management of their own affairs and all his Epistles to Princes and Prelates were written with the confidence of Papal Decrees You may satisfie your self with a multitude of instances in his Letters to the King Princes and Castellans of Poland to the Prince Elector of the Palatinate to the Church of Strasburgh to the Duke of Wirtenburgh and to the Lantgrave of Hess beside his particular missives and instructions to his Vicar-Generals residing in several Kingdoms and Provinces But to keep more closely to our own concernments by his Letters Patents to the Exiles of Francfurt the English Liturgy was casheir'd to make way for the entertainment of the Order of Geneva and Dr. Cox with his Associates Grave and Reverend Men cum gregalibus suis as he stiles them were rated for endeavouring the establishment of the Liturgy of the Church of England And when Mr. John Hooper Bishop Elect of Glocester had pickt up a quarrel against Caps and Tippets and Gowns and Rochets and Chimeres who forsooth must solicite the Duke of Somerset then the Great Minister of State to have these idle scruples dispensed with in despite of the Customes and Constitutions of the Church but John Calvin Not to mention his Letters to the King to the Arch-Bishop to the Bishop of London to Cecil and to the Lords of the Council in which he very frankly and before his advice is asked makes his exceptions to the English Liturgy and finds fault with many Popish and superstitious Rites and with an Apostolical Authority advises the lay-Lay-Lords to set aside all prudence and worldly wisdom in carrying on the work of Reformation and admonishes the Bishops to strip themselves of all Secular Power and Jurisdiction and charges it upon the Bishop of London in particular as his duty to inform the Queen that she ought not to trust or trouble them with any more Authority than what they might challenge and exercise purely by vertue of their Spiritual Office And all this I suppose to make way for the more easie admission of his Discipline with a great many stories more that I could tell and of which Kings might by the help of their Royal Understandings make excellent use And now after all this it matters not much whether Geneva be scituated upon the South-side of the Lake Lemane or the South-west or the South-west and by West for peace sake I will grant you any point in the Compass though as far as I can learn by Maps and Books of Geography they all inform me that it stands where it alwayes did on the South-side and if they are mistaken it is none of my fault for I am no Traveller and had I been imposed upon in a matter so collateral and impertinent to my main design yet no man that had not been to seek for more material exceptions would ever have attempted to make so much noise and advantage of so small a trifle for though Geneva were removed at as great a distance as Surat and Grand Cairo yet for all that Calvin was an over-busie and pragmatical man and intermedled with several Affairs foreign to his Judicature and out of his Diocess not only before his Advice was asked but after it was refused And therefore I shall not at all concern my self to examine the Debates of your Oecumenical Council about the scituation of Geneva the discourse is suited to the wit and wisdom of the company that consists I suppose of your particular Friends that you so often remember Gilian the Cook-maid and Abigail the Chamber-maid and Mopsa the dry Nurse together with some of your Charing-Cross and Lincolns-Inn-field wits you your self being President for after having condemn'd their remarques for crude and cold conceits after a frown or two with your mouth and some smiling with your forehead they being both perform'd by the same Muscles you gravely determine that it was well and wisely done of me to choose a South-sun for the better and more suddain growth of the bramble It is such an Oracle as if there were not a South-sun on the North as well as the South side of the Lake And thus having finisht your serious counsels you are at leisure to advance to a dance and recreate your self and the company with Anagrams and Acrosticks upon Calvins Name And to confess the truth for I love wit in an enemy Lucianus and Usinulca are very pretty conceits but yet I have heard of an old Elsibeth one that in my poor Opinion is more worth than both of them though I recreate my self with believing that my simple judgment cannot beyond my intention abate any thing of the just value of your wit with others And thus having done you right as you did the Bishop by making you this pious Apology I will venture to let it out and it is Culina for beside the transprosing Wit that is common to it with all Anagrams it is an unhappy Omen to betoken how much his followers should delight in Dripping pan comforts For beside our own experience at home if we may relye upon the relation of your Travels abroad The Presbyterians are in all parts the very Canibals of Capons in so much that if Princes do not take care the Race of Capons is in danger to be totally extinguish'd The Race of Capons man This Geneva certainly is the most breeding soil whatever some Travellers may report of Africa in the whole Universe For who ever heard of any other Climate so fruitful that even Capons are able to propagate their own Race But how should Princes take care lest this Race be totally extinguish'd by the sharpsetness of the Presbyterians when there is no such Race to be found in any Kings Dominions for as I take it ever since the Bishops banishment there has been no King of Geneva His Majesties Curiosity has replenish'd St. James's Park with all sorts of Fowl from all parts of the World but could never yet that I can hear of procure one single Bird of this Capon Race So that I perceive notwithstanding all his great Alliances and Correspondences abroad he has no great interest in the Court of Geneva But you Sir have travel'd those parts and have no doubt contracted acquaintance with the good House-wifes of the Countrey it would be a very considerable piece of service to the Common-wealth in general and to your dear Presbyterian brethren in particular whose mouths you say hang so much Capon-way if you could but help us to some of the Chickens of both Sexes of this Capon-brood I am confident it would be so well accepted both in Court and City that you might easily obtain a Patent for the Monopoly and a Pension for the service Especially when they are of the greatest size of any in the reformed World so that if this race should be totally extinguish'd it might prove of fatal consequence to the Growth and Interest of the reformation in Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Poland Savoy France the Netherlands Denmark Sweden Scotland
in general and as if I had perswaded men that they may and ought to act against their Consciences where the Commands of the Magistrate intervene because forsooth I have proved that when the Command of the Magistrate intervenes in doubtful and uncertain Cases by obeying they do not nor cannot act against their Consciences if they really are what they pretend to be and if they are not that then they are Knaves and Hypocrites But the Opinion is bruitish and the consequences devilish though whether it be so it is no matter of your Judicature and therefore must be referred either to a Jury of Divines or the day of Judgement And so we have you at Moral Grace where you warble forth a pleasant ditty of Fortune Prudence and Honesty in three several Languages and the Song ended we might have had a dance upon the high ropes but that lightly one time or other by that means men break their necks and for this reason you make hast to bid adieu to moral Grace of which not a word more only he that is not satisfied may satisfie himself if he can And so immediately you get to debauchery tolerated and this you understand a little better than moral Grace but yet all that you have to say upon this subject is to acknowledge that I never asserted any such thing only debauch'd persons will as you do by a perverse way of reasoning conclude so and so i. e. if I had affirmed as you do that it had been safer to give toleration to mens Blasphemies and Heresies than to their debaucheries then it would have been Heresie tolerated And so after a driveling and School-boys Declamation against the debauchery of the Sibarites you are at Persecution recommended And here it is Gods Mercy that Julian was Emperour and not I and though you dare jest upon him and the Gallies as the more remote yet you sculk by the Axes Pillories and Whipping-posts as the more practicable and dangerous instruments of Persecution and being your self a most gracious and conscientious Coward admire at some bodies courage that dares walk the streets so confidently when it were so easie to deisy the Divine after the ancient manner and no body be the wiser and so cunningly insinuate as if you your self would be glad to accept the Office provided you may gain some accession from the publique stock of the Party because in this age Gentlemen cannot otherwise well support their Quality but if ever you undertake it I shall never fear any other weapon than a Spanish Fig or some more secret Italian dispatch for though you talk so much of fighting and duels you are so far from being so hardy as to see any man dye upon the spot that it is manifest you never had the Courage to attend the event of a war between two Boys in the streets in that among all the wise and politique remarques you have made upon the transactions of Oheering-Cross and Lincolns-Inn-fields we have not one Observation upon that subject And so at length we come to Push-pin Divinity but because you understand nothing of the Game I have directed you to the School where it is weekly practised Onely to hide your ignorance you tell us what you have to say upon it and perhaps you may have a stomach but perhaps you may not for when you come to it you only repeat it all over again and tell us that though you indeed have not yet the King himself has considered all these things Strange that a man of such private condition and breeding should be so intimately acquainted with the studies and retirements of Kings These are the Acts and Scenes of all your six Plays but yet when all is over the Plot of the Grand Thesis and Ecclesiastical Policy stands stock still And now among friends was ever any thing so monstrous you see what some men may come to with high feeding and no Divinity Did ever any man run such taplash as this at first Broaching Well! for your sake may I never live to out-live my self and my little Understanding so much as to be proud of such witless and insipid stuff as this upon the usefullest and most pregnant Arguments in the World This a Merciful man as I am would have thought Correction enough for one mans back but you are so pregnant and awkerd a Dunce so emproved in Ignorance so dexterous in the knack of being impertinent and so addicted to all kinds of Leasing that though you had Truth on your side yet it would never please you till you had dress'd it up and set it off with all the Colours of Falsehood and whatever the cause is in which you engage you will be sure to make your self ridiculous and therefore but for a proof of this peculiar giftedness of yours I shall to avoid Ink-shed content my self and I fear more than satisfie my Reader with three or four of the goodliest Instances of your Wit and so leave you to chew the Cud upon your own shame and folly Thus when J. O. had and that without blushing too pleaded in Justification of his own Non-conformity that he dares not conform to Socinianism Arminianism and Popery as if he could be admitted into the Communion of the Church of England upon no other Terms than of Popish and Socinian Subscriptions and when I had scourged such an insolent Libel with some smartness of Correction though not so much as it deserved you in your bashfulness call it railing So that it seems if any man impudently belye the Church of England and I take him in it and expose him for it it is but telling me I rail and I am answer'd This is too like the stubbornness of your shrew that when she was duck'd over head and ears still stretch'd up the Symbols or as your Pin-Divines will have it the Sacraments of Lowsiness and Cuckoldry Nothing but such incorrigible Scolds as you and she could have persisted so obstinately in so rude a Calumny as this of J. O's But when among other passages I tell you that to the Isme of Socinianism he might as justly have added all the Ismes in the Old Testament out of this you rear two thwacking Objections the one against my self of prophaneness the other against the Church of England of Schism And this is yelp'd like a true Whelp of Old Martyns for no man be he Bishop or Arch-Bishop could ever open his mouth against the holy Discipline but this dull Buffoon presently run him up into Blasphemy and Treason Blasphemy because he reviled the Lord Christs own Institution and set up a form of Church Government of mans devising in defyance to his unalterable Platform Treason because he perswaded her Majesty to keep out Christs true Officers and plant Antichristian Bishops in their steads and by that means to draw the Judgments of God down upon her self and her Kingdoms This was the Summe not only of all old Martyns Buffoonry but of all the serious
a Jest or a Quibble in its confutation You are a right Champion for the Fanatique Cause that can confute any Argument with face and confidence There is no disputing such an Adversary without an head-piece This is only tilting of foreheads where the hardest skull not the fullest must get the victory Away you trifling Wretch talk you no more of Ecclesiastical Policy and hereafter never pretend to any knowledge that pretends either to Reason or Modesty for had you any sense of the former you would never have been so silly as to be so seriously scared at such an innocent and undeniable proposition or any of the latter you could never have been so impudent as to bray forth such a confident and heinous censure against it as if it were notoriously evident without proof that it directly subverts all the Principles of Religion and Government And therefore I would fain know in good earnest what your meaning was in making your first onset upon this Grand Thesis If you intended its Confutation why have you not discharged so much as one semi-vowel of exception against it If you did not to what purpose is it to trouble your self and the world with its Quotation A man in my Opinion had as good altogether unless he be very idle keep his mouth shut as gape and yet say nothing If this be the Grand Thesis in comparison whereof the rest of my Assertions as you inform us are to be reckoned no better than sneaking Corollaries and if I bottom all the foundations of Government and Religion upon it and make it more necessary to the support of the World than the Pillars of the Earth or the eight Elephants one would think this if any thing should have been battered down with knocking and dead-doing Arguments and here if any where one would have expected you should have given an hot and fierce alarm and have drawn up all your squadrons of vowels mutes semi-vowels and liquids and by the next Gazet to have heard of a sorer and more dreadful battel than ever was fought in your Grammar-War or my Roman Empire Now after all this Threatning and Preparation what a disappointment must it be to the Readers and Spectators to see so proud an He that bore up so bravely and with such a manful Confidence come off with this soft and gentle Rebuke Verily and indeed now it is a naughty Proposition ay and all that Thou a Rat-Divine thou hast not the Wit and Learning of a Mouse when thou endeavour'st to bite thou canst not so much as nibble Thou talk of Government of the Crowns and State of Princes to School Truant mind your Push-pin and con your eight parts of Speech and presume not hereafter to cavil at things that are above the capacity and concern of Boys and Girls and sucking-bottles And yet to the same purpose that is to none at all is that tedious train of Quotations that you bring in at the tail of this without passing any smarter remarque upon them than the same general censure of Malignancy though if they are chargeable there was no need of your Edition for they were in print before and therefore it is but sit you should be endited for a scandalous Plagiary to transcribe so much of my Book to no other purpose than only to make up 6 pages towards your full tale of 326. I believe it will be found against the Laws of the Stationers-hall for your Book-seller to print so much of another mans Copy after it is enter'd according to Order without his leave and consent and I hope M r Martyn will seek his remedy against the Assigns of John Calvin and Theodore Beza They are bold and sawcy fellows as it is the nature of every thing to be so that relates to Geneva But you and I will not concern our selves in their Controversies they know without our information as well as any Vermine in Christendom how to manage their own Affairs by the intrigues and mysteries of their own Trade At least it more concerns me to keep close to your self for they tell me that if a man will keep continually running after a mad dog it is the only way to secure himself from being bitten Tell me therefore quickly in answer to the Grand Thesis do you seriously believe that his Majesty has no Power in matters of Religion What then becomes of all your Acts of Parliament against Popery ever since the Reformation nay what then becomes of the Declaration it self for Indulgence and Liberty of Conscience in which his Majesty declares that he therein only makes use of that Supreme Power in Ecclesiastical Matters which is not only inherent in the Crown but has been declared and recognized to be so by several Statutes and Acts of Parliament Beside do you not think it possible for men to create publique disturbances under pretences of Religion Was there never any Rebellion carried on by popular Zeal and Reformation Did you never hear of any men that set up Christs Standard in defiance to their Princes and that fought against his Person at least only to carry on the work of the Lord and that have murther'd and banisht Kings only to dethrone Antichrist and the Whore You so great a Traveller and did you never hear the Countrey people tell stories of the merry pranks of John of Leydon and the Anabaptists of Germany You so great an Historian and never read of any Kingdomes and Empires some time or other embroil'd or destroyed by Arts of Religion You would be an Historian indeed if you could but name any one Nation in the World whose Annals do not afford us variety of sad stories to this purpose And then after all this dare you be so confident as to declare it is absolutely unlawful and in all cases for any Prince to claim or exercise any Authority over Conscience or Religion If you dare not but allow a necessity of Coercion in some cases then after all your confidence you grant the truth and justifie the innocence of the Grand Thesis viz. That it is necessary to the Peace and Government of the World that the Supreme Magistrate of every Common-wealth should be vested with a Power to govern and conduct the Consciences of Subjects in affairs of Religion An Assertion so obvious and so harmless that never any People in the World had so little brains or so much forehead as to deny it to all Intents but only the salvage Anabaptists of Germany and they indeed claim'd an absolute exemption from the Civil Power for themselves and that only upon the priviledge of Saint-ship but then they equally cancell'd all Government and protested against all manner of Subjection either to Secular or Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction But excepting these inhumane Canibals this Grand Thesis that you suppose to be so grosly absurd that barely to name it is enough to expose the person that shall maintain it as an open enemy to God and Man is so granted and undoubted
Clamours that have the face to compare three easie and harmless Rites with the Yoke of Moses and the Tyranny of Antichrist But thus split a Straw and lay it cross a Fanaticks forehead and as hard as it is it shall break the back of his Conscience I could have wish'd you had been as much refreshed and edified with the Arch-Bishop's Testimony as with Mr. Hales's that so instead of quoting a single Passage you might have taken upon your self the grateful penance of transcribing his whole Book and then you would have obliged us with that remarkable Prophecy wherewith he shuts up his Antiquities There is nothing more to be fear'd and provided against in this well-constituted Church of England than lest the Clergy whilst it takes pains in the Word and Truth and is with the greatest Observance subject to the Soveraign Power should be set forth as a Prey and Spoil to the Lavish and Spend-thrifts and be torn by the Reproaches and Contumelies of the Ignorant and exposed to the Affronts and Insolences of the Rascal-Rabble If this shall ever happen more heavy Scourges from God and sadder times than those of Queen Mary's Reign may justly be expected And yet thus it has been and thus it must be wherever it is the humour and fashion to vilifie the Priesthood Religion becomes contemptible with its Officers and where that loses its Esteem and Reverence Government loses its support and security And this was at the bottom of our late wild and wanton Rebellion that the People were debauch'd into a slight regard of all things Sacred and Civil by the bold and juggling suggestions of a few ambitious and sacrilegious Malecontents and then it was not only easie but natural to put Affronts upon all the Proceedings of Authority to bear down all its Remonstrances and run the Common-wealth into flat Anarchy and open War You see how little Execution is to be done upon the Church of England with the But-end of an Arch-Bishop as you express it with equall Wit and Manners Here the Quotation of my Lord Verulam which you could produce to my confusion would in my opinion have been much more to the purpose but to tell us what you can say without saying it is only to talk to your self Or the story of Pork that you forbear to tell too because you say I know it but I say I do not know it or if I did you should however have had the Manners to have told it for his Majesties sake because he knows how to make use on 't But another Qualm that is upon every turn throwing you into groaning Fits is that after all my seeming and pretended zeal for the Church of England for which you have the greatest kindness in the World were it not for the Pick-thankness and Pick pocketingness of the Clergy I shall be found by any unpack'd Jury of Divines little better than a rank Erastian a word you have pick'd up out of Bishop Bramhal though for any thing you know that may signifie a Wizard or a Magician yes or a Jewish Zealot i. e. a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat But be it what it will this too was as all the rest are J. O's grievance And you are both Crafty Colts that when you know your selves unable to answer Arguments presently spurn at them with some false and foul Recrimination I scorn'd to take any notice of his Braying and so I should of yours but that I perceive some weak and well meaning Brethren that are only wont to skim and skip over Books to be a little startled at the Impeachment because I all along discourse of the Power of the King and not of the Church though the reason of it is very obvious viz. because the Subject I design'd and proposed to treat of was the Power of the King and not of the Church so that if you and J. O. are aggrieved at any thing it is for no other cause than that I have stuck close enough to my own Argument and too close to yours Now Sir as you well remember you have for want of wiser Remarques calculated at least ten times over in what Year of the Lord and upon what day of the Month my several Books were born and then if you will compare it you will find that the juncture of Affairs to which the first was accommodated was at a certain Season after the Chatham Adventure when you began to lift up your Heads and to Nose your Governours and to make bold demands in the name of your Consciences against the late illegal Impositions of King and Parliament And you know what innumerable swarms of Pamphlets you were perpetually sending abroad only to declare to all his Majesties good Subjects that either were already out of humour or had a mind so to be that if himself or any other Civil Magistrate whatsoever shall presume to challenge or exercise any Authority over their Free born Consciences in any matters of Religion whatsoever he usurps upon the Royalty of God and involves himself in the guilt of Tyranny and Persecution This was loud and broad enough to alarm the Church of England we understood the men and their meaning and had no mind believe me to have that comfortable settlement restored to Church and State by his Majesties happy Restauration unravel'd by these Men's bold and insolent Pretences And therefore divers Persons out of pure Love for the Church and Loyalty to their Prince and Zeal to their Countrey set themselves to beat back all your new Republican Pleas of Sedition and to assert his Majesties Prerogative against all your old Shifts of Dis-loyalty Among the rest I had no more Wit than to thrust my self too forward into the Scuffle and to pursue you too close through all your peevish Clamours and Pretences For when I saw men of known and approved Enmity to the present State buzze abroad such Exorbitant Principles among the Common-People as flatly contradict all the Principles and defeat all the Obligations of Government I could not I ought not to refrain from lashing such Lewd Designs with some Warmth and Smartness of Reproof and if I have any where overlash'd it was out of an over-vehement Concern for the Peace and Prosperity of my Countrey though for my own part I am not sensible of any one Expression that is chargeable with the least Harshness or Incivility I have only express'd ill things by their Proper Names and whereas both your self and J. O. pour fourth in every Page incessant complaints of Railing and Reviling that is but an Uncivil Word that you may throw at any man that you are not fond of and it proceeds merely from your Old prodigious Pride and Partiality to your selves who whilst you make it both your Recreation and Employment to invent or blazon Slanders against the Innocent rave and fome at all Conviction of guilt against your selves I have challenged you often enough to specifie but one foul or false word in