Roman Catholick Physicians and Lawyers had incurr'd by his Acts of Parliament I have told you But what if I should now tell you how afterwards he did take care as it were unâ liturâ to delete the Execution of â—…ll the Penal Laws disabling ones and others against the Roman Catholicks and that as to what he did therein the most zealous Protestants among his Bishops and the Lords Temporal and others of his Privy Council did concur with him in so doing A. I think you would tell me of that which was very strange B. As in the Happy future State of England it was with an intent to detect the Degeneracy and Vanity of the Politick and Protestant-would-be's of the Age who pretended to Advance Religion by Excluding the next Heir in p. 219. shewn that one of the general and publick Articles sent by King James the First to his Embassador in Spain in Order to the Match with the Infanta was that the Children of this Marriage shall no way be compell'd or constrain'd in point of Conscience or Religion wherefore there is no doubt that their title shall be prejudiced in case it should please God that they turn'd Catholicks and that it was afterward sent as an additional Article offer'd from England that the King of Great Britain and Prince of Wales should bind themselves by Oath for the Observance of the Articles and that the Privy Council should sign the same under their Hands and that accordingly the Articles were sign'd by Archbishop Abbot John Bishop of Lincoln Keeper of the Great Seal Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lord high Treasurer of England Henry Viscount Mandevile Lord President of the Council Edward Earl of Worcester Lord Privy Seal Lewis Duke of Richmond and Lennox Lord high Steward of the Houshold James Marquess of Hamilton James Earl of Carlisle Lancelot Bishop of Winchester Oliver Viscount Grandison Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland Sir Thomas Edmonds Knight Treasurer of the Houshold Sir John Suckling Comptroller of the Houshold Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway Principal Secretaries of State Sir Richard Weston Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Julius Caesar Mr. of the Rolls and for the truth of which Facts reference is there made to Mr. Prynne's Introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury's Trial p. 43 so you may there read it in p. 44. that some private Articles were agreed on and probably were Sworn to by the same Persons that the other general ones were and of which private ones the first was in short That none of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholicks should at any time hereafter be put in Execution But you may thus see it at large viz. That particular Laws made against Roman Catholicks under which other Subjects of our Realms are not comprehended and to whose Observation all generally are not obliged as likewise general Laws under which all are equally Comprised if so be they are such as are repugnant to the Romish Religion shall not at any time hereafter by any means or chance whatsoever directly or indirectly be commanded to be put in Execution against the said Roman-Catholicks And we will cause that our Councel shall take the same Oath as far as it pertains to them and belongs to the Execution which by the hands of them and their Ministers is to be exercised The 2d was That no other Laws shall hereafter be made anew against the said Roman Catholicks but that there shall be a perpetual Toleration of the Roman Catholick Religion within Private Houses throughout all our Realms and Dominions which we will have to be understood as well of our Kingdom of Scotland and Ireland as in England c. And the 4th was That we will interpose our Authority and will do as much as in us shall lie that the Parliament shall approve confirm and ratifie all and singular Articles in favour of the Roman-Catholicks capitulated between the most renowned Kings by reason of this Marriage and that the said Parliament shall revoke and abrogate the particular Laws made against the said Roman-Catholicks c. And the Conclusion there is viz. That we will interpose our Authority and will do as much as in us shall lie that the Parliament shall approve confirm and ratifie all and singular Articles in favour of the Roman-Catholicks capitulated between the most renowned Kings by reason of this Marriage and that the said Parliament shall revoke and abrogate the particular Laws made against the said Roman-Catholicks to whose observance also the rest of our Subjects and Vassals are not obliged as likewise the general Laws under which all are equally comprehended to wit â—…s to the Roman-Catholicks if they be such as is aforesaid which are repugnant to the Roman-Catholick Religion and that hereafter we will not consent that the said Parliament should ever at any time Enact or Write any other new Laws against Roman-Catholicks We accounting all and singular the preceding Articles ratified and accepted out of certain Knowledge as far as they concern us our Heirs or Successors approve ratifie applaud and promise bonâ—… fide and in the word of a King by these Presents inviolably firmly well and faithfully to keep observe and fulfill the same and to cause them to be kept observed and fulfilled without any Exception or Contradiction and do confirm the same by Oath upon the holy Evangelists notwithstanding any Opinions Sentences or Laws whatsoever to the contrary In the presence of the most Illustrious Don John de Mendoza Marquess of Inojosa and Don Charles Coloma Extraordinary Ambassadors of the Catholick King of George Calvert Knight one of our Chief Secretaries of Edward Conway Knight another of our Chief Secretaries of Francis Cottington Baronet of the Privy Councel to our Son the Prince of Francis de Corondelet Apostolical or the Pope's Prothonotary and Arch-Deacon of Cambray Dated at our Palace at Westminster the 20 day of July 1623. in the English style Jacobus Rex A Compared and true Copy George Calvert Chief Secretary The Form of the Oath which the Lords of the Councel took to the former Articles is this which followeth found among the Lord Cottington's Papers Formula Juramenti à Consiliariis Praestandi Ego N. Iuro me debitè plenéque observaturum quantum ad me spectat omnes singulos Articulos qui in tractatu Matrimonii inter Serenissimum Carolum Walliae Principem Serenissimam Dominam Doâ—…nam Mariam Hispaniarum Iâ—…fantem continentur IURO ETIAM Quod neque per me nec per Ministrum aliquem inferiorem mihi inservientem legem ullam contra quemcunque Catholicum Romanum conscriptum executioni mandabo aut mandari faciam Poenamve ullam ab earum aliqua irrogatam exigam Sed in omnibus quae ad me pertinent Ordines à Majestate sua ex ea parte constitutos fideliter observabo Thus far Mr. Prynne who verifies the Facts above-mention'd not only from my Lord Cottington's Papers but from the Mercure Francois Tom. 9. A.
other Penalties incurr'd by Popish Recusants pursuant to any Statutes as for example those of Queen Elizabeth or King Iames and even that of 3 o Iac. c. 5. whereby Convicted Recusants are disabled from Military Offices and Offices in the Navy and in the Law and fâ—…m the Practice of Physick and any publick Office and Charge in the Commonwealth or the Test-Act 25 o Car. 2. No question is to be made of the King 's absolute and undoubted Power of dispensing with particular persons in such a Case And during the ferment about the Laws and Statutes whereon the Petition of Right was founded and which were of another Nature as Mr. Glanvile's words are you will not forget that there was a tenderness for Prerogative avow'd by both Houses while you remember those words of the Royal Martyr in his Speech at the Prorogation of the Parliament the 20th of October A. 1628. viz. That the Profession of both Houses at the time of hammering the Pâ—…tition of Right was no way to entrench upon his Prerâ—…gative and their saying that they had neither intention noâ—… power to hurt it c. You may too call to mind that as during the fâ—…rment that the suspending the Penal Laws by His late Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence his Power of Dispensing in them came not in question so the heat about his Preregative to SUSPEND them was soon over The Opinion of that loyal Patriot and learned and upright Iustitiary Sir William Ellis deliver'd in his Argument about Thomas and Sorrells Case I told you of namely that the King may SUSPEND an Act of Parliament till next Session which was a flâ—…ght beyond what was moved for or adjudged in the late Case of Gâ—…dden and Hales did never meet with any angry reflection that I have heard of from any Person either of the People diffusive or representative tho yet that Argument of his containing such Opinion was both after the Votes of the House of Commons about the illegality of the suspending of Penal Laws in Matters Eccleâ—…iastical otherwise then by Act of Parliament and after the Act for the Test. And how near the Prerogative of Dispensing as allow'd by my Lord Chief Justice Vaughan in his Argument in Thomas and Sorrell's Case and who argued after Sir W. Ellis came up to SUSPENDING you may see there by what he saith p. 347 Where the King can dispense with particular Persons he is not confined to number or place but may Liceâ—…s as many and in such Places as he thinks fit But further to shew you to how quiet and temperate a State that ferment of the Prince's suspending all the Religionary Penal Laws without an Act of Parliament was grown I shall let you see that several years after the late King's Declaration of Indulgence and the Act for the Test the late Earl of Sâ—…aftsbury appear'd in Print as owning the legality of the King's Prerâ—…gative in that kind and without his Lordship's being in the least censured for it by any of that numâ—…rous Party he was then the Head of And here I am to tell you that in a Book call'd A Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country Printed in the year 1675. the Earl of Shaftsbury is by Mr. Marvell the supposed Author of the Book introduced as owning that the Power of the King's Supremacy meaning in Matters Ecclesiastical was of another Nature then that he had in Civils and had been exercised without exception in this very Case i. e. as in the Declaration of Indulgence by his Father Grandfather and Queen Elizabeth under the Great Seal to foreign Protestants become Subjects of England c. A. Did the Earl of Shaftsbury then in the year 1675. own the Prerogative of suspending Penal Laws in Matters Ecclesiastical when the King had long before quitted it and when his Lordship was Embarqued with those Men to whom nothing could once seem more unpopular then the owning of any such Prerogative B. I refer you to the Book it self and where you will see that that Great Statesman did then assert the extent of Prerogative in that Point with as much strength of Wit and Reason as if he had been then fitting at the Helm of State and where he further shews the Necessity of a standing Supreme executive Power to mitigate or wholy to SUSPEND the execution of any Penal Laws c. But I shall best entertain you with his Lordship 's own words as so great a Narrator as Mr. Marvell relates them and who as he saith telling his Lordship that the Declaration of Indulgence assumed a Power to repeal and SUSPEND all our Laws his Lordship â—…eplyed that he wonder'd at his Objection there being not one of these in the Case For the King assumed no Power of repealing Laws or suspending them contrary to the will of his Parliament or People and not to argue with me at that time the Power of the King's Supremacy which was of another Nature then that he had in Civils and had been exercised without exception in this very Case by his Father Grandfather and Queen Elizabeth under the Great Seal to foreign Protestants become Subjects of England nor to instance in the SUSPENDING the execution of the two Acts of Navigation and Trade during both this and the last Dutch War in the same words and upon the same necessity and as yet without clamour that ever we heard But to pass by all that this is certain a Government could not be supposed whether Monarchical or other of any sort without a standing Supreme executive Power fully enabled to mitigate or WHOLT to SUSPEND the execution of any Penal Law in the intervals of the Legislative Power which when assembled there was no doubt but wherever there lies a Negative in passing of a Law there the Address or sense known of either of them to the Contrary as for instance of either of our two Houses of Parliament in England ought to determine that Indulgence and restore the Law to its full execution For without this the Laws were to no purpose made if the Prince could annul them at pleasure and so on the other hand without a Power always in being of dispensing on occasion was to suppose a Constitution extremely imperfect and impracticable and to Cure those with a Legislative Power always in being is when consider'd no other then a perfect Tyranny A. I find that his Lordship doth not in the least distinguish between the Right of Prerogative in suspending the Disabling or incapacitating Penal Laws and others And he by giving the Power of suspending all the Penal Laws to the Prince during the Intervals of Parliament and till an Address should be thence made to the Prince to revoke such suspension hath given his Prince this Power in effect during life For 't is obvious to consider by how many accidents a suspension of Penal Laws revocable on an Address from the Parliament may happen to be not so revoked B. You
thing of that nature but in such a fair and legal way as should satisfie all his loving Subjects The Duplys of the Divines of Aberdene p. 54. and p. 130 131. Whereupon Mr. Ley thus goes on viz. Wherein Wise men who judge of Consultations and Acts by their probable Effects and not unexpected Events cannot but highly commend His Majesty's Mildness and Clemency which we doubt not would condescend to your Requests for a removal of this great aggrievance if you would please to interpose your Mediations to so acceptable a purpose and upon our humble sute which in all submissive manner we tender to your Lordship and by you to the rest of your Reverend Order we hope you will do so since we have it upon his word His Royal Majesty's word which neither in Duty nor Discretion we may distrust that the Prelates were their greatest Friends i. e. of his Scottish Subjects their Councels were always Councels of Peace and their Solicitations vehement and earnest for granting those unexpected Favours which we were pleas'd to bestow upon our People The King 's large Declaration p. 420 Thus then the Royal Dispensation with the five Articles of Perth was at the Intercession of the Bishops tho' they knew the same Establish'd by Act of Parliament graciously afforded to his Scotish Subjects Those Articles of Perth related to various Religionary Matters viz The introducing of Private Baptism Communicating of the Sick Episcopal Confirmation Kneeling at the Communion and the observing such ancient Festivals as belong'd immediately to Christ and of which Doctor Heylin in his History of the Presbyterians having spoken saith That the King 's indulging the Scots in Dispensing with the Penal Laws about them was an Invitation to the Irish Papists to endeavour by armed force to Compass the King's Dispensation But how tenderly the Consciences of the Roman Catholics in Ireland were in the Reign of the Royal Martyr THEN Protected under the Wing of the Dispensative Power contrary to what the Dr. observ'd any one may see who will Consult my Lord Primate Bramhal's Replication to the Bishop of Chalcedon where he saith That the Earl of Strafford Lord Lieutenant of Ireland did commit much to my hands the Political Regiment of that Church for the space of Eight years In all that time let him name but one Roman Catholic that suffer'd either Death or Imprisonment or so much as a pecuniary Mulct of Twelve Pence for his Religion upon any Penal Statute if he can as I am sure he cannot c. And such was the acquiescence of the Populace and of the three Estates in the Penal Lawes there against the Roman Catholics being thus dead or asleep that in the Printed Articles of Impeachment against the then Lord Chancellor of Ireland and that Lord Primate thâ—…n Bishop of Derry and others of His Majesty's Publick Ministers of State exhibited by the Commons to the Lords in the year 1640. there is not a syllable of Complaint against those Lawes being so dispens'd with by Connivence Nor yet in the Printed Schedule of Grievances of that Kingdom voted in the House of Lords there to be transmitted to the Committee of the same House then attending in England to pursue Redresses for the same is there any representation of such Indulgence being any Gravamen nor yet of the great Figure the Irish Papists then made in the Government the Majority of the Parliament and of the Iudges and Lawyers then being such And pursuant to that Prince's Indulgence offer'd to the tender Consciences of his Subjects in the year 41. he was graciously pleas'd in the Treaty at Uxbridgâ—… to order his Commissioners who were such renown'd Confessors of the Church of England to make the first Royal offer there that freedom be left to all Persons of what Opinion soever in Matters of Ceremony and that all the Penalties of LAWS and Customs be SUSPENDED And the truth is since the Christian Religion did in its first settlement so rationally provide for its Propagation in the World and its bespeaking the favour of Princes by its enjoyning Subjection and Obedience to their Lawes not only for Wrath but Conscience sake and since that Principle of humane Lawes binding the Conscience which was so often and so publickly avow'd by that Prince and Arch-bishop Laud and Bishop Sanderson and the Divines of the Church of England in General is the surest guard to Princes Thrones and their Tribunals and that therefore 't is the Interest of the Prince and People to be more watchful in preserving that Principle then all the Iewels of the Crown or Walls of the Kingdom that Prince did therefore necessarily take Care to preserve and to perpetuate in some of his tender-Conscienced Subjects a continued Tenderness for his Lawes by his lawful Dispensative Power as particularly in the Case of his Scottish Subjects in taking off the Obligation of Obedience and of Conforming themselves to the Establish'd Lawes for such Dispensation intrinsecally notes the taking off such Obligation from the Persons dispens'd with And it is indeed a Solecism for any one to ask Indulgence from a Prince who owns the Law of the Land binding him in Conscience if he doth not think such Prince perswaded that his Power of granting it is a part of that LAW He was not ignorant of his Father's Aversion against the Penal Lawes in general and on which Account my Lord Bacon celebrating him saith As for Penal Lawes which lie as snares upon the Subjects and which were as a Nemo scit to King Henry 7. it yields a Revenue which will scarce pay for the Parchment of the King's Records at Westminster And religionary Penal Lawes requiring the greatest tenderness as he found when he came to the Government that the two most famous Puritan Divines Mr. Hildersham and Mr. Dod Men of great Probity and Learning had often been in his Father's time Pursuant to the Act for Uniformity disabled from Preaching and been re-inabled to it by particular Indulgence and as likewise Fuller tells us in his Church History that Bishop Williams when he was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England procured a Licence from King Iames under the Great Seal for Mr. Cotton the famous Independent to Preach notwithstanding his Non-Conformity so he in the same manner that his Royal Father did held the Reins of the Law loose in his hands as to those two other Non-Conformists beforemention'd The History of Mr. Hildersham's Life mentions that he was silenced in Iune A 1590 and restored again in Ianuary A. 1591. Again he was deprived and silenced April 24 A. 1605. for refusal of Subscription and Conformity and after some time again restored and was again Silenced in November A. 1611. by the King 's particular Command and on April 23. A. 1613. he was judicially admonished by the High Commission that saving the Catechizing of his own Family only he should not afterward Preach Catechize or use any of the Offices or Function of a Minister
publickly or privately 〈◊〉 he should be lawfully restored and releas'd of his said Suspension But shortly after the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr he was again restored and was afterward again silenced and so continued till August 2. A. 1631. and then he was again restored And Mr. Dod's Life represents his Case as parallel with this before-mention'd He was in King Iames his time suspended and restored and again by the King 's particular Command disabled from Preaching and was by King Charles the First re-ennabled or restored Thus as fortis fortem amat one tender Conscienced man too loves another such and the Executive Power of the Law in re-ennabling after temporary Disability was tenderly administred by these our Princes to these Conscientious Men with respect to their real Capacity of Favour to be shew'd them A. You have here given me a taste en passant of part of the Dispensative Power as exercised in the three Realms during some Conjunctures in the Reign of King Charles the First and for which I thank you and particularly for what you told me of the Act of Parliament dispens'd with in Scotland of which I never heard before and am apt to suppose a thing of that Nature was never done before in that Realm B. I can assure you to those who know the Publick Transactions of that Kingdom the thing will not in the least seem new I can tell you that on the 26th of November A. 1593. King Iames the 6th of Scotland made an Act of State in favour of three Roman-Catholick Earls Huntly Arroll and Angus by which Act he allow'd them several Priviledges contrary to Acts of Parliament made against Roman-Catholicks And His Majesty in his Act of State expresly dispenseth with those Acts of Parliament and which Dispensation tho Queen Elizabeth importuned him to revoke and for that purpose sent the Lord Zouch as her Embassador to him he still adhered to the Act of State he had made and continued his Dispensation A. Have you this Matter of Fact out of any of the Records in England or Scotland B. I have it out of the Original Papers under the hand of Queen Elizabeth and her great Minister Burghly and the Original Instructions of the Lord Zouch when sent by her to expostulate with the King about it that were lately in my Custody and by me sent to our gracious Sovereign and I shall some other time give you a more particular account of that Dispensation A. But I beseech you did not the Protestant Divines of the Church of Scotland then cry out of the unlawfulness or inexpedience of that Dispensation B. I have read it in a learned Book of Dr. Maxwell a Scotch-man Printed A. 1644. and who was then Bishop of Killally in Ireland and had formerly been Bishop of Rosse that Mr. Robert Bruce one of the Ministers of Edenburgh and who had a great sway in the Church of Scotland was pleas'd with the King 's extending his Favour to Angus and Arroll but out of a factious Complyance with the Earl of Arguile was displeas'd at its being shewn to Huntly But that Loyal Bishop there acquiesceth in the reason of State that inclined the King to Pardon the three Earls and his thereby hindering the growth of Faction in Scotland and providing for his more easie and secure access to the Throne of England on the Death of Queen Elizabeth And so you may easily guess what sort of men in Scotland look'd with an evil eye on that Act of the Royal goodness and who did not The Bishop there had applauded the great depth of the King's Wisdom and his transcendent Goodness in the Pardoning the three Earls and mention'd that there was nothing of Religion in the Case of Bruce's Aversion against the Pardon of Huntly for that Angus and Arroll were as bigot Papists if not more then Huntly I can likewise direct you to my Lord Primate Bramhal's celebrated Book call'd A Fair warning to take heed of the Scotish Discipline where in Chap. 6. thus entituled viz. That it robs the Magistrate of his Dispensative Power he saith by way of instance When the Popish Earls of Angus Huntly and Arroll were excommunicated by the Church and forfeited for Treasonable Practices against the King it is admirable to read with what Wisdom Charity and Sweetness his Majesty did seek from time to time to reclaim them from their Errors c. and on the other side to see with what bitterness and radicated Malice they were prosecuted by the Presbyteries and their Commissioners c. sometimes threatning that they were resolv'd to pursue them to the uttermost tho it should be with the loss of all their Lives in one day c. sometimes pressing to have their Estates confiscated c. He refers there in his Margin to Ass. Edinb 1594. But any one who shall consult D'Ossat's Letters and there in the Second Book carefully read over the 37th Letter that was writ to Villeroy in the year 1596 and three years after the Date of King Iames his Act of State and observe what that great Sagacious Cardinal there refers to concerning the Circumstances of those three Earls and how all the Prudence that could be shewn by man was but little enough for the Conduct of that King in that Conjuncture in order to his removing what Impediments either from Rome or Spain or his Native Country might obstruct his Succession to the Crown of England will not wonder at his having dispens'd and continued his Dispensation as aforesaid A. I have not yet ask'd you whether the Divines of the Church of England did not lift up their voices like a Trumpet against the Dispensative Power thus exercised by their Prince as you have mention'd B. They discharged their Duties in Preaching occasionally against all growing Errors but they wanted none to mind them of the Saying Impium esse qui Regi dixerit Inique agis The Pious and Learned Author of Certain Considerations tending to Peace c. mentions how the Bishop of St. Davids in King Iames's Reign A. 1604. did in a set Speech in Convocation shew that Ministers were not in the late Archbishop's time disabled from their Ministry on the Account of Non-conformity to the Ceremonies by Law enjoyn'd and concluded his Speech with the motion of Petitioning the King That if the removal of some of the Ceremonies enjoyn'd could not be obtain'd nor yet a Coleration for them of more stay'd and temperate Carriage yet at least there might be procured a mitigation of the Penalty c. And as the Suspension or Disabling of Hildersham and Dod from their Ministerial Functions so the Restoring of them to the same without all such things done by them as the strictness of the Lawes required was in both those Princes Reigns executed by the Bishops Nor do I remember to have read of any Divine of the Church of England to have in the least look'd with an evil eye on the goodness of the
writ for it were with great heat impugned in Print by Mr. Gillespy a Divine of Scotland and one of the Commissioners in England for that Kingdom and who in a Printed Sermon of his Preach'd before the House of Lords doth call Erastus the great Adversary and in one of his Pamphlets against Mr. Coleman call'd Nihil Respondes mentions how the Presbyterians and Independents were both equally interessed against the Erastian Principles And as to the greatness of the number of the Covenanters out of Parliament that rejected the Iure-divinity of the Scots ruling Elders Mr. Coleman gives us his Judgment in p. 12. of his Reply to Nihil Respondes viz. that 9 10 of the Assembly and 900 1000 of the Kingdom denyed a Ruling Elder to be an instituted Officer jure divino But Heylin having told us in his History of Presbytery That Presbytery did never setle its Lay-Eldership in any one Parish in England we may easily thence suppose the National Violation of that National Covenant without any apparent regret of Conscience on that account How all the Independent Clergy and Layety who had took the Covenant did in a manner simul semel most notoriously violate it in setting up the model of their Church-Government is not unknown But indeed as the very sagacious Author of the Book call'd The main Points of Church-Government c. Printed in London A. 1649. hath observ'd The known sense of the Scotish Nation which framed the Covenant and for whose Satisfaction the Covenant was here taken doth include Independency under the name of Schism or at least under those words contrary to sound Doctrine and our Independent Divines could not but know this to be their sense of it and yet we know of none that did protest against it or explain themselves otherwise at the first taking of the Covenant if they have done it since And I might further tell you that after the Engagement was set up of being true and faithful to the Common-wealth of England as it is now Establish'd without a King or House of Lords tho several of the Presbyterian Divines out of a sense of their Oaths and Allegiance and their Covenant were so Loyal as to refuse it I have not heard of any of those Independent ones who did But such was the Inundation of Practical Atheism in the Kingdom that our Civil Wars had caus'd that when the Engagement was set up almost the whole Body of the Lawyers in England took it rather then they would lose their Practice These men knew the meaning of the Acts of Parliament containing the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and yet were abandon'd by a disloyal Sophistical Principle of the want of Power in a lawful Sovereign to protect them absolving them from their Obedience to cancel their Oaths in the Court of Conscience And in a word further to shew you how the tender Regard of publick Promises was here grown one of Pancirol's lost things I shall tell you that tho in the Parliament of Richard Cromwell none was allowed to sit but he who had first took a Recognition of engaging to be true and faithful to the Lord Protector c. and not to propose or give any Consent to alter the Government as 't is setled in one single Person and a Parliament yet the Republicans in that Parliament were not in the least diverted by that Recognition from endeavouring there to alter the Government and it was there avowed by them that a Promise or Oath took without Doors did not bind within And at last to bring up the Rear of mens Perjury after all the Oaths legal and illegal had been so much confounded when the late King's Restauration was almost in sight on the then General Monk with his Army coming to London a new Oath of Abjuration of the Royal Line was at that time set on foot in Councel and which some there would have had imposed on the General himself A. Good God! What a Concatenation of Perjuries was our Land so long enslaved with you have referr'd to the Solemn League and Covenant for extirpating Popery and Superstition and while a General Assembly and Parliaments were planting here the Doctrine of the Council of Lateran namely the Absolving Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance B. And while they were planting a Discipline that Archbishop Whitgift in his Reply to T. C. p. 299. 559. and Bishop Hall in his Book of Episcopacy Part 3. p. 34. and Bishop Downham in his Defence of his Sermon l. 1. c. 8. p. 139. And Archbishop Bramhal in his Fair warning to take heed of the Scotish Discipline almost throughout do charge with POPERY and where the last Archbishop doth represent the Covenant with the terms of Baal Baal berith and Baalims and saith It were worth the enquiring whether the marks of Anti-Christ do not agree as eminently to the Assembly general of Scotland as either to the Pope or to the Turk This we see plainly that they spring out of the Ruines of the Civil Magistrate they sit upon the Temple of God and they advance themselves above those whom the Scripture calls Gods. A. That Archbishop's saying It were worth the enquiring thus concerning that general Assembly as then used is the only thing wherein I differ from him for I think there is no doubt in the case B. To this you may add the thoughts of their being associated against Superstition while they were planting the grossest Superstition that any Age hath known if we may take our measures of Superstition from that definition of it in the Reformatio legum Ecclesiasticarum viz. Superstitio cultus est ad Deum relatus immenso quodam proficiscens humano Studio vel animi certâ propensione quam vulgò bonam intentionem vocant c. Let any one consider how after the beginning of the Parliament of Forty they had obtain'd in the very Act that took away the Ship-money that all the Particulars prayed or desired in the Petition of Right should be enacted one whereof was That no Oath should be imposed on the Subjects that was not establish'd by Act of Parliament and how in despite of that Law they without any such Act out of a blind Zeal for Religion imposed this dreadful Oath on the People Let any one but read over The Covenant with a Narrative and the Speeches of Mr. Nye and Mr. Hendersham at the time of the Solemn Reading Swearing and Subscribing of the Covenant by the House of Commons and Assembly of Divines in St. Margaret's Church and observe in Mr. Nye's Speech his Saying that ASSOCIATION is of Divine offspring and his resembling of this Covenant to the Covenant of Grace and the matter of it there represented by him as worthy to be sworn by all the Kingdoms of the World as a giving up of all those Kingdoms to Christ and where it followeth yea we find this very thing in the utmost accomplishment of it to have been the Oath of the greatest Angel that
ever was who setting his feet on two of Gods Kingdoms the one upon the Sea the other upon the Earth lifting up his hand to Heaven as you are to do this day and so Swearing Rev. 10. c. and consider how he there makes this Oath to be the most effectual means for the ruining Popery and Prelacy and leaves it to be consider'd whether seeing the preservation of Popery hath been by Leagues and Covenants God may not make a League and Covenant to be its Destruction after he had before-mention'd the Associations of the Religious Orders and Fraternities and the Combination by the la Sainte Ligue for the muniting of Popery as incentives to this League and how he doth again go to the Magazine of the Apocalypse for some Weapons for this Covenant and hath other artillery for it from the Iewish State citing the words of the Prophet Let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual Covenant that shall not be forgotten how according to the ratio nominis of Superstition viz. of mens over-importunate Prayers that their Children might out-live them he concludes with a devout Prayer that this Covenant may out-live their Childrens Children and let any one behold in Mr. Henderson's Speech the like flame of Enthusiastick Zeal or of the Superstition quam vulgo bonam intentionem vocant against Superstition and Idolatry in Worship c. and concluding it with his belief that the weight of that Covenant would cast the balance in our English Wars I say let any one consider all this and tell me if ever he saw a more pompous Scene of Superstition and more magnificent Procession bestow'd on it and contrived as Bishop Sanderson's words are in his Lecture De bonâ intentione and having his eye on that Covenant viz. Obtentu gloriae Dei reformandae Religionis propagandi Evangelii extirpandae superstitionis exaltandi regni Domini nostri Iesu Christi and if ever he saw what the Bishop in that Lecture calls The Iesuites Theology viz. Omnia metiri ex Commodo Sanctae matris Ecclesiae more strongly asserted then in the Contexture and Imposition of that Covenant But those two Divines lived to recover their Allegiance and a due sense of their Oaths for it and to see that foetus of their Brain that at its solemn Christning they wish'd immortality to renounced publickly as a spurious Birth and to the Scandal of that Age a race of other Oaths in England as infamously born intercept its inheritance Nay let me tell you that in the Nation of Scotland Loyalty hath been a growing Plant of Renown since the year 1660. and the Idol of their former Covenanted Presbytery been by the Loyal Nobility and Gentry and Populace there generally abhorr'd And tho Sir George Wharton in his Gesta Britannorum relates it as a strange thing that on the 21st of August A. 1663. the Parliament of Scotland Passâ—…d an Act for a National Synod the first that ever was in that Kingdom under the Government of Bishops yet I can tell you of an Act of Parliament that pass'd there afterward that declared the right of the Crown to dispense in the external Government of the Church I shall entertain you with it out of the Scotch Statutes viz. In the first Session of the Second Parliament of King Charles the Second there pass'd an Act asserting His Majesty s Supremacy over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical Edenburgh November 16 th 1669. THe Estates of Parliament having seriously considered how necessary it is for the Good and Peace of the Church and State That His Majesty's Power and Authority in relation to Matters and Persons Ecclesiastical be more clearly asserted by an Act of Parliament Have therefore thought fit it be Enacted Asserted and Declared Like as his Majesty with Advice and Consent of his Estates of Parliament doth hereby Enact Assert and Declare That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority and Supremacy over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical within this his Kingdom and that by virtue thereof the Ordering and Disposal of the External Government and Policy of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an inherent Right to the Crown And that his Majesty and his Successors may Setle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administration of the External Government of the Church and the Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical Meetings and Matters to be proposed and determined therein as they in their Royal Wisdom shall think fit Which Acts Orders and Constitutions being recorded in the Books of Councel and duly published are to be observed and obeyed by all his Majesty's Subjects any Law Act or Custom to the contrary notwithstanding Like as his Majesty with Advice and Consent aforesaid doth Rescind and Annul all Laws Acts and Clauses thereof and all Customs and Constitutions Civil or Ecclesiastick which are contrary to or inconsistent with his Majesty's Supremacy as it is hereby asserted and declares the same void and null in all time coming A. You told me before how the King dispens'd with the five Articles of Perth setled by Act of Parliament but this Act yields so great a territory to the Dispensative Power that my thoughts cannot suddenly travel through it It acknowledgeth in the Crown a more sublime Power then of dispensing with Presbyterians or Independents or of suspending the Penal Laws against them namely of abolishing Episcopacy and of making Presbytery or Independency the National Church-Government Car tel est notre plaisir now for the external Form of Church-Government is allow'd to make the Pattern in the Mount. And 〈◊〉 accordingly as Mr. Baxter in his Book call'd a Search for the Schismaticks represents Archbishop Bramhal's new way of asserting the Church of England in his Book against him 1. To abhor Popery 2. That we all come under a foreign spiritual Iurisdiction obeying the Pope as the Western Patriarch and also as the Principium Unitatis to the Universal Church governing by the Canons c. may not the King by this Act make the external Government of the Church of Scotland Patriarchal and the Pope Patriarch B. The Act needs no Comment and if you will tell me that the Scots shew'd themselves Erastians or Latitudinarians when they made it I shall acquaint you that that Archbishop in his Schism guarded p. 319. asserts That a Sovereign Prince hath Power within his own Dominions for the Publick good to change any thing in the external Regiment of the Church which is not of divâ—…ne Institution and that he had in p. 4. of that Book allow'd the Pope his Principium unitatis and his Preheminence among Patriarchs as S. Peter had among the Apostles and that in p. 78. of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England he takes notice that by the Statute of Carlisle made in the days of Edward the First it was declared That the Holy Church of England was founded in the
shall further But I conceive it here necessary for me to acquaint your Lordship that I have been often put to it as speaking cum vulgo grosso modo and for brevity's sake to use the aforesaid Expression of Dispensing with Disability and with Disability incurr'd by Act of Parliament that is with what is generally enacted to be incurr'd and SEEMS to be alike incurr'd by all Persons who perform not what the Act enjoins and which Dispensing with Disability is frequently used in popular discourse for the pardoning it and for the liberatio à poenâ and as the Lord Chief Iustice Vaughan's Report by me so much cited mentions dispensing to have been defined by some of the Iudges But to a judgment so vastly comprehensive and profoundly penetrating as your Lordships the dispensing with Disability must easily appear to be properly meant of the preventing it and the dispensing with what might Cause it according to the style of Queen Elizabeth's Letters Patents or effect the actual incurring of what will reverâ be incurr'd by the Persons not exempted by Dispensation from the doing what the Law enjoins and which will be made to appear obvious to every man's understanding in one of the following Parts and wherein I shall have occasion to speak less cum vulgo and more closely and accurately of the Nature of Dispensing and of its effects in either forum then yet I have had And now having Named that Great Queen I shall not doubt but since the Members of the Church of England do now under our most puissant and most just Monarch find themselves as secure in the Profession of the Religion by Law establish'd as they did in her great and glorious Reign it will upon recollection of thought appear as natural to them to hold themselves obliged to shew the same tenderness for every branch of Prerogative and particularly for that of the Dispensative Power that was then so remarkable in Parliament and throughout the Realm My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. PART II. B. I again bid you welcome and am ready to go on where we last left off and do not in the least doubt of your welcoming any thing I can say to you that may import you to know in order to your sworn assistance and defence of every Privilege belonging to the Crown And I shall frankly tell you that you and other Protestants who in a late Conjuncture did shew a more then ordinary zeal against Popery or Papal Usurpations ought to consider that you have thereby put your selves under an especial Obligation of tenderness â—…for all the rights of your Prince and of hating all popular Usurpations or diminutions thereof with an exemplary and most perfect hatred and of thereby avoiding the being judged hypocrites and factious A. I do herein most fully agree with you and that the late zeal of the same Persons against papal Usurpations and for popular ones was a scandal to the Age. I remember you once observ'd to me how tender the Protestants in the times of Queen Elizabeth and King Iames the first were of every Right and Privilege of the Crown with the most perfect tenderness while the Attaques from the Court of Rome against those Princes had made the highest Ferment in the minds of the Populace But I think there never was any Conjuncture of time here when so many of the declaimers against Popery and so many of the fautors of Plot-witnesses were so much at the same time for a Plot and no Plot and for a King and no King that is to say did so much make a stalking-horse of Popery whereby to strike at Prerogative B. But you know that the talk of Plots and Popery was before apply'd to that use You know Archbishop Laud in his Star-chamber Speech A 1637. mentions it p. 11. as the scope of the Libellers of the Faction to kindle a jealousy in Mens minds that there were some great Plots in hand to change the Religion established and to bring in I know not what Romish Superstition And the history of those times sheweth you how the Men that cry'd up Plots then did decry Prerogative And in the Conjuncture of 41. the famous Protestation of May the 5th that year begins with Out-cries of Designs of Popish Priests and Iesuits and other Papists and their PLOTS and CONSPIRACIES and the Preface of the Covenant runs on in the style of â—…loody Plots and Conspiracies But you likewise know the dismal state of Prerogative in those times then occasion'd by raising of those false Alarms of Plots And I may account it as a beneficial Providence to the Age that shortly after our last Plot-Epoche M r. Hobbs his History of the Civil-Wars coming first out in print through the License of the Press and having been reserved to the detecting then the artifices of the Demagogues that produced the Usurpations between the Years 1640. and 1660. the Book notwithstanding all the prejudice against the Author whether just or unjust being writ with so much strength and beauty of Wit as to make it fly like lightning round the Kingdom in so many Impressions did then prove to many ingenious and thinking Men an effectual Antidote against the poysons of those old Artifices then again scatter'din the Press being so destructive to Loyalty as heretofore Sir Iohn Davis in his Report of the Case of praemunire Hil. 4. Iacobi doth but right to the loyalty of Roman Catholicks and to the genius of the People of England when he saith there That the Commons of England may be an example to all other Subjects in the World in this that they have ever been TENDER and sensible of the wrongs and dishonours offer'd to their Kings and have ever contended to upheld and maintain their Honour and Soveraignty And their Faith and Loyalty hath been generally such tho every Age hath brought forth some particular Mâ—…nsters of disloyalâ—…y as no pretence of Zeal of Religion could ever withdraw the greater part of the Subjects of submit themselves to a foreign yoke no not when Popery was in its height and exaltation It is therefore no marvel that toward the latter end of the Reign of the late King the very Mobile who had been so zealous against papal usurpations and so fiery in charging ALL Papists with disloyalty did upon their discovery of the artifices of republican deluders to put an inglorious domestic yoke on the Monarchy then think themselves obliged by the universality of their loyal addresses to shew the more extraordinary zeal against any Popular Usurpations And so I account it but natural to you who are made è meliore luto to be ready to shew your most consummate zeal for every Privilege of the Crown A. It is not possible for any Man to wish me more sensible of my obligation in this point then I really am and the rather for that I find so many mens loyalty to be but a kind of loud noisy nothing or a
reason that lyes in this Assertory part of the Oath that so many Writers of the Common Law have founded their Assertion of the King's Power oâ—… Commanding the Service of all his Subjects as essential to the keeping up the Monarchy or the Rule of all Estates committed to him by God that I lately spoke of and inseparable from it noâ—… alienable by any Humane Laws It is the Supreme Power of our Princes as Governors of the Realm that hath always entitled them to Press men for the Service of the Crown by Land or Sea and to recall both Soldiers and Mariners from the Service of Foreign Princes upon emergent Occasions to serve their natural Liege Lord. And the Book writ by a Learned Common Lawyer against the Exclusion call'd A Letter from a Gentleman of Quality in the Country c. and Printed A. 1679. and so deservedly extoll'd by the Iudicious loyal tells you in p. 7. and 8. that If it should be enacted by Parliament that No man should honour the King or love his Parents or Children c. such an Act would be ipso facto void because contrary to the express Divine Command c. The Statute of 23 H. 6. c. 8. and several other Statutes Enact that no Man shall be Sheriff of any County above one year and that any Patent of the King to any Person for a longer term tho with an express Clause of Non-obstante shall be void and of none Effect and the Patentee perpetually disabled to bear the Office. And yet notwithstanding it is Resolv'd by all the Iudges of England that these Acts of Parliament are void and that the King may by Non-obstante Constitute a Sheriff for Years Life or Inheritance And what is the Reason which the Iudges give of this Resolution Why because say they in express words this Act of Parliament cannot bar the King of the Service of his Subject which the immutable Law of Nature doth give to him For Obedience and Ligeance of the Subject add they is due to the Soveraign by the Law of Nature See 2 Hen. 7. 6. v. Calvin's Case 14. a. in Coke's 7th Rep. We know that by the Statute of 4 o. H. 4. c. 5. 't is ordain'd That every Sheriff of England shall abide in proper Person within his Bailywick for the time that he shall be such Officer But this Act hath never been construed to hinder the King as Supreme Governor and Ruler of all Persons in the Realm from Commanding any Sheriffs to serve him elsewhere during their Shrievalties nor on such case to oblige the Sheriffs in Conscience to observe the Statute by such Personal residence Baker in the reign of King Charles the first tells us of an Information A. 1629. in the Star-chamber against Mr. Long for that he being high Sheriff of the County of Wilts had the Charge and Custody thereof committed to him and had taken his Oath according to the Law to abide within his Bailys-wick all the time of his Sheriff-wick and his Trust and Employment requiring his personal attendance therein did contrary thereto suffer himself to be chosen a Citizen for the City of Bath to serve in the last Parliament and did attend at Westminster in Parliament WITHOUT HIS MAIESTIES LICENCE he being Sheriff at that time and that for the foremention'd Offences and Breach of his Oath and neglect of his Trust and Contempt of his Majesty the Decree was That he should be Committed to the Tower during his Majesties Pleasure and pay a Fine of 2000 Marks to the King. Hereby you see that his Majesties LICENCE or Dispensing with that Statute had indemnify'd him from it in the Court of Law and that the potestas Superioris being necessarily imply'd in a promissory Oath the King as supreme Governour of all Persons in his Realms commanding or allowing such Officers service to the publick elsewhere had secured him in either forum The known Custom of the Speaker of the House of Commons DISABLING himself when presented to the King but of entring on his Charge on the King's approbation and pleasure signify'd according to that saying of Cuâ—… me posse negem quod tu posse putes may pass for some representation to our thoughts of Disability to serve the publick then evaporating when the King as Governor of the Realm doth give the Subject a Call so to do You may find this practice of the Speaker's disabling himself set down in Coke 4. Inst. c. 1. And I shall here by the way take notice that he there likewise mentions it that one of the Principal ends of Calling of Parliaments is for the redress of the Mischiefs and Grievances that dayly happen And he had there before said Now forasmuch as divers Laws and Statutes have been enacted and provided for these ends aforesaid and that divers Mischiefs in particular and divers Grievances in general concerning the Honour and Safety of the King the State and Defence of the Kingdom and of the Church of England might be prevented an excellent Law was made Anno 36. E. 3. which being applied to the said Writs of Parliament doth in few and effectual words set down the true subject of a Parliament in these words For the maintenance of the said Articles and Statutes and redress of divers Mischiefs and Grievances which daily happen a Parliament shall be holden every year as another time was Ordain'd by a Statute Before the Conquest Parliaments were to be holden twice every year c. But accordingly as my Lord Coke there takes notice of the style of the Statute of 36. E. 3. viz. to the Honour of God and of holy Church and quietness of the People and according to the style of the Statute of 10. E. 3. Because our Sovereign Lord the King Edw. 3. which Soverainly desireth the maintenance of the Peace and Safeguard of his People c. hath Ordain'd c. for the Quietness and Peace of his People c. and suitably to the style of the Statute of 14 o E. 3. 1. To the honour of God c. The King for Peace and Quietness of his People as well great as small doth Grant and Establish the things under-written c. and to that of 20. E. 3. and for this Cause desiring as much for the Pleasure of God and Ease and Quietness of our Subjects and according to that style in the Register Nos oppressiones duritias damna excessus praedicta gravamina volentes relinquere impunita volentesque salvationi QUIETI populi nostri in hac parte prospicere ut tenemut c. and according to the Trust committed to Princes by God to endeavour that their Subjects may under them lead QUIET and Peaceable lives in all Godliness and Honesty and which is the great Fundamental reason of the Moral Obligation of Princes to relax the Summum jus of their Laws by sometimes DISPENSING therein since we may easily imagine by our thinking of a late Conjuncture how possible it was that the
Peace and Quietness of the People might be disturb'd by the Annual Calling of Parliaments according to the tenour of those Laws our Princes as Supreme Governors of the Realm did often dispense with their observance The Author of the Book call'd The Long Parliament Dissolv'd Printed in the year 1676. refers to the Laws of 4 o E. 3. c. 10. and 36. E. 3. c. 14. 5. E. 3. N o. 141. 5. E. 2. N o. 1. R. 2. N o. 95. as positively appointing the Meeting of a Parliament once within a year And the People saith he have silently waited and born the Omission of our Princes in not so Calling Parliaments And he further mentions how Queen Elizabeth Prorogued a Parliament for three days more then a year and he presumes to complain of His late Majesty's Proroguing his long Parliament to above a years time as illegal and he argues for that Parliaments being disabled from Sitting and acting afterward as a Parliament by reason of such Prorogation as contrary to the aforesaid Laws and which he saith were declared to be in force when the triennial Act was made in 16. Caroli 1 mi. and so likewise in the Statute for repealing that triennial Act in 16. Car. 2 o. in these words And because by the Ancient Laws and Statutes of this Realm made in the Reign of King Edward the Third Parliaments are to be held very often c. And how the Iudgment of the House of Lords was assertive of the legality of that Parliaments not being disabled from sitting after such His late Majesty's Prorogation is fresh in memory But to return from whence I digress'd I may here take notice to you how our Princes as Supreme Governors of the Realm and as having the Rule of all Persons committed to them by God and to whom they stand accountable for the same have held themselves obliged further to dispense with disability incurr'd by Acts of Parliament upon a Religionary account and which they have done to the general satisfaction of their Subjects of all Religions A What do you here intend to refer to B. I do here intend to refer to the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 5. by one Clause in which Act Convict Recusants are DISABLED from practising Physick or bearing any Office or Charge Military and by which Clause every Person offending is to forfeit for every such Offence 100 l. and the one Moyety thereof to be to the King and the other Moyety to him that will sue for the same c. But notwithstanding the Zeal of that Prince against Popery he out of a tender regard to the Bodies and Healths of his People and the ennabling many learned Roman-Catholick Physicians to preserve them did by Connivence sufficientâ—…y dispense with that Law insomuch that it may be said that that severe disabling Law came on the Stage but as Cato into the Theatre only to go off again And I have elsewhere mention'd it that a Book afterward Printed in his Reign call'd The Foot out of the Snare sets down the Names of about Twenty five famous Roman-Catholick Physicians then Practising in London and the places of their abodes and whom yet I believe no Informer ever molested And notwithstanding the disability incurr'd by that Act of Parliament I account that an eminent Roman-Catholick Physician not long since dead was not by any among our various Sects of Protestants in the Plot-times envy'd the liberty of being in our Metropolis the greatest Practicioner of that noble Science By the same Clause Roman-Catholick Lawyers are likewise disabled from Practice and under the same Penalty but who likewise enjoy'd the same Dispensation by Connivence with those of the other Profession accordingly as Mr. Nye in his Book call'd Beams of former Light observes p. 146. viz. The Law Physick Merchandize c. may be practised by a Turk or Iew or Papist here among us c. How severe the Laws in being are against Roman-Catholicks of the other great Profession namely of Theology and of the Clerical orâ—…er officiating here you know But you likewise know my opinion I discours'd to you of in the Conjuncture of the Plot and Panick fears namely that by virtue of the Contents of the Assertory part of the Oath we are upon even our Protestant Kings as Supreme Governors of the Realm both in Matters Ecclesiastical and Civil and as having the Rule of all Persons committed to them by God were morally bound to see our Roman-Catholick Countreymen while living among us here provided with a Competent Priesthood as Physicians for their Souls and to administer the Sacraments to them A. Yes I remember you Discourse of that matter then and how you mention'd it that if any Turks or Iews or any Heterodox Religionaries desired to live here without a Priesthood the Prince as Guardian of both Tables was obliged by his Coercive Power to make them put their own Principles in practice by their having a Competent Priesthood and which all the Sects of the Mahumetan Pagaâ—… Iewish and Christian Religion own it as their Principle to have and that as Religion was necessary to the State to make men good Subjects and ready to serve their Prince and just Dealers a Priesthood was necessary to Religion B. You are not therefore to wonder at the Dispensation by Connivence so many Roman-Catholick Priests enjoy'd here in the Reigâ—…s of former Princes And I shall some other time tell you how our Laws that DISABLE Papists from bearing Arms were in the time of the Rebellion after A. 1640. necessarily dispens'd with by the Royal Martyr as Supreme Governor of the Realm and that none of the Church of England did look with an evil eye in the least on such disability being then dispens'd with by Prerogative A. I suppose you may have heard it objected that by the Statute of 25. C. 2. which has lately employ'd your thoughts the Prerogative of the King is not touch'd for that the King may grant the Offices to any of his Subjects and that the Act is only a Direction to the Subject to qualifie himself accordingly for the King's Service and that if he be uncapable to serve the King 't is through his own default and he is punishable for the same as happen'd in the Case of one who was made Sheriff and neglected to take the Oaths and that there was an Opinion given in the Case that no Subject could put himself out of a Capacity to serve the King but for so doing he is punishable B. But the more you think of this Matter you will find the unreasonableness of the Objection recurring upon your thoughts with greater force For it is not in mens Power to qualifie themselves to serve the King by believing what doctrinal Propositions they will and tho you have heard of a Faith that will remove Mountains yet you may consider that 't is as easie to remove them as your Faith it self about Matters of reveal'd truth and that considering the Circumstances
some mens Minds are involv'd in they can no more alter their beliefs about Transubstantiation then they can transubstantiate themselves into other Creatures and are under a Moral incapacity of preventing another incurred by Law. And therefore as it would be Injustice in a Judge to Punish a man for the Errors of the mind that he knoweth not to be voluntary and for a man 's not putting himself into a Capacity to serve the King by the Professing of the truth in Problematical Points when the King of Kings hath by the not sufficient promulgating of such truth to his understanding render'd him innocent in his disbelief thereof and so long morally uncapable to profess it so by one man's after another appearing thus unable to qualifie himself to serve the King he may be totally unserved I have often heard you complain of the narrow Idea's of the King's Supremacy in some of the Non-Conformists but if you will read the Protestation of the King's Supremacy made by the Nâ—…n-conforming Ministers and Printed A D. 1605. you will find that they have there given in sufficient caution for tâ—…eir Principles not allowing any of the King's Subjects being disabled from serving him For they having said in § 1. We hold and maintain the same Authority and Supremâ—…cy in all Causes and over all Persons Civil and Ecclesiastical granted by Statute to Queen Elizabeth and expressed and declared in the Book of Advertisements and Injunctions and in Mr. Bilson against the Iesuites to be due in full and ample manner without any limitation or qualification to the King and his Heirs and Successors for ever they add in § 2. We are so far from judging the said Supâ—…emacy to be unlawful that we are persâ—… aded that the King should sin highly against God if he should not assume the same to himself and that the Churches within his Dominions should sin damnably if they should deny to yield the same to him yea tho the STATUTES of the Kingdom should deâ—…y it to him And they tell you in Sect. 6. that the height of the King 's Royal Dignity consists in his Supremacy It is thus likewise a kind of familiar or Vulgar Error among Protestants to think that in the â—…ncient times this Fundamental Assertory part of your Oath tâ—…at the King is the only Supreme Governor of this Râ—…alm was not allow'd Long before the Rescript of the University of Oxford to Henry the 8th A. 1534. mention'd that he was next under God their happy and Supreme Moderator and Governor and on which being brought into the Parliament House an Act passed whereby the King was declared Supreme Head and Governor of the Church and long before it was declared by the Parliament 16. R. 2. c. 5. that the Crown â—…t England hath been so free at all times that it hath been in no earthly subjection but immediately subject to God in all things touching the Regality of the same Crown and to none other and long before Bracton's writing in the Reign of H. 3. Omnis quidem sub Rege ipse sub nullo sed tantum sub Deo and ipse autem Rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub Deo. c. you will find if you look into Coke's 4th Instit. c. 74. that in the Law before the Conquest the style runs Rex autem quia Uicarius summâ—… Regis est ad hoc est constitutus ut Regnum terâ—…enum populum Domini super omnia sanctam veneretuâ—… Ecclesiam ejus regat c. and where he tells you of the style of King Edwin in his Charters viz. of Angâ—…orum Rex totius Britannicae telâ—…uris Gubeâ—…nator Rector And he there refers likewise to several Grants made by Abâ—…ots and Priors to King E. 4. wherein they style him by these very words Supremus Dominus noster But that he might perimere litem as to the point of the ancientness of the King's Supremacy he there referreth to the judgment of Parliament declared in the Statute of 24 o. H. 8. c. 12. viz. That by divers authentick Histories and Chronicles it is manifestly declared and expressed that this Realm of England is an Empire and so hath been accepted in the World governâ—…d by one Supreme Head and King c. unto whom a Body-Politick compact of all sorts and degrees of People divided in terms and by names of Spiritualty and Temporalty been bounden and owen to beat next unto God a natural and humble Obedience c. And here I am led to tell you that as it is on this Foundation of the King 's being the Supreme Governor and Ruler of all sorts and degrees of men thus anciently acknowledged by our Roman Catholick forefathers that the Regal Power of Dispensing with the Laws that were Penal by Incapacity and particularly in order to the Crown 's being enabled to command the Obedience and Service of all Estates and Degrees of men was built so it is on the same that the Usurpations of the Papal Dispensative Power of that kind were opposed I shall before we part give you instances hereof A. I thank you but shall here tell you that the Expression you used just now about the King being disabled by his Subjects being so hath overcast my thoughts with some kind of horror B. I cannot help it but if you will have me speak with the frankness of a Philosopher concerning the Nature of things the disabling of the Subjects must have that effect in Nature and of the disabling of their Country too And I think too you gave me a hint for some such thought at our last meeting If you do but consider the Services done to Monarchs by that abject Nation of the Iews and who by Tacitus were call'd the Vilissima pars servientium and how in our Saviour's time they were serviceable to the Roman Empire in the Collection of the Customs and how much they have been since and still are useful to the Grand Signior and to many Christian Princes by gathering in their Imposts you will easily imagine the loss that would redound to Princes by Religionary Heterodoxy disabling any to serve them It is but natural to men of the most inquisitive and penetrating thoughts to differ from many Points of Theology receiv'd by Princes and their People and since such heterodoxy doth difficult their access to Preferment it is but Natural to them by their working Thoughts and Industry to arrive at the excelling the duller Orthodox in whatever course of life they take and by that means to try to push on their way into their Prince's favour and consequently to have very sharp regrets against any Methods that would incapacitate them for it And as if this Civil Death were to Men of great Thoughts the terrible of terribles and what as hindring them from serving their Prince and Country were like Burying them alive I shall shew you how a Man of great Abilities and who had made a great Figure in the Church
and State resented it in the Conjuncture of A. 1640. I mean Archbishop Williams who in his famous Speech in Parliament that year against the Bill that afterward passed into a Law to Disable Persons in Holy Orders from exercising any Temporal Jurisdiction doth thereupon represent it that under a CAIN ' s mark an eternal kind of disability or incapacity is laid on them from enjoying hereafter any of those Rights Favours or Charters of former Princes and which is the heaviest Point of all without killing of Abel or any Crime laid to their charge more then that in the beginning of the Bill 't is said roundly and in the style of Lacedaemon that they ought not to intermeddle c. And what his thoughts were of the Injustice of such incapacity put on the Clergy and of the odiousness of that Punishment of incapacity appears by what he afterward saith viz. I come to the 4th part of this Bill which is the manner of the inhibition every way heavy in the Penalty heavier a great deal in the incapacity In the weighing the Penalty will you consider the small wyers that is poor Causes that are to induce the same and then the heavy load that hangs upon these wyers It is thus If a Natural Subject of England interessed in the Magna Charta and Petition of Right as well as any other yet being a Person in Holy Orders shall happen unfortunately to Vote in Parliament to obey his Prince by way of Councel or by way of a Commissioner be required thereunto then is he presently to lose and forfeit for his first offence all his Means and Livelyhood c. This Peradventure may move others most but it doth not me It is not the Penalty but the Incapacity aâ—…d as the Philosophers would call it the Natural impotency imposed by this Bill on men in holy Orders to SERVE the KING or the STATE in this kind be they otherwise never so able or never so willing or never so vertuous which makes me draw a kind of Timanthe ' s veil over this Point and leave it without any amplification at all to your Lordships wise and inward Thoughts and Considerations But if with so much thunder of Passion as well as lightning of reason that learned Speech from the Bishops Bench did so much resent the punishing the Clergy with disability to execute secular Offices and to have the honour of serving their Prince and Country therein and for the imposing of which disability that known place of Scripture 2 Tim. 2. 4. No man that wars entangles himself with the Affairs of this life was alledged in the House as thus disabling them by the Law Divine and as to which the Bishop in his Speech gives a learned Answer we may well imagine how Lay-men of good Births and Educations and whose Diligence employ'd in Courts and Cities and Camps abroad may have qualify'd them here to stand before Kings must necessarily aggravate in their thoughts the dishonour of incapacity to serve their Prince in secular Employments A. Was that Speech of the Archbishop ever printed B. You will find it in the Apology for the Bishops to sit and Vote in Parliament printed in London A. 1661. And he hath in that Speech some other Expressions which corroborate that obvious natural notion of the King and Kingdom being disabled by disabling of Clergy-men from secular Employments For having reflected on the Bill for disabling them from sitting in the Star-chamber and at the Council-table sitting in Commissions of the Peace and other Commâ—…ssions of secular Affairs he afterward saith But my noble Lords this is the Case Our King hath by the Statute restored to him the Headship of the Church of England And by the word of God he is custos utriusque tabulae And will your Lordships allow this ecclesiastical Head no ecclesiastical Senses No Ecclesiastical Persons to be censulted with at all No not in any Circumstances of time and place If Cramner had been thus dealt with in the Minority of our young Jâ—…sias King Edward the 6th what had become of that great work of our Reformation in this flourishing Church of England A. The truth is it being a kind of a Rule that all Men of Parts who have been liberally educated and even those excelling in mechanical professions do naturally desire to serve the King and standing before Kings having been annext in Scripture as a reward to diligence in ones calling a Mark of disability put on Lay-men to serve their Prince cannot but tempt them to passion on that account more then it ought to have troubled the Bishop when he call'd it a Caiâ—…'s Mark in regard you have mention'd it that Clergy-men to some did seem by the Law-Divine disabled from secular Employments B. According to the Opinion of Iudge Vaughan in his Reports who in Hill and Good 's Case there makes a lawful Canon to be the Law of the Kingdom as well as an Act of Parliament and whatever is the Law is as much the Law as any thing else that is so for what is Law doth not suscipere magis aut minus they were by the Canon Law disabled from intermedling in secular Affairs And according to his description of malum prohibitum in Thomas Sorreâ—…'s case p. 358. you may say they were by the Statute so disabled from intermedling For he there saith malum prohibitum is that which is prohibited per le statute Per le statute is not intended only an Act of Parliament but any obliging Law or Constitution as appears by the Case for it is said the King may dispense with a Bastard to take Holy Orders or with a Clerk to have two Benefices with Cure which were mala prohibita by the Canon-Law and by the Council of Lateran not by Act of Parliament The Lateran Council his Lordship there means is that held under Alexander the 3d A. 1180 and which Council hath it in these words viz. neque servi neque spurii sunt ordinandi And uni plura ecclesiastica beneficia non sunt committenda And therefore the Bishop in that Speech saith That this Doctrine of debarring Persons in Holy Orders from secular Employments is the Doctrine of the Popish Church and first brought into this Kingdom by the Popâ—…s of Rome and Lanfrank Anselm Stephen Langthon and Othobone and with an intent to withdraw the Clergy from tâ—…eir receiving Obligations from either King or Lords and make them wholly dependants on the Popacy But Bishop Iewel tells us in his Apology p. 122. that Veteres Canones Apostolorum illum Episcopum qui simul Civilem magistratum ecclesiasticam functionem obire velit jubent ab officio summoveri A. Yet notwithstanding their being disabled by the antient Canons and the Nemo militans c. 2 Tim. 2. as often alledged against them by the Canons and Canonists I think they were frequently employ'd by our Princes in the greatest Offices of the State. B. They were so and the
while or since that Statute of the 25th of his Reign committed the exercise of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to Lay-men did or might give occasion to some Evil-dispos'd persons to think and little regard the Proceedings and Censures Ecclesiastical made by his HIGHNESSE and his Uice-gerent Officials Commissaries Iudges and Uisitors being also Lay and Married men to be of little or none effect whereby the people gathereth heart and presumption to do evil and not to have such reverence to your most Godly Injunctions and Proceedings as becometh them c. So I leave it to you to consider how the disabling of any subjects by reason of Religionary Heterodoxy to serve their Prince did or might give occasion to some evil-disposed Persons to attempt the disabling of their Prince on the same account as I bâ—…fore hinted it to you and as the popular incogitancy of the Power given by God extending to all such Persons as should be employâ—…d under the King producing the irreverence of their surmises of the incapacity of the Officials and Visitors employ'd by the Vicegerent and consequently of the incapacity of the Vicegerent himself did naturally terminate in their gathering heart and presumption to do evil and to surmise the King 's being disabled to exercise all manner of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and to do that which was directly repugnant to his Majesty as Supreme Head of the Church and to his Prerogative Royal his Grace being a Lay-man how you ought still to preserve a tenderness in your thoughts for that Prerogative Royal given him by God's Word of Commanding the Services of all his Subjects by what Laws or Constitutions soever de facto incapacitated And by the gradual Proceedings I have now mention'd you ought with horror to think of the incapacitating any one Subject to serve his Prince as of the first step from a Precipice A. You have provided variety of Entertainment for my Consideration and have my thanks for it But suppose I should be so Curious and Inquisitive as to ask where in God's Word that Power is given to Princes to employ such Persons as they shall think fit in their service according to the purport of that Statute B. You may likewise suppose that you would then find my Genius so inquisitive as to ask you where you have been at Church of late years For you could then go to no Church in England Scotland or Ireland without hearing St. Paul's Omnis anima spoken of Let every soul be subject to the higher Powers whether he be Apostle or Evangelist Prophet Priest Clergy or Layety whether he be of the People diffusive or representative and the like And as the well-drawn Effigies of a man seems to look on every one in the Room so hath the Picture of the Regal Power drawn by the Divines of the Church of England appear'd to cast its Eye on every one and been made as it were Vocal and saying to every one For he is the Minister of God to thee for good And the good old Book call'd God and the King that you have read over and over hath told you that the Bond of the King's Subjects Obedience to his Majesty is inviolable and cannot be dissolv'd And indeed the thing being so plain by the Law of Nature which being written in man's heart is the very same so far forth as it is yet undefaced with the Law of God reveal'd in the Word it is not tanti to raise Moot-Points about this relating to Scripture I doubt not but you remember it in my Lord Herbert's Harry the 8th that there being a Rebellion of many of the Commonalty A. 1536. and the Rebels sending the King their Grievances and one whereof was That his Grace had ill Councellors and of mean Birth among which Cromwel was not forgotten and the King sending an Answer penn'd by himself as to their Grievances he did therein upbraid them for medling in the choice of his Counsellors and command their acquiescence therein on the grounds of Nature and of his being their Natural Liege-lord A. Well Sir Let it for the present pass as a datum or concessum as you will have it that the Obedience of Subjects in serving their Prince is founded on the grounds both of Nature and Scripture And I shall moreover allow it to you that if you had an Enthusiast to deal with and such who as you said do outrage the 13th of the Romans out of the Apocalypse you might out of Brightman's Revelation of the Apocalypse shew him out of that part of Holy Scripture sufficient Authority for the King 's particularly making Cromwel his Vicegerent For he there on the 14th Chapter and the 17th and following Verses saith This Angel is Thomas Cromwel who lived in the days of Harry the 8th that most mighty King and was a man of great renown and place in our Kingdoms being the Earl of Essex and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal who came out of the Temple and being a sincere favourer of pure Religion He had a Sickle in his hand being made the King's Deputy in all Ecclesiastical Matters and it was a sharp one as with which he sets stoutly and deliberately to his work and yet he had no Crown or Diadem to grace his head withal being a Minister rather to put another Man's Power in Ure then any that wrought by his own Power and Authority And he on Verse the 18th makes the other Angel to be a Martyr viz. Tho. Cranmer and refers the meaning of the words He cryed with a great voice to him that had the Sickle to Cranmer because saith he in the days of Harry the 8th he inflamed the mind of Tho. Cromwel by his words with a desire to make a Vintage B. I thank you for diverting me with that passage of Brightman but I can refer you to another Writer of our Church whose Authority will go further with us then Brightman's and who hath recorded it that the great figure that Cromwel made both in the Church and State and his and Cranmer's acting together in concert and by joynt Councels both in Church and at the Helm of State was so highly fortunate to the Reformation You may find this observed by Archbishop Parker in his De Antiquitate Ecclesiâ—… Britannicoe p. 530. where he saith Namque profligato Papa susceptâ Ecclesioe Anglicanoe defensione curâ tutelâ Rex excelsiâ—…ing â—…ii multarum rerum usu peritum Thomam Cromwellum Vicarium suum in spiritualibus generalem designavit Hic cum Thoma Cranmero Archiepiscopo tanquam in puppi sedit clavumque Ecclesioe Anglicanoe tenuit proramque à papali littore avertit in Christianum portum reduxit A. Was Vicar-general to the King in Spirituals Cromwel's style for his Office as the Archbishop there termed it B. I am apt to think it was not I never saw any Copy of his Patent or Commission for it The Acts of Parliament in H. the 8â—…h's time style him The King's Vicegerent c. And
the Statute of 37 o. H. 8. beforemention'd that speaks of Bishops Vicars-General useth only the Style of Vicegerent for Cromwel's Office. And I have observ'd in his Injunctions to the Clergy that he styles himself Lord Privy Seal Uice-gerent to King Henry the 8th for all his Iurisdiction Ecclesiastical within this Realm c. But the word Vicar being perhaps by the envy of the Monks put on him and his Office in common Discourse the word Vicar in the Proper signification of it signifying a Servant to a Servant according to that in Martial Esse sat est servum jam nolo Vicarius esse the Archbishop speaking Cum vulgo might then call him the King 's Vicar-general and so others since I should before have mention'd what he saith p. 323. speaking of Cromwel Inter hunc Cranmerum summam necessitudinem Evangelium conciliavit ut dum ille Experientiâ hic Doctrinâ câ—…nctos anteâ—…elleret tum utrique Regi intimi chari essent Ex horum Consilio impiis atque odiosis Papoe Wolsoei Cardinalis Actis summum supplicium exitium Romanoe Curioe divinitùs paratum est A. You have enough minded me of the King 's dispensing with the disabiity incurr'd by the Canons both in the C se of Cromwel a Lay-man intermedling in Ecclesiastical Matters and of Câ—…anmer a Clergyman intermedling in secular proving so necessary to the Reformation and accordingly as Queen Elizabeth's dispensing with disability proved so to the Establishment of the present Hierarchy of the Church of England And I shall most seriously consider what the Act of the 37th of H. the 8th hath in such plain and liquid terms declared of the Power given to the King by Scripture and to all such Persons as he shall appoint to exercise Ecclesiastical Iurisdiction however incapacitated so to do by lawful Canons and Constitutions and which were by that Eminent Iustitiary you mention'd held Equivalent to Acts of Parliament and shall grant that iâ—… never so many Acts of Parliament had attempted to deprive the King of a Power inherent in him by Scripture such attempt would be nugatory and the fremuerunt gentes against it would be but the Peoples imagining a vain thing And I shall consider it how far by clear and necessary Consequences and no wire-drawn ones it follows from what is declared by this Act of Parliament as to the King 's being authorized by Scripture to choose some sorts of Officers to serve the Crown in Church and State that he is so authorized to choose others in like manner as you mention'd it to me declared by the Scotch Act of Parliament that the King by virtue of the Royal Power he holds from God All-mighty is to have the SOLE choice and appointment of the Officers of the State c. But I Pray do not many other Acts of Parliament in Harry the 8ths time whereby the Royal Prerogative is so much advanced and particularly that of the 25th of Harry the 8th that sets up the Dispensative Power seem to make it depend on Statute-Law And may it not seem to be more than a flaw in the Diamond of Prerogative and a great depretiating of it in cutting it out as it were into four by making its Establishment depend on the King and three Estates B. I shall therefore here once for all tell you that the occasion of so many mens mistake in thinking so many of those Acts of Parliament in Harry the 8th's time prejudicial to Prerogative as seeming to found it on Statute-Law is their not considering that such Statutes were but declaratory of old Laws and not introductive of new ones My Lord Primate Bramhal in his Schism guarded p. 155. saith I profess clearly I do not see what advantage Henry the 8th could make of his own Laws which he might not have made of the ancient Laws except only a gawdy Title of Head of the English Church which survived him not long and the Tenths and first-fruits of the Clergy c. But you may as fully take notice how Harry the 8th throughout his great Declarative Laws so often declares in effect his Regal Power to be given him by God. My Lord Coke in his Caudry's Case instanceth in the famous Statute of 24 o H. 8. c. 12. and calls it declaratory of the ancient Law and you see how it is declared there That the King is by the goodness of God furnish'd with Prerogative c. And the Statute of 37 o H. 8. begins as I shew'd you with the three Estates DECLARING That the King's Majesty is and hath always justly been Supreme Head in the Earth of the Church of England by the Word of God. You know too how the style runs in another of his Acts of Parliament viz. The Bishop of Rome and See Apostolick contrary to the great and inviolable Grants of Iurisdictions by God immediately to Emperors Kings and Princes c. And thus tho there are various Statutes in his Reign and particularly that of the 25th year of his Reign c. 19. by which it was Enacted That the King's Highness shall have Power and Authority to nominate and assign at his pleasure Two and thirty persons whereof Sixteen to be of the Clergy and Sixteen of the Temporalty of the Upper and Nether House of the Parliament to view search and examine the Canous Constitutions and Ordinances Provincial and that such of them as the King's Highness and the said Two and thirty or the Major part of them shall deém and adjudge worthy to be continued kept and obey'd shall beÌ„ from henceforth kept obey'd and executed within this Realm so that the Kings most Royal assent under his Great Seal be first had to the same c. and tho according to the ancient usage of the Realm as well as to those Canons Lay-men were not only incapacitated to make Ecclesiastical Constitutions and Canons but Kings Bishops or Noblemen who believed that the Decrees of the Bishops of Rome may be violated or shall suffer them so to be are in the Canon Law anathematized yet as this enacting Clause was made on the Clergy's Petition to the King as the Preamble of the Act mentions that those Constitutions and Canons may be committed to the Examination and Iudgment of his Highness and of Two and Thirty persons of the King's Subjects whereof sixteen were to be of the Upper and Nether House of the Parliament of the Temporalty and all the said Two and thirty persons to be chosen and appointed by the King's Majesty c. and be empower'd to do what I mention'd out of the enacting Clause and whereby the King alone was in effect both according to the Clergy's Petition and the enacting Clause vested with the jus vitoe necis of the Canons so in a Memorable Epistle of Harry the 8th Printed before the Reformatio legum Ecclesiasticarum and intended as a draught for a Publication or Promulgation of the King 's new Ecclesiastical Laws after the draught of
them had been by those Clergymen and Laymen prepared for his Royal Consideration and been by him establish'd he there declares his Power of so doing to be pursuant to his Supreme Headship of the Church of England recogniz'd quemadmodum divini atque humani juris tatio postulat and mentions the Power granted to him and his Ancestors ipso jure divino as recognized and applies to himself the words Sapientioe cap. 7. Audite Reges intelligite quoniam data est a Domino potestas vobis c. and founding his Power of making Ecclesiastical Laws on that jus Divinum he saith En vobis authoritate nostra editas leges damus c. And here I shall tell you that as my Lord Coke in Cawdry's Case calls the Act of the 24th of H. 8. beforemention'd An Act declaratory of the Ancient Law so he likewise doth the Act of the 25th of his Reign c. 21. that so much props up the Dispensative Power And I assure you that they look but at a few things in general and in that Statute in particular who think that the Dispensative Power inherent in the King lost any ground thereby and he who takes the Statute altogether will find that that Power if it seem'd in any words to go back from it self was but by such retreat to leap the further forward For if you will take a glancing view of the intent of that Statute to that end you will see that instead of that Law making it self to be the Fountain of the Dispensative Power it makes the Dispensative Power to be the very Fountain of a great part of the Common Law it self for its style gives you the figure of our Laws as either devised made and obtain'd within this Realm for the wealth of the same or such as by SUFFERANCE of your Grace and your Progenitors which is a Dispensation by way of Permission or Connivence the People of this your Realm have taken at their free Liberty by their own Consent to be used among them and have bound themselves by long use and Custom to the observance of the same c. And the King in his Legislative Capacity having with the consent of the three Estates superseded the Pope's Dispensative Power that had so long Usurp'd on the King's Laws and having provided that the Money that should be paid as Fees for Dispensations should be rais'd and moderated by their Consent obtain'd from them a Clause in the Act containing so great a deference to the Dispensative Power of the Crown as that after the Act had authorized the Archbishop of Canterbury and his Successors to grant such Dispensations Licences and Faculties as were accustomed to be had from the See of Rome and not grant any others till the King his Heirs and Successors or their Councel were first advertised thereof and determined whether they should pass It Provided that if it were thought and determin'd by the King his Heirs and Successors or their Councel that Dispensations Faculties Licences or other Writings in any such Case UNWONT shall pass that then the said Archbishop or his Commissary having Licence of His Majesty his Heirs and Successors for the same shall dispense with them accordingly and in Case of his refusing to dispense that any other two Bishops the King his Heirs and Successors should nominate should be appointed to dispense in such Cases And this Act with all the Clauses in it you find reviv'd by the 1st of Elizabeth c. 1. The Pope's rehabilitations did customarily extend to Lay-men as well as Clergy-men and that particularly in case of Heterodoxy in Religion then call'd Heresy which both by ancient usage and Acts of Parliament loaded men with various incapacities And his relaxing the incapacities that relate to Clergy-men any one may see by the Taxa Cameroe and the Fees thereby payable viz. in the Age of those who were to take Orders and were defective in some of their Members and in the Case of Clergy-mens incapacity incurr'd by irregularity But after this Act of the 25. of H. the 8th had shew'd the World the Authority the King had to rehabilitate and dispense here in his own Country both as to matters customarily dispens'd with at Rome and such as were not so and how small the Fees were for the same the bringing rehabilitations and Perinde valere's from Rome to England was like carrying Coals to New-Castle A. I was not satisfy'd with your extending the King's Power of Dispensing here as far as the Pope's reach'd and it seems you extend it further I hope you intend not to bring in here the Tax of the Apostolical Chancery and which Mr. Crashaw translating into English in the year 1625. call'd it The Rates of the Pope's Custom-house and wherein are contain'd Indulgences for Sins past present and to come and such a kind of Pardoning Power as in The historical Narration of the first Fourteen years of King James appear'd to that King so scandalous in the Case of the Draught of the Earl of Somerset's Pardon and in which Sir Robert Cotton having been desired by the Earl to find out the largest Pardon that former Presidents could shew brought him one that was made by the Pope to Cardinal Wolsey and by a fac simile after which the Draught of the Earls ran for Pardoning all manner of Felonies and Treasons committed and to be committed B. Premising to you that the Christian offices do more call on you to mind what Sins you dispense with in your self then what the Pope dispenseth with in others and that this present Pope hath spoil'd the Trade of raillery about Indulgences by spoiling the Trade of them and damning so great a number of them and that in his vast Supplies of Money toward the taking of Buda the Souls in Purgatory contributed nothing and that Sir Paul Ricaut in the Life of this Pope having done right to his Vertue in mentioning his having suppress'd an Office of the Virgin Mary and a multitude of Indulgences hath further judiciously observ'd That Wisemen at the Councel of Trent finding that the Doctrine of Indulgences was not solid did but slightly touch it and tho yet it was the CHIEF matter for which that Councel was assembled nothing was determin'd therein but only that Indulgences be used with such Moderation as was approved by the Ancient Custom of the Church that is not at all I say premising all this I shall mind you that I have said enough already to let you see that it is only the ancient Dispensative Iurisdiction of the Crown that I direct you to prop up and more particularly with respect to the Case before you While we are considering the Obligation of an Oath it were pity that the thoughts of either of us should be embarras'd with Moot-points and so without troubling you with a reference to More f. 463. where all the Power of the Pope is not given to the King by the 25th of H. the 8th but is extinct Hallywel ' s
o Eliz. beforemention'd B. I can easily direct you to such a Writer of our Church who hath done the thing to the universal Satisfaction of the Inquisitive as to this Point and that is the Lord Primate Bramhal in his Book of Schism Guarded He saith there in p. 330 and 331. As our Grievances so our Reformation was only of the abuses of the Roman Court. Their bestowing of Prelacies and Dignities in England to the Prejudice of the right Patrons Their Convocating Synods in England without the King's leave Their Prohibiting English Prelates to make their old feudal Oaths to the King and obliging them to take new Oaths of Fidelity to the Pope Their imposing and receiving Tenths and first Fruits and other Arbitrary Pensions upon the English Clergy and lastly their Usurping a Legislative Iudiciary and Dispensative Power in the exterior Court by Political Coaction these are all the branches of Papal Power which we have rejected This Reformation is all the Separation that we have made in point of Discipline And for Doctrine we have no difference with them about the old Essentials of Christian Religion and their new Essentials which they have patch'd to the Creed are but their erroneous or at the best probable Opinions no Articles of Faith. Thus then according to these measures you see how much the hinge of the Reformation turns on the Usurpation of the Papacy in Dispensing for in all these particulars enumerated the Pope dispens'd with the King's Laws And he had before in p. 26. said This Primacy neither the Ancients nor we deny to St. Peter of Order of Place of Preheminence If this first movership would serve his turn the Controversie were at an end for our parts But this Primacy is over-lean the Court of Rome have no gusto to it They thirst after a visible Monarchy on Earth an absolute Ecclesiastical Soveraignty a Power to make Canons to abolish Canons to dispense with Canons to impose Pensions to dispose of Dignities to decide Controversies by a single Authority This was that which made the breach not the Innocent Primacy of St. Peter And afterward in p. 149. he saith But I must contract my Discourse to those Dispensations that are intended in the Laws of Henry the 8th that is the Power to dispense with English Laws in the exterior Court Let him bind or loose inwardly whom he will whether his Key erre or not we are not concern'd Secondly As he is a Prince in his own Territories he that hath Power to bind hath Power to loose He that hath Power to make Laws hath Power to dispense with his own Laws Laws are made of Common Events Those benign Circumstances that happen rarely are left to the Dispensative Grace of the Prince Thirdly As he is a Bishop whatever Dispensative Power the ancient Ecclesiastical Canons or Edicts of Christian Emperors give to the Bishop of Rome within those Territories that were subject to his Iurisdiction by Humane right we do not envy him so he suffer us to enjoy our ancient Privileges and Immunities freed from his Encroachments and Usurpations The Chief ground of the ancient Ecclesiastical Canon was let the old Customs prevail A possession or Prescription of Eleven hundred years is a good ward both in Law and Conscience against an Human Right and much more against a New pretence of Divine Right For Eleven hundred years our Kings and Bishops enjoy'd the sole Dispensative Power with all English Laws Civil and Ecclesiastical In all which time he is not able to give one instance of a Papal Dispensation in England nor any shadow of it when the Church was formed Where the Bishops of Rome had no Legislative Power no Iudiciary Power in the exteriour Court by necessary Consequence they could have no Dispensative Power He then in p. 169. mentions the said Statute of 25. H. 8th and having referr'd to the Proviso there to shew that its intent was not to vary from the Church of Christ in any other things declared by the Holy Scripture and the Word of God necessary to Salvation he saith then followeth the scope of our Reformation only to make an Ordinance by Policies necessary and convenient to repress Vice and for good Conservation of the Realm in Peace Unity and Tranquillity from ravine and spoil ensuing much the ancient Customs of this Realm in that behalf not minding to seek for any relief succours or remedies for any worldly things and Humane Laws in any cause of necessity but within this Realm at the hands of your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realm which have and ought to have an Imperial Power and Authority in the same and not obliged in worldly Causes to any other Superior Thus then you see this Prelates sense of how much the taking away the Pope's Dispensative Power here and restoring that Power to the Crown was the Soul of the Reformation and tota in toto of it And this Act you see revived by the First of Elizabeth without garbling it in the least and the Dispensative Power thereby restored to her her Heirs and Successors and a Declaration that no Subjects of the Realm need for any worldly things and Humane Laws in any Cause of Necessity seek for any relief but within this Realm at the hands of our Soveraign as aforesaid And I shall tell you that the Bishop in the next Page refers to the Statute of the First of Eliz. and saith on his view of both Statutes Whatsoever Power our Laws did devest the Pope of they invested the King with it And of this the Power of Rehabilitating any of his Lay or Clerical Subjects is a part as was beforesaid A. You have cited somewhat out of this Great Champion for the King's Supremacy and for the Church of England and reputed to be the most clear Vindicator of it from Schism our Church hath had which hath created more anxiety in my mind about the Assertory part of the Oath then any thing hath done For the words in the Oath are I do utterly testify and declare c that no Foreign Prelate or Person hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction Power Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm and you have brought in the Primate granting that the Pope hath Power here to bind or loose inwardly and asserting that he hath here a Spiritual Power B. You judge right of the Bishop's Opinion and which is indeed express'd throughout his whole Book He tells us in p. 25. That St. Cyprian made all the Bishopricks in the World to be but one Masse whereof every Bishop had an entire part And he saith in p. 60 and 61. That neither King Harry the 8th nor any of our Legislators did ever endeavour to deprive the Bishop of Rome of the Power of the Keys or any part thereof either the Key of Order or the Key of Iurisdiction I mean Iurisdiction purely Spiritual which hath place only in the inner Court of Conscience and over such Persons as
submit willingly And in the clearing of which Point he refers to the Proviso aforesaid in the Statute of the 25th of Harry the 8th and the 37th Canon of the Church of England as rendring the Power by both given to the King to be purely Political But in p. 159. he refers by way of Objection to two Statutes of Harry the 8th the one an Act for extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome the other an Act for Establishing the Succession wherein there is an Oath that the Bishop of Rome OUGHT not to have any Iurisdiction or Authority in this Realm then faith it is declared in the 37th Article of our Church that the Bishop of Rome hath no Iurisdiction in the Kingdom of England and in the Oath ordain'd by Queen Elizabeth that no Foreign Preiate hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual within this Realm and he then by way of answer to which says That those two Statutes were long ago repeal'd by Queen Mary and never afterward restored c. and that altho it were supposed that our Ancestors â—…ad over-reach'd themselves and the truth in some Expressions yet that concerns not us at all so long as we keep our selves exactly to the line and level of Apostolical Tradition and saith that our Ancestors meant the very same thing that we do Our only difference is in the use of the words Spiritual Authority or Iurisdiction which we understand of Iurisdiction purely Spiritual which extends â—…o further then the Court of Conscience But by Spiritual Authority or Iurisdiction they did understand Ecclesiostical Iurisdiction in the exterior Court which in truth is partly Spiritual partly Political And he in p. 161. takes notice of the Apostles Dispensative Power 2 Cor. 2. 10. to whom I forgave any thing for your sakes forgave I in the person of Christ But all this is only in the interior Court of Conscience But the Primate having in p. 73. discours'd of the Act of 1 o Eliz. c. 1. saith here is no new Power created in the Crown but only an ancient Iurisdiction restored here is no foreign Power abolish'd but only that which is repugnant to the ancient Laws of England and the Prerogative Royal. In a word here is no Power ascribed to our Kings but merely Political and Coactive to see that all their Subjects do their Duties in their several Places Coactive Power is one of the Keys of the Kingdom of this World it is none of the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven This might have been express'd in words less subject to Excâ—…ption A. The Primate hath shewn an eminent Candour of mind in these Passages of his you have cited and if our Ancestors had but over-reach'd themselves and the truth in some Expressions and in any part of a Statute but that which forms an Oath it had not much concern'd us and as long as they had kept exactly to the line and level of plain Truth in all the words of the Oath but Oaths being stricti juris and being to be taken in truth and in righteousness and in the common sense of the words may I not here to the Assertory Clause of No foreign Prelate or Person hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction c. apply those other words of the Primate This might have been express'd in words less subject to Exception But according to what he cited out of St. Cyprian it may be said instead of no foreign Prelate hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction c. that Every foreign Prelate hath it and not only the Bishop of Rome as claiming a Succession under St. Peter but Thousands of other Bishops in Christendom who as the Primate saith there p. 162. do not at all derive their Holy Orders from S. Peter or any other Roman Bishop either mediately or immediately especially in Asia and Africa but from the other Apostles And suitably to what the Primate observ'd out of S. Cyprian by which we see that as there is but one Universal Church so there is but Episcopatus Unus in that Church and that undivided I find it observ'd in Sir Geffery Palmer's Reports in the Case of Evans Kiffin vers Ascuith Trin. 3. Car. B. R. Whitelock Evesque ad 3 Powers Le Primer est Ordinations and that comes to him by his Consecration and not before By that he can take the resignation of a Church He can give Orders and Consecrate Churches and it belongs not to him as he is a Bishop of one place or other mais il est universel sur tout le monde And therefore the Archbishop of Spalato when he was here could give Orders The Chief Iustice agreed with him herein The second is Potestas Jurisdictionis which is not Universal but tied to certain places as to take an Oath to Excommunicate and Punish offences and this Power he hath by Confirmation The third is Administratio rei Familiaris the Government of his Revenue and this is gain'd by Confirmation By this you see that the Bishop of Rome as every other foreign Bishop may have some Spiritual Power here viz. what the Reporter mention'd as the first And therefore I could wish that the 37th of our 39 Articles to which the Primate refers for the Interpretations of this Clause in the Oath had in those words there the Bishop of Rome hath no Iurisdiction in this Realm express'd such a distinction of his Iurisdiction as the Bishop hath done and otherwise that common and trite Rule of Non est distinguendum ubi lex non distinguit being here applicable you know what is to be thought of an ambiguous Oath and that as the sagacious Author of the History of the Council of Trent hath told us p. 187 as one Particular makes false the contradictory Universal so one ambiguous Particular makes the Universal to be ambiguous Moreover tho you will suppose that he might lawfully take the Oath in his sense of the Pope's Jurisdiction yet all his great Learning and Reason could not qualifie him to be an Authentical Interpreter of the Oath to me In some parts of the Oath that were obvious to doubt you have already given me satisfaction and particularly in making me by vertue of the Canons of King Iames a participant with the Clergy in his authentical Interpretation of the 37th Article And since as Suarez in his learned Book De Legibus 4. c. de Interpretatione humanarum Legum saith that there may be an interpretation of Law which hath the Authority of Law and that qui in eadem potestate succedit semper potest Praedecessotum leges interpretari I shall account King Iames his Interpretation as good as Queen Elizabeth's and that if he had there declared his mind about the Pope's spiritual Power in foro interno being not renounced by this Clause in the Oath I should then be content with it But 't is otherwise for he there Confirms it in effect as 't is in the Article
commanding Obedience to be given to the Word of God by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the Spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword by reforming Corruptions by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making decorum to be observ'd in every thing and establishing Orders to be observ'd in all indifferent things for that purpose is the ONLY intent of the Oath of Supremacy and whereby as he effectually confuted the Cardinal whose Letter charged the Oath of Supremacy as tending to this end That the Authority of the Head of the Church in England may be transferr'd from the Successor of St. Peter to the Successor of King Henry the 8th and to oppose the Primacy of the Apostolick See so at the end of his Book he shews that his design of Publishing the same was to satisfie all his good and natural Subjects and likewise Strangers about the things therein contain'd and whereby the King's Mind was publickly notify'd that in the right done to the Crown by the Oath of Supremaâ—…y as well as of Allegiance there was no wrong intended to St. Peter or his Successors A. I hope you have now put a Period to the History of the Dispensative Power of the Crown that was exercised in-the interpreting of any parts of the Oath of Supremacy or the 37th Article thereto relating You have named to me so many interpretations of the Oath that according to the wisdom of our State and the Lex Consuetudo Parliamenti making a Bill to be thrice read in each House of Parliament and then receiving the Royal Assent to be thought like Gold seven times purify'd may shew the interpretation of the Law to be so too But tho I will account any good Law to be more precious then Gold yet if like Gold it be too far extended by ductile interpretation it may be drawn to such a thinness as to lose all its weight and estimation and retain only a poor tincture and colour that will signifie little or nothing And as Pliny in his Panegyrick on Trajan said that by reason of the multitudes of sutes upon Penal Laws in Rome there was danger till Trajan's time ne Civitas fundata legibus legibus everteretur so a Law whose Obligatoriness is founded on interpretations may be endanger'd by the multitudes of them to be destroy'd and may like the Papal Laws of New Rome by the infinite interpretations of Casuists in the forum internum which is their Tribunal be brought to signifie nothing in either forum and to be only an Engine to make Perplexities You have given me here such a Genealogy of interpretations that according to the common Story of Arise Daughter c. one may say Arise Interpretation and go to thy Interpretation c. I shall therefore be glad now you have been so largely communicative of your thoughts to me about the assertory part of the Oath you will deal as frankly with me in acquainting me with what may in the Promissory part of the Oath be of importance for me to know in order to the better discharge of my Duty in the Case before me B. I shall therein be most ready to serve you when we meet next for the entire Consideration of what according to the Assertory part of the Oath you are obliged to do will I see be as great a load as both our patiences will at this time bear and therefore according to the Saying of Must is for the King I am to tell you that let our Kings make never so many interpretations one after another of this your Oath you must finding them all Consistent with one another consider them all with all due regarâ—… 〈◊〉 thank God and them when their Consciences being inclined to a tenderness for the doubting of yours they interpose their Dispensative Power of that kind And hereupon I shall tell you that in the year 1628. King Charles the First did cause the 39 Articles to be reprinted and with a Declaration before the same made by him as Supreme Governor of the Church within his Dominions that those Articles contain the true Doctrine of the Church of England and that if any Difference should arise about the external Policy concerning Injunctions Canons or other Constitutions whatsoever belonging to the Church of England the Clergy in their Convocation is to order and settle them c. he approving their said Ordinances c. that the Bishops and Clergy shall have licence under the Broad Seal to deliberate of and do all such things as being made plain by them and assented to him shall concern the setled Continuance of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England c. and then having respect to the Article wherein the Arminians and Antiarminians were concern'd 't is order'd that no man hereafter shall either Print or Preach to draw the Article aside any way c. But the first Canon that was afterward viz. A. 1640. made was that concerning the Regal Power which begins with taking notice that sundry Laws Ordinances and Constitutions had been formerly made for the acknowledgment and profession of the most lawful and independent Authority of our Dread Sovereign Lord the King over the state Ecclesiastical and Civil and then enjoyns them to be ALL carefully observ'd by all persons whom they Concern upon the Penalties in the said Laws and Constitutions express'd and then decrees that the Clergy shall read the following Explanation of the Regal Power and where the words A Supreme Power is given to this most excellent Order i. e. of Kings by God himself in the Scriptures which is that Kings should rule and Command in their several Dominions all persons of what Rank or Estate soever whether Ecclesiastical or Civil and that they should restrain and punish with the Temporal Sword all stubborn and wicked doers shew they had then the 37th of the 39 Articles in their eye and some other words viz. for any person or persons to set up maintain or avow respectively under any pretence whatsoever any independent Coactive Power either papal or popular c. is to undermine their great Royal Office shew they had an Eye on that 37th Article and on your Oath and where they did speak out that sense of the Clause The Bishop of Rome hath no Iurisdiction c. and of the words in the Oath that no foreign Prelate hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction c. that is that the Bishop of Rome had here no independent Coactive Iurisdiction the sense in which all considerate Persons who were Members of the Church of Rome in Harry the 8th's time and of the Church of England in Edward the 6th's time took the old Oath of Supremacy and the Members of the Church of England in Queen Elizabeth's time and ever since took the new one As for Non-conformists who think the Government of Bishops unlawful this Clause that no foreign
Bishop hath or ought to have any Iurisdiction in the forum internum wanted no relief in their Case from the Dispensative Power of interpretation Nor did those of the Church of England who convers'd with the Statute-Book want the Crown 's interpretation of this Clause in the Oath for the scope of the Statute of the 35th of H. the 8th that enjoyn'd the old Oath of Supremacy and from whence this Clause in the New one had its rise was not to break the Measures of St. Cyprian about the Unity of Episcopal Power but in effect to repress the Usurp'd independent Coactive Power of the Bishop of Rome and which several of the following words in that Oath sufficiently evince and which did bind the Swearer to defend and maintain all other Acts and Statutes made or to be made within this Realm for the Extirpation and Extinguishment of the ururped and pretended Authority Power and Iurisdiction of the See and Bishop of Rome c. And Queen Elizabeth finding the Oath thus at her coming to the Throne she like a wise Reformer would not make any breach in the World wider then necessity required and probably supposing that mens Allegiance having been used to the yoke of several words in that Oath that related to the renouncing and farsaking of foreign Iurisdiction would draw more quietly in the same and that according to the Rule of quod necessario subintelligitur non deest there being no solutio continui imagin'd by any to be design'd in the Unity of the Episcopal Power when the Clause of utterly testifying and declaring that neither the See nor Bishop of Rome hath nor ought to have any Iurisdiction Power or Authority within this Realm c. was inserted in the old Oath it ought to be judged that nothing derogatory to the order of Bishops could be intended in the Clause of the new Oath by her introduced And according to the Rule of Analogum perse positum c. Jurisdiction being to be taken for Coactive Jurisdiction the Clause relating to any foreign Prelates having here no Iurisdiction hath been still meant of none Coactive Mr. Rogers therefore writing on the 39 Articles hath thus fairly commented on that Clause in the 37th The Pope hath no Iurisdiction c. His Iurisdiction hath been and is justly renounced and banish'd out of England by many Kings and Parliaments as by King Edward 1st 3d and 6th by King Richard the 2d Harry the 4th 6th 8th and by Queen Elizabeth and by our most noble King James But that the Church of England intended no War against the Unity of Episcopacy by the Canons of 1640. which yet have the words of Popery's being a gross kind of Superstition and of the Mass being Idolatry and do ininflict a temporary disability namely that of Excommunication on Popish Recusants may appear by the tenderness there used to the Church of Rome in sparing to impute the Superstition of Popery to that whole Church by name And the 6th Canon having mention'd the Convocation's being desirous to declare their sincerity and constancy in the profession of the Doctrine and Discipline Establish'd in the Church of England i. e. the Doctrine of the 39 Articles and to secure all men against any suspicion of revolt to Popery or any other Superstition and enjoyn'd a new Oath against all innovation of Doctrine or Discipline to be taken by the Clergy the assertory part whereof hath in it an Approbation of the Doctrine and Discipline or Government established in the Church of England as containing all things necessary for Salvation and the Promissory part a Promise not to endeavour to bring in any Popish Doctrine contrary to that which is so establish'd c. and not to give consent ever to subject it to the Usurpations and Superstitions of the See of Rome Mr. Bagshaw in his Argument in Parliament concerning those Canons took occasion to criticise on the not subjecting out Church to the Usurpation and Superstitions of the See of Rome and to call it a Negative Pregnant that is to say as his words are you may not subject the Church of England to the See of Rome but to the Church of Rome you may Now there is as much difference between the See of Rome and the Church of Rome as betwixt Treason and Trespass and this appears plainly by the Statute of 23. Eliz. c. 1. where it is said that to be reconciled to the See of Rome is Treason but to be reconciled to the Church of Rome is not Treason for then every Papist would be a Traytor being a Member of the Church and therefore reconciled to it Now the See of Rome is nothing else but the Papacy or Supremacy of the Pope whereby by virtue of the Canon unam Sanctam made by Pope Boniface the 8th he challengeth a Superiority of Iurisdiction and Correction over all Kings and Princes upon Earth and those Persons which take the juramentum fidei contain'd in the end of the Council of Trent which acknowledgeth this Supremacy are said to be reconciled to this See. The Church of Rome is nothing else but a number of Men within the Pope's Dominions and elsewhere professing the Religion of Poperty and that the Clergy had an ill meaning in leaving this Clause in the Oath thus loose I have some reason to imagine when I find it in their late Books that they say the Church of Rome is a true Church and Salvation is to be had in it And if it were tanti after having said so much to say yet any thing more to prop up the safety of your taking the Oath of Supremacy with the Clause whose sense hath been propp'd up by so many Acts of the Dispensative Power of interpreting I could tell you that in Sir Iohn Winter's Observations on the Oath of Supremacy Printed A. 1679. he having there consider'd Queen Elizabeths interpretation in the Admonition and the Confirmation of that Admonition by her Majesty in Parliament by the Proviso in the Statute of 5 o Eliz. c. 1. and the whole drift of the Statute 1 o Eliz. by which the Oath was enacted and what Bishop Carleton and the Primate Bramhal writ of the ancient Jurisdiction restored to the Crown by that Statute and that on the whole Matter the design of the Oath was not to invest her with the exercise of the spiritual Jurisdiction left by Christ to his Apostles and their Successors but to leave that entire to them saith at the end of his Book that it is not the true meaning of the Oath explain'd in manner as abovesaid which makes many of the Roman-Catholicks refuse to take it c. and then makes the Explanations not being known to all and their intricacy and the constant tendring of the Oath for so many years without the aforesaid Explanation likely to give just Cause of Scandal and thereupon he wishes that that Oath and the other of Allegiance which are required of them under so great Penalties may be
knew that if Papists had been Punish'd for their Religion in her Reign by Iudges and Iuries and Sheriffs that it was she had punish'd them And accordingly he in his Premonition to Christian Monarchs doth more regio and with a style of Majesty relating to his Executive Power thus tell them viz. And yet so far hath both my Heart and Government been from any bitterness as almost never one of those sharp Additions to former Laws hath ever yet been put in execution Well Sir In fine I leave it to you to consider on the whole matter how far the Contents of that Canon and particularly what is declared therein about the care of God's Church being so committed to Kings in the Scripture that they are commended when the Church keeps the right way and blamed when it runs amiss and therefore her Government belongs in chief to Kings c. do shew that Kings not only may but ought out of a regard to their own Souls to provide that where the safety of their Subjects Souls is concern'd their Dispensative Power by the interpretation of their Laws and the relaxation of their Rigour in particular Cases may be exerted I doubt not but you have observ'd many more Cases wherein the Royal Martyr to prevent imminent peril of Soul was put to it to exert such his Power A. I remember not to have read of more B. No If you had read the 39 Articles Printed in the Edition that I have done with his Declaration prefix'd thereunto you would find that there being a high ferment about the Arminian Controversie in the Church of England and the Arminian and Anti-Arminian Divines who both had subscribed the Articles appropriating the sense of them to both their Perswasions and too many drawing then the sense of them too much aside and all of them professing themselves bound in Conscience by the Laws that required their Subscription to the Articles and that their Subscription to them was to be taken in the Imposers sense and that as to the Article of the King 's being Supreme Governor of the Church of England it being supposed as the words in the Declaration are Some differences might arise concerning the External Polity Injunctions Canons or other Constitutions thereto belonging His Majesty by his Declaration again ratifying the Articles and particularly publishing that he was Supreme Governor of the Church of England did notify his Pleasure that as to any such Differences arising as aforesaid the Clergy in their Convocation should order and settle them he approving their Ordinances c. and to the end they might not trouble themselves or the Church by putting their own interpretations on the Articles he Requires their taking the Articles in the Literal and Grammatical sense and notifies that literal sense as restrain'd to the way of the general Expressions in the Articles and such as the Divines of the several Perswasions took as making for them so that now by His Majesty 's thus interpreting that sense they might warrantably continue so to do And according to what hath been said of Manna that it was that to every man's taste wherewith it was pleas'd most mens sense of the Articles might be so too by means of the declared Complaisance of His Majesty therewith A. One would then the less wonder at the Complaisance of the Clergy with that King's Power of Dispensing in his Laws by Interpreting or Declaring B. I could tell you of another passage in his Reign that will shew you how our Bishops made use of that Power as their Sheat Anchor to preserve the Hierarchy in the Storms it met with and how then the Bishops issuing out the Processes of their Ecclesiastical Courts in their own Names was by the Artifice of the Faction improved as an occasion of making a very great ferment in Church and State and such a one as nothing but the Royal Power of Interpretation or of declaring the Law could settle And therefore Archbishop Laud in his Epistle to the King before his famous Star-Chamber Speech did in the Name of the Church of England then think himself obliged to apply to the King in a most pathetical and solemn manner to exert that great Power in that Conjuncture viz. I do humbly in the Churches name desire of your Majesty that it may be resolv'd by all the Reverend Iudges of England and then Publish'd by your Majesty that our keeping Courts and issuing Process in our own Names and the like Exceptions formerly taken and now renew'd are not against the Laws of the Realm as 't is most certain they are not that so the Church Governors may go on cheerfully in their Duty and the Peoples minds be quieted by this assurance that neither the Law nor their liberty as Subjects is infringed thereby The many Pamphleteers of the Faction who attacqued the Hierarchy â—…eproached them with the Non-observance of Humane Laws and charged their Proceedings with Illegality because by the Statute of 1 o E. 6. c. 2. that required Processes Ecclesiastical to be in the King's name it was declar'd That the Bishops sending out their Process in their own Names was contrary to the Form and Order of the Summons and Process of the Common-Law used in this Realm And therefore as Heylin tells us in the Life of Archbishop Laud p. 321. in A. 1637. the King accordingly issued out his Proclamation declaring That the Bishops holding their Courts and issuing Process in their own Names were not against the Laws of the Realm and the Iudges Resolutions were therein notify'd to that purpose And upon all motions afterward for Prohibitions to the Ecclesiastical Court upon the pretence of their Processes not issuing out in the King's Name according to that Statute of E. the 6th the currant Law hath still been in Westminster-Hall for keeping up the sense of His Majesty declared in his Proclamation as to that Point According to the manner then of praising the Bridge we go over the Church of England having in Queen Elizabeth's time been preserv'd by the Regal Power of interpreting express'd in her Admonition and by the like Power in the time of King Charles the First and the salus animae having been at stake as to the Oath in her time and as to the avowed Principle of the Church of England about Humane Laws binding the Conscience in his time the use of that Dispensative Power being like a Bridge that kept them from falling into the Pit of Perdition deserv'd their Praise That eminent Divine Mr. Iohn Ley in his Learn'd Book call'd Defensive Doubts and Reasons for refusal of the Oath imposed by the Sixth Canon of the late Synod i. e. that in the year 1640. saith there p. 99. and 100 c. There are some of our Brethren who in good will to themselves and us have undertaken to expound the Oath so as that they and we without scruple may take it And we take kindly their good intention and in good will to them again
request them to consider that a Private Interpretation of a Publick Act can give no satisfaction unless it be either expresly or virtually allow'd by the highest Authority that doth impose it and then it is made Publick c. But the Authority of Interpretation of any doubt in such a Publick Act belongs properly not to private but publick Persons c. For private Men tho Learn'd if they take upon them the Interpretation of publick Dictates may be more like to light on mutual Contradictions of each other then on the true and proper Construction of the Text they interpret So did Vega and Soto Soto and Catherinus who wrote against each other contrary Comments on the Council of Trent In which respect it was a wise advice given to the Pope by the Bishop of Bestice viz. to appoint a Congregation for the expounding of the Councel and well follow'd by him when he forbade all sorts of Persons Clerks or Laicks being private Men to make any Commentaries Glosses Annotations or any Interpretation whatsoever on the Decrees of that Councel Dr. Burgesse indeed made an Interpretation of his own Subscription but there had been no validity in it as we conceive unless it had been allow'd by the Superior Powers And so it was for as he saith It was accepted by King James and the Archbishop of Canterbury affirm'd it to be the true sense and meaning of the Church of England He refers there to Dr. Burgesse in his Answer to a much applauded Pamphlet Praefat. p. 26. A. Your mentioning that of Dr. Burgesse his Interpretation of his Subscription minds me of what I have read at the end of his Book call'd No Sacrilege nor Sin to alienate or purchase Cathedral Lands viz. in his Postscript to Dr. Pearson and his No Necessity of Reformation of the Publick Doctrine of the Church of England Printed A. 1660. where he saith As touching the Regal Supremacy we own and will assert it as far as you do or dare Only we had reason to take notice of the improper Expression in the 37th Article that the Queen's Majesty hath the Supreme Power For if the Declaration father'd on the late King and prefix'd to the Articles had so much Power with his Printer that he durst not alter the word Queen into King even in the year 1642 and those Articles must be read Verbatim without Alteration or Explanation then we say again there is a Necessity of Reforming that Article in the expression of it and not to talk at random what was indeed the meaning unless we may have leave when we read it Regiâ declaratione non-obstante to declare the sense which the Declaration alloweth us not to do But the truth is that exception of the Doctor to the Articles may well pass for a Scruple or rather a Cavil and at this rate we should be put to it to say O King interpret for ever B. You say right Dr. Pierson in that Judicious Book of his call'd No Necessity of Reforming the Doctrine of the Church of England well observes that the 37th Article hath express reference to the Queen's Injunctions set forth in the year 1559. and those Injunctions take particular care that no other Duty Allegiance or Bond should be required to the Queen then was acknowledged to be due to the most noble Kings of famous Memory King Henry the 8th her Majesty's Father or King Edward the 6th her Majesty's Brother The words of the Article declare that the Doctrine contained in it concerneth all the Kings as Kings The title in General is of the Civil Magistrates and the words run thus where we attribute to the Queen's Majesty the chief Government we give not to our Princes c. shewing that what they gave to her they gave to all the Kings of England Which will appear more plainly out of the first Latine Copy Printed in the time of Queen Eliz. in the year 1563. read and approved by the Queen the words whereâ—…f are these Cum Regiae Majestati summam gubernationem tribuimus quibus titulis intelligimus animos quorundam Calumniatorum offendi non damus Regibus nostris aut verbi Dei aut Sacramentorum administrationem c. Being therefore the Article expresly mentioneth and concerneth the Kings of England as they are the Kings of England the mention of the Queen's Majesty in the Article can make the Doctrine no more doubtful then it doth our Allegiance in that Oath which was made 1 o Eliz. where the Heirs and Successors of the Queen are to appoint who shall accept the Oath the words of which are that the Queen's Highness is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm But I hope the Heirs and Successors of Queen Elizabeth did never appoint that Oath to be taken in the Name of the Queen's Highness but in their own It may be supposed that some such like Cavilling or Scrupling humour possess'd the fancies of some in the beginning of the Reign of King Iames the First and that some occasion was thereby given to that Prince in those his Canons expresly therein maintaining the 39 Articles and the Subscription thereunto and particularly in the 36th Canon there to enjoyn a Subscription to three Articles in such manner and sort as is there appointed and of which the first is That the King's Majesty under God is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm and of all other his Highness Dominions c. and that no foreign Prince Person Prelate HAUE or OUGHT to have any Iurisdiction Power Superiority Preheminence or Authority Ecclesiastical or Spiritual c. and in which the words have or OUGHT to have might possibly be inserted out of a Royal Complaisance with the Desires of some Scruplers in whose behalf the Famous Dr. Rainolds moved the King at the Hampton-Court Conference that to the Position in the 37th Article viz. The Bishop of Rome hath no Iurisdiction in this Realm of England might be added nor OUGHT to have but which motion the King then rejected as a thing superfluous and saying Habemus quod jure habemus You may find an Account of this twoâ—…old Subscription in Coke 4. Inst. c. 74. and where he saith Subscription required by the Clergy is twofold One by force both of an Act of Parliament CONFIRMING and Establishing the 39 Articles of Religion agreed upon at a Convocation of the Church of England and ratify'd by Queen Eliz. 13. Eliz. c. 12. Another by Canens made at a Convocation of the Church of England and ratify'd by King James A. I had thought you told me that the 39 Articles owed no Confirmation nor Authority to that Act of the 13th of Eliz. B. I did tell you so and do think that when my Lord Coke used the word Confirming he spake cum vulgo or as the word is taken minus propriè and as it is taken in declarative Acts of Parliament sometime to mean declared and as I and others may in Discourse sometimes use the word But speaking properly to
confirm being firmum facere i. e. what was not so before you are not to think that the Parliament in 13 o Eliz. did so They Enacted what was by the Queen before authorized and as the words there are about the Articles viz. Put forth by the Queen's Authority And you may too for this purpose Consult the style of the Act 23 o Eliz. c. 1. Entituled An Act for retaining the Queen's Subjects in their due Obedience and where 't is made Treason for any to withdraw any Subjects from their Natural Obedience to her Majesty or to withdraw them for that intent from the Religion now by her Highness Authority establishâ—…d within her Dominions Thus too as to the Queen's disabling several of the Roman-Catholick Bishops and Deans by her Ecclesiastical Commissioners in the beginning of her Reign pursuant to the Act of 1 o Eliz. c. 1. for restoring to the Crown the Ancient Iurisdiction the Act of Parliament 35 o Eliz. c. 8. entituled Every Deprivation of any Bishop or Dean made in the beginning of the Queen's Reign shall be good and Archbishops Bishops and Deans made by the Queen shall be adjudged lawful begins with acknowledging that the former were justly deprived and it is therefore Declared and Enacted by Authority of this Parliament that all and every Deprivation c. and all and every Sentence of Deprivation c. had pronounced and given c. shall be adjudged deem'd and taken good and sufficient in Law c. and as to the latter viz. That all such Archbishops Bishops and Deans as were ordain'd or made by the Authority or Licence of the Queen's Majesty c. shall be taken and adjudged to be lawful c. Thâ—…y confirmed not what the Queen did in disabling the former and enabling the latter but only declared and enacted the validity of what the Queen had done And here you have again the Judgment of Parliament for approving the Queen's Power of Enabling and Disabling And here too by the way I am to tell you that you have another judgment of Parliament suitable to that in 8 o Eliz. and for the adjudging and taking to be Lawful the making and ordaining of the Archbishops and Bishops by the Authority or Licence of the Queen's Majesty c. any ambiguity or question in that behalf heretofore made to the contrary notwithstanding and which QUESTION before made in the Case I have before shew'd to be disability A. But I suppose you have read of that TWO-FOLD Subscription my Lord Coke speaks of represented as a Gravamen by some B. I have so and the last Book I read that so represents it is the Answer to Dr. Stillingfleet ' s Sermon by some Non-Conformists c. Printed A. 1680. and where in p. 29. they thus express their desires viz. That all New devised Oaths Subscriptions and Declarations together with the Canonical Oath and the Subscription in the Canons be suspended for the time to come If that be too much we shall consent our selves with a modester motion that whatsoever these Declarations be that are required to be made subscribed or sworn they may be imposed only as to the matter and end leaving the takers but free to the use of their own Expressions And this expedient we gather from the Lord Coke who hath providently as it were against such a Season laid in this Observation The form of the Subscription set down in the Canons ratify'd by King Iames was not express'd in the Act of the 13th of Eliz. 4. Inst. c. 74. And consequently if the Clergy enjoy'd this freedom till then in reference to the particulars therein contain'd what binders why they might not have the same restored in reference also to others It was the second Article enjoyn'd by that Canon to be subscribed viz. That the Book of Common-Prayer c. containeth in it nothing contrary to the Word of God and that it may lawfully be used c. at which they took so much offence and to which the Act of Parliament required not their Subscription A. I perceive then my Lord Coke doth not reflect on the form of Subscription as enjoyn'd by the 36th Canon of King Iames and by his Regal Authority out of Parliament as illegal notwithstanding what had been enacted in the 13th of Queen Elizabeth B. He doth not And he there further faith By the Statute of 13. Eliz. the Delinquent is disabled and deprived ipso facto but the Delinquent against the Canon of King James is to be proceeded withall by the Censures of the Church And I heard Wray Chief Iustice in the King's Bench Pasch. 23. El. report That where one Smith subscribed to the said 39 Articles of Religion with this addition so far forth as the same were agreeable to the Word oâ—… God that it was resolv'd by him and aâ—…l the Iudges of England that this Subscription was not according to the Statute of 13. Eliz. because this Statute required an absolute Subscription c. Besides this Subscription when any Clerk is admitted and instituted to any Benefice he is sworn to Canonical Obedience to his Diâ—…cesan But as to his saying that the Delinquent against this Canon is to be proceeded withall by the Censures of the Church I shall observe that the beginning of the Canon doth incapacitate any to be receiv'd into the Ministry who doth not subscribe the three Articles in it and that the Canon doth afterward put some temporary Disabilities on Bishops who shall Ordain Admit or License any one except he first have subscribed in manner and form there appointed and it is the Universities if offending that the Canon leaves to the Danger of the Law and His Majesty's Censure Here then you see King Iames the First did out of Parliament add a new Subscription to what was required by the Act of Parliament and did likewise out of Parliament make incapacity to be the Punishment of refusing such new Subscription And I need not tell you that that Power so exercised by that Prince out of Parliament hath been approved not only by all the Bishops of the Church of England as putting the Form of Subscription required by that Canon in execution ever since and to this day in lieu of the form required by the 13th of Eliz. but as I may say virtually and tacitly by all our Kings and Parliaments ever since who have acquiesced in the same But what if I should tell you that the Authority of the King in thus making that Canon about Subscription hath been since expresly approved in Parliament A. I should be most ready to hear it B. You may therefore please to consult the Act for Uniformity 16 o Car. 2. and in the latter end of it you will see that in a Proviso referring to the 39 Articles as agreed on by the Archbishops c. A. 1562. and particularly to the 36th therein about the Book of Consecration of Archbishops c. set forth in the time of Edward the 6th as
to perform the Conditions and that the King his Father should do the like Secondly That the Promises of Marriage should be presently made c. but that the Consummation of the Marriage should not at all be executed till the Month of May in the following year 1624. to the end that they might experimentâ—…lly see if the aforesaid Conditions required by his Holiness should be faithfully accomplish'd c. As to the first the Prince of Wales took an Oath to His Majesty to observe the foresaid Conditions and sign'd them with his Hand and he likewise swore and sign'd this by way of Over-plus to permit at all times that Any should freely propose to him the Arguments of the Catholick-Religion without giving any impediment and that he would never directly nor indirectly permit any to speak to the Infanta against the same But I shall here en passant observe to you out of the general Articles namely that in the 16th Article notwithstanding my Lord Coke's Opinion before-mention'd that a new Oath cannot be introduced nor an old one alter'd but by Act of Parliament there is a new Oath of fealty agreed to by the King to be tender'd both to Foreigners and Subjects of England who were to serve the Infanta and care taken that no Clause or word therein shall contradict the Roman Religion or Consciences of the Roman-Catholicks and that by the 24th Article for the Security that every thing that was agreed to should be fulfill'd the King and Prince were to be bound by Oath that all the Privy Councellors should sign the Agreement And I need not tell you that their being sworn to the private Articles was a new Oath A. Was nothing of the King's mind about the Suspending ALL the Penal Laws both the disabling ones and others against the Papists notify'd to his Privy Councel before the year 1623 B. Mr. Prynne there in p. 30. saith that for the hastening the Pope's Dispensation for the Match King James as the French Mercure Tom. 9. records it and as he had CREDIBLY been inform'd of from others assembling his Privy Councel together Febr. 25. 1622. made a long Oration to them which he recites at large the sum whereof was this That the Roman-Catholicks in England had sustain'd great and intolerable surcharges imposed on their Goods Bodies Consciences during Queen Elizabeth's Reign of which they hoped to be relieved in his c. That now he had maturely consider'd the Penury and Calamities of the Roman-Catholicks who were in the number of his faithful Subjects and was resolv'd to relieve them and therefore did from thenceforth take all his Roman-Catholick Subjects into his Protection permitting them the Liberty and entire Exercise of their Religion c. without any Inquisition Process or Molestation from that day forward and likewise will and ordain that they shall be restored to all their Estates Lands Fees and Seignories and re-establish'd in them Commanding all his Magistrates Iustices and other Officers whatsoever in this behalf to hold their hands and for what Cause soever it be not to attempt hereafter to grieve or molest the said Catholicks neither in publick nor private in the liberty of the exercise of their Religion upon pain of being reputed Guilty of High Treason and Disturbers of the Kingdoms peace and repose this being his will and definitive Sentence A. But still I cannot forbear wondring about what Considerations made our Divines and our Great Champions of the Church of England-Protestancy in the State as well as Church afterward thus inclinable to act their Parts about Toleration as Mr. Prynne hath mention'd B. They had cause enough to apprehend that the Hierarchy of England could not be supported without the Monarchy and that by reason of the various growth of the Potency of foreign Princes and States and of intestine Factions the Monarchy could not be then sufficiently secure without a foreign Alliance by inter-marriage and that where such Alliance was to be with the Familiâ—…s of Roman-Catholick Princes there could be no expectation of the Pope's relaxing his Laws by dispensing without our Princes doing something of that kind as to theirs I might here observe to you that we are told in The Regal Apology that the Oxford Antiquities mention'd to have been writ by Dr. Bate that A particular Toleration had a former President even in Queen Elizabeth in those Articles of Marriage which were consented to with the Duke of Anjou and if it were true that an Universal Toleration was agreed on by King James it was intuitu majoris boni The Palatinate was to be restored again and the Protestants of Germany to be re-enstated in their Possessions on that Condition But to punish being a kind of Punishment and it being irreligious to punish Men for Religion and the highest tide of Anger being naturally succeeded by the lowest ebbe of it and the thoughts of rigorous Severity in Princes toward their Subjects being like such in the Head toward the Members of the same Body and King Iames having found that the general abhorrence of the Gun-Powder-Treason had blown up the credit of those fiery Doctrines that produced it and he being then within Prospect of his end and being unwilling that the Sun of his Life should go down in his wrath and finding as appears by his long Proclamation of four sheets of Paper declaring his Pleasure concerning the Dissolving of the Parliament A. 16â—…1 that they were not the Papists who made his later breath so uneasie to him and he being of opinion that the reason of the severe Laws was much abated it may abate of our wonder that in that Conjuncture he put a Period to their Execution Mr. Prynne for this purpose in p. 14. of that Book Prints a Letter of the Lord Keeper Williams to the Iâ—…dges in the year following to acquaint them that His Majesty having resolv'd out of deep Reasons of State and in expectation of like Correspondence from foreign Princes to the Professors of our Religion to grant some Grace and Conveniency to the imprison'd Papists of this Kingdom had Commanded him to pass some Writs under the Broad Seal for that purpose and that he had accordingly done so and tells them that 't is His Majesty's Pleasure that they shall make no niceness or difficulty to extend that his Princely favour to all Papists imprison'd for any Church Recusancy whatsoever or refusing the Oath of Supremacy or hearing of Mass or any other point of Recusancy which doth touch or concern Religion only and not matters of State which shall appear to you to be totally Civil and Political A. You lately mentâ—…on'd to me that the Earl of Bristol hinted it that there was afterward somewhat of Compliance with the Pope in the Match with France of that nature as was in the Spanish Wâ—…at account doth Mr. Prynne give of that B. He tells you there p. 69. that the French Maâ—…ch was soon Concluded in the life of King James the Articles concerning
of the Royal Martyr and I shall be glad to know if the dispensing with the Penal Laws and particularly such as are inclusive of disability made any part of the fermentation B. No doubt if the Dispensative Power of the Crown as to any Penal religionary â—…aws had then appear'd any considerable gravamen to any of the three Estates they would then have cry'd out of it But which they did not Yet I shall tell you that they had a fair occasâ—…on then given them to do it if they had thought it tanti For in the first year of his Reign there was a ferment in Parliament about the Penal Laws against the Papists and particularly the disabling ones but which soon went off as I may say by insensible Perspiration It sâ—…ems that Mr. Prynne in p. 74. and 77. saith both Houses that year having presented a Petition to that Prince wherein they took notice that his Majesty had in his Princely Wisdom taken order that none of his natural born Subjects not professing the true Religion and by Law establish'd shall be admitted into the Service of his Royal Coâ—…sort and having further desired that his Majesty would be pleas'd to remove from all Places of Authority all such Persons as are either Popish Recusants or according to direction of former Acts of State to be justly suspected and that his Majesty said he would give order for it yet that that Parliament being unhappily dissolv'd in discontent his Majesty thought not fit to shew such severity to Recusants as he intended And in p. 76. Mr. Prynne had mentioned that Sir Iohn Winter Mr. Walter Mountague Sir Maurice Drummond and other Papists were admitted in her Majesty's Service But by what appears from Mr. Prynne in p. 80. in the following Parliament in the Second year of that King the House of Commons took divers Examinations concerning Recusants that were in Office and at last agreed on a Petition against Recusants in Office and to present their Names therewith to the King to the end they might be removed and He then saith that Martis 6. Iunii 2. Car. Regis The Petition against Recusants in Authority was engrossed read and allow'd to be presented to his Majesty and this to be done by the Privy-Councel of the House and Sir John Fâ—…llerton which was done accordingly but with what real success I can give no exact account But that the disabling and other Laws against the Papists had been dispens'd with by the Royal Martyr as well as his Father any one will conclude who reads what there followeth viz. In this Parliament these ensuing Articles against Popish Recusants were Consulted of in the House of Commons with an Intent to draw them into an Act and of which the 9th is No Recusant to bear Office of Iustice of Peace or otherwise or any man whose Wife shall be a Recusant or practice Law Common or Civil or Physick nor have Command in War c. And I should first have told you that the Third was A New Oath with more Additions to be taken concerning the Supremacy A. Good God! A new Oath with more Additions about the Supremacy B. You may suppose it would have been seemingly a New Oath by that Parliament's approving all the Authentick Regal Interpretations of the old one as Queen Elizabeth's Interpretation was approved by her Parliament But you may here observe that tho the Disabling and other Penal Laws were by this Pious Prince tacitly and often dispens'd with and the time of the doing of it caus'd some temporary ferments to arise in the Minds of his Subjects in Parliament yet their animosities have soon tacitly evaporated and the Regal Power of Dispensing then came to no question The Puritan Dissenters and scruplers of Ceremonies knew they wanted the benefit of that Power as well as the Papists and the exercise of that Power was in the Petition of both Houses before mention'd implored as to the disabled or silenced Ministers And therefore you will not wonder at it when I tell you that during all the great Patriotly efforts that were made for the removing all Grievances by the Petition of Right there was no offence taken at the Right of the Dispensative Power A. I thank you for that observation B. The thought is too obvious to deserve thanks and I assure you it is a kind of Proverbial Saying in the Canon Law that Dispensationum modus nulli Sapientum displicuit But even in the Conjuncture of the Petition of Right to shew you that the Dispensative Power did not in the least contribute to the ferment I shall let you see out of Rushworth how Mr. Glanvile who made so great a figure of a Patriot then in Parliament did with the greatest popular applause appear as an Assertor of that Power and when in his Speech in a full Committee of both Houses May 23. A. 1628. he inter alia said There is a Trust inseparably reposed in the Persons of the Kings of England but that Trust is regulated by Law For example when Statutes are made to Prohibit things not mala in se but only mala quia Prohibita under certain Forfeitures and Penalties to accrue to the King and to the Informers that shall sue for the breach of them the Commons must and ever will acknowledge a Regal and Soveraign Prerogative in the King touching such Statutes that it is in his Majesty's absolute and undoubted Power to grant Dispensations to particular Persons with the Clauses of Non-obstante to do as they might have done before those Statutes wherein his Majesty conferring Grace and Favour upon some doth not do wrong to others But there is a difference between those Statutes and the Laws and Statutes whereon the Petition is grounded By those Statutes the Subject hath no interest in the Penalties which are all the fruit such Statutes can produce until by Sute or Information he become entituled to the particular Forfeitures whereas the Laws and Statutes mention'd in our Petition are of another Nature There shall your Lordships find us to rely upon the good old Statute called Magna Charta which declareth and confirmeth the ancient Common Laws of the Liberties of England and there he speaks afterward of other Statute Laws not inflicting Penalties upon Offenders in malis prohibitis but Laws declarative or positive conferring or confirming ipso facto an inherent Right and Interest of liberty and freedom in the Subjects of this Realm as their Birth-rights and Inheritances descendable to their Heirs and Posterities the Statutes incorporate into the Body of the Common Law over which with reverence be it spoken there is no Trust reposed in the King 's Soveraign Power or Prerogative Royal to enable him to dispense with them or to take from his Subjects the Birthright which they have in their Liberties by virtue of the Common Law. So then according to the sense of this loyal Patriot if the King shall by his Prerogative dispense with the Disabilities or Premunires or
Thomas and Sorrell tell you that by one of the great Councel who argued in it it was asserted with great Learning That the Non-obstante in that Case remain'd good after the King's death That tho Acts the King doth in his Natural Capacity determine by his death as making of Iudges c. for those referr to his Natural Will yet things done in his Royal Capacity as King do not determine by his death as a License to alien in Mortmâ—…in in one King's time serves in anothers and the Reason is when the Subject is once exempt out of the Restraint of the Act he is ever exempt unless the Exemption be limited Coke 1. Inst. 52. 6. If the Lessor licence his Lessee that is restrain'd by Condition not to Alien tho the Lessor die the licence shall serve the Lessee to alien and is not determin'd by the Lessor's death And in this Point he cited Trin. 2. Jac. C. B. Rot. 2835. Wright versùs Radcliffe and Trin. 2. Jac. Norris v. Mason C. B. as Cases adjudged in this point And I shall then shew you how the same thing was then by others asserted but you may now for this purpose remember how the instances I have given you of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments approving and declaring to be good what she did of this kind and the instances of what others of our Princes did by their own Authority and out of Parliament being valid and being afterward approved in Parliament have supported the extent of the Regal Authority of this kind as to point of time But because according to the Rule of Unumquodque dissolvitur eo modo quo colligatur many Indulgences and Injunctions and Dispensations being revocable by Kings themselves and by their Successors and because declaratory Acts of Parliament cannot be repeal'd but by other Acts common Prudence doth suggest it to all to endeavour the perpetuating to themselves by the Legislative Power what they account beneficial And if you will you may use the term of having it confirm'd by that Power that is if you will allow it to have been firm before you may call it confirm'd by the Prince and the three Estates afterward enacting it and making its firmness perpetual And this is the thing I aim'd at in what you might take for a Criticism when I said that the 39 Articles owed no Confirmation nor Authority to the Act of the 13th of Eliz. A. I know the reason of your cautious speaking here about a tender Point You accounting even every Declaratory Judgment of Parliament for our Religion to be a Treasure and having often said that you would allow some Roman-Catholicks to mock on in calling our Religion a Parliamentary Religion did I judge design to do honour to our Religion as well as to our Prince's in shewing that it was here orderly establish'd by God's Vicegerents before it was by the Deputies of the People or the Magnates Regni B. You guess right at my meaning in this way to salve Phaenomena And if you will look on a Book Printed in Oxford A. 1645. entituled Parliaments Power in Laws for Religion or an Answer to that old and groundless Calumny of the Papists nick-naming the Religion of the Church of England by the name of a Parliamentary Religion c. you will find the Fact in this Point clearly deduced through the course of our Laws and Constitutions in a long series temporum from the Reign of Harry the 8th downward and for the honour of our Kings and of the Church and the Reformation and the measures I have taken in our discourse have been suitable to those of the judicious and learned Author of that Book A. Well Sir we have had a great deal of frank Discourse and I will now take the freedom to put one Question more to you You have entertain'd me with the several Interpretations of our Oath and have shew'd me how the obligatoriness of them all hath been perpetuated and you have likewise salved the Phaenomena in the Iustice of the Government as to the Laws in terrorem But you know the Story of one who being Lord of a place did leave a Pit long open too near the High-way and who at Night erected Lights about it to prevent its being mischievous and he afterward hearing that sometimes poor Blind men who were Travellers fell into it and that at other times by various accidents the Lights were not helpful to other Passengers as being took away or going out too soon and he therefore at last very fairly removed both his Nuisance and Lights together And now may it hot be wish'd that the Prince and the three Estates would remove the Laws about our Oaths and the Interpretations too and so likewise all the Laws in terrorem among which I suppose you reckon the Test-Acts at which so many have taken offence B. You may easily guess that till we have both of us at another meeting discours'd of the Obligation resulting from the Promissory part of the Oath I will not engage your thoughts in any matter of Controverfie that may in the least perplex them But as soon as we have fully discours'd that I shall frankly give you my thoughts at large relating to the question about Repealing of the Test-Acts in a Parliamentary manner but do at present wholly forbear to mention what I think thereof And I have before told you my judgment of the likelihood of the continuance of our great Oath as a great luminary that may perhaps enlighten our English World in the measures of Loyalty to the end of time and as I have told you the Oath giveth no offence to the Considerate so I will hope none will be taken at it But I must here tell you that I have a greater veneration for the Oath because I look on the serious Consideration of the assertory part of it as likely to be very Instrumental in allaying the ferment we have been speaking of A. God grant it may be so B. You remember what I hinted to you about the Clause whereby you testify'd and declared that the King is the only Supreme Governor of this Realm as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or Causes as Temporal and from whence it follow'd by way of natural Consequence that no foreign Prince c. hath any Iurisdiction within this Realm being the Corner-stone on which the great And therefore I mean your forsaking foreign Iurisdiction was built And I assure you that the same first Declaration doth bind you to the like AND THEREFORE to renounce the belief of any Power on Earth being able to dissolve your King 's right of Commanding your Obedience and your Obligation to obey him And indeed if I had produced to you no Iudgment of Parliament for the purpose I have done but that which is contain'd in the assertory part of the Oath and which is unanimously interpreted by Divines and Lawyers as expressive of the King 's right jure naturae to Command the Obedience of
all his Subjects it might have sufficiently satisfy'd you therein and if at our next meeting you will have me dilate more on what our Lawyers have said about the Point of the debt of our Natural allegiance I shall do it A. Our great Lawyers Judgments in that Point being known may be variously useful and directive to the many illiterate and presumptuous Reflecters on the exercise of Prerogative and especially if so learned and so popular a Lawyer as Sir Edward Coke shall be by you further cited in such a Case And so what you shall acquaint me with as from any such one of them shall be kindly welcome B. What you have now said brings it into my mind how that Great popular Man Sir Edward Coke was cited for this purpose by that great popular Man Sir William Iones in his learned Argument in Thomas Dorcel's Case and where he did so much right to the DISPENSATIVE Power A. What Did Sir William Iones maintain the King's Power of Dispensing with Acts of Parliament B. Yes and I believe was never censured for so doing by any one A. I pray tell me what was said by him in his Argument B. Then according to the very Learned and Judicious and Candid Manuscript Report I have of the Case thus it was Among the three Points made the first being if the Non-obstante in the Patent of King James was good against the Statute of Edw. 6. Jones agreed that the King may by Non-obstante dispense with a thing Prohibited by Statute if the thing were lawful before the Statute were made And he afterward said that a Dispensation to one and his Heirs was never good but only in that of a Sheriff 2. H. 7. 6. Grant of a Shrievalty in fee Non-obstante the Statute But Coke 7. R. 14. Calvin's Case the Reason of that is because the King hath interest to have the Service of all his Subjects by the Law of Nature And the truth is that on this noble and great Consideration it is that our Divines who have treated of the OATH of SUPREMACY have fix'd the reasonableness and intent of that Oath and of the King 's having a right to Command the Obedience of all his Subjects upon the basis of the Law of Nature as well as on the Divine Law Positive And thus too the style of the Acts of Parliament about the Oath of Allegiance runs and which Acts you may Consult if you want any more Iudgments of Parliament about the indissolubility of the King 's right to Command the Obedience of the Subject and of the Subjects duty to obey before we meet again The reasonableness of the words in that Oath contain'd in the Statute of 3 tio Iacobi viz. Of declaring that the Pope hath no Power to discharge any of his Majesty's Subjects of their Obedience appears from its being call'd in that Statute their Natural Obedience And the putting in Practice the perswading or withdrawing any of the King's Subjects from their Natural Obedience to his Majesty or to reconcile them to the Pope or See of Rome is there made Treason We will speak more of other Statutes of this nature at our next meeting And in the mean time let me observe to you how as in the Conjuncture of the Exclusion so many were infatuated as for fear of Popery to come to run upon the very Court of Rome-Popery at present namely that of Dominium fundatur in Gratiâ so likewise many mens fear of the belief of perhaps some Religionary Tenets of Popery gaining ground for the future hath hunted them upon the Popery of thinking that Subjects CAN in part or in whole be discharged from their Natural Obedience to their Prince A. I thank you Sir for suggesting that to me for the truth is the tenet of thinking it lawful so to discharge Subjects from such their Natural Obedience is the very odiosa materia charged by so many on the Councel of Lateran B. You say right But however let me occasionally advise you not to charge the odious matter in that Councel on the Communion of the Church of Rome For I shall tell you that the great Writers of our Church did after the real Plot of the Gun-Powder-Treason pursue such noble Methods of Christian Charity as with an intent of improving the Principles of Loyalty and Allegiance among all our Roman-Catholick Countrymen to endeavour to prove with all their Learning that the Decrees of that Councel obliged no Papist in point of Conscience King Iames in his Works calls it but a Pretended Councel and Dr. Donne in his Pseudo-Martyr endeavours to prove it no Councel Moreover Bishop Bilson in his learned Works for maintaining the Oath of Supremacy saith that Nothing was Concluded in the Councel of Lateran I have here on the Table his Book call'd The Difference between Christian Subjection and Un-christian Rebellion Printed A. 1586 in which his Learned and Iudicious Assertions and Explications of the Regal Supremacy and of our Moral Offices to defend the same are comprised and there in Part 3. p. 6. you will find what he saith of the Lateran Councel A. I have not the Book and shall be glad I may borrow it from you that thereby I may have the better prospect of the Measures of our Divines in their Sense of the Assertory part of the Oath of Supremacy as making the Rights of our Kings to Command the Services of all their Subjects to be indissoluble B. I pray take it along with you And I am the rather desirous you should do it because in this Crooked and Perverse Generation many who strain their Consciences by the inobservance of the Oath may be so vain as to fancy that others strain the Oath who endeavour as I have done to build the Right of our Kings to Command the Services of their Subjects on its so firm Foundation He was trusted by the Government to write on the Subject of the Oath and so his Authority is of the more weight and I shall here at parting read to you what he saith in Part 2. p. 183. where he so well insinuates it that the Prince can freely permit safely defend generally restrain and externally punish within the Realm but in p. 328. having spoke of the true Supremacy of Princes he saith This is the Supremacy which we attribute to Princes that all Men within their Territories should obey their Laws or abide their Pleasures and that no man on Earth hath Authority to take their Swords from them by Iudicial Sentence or Martial Violence And he there had before said in his Margin the Sword of Princes is Supreme in that it is not Subject to the Pope and must be obey'd of all in things that are good What he saith likewise in p. 346. there is worth your reading where he makes the word Supreme to be a plain and manifest deduction out of the 13th of the Romans Let every Soul be subject to the Superior Powers If all Men must be subject to them ergo they are Superior to all and Superior to all is Supreme He then thus goeth on in his Dialogue-way Phil S. Paul maketh them Superiors over all Persons but not over all things Theop. That Distinction is ours meaning Protestants not yours we did ever interpret Supreme for Superior to all men within their Dominions Phil. And so we grant them to be but not in all things For in Temporal things they are Superior to all men in Spiritual they are not Theop. That restraint comes too late the Holy Ghost charging you to be subject to them simply without addition It passeth your reach to limit in what things you will and in what things you will not be subject And he there saith Out of all Question where Princes may by God's Law Command all men must obey them not only for fear of wrath but for Conscience sake To this purpose too he asserts the Supremacy in the following Page All men are bound to be subject to the Sword in all things be they Temporal or Spiritual not only by Suffering but also by Obeying but with this Caution that in things that are good and agreeable to the Law of God the Sword must be obey'd in things that are otherwise it must be endured At the same rate you will find him writing in his Third Part p. 7. The Word of God bindeth you to obey Princes the words of men cannot loose you But if you will there take notice of the fire of his Zeal breaking into a flame at the thoughts of the displacing of Princes from their Thrones and of the discharging of the People from the Oath and Obedience toward Princes he saith that they who will go to that turn Religion into Rebellion Patience into Violence Words into Weapons Preaching into Fighting Fidelity into Perjury Subjection into Sedition and instead of the Servants of God which they might be by enduring they become the Soldiers of Satan by resisting the Powers which God hath ordain'd A. I thank God I am a Member of the Church of England that may value it self not only on its Doctrine of NON-RESISTANCE but on its DOCTRINE of Positive ASSISTANCE and DEFENCE of all Iurisdictions Privileges Pre-eminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King c. or united and annex'd to the Imperial Crown of this Realm B. And how from this great Promissory part of our Oath our Obligation to assist and defend the Iurisdiction Privilege Pre-eminence and Authority of the Dispensative Power in particular granted or belonging to the King and united and annex'd to the Imperial Crown of this Realm doth arise we will at our next meeting consider and when I will likewise shew you that the Prerogative royal is a part of the Lex terrae The End of the Second PART 1370. Ex Rot. Parl. in turr Lâ—…nd in 45. Ed. tertii Iustifiables in the French originals Quaere Whether not able todo justice or not to be juststify'd in their Employment as improper for it
Dispensative Power in the Reign of King Charles the First being extended to particular Persons but the hated Sibthorpe who in his Sermon of Apostolick Obedience as he call'd it doth speak of Mens being bound to observe the Lawes of the Land where they live except they will suffer as busie bodies or except they will have that inconvenience granted that the general Lawes or Government of a Nation must be dispens's withal according to the particular Conceit and Apprehension of every private Person whereout what Coleration of Heresy what Connivence at Errors what danger of Schisms in the Church and Factions in the State must necessarily follow c. and having mentioned the Liberty of a few erroneous Consciences bringing the Bondage of many regulated Commands he saith We must prefer the general before the particular and not let every one be loose to their List and Affection but all must be kept within the Lists of their Duty and Subjection And I but just now told you of that Prince's avowing that the Bishops advised him to the tenderness he shewed in dispensing with his Lawes to gratifie the pretended tenderness of the Consciences of some of his Scotish Subjects in that Conjunctâ—… â—…eand by which Dispensing one would have thought they might have been sufficiently antidoted against the strong Delusions of entring into War for Religion Oh that such thoughts had been then impress'd on their Minds as are contain'd in the General Demands of the Ministers and Professors of Aberdene p. 29. as I find them cited in the Book of Mr. Ley before-mention'd viz. There be other means more effectual for holding out of Popery and so of any unlawful innovation in which we ought to Confide more then in all the Vowes and Promises of Men yea also more then in all the United Forces of all the Subjects of this Land to wit diligent Preaching and Teaching of the Word frequent Prayer to God humbling of our selves before him and Amendment of our Lives and Conversations and Arming our selves against our Adversaries by diligent searching of the Scriptures whereby we may encrease in the knowledge of the Truth and in ability to defend it against the Enemies of it Oh that the Demagogues of those times had caus'd such words then to have been writ in our Churches or I might rather wish that those Heads of Parties had had themselves then hearts of flesh and that such tender words had been like a Law written there But the Urgentia imperii fata were upon us and that delicate use of Conscience that is in 2. Cor. 13. 5. call'd examen vel probatio nostrum ipsorum and whereby it resembled the best property of a beam in Scales namely its tenderness and turning with the least part of a grain was among the great Actors in that Rebellion quite laid aside and all the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. the weightier Matters of the Law did not stir their Consciences and the great Obligation of their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy signify'd no more then the dust of the balance Tho they pretended to so nice a Tenderness about any thing that look'd like an Oath in familiar discourse and was not one as at the Saying in faith or in troth and so would seem to come under Solomon's Character of him that feareth an Oath but as to which words of in faith or by my faith our Judicious Sanderson de Iuramento makes them amount to no more then a meer Asseveration or at the most an Obtestation and saith that the genuine interpretation of the words by my faith whether in an assertory or promissory matter is this I speak from my heart I pawn my faith to you that the thing is so yet they at the same time would ridicule or seize on any one who had told them of what they were Sworn to in the Oath of Allegiance and of the recognition they made there as the words of that Oath are heartily willingly and truly upon the true faith of a Christian. A. There was a Solemn League and Covenant afterward took by those who had so apparently outraged the Oath of Allegiance and it was taken generally by all the Layety and Clergy of the Parliaments Party and was there not a general Tenderness of Conscience express'd then in the observance of that Covenant B. In the course of my Observation of Men and Things some things have more particularly occurred to me to shew you that the great Takers and imposers of that Covenant did as plainly and without any seeming remorfe outrage their Oath in that Covenant as they did their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy For after they had first sworn to endeavour to preserve the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government and then sworn to endeavour to reform Religion in these Kingdoms of England and Ireland in all Points according to the Examples of the best Reformed Churches and so were bound to reform us according to the Pattern of Scotland for that Church must necessarily pass for the best Reform'd Church that stands in need of no Resormation being to be preserv'd by them in the State it was the Parliament instead of setling in England the Presbyterian Government which then in Scotland had within its Verge four Judicatories and all pretended to be founded on Divine Right 1. A Parochial Session 2. A Presbyterian Consistory 3. A Provincial Synod 4. A General Assembly as they were bound to did in effect settle ERASTIANISM a Tenet or hypothesis of Church-Government that the Scotch and English Presbyterian Divines avowed as great an hatred of as of Popery it self Erastianism giving the Supreme Power in Ecclesiasticals to the Civil Magistrate and in their Printed Votes and Orders reproved the Presbyterian Divines for challenging an Arbitrary Power and which they would not grant nor set up ten Thousand Iudicatories within the Kingdom as the Parliaments words were referring to the Scots Parechial Session where a competent number of Lay-Elders whom they call Presbyteri non docentes and Deacons proportionable to the Precinct and Extent of the Parish are conjoyn'd and which associate Body thus compacted is the Spiritual Parochial Sanhedrim But this very first Point of that Church-Government the Parliament hinder'd Presbytery from gaining here and opposed its moving in that lowest Sphere of the Parochial Session of setling so many Thousand Ecclesiastical Courts of Pye-Powder in England and whereby it could never hope to climb up to the Primum mobile of a General Assembly which in reality was the Sphere the Parliament it self moved in Mr. Prynne who was one of the greatest Champions for that Covenant was yet an Eminent profess'd Erastian and Mr. Coleman a Member of the Assembly of Divines another of those Champions for the Covenant was likewise a declared Erastian and a great Favourite of the Parliaments and whose frequent Sermons before them for Erastianism were Printed by their Order and which Sermons of his and likewise his Books
Estate of Prelacy by the Kings and Peers thereof But now further to entertain your thoughts with the great Scene of the New Heaven and the New Earth in that Kingdom and of Men there walking at liberty as the words in the Psalms are or at large as 't is in the Maâ—…gin and as in the Latin indesinenterque ambulabo in ipsa LATITUDINE quia mandata tua quaero whose measures were before staked down to the Narrow tedder of Presbytery and whose Souls were once enslaved to a blind Zeal for that Church-Government as what they then fancy'd to be the putting the Scepter into Christ's hand and the only efficacious means to keep out Popery I shall tell you that they have now put the Scepter into their Prince's hand to rule the Church with what external Government he will who were formâ—…rly so ready to enslave both Kingdoms by designing to put the Royal Scepter of Scotland into the French King's hands and to bring a Popish French Army into Scotland to enforce the setlement of Presbytery A. One would hardly think it possible that they should then design any such thing B. As the Civil Law rangeth things that wound mens Piety Reputation or good Manners among Impossibles so one would think those of the Scots then designing a thing of that Nature to be an Impossibility And any one would thus think it impossible who consider'd that the Crown of England A. 1560. sent Forces into Scotland whereby the French were driven out of that Kingdom and that thereupon in the Publick printed Prayer prefixt to the Scots Psalm-Book it is said viz. And seeing that when we by our own Power were altogether unable to have freed our selves from the tyranny of Strangers thou of thine especial goodness didst move the hearts of our Neighbors of whom we had deserv'd no such favour to take upon them the common burden with us and for our deliverance not only to spend the lives of many but also to hazard the Estate and Tranquillity of their Realm grant unto us O Lord that with such reverence we may remember thy benefits receiv'd that after this in our default we never enter into hostility against the Realm and Nation of England Suffer us never O Lord to fall to that ingratitude and detestable unthankfulness that we shall seek the Destruction and Death of those whom thou hast made Instruments to deliver us from the tyranny of merciless Strangers c. But he who shall read Kâ—…ng Charles the First 's Declaration concerning his Proceedings with his Subjects of Scotland since the Pacification in the Camp near Berwick Printed A. 1640. will find this Fact too true and the Letter there likewise Printed which was under the hands of the Leading men of the Presbyterian Faction in Scotland writ to the French King and wherein his assistance is implored A. But by that Act about the Supremacy in Scotland A. 1669. that you read to me I see that the old Leaven of Presbytery is there sufficiently purged out and that the very mass of Blood in mens Principles relating to the Regal Power is universally sweeten'd B. You have great reason to judge so and if you had read the Scotch Statutes since the year 1660 you would find the Body of that Nation having the temperamentum ad pondus for Loyalty And your having mention'd the old Leaven there purged away minds me of minding you that that Nation having so nobly discharged its moral offices in that Case ought to be absolv'd in the thoughts of all the Loyal from the Fact of its former deflection from Loyalty and that the great measures of Christian Charity ought to extend beyond that Judgment of Seneca that poenitens est fere innocens and even as far as S. Paul's generous discharge of the Corinthians on their having purged out that ferment viz. For behold what carefulness it wrought in you what clearing of your selves yea what indignation yea what fear yea what vehement desire yea what zeal c. In all things ye have approved your selves to be clear in this Matter Look on their Acts of Parliament in the time of K. Charles the Second by one of which it is declared That his Majesty his Heirs and Successors by Uirtue of the Royal Power which they hold from God Almighty over this Kingdom shall have the sole Choice and Appointment of Officers of State and Councellors and Iudges and by another That the Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Power from God Almighty do succeed Lineally thereunto And I can direct you to another that contains in it so strange a Resignation to the King's measures as may make you again wonder at the possibility of such a temper and not to be equall'd by any thing I have read of but that pang of Zeal wherewith so many once at Cambridge were affected for Edward the Senior when they swore to will what he willed I mean that Act of Parliament in Scotland An. 1661. Concerning the League and Covenant and discharging the renewing thereof without his Majesties Warrant and Approbation The Act concludes with an Inhibition That none presume to renew that Covenant or any other League or Covenant without his Majesties special Warrant so to do Thus then that Covenant tho by them so much nauseated they shew'd themselves ready again to swallow if his Majesty for any such reasons of State as they could not foresee should enjoyn them so to do A. You do indeed make me wonder at this great example of the tenderness and extent of loyal Obedience in Scotland B. I can tell you of another Act of Parliament viz. the 5th Act of the second Session of the second Parliament of K. Charles the 2d Edenburgh 13. August The Act against Conventicles where their very Zeal against them is a Wall of Fire to guard the Dispensative Power The Act runns thus Forasmuch as the Assembling and Convocating his Majesties Subjects without his Majesties Warrant and Authority is a most dangerous and unlawful Practice prohibited and discharged by several Laws and Acts of Parliament under high and great Pains c. for the suppressing and preventing of which for the time to come his Majesty with Advice and Consent of his Estates of Parliament hath thought sit to Statute and Enact c. That no outed Ministers who are not LICENSED by the Councel Persons not Authorized or TOLERATED by the Bishop of the Diocess presume to Preach expound Scripture or pray in any Meeting c. and that none be present at any Meeting without the Family to which they belong where any not licensed authorized nor tolerated as said is shall Preach expound Scripture or Pray c. A. The Act for Uniformity here 16 Car. 2. doth justice to the Prerogative of the Crown in dispensing by taking care that the Penalties in it shall not extend to the Foreigners or Aliens of the forriegn Reform'd Churches allow'd or to be allow'd by the King's