no more sincerely on his side than they were by some of us it was a Force on both sides and not like longer to last than the first Opportunity either could get to put themselves into hands they could better Trust They told us too That he would begin with Scotland and according to the Success he had there would take his Measures as to England There is not a Step has been made which they have not faithfully and truly foretold It is easy for Managers to be Prophets of what is design'd I wish what is to Come of their Prediction may not prove as True as what is Past That is That having Divided the Church of England among themselves they would through Fears or Hopes gain the major Number to come over to their Doctrine of Resistance whereby having proclaimed themselves to have been False-Teachers heretofore they would easily prevail with the People not to Trust them for the time to come And so by consequence gain the Cry on their side and have their turn in setting up upon the Inclinations of the Peoples and overturn Episcopacy here as they have done in Scotland Indifferency in Lovers is a certain Forerunner of a Breach And the People of England who were so excessively Enamour'd of us when the Bishops were in the Tower that they hardly forbore to Worship us are now I wish I could say but Cool and very Indifferent towards us What the End of all these Things will be is what dear Brother has tortur'd my Thoughts and makes me vent them so freely to you who I know partake in a great measure in them with my self But O good God! If we have not been Sincere with Him he knows our Hearts If Temporal Advantages have been any Biass to us Or if as Uzzah we have put forth our hand beyond our own Rank and Order going but in the least out of the plain Road of our Duty tho as we thought to save the Ark from falling oh what will our Judgment be if those Methods we have taken to preserve the Church prove as it sadly now threatens to her and our own utter Destruction We see the Enemy already Roar in the midst of our Congregations and they have set up their Banners for a Token We seem now to hold our Post but at their Discretion till they are ready to give the Word as in Scotland No more Episcopacy No more Church of England But we shall not fall like them They fell altogether every Bishop in the Kingdom and almost the whole Number of the inferiour Clergy They may rise again and will rise Glorious asserting still the same Principles as we did before in the Restoration 1660. But as for us now Whether shall we cause our Shame to go Will not the Scots upbraid us Where was our Zeal for Episcopacy or Foresight of our own Danger when we stood silent by and saw their Fall without putting in one Address or shewing the least Concern for our Brethren They will mind us for we have not thought of it of the Zeal which the English Bishops shew'd in the Case of the Archbishop of Glasgow unjustly Depriv'd by Lay-Authority in the Reign of Charles the Second though there was an Act of Parliament there to countenance it they Espous'd it as their own Cause for so indeed it was till they prevail'd with the King to have him Restor'd But now we could see not only all the Bishops in that Kingdom but our own Renowned Metropolitan and near half of the then Bishops of our own Kingdom Depriv'd by meer Lay-Authority not to mention the Dispute of the Validity of that Lay Authority and the Cause which none of us did think sufficient for a Deprivation without Interposing one Word on their behalf or so much as for having that Allowance made good to them which was provided for them by the Act of Parliament either by K. William to whom the Act entrusted the Disposing of it or if not from his Justice yet at least from the Generosity of those who came Unwilling and Sorrowful as they pretended into their Places Nor did our Convocation once complain of the Absence of their Archbishop and so many of their other Bishops or make any Address on their behalf or desire any Conference with them to know their Reasons and endeavour any Accommodation No we did none of these things We were seized with I know not what panick Consternation Though all were well Inclin'd and every one would gladly have been a Second yet none durst Begin We were Passive here to a superlative Degree Our Courage and our Souls have left us We lie under the Load though we see our selves sinking with it What is this but Infatuation and the End must be Destruction But now at last if we have any Spirit left though we have not made any Address or shewn our selves Concern'd for the Case of our Brethren in Scotland or for our Depriv'd Bishops and Clergy here yet let us not sit still and by a supine Negligence be so wanting to our selves as at least not to Petition to Represent our Fears and our Danger to the King and Government to Desire some Redress to our just Grievances That there may be an Alteration of the Persons employed in publick Offices and such only set at the Head of Affairs as are sincerely for the Church of England and let us make our Exceptions against those whom we know to be of a quite different Interest We ventur'd upon all this and more to King James and had good Success in it Who knows but upon our appearing Zealous and Active for the Safety of the Church others of our Flocks may joyn with us At least they will Approve and Justify us in asserting our and their true Interest But who will stir for us or stand by us if we Dare not so much as open our Mouths in our own Behalf It is our Office to Lead and Instruct them They will love us the better for it And we may by this Recover many whom we have lost But we shall loose all if we Render our selves wholy Insignificant and Insensible of the Encroachments which are daily made upon us And our Posterities may curse us in whose Power it was to have stem'd this Tide if we had taken it in time The People will never believe that we can be hearty to them and stand in the Gap for preservation of their Rights and Privileges as we have heretofore done and were Honour'd for it while they see us so very Dispirited and Negligent in our own At least this we shall Gain by it That if a Deaf Ear be given to all our Applications we may then rest assur'd of what is Determin'd against us 17 July 1694. FINIS
The Nation was in a violent Ferment and every one almost except those of the Cabal were unwilling to Dip themselves in the First Act of a New Constitution nor knowing where it might end Besides the Episcopalians were and are still generally affected towards King James and took as much Pains to keep themselves out of that Convention as the Presbyterians did to come into it All which did not it could not prevent many more of the Episcopalians to be Return'd than of the Presbyterians the Episcopalians being so very much the major Number especially among the better sort But many of the Episcopalians would not Sit and many who Sat once quitted the House and would appear no more thinking it culpable to be there And others were forced away to save their Lives from the Fury of the Fanatical Rabble who were arm'd and made the Guard of the Convention as that extraordinary Man Sir George Mac Kenzie and others Sir George Lockhart a most eminent Lawyer and who violently opposed the Vacancy of the Throne was assassinated in the Streets of Edenburgh some say it was only through a private Pique but that did not appear to all The Archbishop of Glasgow and others of the Clergy were openly Insulted in the Streets and no Remedy And before the Convention was turn'd into a Parliament the Bishops were by particular Instruments sent to Duke Hamilton then Commissioner excluded from their Right of Sitting in Parliament Yet notwithstanding of all this purging they could not get that Parliament so model'd that if but Half of them had Sat they would ever have abolished Episcopacy or set up Presbytery And the Scots Episcopal Party do vouch That there were not one Third part of the Members present when Presbytery was there Establish'd I am not now meddling with their Reasons why they would not venture to Sit and Vote at all Hazards This is only to shew that no Parliament can be had in Scotland which if Freely Sitting would Abolish Episcopacy And that the Inclinations of the People cannot be justly collected from what was done by that Less than a Third part of a Parliament and that gather'd together by strange Artifices as the Scotch Accounts do inform us as plain as they dare speak in the Management of their Election and of the Prince of Orange's circular Letter by which that Convention was call'd being sent where Preparations were made for its Reception by some Places later and to some not at all who yet had Right of Electing Members for Parliament Yet all this could produce no such Appearance in the Convention as would answer their Designs but they were forced to take into that Convention Men Out-lawed for Treason and under other Legal Incapacities to Sit in Parliament by the Laws and Tests then in Force as my Lord Argile himself who before his Attainder was taken off by the Parliament Sat in that Convention and was sent up Hither with the Tender of the Crown of Scotland And when they had done all tryed all their Ways and Means Legal and Illegal what a contemptible Appearance was it which they were able to procure at the first opening of the Convention or Meeting of the Estates as they stil'd it which was the 14th of March 1688. Of this we have a certain Record which is the Acts and Orders of the Meeting of the Estates of the Kingdom of Scotland extracted out of their Register and printed by Authority in Edenburgh 1690. There in the Act Declaring the Meeting of the Estates to be a Free and Lawful Meeting the 16th of March 1688. all there present do subscribe the said Act and all their Names are printed in the said Act. And there were but Fifty Burgesses in that Convention Neither must we reckon upon all that small Number it self as appears by their Fourth Act which is entitled An Act for putting the Kingdom in a Posture of Defence the 19th of March 1688. wherein we are told that several of the Members who had subscribed the former Act had in that three Days time Deserted the Meeting of the Estates and presum'd openly to correspond with the Duke of Gordon since the Proclamation of Intercommuning against him and to Retire from this Place Edenburgh in form of Weirt and therefore commands all from Sixteen to Sixty to Arm c. The Matter was many of those Few who came to the Convention did not know the Designs of the Managers which assoon as they perceived and that there was a Form'd Party to carry it on they immediately quit the Convention in Form of War as that Act says and openly Declared for King James Among these was my Lord Dundee who sat the first Day of the Convention and his Name is among those who subscribed the first Act above-mentioned There were likewise Seven Bishops whose Names are printed the First of the Subscribers But their Archbishop of St. Andrews as ours would not come into the Convention at all and it seems all the rest but the ' bovesaid Seven were of his mind And that even these Seven were of those who as Lord Dundee c immediately quitted the Convention I say immediately for they subscribed on the 16th of March and the Hue and Cry after them was in the ' bovesaid Act of the 19th of the same Month So that if we are to make any Computation of the Inclinations of the People from this Convention it will operate rather against the present Establishment There from the small Appearance of the Burgesses and their great and sudden Desertion But if the Inclinations of the People is best known by the Sense of Parliaments then it must follow That all along since the Reformation the Inclinations of the People of Scotland have been for Episcopacy which has been ratified and confirmed by 27 Parliaments in that Kingdom as they are Reckon'd up in these Scotch Episcopal Papers and where no such Objections as in the present Case can be Alledged Add to this what I think a plain Confession That the Presbyterians dare not trust a Free Parliament in Scotland and that is that notwithstanding the great Objection of a Convention not called together in the Legal Form becoming a Parliament by a Vote of their own who were not a Parliament before that Vote or any otherwise than by that Vote by virtue only of the Words themselves pronounced when they said Hoc est Parliamentum which some have compared to Transubstantiation I say notwithstanding that the Convention-Parliament in England found it necessary for this Reason to have the Convention-Parliament dissolved and a new Parliament chosen by the King 's Writ in the usual Form Because as was truly alledg'd the Convention was but in the Nature of a Volunteer no Man being obliged to obey the Circular Letters of a Foreign Prince before he was declared our King Nor did his Circular Letters import any other than a Voluntary Compliance which he expected should be paid to them And therefore the Subjects would
Sir Walter Young Mr. Chedwick Sir Patience Ward Sir Robert Clayton And a long c. in other Offices and Places of Trust through the Kingdom too long to be here inserted The Whig and I know not which to say Natural or Unnatural Libertine the Lord Sidney now Earl of Rumney is made Master of the Ordnance and Governour of the Cinque Ports and Dover Castle c. And Whig Sir Tho. Littleton is under him in the Ordnance Lord Cuts an Atheistical Whig is made Governour of the â—â—le of Wight These and many more are the Men now employ'd Little needy Fellows are put into Employments of greatest Honour and Import so they be but Fanatick enough As Johnston Secretary for Scotland who the other day meerly for Bread travell'd with Sir Rob. Barnard his Condition being then very necessitous though he is now one of the chief Managers in both Kingdoms His only Merit is the new fashion'd Theism grafted upon rigid Fanaticism the last of which he derived from his Father that Arch Rebel Wariston who was Clerk in ordinary to the Presbyterian General Assembly in his time and as furious against the Mitre as the Crown Such another is that Infamous James Stuart an Inveterate Rebel and pardon'd by King James now Knighted forsooth and fills the Place of Lord Advocate which answers to that of Attorny General here but of greater Honour and Interest in the State Castairs a Super-presbyterian that is a Cameronian Preacher attends K. William's Person both at home and abroad like a Jewel in his Ear We make a Show in the Chapel but He Exercises the Office of Confessor in the Closet His Advice is taken in all the Spiritual Promotions of our Church and we feel the Effects of it very sensibly We see among the new made Bishops those who were formerly Fanatical Preachers and those who of all our Number are least Zealous for the Church and most Latitudinarian for a Comprehension of Dissenters and a Dispensation with our Liturgy and Discipline The Archbishop himself has put on a strange Moderation that way The Tide runs strong both in Church and State towards a Fanatical Level And the Pattern of the Scotish Reformation stares us in the Face more Glaringly than in 42. And let us remember That the Covenant now Rampant in Scotland obliges them to carry on the work of that Reformation in England as well as in Scotland as they did before And they have the Impudence to pray publickly for it now in their Churches for our Conversion as they call it from Prelacy which they call Popery and Idolatry that is our Liturgy And yet their Agents there would make us believe That they intend no Alteration of our Constitution in England But are we to be so Deceived now Have we never been Deceived by them in the same manner before How often did they protest to Marquiss Hamilton Commissioner for King Charles the First That they did not intend to abolish Episcopacy Large Declaration 114 115. 69. and 173. And they used to perswade the Scrupulous That they might take the Covenant without prejudice to Episcopacy In their Answer to the Fourth Reply of the Doctors of Aberdeen they say You will have all the Covenanters against their Intention and whether they will or not to Disallow and Condemn the Articles of Perth and Episcopal Government But it is known to many Hundreds that the Words were purposely conceived for Satisfaction of such as were of your Judgment that we might all joyn in one Heart and Covenant They had Lower and Higher Senses of this Oath Any thing to get you once within their Circle and though they press the Obligation of it upon all alike like the Artifice of some of the Romish Emissaries who to a Person tenacious of the Reformed Doctrins represent the Church of Rome as little or nothing differing from us in Fundamentals as they call them and will let him keep all the Opinions they can't perswade him from only be reconciled to the Church to avoid Schism But when he is once in then there is no stop they can Drive him to the utmost They bring in many Hundreds of their private Doctors for the lower Sense of their General Councils as their Spawn of the Covenant do leave their many Hundreds of private Persons who they at first pretended knew their Minds in wording of the Covenant to be much lower than the Letter of the Oath seemed to import But yet they would never afterwards allow any such private Interpretations as the true and natural Sense of the Oath But boldly charged them of Perjury who in the least Tittle departed from them And how many Oaths and Protestations had we from our English Parliament in 42. That they never intended the Abolition either of Episcopacy or the Liturgy But on the contrary they expressed a great Zeal for Both till they had got a Set of Fanatical Ministers in the State and They then soon introduced Ministers of the same Kidney into the Church And did not they then set up the Inclinations of the People on their side And did not they carry it And yet they had not half the Pretence as now For before that Rebellion England had been long in the quiet Possession of Episcopacy without almost any Grumbling against it and that but of so small and inconsiderable a Party as did not seem worth notice These Monsters were Bred and Grew up in the Storm But since the Over-flowing of that Schismatical Rebellion our Land has been Fertile of as many Heterogenious Productions as the Mud of Nilus leaves upon Egypt There are almost as many various Sects and Armies of Dissenters now as there were single Mutineers at that time And oh the Difference England had a King then who was Bred from his Childhood in the Episcopal Communion and zealous for it even to Martyrdom But our present King had the Misfortune to himself and to us to be Educated under the Geneva Model made Erastian in Holland And it cannot be imagined That the Alteration of his present Circumstances have wrought as great a Change in his Principles That would be if not a Miracle to suppose him to be wholy Latitudinarian and indifferent to all Religions at least as to Church Government which is the Point We are concern'd for But alass the Measures he has taken in Scotland and here too as fast as it can go has sadly undeceived us and given Demonstration That he is as zealous for his Religion as any other King at least In short it is evident That King James never took more Pains to place such Ministers in the State and Bishops in the Church as were if not Popishly affected yet least Inclin'd against it than K. William has done by the same Method in Favour of Presbytery And there is yet a farther Reason for him to put himself Intirely into their hands as soon as he possibly can and that is That he can never Trust to Us. He sees we cannot
do But if we call that an Error then we own that our Church has been all along before this Revolution a false Guide and that the Dissenters have taught the Truth in this point of Doctrine And then the People themselves make the Application that it is safer trusting to Them than to Us in other Doctrines For say they the Dissenters never went over to you in any of their Doctrines but you have gone over to them in This which you Formerly pressed as Possitively and Zealously as any other Doctrine of the Gospel nay more than most others and as Indispensibly necessary to Salvation And will a People thus prejudiced against us be zealous for us Zealous against the Dissenters to whom we have at last submitted in our so long boasted Characteristical Discrimination of Passive Obedience How shall we retract all the hard Words we have given them for opposing that Doctrine which we now profess For using those same Distinctions which we now set up And what Argument can we find to perswade the People that we may not Deceive them in other Doctrines as well as in this Why they should Adhere to us against the Dissenters who have kept their Ground and not contradicted their own Doctrines Indeed our Case here is very difficult It is needless now to Blame the Preaching of Passive Obedience so high in the former Reigns The Fault is committed we cannot deny it and we must suffer under the Shame of it And we have lost exceedingly in the Hearts and Inclinations of the People now towards us upon that account They look upon us Inconstant and Time-serving And that Character to a Clergy-man must forfeit all Mens Value and Esteem for him And consequently for All that Clergy or Church of whom they have conceived such an Opinion And tho you and I can vindicate our selves as to the Preaching of Passive Obedience in former Times What is this to all that Generality of the Clergy who were never Weary nor would give over upon that Subject Who found it in every Text they could meet with And pressed it oftener and more pathetically than any Article of the Creed And though we did not preach for it yet we did not preach against it We let it go Which the People think we should not have done if we thought it to be an Errour and so Fatal a one as it must be if it can be an Errour They call this Time-serving in us then as much as in the others now And then our Subscriptions to the Homilies and Reading the Declaration of its not being Lawful upon any Pretence to take Arms c. are thrown in our Dish And it is needless here to insist upon our Defences for the Enquiry we are now making is not the truth or untruth of the Case but only as to the Inclinations of the Peopleâ— that is How They take it not how it is in it self Thus far we have observed concerning the People in General and in London But let us now come nearer and observe their Countenance in the Great Representative of the People The Parliament And Here like drawing near to an ill Daub'd Landskip the Strokes appear more Gross and Disproportion'd What a contemptible Figure do our Bishops now make in the House of Lords It was never so known before No! Never They are obliged either to quit their Seats in that House or to bear the Railery of the Lay-Lords every Day who think them a Dead Weight amongst the Peers of whom the greatest part would be glad to be rid of them not only out of their House but out of the Nation And it may here be noted That Episcopacy was in greater Perfection and more primitive Independency in Scotland than with us here in England and likewise as much fortified by the Civil Law and set higher in the State than since the Reformation in England The Clergy there are a Distinct Estate by themselves and preferr'd in all things to the Temporal Nobility For not only the two Archbishops as in England but every one of the Bishops do Sign before all the whole Temporal Lords as may be seen in the Act above-mention 16th of March 1688 where all the Convention subscribed their Names and the Seven Bishops who was there did subscribe before Duke Hamilton though then President of the Convention and all the Lay-Lords And their Subscriptions are thus Indorsed in the said Act The Clergy and Nobility subscribed thus When the Rolls in Parliament are called over the Bishops are all first called The Bishops chuse Lords of the Articles out of the Temporal Estate of the Lay Lords In all things the Bishops there are distinguished more plainly as a Separate Estate and the First of the Three Estates than with us But they have a yet much greater Advantage above our Bishops in their Ecclesiastiacal Authority They have no Prohibitions from the Secular Courts to hang up their Excommunications or intermeddle in their Spiritual Censures The Bishops there are Absolute Judges of the Fitness of Clerks presented to them for Livings Nor give any Account hereof to the Secular Courts Nay more they can Transplant any Priest in their Diocese from one Parish to another as they shall judge their Labours to be more profitable in one Place than another and there lies no Remedy for the Priest so Transplanted from the Secular Courts of which I have been told Instances The Civil Law has made no such Inrodes upon the Episcopal Authority in Scotland as in England and therefore our Bishops can plead no Exemption more than they from being cast out of the Church whenever a House of Commons shall please to have it so There is as St. Cyprian says but one Episcopate in the whole World of which every Bishop partakes Severally yet in Common Episcopatus unus est cujus a singulus in solidum pars tenetur Cyp. de unit Eccles Therefore the Case of Scotland at present is not only proximus Utalegon to us but 't is our own very Case upon the common Bottom of Christianity For if we give up the Jus Divinum of Episcopacy in Scotland we must yield it also as to England And then we are wholy Precarious And if in the Church much less let us think that Bishops are so essential to Parliaments but that as in England in 42. and now in Scotland they may be Dispenc'd with And the House of Commons as well as of the Lords have upon several Occasions minded them of their Frailty And that what has been done may be done as well in this as in other Things But more than all this both Houses of Commons and Lords have shewn their Love to us and high Regard of our Constitution in that they have divested us of all our Authority over the People by their unlimited Act of Indulgence to all Sorts and Sizes of Dissenters and commanding that the Ecclesiastical Courts shall have no Power to proceed against any of them And giving Power