Tradition be our rule to interpret Scripture by An excellent way to find out the truth doubtless to bend the Rule to the crooked Stick to make the Judge stand to the Opinion of his Lacquey what Sense he shall pass upon the Cause in question to make Scripture to stand Cap in Hand to Tradition to know whether it may have leave to speak or no. Are all the great out-crys of Apostolical Tradition of personal Succession of unquestionable Records resolved at last into Scripture it self by him from whom these long Pedegrees are fetcht Then let Succession know its place and learn to veil Bonnet to the Scriptures and withal Let Men take heed of over-reaching themselves when they would bring down so large a Catalogue of single Bishops from the first and purest times of the Church For if Eusebius professeth it so hard to find them well might Scaliger then complain that the Interval from the last Chapter of the Acts to the middle of Trajan in which time Quadratus and Ignatius began to flourish was tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Varro speaks a meer Chaos of time filled up with rude conceptions of Papias Hermes and others who like Hannibal when they could not find a way through would make one either by force or fraud Rare embellishments of stile and choice Oratory all along When others plead for a Succession of Persons in Apostolical Power out of Irenaeus and Tertullian you shuffle them of and say That those Fathers are to be interpreted of Succession in that Apostolical Doctrine which was so eminent and notorious at Rome Smyrna Corinth Philippi and Ephesus Now you deny the truth of Succession as to Doctrines also but you are in an high strain of Oratory which is a kind of natural Enthusiasm or worse and your indisposition plainly appears in that you give such grave advice to these traditional Doctors that they place not Succession before the Scriptures You can only mean that they deduce it not from Felix or Pontius Pilate Annas and Caiaphas the High-Priests or the Jewish Sanhedrim And have not Scaliger and you finely combined together in giving a Character of the times immediately after the Apostles as filled only with fraud and force And for this reason alone Lest an unquestionable Succession of Bishops from the Apostles should appear and their Divine Right become thereby undeniable vid. Iren. p. 2. c. 6. § 15 16 17. Besides it hence plainly appears what your purpose was in writing this Treatise in that you have sided all along with the foreign Divines and used their Arguments against the Divine Right of Episcopacy It is the common policy when Men design to devest any Person or Order of that superior power which they cannot well bear or rather desire to have enstated on themselves first to set up for a level and the Project works mightily Thus we know the thing aimed at in the beginning of the great Rebellion here in England was That the King Lords and Commons were three equal States And when by this stratagem they had wrested the King's Prerogative out of his hands they then soon made themselves uppermost assumed and appropriated that very power they had so violently contended against as what ought not to be fixed except in the three Estates in conjunction So here your sham is That all forms of Government are equally practicable no one being of Divine Right in that nature as to exclude another but any one may be established as Persons Times and Places accord thereunto But then your Eisotericks or that which you effectually recommend to your particular Friends and Confidents is The perpetual fixation of the Presbyter as by Divine Right unalterable and having hereby lowered the Bishops top-sail in your own expression and removed from him all that which hath been heretofore appropriated to his Order asserting him to be an accidental humane creation only in this Stirrup the Presbyter sets his foot and ascends as the Assembly-men did at Westminster You invest him with the full power of Order and Jurisdiction and accordingly thus determine Part II. c. 4. § 12. That every Presbyter from Christ and perpetually fixed Cap. 2. hath the whole Ministry derived unto him in actu primo habitualiter viz. The Power of Preaching the Word Visiting the Sick Administring the Sacraments of Visiting Churches Taking care that particular Pastors do their duty of Ordination and Church Censures and making Rules for Decency in the Church The severest Asserter of Episcopal Power cannot invest his Bishop in more And the same in effect you say over again That every Presbyter whom you call a fixed Officer in the Church hath a radical intrinsecal Power of Order in himself And further That every one being himself advanced into the Authority of a Church Governor hath an internal Power of conferring the same upon Persons fit for it and accordingly every one did exercise this Power in the Churches first State and Period or In the first Primitive Church before the Jurisdiction of Presbyters was restrain'd by mutual consent by way of accumulation upon one Person of a power more than he had not by a deprivation of themselves of that inherent Power which they enjoy'd It would be very strange that any Officers of a Religious Society should be upon that account Out-lawed of those natural Liberties which are the results and products of the free actings pag. 252. To which you add That whole Churches and Nations were without Bishops for several Years together some of which had only Presbyters at their first Planting and in those Churches where Episcopal Government was setled Ordination by Presbyters was look'd upon as valid notwithstanding which could not be unless their Ordainers had an intrinsecal Power of Ordination or had they not been a fixed Order under no prohibition by Scripture Part II. c. 6. § 13. pag. 273 275. cap. 7. § 6 7. In all which I say whatever you have pretended against the divine perpetual Right of any one individual Government that the Bishop might fall with more gentleness and plausibility You set up a fixed lasting Government in the Church by Presbyters as unalterable as the Ministry it self in whom you place the whole Power of the Ministry never to be alienated or lost by any authority or under any accident they receiving this Power with their Ordination in actu primo habitualiter radicaliter intrinsically and their execution of it is effectual at any time and in any place even to Ordination it self and the Church hath approved and accepted of it as when Paphnutius tho' but a Presbyter Ordain'd Abbot Daniel and Colluthus Ischyras c. pag. 379. And hereby you give to many of the principal Patrons of the Presbyterian Parity as Calvin Beza Chamier Gersom Bucer Du Moulin even Salmasius Blondel and Daillée what they desire and contend for they having all along allowed of our Hierarchy upon your terms And all the advantage the Church of England receives by the Irenicum
to their Matter and Argument but never repute a nick-name or cramp Epithete a Confutation of their Adversary And again I less admire your inconsiderateness in that you accuse so eminent an Order of Divines of rudeness in their disputations at the same time when you implead me as guilty of the same misdemeanor in respect of your self and aggravate it against me as the greatest crime Besides you seem mostly peccant herein having been so peculiarly beholden to the Schoolmen for your palmarium argumentum or capital Argument as you call it for the mixt and communicative power of Bishops and Presbyters for they were the first that set that design on foot and their Arguments still support it to which you adhere to this day Do you not boast and value your self upon that one adventure It appears by the Epistle Dedicatory that you do where you tell us That the design of it was to gain upon Dissenters from our Church and it did not want success that way both here and in a neighbour Kingdom I thought our Church and the Pope of Rome had never gain'd Proselytes one and the same way All that can with any shew be pleaded for you is you look'd upon Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas the Master of the Sentences and the Angelical Doctor to be Country Vicars or to be no Deans and upon your self as under no obligation of gratitude or common civility towards them for that only reason and hence concluded that you had a right to theirs equally as to my Arguments and so much the more because you can put them into better words your stile is less barbarous or has more embellishments And if you hope this way to recommend your self as a pattern to posterity tho' my Charity obliges me to wish them better presidents to copy after I shall not envy your acquisitions I assure you the bar you have put that I may not be the like pattern is no ways ingrateful to me All that I aim at is to appear to posterity an honest Man in my profession your giant Objection will then be on my side And admit my stile to be as rude and barbarous as your Eloquence can represent it to be the advantage will be the greater thereby to that truth which tho' so rudely composed the greatest Orators have offer'd so little against And this point once gain'd I value no more the repute of a Grammarian or Elegant Composer than the Grammarian in Aelian valued Helena's Picture that was drawn by Zeuxes the Painter who discern'd no one feature in it being a Gramarian no Limner as the reason is given And yet if we consider a little farther another reason may be given for this your Master-Objection You were an early Disciple of David Blondel's and the rest of that Tribe who assaulted the Epistles of the most Holy and Primitive Martyr St. Ignatius at the same rate And among those many Arguments from whence he concluded them to be spurious wherein you have particularly concurr'd with him in your Irenicum and I wish it were all the rubbish he bequeathed to you there are some à dictione petita from his unusual and uncouth stile which he defames and renders contemptible being unmindful of that of St. Jerome Scio inter Christianos verborum vitia non solere reprehendi as the late most Learned Bishop of Chester reproves him for it from the authority of that excellent Father in his Vindiciae Ignatianae And Blondell is so insolent and puffed up with a conceit of his success herein against the Apostolical Martyr that in his Praefatio ad Apologiam pro sententia Hieronymi pag. 52. he sets upon Franciscus de Clara in the same way and concludes himself to have baffled his Apology for Bishops only by giving an account of his solecisms in Grammar and other barbarities of which I have here given a taste * En Barbarismos viz. Satis testium sunt Zelotes In recto regiam petierunt Majestatem Veriverbium sonat Ecclesiae gubernium Primitas Practica Ecclesiae Maxima id est axioma Verbulum Dubiolum vocat quod postea pro grandi objectione habet Nihil sanxierunt Epilogat Amonibiles c. Though I cannot tell whether something else might not be at the bottom For de Clara writes himself Minoritarum which sounds like a Vicar I have sometimes met with more solid and grave Divines or at least that believ'd themselves such who call their Adversaries Grammarians thereby implying the contempt they had of their persons as altogether unqualified for those performances in Divinity in which they had engaged themselves As I remember either Blondell or Salmasius or both thus revile Dr. Hammond But for certain Salmasius is thus upbraided by John Milton who thought himself somebody in his Pro populo Anglicano defensio as also our most learned Bishop Montacute by Labbee in his Dissertatio Historica de Scriptoribus Ecclesiasticis But your greatness or Typus Theologicus takes a contrary method becomes Splenetick and swells and insults over me with this term of disgrace No Grammarian and because I have less regarded words and embellishments since matter of Fact and Argument are the only object of my search and enquiry to which you have not made one exception But my matter is accused as unintelligible to which I 'll return the Answer Mr. Thorndike gave for himself upon the same occasion in the Preface to his Epilogue The obscurity of my matter I am not sorry for if writing in English because here the occasion commenceth the reasons if the consequence of it in some matters seem obscure I conceive it ought to teach the world That the People are made parties to those Disputes whereof they are not able to be judges and I am willing to bear the blame of obscure if that lesson may be learned by the People My crime is more heightned yet in that I am not only rude with my Brethren but with two Archbishops and a Bishop viz. Whitgift Bancroft and Bilson whom I remarque for writing inconsiderately I am sorry that a Man of your Dignity and reputed Learning in the Church should be brought so low as to stand in need of such a palpable Cavil or groundless Accusation as this is your case surely is the same with that of a great person you elsewhere mention who when he had undertaken to manage an ill cause before a publick audience and one of his Friends asked him what he meant by it replied Trouble not your self our own side will believe me Only such a presumption could put you upon this particular indictment of me In plea to which I will only tell the naked story and leave the Reader to judge of your candid dealings with me Robert Parker one that ought not to be named by an honest Man but with a mark of infamy accused these eminent Bishops for placing the Church Authority in the Prince I vindicated them as well as I could and as I thought satisfactorily All that
to it he need not have been so very harsh and severe upon me for it Especially since the utmost of my crime can amount no higher than that it was done unclassically I 'll only repeat your own Words for my authority Irenic pag. 355. That they viz. the Presbyters concurred in governing the Church and not only by their Council but Authority appears from the general sence of the Church of God even when Episcopacy was at the highest Nazianzen speaking of the Office of Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he knew not whether to call it Ministry or Superintendency the lofty Superintendant of Cosmus Blene And those who are made Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from being ruled they ascend to be Rulers themselves And their power by him is in several places called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They are called by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysostom gives this as a reason of St. Paul's passing over from Bishops to Deacons without naming Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because there is no great matter of difference betwixt a Bishop and Presbyters For those likewise have the instruction and charge of the Church committed unto them With more to this purpose produced by you to shew that the Presbyter's power is every way equal to the Bishop's even to summon and censure the disobedient And consequently upon your own terms the lofty Superintendent of Cosmus Blene went not beyond his commission if it were true as you scandalize him that he did actually Summon and Cite you in order to a recantation of your Error as publickly as the error scandal and offence given by it The next Character you affix upon me is not so easily to be born or pardon'd This accuser of his Brethren because the character which is given to the Devil Rev. xij 10. and you repeat it over again as my accuser calls it I have made a very strict examination of my self in that performance and cannot find that I have given any occasion why you should expose me to mankind under so odious a Character I am so confident of my Innocency that in order to my Vindication I 'll here also tell the naked Story and make my Enemies my Judges Sixteen years after the first publication of your Irenicum for which as you say well many Men made allowance considering the scepticalness and injudiciousness of Youth and the prejudices of Education the Manuscript that is there and the most Scandalous part of it made more Scandalous by your declaring it to be the Sense of our Church was reprinted with your order in Doctor Burnet's History of the Reformation as an authentick Record and with the Approbation of both Houses of Parliament by the undue procurement of your Party affixed unto it which by the way you have declared to be the Mouth of the Church of England And this was done without any caution or alteration excepting for the worse because concealing Cranmer's probable at least Retractation And about this time also Mr. Dean of Canterbury Preached before the Court and afterward Printed Doctrines to the same purpose or rather more offensive Hereupon I apprehended a farther design than many were aware off and not without Reason For what appearingly adds more to the confirmation of these Doctrines as the Sense of our Church than the approbation of both Houses of Parliament and the popular names of Dr. Tillotson and Dr. Stillingfleet and all this might make a greater impression upon me than on some others because I had for many years applied my Studies to search after the Rights of the Church and that Power which our Saviour had vested her withal and appointed to be continued till his coming again Especially I being not in the number of those Subscribers who believe themselves no ways obliged to defend what they have assented and consented unto I therefore revised my Collections and digested them in that order according to which they have since been Printed where as I make some reflections upon you so I always refer to your own Words and Sense to vouch them And yet when my Papers came to London all the Objections that I found to be made against them by some Learned Men into whose hands they lighted were occasion'd by reason of your self and Doctor Tillotson on whom I seemed in their Eyes to reflect over-severely Hereupon I wrote a private Letter to you since Printed before my Book the summ of which is to tell you the ground of that Charge I had laid against you and that I conceiv'd Posterity would be concerned by reason of your Writings in this Cause not in my Writings as you are pleased to misreport me if no Publick acknowledgment of the error be made by you further adding and desiring that you would inform me wherein I had wrongfully accused you engaging upon due notice that I would expunge whatever was in my Papers relating that way To this you vouchsafed me no Answer unless Scorn and Contempt enough of which came abroad every day are to be reputed one or the Epistle Dedicatory published two years after which is only a Defamatory Libel And now I appeal to the whole World Whether there is any thing in all this on my part that is Diabolical or that may fix upon me the Character of ACCVSER in Capital Letters As also how unjustly you have farther slander'd me with the Epithets of Implacable Whom no recantation will do good Vntractable c. or wherein any publick scandal or offence is given by me If the Scandal and offence be laid here and some have so laid it as exposing our own Members to the scorn of the common Adversary especially in these divided times Or if it be farther pleaded That since our Church is well known to have neither published nor countenanced any such Doctrines in her Articles Homilies Canons Rubricks c. it had been much better and safer to have passed over and concealed some few tho' heterodox Opinions of one or more particular Doctors which cannot be supposed to influence and debauch mankind against the judgment of a whole Church to the contrary To this I answer Those always have been observed as the worst of Hereticks that arise among our selves and within the Bowels of a particular Church and they have the greatest advantage to delude and seduce St. Paul therefore gives Directions for severe proceedings against those that are within 1 Cor. 5. and by the parity of Reason the Rule is to extend to other offenders than those there mention'd by him And as to my own particular I do here produce these following instances whereby it will appear that other Writers have taken the same course and method before me 1. And Dr. Stillingfleet shall be the first in his General Preface to an Answer to several late Treatises c. The learned Doctor having at large discovered several corruptions among the Romanists and more particularly in the point of Repentance they endeavor to clear the honour of their Church and
and finished my first part Secondly I shall make it appear that the account you give of your Irenicum is not fair nor true and that you conceal your crime as much as in you lies in the representation the Design and Plot of it being mostly laid if not altogether against the Church of England And this I undertake to make good in these following Particulars 1. The main subject of your present debate you say is this Whether any one particular Form of Church-Government be setled upon an unalterable divine Right by Virtue whereof all Churches are bound to observe that individual Form or Whether it be left to the prudence of every particular Church to agree upon that Form of Government which it judgeth most conduceable within it self to attain the end of Government the Peace Order Tranquillity Setlement of the Church as is to be seen in the latter end of your Preface and Part 1. c. 1. Sect. 1. pag. 4. The first you determine in the Negative the second in the Affirmative the issue of both is this That God by his own Laws hath given Men a Power and Liberty to determine the particular Form of Church-Government among them you had done well if you had produced this Law of God and what the express words of it are none other being sufficient for a lasting divine institution by your own Rules but this is your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That tho' one Form of Government be agreeable to the word it doth not follow that another is not or because one is lawful another is unlawful but one Form may be more agreeable to some parts places people and time than others are That the case is the same as to Church Government whether by many joyn'd together in an equality or by subordination of some persons unto others as it is to dipping or sprinkling in Baptism whether thrice or once As to attending the Lords Table whether at Supper time or in the Morning fasting or after meat You add whether kneeling or sitting or leaning and as to preaching the word you mean doubtless Whether by an Hour-glass or not Vid. Part I. Cap. 1. Sect. 1. pag. 3. § 2. p. 9 10. Part. II. Cap. 4. § 2. c. And hence it is as plain and obvious as words and consequences can make it That by the Law of God enstating Mankind with this perpetual indefectible Power the Independant Congregational Form of Government is equally to be received as the Presbyterian and Classical and either of them as the Episcopal and the Papal hath as firm a bottom as any of them all any one of them ought to be called and really is the Church of England and of God within this Dominion if the Pastors or the Magistrate or when these are knockt o' th' head the People or any one prevailing interest or faction shall appoint and setle it among us So that now you are for a Toleration of several Forms of Government by the Authority of the Church of England And it is plain whence our Sects had it when with so much confidence they said upon each occasion having obtained an indulgence from his late Majesty That they were the Church of England they meant according to Dr. Stilling fleet 's Irenicum And indeed according to this Principle of yours Richard Baxter's Conventicle in St. Martin's Parish in the Fields was once as much of the Church of England as Dr. Stilling fleet 's Church in St. Andrew's Holborn Neither is this the only Case that they use your Authority in thereby to rend in pieces this Church and I did not speak improperly nor without reason when I called that Treatise an unlucky Book This issue is plainly and clearly set down by Mr. Hobbs in his Leviathan Part III. Cap. 42. pag. 299 300. and upon your very Principles to whom you had an Ear no doubt From this consolidation of the Rights Politick and Ecclesiastick in Christian Sovereigns it is evident they have all manner of Power over their Subjects that can be given to Man for the Government of Mens external Actions both in Policy and Religion and may make such Laws as themselves shall judge fittest for the Government of their own Subjects both as they are the Common-Wealth and as they are the Church For both Church and State are the same Men which is your very notion as will appear anon If they please therefore they may as many Christian Kings now do commit the Government of their Subjects in matters of Religion to the Pope but then the Pope is in that point subordinate to them and exercises that charge in anothers Dominion jure civili in the right of the civil Sovereign not jure divino in God's right and may therefore be discharged of that office when the Sovereign for the good of his Subjects shall think it necessary They may also if they please commit the care of Religion to one supreme Pastor or to an Assembly of Pastors and give them what power over the Church or over one another they think most convenient and what Titles of Honour as of Bishops Archbishops Priests or Presbyters they will and these Rights are incident to all Severeigns whether Monarchs or Assemblies For they that are representants of a Christian People are representants of the Church for a Church and a Commonwealth of Christian People are the same thing The inconsistences and most pernicious insufferable consequents of this Principle are abundantly represented to the World by a most judicious Hand in the Case of the Church of England Part III. more particularly pag. 246 247 c. 2. You deny Episcopacy in particular or a Disparity of Power in the Ministry to be by the Laws of Christ always binding and immutable wherein you oppose to be sure the Church of England And further the overthrowing the immutable Right of Episcopacy seems to be the main thing you aim at throughout the whole Discourse tho' you pretend more for the management of which you all along mingle Fire and Water together urging any thing that will give a varnish or make a shew of Argument in order to it tho' really destructive to the common Christianity we all profess but either lightly touch or designedly pass by the most credible motives even demonstrations to the contrary even those which have been own'd for such by your self in the like cases This will appear to him that weighs these following Considerations To avoid this prelatical Power or Superiority of our Bishops you tell us That tho' it be proved that the Apostles had a Superiority of Order and Jurisdiction over the Pastors of the Church by an Act of Christ yet it must be farther proved That it was Christ's intention that Superiority should continue in their Successors or it makes nothing to the purpose Part I. Cap. 1. § 8. pag. 25. Where you do not consider That tho' it be proved that St. Peter and the other Apostles had by an Act of Christ the power of the
is You make Bishops for her as the Common-wealth-men make Kings by Accumulation not Deprivation in your Expressions just now mention'd and consequently retaining the Power entire to themselves they unmake them again when they please or to express it farther in your own words which are the aptest I have met withal When Persons and Circumstances Prudence and Discretion or the Interest of the Government requires it And so the Bishop like those inferior Officers of old as Sub-Deacons Acolouthi Door-keepers c. may be outed as the Perpetual Presbyter shall see occasion Mr. Prolocutor to the Assembly-men at Westminster never spake more bravely to the point And to fix all this surely on the less wary and inconsiderate Reader as a Nail driven by the Masters of our Assembly also you bring in several of our own Bishops for evidence against themselves and their Order in the days of Edward VI. and our whole Church establish'd by Law in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth As is to be seen in your Manuscripts and those other Citations throughout your last Chapter And when you had with so much ease and scorn rejected the Doctrines of all the Primitive Bishops in the case it was no small piece of confidence to think to carry your Cause by the testimony whether true or false of our own Prelates of the last Age. But you are not content to overthrow their Order unless you may fix such a Scandal upon their Persons as the Betrayers of it And indeed your stating this case of the mutability of Episcopacy can be only a design to fool and baffle it and thereby render it a very Babel or Idol in the language of its madder Adversaries and in the conception of every one else so trivially accidental a thing that it cannot be really contended for upon a Church account every accident giving occasion though Prudence will always be pretended for its abolition And it is observable That there are not any of your judgment that conclude themselves under an obligation to adhere unto it any longer than it supports and serves them by the advantage of the secular Power As the Church is that Tree in the Psalmist so Episcopacy is one of its bearing Boughs in which you can be content to sit and sing so long as you fill your Pockets but when the gathering time is over it is to be cut down as that which cumbereth the ground And you plead the same express directions for it our Saviour once gave concerning the Fig-tree in the Gospel I 'll state it together with the Presbyterian and Episcopal Hypotheses thereby to make it obvious upon the naked prospect The Presbyterian asserts That each Presbyter hath the whole Power of the Ministry and is enabled to discharge every Church-Office and that a restraint or enlargement is sinful The Episcoparian asserts That this Power is placed in the Bishop and Presbyter but unequally And that the Bishop hath some instances of it peculiar to his Order as Prerogatives and Incommunicable which if laid aside will be Sacrilege in him as also if assumed by the Presbyter You assert all that in the Presbyter and lose all that from the Bishop that the Presbyter desires and contends for only here is the difference You allow the Presbytery upon some occasions and in some instances of their Office to make a Deputy with a reserved Power to recal the Deputation at pleasure or upon each suspicion of his undue behaviour And this is the honour and service you do the Church of England These the Dissenters you tell us you design'd to gain upon and that your design did not want success both here and in a neighbouring Kingdom If you mean our Northern Neighbours I hope Episcopacy is setled there upon better grounds if it be not some of the thanks for it are due to you If you mean our Neighbours in the South they came over indeed but it is with their own Presbyterian Orders which they still adhere to as their commission from Christ The Episcopal Ordination which they receive here only enabling them for the Loaves to which they could have no right otherways by the Laws of our Kingdom And accordingly D. Blondel first offer'd his assistance to Archbishop Laud to write in defence of our Episcopacy whilst it was uppermost but upon the ensuing Rebellion he deserted it nay he turn'd his weapons against it Witness his Apologia pro Hieronymo which he Dedicated to the Rebellious Parliament and Schismatical Assembly at Westminster owning thereby the Vsurpation of the Regal Power in one and of the Episcopal in the other Salmasius did in effect the same and within the space of four Years both applauds and condemns Episcopacy and the Rump Parliament for removing it according to his present subject and design and John Milton the worst of Men takes from thence a just occasion to harangue and vilifie him in the Preface to his worst of Books Entituled Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio And the reasons for it are plain as themselves state the case the Bishop's Consecration being only an humane Rite performed at his Deputation and Enlargment to the execution of that Power which he had before when he was made a Presbyter by virtue of which there is no farther power conferr'd but only a Church Blessing with Imposition of Hands a legally qualifying him for possession according to the particular custom of that Kingdom in which he is to exercise his Episcopal Function And lastly for our own Country-men it may be wished some of them have not on this score also received Episcopal Ordination and then they may be bound to thank you because they kept their Benefices thereby and had farther accession of Church Dignities upon his late Majesty's blessed return But I cannot think it is for this that your Superiors in the Church have for so long a time been pleased to treat you with that kindness you seem to boast of Sure I am all the kindness you have done hereby to the Church of England and her Bishops may be put in their Eyes and they see never the worse for it Tho' I will not say so of the unkindness she hath received from you Besides it will farther appear with what affection and byass you wrote this Treatise if we consider your different behaviour to the Bishops and Doctors of the Church of England and the Presbyterians Independents even Anabaptists and Quakers upon each occasion It is but a little to reflect upon those slender civilities which you shew all along to that great and eminent Divine Dr. Henry Hammond one that was every ways great and considerable provoking reverence and respect from his Adversaries that were in any measure civilized Such was his Learning Integrity Courage in those perillous times he lived in the Ark it self rested peculiarly upon his Shoulders But I say your unhandsom behaviour to him may easier be passed by because he was but one single Doctor in our Church you seem to treat him with
who stood upon the supposition That Christ had appointed a Presbyterian Government to be always continued in his Church And it is easily observable that you have omitted nothing that was pleaded by them whereby Prelacy might be rendered detestable as an unlawful Vsurpation but whether you have done the same thereby to render Presbytery as such I appeal to that very Chapter You are so far from it that the same design is managed throughout the whole Book where your Plea is against the Divine Right of any one individual Form of Government but the instance is mostly against Episcopacy Presbytery is seldom mentioned with any mark of disrespect or if it be it is accidentally I do not remember any one set discourse particularly levelled against it as there is sometimes against the Independents but all along against the Church of England both in this and several other of her most considerable Tenents and Articles Nay you expresly and in so many words give the precedency to Presbytery founding it upon one of your necessary and unalterable Divine Rights Part I. c. 1. § 7 8. pag. 23 26. and say That the Presbyterians seem more generally to own the use of General Rules and the light of Nature in order to the Form of Church-Government as in the Subordination of Courts Classical Assemblies and the more moderate sort as to Lay-Elders And to the Independents in the next place who plead the general Rules of Scripture and evidence of natural Reason Now all this you must be supposed to remove from the Episcoparians because therein you place the opposition if you do any thing And besides you say further The Episcopal Men will hardly find any evidence in Scripture or the Practice of the Apostles for Churches consisting of many Congregations for Worship under the charge of one Person in the Primitive Church for the Ordination of a Bishop without the preceeding Election of the Clergy and at least consent and approbation of the People and neither in Scripture nor Antiquity the least Footstep of a delegation of Church-Power and leave them no other Foundation but the Principles of humane Prudence and those not very well observed Pag. 416 417. So then upon the winding up of your Book the Church of England is represented without evidence of natural Reason and the Rules of the Light of Nature with little evidence from Scripture or the Practice of the Apostles in some instances of her Worship and Discipline but with none in others neither is Prudence her constant Guide And was not this a hopeful way and delicate means to bring over Dissenters to a compliance with the Church of England then likely to be established But none of it is to be wonder'd at if we consider the account you have given of the Government of our Church in the name of the Foreign Divines a little before pag. 409. and the inconveniencies it is liable unto as a step to Pride and Ambition and an occasion whereby Men might do the Church injury by the excess of their Power if they were not Men of excellent Temper and Moderation insomuch that our Bishops are begg'd rather to lay down their Power than to transmit that Power to those after them who it may be were not like to succeed them in their Meekness and Moderation and at last they are left to the Judgment of those who have the Power not only to redress but prevent abuses incroaching by an irregular Power And yet you have not left her barely to her Judges or the Civil Magistrate for such you can be interpreted only to mean to stand and fall at their discretion your self appear as Council against her prepossessing them with new fears and jealousies to which purpose you produce a ridiculous Prediction of Padre Paulo viz. That the Church of England would then find the inconveniencies of Episcopacy when an high Spirited Bishop should come once to rule the Church A Prophecy that in all likelihood was forged in the Brain of some Puritan and my reason for it is Because I find it placed in the front of a Latin Treatise writ by one of great intemperance and violence against the Church of England the Title whereof is Irenaei Philadelphi Epistola ad Renatum Virideum in qua aperitur mysterium iniquitatis novissimè in Anglia redivivum excutitur liber Josephi Hall quo asseritur Episcopatum esse Juris Divini Eleutheropoli 1641. The design of it is to inveigh against the praetorian Authority of Bishops with their Pride and Usurpation over the Clergy and he states the case just as you have done in your Irenicum viz. against their Solitary appropriated Power by Divine Right allowing a Ministry by the Law of Christ and that general Rules are given in Scripture for the great ends of Peace and Order But the particular Form depends upon the choice of the Presbyters and as they do judge it best agreeing with that Kingdom or Common-Wealth in which it is setled So then it seems the Presbyterians first instructed and brought over you not you them as you told my Lord of London And this also confirms what I said before viz. That you come up to the principles of them all excepting some of the rigider Scots who believe that no Church is duly administred where there are Bishops from whom my Worshipful Author declares his dissent tho' he is never the nearer to the Church of England for it that is purely your mistake and he notwithstanding follows on his design against our Church with all manner of indecency and dirty Language He begins with Arch-Bishop Land and takes occasion to vilifie him by reason of his Book against Fisher as worth no Man's reading and that it is unsaleable (a) Quis enim operam perdere voluerit in evolvendo hoc libro quem audio fidum esse custodem officinae bibliopolaâ—um thence he goes on to Richard Montacute Bishop of Norwich upon whom he empties his Spleen calling him a Chief Coal-blower (b) 〈◊〉 ciniflones Archiepiscopalis culinae primas tenet in the Archbishop's Kitchin reviling him as wise in his (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 own Eyes swelled with Pride and Malice with a little learning but more of self-conceit Bishop Andrews is his next Man whom he accuses of Plagiarism and for stealing his determination against Vsury out of Rivette upbraiding him for his ill stile (d) De ferreo stilo per scabra decurrente adding that Du Moulin and Rivette are as much before him in Learning as he thinks a Bishop to be above a Presbyter and placeth him at length amongst the Men mediocris Doctrinae of mean Learning The last I shall produce tho' there be many more against whom he raves at the same rate is Bishop Hall and he impleads him for want of Prudence in that he wrote his Book of Episcopacy carried on to it with an unseasonable itch of Scribbling casting Oyl thereby on that pyle in which the
your account of it being only this That by the hand of Providence it happily came to your hands which account is very scandalous Providence being the Sanctuary for every Impostor is placed in the History of the Reformation of the Church of England with the time and year when the Conference was held and hath the Character as well it may upon your terms of an Authentique Writing and hereby Dr. Burnet is equally dishonoured as an Historian with your self as a Divine of the Church of England And first that your own reputation as a Divine of the Church of England must be shrewdly called in question hereby is most manifest because this Manuscript upon your alone authority and with the Character of stupendae eruditionis theologum is made use of by the most rigid and rude of the Presbyterian Party to prove That our first Reformers did not believe a Bishop and a Presbyter to be two distinct Orders but that it is in the power and at the pleasure of the Prince to Govern by Bishops and Presbyters or by Presbyters without them And they farther hereupon assert That our own Divines were generally of the same Opinion during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth tho' Bancroft and Laud have since maintained the contrary and asserted Bishops to be by Divine Right and a distinct Order This is to be seen in Mr. Hickman's Apologia pro ejectis in Anglia ministris vulgò Non-conformistis but a particular of this passage in it is given by the Reverend Dean of Windsor Dr. Durell in his Ecclesiae Anglicanae Vindiciae cap. 28. I might add because the Erastian Party is hereby much confirmed and strengthned Now can any Man think that a true Son of the Church of England who by his relation to her alone must be supposed to believe that the Power of the Prince is quite another thing from the Power of the Church as also the Power of a Bishop from the Power of a Presbyter would willingly and under such circumstances as these have given this great advantage to the Adversary that you so manifestly have done by reprinting this Manuscript and with the approbation of the two Houses of Parliament and not add one Note in the Margent disowning the evil consequents have been drawn from it Is it not rather a yielding to them and complying with the objection giving new Strength and Sinews unto it Or is it not a thankful acceptance of the honour that was done you by the Presbyterians in the Quotation And I fear you were over-tickled with that higher Eulogy and wonderful commendation they bestow'd upon you Sure I am you could not have served them and their design more advantageously I must confess I was startled at the first reading of it Again the reputation of Dr. Burnet is equally at the Stake also as an Historian The grounds and reasons produced by the Dean of Windsor in his forementioned Vindiciae cap. 28. upon which he suspects the Manuscript to be a fraud and not the writings and determinations of Cranmer and those others whose names it bears seems to me very considerable they amount indeed to a demonstration his words are these Nam quifactum c. For how comes it to pass that these things in that Manuscript were altogether unknown to John Fox that most diligent compiler of the Acts and Monuments of Cranmer and the other Martyrs a Man over much addicted to the Faction of the Puritans and the other most diligent writers of the Church of England Whence is it that Cartwright and other ancienter Puritans heard nothing of them And they are to be believed to have heard nothing since they have made no mention of them How happens it that no one Historiographer of that time hath remembred so memorable a thing as was that Conference of so many illustrious Men concerning the affairs of so great moment For if we may believe the Manuscript there was enquiry of many and the principal heads of Religion as of the Rights of the higher Powers about holy things and those most eminent Men and learned Prelates did there dispute of them all I 'll add how came Mr. Hobbs not to find it out He was a Man well acquainted with English Story and the concurrence of Arch-Bishop Cranmer and so many of our first Reformers in his Scheme of Government which I have shew'd to be the same with this in the Manuscript would have been very pleasing unto him He did not hate our Church and Divines so much but that he was glad on each occasion to serve himself of them and did so Surely a wise Man would have consider'd these things some way or other the Doctor wanted full thoughts and a thorough consideration here to be sure and it shall go for part of his punishment for that he hath so much despised them in others Surely no one would have gone to the Press without laying these things together and their consequences but he who looks upon himself as the very Pillar of Truth which will bear out any inscription it is entituled withal and his own Authority as sufficient to make credible whatever he shall think fit to recommend to Mankind And this his Arbitrary Precarious Self-authoritative way of writing History and Record-making is so much the more culpable in the Doctor because he hath particularly blamed Peter Heylin a Man much better and honester than himself upon the like as he supposed occasion His words in his Preface after many severer Animadversions upon him are these In one thing he is not to be excused that he never vouched any Authority for what he writ which is not to be forgiven any who write of Transactions beyond their own time and deliver new things not known before so that upon what grounds he wrote the greatest part of his Book we can only conjecture For surely it is much safer and a great deal less disingenuous to produce no Authority but leave Men to their own conjectures than to produce and vouch that Authority which is false and hath no bottom at all except that of one single Doctor or in his own Language a Sceptical injudicious Youth who vouches Providence for it by which he can only mean that the Manuscript came to his hands immediately from Heaven for no humane hand reacht it unto him All Historians all Men of what sort soever that can be conceived to have been concerned in things relating that way being altogether silent about it And I shall hereafter no more believe him in whatever it is that he delivers unless I see the originals with mine own Eyes or have them vouched by a better Authority than his own than I believed the late Dialogue between him and the Groaning-Board The old malicious Fable of the Nag's-Head-Ordination by which the Emissaries of Rome defamed our Church one way as you have by your Manuscript another carries much more likelihood of truth and credibility in it For our Bishops and Divines had a meeting at the
particulars As That the Church hath no declarative Power in matters of Faith or supposing any Article obscure to us or inverted and involved by Hereticks so that the matter of it hath not been explicitly acknowledged in all Ages of the Church anteceeding when the present Church gives the true meaning of it according to the tradition of Faith evidencing thereby the Sense of the Article or which is the same the sense of Scripture on which the Article is founded and engages the assent of all Christians thereunto That hereby she creates a new Article of Faith pag. 75 945. as if there were no mean betwixt the Power of the single Church of Rome who resolves all her actings into her own immediate Authority and the true Power of the Catholick Church of God which determines antecedent truths that were tho' less known or misinterpreted from the beginning and when the reason of her decree is not from her own Authority but the Tradition of Faith delivering the sense of the Holy Ghost down unto us That the Church representing and the Church diffusive are all one nothing can make the Church teaching and representative but the belief of what is necessary to Salvation Pag. 86 87. I thought a distant Power by Ordination had constituted the Pastors of the Church You go on at the same confused rate Pag. 251 252. I 'll only write out your words at large and let the Reader judge of them That which being supposed a Church is and being distroyed it ceaseth to be is the formal constitution of it but thus it is as to the Church The belief of Fundamentals makes it a Church and the not believing them makes it cease to be a Christian Church I speak of an essential not an organical Church And I know not who those persons are who out of those places Luk. 10.16 Matth. 28.19 20. Joh. 14.16 do infer the perpetuity of an organical Church nor if they did doth it thence follow they must suppose an infallible assistance beyond an essential 't is strange that nothing should be found betwixt these two in your own sense of them to constitute Pastors of Christ's own sending to make it an organical Church for I cannot imagine what necessity can be supposed of infallibility in order to that which may be sufficiently constituted without it The perpetuity of the Church doth rather argue the infallibility of the promise than of the Church Supposing then that the promises by you insisted on should be so far extended as to imply a perpetuity of a Christian Church what doth that argue but only this that to make it appear that promise is infallibly true there shall always be a Succession of Christians in the World Suppose I grant that the being of a Christian Church doth suppose the assistance of God's Spirit is there no assistance but what is infallible If not no one can be a Christian without infallibility for we speak of no other assistance but what is necessary to make Men Christians for what makes them such severally take them conjunctly makes them a Church But if you besides what assistance is requisite to make Men Christians do suppose somewhat more to make them a Church I pray name what it is And whatever it be it will not be own'd by such who infer a Perpetuity But if in order to that no more be meant as no more can be meant than what is necessary to make Men Christians then infallibility will grow so cheap and common I add and Church-Power and Offices together with it it will not be worth challenging by you for your Church neither will a Ministry be worth challenging by us either But this is agreeable enough with the Title you still give the Archbishop in this Treatise and as if he had no other Prelation but what is derived from his Majesty and is purely Secular you call him his Lordship only I much question Whether it might not have discomposed the Calm that most exemplary Prelate died in upon the Scaffold at Tower-Hill if he could then have been aware that he should have had such a Vindicator I cannot here but repeat it again tho' it be so very Offensive How gladly I should see the Church of Rome opposed and our common Christianity not struck at with the same blow and hand Surely the due Power of God's Church might have been vindicated and Rome's Usurpations rejected without this intermingling all as one both Priest and People as you have done here most Scandalously And at the same rate you dispute also against the Monarchical Government of the Church and an infallible judge Pag. 464. because Christ no where that we read of took care that we should be freed from all kind of Controversies and we no where find such a State of Christian Church described or promised where Men shall be of one mind only that peace and brotherly love continue is all that Christians are bound to and that every Man have the same Vnderstanding Which Arguments conclude as forcibly against any other Government even that of our Saviour himself and his Apostles were they upon Earth again and in the same circumstances as when here before Nay you have used these very Arguments against all manner of Government in your Irenicum And farther Pag. 172. you infer Because it is not in the Power of the Church of Rome judicially and authoritatively to determine what Books belong to the Canon of Scripture and what not Therefore the Church in this case is but a Jury of grand Inquest to search into matters of Fact and not a Judge upon the Bench to determine in point of Law And thereby take away all judicial Power from the Church to oblige her Members or Subjects by for their assent and submission to her Acts and Decrees upon a due search of matter of Fact and full evidence of the Truth and Certainty of those Articles Rules and Canons enjoin'd and commanded And thus you particularly affront the Practice of our own Church she having made it Law that only such a certain number of Books of the Old and New Testament be accounted and received as Canonical and withal requiring Subscription thereunto as a judge upon a Bench to be sure by all that are admitted by her into holy Orders And as you have before concluded That whatever Power can be supposed by Christ to be promised and derived to his Church from Matt. 28.19 20. c. is that which each private Christian partakes of So again Pag. 516. you say That whatever Power can be supposed in a General Council must be first in the Church diffusive and from thence be derived to the Council Which in effect is thus That the Bishops of Christendom who by right are only to sit in Council and such Presbyters as have sat and acted there did it only as their Substitutes and by virtue of their deputation receive their Power either from the Presbyters and Deacons or which is worse from the Laity