invisibly a Member of your Roman Catholick Church as it is by you contre-distinguished to the rest of the Christian world An old pious fraud or artifice of yours learned from Machiavell to gain credit to your Religion by all means either true or false but contrary to his own profession at his death contrary to the express knowledge of all that were present at his murther Upon a vain presumption that Talem nisi vestra Ecclesia nulla parerit filium And because you are not able to produce one living witness you cite St. Austin to no purpose to prove that the elect before they are converted do belong invisibly to the Church Yea and before they were born also But St. Austine neither said nor thought that after they are converted they make no visible profession or profess the contrary to that which they beleeve Seek not thus to adorn your particular Church not with barrowed but with stollen Saints Whom all the world know to have been none of yours What Faith he professed living he confirmed dying In the Communion of the Church of England he lived and in that Communion at his death he commended his soul into the hands of God his Saviour The Authors confession confutes his demonstration that Prostants have no faith That which you have confessed here concerning King Charls will spoil your former demonstration that the Protestants have neither Church nor Faith But you confess no more in particular here than I have heard some of your famous Roman Doctors in this City acknowledge to be true in generall And no more than that which the Bishop of Chalcedon a man that cannot be suspected of partiality on our side hath affirmed and published in two of his Books to the world in Print That Protestantibus credentes c. persons living in the Communion of the Protestant Church if they endeavour to learn the truth and are not able to attein unto it but hold it implicitely in the preparation of their minds and are ready to receive it when God shall be pleased to reveal it which all good Protestants and all good Christians are they neither want Church nor Faith nor Salvation Mark these words well They have neither Church nor Faith say you If they be thus qualified as they all are they want neither Church nor Faith nor Salvation saith he His intelligence as good in Heaven as upon earth Lastly Sir to let us see that your