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A34335
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The notion of schism stated according to the antients, and considered with reference to the non-conformists, and the pleas for schismaticks examined being animadversions upon the plea for the non-conformists : with reflections on that famous Tract of schism, written by Mr. Hales in two letters to a very worthy gentleman.
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Conold, Robert.
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1676
(1676)
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Wing C5891; ESTC R11683
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38,869
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110
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Imprimatur G. Jane R. P. D. Henr. Episc Lond. Ã sac domesticis May 17. 1676. THE NOTION OF SCHISM Stated according to the ANTIENTS And considered with Reference to the NON-CONFORMISTS And the PLEAS for SCHISMATICKS examined Being Animadversions upon the Plea for the Non-Conformists With Reflections on that Famous Tract of Schism Written by M r. Hales In Two Letters to a very Worthy Gentleman LONDON Printed by R. W. for William Oliver and George Rose Booksellers in Norwich and are to be sold by them there and Nath. Brooks at the Angel in Cornhill and R. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard 1676. TO THE READER THE Plea for Non-conformists tending to vindicate them from Schism came to my hands long after its Edition and then by accident too But the Schism being still continued I hope you will not think it too Late or Impertinent to publish these Animadversions upon that Tract Now should I protest against all Vanity and Popularity disavow all Interest and Sinister designs should I tell you in most Solemn and Sacred protestations that I have no other end in the publication of these Papers but the Honour of God and the Peace of his Church yet it were still at your mercy to credit these Asseverations or receive them as the usual pretensions of every Author Therefore I resolve against the Impertinence of an Apologie and leave you to the common liberty of Censure If I meet with the fate of St. Paul to pass through good as well as bad Report I shall have Honour and content enough If thou art a sound and sober member of the Church of England I know thy Temper cannot be Sullen or Ill-natur'd it is thy Genius to be Candid and Generous and thy Religion makes thee Charitable and therefore I am assured that thy Balms cannot break my Head and if these Papers may in any measure contribute towards thy firmer settlement in the Communion of this Church my principal End is then effected If thou art a Dissenter from this established Church but hast not lost that Christian Temper of Modesty and Humility read on there is hope of thy recovery that thou wilt not dye a Schismatick But if thou art one who hast given up thy Name and thy Reason too to the Leader of a Conventicle let me beseech thee to read no further for this little Discourse will but provoke thy Passion I have no Hope to prevail upon Pertinacious resolutions I never yet cleansed a Leper nor raised the Dead but if I had I should notwithstanding Despond of ever perswading any Obstinate or Passionate man for it does not appear to me evident in all the History of the Gospel that our Lord among his many Mighty Works and Miracles ever cured Perverseness If thou art a Romish Recusant let me intreat thee to Suffer thy Reason to recover its Liberty and not alwayes be in Vassallage to those Roman Dictators I know there are many of that Religion in this Nation who are Gentlemen of Complaisant Converse and Ingenuous Education but I wonder that ye who pretend so much Abhorrence of Fanaticism and boast of Loyalty to your Prince should yet degrade your selves to the same Level with the Basest Sectaries and live in constant Rebellion to the Laws of your Natural Soveraign There is great Reason that the Kings of England should ever have a peculiar Jealousie upon your Party for though your Bodies and Estates are Subjects of England yet your Souls or Religion are under the Empire of a Forreign Jurisdiction and as long as ye continue so there is no Reason in the world that can give the Crown sufficient Security for your lasting Allegiance As for those of your Religion who live under the Laws of the Romish Dominions I have great Charity for them for they can plead submission to their own Superiours and I am apt to believe that Plea may be very considerable when they come to appear before the Prince of Peace and the God of Order But for you whose Lot hath cast you under the Government of the Kingdom and Catholick Church of England and yet to Divide from their Jurisdiction and subject your selves to the Canons of a Forreign Church is not only a Disobedience against the Laws of this Church and State but a Violation of the Antient Canons of the Catholick Church and is so great a Disorder and unreasonableness that the Penalties inflicted for your Recusancy are as Just as they are Severe and ye merit no Compassion Indeed if your deserting the Romish would put you out of the Catholick Church I would never upon those hard terms perswade you into our Communion Our Profession of Faith ye will acknowledge to be the antient Catholick and Apostolick Creed I know your principal Prejudice is against the Succession of our Bishops and the Authority of our Priesthood But let me beseech you to do so much Right to us and so much Justice to your selves as impartially to peruse Mr Mason's Vindication of the Ministry of the Church of England and if his Transcript of those Acts and Monuments of our Church will not satisfie you let some of your subtilest Jesuits convict that Author of Falshood or Imposture and I will acknowledge that we are no Catholick Church and you no Schismaticks There are many of your Religion persons of great Honour and Estates in this Kingdom who may easily have the Advantage to view and examine the Original Records of the Consecration of our English Bishops in that great Crisis of our Reformation and methinks in so weighty a matter where your Estates if not some raster Interest are highly concern'd ye should be strictly inquisitive and not so blindly acquiesce in a popular Mistake and Jesuitical delusion In the mean time I charge you with the guilt of Schism in Dividing from the Church of England and if you think your selves injur'd by this Indictment let any of your Romish Champions be the Doctor 's Second and publish a Plea for your Vindication and though I am none of the Worthies of England yet I will engage for a Reply If any of you shall think fit to require it I dare undertake to prove that the Canons of the Romish Church do no more oblige any Subject of England than our Statute Laws do bind the Poles or Moscovites and that it is as great a Disorder and Impertinence for the Bishop of Rome to excommunicate any of the people of England as it were for the Lord Chief Justice of England to outlaw Don Juan of Austria And now Reader I leave you to enjoy your Humour to be Candid or Clamorous as your fancy inclines you To be wounded with the Arrows of Bitter Words is a very easie kind of Martyrdom and say what you please I am resolv'd to be unconcern'd and subscribe my self Your Christian Friend R. C. Worthy Sir I Not long since receiv'd from the hand of a Non-conforming Pastor by way of Answer to my impeaching him of Schism this Tract Intitul'd A Plea for
jejuno and so St. Augustin counsels Januarius Sic etiam tu ad quam forte Ecclesiam veneris ejus morem serva which plainly concludes that Christian peace and order requires that we should conform to the Rites and Canons of that Church in whose Jurisdiction we live The five Presbyters of Carthage were by St. Cyprian sentenced for Schismaticks because being within the Diocess of Carthage and so under his inspection they notwithstanding gathered to themselves Assemblies and exercised Ministerial Offices without his Authority And for the same reason Athanasius accused Ischyras of Schism for modelling a Congregation in Mareoles without any subjection or dependance upon him the Bishop of Alexandria unto whose Jurisdiction that Countrey belonged for he shews us his Title in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. All the Presbyters of this Province have their peculiar Cures or Parishes but all the Churches of this Region are under the Jurisdiction of the Bishop of Alexandria And the very same thing Epiphanius tells us in his second Book adversus Haereses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That there were several Parochial Churches in which the Inhabitants might assemble with greater convenience and these Congregations were under the Ministery of peculiar Presbyters but all these Presbyters and their respective Churches were governed by the Superintendence of the Arch-bishop of Alexandria and this was the universal model of unity and order in all other Provinces of the Catholick Church Now the Arch-bishops of Canterbury and York have as much Jurisdiction over the Christians in England as Athanasius had over the Province of Alexandria or St. Cyprian in the Diocess of Carthage for beside the Right of Church-Government which their succession from the Apostles give them they are impowr'd to exercise their Jurisdiction by the Laws of our Christian Prince and therefore those Societies of Christians living under the Jurisdiction of the Arch-bishops and Bishops of England and yet do separate from their communion and Government are Schismaticks from the Church of England To conclude this if the Novatians and Donatists if the five Presbyters of Carthage if Ischyras in Alexandria were Schismaticks if from the Ascension of our Lord to his second Advent there was or can be a Schismatick then the Sectaries of England are Schismaticks not only from the Church of England but from the whole Catholick Church Having thus stated the antient notion of Schism and found it a henous impiety though our Non-conformists sport with it as an Ecclesiastical Scarecrow I shall next do them the justice to examine the Doctors Plea and see how well he vindicates them from the guilt of Schism First He denyes that there is any such creature as a National stated governing Church of England If the Doctor means by all these rumbling Epithets of stated National governing organical Church of England that there is no such distinct organical Church in England that is a separate body from the Catholick Church I am then of his opinion But if he means that the Bishops of England have no power of Government over the Christians in England it is a very foul mistake to speak in the modestest phrase for I have already prov'd that the Arch-bishops and Bishops have as much Jurisdiction in their respective Provinces and Dioceses of England as any other Patriarchs and Bishops of the Catholick Church ever had in theirs and if the Act of Uniformity be a Law I am sure there is such an establish'd being as a National Church In Pag. 30. his gravity drolls and gives us a very merry Argument to prove that there is no such creature as a National Church of England for sayes he Whoso will erect a stated National governing Church in England must find us an Officer clothed with Authority to excommunicate from Michael ' s Mount in Cornwall to Carlisle in Berwick Now Sir let this pass for a piece of wit though it is as wide from reason as Cornwall from Berwick What though the Bishop of Antioch could not excommunicate from Antioch to Constantinople and from thence to the borders of Persia must there therefore be no governing Church in Greece and might the Christians in Antioch by that Logick separate themselves from the communion and jurisdiction of their proper Patriarchs without Schism If our Author could have prov'd that there were any Provinces or Natives of England that were de jure exempt from the Canons of this Church and the jurisdiction of the English Bishops then there had been something of argument But if the Doctor for contumacy and disorder should be excommunicated from Church of England in Berwick I am sure without absolution de jure he could not communicate with any Assembly of the Church in England though he travail'd from Berwick to Carlisle and from thence to Mount Michael in Cornwall and this I fancy does strongly conclude That the Church of England is such a part of the Catholick Church which hath a proper and peculiar jurisdiction over all the Christians in this Kingdom Our Doctor pag. 10. sect 12. owns it as a confess'd principle That every individual member of the Church Catholick visible is bound in duty both to God and his own soul to joyn himself to some particular Society of Christians with which he may enjoy all the Ordinances of God so as may be for his souls advantage Well then why do they not communicate with the Church of England where all the Ordinances of God are observ'd and solemniz'd with as much gravity and faithfulness as in any other part of the Catholick Church To this he answers pag. 11. That the business is so stated by the Act of Uniformity that they cannot communicate with us without doing what they judge to be sinful There is nothing can justly be called sinful but what transgresses some manifest Law of God or Nature and could the Doctor have prov'd that any thing practised or enjoyn'd by the Church of England did violate any of those Divine Rules his Plea had been allowed and his Party might vindicate their Non-conformity But to Transgress a plain Law of God to disobey the Orders of our Governours and yet to give us no better reason for it than to say they fancy the things are sinful is so far from excusing that it aggravates the guilt For First Their disobedience is an affront to their Governours and then the doing this only upon the account of their own judgement or fancy is an affront to God for private conscience to usurp the Soveraignty of God and to lay such Divine Obligations upon the soul and mind which God never impos'd The nature and guilt of this disobedience is exactly represented by the story of the young Prophet 1 Kings 13. he was sent to prophesie against the Altar in Bethel now Jeroboam having cast off all the Priests and Levites of the Aaronical line and erected a new model of Religion therefore that the young Prophet might have no communion