thither that they Personally examin'd all the People in that place who with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake And yet they laid their hands on them being I presume well satisfied with Philip's account of them and they received the Holy Ghost For Philip's Examination of them was in order to Baptism and after that it was usual to administer Confirmation and the Eucharist also to Adults at the same time For his Exception at Baptizing tolerated in Necessity to Midwives and he would gladly see any such thing in Antiquity Tolerated by whom by the Church Pray let him look upon the Rubrick concerning Private Baptism before he writes again where the words are these First let the Minister of the Parish or in his absence any other lawful Minister that can be procured with them that are present call upon God Yet were Tertullian now alive who knew the Customes of the Ancient Church as well I suppose as this Author he would not have censur'd our Church for Tolerating so much in that point For sure he goes much farther and will shew him somewhat more than this in Antiquity in case of Necessity such a Necessity they did believe of Baptism his known words are these that in such a case Quilibet Laicus ting it And I know not in this case and according to this Author's Principles what a Lay-man can do more than a Woman For the great things he speaks of the Power of the Keys in his Chapter of Church-Government they are well and truly spoken but so is not that which follows Yet this is in a manner quite relinquisht to Chancellors Lay-men c. The Church perhaps was never happier since the Reformation in men of this Profession that fill up those places with great Ability and Integrity and I add with great deference to their Superiours the Bishops No doubt they are most capable to examine and declare upon matter of Fact whether or no this or that person have done the fact to which the Canon has decreed Excommunication but they understand too well to think they have the Power of the Keys wherefore the Sentence where things are regularly done is pronounc'd by a Priest not by a Lay-Chancellour And his Similitude of the Parish-Clark jingling the Keys when the Rector has lockt any one out of the Church to which he likens those proceedings in the Spiritual Court is a Jingle it self and no better You will answer me saies he The Bishops themselves pass it over c. Truly in this you have reason and the blame must wholly light on them No I will not answer him so but I will ask him one plain Question Are the Bishops wholly to blame that the Canons of 1640 are not observed which make abundant provision against such Abuses or rather Are not those to blame who explode these Canons He tells us that in the times of Popery when Spiritual and Temporal affairs were all intermingled and horribly confounded the Bishops were frequently Lord-Keepers Treasurers Chief-Justices Vice-Roys and what not which is strangely Unapostolical and unlawful No men were greater Blessings to their times even in those times of Popery when they sat at the Helm than the Bishops 'T was Bishop Morton's Industrious brain that made up the Fatal breach and United the two Houses of York and Lancaster in the happy marriage between King Henry the Seventh and the Lady Elizabeth and it was under the Ministry of Bishop Fox who was Lord Privy-Seal and by his reaching Parts that the grounds were laid for a more happy Union between the two Kingdoms of England and Scotland in that Marriage which was design'd with a deep and long train of memorable Policies that the eldest Daughter of Henry should marry James of Scotland and the younger should maâ—ch into France that so if ever they should come to inherit Scotland might be the Annexe to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and that England might never be in the nature of a Province to France In the Old Testament there are Examples enow of Priests that were Ministers of State those I confess were Unapostolical that is long before the Apostles but he will have much adoe to prove them unlawful He might have omitted Lord-keepers and Treasurers for Bishop Williams and Bishop Juxon's sake one of them as able in the Chancery as the other in the Treasury And whereas the King is graciously pleased at this time to bestow the great Seal of Ireland upon a Reverend Praelate there I hope this Author will not deny but his Majesty has put him into a lawful Calling But whereas in the end of this Chapter he justly complains of exempt Jurisdictions as meerly Papal and a thing altogether unknown to Antiquity wherein he is much in the right I wonder he does not discern his own Scheme concerning Bishops and Priests to be Papal too and that Presbyterianism has no pretence to Antiquity but what it has from Popery It was Pope Innocent the 4th whom for such pranks as these his Party celebrate for a most wise Pope who decreed that ex dispensatione deputatione solius Pontificis Romani one Priest might ordain another whosoever then writes the History of Presbytery should make it begin from Rome and not take its rise from Geneva who does not know that the Popish Schoolmen and Canonists have made it their business to degrade their Bishops and confound them into one and the same order with the Presbyters to exempt the Regular Clergy from Episcopal Jurisdiction and as many of the Secular as they please who made the Cardinals that were but mere parish-Priests and many of them no Bishops to this day superiors to all the Bishops nay Governers and Judges over all Prelates in the vacancy of the Popedom The Consistory of Cardinals is then their only head of the Catholick Church upon earth which is all one as if it were headed with a Geneva-Consistory both Papists and Presbyterians take down the Superior order and advance the middle only Mr. Calvin and his Followers will have all this depend immediately on Christ himself whereas the Romish Party makes it depend immediately on one they call Christ's Vicar For how vehemently did the Papalins even in their Council of Trent urge and press it That the Power and Jurisdiction was wholly given to the Bishop of Rome and that every particular Bishop being only de Jure Canonico may be removed by the Pope's Authority he that would see more to the same purpose let him consult the Cardinal Pallavicino if he will not trust Padre Paolo where he may read the long Speech of Father Laynez all to this effect But though I had prepared some Animadversions upon this Chapter too concerning Bishops and Priests yet it has been so learnedly confuted in a Sermon preached at Whitehall which I hear is to be published by His Majesties special Command that I shall not need nor presume to touch that Chapter Animadversions on his Charitable
us by imposing several things which your selves confess not necessary Why said the Bishop and your selves confess those things are not unlawful O but replied the Advocate some of our Party think those things unlawful and some of ours answered the Bishop think them Necessary and for order and decency some Ceremonies sure are Necessary Well but cannot you perswade your men said the Other and cannot you said the Bishop prevail with yours So the Dispute ended nor was it indeed possible for any Solid man granting that we do not clog our Communion with any thing unlawful to say more for them without speaking against them and confessing their weakness or their wilfulness that they could not or would not be perswaded And if this be reason enough why they must be gratified and humoured in every thing then it follows that only Knaves and Fools must govern the world Secondly I answer if the Surplice with other things were as he confesses wisely and piously retain'd by the Reformers from Popery when probably many long nourish'd up in those Ceremonies would not have come into the Church had all those been cast out Then it would be imprudently not to say impiously done of us who ought in pursuance of that most blessed work the Reformation to make it still our aim and design to bring the Papists at home and abroad into the Communion of our Church if we should set them further off by turning out all our Ceremonies several of which 't is true are theirs also but many Ages before they were either theirs or ours they were the Primitive Church's and therefore to think them Popish for being also theirs is as senseless as to think there was Popery before Noah's Flood And if the Church of England which is now the terrour of Rome and the glory of all Protestant Churches be thus considered as a part undoubtedly the best and happiest part of the Catholick Church whose members are innumerable â—nd all of them both in the Greek and Latin Churches nay in several of the Protestant Churches especially the Lutheran are far more addicted to Ceremonies than we in the Church of England and use almost all the same Ceremonies and others like them then certainly we should give offence to almost the whole Christian world whereas we ought to give them none though they were Jews or Gentiles if we should abolish all our Ceremonies Then how ill does this Author argue in crying the People the People are passionately against the Ceremonies and putting the business on this issue of counting Noses But thirdly I answer this is Trying the Church of England as they did its Sacred Desender in the name of the Commons of England when they had not one in ten of their Party Nay perhaps Dissenters properly so call'd are not in some Dioeceses above one in twenty Many absent themselves from our Churches out of pure Indevotion and Laziness Many frequent the Meeting-houses out of Curiosity and many for want of room in their Churches and Tabernacles at London or because of their distance from their own Parish Churches in the Country The stiff and irreconcilable Dissenters appear to be a handful of men in comparison And this I hope is enough to answer this old bug-bear-Argument started by those that found out the trick of gathering hands and mustering up the Broom-men and the Chimney-sweepers to cry no Bishops Then he raises an Objection for us and answers it after a fashion But you have no hopes of gaining him you believe 't is not Conscience but Faction and wilful perversness keeps him off Oh! do not despair believe better of him c. We are very far from Despairing if good means be used and the right course be taken And we can hardly believe worse of the Dissenters than this Author would make us believe of them for p 24. this Author styles them blind and wilful Separatists And is it not apparently wilfulness and faction I beseech you my Brethren take heed of thus dissembling with God and the World or take heed of giving your selves up to the Delusions of a mistaken Spirit And p. 65. 't is most evident their Spirit savours something of the Pharisee the proud Pharisee But whereas he is pleas'd to reinforce these Objections against the Dissenter in our behalf But you know it is so with him viz. that we have no hopes of gaining him c. Indeed we know no such thing but the quite contrary we know very many that have been as highly prejudic'd in their Education and yet have submitted afterward to clear Conviction and are now very useful men in the Church of England But I take no pleasure in giving this Author the mortification of answering himself by his own contradictory Propositions That here which bears any colour of Reason is only this that we should yield the more to save his soul and we should cover a multitude of our own sins I answer if that be true which he saies and which I fear that they do thus dissemble with God then to frame a new Law to serve their turn is to countenance and as it were establish Hypocrisie by a Law If they have cover'd their sin like Adam and hide their iniquity in their bosome this would but make them add sin to sin and so instead of covering a multitude of our own sins we shall only follow a Multitude to do evil His next address is to the Bishops with Oh! my Fathers my Fathers But oh the pity of it that twenty such Oh's will not amount to one Reason his humble request to them is that they would vouchsafe to read the fourteenth Chapter to the Romans Since he is not pleas'd to draw any Argument thence into any form and because I shall meet him again pelting of this Text anon my humble Answer shall be likewise by way of request to him that he would vouchsafe to read Bishop Sanderson's Excellent Sermon upon the third verse of that Chapter Let not him that eateth not despise him that eateth c. That Bishop I hope was no Persecutor and yet he plainly shews that restraining some mens Extravagancies by good Orders and requiring Obedience to those orders is not that which this Authour is pleas'd to call Restraining the Liberty of the Gospel to the rigidity of their Discipline Then he bids us gravely to build our Church on a Rock and not on the Sand of Ceremonies And again this is a very sandy and dirty foundation Our Church God be thank't is not now to be built but upheld against such as himself who like Her in the Proverbs plucketh it down with his own hands Who ever before wandred into such an Extravagant Supposition as if we made our Ceremonies our Foundation yet by his favour as contemptible as these Materials are of Sand and Dirt if every one may be allowed to pick out all the Morter that is made up of them the House must fall But is not the Body more than Rayment
and ask't the Doctor in this Author's way Whether he would have him build his Faith upon Syllogisms As if a true Syllogism both for matter and form were any thing else but true Reason And as if any part of our Faith were not only above our Reason but unanswerably contradictory to Reason and to the rules of Reasoning Sure if the Apostle prays for a Deliverance from unreasonable men for some men have not Faith implying that such men as have not Faith are unreasonable in that however rational they be in other affairs Then we may safely and truly convert the sense of that Proposition and conclude this or that as Transubstantiation in the Case before us is indeed unreasonable therefore it ought to be no part of â—ny man's Faith A thousand more such Instances may be raised out of other Texts but these may suffice This is that which St. Paul calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to convince Gainsayers the very word of Aristotle which is honour enough for that Philosopher If he had his wish which is ours as well as his that only grave discreet and conscientious Persons weâ—e put into the Ministry then he foresees and foretells that many Persons of good rank and estate would think it no dishonour but rather an high honour to enter into it as they did in the Primitive Times Though we cannot shew so many Heroick Examples of this kind as were in those blessed times yet thanks be to God many persons of good rank and estate do think it no dishonour to be Clergy-men and perhaps there were never so many well-born men in the Church since the Reformation though he takes no notice of it but rather implies the contrary that men of Quality count it a disparagement to be in Holy Orders He might consider that two of our greatest Prelates are Sons to Peers of the Realm and that my Lord's Grace of Canterbury my L. Bishop of Winchester and my L. Bishop of Hereford besides several other Bishops are Gentlemen of ancient Families and Honourable Names in this Kindgom and always must be Of such as these the Prefacer to Mr. Herbert's Country Parson speaks thus with holy and lofty Eloquence These Noble Persons so excellently qualified with Vertues Learning and Piety by bringing along with them into the Church the Eminency of their Birth also have cast a lustre upon the Clergy as greater Starrs help to brighten up their less shining Neighbours and have advanc't their Christian Priesthood to the height it was at under the Law of Nature when it was the hereditary Honour and Prerogative of the First-born or chief of the Family to be the Priest of the most High God But whether University men or not it matters not so as fully instructed in the Doctrine of the Gospel by sound Commentators And why matters it not Where are they like to be so fully instructed in the Doctrine of the Gospel or even in sound Commentators if they are all in all with him as in Universities But I suppose he means some English Commentators such as the Assemblies Notes for Dr. Hammonds will mislead them concerning Episcopacy For such as were never Academians the Latin they bring from School together with some Hebrew and little or no Greek will hardly carry them farther except into some renowned Postillers Yet these are the men whom he would set up to Preach with that which he calls the Demonstration of the Spirit By which I cannot gather what he means from all that he speaks unless it be to speak as he does Magisterialy But that that is not to speak with Demonstration of the Spirit I refer him to the first part of the Friendly Debate where that is clear'd sufficiently But to return to the point we were upon the Interest of Universities Would he have Men of Quality come into the Church and not be capable of its highest Dignities And would not this be a rare Breeding for such as should be design'd for our greatest Dignitaries and Praelates never to come near either of the Universities but to live in the Country poring upon his Commentators A good way indeed to make them Gentle-Readers as he tells us Julian the Emperour's Kinsman and afterwards Emperour himself was admitted a Reader in the Church or for a need to make them such Lecturers as he is forming in this Chapter or such as one verily thought King Henry the Eighth had been when reading his Life as it is written by my Lord Herbert of Cherbury instead of the words of the Noble Historian which are these p. 2. His Education was accurate being destined as a Credible Author affirms †Concil â—râ—d l. 1. to the Arch-bishoprick of Canterbury during the life of his elder Brother Prince Arthur he mistook and read it His Education was a Curate being destin'd to the Arch bishoprick ef Canterbury For Confirmation he is in the right where he urges the Necessity of it And perhaps not much in the wrong where he proposes an Expedient for the Bishop to appoint some discreet Conscientious Ministers as our Deans Rural should be in several Circuits to examine Though 't is a little hard that he will not trust every Parish-Priest with Examining praeparatory to Confirmation when he makes them one and the same Order with the Bishops themselves But whereas he adds to Examine and Licence to the Lord's Table for I pass it as granted that Confirmation is no Sacrament so do I take it for granted that 't is not only a License to the Lord's Table and to think it is only so is to run into one extreme of speaking too meanly of it to avoid the other of such as call it a proper Sacrament For by his favour our Youth may receive the Sacrament before they are Confirmed To what purpose then does he put the case so tragically against the Bishops It may often happen saies he that a pious Child well fitted for the Holy Sacracrament and perchance being weak earnestly desires it before his death yet must stay some years till next Visitation or take a long journey to the Bishop for which he may want strength or means to support him No his pious Child need not stay some years nor yet some hours for the Sacrament nor travel any farther than the Rubrick which one would think this Author never saw the words of which are these And there shall none be admitted to the Holy Communion until such time as he be Confirm'd or be ready and desirous to be Confirm'd It is indeed not possible for a Bishop in a large Diocess and Triennial Visitation to perform this Necessary work as it ought if there have not been good Catechizing and praevious Examinations but supposing those Why may not Priests nor Bishops perform it And why must Confirmation be taken out of the Bishop's hands upon this wild account When St. Philip had converted Samaria Acts 8. 15. whilst the Apostles were at Jerusalem can we think when some of them came