Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n
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A47752
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Querela temporum, or, The danger of the Church of England in a letter from the Dean of ----- to ----- Prebend of.
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Leslie, Charles, 1650-1722.
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1694
(1694)
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Wing L1142; ESTC R7679
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24,869
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29
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to the Justices of Peace at their Sessions to Licence Teachers and Preachers as it is in the Act of Toleration 24 May 89. prim Guliel Mar. This has render'd our Church a perfect Cypher And if any or all of our Flocks should Desert us to morrow and go over openly to the Dissenters we have no Power left us by this Act to restrain any of them by Ecclesiastical Censures or any other way and the whole Nation have Liberty to believe any of their Communions to be as safe a way to Heaven as our own And they have made full use of that Liberty For how many do we meet with who do not believe it And think it a thing indifferent which of our Churches they go to as they term the Dissenters and ours They think them all to be Churches and the Law giving equal Liberty to All who dare quarrel with any for taking that Liberty to go to Any or All of these Churches Who can say the Parliament has done Ill For if Episcopacy be not Jure Divino why are they bound to set it up more than Presbytery Independency Quakerism or any other Sort Why have we made such Contests about it these Ages past But if it be Jure Divino then it is out of the Parliaments Power to Abolish it or even to Dispence with or Tolerate any other Form of Government in the Church So that we must either Condemn what they have done in Scotland and in England too by this Toleration or otherwise we must give up our Jure Divino Right which we have endeavour'd to hold out so long against the Dissenters and profess to hold hereafter by no other Tenure than that of an Act of Parliament which now Grants equal Liberty to the Dissenters as to our selves But this Law does not only proclaim Liberty and Indemnity but proposes Rewards and Advantages to all who shall leave us Any of any Sort in Orders or out of Orders who please to set up for Teachers are by this Act exempted from serving upon Juries or from being Church wardens Overseers of the Poor or any other Parochial or Ward Office or other Office in any Hundred of any Shire City Town Parish Division or Wapentake And these being Offices of Charge and Trouble we shall be in a little time left to serve our selves or the whole Burthen lie upon those Few whom their Neighbours will call Fools for not easing themselves of it as they have done The Effect of this may not appear considerably at first But when the Taxes have Reduc'd more to Poverty and the Envy and Spite to see their richer Neighbours excused may operate more than we are yet well aware If you think that no such Inconsiderable People will be allow'd of for Preachers The Act excepts none And the Allowance is Granted to the Justices of Peace And there is no stint of Number I can tell you an Instance came in my way at the Easter Sessions 92. in St. Albans there came three poor Fellows for Licences to be Preachers Two of them set their Marks instead of their Names for they could neither Read nor Write and they had their Licences And one of them being after Return'd upon a Jury pleaded his Privilege as a Preacher by the Act and had it allow'd him Nor indeed can the Justices Refuse either to give them Licences or allow them the Privileges granted by the Act. One of these Preachers Names I remember was one Bocket he lives in St. Stephen's Parish near St. Albans and is a Ditcher and Day-Labourer There are many such Examples through the Kingdom We may now see where our Authority is going not to mention Christianity at this Rate That Bocket is now as Legal a Teacher as the Archbishop of Canterbury This Brother is a fair Indication of the Inclinations of the Parliament towards us of their Zeal to support the Authority and the Reputation of our Church Well But they have left us in Possession of the Rents and Revenues of the Church That is indeed All that we have left And how long shall we keep that when the only Ground and Foundation of it is gone that is The Authority and Discipline of the Church and the supposed Necessity there is of our Church This is all the Ground and Reason there is for supporting and maintaining our Church more than any other Church or for having any Church more than no Church If none of them be Necessary or ours no more than another why should we expect to Enjoy such great Riches more than others The Nation is not or soon may come not to be in a Condition to allow such great Pensions when they are meerly Honorary and of no Necessity to the Nation The Bishops Lands as now in Scotland may be sold either for the Carrying on the War or to Reward many of those Necessitous and Sacrament taking Fanaticks for Places of Advantage There is no other visible Fund for them and they Expect it and refrain not sometimes to Express it Our Titles being Jure Divino will not do The Impropriations have spoil'd that The Church though over-run with Errors was in far greater Authority and Reverence than now when Henry the Eighth seized her Revenue and had more and greater Friends to stand by her The Pope and all the then Christian Princes did Detest his Act as Sacrilegious and were highly Concern'd to have it Rectified And it was thought abominable by all England except those among whom he Divided the Spoil But is there one Man in the World would be Concern'd for us or Pity us if we lost all Yet the Inclinations of the People is all we pretend to Trust to How have I heard some repeat with Pleasure that Prophecy which they ascribe to old Merlin Henry the Eighth pull'd down Abbys and Cells But Henry the Ninth will pull down Churches and Bells By Churches and Bells they understand the Episcopal Church and Ceremonies and there has been enough done in Scotland to fulfil the Prophecy but that it was spoke of England And they think that Henry the Ninth and the time is now come I lay not stress upon these sort of Prophesies but they shew the Inclinations of the People when they are pleased and no body displeased with Trumping up such stuff upon us Add to this whatever stress you will lay upon the confident Boasting of those Dissenters who are most in K. Will 's Interest and Councils that all will be their own they make no doubt of it only they would manage as they think wisely and worm us out by Degrees They told us from the Beginning of this Revolution that K. William would take his time to bring them into the chief Places and Offices of Trust which we Thought in our Honey Month to be nothing but the vain Humour of that Party and to create Jealousies betwixt the King and us when we were endeavoring to exceed one another in our Caresses which if they were meant
not think their Liberties preserved unless they had the Antient Freedom of Election Reâ—erved to them to chuse Members to serve in Parliament knowing before hand that it was to be a Parliament For a Convention was new both Name and Thing and few understood either the Nature of it or the Ends and Purposes for which it was summon'd and to metamorphose that into a Parliament and then to continue it as such would be understood as a plain Cheat to Trick the People out of their Votes Yet all these obvious Reasons and the Example of England notwithstanding the Presbyterian Managers in Scotland dare not summon a new Parliament but keep on still the old Convention with the new Name of a Parliament And though they know that many of the Episcopal Perswasion There are so Zealous upon the point of the Government that they would not come in though there were a new Parliament yet the Presbyterians dare not trust those that might come in against all their own Strength and all the Trimmers they could Bribe or Frighten to their side For they could never by their Arts compass such a Parliament as would not spue out Presbytery as a Yoke which neither they nor their Fathers were able to bear They know it to be utterly impossible for them ever again to get such a Company of Conventioners as by their secret Intelligence laid without opposition or suspition of the Episcopal Party leap'd together and chose one another upon the Prince of Orange's Circular Letters which were left wholy to their Management If all this be causelesly alledged let them convince us with the Free and Impartial Election of another Parliament Or give any other Reason why they will not than that they dare not Trust the Inclinations of the People which they know to be the most averse to them and most deservedly There is another Thing which extreamly shews the Weakness of the Presbyterian Interest there And that is That they would never have been able to have planted Presbyterian Ministers there if the Right of Patronages had continued for there were but very few Gentlemen in that Kingdom to whom Advousons did belong who would ever have presented any Clerk that was Presbyterianly inclin'd Therefore all Patronages were taken away by Act of this Parliament After which one would have expected that the Free Election of the People should have been set up in its full Extent and Prerogative because this was it for which the Presbyterians chiefly contended they made it to be Jure Divino and call'd it Christ's Legacy to the People and said it was Indefeasible and Unalienable from them But yet they were forced to Dispense with it at the First and put the Calling of Ministers into the hands of the Presbytery For they found the Inclinations of the People Run against them at least of much the major Number as well as of the Nobility and Gentry and therefore this Method was necessary though Antichristian by their own Principles for the first planting of the Gospel as they stile the Preaching of the Covenant in that Prelatical Country Neither durst they for the time to come trust the People with their Divine Right of Electing their Ministers without clogging this Legacy of Christ as they call'd it with such Limitations as they could not pretend and to be found in Scripture That none should Vote in the Election of Ministers till they first swore the Oath of Allegiance to K. William and Q. Mary and sign the Assurance for which an Act of Parliament is passed accordingly Yet with all these Bars and Defences they found very great Difficulties in planting those Churches which they have planted with Presbyterian Ministers Who were so few in that Country That they were forc'd to Ordain young Lads from Shops or the Plow as they could get them Gifted without any University Learning For these Springs as themselves confess were all corrupted that is in their Sense were wholy Episcopal And in the North of Scotland as confessed in the Presbyterian Representation above-told they have got little or no Footing to this Day In which parts they are so strongly Episcopal that as I read in a very accurate and ingenious Account of the Proceedings there about the Convention time It were no hard Task says he to give a just Account how it only happen'd that there was so much as one Northern Member who was not such by Birth of the Presbyterian Perswasion in the Meeting of the Estates But there can be no such Demonstration as their preserving their Episcopal Clergy and keeping out the Presbyterian against Repeated Acts of Parliament and that the Privy Council which has There almost the Power of a Parliament in the Intervals of Parliament have interposed their Authority to Ratify the Decrees of the Presbytery Nay even in their own Dear West Country the Presbyterians found so much Difficulty in some Places particularly near Edenburgh to perfect their Reformation that they were forced to fill a Church there with Soldiers to fright the People from Singing the Doxology from which they could not otherwise be Reduced Was not this something like Dragooning But I go on It may be thought Strange Things being as here told what Ground or Pretence could be found for Representing Episcopacy to be contrary to the Inclinations of these People And herein appears a Subtile but very wicked Politick of the Managers then at Helm They first had Arms put into the hands of the mad Cameronian true Presbyterian Rabble of the West and then set them on to Mob the Episcopal Clergy in those Fanatical Shires which they executed in a most Savage Manner And from thence they Represented the Inclinations of the People to be irreconcilable to Episcopacy And upon Enquiry I cannot find that there is any now who insist longer upon that common Place of the Inclinations of the People of Scotland It like some other Stories has serv'd its Turn except one Sycophant who had Presbyterian Education and from his Infancy was taught to Hate and Despise Episcopacy who has Deserted his Church in East Lothian and was Expell'd neither by Force nor by the Rabble nor any Sentence of any Presbyterian Judicature but fearing that the Gentry of his Parish to whom he was always most Disagreable would lay hold of the present Opportunity to turn him out when their Inclinations was made the Standard he thought it convenient to leave the Place with less Disgrace And he is now encouraged by a certain Minister of State to propagate that Notion here in England that the Temper of the People in Scotland is against Episcopacy and most inclin'd to Presbytery And the Rabbling of the Episcopal Clergy in some parts of the West is all the Argument This is all and every bit of the Ground the Convention or any other had to Represent the Inclinations of the People as averse to Prelacy Nor had they had this Pretence it self if All the People even in those same Fanatical Shires