Civil Power What was not her own she has given out of her Hands where she can't communicate yet there she will obey and where she can't obey she is ready to endure expecting her Reward in Heaven Not ignorant how much she suffers now from the Contradiction of disloyal Men for the Truth of this Doctrine and how much by its meekness she stands exposed to future Persecution yet she professes to know too that her Saviour's Kingdom is not of this World that the Rendezvous against a Prince is not protected by being in a Church turns not her Congregations into Armies That the Sword is joyned with the Keys and that Excommunication is armed with any civil Penalties It acknowledges to be from the Care and Authority of the Civil Government that thence it has its temporal Power over Subjects so far is it from assuming any over the Superiors themselves And tho parties seemingly opposite agree in the contrary Opinion we take not that for an Argument of its Truth equally detesting the Holy League of the one and the Solemn League of the other If the Caesar be Heathen and like him in the Text so far our Church obeyes If he professes the Faith and she finds him in her Assemblies she gives him as his own the supreme Direction and Guidance of ecclesiastick Affairs to settle its outward Policy and be its Moderator and Governour And yet gives not so much as to take away from the Ordination of God Her Ministers act under his Protection but in vertue of a Commission from above of an Authority spiritual and derived by other Hands So far hath the Church of England been from opposing or flattering the Civil Power neither exalting its self against the Prince nor the Prince against God in a constant Uniform Practice of this Rule of the Text Giving to Caesar what is Caesar 's and to God what is God's In the same temper and with the same impartiality she has endeavoured to reduce all things to their antient Limits and render to every one their Due Arrogates not to her self an Infallibility in her decrees but permits to every private Person to judge and Consider and yet authorises not a wanton giddy Spirit a Judgment without Discretion but advises the unlearned to attend to those that are over them Neither grosly to think they cannot err nor easily to think they do Keeps a mean between a blind Obedience an implicite Faith and betwixt a blind Disobedience a froward contemptuous rejecting of what a Congregation of God's People shall Decree She has restored to the People the one half of their Lord's Supper the Blood the Life of the Christian Sacrifice detained before by a sacrilegious Impropriation Directs to discern the Elements of the Communion from the corporal Substance of Christ and from common Food to receive them with Reverence but not with Adoration Renders into their Hands the Holy Scriptures intercepted by the Roman See Hides them not under the Cover of a strange Language nor in the Closets of the Doctors but sets them on a Candlestick that they which come in may see the Light Takes not from them the Word of God lest they should misenterpret it but labours that they may not Admonishes Interprets and Explains Le ts them understand their God speaking to them and themselves speaking to God returns them their Prayers in their own Tongue returns them I say For neither was it thought fit to depart from those old Forms of Supplication which God had been pleased to accept from Holy Men of the first Ages which had been Consecrated by the Mouths of the best Christians neither was it to be imagined that God was to be pleased with the variety of a new Phrase or surprised by an extempore Petition In like manner she prayes not to Saints but mentions their Names with Honour uses not the intercession of their Merits but thanks God for their Example And as the Substance of our Worship is not oppressed and overcharged with Ceremony and Circumstance so neither is it left neglected and unattended We wait upon our God with the whole Man in composure of Mind and Body And thus has the English Church rendered to every one their own purged from Superstition and free from Novelty reformed from Abuse and Corruption on all Hands it deservedly takes place of those of the last Ages and may be ranked with the first and best Centuries The primitive Christians if they could be supposed to return upon the Earth would profess our Faith for it is theirs and would certainly be of our Communion for here they would find their own Doctrine and their own Government An Universal Infallible Bishop they had never been acquainted with and of a Church without a Bishop they had never heard So stands our Church upon a Rock beaten upon by Waves on all sides and were the strength of its Adversaries only in their Arguments secure enough It stands firm and upright leans on neither side and by its Frame is in no danger of falling But the Malice of its Enemies is restless they assault openly and privately undermine no way left unattempted not by Men above nor by Hell beneath if they can't throw down they blow up And amidst all the Antichristian Variety of Ruine which the Contrivance of those of Rome has designed against this Church and Nation None so unlikely to be prevented so sure and speedy in the Execution so like themselves and of so Catholick a Destruction as that of this Day When the Invention of a Monk applied by the Malice of a Jesuite had well nigh gratified their Roman Master with the Wish of one of his Heathen Predecessors another vice-God and dispatcht a Nation at a Blow Neither have we had any Reason to think that the same sort of Men are now more quiet or grown more Merciful their frequent Disappointments may have only enraged them and the memory of this Day they are to blot out with the success of another They have always acted with the greatest Violence against this Kingdom and against this Church and for the same reason Our Country for it 's natural Strength great Riches and Courage of its Inhabitants is the firmest Support of the other Protestants and as soon as this Island were reduced the Conquest of the other Hereticks as they call us might be easie weak as they are and divided With the same Prospect are their Designs within this Kingdom levell'd against our Church as it stands here established That is their great and considerable Enemy A Church regularly founded by full Authority Temporal and Spiritual not tumultuously Collected It s Doctrine bottomed on the sure Basis of the Scripture Apostolical in its Government and its Ministers having on its side all that true Antiquity which they themselves vainly pretend A Church they are not able to reproach either with Novelty or Sedition whose Learning has been eminent to their Confusion and whose Interest by the Grace of God has yet been
crave leave to prosecute that way the occasion of the Day leads by representing First the Rights of God and of Caesar Secondly the Usurpations of the Pope upon both and Thirdly the Redress and Reform The Rights of God and the King and the Robbery the See of Rome has committed upon both have been made so evident by others that they will need here but a very brief Recapitulation First If we enquire what is God's we are to consider him as Lord in chief and sole Proprietor whose is the World and all that dwell therein Part indeed of his Dominion he hath been pleased to bestow on the Sons of Men but so as to be held of him by such Laws with such Services and under such Reservations as it shall have pleased the Almighty Donor 1. He has therefore reserv'd to himself the power of declaring Laws and those not to be overrul'd nor superseded but by himself to bind every where and for ever to pass through all Countries and continue to all Ages And those you may read he has delivered them in Writing 2. He has accordingly prescribed the Worship that shall be paid him and the Services he expects Those that are peculiar to him have his Image his Mark set upon them and are Incommunicable For he is a jealous God and will not give his Honour to another 3. And for this peculiar Service he has chosen to be waited upon by a distinct peculiar People that the Homage and Worship of the World may be presented to him in publick by proper hallowed Hands And these Men they too have their Character you may know them whose they are and to whom they belong 4. In the last place we may mention as proper to God not what he has primarily reserved but what afterwards his pious Servants out of Zeal and Gratitude have offered to him Such are all Donations sacred to his Name and appropriated to his Service These Possessions and Revenues whose they are you will find too by their Inscription look into the Charters of their Foundations and you will see they belong to God In the next place consider we what is Caesar's and if we look upon him we shall know his Quality and his Value Whose Image bears he And whom does he represent Is he not the Vicegerent of God 1. Wherever therefore his Sovereign the Almighty has not prevented him by any precedent Commands there he has right and liberty to put forth his in those cases to expect an active cheerful Obedience and that we should in no case and for no reason resist 2. Be this Civil Government Heretick or Infidel we are not discharged of our Allegiance We are obliged by the same Divine Authority to preserve our Religion under it and to continue to it our Subjection Nor are any Modern Governours of the Church greater than their Fathers the Apostles who obey'd patiently the worst of Heathen Emperors submitting either to their Edicts or Persecutions 3. The Duty of the Christian Emperor being to restrain Vice and Irreligion to promote Holiness and the Worship of God to him it belongs to order and direct the Church the way he shall think most proper for those ends to be its Temporal Overseer These are the unquestionable Rights of the Civil Power affirm'd in our Articles and asserted at large by others and to be given up to it by those that will render to Caesar what is Caesar's II. Neither are the Rights of God and the King more evident than that the Pope has invaded both His Usurpations are now grown as conspicuous as his Greatness and to recount them all would be to give a particular of his whole Authority Every one knows his Principality over the other Churches of the World what an unjust Claim it is and how meanly founded How his Authority at first was no greater than that of his Neighbour Bishops the Style the same and his Holyness in common His Precedence not in the Right of Saint Peter but of a Capital City and Addresses first made to him not because he was next to God but to the Imperial Court How from the civility of a Precedence they claim'd a Superiority because they had been consulted with they would afterwards command from arbitrating of difference referred to them by their Brethren concern'd they usurp'd a Judicature and then when none durst contradict them they could not err and grew Infallible It is too as well known how taking advantage of the weakness of an old Empire and making still conditions with the new authorizing the usurpations of others in countenance to their own abusing to their private purposes the zealous Devotion of new converted Barbarians and imposing on their unlearn'd Simplicity by the Authority of forg'd Donations and counterfeit Decretals and having before by various Arts and thorough the connivence or assistance of Princes gained an absolute power over the Bishops of the West They then by the aid of the enslaved Clergy and their Garrisons of Monks attempted openly on the Princes themselves confined their Jurisdiction and forbid them to meddle with the Persons or Revenues of Ecclesiasticks Authoritatively interpos'd in all Differences between Prince and Prince or Prince and People with their Spiritual Thunder in their hands commanded the World to lay down or take up Arms at their Pleasure exercising every where by their Legates the Sovereign Power of Peace and War giving the Law and disposing of Crowns and Lands as they thought fit He that disobey'd was first thrown out of the Church and then out of his Country his Subjects absolv'd from their Allegiance and those justified that had a mind to rebel or to invade They did the Holy Church and Saint Peter Service that seiz'd upon his Estate or his Person He stood delivered up to Satan to be Buffeted on Earth and Tormented in Hell These are the Steps to the Papal Throne and when they were mounted so have they Lorded it trampling imperiously on the Necks of Kings and Bishops in an equal violation of all Authority Sacred and Civil They are the first that directed pretended Holy Orders of men and Sons of Perfection in Separate Congregations to despise their true Spiritual Governours and first instructed Traiterous Subjects to rebel against their King the sanctified way And these Injustices of their Growth and violences of their grown Power lie so open in the successive Annals of the Christian Times That to secure their Cause they have reason to forbid the reading of all Histories as well as of the Holy Bible There we may as easily discern the beginning and gradual advance of the aspiring Papacy as of any other usurping Empire and that this new Rome has by means as humane as those the Old practised and with as little of divine Right extended the narrowness of its original Territory into a Catholick Dominion And there we shall find as soon as it rises to its plenitude of Power nothing but Robbery and Cruelty the World in a perpetual
well enough United to withstand their continued Attempts against this Body and this Constitution they direct all their Aim apply their open Force and their secret Practices This which God forbid if they should ruine they may think it would be no difficult thing to destroy the other ill grounded disunited Societies that are among us ty'd together by no Government consenting in no form of Doctrine met together upon Fancy and Humour holding they know not what and agreeing they know not how Neither are they so barren of mischievous Invention as to be at a loss if Poison Dagger or Powder fails they can work on other Mines and lay other Traines than those of this Day It is indifferent to them by what sort of Artifice the Frame of our Government flies asunder what it is that Tears and Rends and breaks in pieces our Church and State whether the matter that is to scatter us be under the places of our Assemblies or in them whether Houses are burned by their Wildfire or Mens Minds inflamed and our Cities in a more dangerous Combustion whether our Religion be ruin'd by them or by their friends Debauchees Atheists or Enthusiasts They thankfully accept the Pains those of the Separation take to divide and distract us the liberal Present they make of our whole Church into their Bosom contentedly allow all their Clamour against Popery if they will but serve them so far as to fasten that odious Popery upon us glad to see the Papal Designs executed at the Expence and Scandal of those that bear a Protestant Name to see their Brethren of the Recusancy as vigilant and vigorous at it as if they were some new Order of the Popes and had a General at Rome so well agreed that we are never in more Danger from the one than when we are threatned by the other Then our Church is not capacious enough and should be rebuilt say those that would pull it down then its Gates are not broad enough and Breaches to be made wide enough for an Enemy to come in On this side the Papist Mines on that the Dissenter Countermines till by both the Foundation is sapped and the Fabrick sinks Our growing Schisms giving our common Enemy certain Hopes of our future Ruine and furnishing them now with the best Argument for a Head of Unity and an Infallible Judge Other Plots and Designs which those of the Church of Rome may have it may not be in the Power of private Persons to encounter To oppose them there may be the Work of other Hands and the proper Business of Authority for we are to give to Caesar what is Caesar's But to oppose their most dangerous Designs and that without which no other can prevail that is in our own Power It is every particular Man that is to hinder his being disunited to prevent and disappoint the Advantages expected from our Divisions And to exhort and beseech Men to lay aside private Animosities humorous and fanciful Distasts in matters of Religion to keep the Unity of the Spirit in the Bond of Peace is a fit and necessary Duty at all times in an Age that wants Charity so much and has so little of Christian Condescension but at this time more eminently seasonable and absolutely necessary To agree now in the Service of God as it is the Duty of each in private so it is the Interest of the publick The House of God its self if divided against it self cannot stand Whatever other Instruments of our Ruine those of Rome may have let no Protestant suffer his Zeal to be made one To be truly opposite to the Church of Rome to prevent their future Designs and in gratitude for our past Deliverances let us in obedience to the direction of the Text and in imitation of our Church render to every one their Due To the Constitution of the Church that just and thankful Testimony that nothing can be more contrary to the Falshoods Usurpations and Corruptions of the Romish See nothing more agreeable to the Peace good Order and Government of the Kingdom In the head of this Church to Caesar what is Caesar's a grateful loyal Resentment of the great Blessings we enjoy under his Gracious Government no half-Subjection nor Popish Conformity to his Laws an Obedience clear of Roman Shifts and Jesuitical Evasions not setting up a private Antipapal Authority to absolve our selves in some cases from our Allegiance and deny his Majestie 's Supremacy in favour of our own To God particularly on this Occasion all Honour Thanks and Acknowledgment That he was first pleased to shine early upon this Nation in the returning Light of the Gospel the Doctrine of the Reformation discovering to us as it were by a new Revelation his true Religion freed from the Corruptions and Impostures of Men from a Burden of Ceremonies almost Jewish and an Idolatry almost Pagan That he was pleased during the Reign of the succeeding Princess to continue this his blessed Gift to us to the Confusion of all the Enemies of our Faith and Countrey both at home and abroad And particularly under her Successor King that the Divine Majesty was pleased by a singular extraordinary Providence to disappoint a Treason unexampled in its Malice and of an unheard Design The Prince of Darkness himself contriving and labouring the horrid Plot beneath God watching from above and confounding the accursed Work by a Miracle almost as great as if the Train had took and he had stopt the Blow that he has been pleased since still to defeat by a constant jealous Care the restless Enemies of our Peace and Religion preserving from their Malice and Treachery that Sacred Head next and immediate under God our Governour and Defendor preserving us all to his true Worship from Confusion and War whose Grace it is that we assemble as at this time in Peace and Safety worship him as here in Purity Neither is this all on this Occasion we owe our God We are to continue our Thanks beyond the Day and express our selves sensible of the Divine Favour by improving it to the most Advantage We stand still obliged to a farther Justice to give our Protestant Religion its Due and let It have its proper blessed Effects That the Purity and Reformation of our Religion be not only read in our Articles and Liturgy and those framed by the Piety of our Ancestors but seen on our own Persons exemplified in our Lives That our Worship of God discover by the Intenseness of the Devotion that it is not distracted by any other Object nor diverted on Saints and Angels That it appear not by our slackness at the Holy Communion that we could have been without the Use of Both Kinds That it be visible by our zealous attention to our Prayers that we Understand them and by our Obedience to God's Word that we have Read it not from impious Allusions and such Profanations as may almost justifie the Papal Prohibition Let us shew by the frequency of our own Charities and Devotions now that we think those of Others for us after our Death of no avail by our abhorrence of all Sin that we account none Venial and by the religious Carefulness of our Lives that we trust not to Indulgences or easie Absolutions They that doubt of a Possibility of Salvation for those of the Other Communion in This let them secure their own and while we profess by good Works we cannot Merit Heaven let us not by bad Deserve a greater Damnation These are the proper Tests of a true Protestant and signs of a holy Zeal Other noisy Clamours and angry Heats against Rome have no more of Religion in them than is in the loud sounds on that occasion we hear from the tops of our Churches or in the Fire that burns in the Streets If we would intirely banish Popery let none of its Corruption be retained in our Manners let our Lives and our Conversations Protest So shall we best thank God for the Mercy of this Day and engage his Protection for the future FINIS
Disturbance by Interdicts and Excommunications all the Wars and Confusions of whole Ages commanded and managed by this unchristian Authority Emperors at their Feet kickt away deposed by them to be murdered by their Subjects and their Sons The Crowns of England and France given away on any distast as if those Princes had been only Vicars of the Church and at best what they forced one of ours to own but Homagers to the Holy See This Usage on all occasions Crown'd Heads of their own Communion have felt from their Holy Father But if the Crime the Pope charg'd border'd on Heresie Then the Thunderbolts flew and the World was to Tremble to invade that Prince was like a Journey against Infidels to stab him meritorious and the Assassin to be Canoniz'd and so in the last Age on the Presumption of such a Sentence dyed Henry the Third of France The villainous Murderer in open Consistory recognized by the Pope for a Religious Hero and the Relief of Paris by such an ungodly Fact compared with the Redemption of Mankind Under the same Danger by a more express Decree lay Henry the Fourth his Successor till he suffered himself to be Instructed how he might be safe from the Master of the Assassins the Old Man of the Mountains and laid down his Conscience at the Pope's Feet to hold his Life and his Crown And not to mention their impotent Fury against our Henry the Eighth their Former Defender by the same Authority and with as little effect did four of that See successively thunder against our late Glorious Queen and solemnly declare her deprived of her Kingdoms As they had deprived her of those and her Life if God would have suffered private Treachery open Rebellion or a Forrain Powerful Invasion to succeed And in consequence of such a Declaration made by the last of them and with as much Justice was the Traiterous Attempt made we this day remember and King James of Blessed Memory and the three Estates of the Realm together condemned to one Fire So do they give to Caesar his Due And what then can Heretical Subjects expect they are to fall by thousands self-condemn'd and without the Honourable Ceremony of a Bull to be slaughter'd like Sheep abandoned by the angry Shepherd as in the Butchery of Paris or by the Wolves of Ireland For Mercy is not the due of a Heretick nor has he right to common Faith his Life belongs not to him But how is it that the great Spiritual Father deals with his obedient Children Does he not render them their due He like an Old Roman Father treats them with an unaccountable Power allows them no Propriety and denies them the use of all that their good God had given them He takes out of their Hands the Holy Scriptures the greatest Gift of the Holy Ghost their only Comfort and Instruction And instead of it puts a Legend for the Word of Life and Truth unedifying fabulous Traditions for Bread a Stone for Fish a Serpent If that See had pretended but a little earlier Power over the Blessed Spirit they might have commanded it not to write however now they forbid the People to read He keeps from them the Legacy of their dying Saviour one half of the spiritual Nourishment bequeathed them He denys them the use of their Understandings and Judgements in almost all the Articles of their Faith of their Sences too in that of Transubstantiation He takes from them the knowledg of the Prayers offered in their Name and lets them not understand their own Desires So are the People to appear before God dumb and Senseless like one of their Idols All is to be referred to the Priest The Pardon of their Sins is to depend on his Discretion and the Efficacy of that part of the blessed Sacrament that is left on the Sincerity of his Intention So is man robbed of his Spiritual Consolation and the good God of his gracious Purposes But they are more bold yet with the Almighty That Princes may not complain of respect of Persons they absolve in some Cases from the Obedience of God himself and avowedly allow what he as positively forbids authorise incestuous Conjunctions and license Perjury pass Pardons for all Sins committed against the Divine Majesty They make the Authority of the Writings of God to depend upon their own and add to them as they see cause creating new Articles of Faith and Instituting almost a new Religion They give away his Worship make their devoutest Addresses and pay their most humble acknowledgments to the Virgin Mary to Angels to Favourite Saints And that there may not be wanting Rivals with our God They create Saints give Crowns above as well as below and dispose of Heaven as their own They give Divine Honour to Bread which they call a God and to an Image which to the Eye they might better Transubstantiate And to cover their Idolatry they commit Sacrilege steal away one of the ten Commandements and by their Index Expurgatorius blot the two Tables themselves So far has the Papal See been from observing the Rule of the Text from giving to Caesar what is Caesar's or to God what is God's III. The Church of which we have the Blessing to be Members and whose Preservation we more particularly acknowledge this Day with Thanks to God Almighty its Defendor appears in its reformation to have proposed to it self this Rule of our Saviour's to have had in it no other Design than by a just and equal distribution to give to God what is God's and to Man what is Man's It has surveyed the several Claims in the name of God and of the King has considered whose peculiar Stamp and Character those things that were challenged bore and has restored them by the direction of those Marks to their rightful Proprietors In this disposal of Rights and general Restitution it has not minded any Interest of its own nor laid its Hands on what belongs not to it It has not had any private Design to gain by what it was to distribute It has stood upright and held the Ballance steady dealing to each their own ingenuously and with an impartial Hand To God as is most due it renders first his own to his Person a Worship intirely Divine an Honour not before lessened on any rival part of his Creation to his Laws an Obedience which no other Command shall controle nor Dispensation release To Princes next and those that are in Authority it has restored the full exercise of their lawful Power their Countries and their People again their own no place privileg'd nor Person exempted no forain Potentate sharing the Authority nor dividing the Revenue their Subjects bound in an Allegiance not to be withdrawn on any Pretence of Schism or Heresie in the Power of no Consistory to discharge And here we see no Politick reserve that our Church has not provided for it self any other Refuge but in the Providence of God and the Piety of the