a Man the Frankness of a Gentleman and Charity and Compassion of a Christian to the Persons of many Papists and others and doing as I did in the late Conjuncture would occasion designing Papists and some perverse Nominal Protestants as you call them to make a Papist of me and did therefore esteem it in you whom I never had opportunity to oblige a Favour to do me Justice therein as you have in the former part of your Discourse and of which I think the Sheets were sent me printed within a Month or two's time after the old Date they bear But a long fit of Sickness afterward seising you and you then signifying to me that you resolved that the same should not be published till you added the following part wherein for the Encouragement of so many Protestants who were so much Dispirited with imaginations of Popery's coming to be the paramount Religion and of Protestancy's being Extirpated you endeavor'd to shew the impossibility of the same Humanly speaking and till you had likewise finished your Casuistical Discourse of the Obligatoriness of our Oaths as to the King his Heirs and Successors I was easily satisfied with your taking your own time for the Publishing the whole as knowing that the Torrent of Shamm and Calumny by which the Reputations of many Loyal Persons were born down was too violent to be of any long continuance and considering likewise that your incorporating the Character of my Life into a Work so full of various exquisite Learning of all sorts and particularly of that now so much in request Namely the reducing Political Matters by Calculation ad firmam as you call it that by the Course of Nature must be immortal and probably pass Christendom in some Language more general than the English would in time Render me a sufficient gainer by the false Affidavit which an angry House of Commons so unwarily dispersed with their Votes throughout this Kingdom The truth is you having been the first Person who took the pains to find out by the Records of the Pole Bills and the Bishops survey the Number of the People of England have highly Merited the thanks of your Country thereby as having necessarily rendred its Figure and Alliances in the World the more considerable And it was the more proper to be done by reason of De Leti having Published it that that Learned Person and my Worthy Friend Monsieur Van Beuninghen had Judged the People here to be but two Millions and because as you have Cited it out of Dr. Vessius his Book of various Observations Dedicated by him to his late Majesty that the Doctor there hath Estimated the People in England Scotland and Ireland to be but two Millions I remember not in all the Books I have read to have found so much and so various Political Calculation as in this your Discourse And because you intend a Review thereof I think it will be in any who have the Custody of Records that may be of use to you a kindness to the publick to be communicative of them to you Though I need not observe to any Reader of your Discourse the height of your Eloquence and great unaffected Wit and the Nervous way of Argumentation appearing therein yet I am obliged to acquaint you that in some particular passages therein my Observations of Men and Things have been different from yours But all of which I hold my self likewise obliged not to trouble the World or you with at this time for your having mentioned your intended Review to be Published in a Volum by it self I who have received so much kindness from you am to do you the Iustice to stay a while in expecting your Second thoughts and without boding ill of your being any way partial therein yet shall here at present acquaint you that as I am a Member of the Church of England as now by Law Established I will not Recede a Iot from its Doctrine by Judging the Papacy not to be Antichrist or by judging the Worshipping the Host not to be formal Idolatry as my Honoured Friends Dr. Hammond and Bishop Taylor as you say have done And shall here observe to you that tho' Bishop Taylor in his Liberty of Prophecying pronounced Worshiping the Host to be not FORMAL Idolatry yet afterward upon more Mature thoughts he in his Disswasive against Popery did make it FORMAL Idolatry I shall likewise tell you that Bishop Sanderson whom you so often quote and whose Judgment you so deservedly Celebrate doth amongst his Sermons printed Anno 1657. in the fifth Sermon Ad Populum p. 287. in plain Terms call the Pope the Man of Sin the Text of the Sermon is 1 Tim. 4.4 The Bishop there represents the Church of Rome as injurious to our Christian Liberty whom St. Paul in this passage saith he hath branded with an indelible note of Infamy in as much as those very Doctrines wherein he gives an instance as Doctrines of Devils are the received Tenets and Conclusions of that Church not to insist on other prejudices done to Christian Liberty by the intolerable Vsurpation of the Man of Sin where he refers in his Margent to 2 Th. 2 3. who exerciseth a Spiritual Tyranny over Mens Consciences as opposite to Evangelical Liberty as Antichrist is to Christ. Let us a little see how she hath fulfilled St. Pauls Prediction in teaching Lying and Divelish Doctrines and that with seared Consciences and in Hypocrisie in the two Specialties mentioned in the next verse viz. Forbidding to Marry and commanding to abstain from Meats And then the Bishop saith Marriage the Holy Ordinance of God is yet by this purple Strumpet forbidden and that Sub Mortali to Bishops Priests Deacons c. and he there for that Appellation of purple Strumpet refers in his Margent to Rev. 17.13 And as I have here cited this great B. for this purpose so I may likewise refer you to the work of our B. of Lincoln called Brutum Fulmen as proving the Pope to be Antichrist contrary to the Assertions of Grotius and Dr. Hammond and others I never think of this Bishop and of his Incomparable Knowledge both in Theology and Church-History and in the Ecclesiastical Law without applying to him in my Thoughts the Character that Cicero gave Crassus viz. Vir non unus é multis sed unus inter omnes propè singularis And I desire here to own my beholdingness to his communicative Disposition for assisting me with quotations and his Judgment when I have occasion to Crave his Aid therein as you know I have lately done and shall be glad that the learning in such Letters as I have received from him wherein there are many excellent Notions which I had no occasion to quote may sometime see the light But I am in the next place with Justice to acknowledge it to you that you have in your Reflections on the Vsurpations of the late times acquainted the World with several things useful to be inserted in
Divine Worship on Men as much as your Description doth And the Venetians particularly opposing the Popes Interloping in their Jurisdiction that other thing referred to in your Description is sufficiently known But if by your Description of Popery you intend only to give us a Dictionary of your Sense of the word generally as used by you and that you intend by the Extermination of Popery the Banishing only of those Principles of it that are Irreligionary out of Mens Minds namely the Principles that tend to the Popes Spiritual and Temporal Vsurpations I am not to quarrel with your expressing your own meaning But as I Judge several Roman-Catholick Writers using the Term Popery to intend thereby the Religion of the Church of Rome as for example the Author of the Compendium saying what I before referred to that nothing but Popery or at least its Principles can make the Monarchy of England again emerge or lasting yet as to which a Divine Sentence was in the Mouth of the King when in his Gracious Expressions in Council concerning the Church of England he Judged otherwise and said I know the Principles of that Church are for Monarchy c. and meaning by Popery what was called la Catholicitè I shall say that according to the common acception of the Word Popery were I to explain what I usually mean by it I would declare that I mean not only the Power of the Bishop of Rome but of any General Councils in Imposing Creeds and Doctrines c. on me And I desiring to have all Religionary Errors banished out of my understanding and Loving my Neighbour as my self will desire they may be so out of his and particularly if after he knoweth he is bought with a price he shall think it lawful for him to be a Servant of Men And will not only weigh the Commands and Decrees of any Bishop But of any General Council whatsoever And if in Matters that Import my Salvation I find them contrary to the Bible with a Salvo to the Reverence I owe to all Lawful General Councils I will desire them to excuse me from obeying them Were it not for what you have so well in p. 48. said that the Protestant Religion not making the intention of the Preist essential to the Sacrament of the Eucharist is more strongly assertive of the Real presence there than the Popish Hypothesis and for that great and excellent Notion of yours in your Discourse viz. That Papists and others being bought with a Price that therefore they ought not to be the Servants of Men and my Judging that according to what I have mentioned out of Dr Iackson that you would separate your self from any Church that imposed any thing Magisterially on Mens Faiths I might think that perhaps had you lived in the Reign of Henry the 8 th you would not have separated from the Ecclesia Anglicana as then by Law Established And therefore when by your warm Expressions in p. 47. after you have said that the Protestation that the Protestant Religion requires is such a continual one as is Reiterated upon every fresh Act and Attempt of the Papal Religion upon ours and whereby it would impose Creeds and Doctrines on us contrary to the Liberty of the Church of England as now by Law Established You tell us that We are to shew no Mercy to these Principles of Popery that disquiet the World and on the several occasions offered protest against the Damages that both our King and Country may have from the Rage of Popery I may tell you that this PROTESTANCY amounts to no more than what we read of in the Review of the Council of Trent where in Book 1. and 12 th Chapter the Author refers to the French King by his Embassadors causing a PROTESTATION to be made against the Council of Trent and as appeared by the Oration there made by Mr. Arnold de Ferriers the 22 d. of September 1563. where among other things having mentioned many grievances he saith that according to the Commands of the most Christian King they were constrained CONCILIO INTERCEDERE VT NVNC INTERCEDEBANT by the same Token that that Book relates how thereupon a certain Prelate of the Council of Trent not well understanding the Propriety of the Word Intercedere which the Tribunes were wont of Old to use when thay made their Oppositions and Hinderances asked his Neighbour PRO QVO ORAT REX CHRISTIANISSIMVS But of the French Kings Embassadors protesting not only against Grievances in the Council of Trent but against it self as a Grievance and of some occasions thereof it will come in my way to speak hereafter Nor was there ever any Instrument or Paper Writ with more sharpness of Anger and Scorn in the way of Defiance against Papismus or Popery than H. the 8 ths Protestation against the Council of Trent and yet inclusive too of another Protestation I mean of his Adherence to the Faith then called Catholick That long Protestation calls the Pope by the Name of Bishop of Rome and saith surely except God take away our right Wits not only his Authority shall be driven out for ever but his NAME also shall be forgotten in England Nor did ever any Protestant Writer in Queen Elizabeths or King Iames the First 's time or in our late Fermentation so zealously press the Exterminating of the Papal Power as Henry the 8ths Proclamation about the Abolishing the same Triumph at its being here done And where he saith We have by Good and Wholsom Laws and Statutes made for this purpose EXâ—IRPED ABOLISHED Separated and Secluded out of this our Realm the Abuses of the Bishop of Rome his Authority and Iurisdiction of long time Vsurped c. And the King there Orders all manner of Prayers Oraisons Rubricks Canons of Mass-Books and all other Books in the Churches wherein the Bishop of Rome is NAMED or his Presumptuous and proud Pomp and Authority preferred utterly to be Abolished Eradicate and Razed out and his NAME and Memory to be never more except to his Contumely and Reproach remembred but perpetually suppressed and obscured The Act of 28 of Henry the 8 th before spoken of called an Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome was here referred to and which Act and other Acts of Parliament Establishing the Kings Supremacy and Excluding the Pope for ever I mentioned as revived in Queen Elizabeths time after their being repeal'd in Queen Mary's I need not observe to you how this present French King hath likewise lately shewn a very Commendable Zeal for the Exterminating the Vsurpations of the Papal Power in the Business of the Regalia and that the Case of that Kings Power is much altered for the better since D' Ossat Writ to Villeroy from Rome with so much Joy for his having found out an expedient as to the difference between Henry the 4 th and the Pope about the granting to one a Church Dignity in France Namely to have the Words put
Majesties Reign in any Religionary point Yet as to your self I have had reason to guess that you long ago in the late Kings Reign had some Theological Sentiments some what differing from what I took for our Churches Articles and that I speaking to you thereof you reply'd out of Bishop Bramhalls Iust Vindication of our Church that our Articles are not penned with Anathemas or Curses against all those even of our own who do not receive them but used only as an help or rule of unity among our selves Nor have I forgot how you once discoursed to me your opinion of the Tenet that the Souls of good Men do not immediately after Death go up into Heaven nor the Souls of bad Men then immediately down into Hell But that the former than go into a good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the latter into a bad one and that such place was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. inconspicuus as being so not in regard of it self but of us and that our Saviours Soul went 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that this Tenet was more particularly Tertullians and that he describing the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said 't was a place ubi bonis benè erat malis malè and that good Men did there in Candidâ expectare diem Judicij and that the Expression of aeternitatis Candidati was first taken occasionally from those words of Tertullian and that it seemed suitable to the Measures of Divine Iustice not to give the great Sentence concerning eternal rewards and punishments before the Trial of the Day of Iudgment and that as a Thousand years with God are said to be but one Day the time of that Trial might possibly last so long and that it might else seem a diminutio capitis for Saints to be brought from the Caelum beatorum to the Bar and that somewhat like this notion of the State of Souls after Death the Iews had and likewise all the Fathers for the first four Centuries and when some of them encouraging Men to be Martyrs said that such did uno saltu get up into Heaven and that our Saviour saying in my Fathers House are many Mansions c. and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto my self tho therefore the good will not be received by Christ into those Mansions till he comes again yet their condition will be much better in the good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then in the most prosperous State here below where they are continually exposed to the Contagion of Sin And as you have in p. 317. mentioned that some of our Protestant Divines owning this Tenet have not been therefore Censured as Popishly affected or maintainers of Purgatory so neither shall I therefore thence infer your owning the Notion of a Purgatory or Limbus nor the usefulness of Praying for any Souls in the Hades and much less that your favouring this notion of Hades by publishing it now as what some of our Protestant Divines favoured was in the least designed by you as any humouring of a Project to reconcile Churches a project that you have expressed to be so ineffectual when some well meaning Men had it in their Heads in a Conjuncture long ago and when Withers a dull Poet of the Age yet a favorite of the vulgus did in his Emblems p. 3 of his ep dedicat as you once told me amuse them with his fancies of the Vnion of Religion And as you have in your preface observed it that the few florid Sheets lately published on the Subject of Toleration have made no other figure than that of the poor resemblances of flowers extracted by Chymical Art out of their ashes and that a little shaking them together in the glass of time must make them presently fall in pieces I have observed likewise that the perhaps well meant Velleities or Wishes or little Essays of some few private Persons that since his Majesties Reign amused any by propounding a Reconciliation of Churches have appeared but like extracted resemblances of the flowers of private Mens proposals of that kind in the Conjuncture before the year 1640 and since his Majesties happy Reign they have been easily shaken in pieces Mr. Prynne in his History of the Tryal of Arch Bishop Laud in p. 191. tells us what a ferment Mr. Adams his Case made in the Vniversity of Cambridge in the year 1637. who Preaching in St. Mary's and there asserting the necessity of Auricular Confession was by Dr. Brownrig the Vice-Chancellor enjoyned to Recant that Doctrine and about which great Heats arose among the Heads of Houses there But the Sharpness of the canons of 40 against Popery shewing the zeal the Arch-bishop expressed in the making of those Canons and of that Clause in the Oath there for the abjuring Popery viz. and that I will not Subject the Church of England to the Church of Rome which Oath the Arch-Bishop in his Defence saith was a more strict Oath than ever was made against Popery in any Age or Church may easily Convince the Sagacious of the Church of Englands Sense then about any Project of Reconciling the Church of England to that of Rome being altogether vain The Arch-Bishop had it seems by long and deep observation found the project of the reconciling of our Church and Romes a thing utterly unpracticable however as to his having been formerly a Visionaire about the possibility of the same I remember I have seen some angry reflections of Dr Williams Bishop of Lincoln against him and Writ with that Bishops own Hand in the Margent of the Arch-Bishops Printed Star-Chamber Speech where over against those passages that seemed to be somewhat trimming in favour of the Church of Rome Bishop Williams wrote the nearer you come to the Church of Rome the further she will fly from your Courtship and Caresses and will tell you that Rusticus es Corydon nec munera curat Alexis But what thing the Reconcilers would be of Churches mean to themselves is sufficiently plain As to the natural meaning of any thing of that nature I call to mind that a Presbyterian Minister speaking to you once of Comprehension and of the Divines of his perswasion and that of the Church of England being that way Reconciled you told him you wished a Coalition of such with the Church of England as were formerly of his Perswasion But that you supposed by his comprehension he desired to be a Comprehensor of some of the Livings of the Divines of the Church of England and that therefore when you found any Divine speak of the Essaying to Reconcile Churches you naturally thought of those Words in the Acts of the Apostles C. 17. v. 18. What will this Babler say and Rendring the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there by Church Robber Altar Robber and Sacrilegious Person as our Broughton did and justifying that your Critical Acception of the word out of the Greek Classick Authors viz. Demosthenes and
the History of that Age and could wish that such a Writer as your self would undertake the writing of it Nor can I forbear to observe that your occasional propping up the great Characters of many of his Majesties Ministers in your Discourse in very warm Conjuncture when a Factious Multitude was so busy in Demolishing their Reputations was worthy your great thoughts and generosity And your particular painting the Character of the late Earl of Clarendon in such Noble Colours and with Somewhat as bold strokes too of your Fancy and Judgment as Aerodius shew'd in his penne's Nulling the Laws made above a thousand years ago against the Heroical Men you have mention'd was in you an adventurous piece of Justice The course of Mortality hath carryed several persons off th◠Stage whom you mention'd as then living and particularly the late Duke of Norfolk of whom in p. 174. of your Discourse you speak as one of the three Earls then Living who went from the Church of England to the Roman-Catholick Communion and whom you since told me you there introduced only with his Title of Earl a Title that was due to him as Earl of Norwich Arundell and Surry making bold to Level him with the Title of the other two viz. the late Earl of Bristoll and the late Earl of Inchiqueen as intending thereby that if he had lived to have read your Discourse of which you told me you communicated several parts to him he might by that little Obscurity see the Reverence you had paid to that picture of your known great Friend by your drawing a Curtain before it The Earl of Radnor and the late Lord Keeper North whose Characters you have so greatly painted to Eternity left the World without seeing the right that you had so generously done them in Defiance of the vulgar Clamour I am moreover here to own my thanks to you for giving me occasion by your so frequent quoting of D' Ossat to renew my Conversation in my Library with that great Author His Excellent Letters were formerly fresh enough in my Memory and time was heretofore when not to be well versed in him was a Reproach to a Man employed in Affairs of the State as you will see by my Lord Falkeland the Secretary of State 's printed Letter in answer to Mr. Walter Montagues Letter where speaking of D' Ossat he adds viz. An Author which I know Mr. Montague hath read because whosoever hath but considered State Matters must be as well skill'd in him as any Priest in his breviary You very well in p. 38. observ'd how one Priest that in his Book considered State Matters and quoting D' Ossat about the same was not so well skilled in him as in his Breviary I mean Mr. Browne the Franciscan who in his ADVOCATE of Conscience Liberty Cited D' OSSATS Letter to shew that the Gunpowder-Treason was contrived by CECIL But it was the ill fate of that Cardinal on the account of his great Fame for the Politicks to be falsely Cited and even as to the point of the Gunpowder-Treason by several who never read him and particularly by Mr. Osborne in his works bound together p. 487. among the Memoirs of King James where he saith And here I cannot omit that after this happy Discovery his Catholick Majesty sent an Agent on purpose to Congratulate King James his great preservation from the Gunpowder-Treason a flattery so palpable as the Pope could not forbear Laughing in the face of Cardinal D' Ossat when he first told it him Nor he forbear to imform his King of it as may be found in his printed Letters You have truly shewn it out of the Cardinals Epitaph printed in the Edition of his Letters in Folio that he dyed in the year 1604. I am very glad that for the Honour of the Reformation you have with so much Candour and likewise with Substantial Calculation Confuted an Unjust insinuation against it made by the Author of the Compendium who there in p. 77. saith can it be said that the Monarchy of England hath gotten by the Reformation and what desperate Enemies that hath created us may be easily imagined that nothing but Popery or at least its Principles can make it again emerge or lasting It was fit that the clearing of the truth in that matter should be undertaken by some one or other of our Church and it hath been by you very Satisfactorily performed And your thus Confuting that Author without naming him or his Book in that part of your Discourse where you were doing it was the more Congruous to the measures of Charity and Candour and the more for the advantage of your undertaking It was likewise fit that the minds of so many People whose Humour in the late Fermentation was desperare de Republicâ should be fortified with Reason And that the popular Nusance of FEARS AND IEALOVSIES should be removed and which you have so much ex professo I think beyond any of our late Writers done And while the vulgus of Writers were entailing Fears and Iealousies upon us your predicting from Natural Causes the Happy Future STATE of your Country and that the Fermentation would be perfective to it as your words are was an Attempt of a great Genius And I cannot but in Justice say to you that your thoughts in p. 194 195. of the Folly and Madness of any Republican Modellers here are new and great Moreover as I always had a Just and High value and Honour for the Endowments of his Present Majesty that were in him Conspicuous to the World when Duke of York and was as much ashamed of the opprobrious Calumnies that his great Character was then exposed to as any Man whatsoever and was likewise more concern'd for the ill usage he had than for my own when my poor Name was in the printed Affidavit enforced to March round the Kingdom with his Great and Illustrious one so I was glad that in the late Conjuncture I found by some printed Sheets of your Discourse then sent me your papers Representation of his Character made him amends for the Sanbenito of the Affidavit And the Strictures of your great Fancy and Iudgment with which you so apparently refer to his Character in p. 122.176.211.271 and others in your Casuistical Discussion tho' they were but short and seemingly en passant yet they were like the slanting of Lightning and like glances whose quick Movements might probably Create much more powerful Passions of Love and Admiration in a Reader than if you had penned his Character in Set formal Panegyricks whose Hony soon cloys and leaves no sting or Impression in the Mind But that which I may paralel with any Coup de Maitre in your or perhaps any Discourse and Writ with such great Advantage for his present Majesties Service and wherein the Mixtures of your great Colours is so Admirable and wherin you have painted according to the height of a pittore that the Italians say must paint con
the chief Managers of these Hellish Contrivances and what more convincing Argument that they are well approved and conform to the Religion taught by their Church And as to which in his Papist Represented he fairly saith Neither let any one pretend to Demonstrate the Faith and Principles of the Papists by the Works of every Divine in that Communion or by the Acts of every Bishop Cardinall or Pope for they extend not their Faith beyond the Declaration of General Councils and standing fast to these He had before said there against what was mentioned in the Papist Misrepresented about fireing of London the Late Plot in the year 78 c. And though he is not bound to believe all to be Truth that is charged upon them by Adversaries there being no NARRATIVE of any of these Divelish Contrivances and Practices laid to them wherein Passion and Fury have not made great additions wherein things dubious are not improved into certainty Suspicious into Realities Fears and Jealousies into Substantial Plots and downright Lyes and Recorded Perjuries into Pulpit nay Gospel Truth yet he really thinks there have been Men of his profession of every rank and degree c. that have been Scandalous in their lives c. But what then is the whole Church to be Condemned for the Vicious Lives of some of her professors c. And in the Conclusion he saith These are the Characters of the Papist as he is Mis-represented and as he is Represented And as different as the one is from the other So different is the Papist as reputed by his Maligners from the Papist as to what he is in himself The one is so absurd and monstrous that 't is impossible possible for any one to be of that Profession without first laying by all thoughts of Christianity and Reason The other is just Contradictory to this and without any further Apology may be exposed to the perusal of all prudent and unpassionate considerers to examine if there be any thing in it that deserveth the Hatred of any Christian and if it be not in every point wholly conform to the Doctrine of Christ and not in the least contrary to Reason I will readily accord with him that Delictum personae non debet ad ecclesie detrimentum trahi And do therefore suppose that he likewise will not charge the Constitution of the Church of England with any imperfections because many of its Members have Mis-represented or Calumniated any Papist Nor hath any one a greater Compassion then my self for such Innocent and Loyal Papists as have in the late Fermentation been aspersed with the Shammes in Narratives Any one may easily Judge me not untaught as to the Moral Offices of such Compassion from the Measures of Non Ignara Mali c. I never in the Conjuncture when we were so much deafned with the Noise of Narratives thought otherwise of them than as being partly like the River Euphrates according to the known Description of it in that Hymne of Callimachus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Assyrius fluvius volvit magno agmine fluctus Et trahit Illuviem Multasque hinc indeque sordes The Recorded Infamous Person who in his Affidavit that made so much noise and threw so much Dirt on me and who by being so presumptuous therein as to Reproach his Majesty with things that no Man of Sense could believe thought to eternize his Name like him who burn'd the Temple at Ephesus hath Missed of that Aim as far as in me lay and so shall And I think you have done well in not naming the Profligate But it having pleased God to permit him while he was under the Course of his due punishment and under the protection of the Law to fall by the Hand of an Assassinate and at whose Hand his Majesty required his Blood that Signal instance of the Justice inherent in his Majesties Nature hath sufficiently encouraged all his Liege People to think themselves safe by his being a Terror to Evil Doers and not bearing the Sword in vain According to the Moral Offices you have so well described of not Condemning whole parties merely on the account of the immoral Actions of particular Members of them I however blame not any Religionary Caetus that either the profligate or assassin referred to for their respective Outrages did herd with And as the Author of the Papist Mis-represented c. is very fairly desirous that we should take our measures of the Church of Rome from the Principles approved by it I shall herein Comply with him But here must say that I am sorry to find that the Author is in a Church where the DEPOSING Power is so much as DELIBERATED For as you have well cited it out of two Heathen Authors Dum deliberant desciverunt And Ea deliberanda omnino non sunt in quibus est turpis ipsa deliberatio And I am glad that in his 26 th Chap. viz. of Mental Reservation he was enabled to cite the present Pope's Decree of the 2 d. of March 1679. for the Damning of the Doctrine of Equivocation of Oaths And among the many Principles of the Iesuits and other Casuists which may come under your Denomination of irreligionary ones that Sicarious one as you properly call it viz. It is lawful for a Person of Honour to kill a Man that intends to Calumniate him if there is no other way to avoid that Reproach was in that Decree very justly Condemn'd And but for that Principle having till its Condemnation been approved in the Church of Rome there could be no more just cause to charge any Papist except the Actors with the Blood of Godfrey than there was to cast the odium of the Execrable Murder of the Arch-Bishop of St. Andrews on any of the Presbyterians except the Ruffianly Actors And as to the case of Godfrey I remember you told me that since your warm aggravations about it in your DISCOVRSE you were a colder Concurrer with the Iustice of the Nation therein and that you thought there was still somwhat of the Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 uncertain or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulous in the case of his Death And as to what the Author speaks of Papists being Misrepresented with relation to the late Plot in the year 1678. To Subvert the Government and destroy his Majesty I who in the Conjuncture of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 made so little about it shall not now make any at all What I have read in a Pacificatory Discourse of a Pious Divine published in the year 1653. where speaking of a Spirit of Iealousie and of envy strife Railings and Evil Surmisings and having quoted 1. Tim. 6.4 and that Strife and evil surmisings are near of kinne and that if Contentious Men can get nothing against their Brethren they will surmise there is something and if they can find nothing in their Actions to Iudge they will Iudge their Hearts If there be nothing above-board they will think there may be
live in Bondage I am far from desiring to entrench on this liberty for Papists in matters or Tenets properly denominable by the Term of Religionary ones according to the expression by you frequently used and do suppose though there were no such thing in the World as a Pope or Patriarch that the Religionary Tenets of Transubstantiation and Purgatory c. may continue to be believed by many and if any one shall contrary to the Sense of the Government and of Acts of Parliament in Henry 8 ths time believe as the Representer doth that the Bishop of Rome hath here in Spirituals more power by the Word of God than other Foraign Bishops I shall not endeavour by any severity to impose on him the contrary Belief But yet shall still by virtue of that Sacred Word think my self bound and that particular passage in it cited by Dr. Iackson not to be a Servant of Men as to any Doctrinal Impositions and to forbear external Communion with any Church that would impose upon my Belief I know of none of the Church of England who hath avowed the practice of more Indulgence to Papists in the Confession of their Religionary Principles than I have done And I thank God that my practice in this kind hath not been by Fits or Starts or Turns of Times or Humours but that my Life hath in this Point of doing Just and Charitable Offices to all Consciencious and Loyal Papists been as I may say a Thred even spun upon every Wheel of Providence Your self can tell of the Signal good Offices I did to many Papists and to others that a Clamorous Common Fame would have run down as Popishly Affected when you applyed to me then in their behalf during the Season of some of the late Narratives and I am able further to do you the Justice as to remember what you have long ago told me and what I had reason to believe that when the figure you made in another of his Majesties Realms allowed you Virtute officij to have made many thousands of them groan under the Burden of the Penal Laws you held your self in Conscience obliged not to do it but on the contrary to rescue them from the least Hardship thereby But I shall here take occasion to tell you that I have scarce in any thing more shewed my Friendliness to the Persons of some of my Roman Catholick Friends than by my Advice to them that they would apply to the Writers of their Church to forbear troubling our English World with new Models of Reconciliation of Churches And indeed Nature doth now Loudly enough tell us that the Real Peace of Kingdoms ought not to be troubled by projects of a Chimerical one between Churches The best Men are Reconciled to one another and the Reconciling of all the worst Men in the World together would make their Association more troublesom to Mankind And when we know that the Bigots of the Church of Rome can stir no further from the Councel of Trent than our Soldiers in Africa could from their Garrison of Tangier before the Peace there is no thinking of their Travelling far to meet us And if any one suppose that they would meet us half way yet notwithstanding he might likewise according to the Principles of Nature suppose that the other Moiety of the Theological Controversies not agreed in would occasionally render Mens Spirits more Tempestuous toward each other and the publick as we usually see Storms to be most violent about the Season of the Equinoctial Moreover they who give themselves the Office of Reconcilers general or intrude into the Station of the Publick Mediators appearing thereby hot and unquiet in their own tempers rendring themselves always liable to disquiet from abroad by attacks from all parties are of all Men the most unlikely to be universal Peace-Makers or to gain any Blessing by being such And as you have in your Discourse Studiously declined the use of the little Names of Distinctions of three differing Parties in the State so shall I likewise do but can easily give you occasion to guess which of them refers to Men most Hated and most Impolitick by Minding you how the Systematical Writers of Politicks do often call neuters Middle Region Men and such as being Lodged in the Middle Rooms are annoyed with the droppings from above and smoak from below You have expressed your self in your Preface and Discourse as so much agreeing with me in this Subject that I shall be but Just to you in owning my Belief that your varying from some of the Measures of the Church of England in some Points tended not to encourage others to undertake the Thankless Office of being Match-Makers of Churches I know very well what my Lord Primate Bramhall in order to shewing that the Sons of the Church of England are not Slaves to its Articles saith In his Iust Vindication of the Church of England and how Mr. Chillingworth in his Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation tells us that by the Religion of Protestants he understands not the Doctrine of Luther or Calvin or Melanchton nor the Articles of the Church of England c. But that wherein they all agree and which they all Subscribed c. as a perfect Rule of their Faith and Actions that is the Bible the Bible I say the Bible only is the True Religion of Protestants c. And therefore what ever freedom you justly claim by the Charter of the Bible to confess any Religionary Tenets however different from those I own I am not to envy you But do know that I am bound to pitty you or any else of Mankind that I shall think to err therein though it should be in any Religionary Tenet of Popery it self or in the Power of the Bishop of Rome in Imposing Creeds or Rules of Divine Worship on Men by Divine Right as part of your Description of Popery runs and as to which I think there may be occasion in your Review of it to avoid giving more Offence both to the Church of England and that of Rome thereby than you perhaps intended I have observed a late French Writer to avoid the Censure of describing the Communion of the Church of Rome or the Faith of that Church by a doubtful Name having used the Term la Catholicitè But as to your Description of Popery I may mind you that according to your Quotation in p. 318. out of Ames of the Seven Venetian Divines who in that most Iudicious Tractate of theirs as Ames calls it of the Papal Interdict affirmed that a Christian ought not to obey any Command of the Popes unless he had first examined the Command as far as the Subject Matter required whether it were convenient lawful and Obligatory and that he Sins who Implicitly obeys it those Divines though adhering to la Catholicitè firmly enough did thereby throw off the Power of the Bishop of Rome in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of
both in the Close of your Discourse as well as your Discussion to do the Persons as well as Tenets of Papists all the Justice you could From your having in that Discussion occasionally so much dilated on the Moral Offices of Loyalty to our Princes without respect to their Religion and what ever Religion they may profess different from that by Law Established I shall be glad if the thoughts of all his Majesties Protestant Subjects will Receive deep Impressions of the peculiar Duties we owe to him our Great and Gracious Soveraign particularly eo nomine When ever we pray for him at the Prayers of our Church or our private Devotions let us think of him with the Honour due to a King and Gods Vicegerent Let us not Slander the Footsteps of Gods Anointed in what ever way to Heaven he hath placed the same nor yet by Reproaches make the few of this great populous Nation uneasie who as Viatores attend him in the same way but be the more Civil to them for being part of his retinue therein Since it is Rudeness for any Man to be Curiously Inquisitive into the Speculative points of Religion held by Subjects it may be thought both that and Profanation of Gods more than ordinary Care over the Hearts of Kings to be prying and intruding into the Sentiments of our Soveraign As there are peculiar Moral Offices that concern Subjects when the Prince is not in the External Communion of the same Church with them so there are such likewise incumbent on those Subjects that are in the External Communion of the same Church with their Prince and which oblige them particularly to promote the Ease and Tranquillity of his Reign It having pleas'd God by the Course of the Executive power of the Law in his Majesties Hands to free them from many Hardships to which they were before liable and to put a great price into their Hands if they have Hearts to make use of it and to give them an opportunity by their Moderation and by their Complaisance with his Majesties Measures in the Defence and Supporting of the Church of England and by their knowing in this their Day the things that belong to their Peace to compass an Universal and lasting Tenderness in the great Body of the English People toward their Persons and making the Laws and the whole Hive of the English People to guard them and the very Anger and Zeal of the Protestants to be a Defensive Wall of Fire round about them as your words are it becomes them to contribute to the ease of his Majesties Royal Cares by their being what you say they generally are and by their not Misrepresenting or Calumniating those who are of the Religion different from theirs which yet you have shew'd Father Parsons predicted they must necessarily do and by their not affecting such an excessive internal Power in the Government as you say in the distant Reighnes of some of our Protestant Princes they did It concerns them by their Reverently using their present Temporary Indulgence to effect for his Majesty that in the Case of his easing their Consciences and their Estates from some Penal Laws it may be as was in the Reign of David viz. that whatsoever the King did pleas'd all the People There is none desires more than my self that among the various Opinions in Religion all exasperations against each others Persons and Misrepresentations of each others Doctrines may for ever cease And therefore according to the expressions us'd in the Acts of the General Assembly of the French Clergy complaining of Calumny publish'd against the Doctrine of the Church and the Faith of the Catholick Church and their seeming there to restrain that Doctrine and that Faith to the Decisions of the Council of Trent and such as are of the Nature with those printed in one Column apart I in what I have Written in my private Papers concerning the Religion of the Church of Rome have observ'd the Measures that our great Writer Mr. Chillingworth hath done in his Book forecited and where he saith Chap. 6. N. 56. I do not vnderstand by your Religion the Doctrine of Bellarmine or Baronius or any other private Man among you nor the Doctrine of the Sorbon or of the Jesuits or Dominicans or of any other particular company among you but that wherein you all agree or profess to agree the Doctrine of the Council of Trent And tho in your Explication of what you mean by Popery you seem to restrain your aversion to it as comprising only the Papal Usurpations or what is Congrous to the known Distinction of the Court of Rome and the Church of Rome and profess to follow the Measures of the late Earl of Clarendon of whom Cressy in p. 101. of his Epistle Apologetical saith that he makes the Popes Temporal power to be the Hinge upon which all other Controversies between Protestants and English Catholicks do hang and depend so entirely that if that only were taken off all the rest would quickly fall to the ground I am pleas'd with his Lordship or yours having gone so far with me in my way against Popery for if any Friend bears me Company good part of my way in any Journey I shall be pleas'd therewith tho he accompany me not to my Journeys end I am yet to tell you that in my way to Heaven I have further to go than merely so far as the leaving that Temporal Power of the Pope behind me And must freely pass the bounds of Trent but yet strictly observing the Moral Offices of not injuring or troubling or Misrepresenting or Miscalling any Man for not going my way and if I find the profess'd observers of the Doctrines of the Council of Trent seeming but tacitly to reject the Disloyal Principles propp'd up formerly by the Council of Lateran and owning expresly only the Doctrines of the Council of Trent I shall not trouble my self or them to charge them with the Odious Matter of the former Council or to Recant by Words what you say so many and so great Papists have done by Actions And if the Roman Catholicks who were suppos'd to have publishâ—d that Translated Book of the Acts of the French Clergy intended only thereby to caution us against the Misrepresenting them and the Doctrine of their Church I shall be glad if the Caution may be justly pursued by all Men. But some Criticks on that Translation have presumed to Judge their publishing the French Kings Edict of the 14 th of Iuly last for Restraining the French Protestants former Liberty of Writing and Speaking against the Doctrines of the Council of Trent or as the words there are from speaking directly or indirectly after what manner soever of the Catholick Religion was perhaps done with an ill intent by some who with an Evil Eye look'd on the Kings goodness to the Church of England I am far from Attributing the Heat or Indiscretion of particular Persons to the Body of any Religionary Party
Aristophanes whom you had said you had found Cited for that Sense of the word at the end of Cloppenburg de Sacrificiis and who Citing Aristophanes his Comedy of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aves where the Birds threaten Iupiter with a Holy War shews that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was meant Avis Seminilega and that the Athenians thought St. Paul would despoil the Altars of the Gods of the Provisions of their Offerings And in Fine you said that such various readings of that word would certainly meet in any ones being thought a Babler by those of the Religion Established if he would interlope in their Maintenance I doubt not but you have heard of the late Candidate Beyond-Sea for the Office of the Reconciler of Churches I mean the Author of TVBA PACIS ad universas Dissidentes in Occidente Ecclesias seu Discursus Theologicus de unione Ecclesiarum Romanae Protestantium nec non amicâ Compositione Controversiarum sidei inter hosce Caetus per Matheum Praetorium Memela Prussum Printed at Collen An. 1684. and which that Author Dedicates to the Emperor and to the Kings of Poland France England Denmark Sweden severally and to the Electors and other Princes of the Empire And just before he blows his Trumpet he warne thus of the two Old Pronouns that have so long troubled the World viz. Meum and Tuum and which will always continue so to do till all Men shall be of St. Francis his mind whom when a Fryar told that he came à cellâ tuâ St. Francis when he heard the word tuâ said he would Lodge no more there The Author tells us in his 10. Chapter Tentavit quidem Compositionem Vir ob studium pacis a plurimis principibus viris Longè Laudatus Georgius Cassander sed non fausto Successu Contradicentibus partim Romanis partim protestantibus and tells us there of the like Event that Marcus Antonius de Dominis and his Work for that purpose had But our Author had the Fortune to Catch a Tartar of an Objection in the last Paragraph of his Book save one viz. At dicet aliquis si unio nostrarum Ecclesiarum Cum Romanâ Ecclesiâ sieret Romanus Pontifex jus suum repeteret tot bona olim Eccliastica quae jam per pacta transacta in manus serenissimorum principum Cessere quae nunquam principes in aerarij sui damnum adimi sibi patientur And to this Objection he returneth this Answer viz. Respondetur Omninò aequum est Ius suum Cuique tribuere nec Romano Pontifici illud derogandum quod ipsi legitimè Competit Bona Ecclesiastica quae olim fuerunt nunc autem aerario principum adscripta jure gladij pactorum acquisita NON PVTAMVS Romanum Ponti ficem pro suâ quâ pollet prudentiâ repetiturum Frui Concedet ijs ad quaâ— admissi sunt possessionibus Nihil ijs vel decedere vel adimi cupiet This the good Man in his Embassy Speech to the World as its Reconciler tells us of this Pope but without shewing his Credentials either from the Pope or any one else And I believe on the account of what you have shewn of the Munster-Treaty the Princes and Electors of the Empire to whom he hath Dedicated his Book will not fear this Popes being either able or willing to give them any disturbance in their Church-Lands Nor need any of us in England more fear the Popes being able or willing to hurt our possessions of the Church-Lands We are sufficiently shewn it out of Mores Reports f. 1.282 that the Popes Bulls giving Monasteries to Wolsy with the consent of the King and the Surrender of the Priors to Wolsy would not serve the turn and that nothing but an Act of Parliament would alter the Property You have here an instance of our present Foraign Reconcilers of Churches being very poor Middle Region Men in Comparison of Cassander and Antonius de Dominis and others as our late little Reconcilers likewise have been Compared with the unfortunate ones of the Old Conjuncture The question of what will this Babler say is properly applicable to them from all Parties But one thing I cannot but here observe to you that as I was very well pleased with your Design that you Communicated to me after you had begun this long VOYAGE of your THOVGHTS as I may call it and writ the former part of your Discourse namely that because in your occasional Conversation with People of all sorts you have found that Mens Fancies were as you said Nail'd to POPERY and their Tongues Ty'd up as to any thing but POPERY and that they could not go beyond the Tedder of that in their Discourse and that POPERY's Monopolizing so much of their Discourse had been one of its VSVRPATIONS you intended to try to divert them from it and make them pass ad autres by laying before them such various Matters of Calculation relating to their own Country and many places of Christendom as might give them somewhat beside POPERY and PLOTS to think and speak of in Company So I am much better pleased with your Performance of that your Curious Enterprize and do think that your Book by containing in it so many MISCELLANEA must eo nomine prove highly useful to our English World in this Conjuncture It here occurs to me to observe to you that after an Erratum of the Press in Page 38. of your Discourse Namely where you referred to P. 325 in the Advocate of Conscience Liberty instead of Page 225 you make the last Letter of D'Ossats to be from Rome An. 1596 and I suppose you happened to do so by casting your Eye on the Old Date of the last Letter but one Printed in the Volume of his Letters in Folio of the Paris Edition An. 1625. and finding it to be An. 1596. But it came not into your Mind then to observe that the last of his Letters as they are Ranged in Order was the 199 th and in the End of Book 9 th and which was to Villeroy from Rome March the 6 th An. 1604 and in which Year he dy'd as you rightly refer to his Epitaph to shew But it seems after that last Letter in Book 9 th of the Paris Edition the Publisher saying that he had recovered some others of his Letters Prints them without respect to the Order of time and there makes the Date of the last Letter save one in the Volume to be in the Year 1596. as you have there done But however this Derogates not from the Iustice of your Animadversion in page 38. on the Roman-Catholick English Priest for making D' Ossat to have known the Gun-Powder Treason Plot to be a Sham one Eight Years before it was to be Executed For the Letter of D' Ossat that that Priest alledged to prove what I now mentioned was Dated as you justly say from Rome March 29 th An. 1596 and he never read the Letter that can find any thing of the Gun-Powder Treason in it I shall here take occasion to make my Excuse to the Reverend Divines of our Church assuring them that by adding Observations on the Writings of the Author of the Papist Misrepresented and Represented I intended not to Derogate from the Sufficiency of the Learning and Reason they have shewed in their Answers thereunto But the â—ruth is though as in our Parliaments frequently when â—ny have moved for some Additional Branch to be setâ—â—ed on the Revenue here afâ—er the Example of somewhat of the like Nature in France the Naming of France â—n the Case then for a Preâ—ident hath been observed â—o make many speak against the Vnseasonableness of the Motion who otherwise would not have done it so the writing of any thing that was contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England and after the Mode of the Bishop of Condom and the Acts of the French Clergy just at this time of Day was a thing that I could not but shew my Resentment against as very much unseasonable And moreover according to the saying that one ought not tâ— be Patient under charge of Hesie I may justifie the warmth of my Resentments against the Acts of the French Clergy charging some of ours both with Heresie and Calumny and bringing up our Whitaker and Downham there in the Van of the Calumniators under the first Article and our Raynolds under the Sixth I Remain SIR Your Affectionate Friend and Servant ANGLESEY FINIS
place perhaps a quarter of one And if it had so pleased God that your Father had lived any considerable time longer I would have humbly offered it to his Consideration to have some Passages there omitted and particularly that wherein he giveth his thoughts of somewhat in p. 70. of my Discourse and likewise those wherein his Lordship is pleased to signifie his over-valuing of my poor Sixth-rate Talents and my performance in my Work But since he lived not long enough for my having an opportunity to satisfie him with my Reasons for the leaving out any passages as I did the incomparable Mr. Boyle I presum'd not to delete any thing therein worth the speaking of But as I took great Care to watch the Press in my Publication of that Noble Work of Mr. Boyles to prevent the Printers Errata so I have in this of your Fathers The Author of the Athenae Oxonienses having among the Lives of the Oxford Writers Writ that of your Father is there pleased to mention that in the beginning of the year 1686. He began to be admitted into the Favour of King James the II. But he was admitted into his Majesties Favour before and Mr. Ryley after your Fathers Death shew'd me this in his Lordships Diary viz. On March 8.85 Spent most at home in Business and Duty i. e. Prayer In the Evening was private with the Lord Sunderland my good Friend and then was with the King a full hour at Mr. Chiffinches who was very kind free and open in Discourse Said he would not be Priest-ridden Read a Letter of the Late King said I should be welcome to him I refer to this to shew likewise on what Terms he stood in the Royal Favour and which was so great to him that his Friends supposed that had he lived a Month longer he would have been Lord Chancellour and that his zeal for his Religion suffered no Diminution thereby and which sufficiently appeared by the Picture of his mind drawn by himself in the following Discourse and to which he was then applying his finishing Touches And hence the Reader may guess that his private Belief of his Prince not designing the unsettlement of our Religion Encouraged him in his thoughts of Loyalty and in his Inculcating the Moral Offices of it so much throughout the following Discourse And indeed his Advices then about it were but Eccho's to the Pulpits of the Divines of the Church of England in general that rang with it till the time of the setting up the Ecclesiastical High Commisssion and by virtue of which they had apprehensions of their being removeable out of their Church-Freeholds in two or three days time And whereupon they had as I may say in the School-Divinity Terms the motus primo primi to think that the Affirmative precepts of Preaching up Loyalty in their Sermons as before did not bind Semper ad Semper But your Father was in his Grave before the Birth of that Commission and it was several Months after in that year 1686. before the Commissioners opened their Commission and which they did on Tuesday the 3 d. of August that year However it may be said that no Revolutions time can cause can make persuasives to Loyalty wholy useless or it cease to be a Vertue or to want the Support of any Government and which must be supported by it But your Fathers growth in his Habitual Loyalty when he was so near his End needs no Apology And according to the observation I have met with from some of our Practical Divines that God watcheth when his Child is at the best and his Graces ripest and then takes him thus was it with your Noble Father And as no thought can be more obvious to a prudent States-Man who was for a time Employed by his Prince in a Provincial Kingdom under his Vice-Roy and was preparing to return to his King and to be under his Eye than that 't is his great concern to part fairly with the Vice-Roy and not to be conscious of having Dishonoured or of having render'd him uneasie in the discharge of his Office so neither can it be unthought of by any Pious Minister of Kings who are Gods Vice-Gerents that it highly imports him after his splendid Sojourning here to have the Testimonials of a good Conscience ready to carry to Heaven with him that he here Honoured the great King of Heaven and Earth in the persons of such Vice-gerents and did not by stirring up any popular ferments trouble their Administration and frustrate their Counsels Had your Father lived to have come to the Helm of State as a primier Ministre I believe his influence would have prevented many inconveniences that happened by the Bigotry Pedantry and blind zeal of some particular papists For tho I have own'd to the World in print the excellent Tempers and Justice and prudence of some Great Roman-Catholicks then yet I have often been diverted by the impotent passion of some certain Popish Bigots who because I in my Book which I designed as perswasive against the Exclusion the growth of the popular fears of Papists and Popery and wrote in the turbid interval of the Kingdom the interval of panic Fears and when the Ayre of Mens fancies was generally infected and the Kingdom was in a Chaos-like condition thought it necessary to Demonstrate that I was a Non-Papist and not to dilate in invectives against the Belief of any popish Plot whatsoever and against all the Witnesses in particular were pleased in common talk to shoot the bolts of their Censures against me and my Works And the truth is for any writer for the aforesaid purposes to have then appeared in such a Dress as they would have had him would have shew'd as strangely as when it once happened that one being to Act Theseus in Hercules furens coming out of Hell he could not for a long time be perswaded to wear some old sooty Clothes but would needs come out of Hell in a white Sattin Doublet Your Fathers Learned Book may in various places teach such Censorious bigots common sense And his Lordship justly coming under the Character of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I may account his single acknowledgment of my performance to out-weigh Myriads of such Ignorant Censurers and be very well content with my having escaped the Scandal of their praise But here I must needs say that as I have sufficiently shewn in print the aversion of my Humour from courting the popular praise of any party as having judged that the medicament of Notions I applyed to each would be necessarily helped in the working by the ungratefulness of the Taste so by my having so long delay'd the publication of this excellent Volume of your Father I have shewn some uneasiness or backwardness in receiving the various Honour he was pleased in his short Letter prefixed and following large one to do to that Work of mine which in obedience to his Commands and for the doing him Justice I
wrote And I believe had not a Learned and Prudent Friend of mine of the Church of England told me that my being thus accessory to the publishing of your Fathers Laudatory Acknowledgments of my performance was as much consistent with the Laws of Modesty as is many grave and wise Authors prefixing Commendatory Verses or Prose-testimonials from others before their works and for which purpose he told me of Mr. Hobbes having before a philosophical and political Work of his printed some excellent verses of Dr. Bathurst and of Dr. Templer having printed some of another before his admirable Confutation of Leviathan and withal represented it to me that I was in Conscience bound to the supporting the Honour of our Church by the publishing the New Matter contained in your Fathers Book against popery and likewise to the supporting the Justice of our Compassion for the sufferings of our Brethren in France by the Bigottry of the French Clergy upon the account of their not owning the Faith of the Council of Trent your Fathers Book beyond all other Writings published so clearly shewing it out of the most Authentick Histories that that Council was never published and received in France I should have been inclined to have Transmitted this incomparable Discourse of his Lordship to have lived only in the Archives of the Oxford-Library And so chiefly by the weight of this latter Consideration I have held my self obliged to make it publick And I doubt not but all protestants and especially our Divines of the Church of England will bid it welcome to the World But My Lord I am to crave your Lordships Pardon for thus long detaining your thoughts from the Great and Noble ones of your Fathers in the following Discourse and will no longer offend therein than by Subscribing my self My Lord Your Lordships most Faithful and most Humble Servant P. Pett July 17. 1693. From my Tusculanum Totteridge Iuly 18. 1683. Sir Peter Pett I Obeyed your Commands in giving the great Sr. George Ent a taste of my villa fare I hope you seasoned it with your wonted good discourse I envy you nothing of your Happiness but that I had not a part in it for I delight in nothing more than such Company from whom I ever part the better and the wiser I acknowledge the favour in the two Sheets you sent me which were so far from satisfying me that they served but to whet my appetite to desire that you would after so long an expectation given ultimam manum ponere to that work wherein you do pingere aeternitati and from which it is pitty the publick should be with-held longer I remember after Cicero's incomparable parts and learning had advanced him in Rome to the highest Honours Offices of that famous Common wealth that by Caesars Vsurpations upon the publick there was no longer place either in the Senate or Hall of Iustice for the Romanum Eloquium he had made so much his Study and wherein he had before Caesar himself shewed how much he excelled he betook himself wholy to the common consolation of wise Men in distress the use and practice of Philosophy and therein with an industry and stile answerable to the diviness of the purpose undertook for the benefit of all Ages the most Religious and Sacred part of Philosophy the Nature of the God-Head wherein amidst a cloud of various and opposite errours and the thick darkness of a benighted ignorance he acquitted himself to admiration insomuch that I may account him as some great Authors have done the Divine Philosopher as well as Seneca And if I had reason to doubt what his opinion might be concerning a Deity or whether his works evince not the true Deity and Religion yet I am sure they tend strongly to the overthrowing the False Which the very worshippers of those ignoti Dei were so sensible of that they conspired the Destruction of this work of his insomuch that in the Reign of Dioclesian that great Bigott as I may call him of the Heathenish Idolatry and the Enemy of the Christian Religion these three Books De naturâ Deorum and his other two of Divination were publickly burnt in company with the writings of the Christians Anno Christi 302. as most famous Chronologers and others have recorded In particular Arnobius sharply tho then no Christian inveighs against the burners of these Books of Cicero in these words viz. But before all others Tully the most Eloquent of the Romans not fearing the imputation of Impiety with great Ingenuity Freedom and Exactness shews what his thoughts were and yet saith he I hear of some that are much transported against these Books of his and give out that the Senate ought to Decree the abolishing of them as bringing countenance to the Christian Religion and impairing the Authority of Antiquity rather said he if you believe you have ought certain to deliver as to your Deities convince Cicero of Error confute and explode his evil Doctrine For to destroy Writings or go about to hinder the common Reading of them is not to defend the Gods but to be afraid of the Testimony of Truth Thus far Arnobius And I could not leave Cicero and his Books in a more illustrious place than amidst those bright flames wherein the Divine writings were consumed For what greater Honour than for him to be joyned with Christ in the same cause and punishment I should not have so far advanced the pattern of Cicero in a Christian Kingdom but that we are so far degenerated from the primitive ones that Tullyes Morality if not Divinity goes beyond us When the Age is Receptive of better examples though you need them not I should willingly insinuate them to others Now if by the beginnings of Persecution in France and other parts and the dangerous Divisions and Circumstances at home we seem to be hurrying to the like sad times you may guess what makes me embrace so much a Country life as Cicero did and that from the Noise and Contrivances of a croud in the City I am retired to the sweet quiet of a Tusculanum and to converse with the dead qui non mordent and if I declare I should be glad among the Tombs of such company as you and other my good friends that perhaps in kindness to me think me wanting there you will believe me no ill chooser for my self and I hope squander away some time upon a friend You see I give a beginning to our entercourse wherein you were not wont to flinch and when you write to Bugden pray let the Learned and good Bishop know I am as much his as ever tho the whole Body of Papists seem now to be confuting his before Iudged irrefragable Book and bring in the protestants by Head and Shoulders to what he evinced were their Maxims and practice so that now Mutato nomine de nobis fabula narratur But the God of truth in the thing wherein they deal proudly and falsly will shew himself
diligenza con amore con fortuna is what I find in your page 217 and 218. For 't is there that in your great picture of His Late Majesty as an Agonist and laying the Crown of Righteousness before him eo nomine and as Contending for the Succession You have interweaved the picture of your own Loyalty and Contention for it with such bold Touches as I shall not name but refer the Reader to them which it was pitty but your Index had done with a hand in the Margent There is no doubt but the very Curiosity of the Calculations in your Discourse would have brought it into the late Kings Cabinet and to his perusal had he lived till its Publication and your great Majestick Insinuations of perswasive Arguemnt there brought apparently wâ—th a Design to fortifie his great Mind against any possible further Batteries from Members of any of the three Estates to occasion his consenting to the Exclusion must necessarily have been soon perceiv'd by so quick an Apprehension as his Majesties and could not but have made deep impressions on him for the continuance in his former purpose And I will hereupon say that if any Loyal Roman-Catholick would not on the Account of what you have said in those two pages absolve you from his severe Censuring of the warmest passages against Popery in your whole Discourse he would injure his own Judgment And the Truth is Arch-Bishop Hutton's minding Queen Elizabeth so boldly from the Pulpit though yet with a Salvo to the Rules of Modesty and Decorum of what in Justice concerned her as to K. Iames's Succession which you have mentioned and which was by her so well taken was not a harder Task to be performed than what you presented to the consideration of his Late Majesty from the Press in the Affair of his preserving the Lineal Succession of his present Majesty As it is natural to Men on the sight of any Combatants or Wrestlers whom they had never before seen to wish better to the one than the other and to have their Fancy's by the Current of Nature constantly carryed along to favour the Fortunes of this or that Contender whom yet they never saw so I have during the course of our long acquaintance observed in you on all occasions a natural and constant tenderness in your Wishes of Happiness and good Success to his present Majesty when Duke of York And had not you on grounds of Nature and so like a Philosopher expressed the same and from the Knowledg of things in particular founded your Conjectural measures of Englands future Happy State if under his Government but had only presaged well of his Reign in general one might have thought that your natural Affection and Honour for his Person might have byassed you that way as a praedicter rather than the natural knowledge of things especially considering what you have well hinted that the very praediction of things is often a Natural cause in some degree of Men's being Animated to bring them to effect And indeed I receiving many of your printed Sheets during our late Fermentation when so many Writers seemed Associated in the praediction of the worst of Events under a Popish Successor was the more pleased to find one Man that was not like a dead fish carryed down with the stream of the Times as to the point of ill boding to the publick and the strength of whose fancy mixt with his great Reason and Judgment might be able to help to turn that stream And God be thanked that by his Majesties coming to inherit the Throne of his Ancestors with almost as equal Peace and Ioy of the People as his Royal Brother was Restored to the same and for your Description of the Figure I made in which latter or to speak more properly of my Duty I discharged therein I return you my Just Acknowledgments and by his so early and voluntary Gracious Declaration of his defending the C. of E. and the Civil Government as by Law Established and so publickly owning the Loyalty of the Principles of that Church and by his continuance of the prosperity of that Church and the Peace and Prosperity of the Kingdom while the whole Creation as I may say groans under the pressure of some of our Protestant Brethren abroad you have hitherto appeared so much a True Praedicter as you have I am likewise glad hereby that another Learned Person of our Church I mean Dr. Thomas Sprat the Lord Bishop of Rochester taking his view of the Future State of England in his History of the Royal Society and there saying as you have Cited it that we may safely conclude that what ever vicissitude shall happen about Religion in our time it will probably be neither to the advantage of implicit Faith nor of Enthusiasm has hitherto appear'd so fortunate in that praediction God be thanked that such as in the late Conjuncture troubled us with the being Lachrymists in another and the imagin'd nubecula est c. as to persecution have had some cause to be ashamed of their Fears And that you have hitherto had no more cause to be ashamed of praedicting Englands future pacifick State though yet we have had a * Monmouths Rebellion since But as to that it may be properly said that that persecution against the Throne nubecula fuit transivit We have had presently after the Kings coming to the Throne a little Cloud of Calumny cast on the Reputations of four of the most Eminent Divines of our Metropolis by some of their fellow Subiects supposed Roman Catholicks but it soon passed off And God brought forth their Righteousness as the Light and their Iudgment as the Noon-Day And the thing scarce deserves to be remembred that after they had thus misrepresented four such Protestant Divines with so much falshood some others of those published a Book called The Papist Misrepresented and Represented and which is lately answer'd with that Candour and Strength of Reason that ought to be in Theological Writings and wherein as the Lord Falkeland who was then Secretary was wont to say it was as absurd to mingle angry reviling expressions as to do so in a Love-Letter There was a despicable Childish Pamphlet and Writ with too much petulant insolence called An Address from the Church of England to both Houses of Parliament and which was by many of the Fathers of that Church held not worth the taking notice of And because it is very Ridiculous for any now to think to Re-Baptize the present Church of England with the Name of ROMAN Catholick I have here thought fit in pursuance of what you mentioned in p. 70. to let you and others have a Copy of the Rescript or Iudgment of the Vniversity of Oxford to Henry the 8 th whereby the Bishop of Rome was pronounced to have no more power here by the Word of God than any other Foreign Bishop I Judge that that Old Book of Dr. Iames's you refer to is
to have as much power by the Word of God here as any other Foraign Bishop and 't is pity but that the Iudgment of our Vniversities were shewn the World in Print and sent to the French King and particularly the Iudgment or Rescript of the Vniversity of Oxford as not being any where in Print as I know of But in an Old Book of Dr. James's against Popery But as to your thought of having that Rescript of the Vniversity of Oxford sent to the French King I for my part am disinclined to it The printing of it here may probably bring it to the notice of his Ministers and so perhaps to his I have heard how the French Embassador not long ago applyed to a Learned Friend of ours of the long Robe and of the Church of England and one who is a great Antiquary and desired him to furnish him with Copies of Records not printed in Dr. Burnets Works that related to Henry 8 th's withstanding the Papal Usurpation and no doubt but the Copy of this Oxford Rescript would have been as welcom to him and as necessary to Compleat his Collection as any could have been and the publication of it may perhaps be of use in some places of the Roman Catholick World abroad But I fear that the present French King will never without some strange unexpected provocation received from the Papacy advance so far towards the confines of Reformation as Henry 8 th did I know it was but Congruous to Worldly Politicks however contrary to Justice for French Kings formerly to use very high Severities to their Protestant Subjects in the Conjunctures of their quarrelling with the Pope and this you well observe in p. 329. out of the Book called the Policy of the Clergy of France Namely that the French Kings never made any Assaults on the Papal Power but what cost their Protestant Subjects very dear And of the like Nature were the Political Measures of Henry the 8 th here who at the same time burn'd his Protestant Subjects for what he called Heresy that he hang'd some of his Popish ones for what he called Treason in abetting the Papal Supremacy I know we should not presume to limit the most Holy God as to what Instruments he shall or shall not use in the Melioration of the Affairs of Church or State But the French King is one I never think of without Horror Nor do I entertain any idea of Gods making any right Lines in the World by so crooked an Instrument If David must not be allowed by the Course of Providence to build the Temple because his Administration of the Government had been so much dipp'd in Blood what good to Religion can we presage from such a Monarch as has made all Christendom almost one great Aceldama The great God will I believe take his time to make this Monarch share in the usual fate of Persecutors how prosperous soever he may be at present according to what is commonly observed out of the Heathen Moralist That the Divine Wheels are grinding and will grind to powder though they are slow in Motion Nor did God think fit to use our Henry 8 th as an Instrument to contribute towards the building his House here further than by removing the Rubbish of the Papal Vsurpations and by so Signally Acting therein by compassing the Popes power to be here reduced to the level of that of every other Foraign Bishop This was a Momentous thing and worthy the Sagacity and Politicks of King Henry and his Ministers and it must however be for his Honour acknowledged in our English Story The truth is that it having been so Customary for the Bishops of Rome when they met with a weak King here or one whose Affairs were Embarrassed to interlope in their Temporal Concerns and to presume to dispose of their Crowns and Regalities it was but Natural for such a Magnanimous Monarch as Henry the 8 th was to Stake down the Popes Spiritual power to that short tedder he did out of the Scriptures and to allow it to go no further there than any other Foraign Bishop's And thus I for my part would never prefer any Divine to be my Spiritual Pastor who claimed my Temporal Estate And as I think no Lords of Mannors who had the right of Advowson would present any one to a Living in their gift who without Sense or Reason did set up a title to the Mannor But the very thought of waters not rising higher than their Springs might well serve to mind Henry 8 th and some of our former Roman Catholick Princes that the Power of the Bishop of Rome in Temporals however Claimed by Popes was not allowed to rise higher than St. Peter's nor St. Peter's higher than his who said his Kingdom was not of this World and that St. Peter's Successor is not like Tamberlain to tread on the Heads of Christians nor like Alexander the Third to Tread on the Neck of an Emperor and Burlesquing one of King Davids Psalms Super aspidem basiliscum ambulabis conculcabis lâ—onem Draconem when it may be said that the Holy Iesus did tread so gently in his passage through the World that if he had trod on a bruised Reed he would not have broke it or if on smoking Flax he would not have quenched it A Man cannot throughly Write of the Old Papal Usurpations here without being as voluminous as Mr. Prynne and our Statute-Book doth sufficiently instruct us out of Hen. 8 th's Reign and former ones in the Fact of the Papal Arrogance and in the Fact and Right of their being withstood But I need not tell you of the common Observation that those Statutes in Henry 8 th's time that were most warm against the Papal Usurpations were but Declarative of our old Laws and Customs and as for example the dernier Ressort that the Cannon Law gives the Pope of Appeals from our Ecclesiastical Courts was an Usurpation long before the Statute of Henry the 8 th's time for prohibiting all Appeals out of England to the Court of Rome And thus the Constitutions at Clarendon plainly speak out how our Old Laws and Customs were to be observed in this point viz. That all Appeals must proceed regularly from the Arch Deacon to the Bishop from the Bishop to the Arch-Bishop and if the Arch-Bishop failed to do Justice the last Complaint must be to the King to give Order for Redress i e. by proper delegates and Mathew Paris A. 1164. thus tells us that in the Reign of Henry the Second the Custom then about Appeals was viz. Si emerserint ab Archidiacono debet procedi ad Episcopum ab Episcopo ad Archiepiscopum si Archiepiscopus defuerit in justitiâ exhibendâ ad Dominum Regem perveniendum est postremo ipsius in Curiâ Archiepiscopi controversia terminetur ita quod non debet ultrà procedi absque assensu Domini Regis But as to the Ridiculousness of the Papal Usurpations by the
Canon Law giving the Pope a power to receive Appeals from the Dominions of Soveraign Princes and States Mastertius in his Book de justitiâ Legum Romanarum in the Summaries of his 20 th Chapter sets it down That 1. Ridetur Pontifex ab ipsâ Romanâ Curiâ 2. Credentes Constitutioni Pontificis a Regibus liberisque populis laesae Majestatis damnantur 3. Iterum dissentit a Pontifice Romana Curia 4. Mira pontificis caecitas notatur 5. Intellectus L. à proconsulibus 19. Cod de appellat 6. Ius Canonicum malè damnat in expensas tantum appellantem perperam Under which he saith Infelix fuit Romanus Praesul in Cap. 7. Cap. de priore 31. Cap. Ad audientiam 34. Cap. dilecti 52. Ext. de appellat quibus constituit adversus L. Imper. in princip D. de appellat licere pulsatae parti relictis medijs pontificalem cognitionem invocare nam ipsa Romana Curia id Iuris tanquam omnem bonum ordinem invertens ex merâ dissentiendi libidine promanans explosit neque procedit Canonistarum glossema quo videtur id constituisse pontifex ob specialem suae sedis praerogativam quâ fidelium omnium competens est Iudex Cap. si duobus 7. ibi D. D. ext de appellat Concil Trident. sess 24. Cap. 20. de reformat Nam cum id falsum sit totius Christiani Orbis Reges liberique populi laesae Majestatis reos agunt qui vel immediatè vel ab ipsorum sententiâ ad pontificem praesumunt appellare Eodem candore defert appellationi rei minimae iterum reluctante Romanâ Curiâ requirente ut litis aestimatio sit ut minimum coronatorum decem Praesec in praxi Episcop p. 2. Cap. 4. Art 15. N. 8. Mechlinensi 50. Flor. D. Zypaeus de Iure Pontif. novo tit de appellat N. 8. Mihi videtur quod pontifex de industria se voluerit risui propinare nam hic defert appellationi rei minimae suprà relictis mediis implorationi Pontificialis auditorij evocando Belgam aut Anglum in Causâ aliquorum obolorum ad urbem Romanam experiundi sui Iuris gratiâ But there is another use we may now well make of the publication of this Rescript of the Vniversity of Oxon and that is to observe how awkwardly and unseasonably the Author of The Papist Misrepresented and Represented hath thought fit to Represent the Pope as now deducing a Claim to a Higher Power here by the Word of God than what our Roman-Catholick Universities allowed him in Henry the 8 th's time For in his 18 th Chapter he tells us That the Papist believes that there is a Pastor Governor and Head of Christs Church under Christ to wit the Pope or Bishop of Rome who is the Successor of St. Peter to whom Christ committed the Care of his Flock c. and now believing the Pope to enjoy his Dignity he looks on himself obliged to shew him the Respect Submission and Obedience which is due to his place And afterward in this manner is he ready to behave himself towards his CHIEF PASTOR with all Reverence and Submission never scrupling to receive his Decrees and Definitions such as are issued forth by his Authority with all their due Circumstances and according to Law in the concern of the whole Flock His Answerer doth well reply to him in that point and with a Candour suitable to the Pacifick State of the Realm you have predicted under any Prince of the Roman-Catholick Communion say viz. How doth it appear that Christ ever made St. Peter Head of the Church or committed his Flock to him in contradistinction to the Rest of the Apostles This is so far from being evident by Scripture that the Learned Men of their Church are ashamed of the places commonly produced for it c. And afterward saith ' We need not insist on the Proof of this since the late mentioned Authors of the Roman Communion have taken so great pains not only to prove the Popes Supremacy to be an Encroachment and Usurpation in the Church but that the laying it aside is necessary to the Peace and Unity of it And until the Divine Institution of the Papal Supremacy be proved it is to no purpose to debate what manner of Assistance is promised to the Pope in his Decrees It was I think an undertaking that none but a very Sanguine Man could suppose fesable to engage us to believe in this Age that the Pope was by Divine Right Head of our Church under Christ. I say in this Age so generally Learned and when a Layman furnished but with an ordinary Library can shew that the Churches of the Brittish Islands England Scotland and Ireland as my Lord Primate Bramhal shews in Chap. 5. of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England by the Constitution of the Apostles and by the Solemn Sentence of the Catholick Church are exempted from all Foreign Iurisdiction and that if it be objected that the Bishop of Rome was ever our Patriarch that all Patriarchal Jurisdiction is of Human Institution and by the Statute of 35 C. 1. it was declared that the Holy Church of England was founded in the State of PRELACY not of Papacy within the Realm of Eng. not without it by the Kings and Peers thereof not by the Popes and when in the time of our late Civil Wars the Presbyterian and Independent Divines had by their Claims of Ius Divinum for their Models of Church-Government so much exercised the understanding of the People in general that at the time of his late Majesties Restoration restoring to our Church the best Constituted Government in the World many of our Virtuosi and Latitudinarians could not be brought expresly to own its excellence on an Universal Ius Divinum praeceptivum and would say that in any Church Government that by Divine Right would bind all Churches there must be not only praxis but institutio apostolica The Pryers into the Rabbinical Learning of the Iews have not been forced more to observe their Criticising on the Divinity of the Fire which burn'd the Sacrifices on the Brazen Altar as coming from Heaven both when the Tabernacle was erected and when the Temple was built and making the fire in the first Temple to be Divino-Divinus altogether Holy and the fire in the second Temple to be Divino-Humanus Human Holy as being kindled as our fire though still kept in as the fire of the first Temple was and the third fire that Nadab and Abihu offered to be Humanus and likewise called by them alienus as strange fire then the Readers of the late Controvertists of the Ius Divinum of several Forms of Church-Government among us have been forced to take notice of their nicety in distinguishing it And now after the Bishop of Rome had before Henry the 8 th's time made the figure of the fire Divino Humanus and whose Authority was then Extinguished for so the Style runs of the Act of
Parliament I mentioned of 28 of H. 8 th viz. An Act for Extinguishing the Authority of the Bishop of Rome and as to whose Authority we are told by More 463. that all the power of the Pope was not by the 25 of H. 8th given to the King but was extinct in Holy wells Case for any Writers without the Heat and Light of much clear Learned Argumentation to rekindle that extinguished ignis alienus a strange fire of Foreign power in our Beliefs will I may modestly say be a strange Attempt and not to be Effected by any Rhetorical Representer But here I cannot forbear observing that the Author of the Papist Misrepresented c. doth in his Reflections upon the Answer to his Book in p. 13. refering to Dr. Hickes his Iovian call him a Worthy Divine and Cite him for saying that in Case a Popish Julian indeed should Reign over us he should believe him uncapable of Repentance and upon that Supposition should be tempted to pray for his Destruction and then in seeming Charity to the Church of England deny that because the Doctor used those Words it is honest hence to blacken the Church of England with this Disloyal Principle as if she allowed her Members though not to fight against yet to pray for the Destruction of such a Prince The Doctor whose great Learning and Pains taken in doing right to the Succession you have so particularly Represented in your Preface and whereupon if we reflect on the little or nothing ex professo writ by any Romanists against the Exclusion it will be no Complement to â—ay that he hath therein laboured more abundantly than THEY all might if it had pleased this Representer have been deservedly referred to by him with a higher Character And if in any expressions warmer than ordinary against the principles of Popery he had erred by any little Transports in any of his Books he sufficiently Merited from any Roman Catholick Criticks their mildest Representation of them And it had been but Justice in the Representer to have Cited the former part of the Doctors Sentence viz. and if it should please God to plague the Church with such a Spightful Enemy of Christ c. And if he had done so it would have invited the Reader to look back to what the Doctor had written from the 140 th page to the passage which he Cites and then his Reflection would have come to nothing By what I have heard of the Doctors Loyalty I believe him to be one who with Effectual Fervent Prayers doth Importune Heaven for his Majesties long and prosperous Reign and doth his Duty of praising God for his Majesties being so far a Nursing Father to the Church of England And I have that opinion of the largeness of his Christian Charity and Justice that he is ready to retaliate with the Representer in not blackning the whole Church of Rome with the principles lately held by some Iesuits and others Casuists referred to in the Popes Decree of March 2 d. 1679. in § 13 14 15. by the 1 st of which it is rendred no Mortal Sin to be troubled for the Life of another so it be done with due Moderaton and by the second it is made Lawful to desire the Death of ones Father by an absolute desire and by the 3 d. Lawful for a Son to rejoyce at the same and perpetrated by a Son in Drunkenness I suppose you could not but take notice how that Answerer of the Papist Mis-represented c. reflects on the unlucky instance there in Caiaphas and saying was not Caiaphas himself the Man who proposed the taking away the Life of Christ at that time was he assisted in that Councel Did not he determine afterward Christ to be guilty of Blasphemy and therefore worthy of Death For you have well observed the ill Luck that the Famous Hosius as he is called by you had in this case of Caiaphas as to which Dr. Crackanthorp exclaims against Hosius O Hominem Sacrilegum ac Blasphemum Illene reus Mortis qui innocens innoxius vitam dedit An Blasphemus etiam Ea judicij pars You may in Bishop Iewels Apology find this blot of Hosius hit where speaking of the Pope p. 151 152. of the London Edition in the â—ear 1581. he saith Petrus quidem á Soto ejus astipulator HOSIVS nihil dubitant affirmare concilium illud ipsum in quo Christus Iesus adjudicatus est morti habuisse spiritum propheticum spiritum sanctum spiritum veritatis Nec falsum aut vanum fuisse quod Episcopi illi dixerunt Nos habemus Legem secundum legem debet mori illos judicasse Sic enim scribit HOSIVS judicij veritatem omninóque justum fuisse illud decretum quo ab illis pronuciatum est Christum dignum esse qui moreretur Mirum verò est non posse istos pro se dicere propugnare causam suam nisi uná etiam Annae Cajaphaeque pratrocinentur Nam qui illud ipsum concilium in quo filius Dei ad crucem ignominiosissime condemnatus est legitimum dicent fuisse ac probum quod tandem illi concilium decernent esse vitiosum Tamen qualia sunt istorum concilia ferè omnia necesse illis fuit ut ista de Cajaphae Annaeque concilio pronunciarent c. He there had Cited in the Margin Hosius contra Brentium lib. 2. But if so great a Divine as Hosius who was a Polonian Bishop and Cardinal of Rome and one of the Popes Legates in the Councel of Trent did thus err in this point the mistake of an other therein who was of an inferior Character is not to be much wondered at However as I am an Honourer of Learned Men I Derogate not from the Talents of Wit and Learning shewn in his Book and do suppose that somewhat of the Moderation he shews therein may be attributed to the Candour of that Church he was first Educated in And am sorry that he should find any Cause in his Papist Misrepresented Chapter 31. Of wicked Principles and Practices to say take but a view of the Horrid practices She i. e. the Church of Rome hath been engaged in of late years consider the French and Irish Massacres the Murder of Hen. the 3 d. and 4 th Kings of France the Holy League the Gunpowder Treason the Cruelty of Queen Mary the Firing of London the late Plot in the year 1678. to Subvert the Government and destroy his Majesty the Death of Sir Edmund Godfrey c. And then tell me whether that Church which hath been the Author and Promoter of such Barbarous Designs ought to be esteemed Holy c. and let never so many pretences be made yet 't is evident that all these Execrable practices have been done according to the known Principles of this Holy Church and that her greatest Patrons the most Learned of her Divines her most Eminent Bishops her Prelates Cardinals and even the Popes themselves have been
something under-board and from thinking there MAY BE something they will think it is very LIKELY there is something and from LIKELY THERE IS they will conclude THERE IS surely there is some PLOT working hath still since inclined me to be cautious how in my most private thoughts I charged any Men and especially any great Bodies of Men with PLOTS And I think the Author of the Papist Mis-represented c. will find enough Protestants as ready as you and my self to avoid troubling them with the Witnesses Plot. But since the Author hath in this case thought fit to invite us to a view of the Principles APPROVED and Conform to the Religion taught by his Church I shall reflecting on the Principles approved by so many in that Church tell him I cannot but Judge them short of that unconditional Loyalty you have so clearly asserted in your Discussion and shall judge as the L. Falkland the Secretary did in the Letter to Mr. Mountague I before referred to where his Lordship on Mr. Mountagues making POPERY the way to Obedience having had these words viz. I cannot but say that though no Tenet of their whole Church which I know makes at all against it yet there are prevailing opinions of that side which are not fit to make good Subjects when their Kings and they are of different perswasions and having quoted D' Ossat for saying that it is the Spaniards Maxim that Faith is not to be kept with Hereticks and more that the Pope intimated as much in a Discourse intended to perswade the King of France to forsake the Queen of England and that they hold at Rome that the Pope to avoid a probable Danger of the encreasing of Heresy may take away a Territory from the true owner and dispose of it to another and many also defend that he hath power to Depose an Heretical Prince and of Heresy he makes himself the Judge His Lordship with a profound Charity and Iudgment thus goeth on viz. So that though I had rather my Tongue should cleave to the Roof of my Mouth than that I should deny that a Papist may be a good Subject even to a King whom he accounts an Heretick since I verily believe that I my self know very many very good Yet Popery is like to an ill Air wherein though many keep their Healths yet many are Infected so that at most they are good Subjects but during the Popes pleasure and the rest are in more danger than if they were out of it Moreover as to the firing of London which the Author referreth to in his Papist Misrepresented as well as the Death of Godfrey I was always as careful as you were to charge no more Papists with the Odium of it than such as the Justice of the Nation Criminated therewith Moreover if any one will have it that Hubert and Peidelow were not Papstis I shall not account it tanti to contend with him about it and as you told me lately that you would not I remember when we were long since Discoursing of that fire you shewed me a Book of Vigelius a Civilian who treating de praesumptionibus quaestionum facti laid it down as a particular Rule viz. Si de causâ incendij quaeritur culpâ inhabitantium praesumitur factum and saith quae regula approbatur l. 3. § 31. ff de officio praefecti vigilum ubi Paulus plerumque inquit incendia fiunt culpâ inhabitantium Moreover you once shew'd me it represented as a Rule in Magerus his Advocatia armata that damnum quod ignoratur à quo provenerit ab inimico illatum esse praesumitur which doth partly agree with the presumption of the causer of the damage mentioned in the parable of the tares an enemy hath done this And you have with Candour in the Papists behalf in p. 180. to shew that the Pope was not the inimicus Homo helped them to the Testimony of an adversary I mean of Marvil in his growth of Popery You have likewise done Iustice to the Papists in p. 181. Exploding the great popular Argument of London being designedly fired by many Popish Persons because of the flames breaking out at once in several places distant from one another An Argument that the Author of Pyrotechnica-Loyolana printed in London in the year 1667. doth in p. 130. lay great stress on and saith that as at Cracow in Poland which he had before accused the Iesuits for having fired the flames did break out there in several places of the City at the Tops of Houses so here the fire did break first out at the Tops of several Houses which were every way at a considerable distance from the contiguous burning in the main Body c. And therefore on the Account of the thing you mentioned and which is obvious enough in Nature a fire first caused in London or Cracow culpâ inhabitantium might afterward appear breaking out in several distant places thereof And I have several times told you how I was in the behalf of the Roman Catholicks troubled at the Votes of the House of Commons that threw the Guilt of the fire of London on the Papists in general and likewise at what was spoke by an Eminent Son of our Church and Minister of his late Majesties that at the Condemnation of the Lord Stafford in effect did so for there as you have truly said in p. 179. the Evidence did not rise High and Clear enough for the charging any Papist with it Nor need I now tell you that I was in the year 79 sorry to find that a Pamphlet against Popery that charged the Papists in general with the Fire of London and with that particularly of the Temple caused by a Non-Papist Debauchè who was burn'd in it was then Licenced by a very Loyal and Learned Licenser But since our Roman-Catholick Author in his Papist Misrepresented doth partly found the Mis-representation on these execrable practices having been done according to the known Principles of the Church of Rome I shall take this occasion he hath given me to offer it to him to consider how far any known principle founded on the Papal Usurpations and approved either BY or IN that Church might have Legitimated a practice of the like Nature As for Example the Firing of the Heretical Villages at the Massacre of Merindol affirm'd by Heylin and Maimbourg and the designed one of the City of Westminster in the Gunpowder-Treason And shall leave it to the ingenious Author to Recollect whether any Divines or Divine of the Church of England he withdrew from and much more whither any of its Canons approved any princiciple of that extravagant Nature Whatever Impressions it may make on his Thoughts or those of the Gentleman you refer to in p. 173. and there mention with Honour and as one though having forsaken the Communion of the Church of England yet being a Pious and Learned Roman Catholick and of a nice tenderness of Conscience and a lover of Truth as such
and whose Inquisitiveness in Religion is not at its Journeys end in Rome and whom you have found inclined to return to the Church of England if the Tenent I shewed you discussed by Gundissalvus and asserted in the gloss and Text of the Canon Law can be charged on the Church of Rome as approved by it I know not but shall here send you a Transcript of the same and shall first observe that the sedes materiae for this Tenet that a whole City may be burned with fire if the Major part thereof were Hereticks is in the Body of the Canon Law namely in the Text of the Decrets it self Can. si audieris 23 Caus. Q. 5. And if any one will consult the Body of the Canon Law with the gloss and Case of the Edition at Turin in the year 1620 he will find it there as followeth SI AVDIERIS CASVS Cyprianus fuit interrogatus an mali post adventum Domini in hunc mundum morte sint puniendi Et certe respondet quod sic quia si ante adventum Christi hoc fuit ut probabitur autoritate Deuteronomij exemplo Matathiae Multo fortius post adventum Christi hoc fieri debet Autoritas durat a principio usque ibi cujus praecepti Postea sunt verba Cypriani SI AUDIERIS Haec verba sumpta sunt de Deuterono usque ad illum locum hujus praecepti Necabis Tu quicunque sis Et sic quandoque ille qui non est judex potest punire malesicos c. OMNES QUI si Ergo aliqui haeretici sunt in una civitate tota civitas possit exuri sic ecclesia vel civitas punitur pro delicto personarum ut 25. q. 2. ita nos c. NVNC id est in futurum c. CVIVS haec suntverba Cypriani MATATHIAS ut legitur in libro Machabeorum Item Cyprianus lib. de exhortatione Martyrij cap 5. Principes saeculi pessimis parcere non debent 34. § Si audieris in unâ ex civitatibus quas dominus deus tuus dabit tibi inhabitare illic dicentes eamus serviamus dijs alijs quos non novisti interficiens necabis omnes qui sunt in civitate caede gladij Et incendes civitatem igni erit sine habitaculo in aeternum non reaedificabitur etiam nunc ut avertatur dominus ab indignatione irae suae dabit misericordiam tibi miseribitur tui multiplicabit te si exaudieris vâ—cem dom dei tui observaveris praecepta ejus Cujus praecepti rigoris memor Matathias inteâ—fecit eum qui ad aram sacrificaturus accesserat Quod si ante adventum Christi circa deum colendum idola spernenda haec praecepta servata sunt quanto magis post adventum Christi servanda sunt quando ille veniens non tantum verbis nos hortatus est sed factis To this place in the Canon Law Gundissalrus refers in his Discourse against Heretical Pravity and which I shewed you in my Study among the Tractatus Criminales published by Franciscus Maria Passerus at Venice in the year 1556. and where in p. 158. he hath discussed the Tenet at large and ex professo 'T is among those Criminal Tractates called Tractatus contra haereticam pravitatem per Gundissalrum de villa diego Sacri Palatij Apostolici Auditorem char 158. and where it follows thus viz. Summarium 1. Civitas in qua aliqui insunt Haeretici an tota possit igne exuri aut alias destrui latissimè usque ad questionis finem 2. Civitas quando dicatur Haeresim committere ut universe destrui possit 3. Vniversitate punitâ de Haeresi an singuli quoque puniti videantur ita ut amplius puniri non possint Questio 24. Vigesimo quartò quaeâ—o an si aliqui Haeretici sunt in unâ civitate possit tota civitas exuri sive alias destrui glo in c. Si audieris 23. q. 5. arguit quod sic per illum tex videntur ibi velle Ioan. Laur. quod quilibet possit hoc facere sed in Contrarium inducitur ea q. si non licet ver quasdam versi his igitur q. 4. ver non ergo q. â—ult quodcunque quod no. 33. q 1. inter haec in 1. glo Archi. in c. praesidentes de haere l. 6. dicit quod Ecclesia concedit generalem authoritatem exterminandi haereticos 23. q. v. si vos c. Si audieris Quae non tantum diriguntur principibus Et facit eadem causa q. legi de haeretici communicamus § Catholici ubi etiam ad eos exterminandos conceditur cruce signat indulgentia ultra-marina tamen occifio spoliatio talium tutum est quod fiat ex edicto principis aut Ecclesiae c. cum secundum leges eo titu lib. 6. ne ex cupiditate vel ultione potius quam ex justitia vel obedientia pugnare videantur 23. q. 1. quid culpatur q. 11. c. 1. q. 111. Sex differentiae quod etiam tenuit in summa eo titu versic Sed nunquid Goffre in summa eo titu § sed nunquid Catholici Hostien in summa eo titu qualiter evitentur vers sed nunquid Catholici idem sequitur Joan. And in novel in d. c. praesidentes domi qui subjungit oportere necessario praecedere judicis declarationem super crimine haeresis ad hoc ut ista executio fieret per d. c. cum secundum leges Sed ista videntur mihi cum supportatione nimis crudè indigeste dicta in tantâ questione ubi de tantorum periculo agitur praesertim ubi innocentes pro nocentibus puniiuntur gravius profundius scribendum calamus magis temperandus fuisset quapropter ego dicerem quod etiam si aliqui de civitate sint Haeretici dummodo civitas ipsa haeresim non incurrerit adeo quod delictum istud universitati civitatis ascribi possit non propterea civitas possit uxuri aut alias destrui Nullo enim jure hoc reperitur cautum omnia jura clamant in contrarium scilicet quod peccata suos debent tenere Authores C. de pae sancimus de his quae fiunt a Majori parte c. quaesivit Ad jura quae in contrarium inducuntur stat responsio ad C. si audieris per quod glo praefata se fundat dici potest multipliciter Primo quod illud erat praeceptum legis veteris judiciale ut patet clare nam habetur originaliter Deutero 13. talia in lege novâ cessaverunt nisi de novo fuissent instituta nec legitur nova institutio Nam Cyprianus cui inscribitur ille tex in decretis non habuit facultatem jura generalia concedenai cum non fuerit Ro. Ponti eo Maxime ubi de incendio morte inferendis disponitur ut patet in illo tex quae paenae ab ecclesiâ non
Quotation out of Cyprian with these words viz. Si ante adventum Christi haec praecepta servata sunt quanto magis post adventum servanda sunt quando ille veniens non verbis tantum nos hortatus est sed factis By which words he would prove that our Lord did both by Words and Deeds exhort us to Kill Hereticks Whereas there is not one word in Cyprian or the Texts of Scripture he Cites which any way concerns Hereticks or Heresie but only Idolaters and Idolatry which are things of a far different Nature And had Gratian considered what immediately follows there in Cyprian and which he there unluckily leaves out he might have clearly seen that Cyprian neither said nor meant that the Meek and the Holy Iesus did by Deeds or Words Exhort Men to kill Hereticks But that which Cyprian truly saith our Blessed Saviour did by Deeds and Words Exhort us to was that Christians should patiently suffer and by no means renounce the Gospel by serving Idols and by Idolatry For as to those words with which Gratian ends his Canon viz Christus veniens non verbis tantum nos hortatus est sed factis there should have been only a Comma after factis though Gratian makes a full point as if it concluded the Sentence It immediately follows in Cyprian thus viz. Non verbis tantum nos hortatus sit sed factis post omnes Injurias contumelias passus Crucifixus ut nos pati mori exemplo suo doceret ut nulla sit homini excusatio pro se pro Christo non patienti Cum ille passus sit pro nobis c. In short that which Cyprian saith Christ taught us with Words and Deeds was not that we should Kill Hereticks as Gratian would have it but that we should willingly suffer Death for the Gospel rather than be Idolaters We know that in the case of the Samaritans who were both Hereticks and Idolaters when Iames and Iohn would have had fire from Heaven to Consume them our Blessed Saviour Rebuked them and said that the Son of Man was not come to destroy Mens Lives but to save them Because I love to make no breach among Christians wider and because in p. 260. you have in general mentioned Gratian's Misciting of Cyprian and in p. 261. shewed that Gratian's founding a Tenet on Cyprian or any places out of other Authors giveth it only the weight that Cyprian and they had in their proper Works c. I have here thought it worth while to shew that Papists are under no Moral Obligation by this Canon Si audieris and do believe that the more Sagacious Persons of the Church of Rome do as is said in Pere verons Book you in the page last cited refer to make Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claime nothing of Faith and so even in the country 's of the Pope where the Canon Law is in force this part of the Decrees so wilfully mistaken by Gratian out of Cyprian can bind none in Conscience And therefore as to what you mention of the Roman Catholick Gentlemans observing that the Council of Trent had gone far in the Confirmation of the Canon Law c. I account you have said enough to Answer that Objection For though the Council of Trent hath it in the 25 th Session C. 20. De Reformatione p 623 624. of the Edition at Antwerp in the year 1033 that Praecipit sancta synodus sacros canones concilia generalia omnia necnon alias Apostolicas sanctiones in favorem Ecclesiasticarum personarum libertatis Ecclesiasticae contra ejus violatores editas quae omnia praesenti decreto innovat exactè ab omnibus observari debere tho' other expressions in that Council may seem to confirm some parts of the Canon Law they cannot I think Rationally be extended to confirm any thing therein that was void ab initio and so not obligatory and as this Canon Si audieris appears not to be by Gratians falsification as to Cyprian But how far a Tenet or Principle of this Nature branded by no Index expurgatorius is yet chargeable on the Papacy as approved by it I leave to consideration and do think it great pitty that when a Pope could find leisure by a Bull that I find King Iames the I. mentions in his Works as beginning with Exurge Deus to Damn among other sayings that of Luther Nova vita est optima paenitentia he did not find time to censure this thing in his Canon Law I thank God that I am Embarqued in a Church whose Articles and Canons contain nothing inserted in them by any Falsarius and by which nothing is approved or imposed on me to own contrary to the Liberty purchased for me by my Redeemer You have in p. 71. cited a late Author of the Communion of this Church for saying that Image-Worship invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be Learnedly and Voluminously defended on each side to the Worlds End and perhaps in the World abroad it will be so But I agree with you in believing that the Present State of England doth and probable future one of it will here render Voluminous Writings of all Theological Controversies out of Fashion Your p. 170. contains in it one Theological consideration of more value in my Opinion than many Tomes of Controversy viz. that Papists as well as others of Mankind have a right and title to the free and undisturbed Worshipping of God and the confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the Blood of Christ And the very consideration of the Duty incumbent on all Christians to stand fast in this Liberty so dearly purchased for them would if I were in the External Communion of the Roman Catholick Church prevail with me to leave it though there were perhaps no other Argument in the case I have here our great Dr. Iackson on my side in thus Judging in his Treatise of the Church 14th Chapter where having given two Reasons as just and necessary for which Men may and ought to separate themselves from any visible Church and named this as the first Namely when they are urged and constrained to profess or believe some points of Doctrine or to adventure upon some practices which are contrary to the Rule of Faith or Love of God he mentions this as the Second viz. In case they are utterly deprived of Freedom of Conscience in professing what they inwardly believe c. for which he quotes 1 Cor. 7.23 ye are bought with a price be not ye Servants of Men. Although saith he we were perswaded that we could communicate with such a Church without evident danger of Damnation yet in as much as we cannot Communicate with it upon any better Terms than Legal Servants or Bondslaves do with their Masters we are bound in Conscience and Religious Discretion when lawful occasions and opportunities are offered to use our liberty and to seek our Freedom rather than to
having in p. 284. of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England spoke of the Trent Council saith We have seen heretofore how the French Embassador in the Name of the King and Church of France protested against it and until this day though they do not oppose it but acquiesce to avoid such disadvantages as must ensue thereupon yet they never did admit it Let no Man say that they rejected the Determinations thereof only in point of Discipline not of Doctrine For the same Canonical Obedience is equally due to an acknowledged General Council in point of Discipline as in point of Doctrine Monsieur Iurieu in his Historical Reflections on Councils and particularly on that of Trent which were Translated into English and Printed in the year 1684. Saith that the French Kings their Parliaments and Bishops dislike several things in the Decrees of the Council of Trent and mentions as the Reasons why the Council of Trent is not received in France these following 1. That the Council hath done and suffered many things that suppose and confirm a Superiority of the Pope over Councils 2. It hath confirmed the Papal encroachments upon ordinary's by exemption of Chapters and priviledges of Regulars who are both withdrawn from Episcopal Jurisdiction 3. That it hath not restored to the Bishops certain Functions appertaining to their Office and taken from them otherwise than to execute them as delegates of the See of Rome 4. That it hath infringed the priviledges of Bishops of being Judged by their Metrapolitan and Bishops of Provinces by permitting a removal of great Causes to Rome and giving Power to the Pope to Name Commissioners to Judge the Accused Bishop 5. That it hath declared that neither Princes Magistrates nor People are to be consulted in Setling and placing of Bishops 6. That it hath Empowered Bishops to proceed in their Jurisdictions by Civil pains by Imprisonment and by Seisures of the Temporalties 7. That it hath made Bishops the Executors of all Donations for Pious uses 8. That it hath given them a Superintendency over Hospitals Colledges and Fraternities with power of disposing their Goods notwithstanding that these matters had been always managed by Lay Men. 9. That it hath ordained that Bps. shall have the examining of all Notaries Royal and Imperial with power to Deprive or Suspend notwithstanding any Opposition or Appeal 10. That it hath given power to Bishops with consent of two Members of their Chapter and of two of their Clergy to take and retrench part of the Revenue of the Hospitals and to take away feudal Tithes belonging to Lay-Men 11. That it hath made Bishops the Masters of Foundations of Piety as Churches Chappels and Hospitals so as that those who have the Care and Government of them are obliged to be accountable to the Bishops 12. That in confirming Ecclesiastical Exemptions it hath wholy ascribed to the Pope and Spiritual Judges all power of Judging the Causes of Accused Bishops as if Soveraign Princes had lost the right they had over their Subjects as soon as they became Ecclesiasticks 13. That it hath empower'd the Ordinaries and Judges Ecclesiastick in Quality of Delegates of the Holy See to enquire of the Right and Possession of Lay-Patronages and to quash and annul them if they were not of great necessity and well founded 14. That in Prohibiting Duels it had declared that such Emperor or Prince as should shew favour to Duels should therefore be Excommunicated and Deprived of the Seignory of the place holding of the Church where the Duel was fought 15. that it hath permitted the Mendicant Fryars to possess Immoveables 16. That it hath ordained an Establishment of Judges it calls Apostoles in all Dioceses with Power to Judge of Spiritual and Ecclesiastical Matters in prejudice of the Ordinary 17. That it hath declared that Matrimonial Causes are of the Churches Jurisdiction 18. That it hath enjoyn'd Kings and Princes to leave Ecclesiasticks the free and entire possession of the jurisdiction granted them by the Holy Canons and General Councils that is to say usurped by the Clergy over the Civil Power These are the Principal Points Disputed in France These that tend to the Diminution of the Authority and Priviledges of Bishops to enlarge the Roman power are Rejected by the Bishops And those that would extend the power of Bishops to the Prejudice of the Civil Authority are Rejected by the Parliaments Between both this Council as enacting contrary to the Rights and Liberties of the Gallican Church was never at all received in France so as to obtain the force of a Law He then shews that the Popes Superiority over Councils is a point of Doctrine and was decided in the Council of Trent And yet that the Gallican Church believes the contrary I know it will be said saith he that the Council of Trent hath not decided that the Pope is Superior to Councils Men may talk as they please but things for all that will continue as they are It is true that among the Decrees and Canons of the Council there is none that saith in express Terms that the Pope is Superior to Councils and can be judged by none But the effect of such Decision is apparent in all the Acts and through the whole Conduct of this Council And he afterward saith that the Clause of proponentibus legatis was a plain Decision of the Popes Superiority over the Council But to these 18 Reasons of Mr. Iurieu about the Reception of the Trent Council in France being neither practicable nor practised I might add that according to what my Lord Primate Bramhal observes in another place of that Book of his I Cited before the Obedience promised to the Bishop of Rome as Successor to St. Peter and Vicar of Iesus Christ pursuant to the Trent Council may seem to quadrate but ill with the liberty of the Gallican Church to set up a Patriarch For in p. 194. of that Book he mentions that in Cardinal Richelieu's Days it was well known what Books were freely Printed in France and publickly sold upon pont neuf of the lawfulness of Erecting a new or rather restoring an old proper Patriarchate in France as one of the liberties of the Gallican Church And thereupon saith It was well for the Roman Court that they became more propitious to the French Affairs And if we consider how in the 22 d. Session of the Council of Trent Chapter the 11 th all Kings and Emperors are Anathematized who hinder any Ecclesiasticks from the Enjoyment of any of their feudal Rights or other profits and that it might well be supposed that the Course and Vicissitudes of time would put Roman Catholick Princes on somewhat of that Nature and which so eminently influenced the French King in the Munster Treaty none need wonder at the Trent Councils not being received in France There was a Book called a Review of the Council of Trent written by a Learned Roman-Catholick and Printed A. 1600. and Translated by Dr
of the DEPOSING Power than any thing said by their Writers hath been and no doubt but when any more such close Attacks shall be made upon them by our Writers as have been since his Majesties Reign to charge the Allowance of the Deposing Power on their Church they will not neglect to Crave Aid from what you have said in that your Historical Account of that Peace I assure you it was no easie Task to give so Critical and so Impartial an account of the factum of that Peace as you have done and so much for the Advantage of the Papists and whereby you have Merited much more from them than their Favorite of our Church Dr. Heylin did by Writing of the Outrages that accompanyed the Reformation And your occasional rectifying the Mistake of a considerable Writer of the Church of Rome and of such another of the Church of England here in the Negotiation of that peace hath shewed the Niceness and Difficulty of stating it exactly as you have done The Author of the Novelles de la Republique des Lettres for the Month of November last past giving an account of Dr. Burnets 2d Part of the Hist. of the Reformation being Beyond-Sea lately Printed in French doth there in p. 1250 give the World a fresh view of the Horrour of the Lateran Council by rendring our Queen Mary as prompted by that Council to the Persecution of her Protestant Subjects But you having in your Discourse with the Exquisite Artifice of Oratory mentioned some Passages in her Reign not commonly known and that on the Foundation you lay'd so low in the Rubbish of her Reign you might with more Advantage support the whole Super structure of your Judging that any Roman Catholick Prince that should inherit the Throne here would perfectly Decline her politicks and likewise in your Preface particularly fortified the Minds of People against the Fears and Jealousies of such a Prince that might be Occasioned by the Lateran Council did very seasonably thereby advance the measures of Loyalty and Mens more chearful adherence to the Lineal Succession And the Truth is that among the many Pamphlets Writ with most Artifice and ill apply'd Learning ad faciendum populum and to pervert them to the Exclusion I observing the Lateran Council so much insisted on cannot but Judge your undeceiving them in that point to have been the more necessary The Pamphlet you shew'd me in 4 to Pr for Ianeway in the year 1681. and called A Moderate Decision of the Point of Succession humbly proposed to the consideration of the Parliament doth harp much on that Council And another Pamphlet Printed in the same year for the same Person and called The Case of Protestants in England under a Popish Prince c. did there among the many Quotations out of the Canon Law and Canonists councils and Popish Divines and School-Men making for its purpose in p. 5. and 27. trouble us with the Lateran Council and mentions Bellarmines calling it the Papists great and most Famous Council Your having in your Discussion so succesfully combated the obligatoriness of that Council upon Papists was of great use for the unblundering many nominal Protestants as your term is in their fancying it so necessary for the quiet of Christendom that Princes and their Subjects should agree in the Belief of the Speculative points of Religion as your expressions are and whereupon you promise the Age your publication of the fact of the Munster Peace and its Consequences and which promise you have in your Preface so well and fully perform'd The Author of the Answer to the Book call'd A Papist Misrepresented doth refer to Lessius his Discussio decreti magni Concil Lateran and saying that the Churches Authority would not be maintain'd without the Deposing Power and in p. 104. making the Councils of Lateran under Alex. 3. and Innocent 3. to be general ones And in the Reflections on the Answer nothing is mentioned to deny it But your having in your Discussion cited Cardinal Peron for having so strenuously asserted that Councils being a general one and yet not thinking it Obligatory for the Exterminating the Persons of Hereticks from France where their number was so great and your having cited Cardinal D' Ossat partly to the same effect and further shewing this their Doctrine Incarnate in the Lives of so many Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads and their Empires after all the dismal effects that the contrary practices produced and that the Voice of Nature did in the Storm their Country 's were in and when it was so necessary to have many Hands speak it as plainly concerning Heretical Subjects continuing with them as St. Pauls words were to the Centurion and to the Soldiers viz. except these abide in the Ship ye cannot be saved and your shewing that pursuant to the Munster Peace they did abide in the Ship and thereby saved themselves and it was time by you very nobly spent in your helping Men to See how far Nature had by its powerful Hands effectually delivered People from their Fears of the Lateran Council and which time was to much better purpose spent than that of some Roman-Catholick Apologists for any harsh thing Decreed by General Councils and saying that they are not declared as Doctrinal points and that the Decrees relating only to Discipline and Government come short of being Articles of Faith as the Author of the Reply to the Reflections upon the answer to a Papist Misrepresented and Represented oâ—â—erves and as to which he there further in p. 54. quotes the Vindication of Dr. Sherlocks Sermon for saying that to Decree what shall be done includes a Virtual Definition of that Doctrine on which that Decree is founded But such little Arts the great Cardinal you mentioned forbore to use in the point of the Lateran Council And 't is not Art but Nature that can satisfie the Curious in this inquisitive Age and by the great prospect of Nature you have shew'd Men appearing in the Munster-Peace they will be naturally untaught their Fears of that Council now they know its Sting is pluck'd out what ever humming about their Ears it may still make by the help of any Writers The Learned Author of the Seasonable Discourse in his other Book of the difference between the Church and Court of Rome consider'd in p. 21. speaking of the Lateran Council and how his Roman-Catholick Antagonist had Cited one Iohn Bishop who in a Book Written in the time of Queen Elizabeth affirmed that the Constitution of the Lateran Council on which the whole Authority of Absolving Subjects from their Allegiance and Deposing Princes is founded is no other than a Decree of Pope Innocent the 3 d and was never admitted in England Yea that the said Council was no Council at all nor any thing at all there Decreed by the Fathers doth in the following Pages substantially Confute his Adversary and sets up the Authority of Cardinal Peron and of the Council of Trent against
and their Estates and many of which Estates were Church-Lands notwithstanding the Popes Declaration of the Nullity of that Peace supported by his Present Majejesty and as I doubt not but it always will be as well as by other Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads And the figure the present French King made in the Munster Treaty in the year Forty Eight and in the Restauration of its effects and Vigor in Christendom in the year Seventy Nine is a sufficient Demonstration of his thinking it lawful for the Lateran Council to be Disobey'd by Popish Princes as to the point of Exterminating their Heretical Subjects I do therefore account this your Manly way of Confuting the Fears and Iealousies founded on that Council to have been at this time the more opportune and the more worthy of your Loyalty because as you have mentioned it after the End of your Discussion It may seem the Design of some People in the World abroad to encrease our Divisions and the popular hatred against Papists and Popery here by the usage that Protestants meet with there as if the Religion of Popery did necessarily Cause the same You have therefore well reputed it the opus diei here in England to shew the contrary and have done it more effectually than any late Writer of the Church of Rome I know here hath done or perhaps was able to do And your quoting for this purpose in p. 208. D' Ossats Speech to the Pope and wherein he so Argumentatively both like a Divine and a States-Man asserted the Lawâ—ulness of Henry the 4 th's of France observing the EDICTS in favour of his Protestant Subjects and wherein he mentioned how other Roman Catholick Princes had done what was tantamount to it and how that the Pope made no Reply to him thereupon may much help to shew our Timid and Iealous People that the Religionary part of Popery or Doctrine of the Church of Rome doth not oblige Roman-Catholick Princes to make the Lives of their Protestant Subjects uneasie to them It here falls in my way to acknowledge to you that the great Instances you have given in your Discourse concerning the Consummat Loyalty of great numbers of Henry the 4ths Popish Subjects to him while a Protestant and under the Popes Excommunication have been very useful for the enlarging Peoples Charitable Thoughts as to the Persons of some Papists and the tendency of their Principles to Loyalty and to the shewing that though in the Great Lateran Council wherein were 1215 Fathers it was Synodically and Categorically concluded that the Pope might absolve Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance that yet great Numbers of Henry the 4ths Roman-Catholick Subjects knew and Practised better things and that their great Absolute and Unconditional Loyalty to him lives in the Records of the Impartial Thuanus And that notwithstanding any principles Chargeable on the Church of Rome the Faith of many particular persons in it hath by its Works shewn it self very perfect for Loyalty But here I am likewise obliged to gratifie you by my Complaisance with your Temper in differing somwhat in Opinion from you for you say you are better pleased in Conversation with those who in many points differ from you than with those who in all agree with you and am frankly to tell you that tho' I am sufficiently satisfied with your discharging of the Moral Offices of Honouring all Men and giving Honour particularly to some Roman Catholicks to whom it was due and particularly where in p. 360. You have with so great a Height of Expression Celebrated the Virtue of the Queen Dowager and from whom I had the Honour to receive Thanks by the late Earl of Ossory for the Justice I did her Majesty in a late Conjuncture Yet there is one thing at the end of your Discourse and another after the end of your Discussion wherein you are pleased to give your Judgment concerning the Papists here in geral as I would not have given mine in the Case You say in p. 285. That after the Various Intervals in which the Discourse was Written it having happened that the Papists are to the General Satisfaction of Impartial Judges of Men and things become as sound a part of this Nation as they were and are of the Dutch States and as throughout the Discourse you always supposed them Capable of being and in p. 361. You say that it is with Justice to be by all Men to our Popish Fellow Subjects acknowledged that what ever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any Ambitious Design of making too great a Figure in the Internal Government of the Nation yet that the Deportment of the Generality of them hath lately appeared with such a Face not only of Loyalty but of Complaisance with his Majesties Measures in imploying the Hands and Heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of great Matters of State as is necessarily Attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion c. But tho' I account my self Morally obliged to Judge several Papists of my Acquaintance to abound in Loyalty and to be such whose Moderation is known to all Men and to be no Exorbitant Affecters of making too great a Figure in the Internal Government of the Kingdom and do hope that many others are so with whom I am not acquainted and will Judge no particular Papist to believe or practise Principles of Disloyalty without particular grounds and tho' on the account of the Trite Rule that Interest never lyes I will hope that the generality of them will in his Majesties Reign and afterward be neither Disloyal nor Heady nor High-Minded nor affecters of Preheminence Yet if I were required to give my present Judgment in short of the present Temper of the generality of them as to the Qualifications about which you have given your Judgment in the Case and that too relating to future times I considering the Formulary of the Letters denoting Judgment given in the Mode of the Old Roman Laws viz. A. and C. and N. L. would not presume either to Absolve or Condemn the gross of their Numbers as to those Qualifications but would interpose the Non Liquet in their Case and much less will I Condemn your Judgment of Charity to them and say that some of your Sharp Reflections on Popery and some Papists have favoured of the Common way of some Partial Judges Byassed with an intent to bring off some Criminals Namely to make some disobliging rough Language previous to the obliging them with their Sentence at last But taking every thing in the best Sense it will bear shall suppose that your Information of the Temper of the Generality of them might be what arrived not at my Knowledge and that therefore you pronounced thereof as you have done And moreover your Discourse being Writ before the Late Kings Death I shall account it was for several Reasons a strengthening of Loyalty and weakening of the Fears of Timid Protestants for you
And do Judge that when our Excellent Divines of the Church of England shall be of Opinion that the Emissaries of Rome are not more than ordinarily busie in endeavouring to pervert any of their Flocks from their Religion they will naturally throw off Debates of Speculative Controversial Divinity For granted it must be that both Protestants and Papists do stand more in need to be taught what were the Moral Practices of the Primitive Christians than what were their Speculative Assertions And as a late Divine hath well remark'd Sixteen Hundred Years are run out since the Son of God came down to Sanctifie and Save the World which are so many Degrees whereby we are Descended from the first Perfection We are more distant from them in Holiness than in time so universal and great is the Corruption that 't is almost as difficult to revive the dying Faith of Christians and to Reform their Lives according to the Purity of their Profession as the Conversion of the World was from Heathenism to Christianity And when I consider how much the Christian Religion hath been Debased to a Religion-Trade as your Term is and and a project to advance Mens Ambition or profit and by ways and Artifices contrary to the Law of Nature and below that generous Contempt of Sordid Actions and below the fides verecundia honestas and the Simplicity of Manners that Adorn'd the Minds and the Conversations of the Antient Heathens and how much the Old pietas in patriam you have referr'd to in Cicero is evaporated among Christians and the very ideas of Heroical Actions lost that is such Actions as were term'd so as respecting the good of our Prince and Country and when I consider how by that Cruel Revengeful implacable Spirit rendring Christians worse Enemies to one another than even ever Iulian was for he in one of his Epistles to Iamblichus profess'd that he thought then was not fit for him to persecute the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. I think it fit to teach but not to punish Fools seeing some Christians to apostatise from that which was commendable in the temper of Iulian the Apostate I cannot forbear thinking of those severe words of my Friend Dr. Hammond in the Epistle to his practical Catechism viz. As Machiavel thought Religion would emasculate and enfeeble Common wealths we have more reason to complain that it hath Debauch'd and Corrupted Lives And were it not that God hath been pleas'd to preserve a scatter'd Remnant a few in every Nation to be the Records as it were from whom it may be seen what Christianity is able to do if it may be hearken'd to Were it not that there are a few Antient primitive Spirits by whom as by a Standard others may and ought to be reformed we have reason to think and say that Christian Men are the impurest part of the World That Satans after-game hath proved more prosperous and lucky to him than his first designment did that his Night-walk hath brought him more proselytes than his unlimited range of going up and down to and fro over the face of the Earth that as Sin by the Law so Satan by the Faith of Christ hath taken occasion and so deceived and ruined us more desperately more universally than by all the National Idolatrous Customs of Heathenism he hath been able to do There is one noble Virtue of the Primitive Christians that hath indeed by the Successful labours of the Divines of the Church of England been lately much Propagated in this Land and that is Loyalty to our Princes and God be thanked that we have many thousands of the Layety of that Church who have been better instructed in that Primitive virtue then ever Bellarmine was as appears by his Quia deerant vires And I wish that for the ease of his Majesties Cares and Safety of his Government all Mens Ideas and Practices of Loyalty may grow both more refined and firm And that according to your excellent quotation out of Seneca Quanto latius officiorum patet quam juris Regula all his Majesties Subjects may practise the Primitive Obedience to the Height of all Moral Offices not to think that their being barely legales homines in doing what the Law compells them to for his Service is all the Loyalty or Obedience requisite The obvious thought of Children as well as Parents being Morally bound to be helpful to each other beyond what they are constrained to by the Law may shew us the reasonableness of the extending our Obedience to our Political Father to all the Noble heights of Virtue I-am very well pleas'd with the passages in your Discourse that brand Mercenary Loyalty in p. 274. and the I opeans you sing to the Crowns victories obtained over Mercenary loyalty And here I cannot omit being so just to your self as to acknowledge that you have as good a warrant as any Subject of the Crown I know to reprehend Mercenary Loyalty since on your modest Application to the late King upon the importunity of your friends for a Compensation of your varicus Services done him almost ever since his Restoration and the Reinbursment of your expences in his Service and on his Ministers by reference consulting my Judgment about your Case I found several thousands of pounds due to you on that account and do Judge that you never since apply'd to his late Majesty nor any of his Ministers about the same But one instance more of your unmercenary Loyalty I shall not conceal that I was assured of from a Lord in High Favour with his late Majesty Namely that when in his late Majesties Reign he knowing your Abilities to serve the King did of his own accord offer to you his readiness to move his Majesty to afford you a fair Pension you Over-Modestly requested his Lordship to move no such thing in your behalf professing to his Lordship that it should be the business of your life to promote all his Majesties Just Measures in what you could without any expectation of other reward than what the pleasure of all Actions of Loyalty necessarily included in the doing of them And to this too I might add that in the time when the late Western Rebellion was most considerable your having with other Gentlemen appear'd to his Majesty as ready at your own expence to be then in Arms to serve the Crown at an Hours warning was a further fair example of your unmercenary Loyalty And the truth is that in the Present State of England when it so much imports us to restore England to its Old Office of ballancing the World Mercenary Loyalty would be now a kind of Monster In morality It here falls in my way to observe that you have in p. 156. and 157. very usefully shewn Mercenary Religion to be a thing both senseless and odious And therefore tho you may seem the only person of the Church of Eng. who hath in print vary'd from its Homilies or Articles since his
or any Act that shews us that it hath been truly received and publisht for according to the Rules of Right a Council cannot Faire Loy if it hath not been published But if any one were minded to speak Argumentatively and shew that the French do not now receive the Trent Council no not in rebus fidei he might urge 1. That the whole Clergy of France in their Assembly March 19. 1682. declared that a Council is above the Pope 2. That he hath no Power in Temporals in any Princes Dominions 3. That he hath no Power to Depose Princes 4. Nor to Absolve Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance 5. That he is not infallible And though the Pope declared by his Bull Dated at Rome Apr. 11 th 1682. that those Acts of theirs were Null the words of Improbamus Rescindimus Cassamus c. being in the Bull yet the French King had before in his Edict of March 23. 1682. Registred in Parliament Ratified and Confirm'd them all Nor is it deniable that these 5 Propositions contradict many things in the Trent Council which are setled in it as Doctrinal Points And moreover 't is obvious to any one to observe that in the Acts of the General Assembly of the French Clergy in the year 1685. they Cite their new Trent Creed i. e. some PART of it For the last of it they cite is p. 38. of that Book and leave out the LAST part of that Creed which is contained in these words Caetera item omnia Sacris Canonibus aecumenicis Concilijs ac praecipuè à Sacro-Sanctà Tridentinà Synodo tradita definita declarata indubitanter recipio ac profiteor simulque Contraria omnia atque haereses quascunque ab Ecclesiâ damnatas rejectas Anathematizatas ego pariter rejicio damno Anathematizo Hanc veram Catholicam fidem extrà quam nemo salvus esse potest quam in praesente sponte profiteor veraciter teneo eandem integram usque ad extremum vitae Spiritum Constantissimè retinere confiteri atque ab illis quorum cura ad me in munere hoc spectabit teneri doceri praedicari quantum in me est curaturum Ego idem N. spondeo voveo juro c. These are the words which the French Clergy leave out in their Book above mentioned and they knew the Preservation of the Liberties of the Gallican Church obliged them to such omission For by this part of the Trent Creed they are bound to believe and profess Omnia à Concilio Tridentino tradita definita declarata and so not matters of Doctrine and Definitions of Faith only And 't is most plain that the Council intended both matters of Discipline and Doctrine And in the aforesaid words of the Trent Creed a firm Belief is required to be given omnibus in Concilijs oecumenicis traditis and then a long farewel to all their Liberties of the Gallican Church would ensue and their Sanctio Pragmatica which is the Authentick Comprehension of them is Damned by Leo the 10th approbante Concilio in the General Lateran Council It may be moreover said that the words above mentioned that the French Clergy left out of their Book are a part Fidei Catholicae extrà quam non est salus and therefore if the French do not receive as it seems they do not this part of the Trent Creed then it may very well be doubted whether they receiv'd the Definitions of Faith of the Tridentine Council as De Marca would have us believe The Trent Creed I have referred to is at the end of that Council in most of the Editions of it but in the Edition at Antwerp which is the best viz. Anno 1633 it is in the Body of the Council Ses. 24. p. 450 451. It here occurs to my thoughts to entertain yours out of Hoornbeck's Examen bullae Papalis Printed An. 1652. where in p. 42. speaking of the French Embassadors claiming the Honour of sitting before those of Spain he saith uti apparuit in Oratorum Galliae Regis Carol. 9. protestatione in Concilio Tridentino factâ An. 1563 quando secus fieret Oratores Hispan Regis post Imperatoris locum Caperent primum Cujus omnem Culpam in solum rejiciebant Papam Pium 4 tum Cujus aiebant imperium detrectamus quaecunque sint ejus judicia sententiae reijcimus respuimus contemnimus Et quanquam Patres Sanctissimi vestra omnium Religio vita eruditio magnae semper fuit erit apud nos auctoritatis cum tamen nihil a vobis Sed omnia magis Romae quam Tridenti agantur quae hic publicantur magis Pij 4 ti placita quam Concilij Tridentim decreta jure existimentur denunciamus protestamur quaecunque in hoc conventu hoc est toto Pij nutu voluntate decernuntur publicantur ea neque Regem Christianissimum probaturum neque Ecclesiam Gallicanam pro decreto oecumenici Concilij habituram Interea quot quot estis Galliae Archiepiscopi Episcopi Abbates Doctores Theologi vos omnes hinc abire Rex Christianissimus jubet redituros ut primum Deus opt max. Ecclesiae Catholicae in generalibus Concilijs anttquam formam libertatem restituerit Regi autem Christianissimo suam dignitatem Majestatem And he afterward in p. 192. desires that after those words dignitatem Majestatem may be added what followeth among the addenda there to his foregoing work viz. In Concilio Tridentino vehementer illa inter Gallos Hispanos agitabatur Contentio de praecedentiâ Non solum illis primum à legato Imperatoris locum petentibus sed nolentibus ut Orator Hispani Regis alio quo singulari loco ab illis sederet sed ordine post eos aliter se protestari non adversum legatos aut Philippum Regem aut Concilium aut Ecclesiam Romanam sed adversus ipsum Papam Pium 4 tum non pro legitimo illum habentes Papâ provocare se ad Concilium aliud liberum in Galliâ Cogendum Ubi illud facetum accidit quod quando adversus Oratoris Gallici expostulationem diceretur cum Scommate Gallus Cantat hic Concinne protinus respondit Vtinam illo Gallicinio Petrus ad resipiscentiam fletum excitaretur Illà que causa postmodum Gallis fuit inter alias quo minus Concilium Tridentinum in Regno Ecclesiis Gallicanis vel ejus publicatio admissa fuerit This Book of Hoornbeck was Printed at Vtrecht and the Papal Bull on which it very Learnedly Animadverts is that by which the Pope endeavour'd to Abrogate the Peace of Munster But to go on with my Assertion of the Non-reception of the Council of Trent in France I shall acquaint you that another considerable Author Namely My Lord Primate Bramhal who was an Exile in France in the time of the Vsurpation and whose observation penetrated as far into the Constitution of the Gallican Church as either F. Cressy's or any Man 's else