A LETTER from the Member of Parliament The Letter of the Divine has been put into so many hands that it was thought unnecessary to reprint more of it than the Breviates in its Margin but the Reader if he pleases is desired besides to compare the Letter it self in Answer to the Letter of the Divine concerning the Bill for Uniting PROTESTANTS DIfferences of opinion are so apt to arise Many prejudiced against the Bill for the name of it and I am so much for Union that I cannot but take the trouble of telling you that you and I were much better agreed at our last meeting than you seem to think For I do not remember that I was so disaffected with the word Comprehension in the Church as that you should think to oblige me with the other of Union that alters the matter as little as if you should recommend a Bill for the Union of the two Kingdoms to the State by calling it a Comprehension I hope too that the Design is not to break the Frame but for a greater firmness Of the design of it For tho some pull down an old Mansion-House to sell the Materials and some to build a new Folly after a foreign Model as a Specimen of their late improvement by Travel yet others I grant you make such alterations as better the Seat. I do not therefore reject all Alteration for I would be as glad as any to see the good old House improved but I like it so well as it is that I desire first to be satisfied in the Proposals before I engage too far with the Undertakers for I know how willing that sort of Men are to make themselves work Our Church is not so unreasonable as to say That it is agreeable to the Principles of the Church of England that all her Appointments are unalterable and so much other Churches must confess too she is capable of amendment I grant you and so she will still be I suppose after your Corrections and Supplies and I know no other Church that is not but whether the Model that is offered will amend it or make worse that if we are wise Builders we shall consider first For as the Romans have altered for the worse so may the English too Some such thing promised to be done by us The Condescensions that were promised on our side are not to be forgot and further I wish that the occasion of that promise may be forgot the late dangerous Condescension of some Men to the Romish Party But his memory must be short who doth not recollect that this Temper promised was such an one as should be so esteemed by a Parliament and a Convocation that is a proper and expedient Temper in the regular way And if the Church men desire that this Method may be followed they will not deserve to be reproached with an ill Conscience in keeping their word And necessary to remove the Objection that has been made against us of our being a Persecuting Church Neither will the Church deserve therefore the name of a Perseeuting Church tho she has been unjustly persecuted with it all along by such who when in power were the greatest Persecutors themselves and whose Temper will always make them seem to themselves under Persecution till they can persecute again This Cry was raised by the Jesuits themselves against us in the late Reigns and a Book of Martyrs preparing and now it may be taken up again But this makes not Comprehension necessary it may be sufficiently provided for by a Bill for Toleration for the National Church of England tho she does not alter will be no more a Persecuting Church than the National Church of Holland who is not about to alter as we hear and continues to exclude above half of the Inhabitants We are now better able to know what is fitting to be done than we were heretofore But I am not only for a Toleration I am in my judgment for a review of our Constitution as much as any of you Divines and hope it may be made with so much Christian Prudence as may shew we are grown wiser by our greater Eperience It is indeed to be lamented that the Dissenters Objections cannot be removed by Answers of so great strength and plainess It remains therefore only to remove the occasion That it is the only way to remove the Dissentrs Scruples that is to take away such things against which there is no reason out of Charity then let it be done and a Bill of discreet Charity it will be indeed that shall take away all Scruples prevent all Prejudices and reduce us to perfect Union But you may remember I took the liberty in our private Conversation to tell you that such promising Bills of general Cures are put into your hand in every street The Bill is not yet come to us That this Bill will be no prejudice to Ecclesiastical Power but I have have inquired and find that besides the liberty the Laity have by it the Minister is at liberty to wear or not to wear the Surplice to kneel or to stand or to sit at the Communion to baptize or not to baptize with the sign of the Cross And some tell me they are not sure whether he is obliged to approve the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church in which he officiates and that Ordination by the hands of the Presbtyery is so owned that it capacitates him for a kind of Licence from the Bishop these they say are the present Alterations and Twenty Divines of your acquaintance are to have the Royal Commission to consider afterwards of many more and more weighty to be presented hereafter to the Convocation I hope and Parliament Now against this Method of removing the Dissenters answered Objections there seem to me to be several weighty Objections I wish might be answer'd as easily some of which I shall mention presently But as to the Ecclesiastical Power of which you allow me to be tender all that the Divines of my acquaintance desire is the power of hearing and deliberating concerning such Proposals in a Convocation And if this preparatory Act be of an Ecclesiastical nature they request the same Power may be granted them here for the Church-men I think have such a Right and if they have not yet they are proper Advisers and so numerous and so learned a Body as the Ecclesiastical Commonalty is should have some regard had to them as well as to the Dissenters and be represented not by a few Men of a sort but by a Convention at least of their own choice being neither so superstitious nor so ignorant as in the times you mention of Queen Elizabeth All the reason of Fences to the inclosure of a Church Nor take away the Fences of our Church is to keep those out that are not fit to come in or will if they are suffered to stay in disturb it to maintain Truth
Gratification to them Yet we may Reasonably Hope all others will approve it the conditions of this Bill being very easie both to the Ministers than to expose our Church to irremediable Disorders and Factions for their pretended ease For to deal plainly with you tho they have been pleased it seems of late to increase their number by new Ordinations yet I do not find the Church so ill provided as to want their Ministry it did not in the late exigency And if there are of them that shall after competent study really think the disputed Ceremonies to be unlawful this to me is such a proof of their weakness as that they ought not to undertake to teach and should in modesty be contented with Lay-Communion Now to the Lay a great tenderness is due And to the lay-Dissenters and there is place for charitable Condescension they have taken up Prejudices from the wrong information of those who pretending to instruct were bound to know better They have not had capacity or leisure or opportunity nay as you intimate have not been suffered to use the means of correcting their Prejudices they are therefore indeed to be considered and treated very charitably Let such then be permitted not to kneel and the Minister be bound to admit them to the Communion at their desire let the Minister be bound to Baptize their Children without the Sign let all reasonable ease be given them and the Surplice if you please quite taken out of their sight The Laity by this means will have all the Condescension you propose and enjoy their own liberty in such things as much as they can desire tho the Minister remains obliged For if the scrupulous have their own liberty to stand it is presumed by the Project that they will not be offended at any other or at the Ministers kneeling and what difference is there to them whether the Minister kneel by command or by choice I say not that the Surplice too may be left upon the Minister for the same reason for if you suppose he may wear it voluntarily without Offence to the lookers on why may he not wear it by direction without offence too I know you intimate the old Objection of indiffernt things becoming unlawful by their Impositions But will they be said to grow unlawful to me because imposed upon another that will be an unreasonable stretch of an Objection that is so very unreasoable in it self as to suffer no Ecclesiastical Appointments and I will assure you if our Church think fit to humor the Objection she will be the first that ever did You see I am ready to give all the desired satisfaction to the Lay but as to the Ministers I do not see how they can be left to their choice This Bill if it has no present good effect yet will secure the next Geneneration and satisfie the Protestant Churches abroad to whom it has been communicated and who do highly approve the conditions of it without more Disorder and Confusion than is fit to be suffered for their sakes and I must take leave to tell you that greater regard seems to be had in this Project to the personal Interests of a very few whom we may well be without than to the Peace of the whole Church The probable effect of this Bill so conditioned I have ventured to conjecture and you Divines should consider before-hand the rather because you are upon a new Experiment and which no Church has ever thought fit to try For tho the Reformed Churches abroad you mean the Calvinists as they are pleased to honour themselves with the Title in contradistinction to the Lutherans c. may appear to like your Project well as no Man discourages the Practice of his own Example and as the French will never find fault with us for following after their Faishions Yet I am not satisfied of their mind so but I shall do by them as we Lay-men use to do by you Divines I shall rather look into their Lives than their Doctrine and see what course they take at home Now I am afraid a Man would hardly be admitted a Minister of their Churches that should deny to approve their Doctrine and Discipline the Remonstrants you know say otherwise The Churches of France were not used to give the Sacrament to any sitting nor those of Holland to any that kneel much less are they used to see their Ministers in contrary Postures and if in any place they have sometime dispensed with their manner it was done out of a particular civility to some eminent Stranger not ordinarily and to those of their own Communion Now I do not suppose that they keep to their own Rules out of any humor or opposition but upon wise Considerations and for the sake of Order and Peace and I cannot think that they would ever advise us seriously to a Practice they do not follow themselves A Calvinist Minister may indeed be glad that he is without any more trouble made capable of an English Preferment and he may write such a Letter of Compliment to get one But this is neither Authority nor Motive to our Change And what need is there of a Foreign Oracle or going to Switzerland for a direction for us in England Shall Strangers be suppos'd to know our Circumstances better than we And shall we never think our selves able to do our own business our selves I am glad they abroad look upon our Church as the Centre of Protestant Unity a Protestant I hope she has appeared now and a Centre I hope she will prove by a speedy faithful direction she will afford to the Protestant Circle to use the German Phrase for the uniting and supporting their common Council and Interests Now for that Office she seems already to have the proper Position and will if she vary much go out of her true place for so much as she approaches to the Calvinists so far she departs from the Lutheran as friendly and a much more considerable Body But if she Will be a Centre she must be fix'd somewhere and she can never be serviceable to those abroad if she be in disorder and confusion at home Let us then settle our selves on Terms of Peace and Unity and so we shall be the better able to assist the the other Protestants But in order to that assistance there is no need that we should part so much as with the Surplice except you think the Preliminaries of the Protestant Treaty were about our Rubrick or that the Swede or the Lunenburger cannot succour the Hollander without subscribing to the Synod of Dort However we are to be guided by the standing Considerations of Peace and Unity at home and not by these temporary Conjunctions of Princes and States which may alter the next year The acquaintance with those of your own Profession This Bill approved by the truest Sons of the Church of England must be larger than mine and as the margin saith much
better for it is with the Truest Sons of the Church But I assure you I know many and those not inconsiderable who have too appeared for the Churches Cause who are against this Bill as they hear it is framed and who think it highly for the cause of the Church to have it amended And would be fit to be pass'd tho it were not necessary for Vnion We may improve our Constitution tho it be already very good My Acquaintance agree with you perfectly in the general that there is room for improvement and that Peace and Piety may be promoted by some Change and many thoughts they have spent upon it but they think that this matter should be regularly considered and not done by a few hands and on their own heads And they are the more apt to suspect the Prudence of the grand Change that is after designed because they have so much reason as they think to dislike this preparatory Expedient There was I believe a Juncture lost at the return of King Charles II. and the Popish Party might have some hand in it as we do the Divel no wrong when we make him a Party to any Mischief None but the Papists who have hitherto prevented our Vnion ought to be displeased at our present endeavour after it But I believe the Circumstances of that Juncture were a great occasion of the loss and that one cause of it might be the extravagances of the Proposals the Dissenters then made For I do not think that Men were so unwise or so negligent at that time as they may be fancied now Some were stiff I believe for every tittle of the old Form and some were far more unreasoable against the whole The Fanaticks in the mean while and the Papists were for no settlement at all and so for fear the Juncture should be entirely lost it was thought advisable to stay no longer but to resolve upon the present Establishment tho it be not absolutely perfect yet is I will say more perfect than any other in the Christian World and the prudence of it appeared in the reception and general submission it had in some little time gained as it would have prevailed universally had not the Papists who found themselves no Gainers by it broke in upon it by their Indulgence of 1671. and again spawned their Conventicles all over the Kingdom The Papists we know will take advantage by our Discord and this Bill I would have so ordered as not to occasion them The Church without the Dissenters and united as she is in her self has been able to make a glorious stand against Popery regnant But if by the admission of the Dissenters she shall be broken and divided she may grow weaker by her new Company and not resist so successfuly a second time This I confess is a favourable season but not by reason of the Protestant League abroad for under favour what breach of any Articles under that League will it be if our Church remain unaltered Or how does that League enable us to make ever the better Alterations Favourable it is by our Circumstances at home if we who were almost comprehended in the ruine we at least who were united in the Defence of our Religion would abate of our stifness for or against smaller matters and would be ready to form such a Body as may be more firm and lasting May this favourable season be discreetly used and let it not be lost again by such Proposals as ought to be rejected This Juncture will not be lost to the publick if some men are not too sedulous to make it favourable to themselves I am SIR your humble Servant M. M.