AN APOLOGY FOR THE New Separation In a LETTER to Dr. John Sharpe Archbishop of YORK OCCASIONED By his Farewell-Sermon preached on the 28th of June at St. Giles's in the Fields MALACHI 11.7 8 9. The Priest's Lips should keep Knowledge and they should seek the Law at his Mouth for he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts But ye have departed out of the Way ye have caused many to stumble at the Law ye have corrupted the Covenant of Levi saith the Lord of Hosts Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the People according at ye have not kept my ways but have been partial in the Law LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCI To the Gentlemen of the Vestry of St. Giles's in the Fields SIRS I Here present you with some Reflections upon the Arch-Bishop of York's Farewel-Sermon which his Grace tells us he Published at your Request They are written in form of Letter to him and as I present them to you with as much Respect and in as much Christian Charity as he I believe presented the Sermon so I hope you will read them with as much Candour and examine impartially without any byass to Persons or Causes which is in the Right and whether the Things which you took upon his Grace's Authority be so or no. I must do him the Justice to acknowledge That he is an eminent Person in his Profession as well as in that station which he now holds in the Church and that he deserves that Esteem and Veneration which you have for him But then I must tell you That the Authority of no single Man or number of Men how eminent or great soever ought to signifie any thing with Church of England Men against the Authority of the Church I have seen her Articles and Homilies in many of the London-Vestries and if they be in yours I desire you to make them the Test of my Lord's Sermon and this Answer to it which I desire may be approved or rejected by you as it happens to prove by that Test See I pray you Gentlemen if you can find any thing in them to countenance transferring Allegiance from a living and claiming Legal King or daily Praying for his destruction See if you can find any thing in them that will justifie his Graces Exposition of 1 Tim. 11.1 2. or of Submitting or Praying for the Powers in being without distinction or regard to Titles which he says Is the very Doctrine of the Church of England Pag. 3. If it be you may surely easily find it but if you cannot find it or any thing like it then you may be sure it is not the the Doctrine of the Church though it may be the Doctrine Preach'd of late in the Churches and then you will have occasion to follow the Apostle's advice which is not to have the Persons of Men in Admiration and to remember what our Lord often inculcated to his Disciples to beware whom and how they heard There are some times in which his advice is more needful than others and this I think is such a time when our Church-men are divided in their Practice and about some practical Points and whether the greater or smaller number is in the Right you will never be able judge though it concerns your Souls to judge aright unless you will hear what both say There are Men of equal Eminence and Learning on both sides and if one side can pretend the Advantage Numbers the other can urge against it the interest of saving and getting more to depretiate the Number and Authority of their Examples together with a multiform variety of most different Opinions and Principles among them one of them complying in one sense and upon one Principle and another upon another This Book of mine is a short and summary Apology for the little suffering Number against the Arguments and Accusations of the Arch-Bishop who is now at the head of the other Party and if it can prevail with you to look more narrowly into the Controversie in which you have engaged his Grace I shall think my self sufficiently recompenced for my little Pains in Writing of it and in Hopes that you or some of you who have most leisure and ingenuity will do so I Subscribe in all Sincerity Gentlemen Your most Faithful and Humble Servant AN APOLOGY FOR THE New Separation MY LORD I Once had the Happiness to hear you preach an excellent Sermon in which you spoke many excellent things that were true and just with all that serious Air and Authority that could become a sincere Preacher I often had occasion since to wish it had been put in Print it was preached at St. Margaret's Westminster on the 30th of January was two years before the Gentlemen of the Convention and remembring the excellent Discourse you then made and pressed upon the Consciences of the Conventioners I had a great Desire and Curiosity to read your late fare-well Sermon to see if you stood firm in these times of Defection to your former Principles But to be plain and serious with you I find you so altered like many of your Brethren from your self that though Dr. Sharpe is still the same Person yet I do not find that the Dead of Norwich and the Archbishop are the same Man For then my Lord you preach'd with great appearance of Zeal and Sincerity against the resisting and deposing Doctrines for which you had the Honour to be censured by many of the House but now in the very Phrase and Language of those Authors who have taught the World those damnable Doctrines Page 30 you tell us that we must be more concerned for our Countrey and Nation than the Interest of any single Man in it A Saying certainly in the sense you must needs mean it fitter for a Bishop of the Romish than the English Church which conformably to our Laws and the eternal Reasons of them teacheth her Children That the Interest of the People is wrapt up with the Safety and Interest of the Prince and that they can never be happy without him This our Ancestors have often felt and confessed upon Experience particularly Mr. Pryn in his Preface to Cotton's Abridgment to whose Words I refer you But you my Lord contrary to all Law Reason and Experience have taught the People in this Sermon to set up a separate and distinct Interest against that of the Prince and by consequence to resist or depose him to turn or keep him out of his Kingdom be he who he will even the present as well as any of our former Kings You cannot but know that there are a party of Men among us who are more concerned for another Interest than the Interest of the King I mean the Comman wealthsmen and they thinking that Interest which I assure you is a growing Interest the Interest of their Countrey they may upon your Principles do as much for his Majesty as the Pretenders of Publick Good in former
and Doctrines of Politicks that they that dwell on the Earth shall wonder at them as at the Beast in the Revelations when they behold them One of them as I am told hath been at the pains to compare Dr. Sherlock's Notions about Politicks with those of Julian Johnson's and can make it appear from that Collation that Julian is much the better Church-man and the more Orthodox Apostate of the two In short my Lord in answer to this Reflexion upon them as Coiners of Nations about Politicks they stick not to say that you are the Statists and Polincians who with your humane Policies have corrupted your Religion defiled the Priesthood dishonoured the Church scandalized her Friends and caused her Enemies to triumph In the next Paragraph you say That it is very grievous for those that promote a Separation Page 27. who have always declared themselves Friends to the Church and Enemies to Schism To this Reflexion they reply That they are still as much Friends of the Church and Enemies of Schism as ever but then by the Church they understand the True Old Church of England with all her venerable Doctrines of Faith Justice and moral Honesty and all her strict Decrees against the resisting deposing and forferting Doctrines the Church of England with all her plain Primitive Doctrines of Christian Honesty and Simplicity against Equivocations and Mental Reservations the Church that always abhorred Treason and Perjury as well as Idolatry that never allowed her Children to do any moral Evil for a good End or with a good Intention In a word the Church that equally condemus both the Parts of Popery that which teaches us to be false to Men as well as that which is injurious to God that which pollutes our Morals as well as that which pollutes our Faith and Worship This pure Virgin Church which they think is now driven once more into the Wilderness they say is the Church which they adhere to and to which they think you ought to have adhered with them and that you have separated from her and them and not they from you For they say they are just where they were when you were last with them and have not budged a Foot since from that Church and that you cannot say they have broken from you unless you will affirm that when a Ship breaks from the Shoar where she lay at Anchor the Shoar removes from her and not she from the Shoar And then as to the next Reflexion of being distasted at the establisht Worship for which they were zealous before they say they are as zealous for it as ever as far as the Matter of the Prayers is the same but the Matter of some of the old Prayers they say is changed and this Matter with that of all the New ones being the subject Matter of the New Oath of Allegiance they have the same difficulty of Conscience upon them as to saying of these as taking of those Wherefore in Answer to your fallacious Question about the Liturgie and Prayers they desire to know if you put the Question of the whole Liturgie and all the Prayers in it or not If not then the Question is not to your purpose but if you indeed mean the whole Liturgy and all the Prayers in it as you would be understood then they say they must tell you that the Liturgy and Prayers are not the same they were and by consequence that the Proposition implied in your Question is false For as Changing the Name of God for the Virgin Mary in the invocatory part of any Collect in the Liturgy would change the Object of Worship and make it not as it was a Prayer to God but to the Virgin so changing the Name of a Man for that of his Enemy in the petitionary part of any Collect makes it quite another Prayer not for the Man as it was before the Change of Names but for his Enemy and by consequence alteration of Names alters the Matter and Intention of the Prayer and makes it as different from it self as the two Men and their Interests happen to be They suppose that if a Man should raze the Names out of a Petition to their Majesties and put the French King's Name in their place that it would no longer be a Petition to them but to their mortal Enemy and therefore in Reply to the next Question which follows about the same Liturgie they say this change of Names has changed the Prayers in the Liturgie and that this change disgusts their Consciences and helps to drive them from your Churches being one cause of their Separation from the Publick and but one for as I just now shewed your Grace there was another of which you were pleased to take no notice Ay but you say they proceed so far as to declare open War and set up separate Congregations in opposition to the publick To this they say for the foresaid Reasons That they did not begin this spiritual War which on their side is purely Defensive because they are driven from the Publick and that the same Reasons that will justifie their Separation from it will also justifie setting up separate Meetings in opposition to it in which they think the pure Church of England with her pure Worship may be seen and heard like the Church of Jerusalem in the first persecution of Christianity in the upper rooms And in reply to the great Emphasis which to supply the want of Argument you put upon Separating from the Publick and Setting up Congregations in opposition to the Publick they pray you to consider That the Multitude or great Majority which usually makes the Publick is often in the wrong You will not deny but the Multitude or Publick are now the Schismaticks in Scotland they were so under the Donatist Bishops in Africk they were so in England under the Popish Marian Bishops they were so under Aaron in the business of the Calf they were so in Israel under Ahab and the Idolatrous Priests and lastly they were so under the Arian Emperours and Bishops throughout the whole Roman Empire In short my Lord they say when the Publick is in the right and gives no just cause of separating from it that then it is a great Sin to set up private Meetings against it but when it is in the wrong and gives just cause of separating it then becomes innocent and a Duty to doe so though the Publick be in Possession of all the Churches as it usually is when Safety Honour and Riches attend the erring side I hope by this time my Lord you understand what their Meaning is in Setting up separate Congregations for it is the Cause and not the local Churches and Revenues that make say they a true Church and therefore in Answer to your Question they pray your Grace to consider that Men that have been branders of Schism may think it not onely innocent but their Duty to separate from the Publick or publick Worship without changing
their Principles Nay sometimes their Principles unless they can change them will oblige them to doe so though they do not think Schism can change its Nature and this they think is their own Case and therefore they challenge you and the whole Regnant Church of England with all the advantage if its Churches and Revenues but more particularly the Intruders as they do not stick to call them and all their Electors and Consecrators to prove that their Separation is a Schism All your Arguments about it are couched in a few trifling Questions of which this that follows is a terrible one Have we not the sam Government in Church and State that we formerly had And they appeal to your Grace's Conscience upon second Thoughts and as you expect to be called to Account for the Sincerity of your Ansiver at the dreadfull Tribunal of God if we have the same Government we formerly had Do you know of no Changes it hath undergone which may reasonably aflect the Mind of every true Englishman as well as the Conscience of a good Subject Was there no substantial Reason for throwing the Word rightfull out of the New Oath of Allegiance Or for the Declaration that so many made for the ease of their Consciences at the taking of it And do not many among you still complain in private of the Alterations that the Revolution hath made in the Government and wish them unmade again You cannot but know they say that there are many Grumbletonians and half Penitents among you and therefore they wonder with what Confidence you could put this Question about the Government as well as that about the Prayers But they say your Question is fallacious because it is not to be put about the Government but about the Governours and they think you will not say that they are the same They also make some distinctions about Things and Titles which I shall not here recite because I believe your Grace hath heard of them and knows them to be very material in Controversies of Allegiance of which Praying for the King next to Fighting for him is a principal part and therefore they say that in contests about Crowns in Christian Kingdoms the Subjects at the peril of their Souls are bound to consider for which of the contesting Princes it is their Duty to pray as well as for which it is to fight The next Question to this say they is as little to the purpose wherein you ask Have we not the same Articles and Doctrines of Religion publickly owned and professed and taught without the least alteration To this they Answer That there are many Doctrines relating to the Controvertie between you and them taught licensed and allowed which have been condemned by your Predecessors of the Church of England in the late Usurparion and formerly and of late censured by the famous University of Oxford and which they verily believe a free Convocation would yet censure as contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England such as these are the Resisting the Deposing the Forfeiting Doctrines which are to be seen in your licensed Tracts The Doctrine in behalf of bare Possession that it gives a Right to a Crown to which another King hath a legal Title that will justifie a recuperative War the Doctrine of Providence and actual Administration the Doctrine which makes War God's Court and Victory his Sentence lately asserted by the Bishop of St. Asaph The Doctrine of laying aside Kings for Mocal Incapacity and another fine Doctrine that Force from what Cause soever will disengage Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance and justifie their entring into contrary Obligations and they appeal to your Grace's Conscience if these Doctrines not to mention others which used to be so much branded and decryed by our Divines in Popish and Presbyterian Writers be Articles of our Religion or Doctrines of the Church of England and the Preaching and Printing these Doctrines with Allowance not mentioning the Preferments Men have for Teaching of them is an Argument they say that the Articles and Doctrines you speak of are not owned but disowned not professed but suppressed and that they are not taught so publickly as formerly because they are not pleasing and some Men you know do not love to teach displeasing Things though they be true lovely honest and just But say you again What Government is there in the World will not meet with such Subjects that are not satisfied with it and if that disaffection be a just Reason to break Communion with the Established Church what Ligaments have we to tie Christians together Here they say my Lord you couch a Fallacy which it did not become your Grace to make for the dissatisfaction of Subjects or rather if you please of the People against any Government is they say of two sorts one upon the account of want of a good Title in the Governours and another upon the account of want of good Administration and with respect to the later they acknowledge there are very few Governments which have not in some measure dissatisfied their Subjects but this sort of dissatisfaction they say is very consistent with Church Communion under any Government though the Church-men should happen to favour the Male-administration as sometimes they chance to do But then with respect to the former sort of dissatisfaction which is upon a moral Account they say it becomes a just Reason to break off Communion with the Church when an acknowledgment of Right in wrongful Governours at whom they are so dissatisfied is made a condition or part of the Communion in the Prayers and Sacraments of the Church in the partaking of which Communion doth consift In this case they say the change of Names in the Prayers as to the use of them affects the Consciences of People as much as the change of them in the Oath of Allegiance and therfore for the People to joyn in them would not be to hold the unity of the Spirit but to make themselves Parties to that which they think an unrighteous Usurpation which would be a great Sin But you tell us again That great Revolutions have happened in all Ages and Countries and that you believe it will not easily be found that ever any Christians separated from the Church upon the account of them Here my Lord they distinguish again and say that Revolutions of Government are also of two sorts one in which the new Governours happen to acquire a clear and undoubted Title to the Government and the other when they acquire the Government without a clear and undoubted Title which happens when another claims it by a clearer Title and prosecutes his Claim As to the first sort of Revolutions they acknowledged with your Grace that never any Christians did or ought to separate from the Church upon the account of them But as to the second they assert that they commence just Causes as of Non-subjection so of Separation when owning the Right of the new Governours
you believed you could write Satisfactorily upon the Subject but you were afraid the Government would not like your Reasons and in truth my Lord you had reason for what you said for no Government can like this time-serving and precarious Principle of swearing Allegiance unto Princes Indeed a distressed Government may connive at it in a time of Exigence but it can never approve it it may be content with it upon Force when it can have Allegiance paid upon no better terms but when it grows strong enough it will despise such beggarly Elements of Subjection being the Anthers of then to condign Punishment and order their Books to be burnt by the hand of the Common Hang-man For my own part I am not afraid to tell your Grace that I hope to see such Bishop and Priests become Base and Contemptible in the Eyes Loth of King and People that expound St. Paul as you and Dr. Sherlock have done contrary to the Rules of moral Equity and Justice and advance Allegiance to the Government upon a Principle that is destructive to it and the true and lasting Peace of the Kingdom in which our Happiness does consist No Divines of the Church of England but you and Dr. Sherlock and a few more since the Revolution ever so expounded Rom. 13.1 and 1 Tim. 11.1 2. and I have so good Opinion of the Constancy of our Clergy to their Principles that I verily believe were your Exposition proposed to the Convocation they would condemn it as contrary to right Reason and the moral Duties of Religion acording to which all the general and unlimitted Precepts in the Gospel concerning relative Duties ought to be limitted and understood Doth not Nature it self at first hearing teach us that the Apostle by higher Powers and Kings in those two places meant rightful higher Powers and Kings And will not you your self grant that in other places where he or other Apostles exhorts Children to obey their Parents Wives to obey their Husbands Servants their Masters and the People their Pastors that he me us only such as are truly and rightfully so though according to you own Observation He makes no restriction or distinction what Father Husbands Masters and Pastors are to be obeyed and what not But you imply that the reason of this Exhortation to pray for Kings is general and are not the Reasons as general upon which he exhorts us to perform our relative Duties of our other Superiours as hath been observed in the several learned Answers to Dr Sherlock to which I humbly refer your Grace for your better information in the following Order as I have read them with great Delight and Satisfaction The Title of an Vjurper after a through Settelement examined p. 39 and forwards The Duty of Alleg ance settled upon its true Grounds according to Scripture and Reason Chap. 3. Dr. Sherlock 's Case of Allegiance considered Sect. 3. The Examination of the Arguments drawn from Scripture and Reason in Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance in the Examination of Sect. 4. Pag. 28 I have taken upon me to direct your Grace to these particular places in hopes that you will read them and impartially examine the Reason of these learned Anthours against Dr. Sherlock's way of Expounding the Apostle Rom. 13.1 and by consequence against your own who after this manner have expounded the Apostle's Precept of Praying for Kings in a Sense as unlimitted as he hath done the other of Subjection to them viz. of Praying for Kings without distinction provided they are in Possession of the Throne These Expositions my Lord as some Men think reflect upon their Majesties and the Acts of Recognition and if you have no more to say to justifie your Praying for them Exaltabunt Jacebei the Adversaries I fear will have occasion to triumph My Lord I could name some great Men among you who when they were directed to read some of their Books replied that they were satisfied and desired not to be unsettled but I expect better things from a Person of your Candour and Ingenuity Nay my Lord I think you are bound in Honour and Conscience to examine your Adversaries Reasons against the unlimitted Sense of the Apostle's Exhortations for fear you should happen to be in the wrong and continue to delude the People by an Exposition of his Words apparently contrary to the dictates of natural Reason and by consequence to the meaning of that holy Spirit by which the Apostle wrote You cannot but know that this unlimitted Sense in which you expounded the Apostle is of ill Fame and hath been generally disapproved by the learned Divines of our Church it was insisted on it the times of the late Usurpation by Phanatical time-serving Writers but rejected with disdain by the Martyrs and Confessors of Loyalty among the Suffering Clergy-men as it now is by Jacobeans It was so expounded by Mr. Jenkins who in the late Usurpation argued for Subjection as Dr. Sherlock doth now and was ever after Infamous for it and exposed without Mercy for it by your old Acquaintance Dr. Grove now Bishop of Chichester as you may see in the Margent ‡ Answer to Mr. Jenkins's Farewell Sermon p. 15. It is a most excellent Presertative against Tower-hill But what is this famed Position of the Doctor 's As far as I can learn it was laid down in these very Words or to this purpose Regimen Politicum fundatur in Provident à Dâ—i Extraordinarià This Mr. Jenkins calls his asserting Providential Disposal though one might conjecture what this means yet it had not been so clear without the Comment which he has made upon it in the beginning of his humble Petition to the Supreme Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England in short it is this That whoever they be that get the Power into their hands the Providence of God evidently appears in removing others and investing them with the Government And he looks upon it as his Duty to yield to this Authority all active and chearful Obedience even for Conscience sake This is a fine pleable Principle as a Man can wish 't will lap about your Finger like Barbary Gold Thus when King Charles the First of blessed Memory had the Power in his hands this was an Extraordinary Providence and the Right of Government was in him But stay it may be the Dector had not studied the point so soon but to be sure when the Parliament got the better that was an Extraordinary Providence ideed and then indeed without doubt they were the Supreme Authority as this Petitioner styles them and so was Oliver Cromwel and so was Richard and so was the Rump and so was the Committee of Safety and so was I know not who and so round until his Majesties most happy Restauration and then because there was an Extraordinary Providence in that so is he too and so Mr. Jenkins is as good a Subject as can be desired and so he had been whoever had come And