sacred Functions the Church upon certain Notoriety of that Guilt Forfeiture and civil Incapacity may elect and consecrate others who have contracted no such Blemish or Incapacity Nor needs there here the Judgment of a Synod as is confessed in the like Case of Callinicus and Cyrus before mentioned which is only necessary to discuss and determine things dubious in Fact or Right So that in such Cases where there is no Rule set to the contrary the Church on her old original Liberties may of her own accord proceed to a new Promotion and I think ought to do so when the Blemish and consequent Incapacity are irremediable And what the Church in freedom may do without Command she may do when commanded even by those Powers which have no direct Right to manage our Ecclesiasticals as Infidel and Un-Christian Powers have not Yet indirectly I grant a new Settlement in the Church may be necessary to the weal of an Un-Christian State which then has an indirect Right to command the Church within it to fill the Vacancies and then she is in Duty bound to obey not only for Wrath but also for Conscience sake whensoever so commanded as having no Authority to oppose those actual Reasons or the civil Causes of such the secular Commands so that in the lawful Vacancy she must be obedient And if this be a just Rule for the Christian Church under Un-Christian Princes much more ought it to be so under Christian ones to whom as nursing Fathers you know our Church gives great Homage and Deference Have you any thing more to object Dyscher Nothing at all except you will hear me repeat the three last Pages of T. B. spent wholly in charging you with soliciting our total Ruin and Misusage of your deprived Metropolitan and Diocesan on their refusal of a Petition with the same pernicious Design but because I must confess you were most carefully tender of censuring the Counsels of those Fathers and T. B. discovers himself too openly calumnious in those Impeachments I have done and commend us all to God's Grace and Mercy Eucher T. B. is one of those Men who love to speak evil of Dignities and the things they know not supplying the Narrowness of his Understanding with Rage and Bitterness for which I heartily remit him to God's Mercy But as for your Fathers and all the venerable Numbers of good Men fallen in this Change I compassionately beseech them tenderly to lay these things to heart and unanimously to think of some healing Expedient for our mutual Peace and Joy There have been who upon the bare dry Inferences of their Arguments have desired them to desist and quit claim only which is to ask not shew them Charity But might it not be thought too assuming I think I could propose such a certain Scheme of Resolutions as would so effectually close up our present Wounds as to turn all our Sighs and Sorrows into Joys and the Voice of Melody But being conscious of my Station and Measures and doubtful of your Misapprehensions I forbear and leave you and your Counsels to the Divine Conduct and your own Piety that you may happily recover that Union from which your Errors and Infirmities have too much alienated you being willing to hope that as St. Paul said of Onesimus Perhaps you are departed from us for a Season that we should receive you again for ever Amen ADVERTISEMENT WHereas T. B. Sec Let. pag. 29. and the impartial Reflecter vehemently contend against my Suggestion in Sol Ab. pag. 11. that K. James's Dispensation with the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy might look like a Concession to us to transfer our Allegiance they dealt with me disingenuously for that I made for them an effectual Answer against that Argument before in which my Conformist silently acquiesced And that Answer I made is stronger and sincerer than theirs which I could teize to purpose were I minded to wrangle But as I made Eucheres abide by just Reason then so will I use no perverseness now And in truth that Passage was brought in not with a Design to insist on it but only to introduce it for a smoother Passage to the Liberties granted us by K. James's Coronation-Oath For which Cause I laying no stress upon that Argument from the Dispensation have wholly omitted to contend with my Adversaries on it in this Debate I hope the wicked Surmise of T. B. that His Majesty would murther the Princess of Denmark and the Duke of Gloucester Sec. Lett. p. 22 if her Royal Highness should outlive the Queen is now fully refuted since her Excellent Majesties Death and it will become T. B. torepent for it in Dust and Ashes A Postscript to Mr. Richard Chiswell SIR SInce I was once an Author of yours in Solomon and Abiathar which you Printed and this very Debate was offered to your Edition once Anno 93 which you declined with thanks to me however for the respect I desire you to consider what an ungrateful office you have undertaken in publishing a Reproach against me and these very Books in the Vniversity Man's Postscript to you I am not offended at this miscarriage in you that are a Man of Interest but yet as you may justly reprove your self and your Sollicitor for this indecent way of abusing your own Authors and Books so I challenge you for a witness of the Falshood he has caused you to Print Look upon my Letter to you sometime in the Summer 93. and therein you will find this Book offered you which this Vniversity Man tells you and by your Press the Nation that it was written since the Book remarked on to secure my self against a Storm I shall makeshort however and desire you to remember my love to him and tell him that it is the most undâ—cent sort of confidence in him of all Men living to despise any Man's Writings for the present Government and to accuse any Pen for Brutality towards the Jacobites He will know the meaning at your first suggestion by the interpreting Conscience within him or that part thereof that is left And so I dismiss you with assurance that I am Your much obliged Servant S. Hill A General Remonstrance to all Good Christians IN the name of God the Sovereign Lord and Judge I remonstrate and protest that I measure not any Men by their Fortunes but their Merits and that the Sufferings of good Men increase my Affections towards them 2. That I published Solomon and Abiathar not for worldly Interest nor with any injurious design nor thro' a vanity of Affectation but on purpose to get satisfaction from the learned in the Right of Communion to the avoiding of Schism 3. That particular provocations made that discussion and it's publication absolutely and inevitably necessary 4. That after its Publication I waited two years for Satisfaction before ever I entred into the present Communion 5. That the Meditations in this Debate have satisfy'd me that our Communion is consistent with the most Catholic and Primitive Rules or else I could not have joyned in it 6. That for my own part I renounce all Ecclesiastic Servitude and all Principles leading thereto and I do declare for an assertion of the Rights and Liberties Hierarchical in contempt of all Persecutions yet not to arrogate that Liberty as a Cloak for Maliciousness 7. That tho' Calumny urged the Publication of this Debate yet that alone should not have prevailed thereunto had I not thought it of good use to reconcile Dissensions and to obviate many growing Prejudices 8. That tho' it be a public blemish that the great Authors of our present Heresies are not yet censured by Authority yet this does not illegitimate our public Communion with the Innocent who have no power to reform it nor can it in the least affect those that make their uttermost remonstrances against it 9. That all Spiteful and Insincere Writers on the point of Communion design to widen our Breaches and are therefore utter Enemies to the Church of God and their Native Country 10. That tho' I had many inducements to have collected all T. B's Flowers of barbarous and unparallelâ—d Railery into one view yet that the odium thereof may not reflect any prejudice on the better part of that side I have forborn remitting him to the friendly correction of his wiser and better Brethren and have so endeavoured to temper this Discourse as that all along Mercy and Truth might meet together that Righteousness and Peace may kiss each other Amen After all whosever is not satisfied to the full may hereby be however induced to beware of censuring us for Men wilfully Perjured and Schismatical since I suppose the reasons here offered are not all contemptible but may justify the Author in his Design of quitting himself from the guilt of those black and horrid Imputations the natural Right of every suspected or accused Innocent FINIS Books Printed for John Everingham at the Star in Ludgate-street THE Spirit of Jacobitism or Remarks upon a Dialogue between K. W. and Benting in a Dialogue between two Friends of the present Government A Sermon Preached before the H. of Lords at the Abbey-Church of St. Peter's Westminster on Thursday the 30th of Jan. 1695 6. being the Martyrdom of K. Ch. I. By the Right Reverend Father in God Humphrey L. Bishop of Bangor A Sermon Preach'd before the House of Lords at the Abbey-church of St. Peter's Westm on Wednesday the 11th of Dec. 1695. being the Day Appointed for a Solemn Fast and Humiliation by the Right Rev. Father in God James L. Bishop of Lincoln Eight Serm. Preach'd on sev Occasions 1. Of the Power and Efficacy of Faith 2. The danger of Mis-informed Conscience or Mistaken Principles in Religion 3. Of the Different Dispensations of Grace and of Impenitency under the best Means of Salvation 4. The Case of a late or Death-bed Repentance 5. The Streight and Certain way to Happiness 6. Of Growth in Grace 7. Of Murther particularly Duelling and Self-Murther 8. Of the Shortness and Instability of Humane Life
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood
and Damnation not required by the word or law of God must in their own nature be And thus in the ancient Church all rigorous Doctrines which made sins where God hath made none draw after them inevitable Separations and so became Heretical Dyscher Well how doth this affect us Eucher I am afraid in all your Principles which make our present Allegiance Illegal and Irreligious Dyscher I pray form them into propositions and make your convictive Strictures upon them if you can Eucher I take no delight in such an Employ It is no pleasure to me to wound or grieve you but as the setting before you the danger of your Principles may correct the precipitancy of your Zeal I will obey and observe your direction First then Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to be subject to the Human Constitution and the Authorities that are as Gods Ordinance teacheth practical Errors Min. But so you teach Men against the present Constitution and Authorities Ergo. Concl. You teach Men practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth it to be Perjury to swear Allegiance to a new settled Sovereign upon the Desertion of the former to whom we had sworn Allegiance teacheth practical Errors Min. But such is your Doctrine contrary to Bishop Overals Convocation book Ergo. Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth to disobey Princes fully settled in a Government procured by ill means teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do ye in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to pray for Kings and all that are in Authority teacheth Men Practical Errors Min. But so teach most of you in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo. Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men presumptuously to speak evil of Dignities teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do most of you Ergo Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever excommunicates or teaches Men to refuse Communion with Men that have sworn Allegiance to Powers fully settled acts upon and teacheth practical Errors Min. But so most of you act and instruct Men against our Communion because we have sworn Allegiance to the Powers fully settled over us Ergo Concl. You act upon and teach Men practical Errors And now considering all wherein I have answered you what can you say hereto Dyscher I answer we do not deny any of your Major and general Propositions but we deny your Minors that we teach such Doctrines for our Recusancy But we teach that those Major Maxims do not affect our particular Case for that these are not Constitutions Authorities or Dignities fully settled on which the Church according to the Apostles requires respect and obedience Eucher This is like those prevaricating Salvo's which your Author of Christian Communion upbraids us with †Part 3. Ch. 5. in eluding general Precepts from influencing in particular Cases but to omit this I have however gained another advantage and success by my Advice viz. that in the matter of Allegiance you must quit your Pretensions to Ecclesiastical Doctrines as the grounds of your Recusancy Deprivation and Separation and consequently there is an End of your low and causeless Clamours for your glorious Passive Doctrines as the Cause of your Sufferings all the remaining Question now being between us whether the present Constitution be fully settled which is a Point of Law not Religion to be resolved by the State not the Church by the Court Civil not the Court Christian And hereupon such Civil Judgments are to be secured by Religion and Conscience while they stand reversed and so you are obliged to acquiesce in the Judgments of our Parliaments in this Point But while you oppose this upon Principles of Conscience consider the Danger of Heresie which lies before you Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men to oppose the Course of public Judgment in Civils upon private Opinions to the contrary teacheth Rules of Sedition against Civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Min. But you teach Men to oppose the public Judgment of the Nation for our full Settlement in the present State Ergo Concl. You teach Rules of Sedition against civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Or thus in another Form Maj. He that teacheth Men to act against confessed Principles of Truth ought to be exauctorated Min. But you teach Men to practice Disobedience contrary to those Principles of Truth which you are forced to confess Ergo Concl. You are to be exauctorated Now I cannot for my part see how you can avoid this Charge which your own rigours against us have extorted from me And yet I have urged it for no ill Ends but only to lay before you the ill Aspects of your Division upon those your very Principles in which you glory For here I can more justly enclose you with your Vindicator's Dilemma viz. that if you separate without Principles you are then Schismatical if upon Principles you incur Heresie But if this be so the Church and State may according to your own Rules eject you without a Synod which I compassionately beg you tenderly to consider Dyscher Well let our Cause be what it will in Fact or Opinion I look upon these Lay and Parliamentary Forms of Deprivation to be very dangerous to the Spiritual Franchises of the Church tho' we suppose that such servile and gradual Concurrences of the Church do give them an Ecclesiastical Effect for that they destroy out of the Faith of Christians the Sense of those Spiritual Liberties and Authorities of the Church that by a Divine Charter and an Apostolic Descent belong to her and instil a fatal Erastianism into men's Principles and for that Cause ought not to be received but censured by the Church for that your Party founds their Authority on this false Proposition that the Church and State of England are the same Society whereas there are many Subjects of the State that are no Members of the Church as Apostates Papists Heretics and all unbaptized Persons Tho' yet were this Hypothesis true that all the same persons were equally Members of the Church and State yet as they are a Church and spiritually sociated they must be governed by a Spiritual Authority and as a State by the Civil Power of the Sword nor must the identity of the People confound the Distinction of Powers Besides as we are a Church we are of Right sociated into the unity of the whole Catholic Church to be maintained by an uniform Ecclesiastical Conduct the only ligament of Catholic Communion but as we are a State the Catholic Church is not concerned with us to take any Cognisance of our Civil Procedures but if as a Church we corrupt the Ecclesiastical Government into Civil we break off and excommunicate our selves from the Catholic Unity by deserting the Catholic Forms and Ties of
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the
not persevere in your Sin since it is one of those Sins that shuts out of the true Chuch of God For if it were necessary I could prove that its Principles destroy the Churches Fundamentals and Structure if such Principles which destroy all Morals and all Faith and Truth among men can be said to do so by which men may exclude themselves as well as be thrown out by others without an Authentick Act of an Ecclesiastick Judic tory and your instance in the Roman Church is Insignificant for we do not communicate with it but that of the Eastern Churches is still less to the purpose for I am not satisfied that either they have condemned us or we them as Schismaticks and Dr. Basier was desired by some of the Greek Clergy to Communicate and Minister among them neither did he refuse it T. B.'s 2d Lett. p. 10 11. Eucher But Brother it is not enough to call things by hard Names but it is necessary to shew wherein the iniquity consists and by what Law For submission to a Civil Constitution after its settlement is no Perjury Robbery Rebellion nor Impiety if men contribute no antecedent Evil to the Change and it is this meer Submission which I undertook to defend as being the only thing that can be charged on the Ecclesiastick Body And tho you pretend it unnecessary yet you can never carry your cause that we are Self Excommunicate upon the malignity of our Principles except you prove it and shew that our Maxims destroy all Morals and all Faith and Truth among Men since you load us with such an heinous and general charge and I know not to what purpose you discoursed me last or discourse me now except it be to convince me of the Reality and Anathematizing guilt of our Sin in this Submission Here then you must to the Law and to the Testimony and make up a very exact proof in order to Conviction for Men are not to be harangued into condemnation by meer unproved and general clamour but by very articulate evidence only which therefore I shall expect from you in the course of this Conference In the mean time when I alledged that we own the Roman and Greek Churches to be Churches notwithstanding their far greater Pollutions and Confusions than can be imagined in our present Ecclesiastical Change that hence I might evince us not to be Unchurched i. e. cut off from being Members of the Church Catholick as not having been condemned out of it by any Ecclesiastical Sentence 't is strange you should censure this instance for impertinent upon these pretensions that we refuse the Roman but admit the Greek Communion for by your favour in order to Unchurching which very intelligibly is the making us no Church of Christ you must have proved our Change more censurable than all the Pollutions of the Roman and Greek Churches And since you accuse us as Self-Excommunicate and therefore uncapable of your Communion which yet you deny not to the Greeks as being with you no Schismaticks the instance of that Churches Corruptions was not less but far more pertinent to our Cause for if their Corruptions are far greater than ours and yet cut them not off from the Right of Catholick Communion I think we are as much entituled to that Communion who have far less and fewer Irregularities So that except you can prove our Change more Irregular than the State of the Greek Church you cannot out us of that Communion you assert to them Here indeed you saw your self pinched and so shift off the matter with a piff as if I would be shaken off with an empty Scoff of Impertinence No no I will sit a little closer on your Skirts and though I shall not exagitate or upbraid all the known disorders in that distressed Church yet will I object to you the many Arbitrary Changes of their Patriarchs made by a Mahometan Emperor and admitted by them toties quoties whensoever the Grand Seignior has a mind to ease their Purses of that money which the new Patriarch is to tax on the Church as the price of his Advancement without any other Provocation or Inducement whatsoever Is not this a greater corruption than any can be imagined in our Change This you know was what I intended and yet you condemn not them as Schismaticks though here are frequent Deprivations and New Advancements admitted by the Greek Church to the Will of an Infidel Prince without any other crime of the Deposed and only for Monys sake Dyscher I did indeed in our last Conference * Sol. Ab. p. 24 29. censure this Blemish in the Greek Church But here I will give you the answer of one of our most puissant Advocates concerning this disorder in the Greek Church with his Apology foâ— the like frequent Depositions of the Jewisâ— High-Priests * Christ Commun Part 2. cap. 3. p. 32. In these alledged State-deprivations of the Jewish High-Priests either of Abiathar by Solomon or after they came under Roman subjection of the Chief Priests by the Roman Procurators there was only a Change of Persons but matters of Religion went on every thing the same in Doctrines Practices Prayers Sacrifices and Services of the Temple and the Synagogues and when these are not corrupted Gods faithful Ministers may yield their personal claims to State-Deprivations to secure Protection and Civil Benefits to the Church This also clears the instance of the Submission of the Greeks on the frequent Deprivations of their Patriarchs by the Turkish Governors The benefits of Incorporation which they propose to secure thereby are not the most tempting lying not so much in being priviledged and beneficed by the State as in not being persecuted but tolerated under it And their submission for keeping on this State-benefit such as it is is not without detriment to the Church tho' their breaking with the State they fear would be more detrimental the Turks making their new Advancements for Mony to be levied on the Church by the new Patriarch to the countenance and growth of great Corruption and to the bringing of the Church in debt But as to the course of Religious Ministrations they are the same under both Patriarchs in the same Doctrines of Faith and Manners Prayers and Publick Offices But now you know with us here is a change in all these parts of our Religion in teaching men to swear falsly to rob our King Bishops and Priests and to pray for Robbers and Usurpers against the just and true Proprietors Eucher But all this Charge of Alteration in Religion is downright Calumny uncapable of any proof in any one particular For we preach only Submission to a Legal Change of Governors and pray for them that are set over us by Legal Rules of Constitution Therefore tho' Governors like the state of all things temporal are liable to changes yet the Rules and Forms of our Religion and Morals are still permanent and unaltered And here I think I may
seasonably tell you that the alteration of our Sovereigns was more legal than the change of the Theocracy to Chaldaean Persian Graecian and Roman Sovereigns yet even for these the Jews were to offer Prayers and Sacrifices and so is the Greek Church to pray for the new Grand Seigniors brought into the Sovereignty upon the rebellious expulsion of the former yet surviving in Bonds and Prison without any scruple of Allegiance to their new Master hereupon Now if they ought to make an Ecclesiastical Opposition to such an Imperial Change then their ready conformity thereto puts them into that same state of sinful Religion which you charge upon us and how then are they in and we out of Right to Ecclesical Communion But to speak truth I could not have thought that men of such Primitive Rigour and Purity could Ligitimate that great corruption in the Greek Church which tho' of it self it doth not actually and totally Unchurch them yet it is a most deplorable profanation of the supreamest Order in their Hierarchy and such as a General Council upon the perpetual Sense and Principles of the Church Catholick cannot but condemn for impious and irregular But now I am under a passionate concern for this Author lest this Principle of his bring him under that Heresie which your learned Vindicator of the deprived Bishops if he keeps up an impregnable impartiality against all Errors will be apt to find in it Sure I am here is laid a Rule for our Church to admit from the State even the most arbitrary removes and changes of Bishops for no cause at all but only to humour the State in Tyranny or Simony according to Doct. Hody's Doctrine and here is conceded far more than was by the subscription of a Popish Convocation for fear of a Premunire and more than the Pope or Henry VIII ever arrogated to their Headship or Supremacy and to use your former words * Sol. Ab. p. 29. a blemish not to be endured in any Church whatsoever it incurs for the Opposition But so it is and so it will be when men are pressed too hard in point of Argument that to avoid one absurdity they run into another which is many times worse and more notoriously offensive Dyscher Well then we 'll let alone the Greek Church herein to Gods Judgment But as for you that think to shelter your selves under their shade you are not capable of that their Plea For I do not know that we want an Ecclesiastical Judge Our Metropolitan with his Suffragans are a sufficient and proper Judge And if they have not lata sententia which there may be great Reason to forbear yet in Praxi their Judgments are sufficiently declared T. B's 2d Lett. p. â—1 Eucher That the deprived Metropolitan and Fathers are a proper Court or Council of Ecclesiastical Judges upon all conforming Bishops Clergy and Laity of the Realm I do utterly deny for many Reasons In the Province of York they have no jurisdiction nor can they make a distinct Synod from the rest of their Colleagues within the Province of Canterbury So that had a Synod of meer Bishops been called therein before any Bishops made by King William this had been a Synod against which no Uncanonical Ordination or Enthronement could have been objected and yet the Majority of these would have condemned their Recusancy if we may judge of their Sentence by their Conformity But further by our Constitution the Body of the Clergy are concerned in our Synods and which way think you would your Cause have gone in a full and Canonical Convocation This your wife Author of Christian Communion well saw and therefore would not adventure the issue * Part 2. Ch. 4. to a Synodical Determination But yet neither have these Fathers given a definitive Sentence of Excision upon us which yet is necessary where the actual Excision passes not meerly on the uncontested notoriety and malignity of the Crime which we suppose at present not to be our State And let the Reasons of their forbearing Sentence be what they will yet as long as we are not self-condemned but stand upon our Defence we are not yet actually excommunicate by any effectual judgment of these Fathers Nor can their practice amount to so much either Legally or intentionally Time was and yet is I believe when several of these Fathers would not censure our Submission to the present Civil Government as criminal and heinous And one of those Prelates in a publick Oration to his Clergy strictly charged them to abstain from all oblique Reflections on each other for refusing or admitting the Oath of New Allegiance but to retain Charitable Opinions each toward the other which being a publick act of that Father 's at the head of his Diocess will not I hope be denyed as a Lye nor may I be condemned for uncovering a secret since this was not such nor transacted in a corner nor need that Reverend Father be ashamed or unwilling to own it since it was a most Illustrious Indication of his Excellent Piety and Moderation but withal a clear confutation of that pretended censure which you place in their Practice For the Practice of not Swearing may in several Men have several causes some may condemn the Allegiance some may doubt only some may have aspects on another Revolution others to the reproach of our and to the esteem of another Party some to their former Writings or Pretensions points of honour or the Fatigues of a Publick Station So that except one unanimous Sentence against the Allegiance be judicially given the argument from practice is very unconcluding But besides the Practice of the Majority will as much condemn them as theirs can us if this be of any such importance toward a Judicial Excommunication So silly it is for Men to hunt after such feeble Cavils on purpose that they may seem to have somewhat to say and not be born down by that Truth against which they have formed a Faction Dyscher Well However I told you that there is danger in your Communion and I should have added that the sin is unavoidable in it because the Secession was on your side from us and Righteousness we still continuing as we were but see I pray what answer you made me hereupon that I may take off the vizor and lay open your Hypocrisie You say * Sol. Ab. p. 6. that though our Church Justly and Absolutely rejects the Roman Monarchy yet she will not refuse any Lawful Communion or correspondence with it in any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations consistent with Integrity saving still a Publick Remonstrance to all her Pollutions What can be the meaning of this but that your Church is ready and willing to joyn in Communion with the Church of Rome as many of your Brethren take the Oath with a Declaration This and no other can be your meaning else your Argument and Parallel is sensless and insignificant for thus it follows so should you
Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a foreign Prince and when he comes tho' with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their Treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with a Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his illgotten Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher It confessedly seems as I stated the Proposition you cannot deny the perspicuity of its Truth and therefore you invert it to an invidious Paraphrase which in many parts of it is not truly applicable to that which was the Subject of my Apology viz. the Authority of the Convention For all your aggravated Invitations Combinations Revolts Treacheries and Derelictions allowing or supposing them to be no other than you describe them are not chargeable on the whole Estates of the Land especially when in Convention And even thus I will renew my Position That by the Laws of Nations if a foreign Prince procure the Revolt of a vast part of another Princes Subjects thro' the terror of which the helpless Prince leaves his Kingdoms in Anarchy under the Army of the foreign Potentate who thereupon calls the Estates of such deserted Nation to treat for a Settlement they may convene and treat with him upon such invitation For it is the necessity the subject Nation stands in for a Settlement that warrants and legitimates such Treaties by what means soever those exigencies are introduced whether by foreign Force or intestine Commotions jointly or severally throwing all into Anarchy and Disorder But if the charge of the Revolt preclude the legality of any mans Session that incapacity ought to have been objected and if over-ruled protested against in Convention as I have already told you which not being done they were all in Law Reason and Civil Construction lawful Agents and Councellors As to the word Unresisted Power I confess I used care indeed but no trick for it was too hard for me to judge whether the Prince's Power were irresistible or no and so it is in many cases in which Parties yield rather than run the hazard of a Battle But every one can tell when it is or is not actually resisted and the Proposition is as true of an unresisted as well as irresistible Power Tho' take you all the Forces foreign and domestick joyned to the Prince when the Convention was called you will think it hard for any Subjects to have resisted them when the King himself long before durst not but disbanded and quitted thereby all pretensible Duties in the Subjects to take Arms. And the Conventioners deserve to be your humble Servants for putting them upon such an Essay But if you will require where the fault of this non-resistance really lies I think you may find it in him that neither could be induced to call a Parliament nor to fight it out After which double miscarriage and flight out of the Kingdom I think no man was obliged to resist or take up Arms but to desire such a Settlement as the State of Affairs would admit As for the Wars we maintain with our Purses against all the Enemies of our present Settlement they are just according to all the Rules and Forms of Civil Laws to which you your selves contribute as well as we only with more Crime as doing that against your Consciences which we admit upon Principles to us appearing good But if you think your Exigencies legitimate your payment of Taxes to prevent new danger so we think the general Exigencies of the Nation did legitimate this Settlement and do still justifie our plenary Submission thereunto according to the Sense Laws and Usages of all Nations As for those you call Revolters they were not the Subject of my Discourse whom I therefore leave to God who as he saw the provocations so did he also every mans purposes and trains of thought in that Insurrection according to which at the last day they shall each man be judged But for those that lay still I know no legal summons they had from King James to rise in Arms to make that quietness a breach of Allegiance in which certainly you Jacobites are as culpable as the others and in one degree more in that when you might and upon your Principles ought to have taken Arms for him you would not and now when you neither can nor ought clamour for new Seditions and Commotions by which we must inevitably fall a prey to France and a Burnt-Sacrifice to Rome Dyscher I will now for the present intermit the Remarks I collected at Gilman's Coffee-House and bestow some other impartial Reflexions on your Grand State-Principle on which you raise your other Arguments Here then I must tell you That you set up new Principles which the Church of England hath always declared to be erroncous and grounds of Rebellion viz. you set up the Parliament above the King and that we must take our measures of obedience only from the Parliament * Sol. Ab. p. 31. to whose Judgment say you in all Civils all Subjects must submit And upon this you Ground all your Superstructure as that King James's * Ibid. p. 8. Tenure has been publickly judged by this Natition to be extinct * p. 9. and that this Nation hath justified King William 's Cause which is to conclude upon us Beyond this you allow no no man to look or enquire The whole Body of the Church are to be taught by the Parliament and to have an implicit faith in them against the King in all Cases whatsoever so that * Ibid. p. 4. the Churches Loyalty is to follow the Civil Judgment concerning the Object of our Allegiance and the Tenure of Sovereignty And by this Rule if a Parliament change a King every day the Church is bound to swear to every one the Parliament can solve their Oaths But there was a time when the Church thought it their Duty to be Teachers and particularly as to Loyalty as being a principal part of Religion and even against a Parliament Here unfortunately four or five lines were broken off the MS. Reflections but as I well remember the sense was such as is included within these brackers and their Doctrine was owned by all true Sons of the Church of England I mean the Old Church of England in the Reign of King Charles II. This was their Doctrine and Practice and generally of the whole Church of England ever since the Reformation as is plain in her Homilies Articles and Canons c. And you do not attempt to disprove these but only assert the contrary and so leave it as a thing settled and sure MS. Reflections That the Churches Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true Constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slur upon us that it is to
follow every Civil Judgment much less the Vncivil Judgment of any Sett of Conspirators and Traitors into whose hand you so liberally and piously dispose it T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher I am resolved that no calumnious usage shall storm or transport me into any indecent or uncharitable passion But tho' for my own part I might reject your imputations of disloyalty with scorn and silence yet for your conviction I will calmly remind you that I ever told you that the Estates of this Land are not Judges of the Kings Person who is not under their Power nor in Law subject to them And all that I any where said of their Judgment about the Throne amounts to no more than this that in a state of Anarchy on a King's Desertion or in Arbitration between two or more Competitors the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges and Arbiters upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty and the Rights of the Nation in order to Settlement And that in case an irresistible or unresisted Potentate * Sol. Ab. p. 5. enforce himself upon the Nation for a new King and the Subject people cannot help it our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies * Ibid. p. 4. that in extra-ordinary interruptions and convulsions of State our Laws and Constitutions allow the Estates such a King as can actually be had for the time being for which * Ibid. p. 5. I refer to our Histories Acts of Parliament and Judgments of Law under hereditary Kings since the Reformation without any Remonstrance of King Church or State to the contrary and at last to Bishop Overals Convocation Book So that if a Question arise in the disordered Kingdom who is my King to whom my Allegiance is legally payable I refer to their Judgment as the then Supream in all our Civils and if you can assign any Superior or more Legal Judgment to decide and determine such national Questions and Controversies I am content to give up fairly to you And if you can produce any Homilies Articles Canons or Monuments of this Church contrary to these my Positions then I will yield that the Churches Authority as far as that can go upon Civil Questions will lie against me But a mans Eyes shall sooner drop out of his Head than discover any such counter-principles in the publick constitutions of our Church which you would have quoted if you could particularly but since that could not be done 't was very feeble to make such an hollow and causeless noise about it And yet if the Church in Civils had interpreted the Laws contrary to the Judgments of the State she had given a null and incompetent Judgment since we are no Authentick Doctors in these matters nor the Church a Court of Civil Judicature prohibitions always justly lying on her whensoever she admits the Pleas and assumes the Judgment of Civil Causes As to the Rebellion against King Charles the First it comes not near our Case for there was a King actually Regnant who in Parliament had redressed all their Grievances and whose Tenure was indisputable and undisputed the very Rebels owning their Arms to be for King and Parliament But neither was that Rebellion a judicial form of proceeding of both Houses of which only I spake as Authentick in the Actual Vacancy of the Throne and a state of Anarchy but a military one by a divided part of the Houses assuming the Style and Title of the whole Parliament against a King actually Regnant which I had no occasion to mention much less to justifie the Nation having since condemned it by Act of Parliament Nor had it been entred into by the unanimous Vote of both Houses had it obliged as a Law as wanting the Royal Assent of the King then Regnant And the Rights of the Crown and Duties of our Allegiance are still the same tho' Milton will still have Successors to his Villanies arise when their Sovereigns are involved to tamper with popular and seditious humours and ambitions in order to new projected commotions But they who make the Convention to have proceeded on principles of Rebellion contrary to their enacted Judgments that hence they may draw Arguments to whiten the Old and to enflame New Rebellions deserve they and their incendiary Pamphlets to be burnt together Nor need you fear any such consequence from any my Positions as if upon these the Parliaments may change their Kings every Day and thereupon our Oaths For I have asserted no Convention of Estates to be in Name or Thing a Parliament if they mect contrary to the Fundamental Laws of their Constitution And while a King is actually Regnant they * The Triennial Act was not pasied when this was written yet meet sit are prorogued and dissolved at the Kings Order only And this being yet the form of our State no Votes or Bills of the Houses can pass into an Act or Law without the Assent of the King Regnant at whose pleasure they immediately are and are not and so can make no Legal Assembly or publick Change without or against him over whose Person they are neither Lords nor Judges For tho' Causes of the King may come before the Lords and be overruled in Justice to the Subjects Right against which they are brought thither yet this is no more than what we see in other Courts which yet pretend no Sovereignty over the Kings Person by whose Commission they sit in Judgment So far am I from such wicked Principles as Plat-thorns in the Crowns of Kings and set them in the most unsupportable Bondage that Art or Ill-nature can contrive but withal provoke great spirited and designing Princes to seek avenues to an Arbitrary Power who would have gladly been contented with a regular and equal Sovereignty if they could have been secured in it from the fears and incentives of popular insolence But to return from this Digression if a King thro' any fear or cause whatsoever utterly deserts his Kingdoms and leaves all in Anarchy and Confusion that the Estates of the Land if they can should then Convene and settle the Nation the best way they can is so far from Rebellion that it is most certainly both their Priviledge and their Duty And if they are first to determin our Settlement I am sure the Churches Loyalty is to follow their Judgment except we challenge an Appeal from them to the Church to ratifie or vacate our Civil Constitutions And if you call this Duty of Submission to their Civil Settlements implicit Faith in the Parliament it will be prone to retort that you challenge an implicit Faith in the Church and that in matters not Ecclesiastical in a latitude more Exorbitant than any Pretensions of the Church of Rome But the Truth is our Duty to any such established Settlements is not founded in an implicit Faith whose proper Objects are things not seen
Heb. 11.1 but in an apparent explicit and authentick Determination as all other Duties pursuant to Laws and Publick Judgments are and no otherwise And you that will allow the Churches Loyalty as to the Object to be guided by the true Constitution of the State but not by every Civil Judgment have need to explain your self what shall he the Supream Civil Judgment for you concerning the Laws and Constitutions of our State in rare unusual and dangerous Cases of Desertion and Anarchy For if you assert to every man a practical Judgment upon our Laws and Rights in such Cases and that even against a National Judgment the Confusions must be eternal If there must be a Civil Council I pray assign me any other like that of the Estates in Convention who indeed as often as such Cases call upon them are the Supream Judges of the Constitutions and Rights of the Nation and Arbiters of our Settlement concluded thereupon And if you will not yield to every such Civil Judgment you may as well say you will yield to none excepe it comports with your private Humours or Persuasions which is the true and plain English of your Answer herein if I may use the freedom you take with me of being your Paraphrast or Interpreter and is a wonderful Expedient to settle us by eternal and unreconcilable discords in Opinion and Practice Dyscher Let us now see what a fine account you give us of the Laws and Rules of our Succession and hereon you tell us * Sol. Ab. p. 4. That the general and ordinary Rule of Succession to this Crown is Hereditary but in extraordinary Interruptions and Convulsions of State against the ordinary Course our Laws and Constitutions do allow the Estates such a King as can be actually had for the time being till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered Now if a man were to speak this in plain English it would be thus By our Laws and Constitutions the Crown is Hereditary but if any Vsurper or Traytor will not suffer it to be so but puts by the Right Heir and gets possession himself the Laws and Constitutions allow him to be King yes marry and a Lawful King too i. e. the Crown goes in a Lineal Succession while people are peaceable and Obedient but if they be troublesome and rebellious it is catch as catch can and he had Right and Law on his side who gets Possession and so will another and another without end who can successively wrest the Possession from those who had the Right whilst they could keep Possession Did ever any Body hear of such a Constitution as this Or was any thing better fitted to produce eternal Confusions Certainly you have a mind to persuade us that our Constitutions were made by the Wise Men of Goatham or the Wiser Men of Bedlam T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19. Eucher You frequently use a suspicious Artifice of travesteering what cannot be plainly answered into farce and mishapen figures and then expose it in Ridicule By which however you call upon you the Sentence of the Psalmist What shall be done unto thee thou false Tongue Mighty and sharp Arrows with hot burning Coals For if I may be my own Paraphrast my Sense is that all Estates and Subjects are to their utmost obliged to preserve together the Sovereign and the Sovereignty and the established forms of Government according to the precise constitution of the Laws but if these be irresistibly overborn or the Sovereign abdicates all to Anarchy then it is Lawful for the Estates to settle under such Sovereigns as can be actually had for the time being till the old Rules can be fairly recovered which being positive must give place to a temporal necessity But did I ever say that Tyrants or Traytors getting into Possession by meer Force had Right and Law on their side No sure for they may break all Law Right and antecedent Rules of Obligation and yet the oppressed Estates may lawfully admit the Oppressive Power when it appears too formidable under prospects of further inevitable Ruins This I expresly and cautiously told you in these words * Sol. Ab. p. 5. And even an unjust Potentate tho' he cannot according to Legal Justice out a King against whom he hath no Legal Cause or right of War yet if he doth do so and the subject People cannot help it and he enforce himself on the People for a new King our Laws in this concur with the Laws and Practice of all Nations in allowing our Estates to determine for us in such Exigencies and the sin shall lie only on the injurious and not on them that submitted to an inevitable fate of things and again * Ibid. p. 6. Wars and victories are many times unjust yet they that suffer the wrong lawfully submit to the unlawful and injurious demand of Submission as in Piracies and other like Tyrannies And could such a Confessor for Conscience Truth and Piety put lying Senses on my words without any remorses or touches of Conscience More integrity was due and becoming such starched or sacred pretensions But I have well learned that Faction leavens the Soul not only with sowerness but with insincerity also But as I truly stated and have now explained the Nature and Duties of our Constitution I assert it a Fundamental Law to all Civil Societies except perhaps that pair of dissyllable Seigniories which you mention where the Politcks Logicks and Ethicks suit with your and where unless you 'll to the Antyceryae I must leave you And since all Kingdoms and Empires are by the just and adorable Counsels of Gods Providence subject to such various Turns of Fate all Princes that take Crowns upon them take them with the Laws of their fortune and a concession to the regular consequences of such Change under which they acquit the innocent Subjects under new submissions tho' they condemn and being reduced prosecuted all those that enforced the Change But as long as the Duties of Subjection are such as I have described intestine changes and disorders cannot arise from them And while Princes minister Justice and Judgment to their People and make their Prosperity the Royal Care they are seldom threatned with Commotions But yet it sometimes happens that for unsearchable tho' Just Reasons the Judgment of God permits the most innocent Princes to intestine as well as foreign troubles which yet however they that promote shall not escape Divine Vengeance And yet after the determination of such Wars it can be no sin to acquiesce under those forms of Settlement which our Estates can procure for the time being tho' different from the ordinary Course And there is no other Rule to recover the Civil Felicity of Nations but by these Principles which every Princely Spirit must be presumed to allow in equity and compassion to all his good Subjects to rescue them from utter extirpation or perpetual misery Dyscher At last you are willing to qualifie the matter and
to suffer this only till the ordinary Rule can be fairly recovered If this be so why is it not recovered Sure you will not plead that in justification of a People which is notoriously their Fault and such a Fault as is in their Power to mend when they please Let them unanimosly as they ought return to their Duty and Loyalty and the thing will do it self and without any great pains trouble or danger T. B's 2d Lett. p. 19 20. Eucher But I thought I had long before strangled the life and force of this Objection having abundantly proved our Submission to this National Settlement faultless And so a breach of National Contract is no fair way to a recovery for an opportunity only of doing a thing legally can put us into a fair capacity of recovering the ordinary Course which is not as you â—ancy the business of a moment but an expectation of years and proper Conjunctures at the hands of God whose leisure we are to wait for without our own too violent anticipations Thus the Nation behaved it self thro-out all the Reigns of Henry IV V. and VI. whom you would have challenged for Rebels in lingring too long in the restitution of the Right Line But whereas you propose to us an universal unanimity in reversing this Constitution I will dare undertake the Affair for you sub poena Capitis when you can find me out an effectual Expedient of making us all unanimous Otherwise what shall the unanimous do that are the far less numbers unarmed and in no publick Capacity of acting for the Kingdom against those settled and formed Powers that can easily squeeze all our little unanimities to pieces Shall there be no end of strife No yielding to legal forms of Determination And when there is but little hope or â—wisting the Sand-rope can your thing do it self and that with little trouble pains or danger And yet if King James Abdicated by a real Cession as the Nation judged and I have proved your project would violate not only this extraordinary Settlement but your ordinary Rule also by which in the moment of Cession it devolves on the next Heir Lineal and the Course cannot turn retrograde without the Consent of all the Heirs in being or their proper Curators for them Dyscher But I see you relapse again and become a zealous Advocate for your extraordinary Kings in whose behalf you plead Acts of Parliament made by Extra-lineal Kings which were confirmed submitted to you subtily phrase it by the Lineal Heirs and these were approved by Lawyers nor did the Church ever remonstrate against them And what of all this Let the Vsurpations and Confusions be what they will still men will eat and drink buy and sell and such like Acts. Nor do I think such a State doth acquit men from the Obligation to do what in them lies such things as seem absolutely necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind And if any such things as are necessary for the maintenance of human Affairs and which are accompanied with common Justice in themselves should now be done or enacred and hereafter be confirmed by King James I know no reason to remonstrate against this but I think the need of such a confirmation is a demonstration where the Right and Authority lies T. B's 2d Lett. p. 20. Eucher Since I am bound to follow the way you lead me the first thing I am to observe is your mistake or perâ—â—â—â—ion of my words about the submission of Heirs Lineal by which you say I subtilly mean their confirmation of the Statutes of Extra-lineal Kings which is no part or glance of my meaning and no man carefully heeding the Order of my words could think it to be so For I mention their submission to somewhat mentioned before those Statutes And I truly meant the long and frequent submissions of the Heirs Lineal as Subjects â—o Kings Extra-lineal actually Regnant particularly under the Lancastrian Reigns And even your Edward the IVth Father Duke of York swore Allegiance to King Henry the VIth and kept it till new â—â—aâ—ses of Rupture arose between them So that it is a very impertinent importunity to clamâ—â—r aâ—or◠〈◊〉 subsequent confirmations which I â—ever â—â—â—tioned And instead of subtil it had beer too silly in me to have called a Confirmation of an invalid Act a submission to that feeble thing which is thereby enlivened And yet by your leave all After-confirmations do not suppose always an antecedent Nullity in the Act confirmed for they sometimes secure sometimes continue and sometimes double an antecedent validity which all the Statutes under Extralineals had in themselves for the time being before there could be room for those subsequent Ratifications and the perpetuity of their Virtue stands not in those Ratifications but in the Non-repeal of them And yet however had it been otherwise by parity of Reason all our Acts obliged the Subject now during this present Reign and we are thereby acquitted in our present submission whatsoever nullities it may fall under in your next Revolution But there is a Famous Act viz. the 11th of Henry the VIIth Chap. 1. made in an Extra-lineal Reign that declares it for Law and Equity that Subjects pay their Allegiance to the King for the time being and indemnifies them herein against after punishments This Law was never since confirmed censured or repealed by any succeeding Prince or Parliament and yet stands firm in the Body of our Statutes to all Civil Effects and Judgments which pass ever since according to the importance and tenour thereof And you your self grant me enough for the time being that the Estates may sit in Parliament under Extra-lineal Kings to do and enact things necessary for the preservation of the Society and the real good of Mankind and are not acquitted from an obligation to do so thro' the disorder in the Succession and such Acts in this Reign when hereafter confirmed by King James you will not condemn Sir your humble Servant But can you tell how such Acts could or can pass in such Parliaments without an Oath of Allegiance taken to such Extra-lineal Kings by all the Members I doubt this will put you out of your good humour again and that is a great pity because you are so seldom in it But however these honest Acts must be valid for the time being upon us till King James returns or else the Obligation of the present State to preserve the Society or promote the real Good of Mankind by them will be but of little Virtue or Use Dyscher But pray Sir upon such extraordinary interruptions did all men ever think themselves bound to approve them Did not they still as opportunity served assist Right Did not such proceedings cost a world of Blood and Treasure to none or very ill purpose while no Peace or Ease could be had till things were brought to rights again When matters are in trouble or confusion wise and good Men
ingredient to a full Settlement or the Obligations to Allegiance founded thereupon For if a Nations Settlement be not full under New Powers till all the former lineal Heirs be Extinct or cease making their claims from Forreign Dominions I know not how many Ages may sometimes be necessary to fill the Settlement and it will be very hard if submission thereto for want of such a ground of plenitude should be Treason and all Sanguinary Commotions against it Pious and Loyal till the claim of all the Succeeding Heirs Lineal shall surcease for ever Or if you will allow a term for Prescription against all after claims then you must allow that a Settlement attaining to Prescription may exclude a Native Right or that a Native Right ceases by such a Tract of Continuance If it excludes Right only then you are no more to comport with it than with present Settlements exclusive if the Right ceases I pray shew me by what equity mere time can destroy a right in me Anno. 93. which was whole and within Memory Anno. 92. especially since the Regestries of Lines Royal usually endure as just Records that will out-live the longest ocular Testimonies and personal Memories whatsoever For the reason why Prescription passes Title is when there is no Authentick Evidence or memorial to the contrary And I will further note that the same Laws of Nations which admit prescriptions as a form of Title do not therefore assert the Title really right in the original means of procuring it but only externally Legal for want of better Evidence Prescription in it self being the weakest form of Title that must give place to all others if verified in foro and its ground or reason is only a supposed Composition Real I say supposed only not Asserted And those very Laws of Nations do not always suppose those Compositions every way right but only Legally Authoritative and Settling and do indeed allow such present Settlements within memory to be as Legal and Valid as those which being out of record and beyond memory can but be supposed Legal and this with more reason because men can better judge of what is present than of what is past into a Tohu an Age in which all things are forgotten Dyscher You are very long and I am almost tired considering the Zeal that is in me Eucher I have kept you so long under the Fatigue because what I ever thought has lately appeared in your Prints that the total ground of the Schism between us lies in this point of Right For you all say that Allegiance follows a thorow Settlement but a thorow Settlement is founded in the Right of him that Reigneth So that if admit the wrong then immediately all our Prayers for him are Immoral Polluted and Abominable as conteining Imprecations against the right and justice of him that is wronged and giving God Praise for the Advancement of the Usurper which we blasphemously attribute to God Whence there follows a necessity that all good Bishops Priests and People renounce Communion in these Liturgies and with all that use them and that if hereupon they be deprived by the Usurpers of all the Publick Advantages of their Ministry they must keep up holy Ministrations among themselves for so the Rule is set and agreed for with most prodigious Zeal and no less Accuracy and Learning by your admirable Author of Christian Communion But I wonder this great Man did not see how Tottering and Casual the visible State of Religion then must be upon every turn of the secular State and the various Competitions for the Sovereingty For how is it possible that Godly Pastors and their Flocks can be all unanimously certain at all times whore the real Right and Justice lies when matters of Fact and Law are so remote from their Cognisance Nor will your evasion of doubtful Cases which you allow much to heal the matter For in all such cases some will assert an indubitable Right others a dubitable one and that on both sides at the same time And thus your indubitable Men must fall into a state of Schism or Separation from each other upon their contrariant confidences in the Right of the opposite Claimers And your dubitable men must either be neuter to all Communion or choose a Communion with one or other of the indubitables at all adventure which to do with a doubting mind is a Sin and Snare And so it is in our present case Some says 't is indubitable that K. James is King de jure and that K. William is not King at all others say as indubitably that K. James is not King at all but K. William is King de jure others own K. William to be King only de facto and K. James de jure others that are indubitably for his being de facto doubt his being de jure King And a great number through ignorance confide or doubt more or less in all these points which they cannot reach Now since Practice must follow Principles and rules of Conscience how shall we settle all these under one Religious Communion on that Authors Maxims There is no possible way but by following the direction of the Convocation Book in Obeying the thorow Settlement of the King de facto made by publick Submission or continuance the form of which being a point of Law not Religion must be determined and defined by the Supremest Domestick Judgment we have in Civils which Certainly is that of Parliament after whose Decisions we need no further Torment our selves in vain about Antecendent questions but consider the Right we have as well as Duty to Live quiet under Publick Formal and Judicial Settlements which we are to take as Gods Ordinance for the time being By which Rule we shall secure our selves from both Extreams either of owning forcible Entry for Legal Title or proper Settlements or of Asserting all Change of Government to be Invalid and unobliging as Contrary to the Law of God who we know changeth Times and Seasons and all the Kingdoms of the Earth and Dissolves and Resettles all the States of Men under proper Laws of Constitions according to the Just and Unsearchable Counsels of his Will And now I will only apply your Rules of Communion to our Case and so dismiss this Theorie If this present Settlement be full and the Judgment of the Nation herein against your Right then all your Prayers and Execrations against the present State are Irreligious Immoral Polluted and Abominable and under an ipso facto Anathema upon which all Christians must abhor your Communion even without any Ecclesiastical Sentence as being self-condemned and cut off And if all these Dangers and Snares await us upon every Civil Change upon Mens Private Cross Opinions about Right and Plenitude of Settlement Christian Religion Ecclesiastical Union could not have continued a Twelve-Month under the Changes of the Empire from Nero to Vespasian but must have Expired before it had been Exposed to the World And I desire
all men may judge how candidly our suffering Fathers are dealt with On the 28 of January 1689 the Bishop of London and St. Asaph and some others presented themselves before your mighty K. William with a mournful address in the behalf of our Reverend Fathers then drawing neer to a Civil Suspension and since more than uncivilly deprived This was the pretence but it is reasonable to think that it was a complotted thing and that the design was to get their Authorities deputed in such sure hands as might effectually promote perjury and the thrusting good men out of their Estates c. and so the Addressers got themselves into their several jurisdictions c. This is the real truth of the matter and is so far from being a deputation of their Authorities that it doth not imply any Consent more than what is always unavoidably extorted from every man in the like Circumstances c. T. B. pag. 33 34 35 c. Vide. Eucher I wonder why a man should raise such a tempest about what is nothing to the purpose of my discourse and besides the greenness of the spite discovers much ignorance For the day of suspension was past neer half an year before your 28th of January 89 viz. on the beginning of the precedent August and the time neer drawing on your 28th of January was the Day of Deprivation in the beginning of the following February But the time that I was speaking of from the admission of their Majesties in Feb. 88 till the day of suspension in the August following during which interval these Bishops were in full unsuspended jurisdiction But in that time upon all incidental occasions of collations and institutions to Ecclesiastical Promotions the Oath of present Allegiance was to be ministred by the ordinary and primary Officer of the Bishops and by no others while they were present at their Sees except by their especial Deputation So that were there no particular instance producible for me the truth which I Spake is self-evident and notorious that the Oath was administred in all such Cases by the Bishops or their Deputies For no person or power could herein impose any officer upon them while all the Course of Ecclesiastical affairs proceeded yet in their names But I know where deputations were then given and the Oath administred by those Deputies by virtue of that Deputation And is it not a very pertinent account to the contrary to tell me what was done just before and then after the day of Deprivation to disprove what I had said was done by the Bishops before their actual Suspension And was it not very accurate to mistake the days of Suspension and Deprivation for one and the same between which there was half a year distance But there had been no occasion for your reproaching Talent against the Reverend Fathers of London and St. Asaph notwithstanding their great merits against Popery in the last Reign if you had not fool'd in this impertinence for a shew of Contradiction But when you pervert the kind intentions of that Address to so horrid and calumnious surmises you ought with grief and repentance to remember that he that rewardeth evil for good evil shall never depart from his House Dyscher I see one fire kindles another by the heat my freedom hath cast you into to cool which I know no present expedient but intermission of discourse for this time And besides the day is at an End and I must retire to my lodging and respite the remainder of our debate till to morrow when with your leave we will renew our Conference and examine the Case of the Ecclesiastical Change Eucher I would not have you take my seldom ardours for uncharitable nor withdraw upon any such surmise if you please to repose your self and your passions under my roof this night you shall be truly and heartily welcome to a thrifty but friendly Hospitality Dyscher I thank you Sir but as I am not otherwise very flexible so my business requires me to take leave and wish you good Night A DEBATE ON THE Justice and Piety Of the Present CONSTITUTION UNDER K. William The Second Part. The First relating to the State The Second to the Church BETWEEN Eucheres a CONFORMIST AND Dyscheres a RECUSANT By Samuel Hill Rector of Kilmington Author of Solomon and Abiathar Psal 7.8 Judge me O Lord according to my Righteousness and according to mine Integrity that is in me Inter-utrumque tene Obsequium amicos Veritas Odium Parit LONDON Printed for John Everingham at the Star in Ludgate-street 1696. A DEBATE ON THE JUSTICE AND PIETY Of the Present Constitution PART II. Concerning the Ecclesiastical Change Dyscher ACcording to my yesterdays promise I am returned to continue on the Debate which the supervening night interrupted Let us therefore now begin where we left off and pursue the matters of our last Conference to their just and utmost Issue Eucher You are heartily welcom and so let us closely apply our selves to the Business Dyscher Pass we then from the Civil to the Sacred War in which we are engaged by the contrariety of our Principles And first I pray you wherein do you found the just and regular Right of the Ecclesiastical Deprivations Eucher This I often and very expresly told you that as to the merits of Deprivation they stand in the enormities of your practic principles against the present Civil Constitution by which you are brought into an incapacity of a public Trust over mens Consciences which your opinions will sharpen into Civil Seditions and religious Schisms And as to the Canonical form of your Deprivations I placed it in the customary right the ancient Churches used against Bishops of false principles by separating from them and Appealing to other Social Churches and Bishops for their assistance in new Consecrations which course our Church has also used against the Recusant Fathers upon the just Commands of the State Dyscher Indeed I do remember now the nature of that Charge you loaded us with †Sel. and Ab. pag. 16 17. and it might have made an excellent Argument for Julian or Dioclesian by traducing our Bishops as imposturous and comparing them to Idolaters for which my friend T. B. hath so sufficiently requited you Sec. Lett. pag. 36 that you cannot say he is in your Debt or is so indigent as to run upon tick for calumnies and slanders Eucher I was never skilled in T. B's Arts or Conversations and do decline the lists and pretentions to the faculty of evil speaking I shall only say that I ever looked on those Fathers to be too rigorously pious in their unhappy Errors in the notions and rules of English Loyalty tho' I ever acknowledged their undoubted sincerity But because I was aware that you exempt all Episcopal Causes and Authorities from all Civil and Laic Cognisance in matters and censures purely Spiritual therefore to draw you off from that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I put the Case upon the worst
no more divinely instituted than the lowest Orders of Levi tho' he was to higher Services Nor is the Doctor less mistaken in his extraordinary Esteem and Elogy of the Annual Expiation as more noble than any Episcopal Functions For notwithstanding all its Solemnities and Operations yet its highest Excellency was but Typical of that Grace which was not given by Moses but by Jesus Christ And all its actual present Energy reached no further than a legal imaginary Cleansing of the Body of the Jews and this only for one Year past and that only for the securing him in the Temporal benefits promised in that Law But our Priestly Functions are not merely Typical of Grace not yet given but both commemorative and exhibitory also of that Grace which hath already appeared for the Salvation of all Men and consecrates the Souls and Bodies of Men unto Immortality not to mention the extraordinary Measure of the Spirit collated in the especial Acts of Episcopal Ordinations In all which interiour Sanctifications tho' there is no Transubstantiation yet is there a mystical Union betwixt Christ and his Members by the illuminating Communion of the Holy Spirit For which truth it is needful that we contend tho' I confess it was needless for him to contend against it And yet further supposing all this had been right which the Doctor hath dictated yet here arises another Infelicity in his Logic For tho' God might admit an intruded High-Priest yet it does not follow that Men may admit an intruded Bishop for can Man pretend to all the Authorities of God God is indeed superior to all his own Institutions and may dispense with them or ratifie Violations of them as he did the violent Successions in the Kings of Israel But does it follow that Men can lawfully without any Divine Dispensation given and granted admit the Violations of his Laws and the perverters of that Hierarchy which he has made organical to the Sanctity and Salvation of his Church Nay further yet the Doctor is very unaccurate in his very State of the Question which properly is not whether any Man may lawfully succeed an Ecclesiastic deposed by a Lay-power for if we grant that there can be any such Lay-deposition no doubt the Succession may be lawful but the Question is whether there can be any Ecclesiastical Deposition inflicted on Spiritual Orders by a Lay-power This is that we and our Fathers complain of that the Lay-powers enact Spiritual Censures of Suspension and Deprivation which your Ecclesiastics admit as regular and valid which were they so we should not quarrel at the Successions This I am sure is our Question whatsoever that of the Baroccian Treatise is if this differs from ours then in that respect the Treatise is impertinently adduced in our Case Besides the Question is not whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastic Office of God's Institution may not be deposed by any Lay power For if God in the Jewish Church did subject their Ecclesiastics to a Lay-deposition no doubt in the Nature of the thing it might be lawful But the Question is whether first God did so subject the Jewish Ecclesiastics to such a Lay-authority And secondly supposing that God had so subjected their Ecclesiastics the next Question is whether he hath in like manner so subjected the Christian Hierarchy For if there be any specific Difference or intentional Disparity in the Nature and Purposes of the Jewish and Christian Religions if there have been such Changes admitted by God in the Authorities of one which have not been so conceded upon the Authorities of the other then the Argument from the Jewish doth not conclude upon the Christian Hierarchy And therefore by the Doctor 's leave not only the Divinity of the Institution but the Nature of the Offices and the Rules of Tenure and Succession instituted by God in his Church are to be considered in this Debate For to put the matter into a short Theory I think it fairly possible to conceive that the Jewish Religion in what it was peculiarly Jewish was only of a carnal Sanctity in Order only to Temporal Fruitions and so might be under the Conduct of Temporal Powers that are the Supreme Guardians of all Temporal Enjoyments but the Christian Religion is purely Spiritual not subordinated to Temporal Ends and so not under the like Authority of Temporal Powers Now whatsoever are the civil Authorities about matters Christian I suppose the Essential Differences of our Religion from the Jewish will bar the Argument for the same Rules of Subjection And if you please upon another Consultation to propose the matter to the Doctor 's second Thoughts I will be at the pains of repeating my Observations hereupon †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 21 22. First that the whole Institution of the Levitical Law was not of a Spiritual but carnal Sanctity yielded them by God somewhat in opposition and somewhat in conformity to the Aegyptian or other foreign Religions among whom the Priesthood had been long subjected to and perhaps first instituted by the Scepter And herein the Supreme Judgments in Civils upon the Law and Oracular Responses upon Consultations about Peace War and Temporal Actions and Successes were essential to the Authority of the Pontificate And yet we find this High-Priest not subject to any ordinary Power till Kings were also given this People after the manner of the Nations among whom the Mitre was subject to the Crown All which put together makes Abiathar 's Deprivation by a Temporal Power under that Constitution Legal But from the beginning it was not so Then there were Priests who till the Flood had the Government of the World without any Civil or Military Power and that Priesthood was in all its Intentions Spiritual So that when our Saviour came not only to restore but even to refine upon the primitive Rules he restored the Priesthood from Vassalage and founded his Hierarchy not in Princes but Apostles not inarmed but in unarmed Powers But if among the Nations of old the carnal Priesthoods were subject to Arbitrary and Imperial Powers and God conceded the Jews Kings with such Power after that Gentile manner the Jewish High-Priests thereupon became Subject not only to a Judicial but Imperial Authority and so legally deprivable at the pleasure of the secular Prince so far at least that these Censures might be effectually valid tho' not always good and just And hence all the Changes of the High-Priests violently and arbitrarily made by heathen Princes in the Jewish Pontificate seem to be legally and regularly valid ex jure Imperii toties quoties and so are nothing at all to the Case of an uncanonical Deprivation or the Doctor 's purpose But our Priesthood has nothing Civil in it nor is by God subjected to the Arbitrary Empire of Princes that so we should think our selves obliged to bow down our Faith and Freedom to such feeble Principles of Spiritual Bondage and Pusillanimity Eucher But a little to
interrupt you did you not deny * Sol. Ab. pag. 23. Zadok's Title to be derived from the Kings donation tho' the Scripture expressly affirms that K. Solomon did put Zadok the Priest in the room of Abiathar I Kings 2.35 And do you now on a sudden put all the power of disposing that Priesthood in the arbitrary will of their Sovereigns that so you may oppose the Drs. Principles Dyscher What I delivered then can well consist with my present Sentiments which I offer not in an itch of contradicting the Doctor but upon the reasonableness of the thing it self For in Solomon's time the Genealogies were extant and the due course of Succession obvious on which account I take it Zadok had before in David's time been admitted under Abiathar into the communicable Offices of the Pontificate in order perhaps to the next plenary Succession after the death of Abiathar which Succession now commenced on Abiathar's remove before the time preintended by the actual introduction of him by King Solomon into the possession of what he had an antecedent Title to upon the next vacancy either by the right of Primogeniture which the antient Jews have owned from the first Patriarchs and the Law Lev. 16.32 or upon an ordination by the Ecclesiastic Powers of the Sanhedrin as men of Talmudic learning have conjectured Now it is certain that their native Kings of God's own appointment were obliged to keep the Law and every man's Rights established by it and the doing otherwise was really sinful and offensive tho' such unjust acts of Kings had among them the effectum juris as appears in the sentence of David between Ziba and Mephibosheth If therefore Solomon had rejected Zadok as well as Abiathar such causeless procedure in my opinion had been unjust but yet valid as being not subject to any Tribunal and presumable for just and done upon reasonable although secret Causes But when the Sovereignty fell into the hands of gentile Princes not tyed to the Mosaic Constitutions as their native Kings were and the Genealogies were lost and the Legal Successors unknown or absent the necessity of some high-Priest made the person upon each such vacancy Elective by the Supreme power or with the permission thereof by the priests and people as appears in the Maccabâ—ic History and Josephus Amongst which instances there is one above all most considerable viz. that of Simon who was made high-Priest by the Jews and Priest for ever until there should arise a faithful Prophet 1 Maccab. 14.41 to discover the lineal Successor as also to shew them what to do 〈◊〉 the defiled Stones of the Sanctuary 1 Maccab. 4.46 Whence it appears the sense of that people from the constitution of that Priesthood in Simon and his heirs for want of the true Proprietary Family First that there was an absolute necesity of the high-priesthood Secondly that it legally belonged to Aarons lineal heirs Thirdly that in want of them they if they had freedom were to elect another Family for that Succession All which set together discovers Zadok to be the next regular Successor to Abiathar since the Scriptures impeach not the King of any irregular and despotic injuries against the Laws of the high Priesthood Eucher But what say you to that note of the Dr that it was of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the annual Expiation performed by one apointed to it by God Does not this argue the Deposition of such a one null and yet upon necessity God permitted the Jews to own the Successor coming in by mere intrusion Dyscher To this I answer that if God himself allowed the Jews to admit such intruders then it appears that it was not of the greatest consequence to the Jews to have the Expiation performed by one to whom it belonged by the constitution of the Law For if the Intruders Expiations were effectually acceptable they did the business as well as the Liturgy of the legal Proprietor But further Gods admission of the Intruder after Intrusion takes off his irregularity ratifies his Title and vacates that of the ejected and so is of Gods particular occasional appointment for the time being tho' not by the original designation of the Law and so this is nothing to the Drs. Hypothesis or Cause And this is in fact the real state of that Case in such Changes The State Civil first intruded Successors into the room of the expelled but this not creating any Plenitude or Sanctity of Title God made up this defect by giving the Intruders the Spirit of Prophecy which supervening made them also Gods high-priests to all Sacred as well as Civil purposes Which act of Gods was not a mere acknowledgment of their antecedent Authority but an efficient thereof to all the intents of the Levitic Law tho' the Dr. would fain perswade us to a contrary notion herein Yet had it been a mere consequent acknowledgment of their Priest hood held only by Intrusion as * Case of Sees c. Ch. 3. § 3. the Dr. intimates it had been nothing to his purpose because upon the Extinction of the Genealogies and Ignorance of the lineal Heirs and the more plenary Subjection therefore of that pontificate to the Gentile Sovereigns who were despotic and free from all the ordinary Rules that obliged their native Kings this had made these Changes of High-Priests in the potificate being an office carnal and temporal even in its Religious acts formally valid and authoritative for that these Gentile powers came into the Sovereignty of their native Kings or perhaps a greater to whom God at their request had subjected the Hierarchy after the manner of the Nations And a great deal of this I told you * Sol. Ab. pag. 24. in our last Conference which no doubt you consulted your Dr. upon tho' he takes no notice of it And I then drop'd another note perhaps worth a second Rumen with you that those Intrusions tho' thus admitted by God were signs of a broken Church and State hastening to its last Dissolution and so no just Precedent for the Christian Church to follow which is to continue to the End of all things except we must yield to methods of Violation that lead to our Extinction And I leave it to the pious consideration of every Religious Conscience to judge whether those servile Submissions to Imperial violences in the instances of the Baroccian Treatise and the others produced by the Learned Dr. against his Opponents did not properly lead to the ruin of the Church into which the Greeks from these precedents are fallen under Mahometan powers all which had been effectually obviated had the Church stuck to the Laws and Canons of the Christian Hierarchy and Communion against the encroachments of wicked Emperors against which it is the Duty of all Churches obstare principiis in contempt of persecutions Hereby and hereby alone shall we be able to stifle all Erastian and Antichristian Arts with which their concomitant persecutions
thereby that he neither was nor would be an Anti-bishop to him tho' Euphemius in begging his Protection in his way to Exile seems to have conceded without Remonstrance that Macedonius should supply the Church for him during his Exile but not against him upon which joynt accord they continued saithful Friends even unto Death And hence well might those who refused to subscribe Euphemius's Condemnation fairly Communicate with Macedonius as being no Anti-bishop to Euphemius but in perfect Charity and Communion with him All which procedures are grounded on that Maxim owned by St. Chrysostom that the Church cannot be viz. well without a Bishop So that it is the actual want of a Bishop for the time being that Justifies new Admissions not to exclude but to supply the defect of the Proprietor till his Recovery from Banishment or Bondage And to apply the Drs. Concession to our present State If their Majesties had not filled the Sees with New Bishops the Old ones had been our Bishops still and then how were the Sees before vacant by the Statute of Lay-Deprivation And how long should we have waited their Majesties leisure had they continued longer the Diocese in Suspence before the Dr. would have remonstrated for the Old Bishops Or how shall the Church know when their King's design to destroy the Church by not yielding it Bishops while the crafty Persecution is carried on under false promises and fair pretences of care for the Churches Interest These are pretty hard Morsels to digest and I leave it to the more judicious to resolve them Dyscher But to what Rules can you reduce the usage of the Greek Church in admitting new Patriarch's erected by the Grand Seignior upon his Arbitrary Dethroning a former who yet is present to his People and capable of his Pastoral Care For the Dr. puts us this strict Question †Case of c. Ch. 15. Pag. 174.175 whether an ejected Patriarch of Constantinople would do well if after he was deposed he should separate from the Communion of his Successor and make a Division in the Church To this he adds another Questions It is certain saith he that when the Patriarch of Constantinople is deposed by the Sultan the Church submits immediately to the Successor without asking the Old Patriarch leave Is now the Greek Church herein Schismatical If the ejected Patriarch should actually lay claim to his See would the Church be Schismatical for adhering to the present Possessor Eucher In this point I find the Dr. and some of you very well agreed to excuse and in a manner to justifie this Submission in the Greek Church This the Dr. observes in one of his Opponents and so have you and I in your learned Author of Christian Communion But herein my opinion is that the whole Greek Church was culpable in the first Admission of such Changes and stil is so in continuing such submission whic has nothing in it to Excuse it but fear of persecution It is true it would be odd for one single Patriarch to refuse such Ejection against the temper and humour of the whole Church especially if himself were advanced so upon the Imperial Expulsion of his Predecessor for if a whole Church will perversely urge her Bishop to yield to violence and lay down his Mitre I think in many Cases he may do well to yield to an unjust and inflexible importunity as Gregory Nazianzen did but the Churches are to blame that do not animate and maintain their Bishops against such Tyrannies in their Spiritual Authorities which ought not to lacquey it to Simoniacal and barbarous insolences For since the Greek Churches are as to their Temporal Condition in the same State with the Primitive they ought to do as the Primitive Church would have bravely done and to follow the rules of Succession that were observed in those purest Ages It is true the whole Greek Church having by a long and consuetudinary consent and prescription made this Usage to themselves as it were Canonical would not seem Schismatical in neglecting the claim of an Ejected Patriarch because he himself in his first advancement came in by the pleasure of the Sultan and assumed the Patriarchate under the same servile Terms and Conditions And therefore that first Consent tho' faulty and vicious incapacitates him to reform and reverse the ill custom singly by himself without the concurrence of his Episcopal Colleagues or the general Councils of that Church at least he cannot condemn them as Schismatical in this Customary Servility And here I must put this Quaere whether this Submission of the Greek Church to such Changes be simply Sinful If so then the Dr. ought not to prescribe from them as exemplary or excusable If not sinful then Custom and Ecclesiastical Consent hath made those deprivations and successions Valid and Canonical and then they are alien to the Drs. Hypothesis and are impertinently alledged But as if Case of the Greek Church now actually stands the ejected Patriarch making no challenges 't is no domestick Schism within themselves tho it be a wretched Dehonestation of that Churches Sanctity And so if as the Dr. confesses these Patriarchs do not merit by their Learning or Wisdom to be guides and patterns to the Bishops of England he should not urge us with their corrupt and profane examples to sacrifice our Hierarchies to the arbitrary lusts of Secular Powers For if it be not a formal Schism in the Greek 't is a radicated vice and corruption there and which for that reason we are to oppose and prevent here against all imprudent perils that it may not become an irremediable and common Evil. Dyscher You are a strange thing of a man you will neither side with us nor our Adversaries but pick out between us matters of dislike as if you would be of neither interest but a certain mixt kind of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but this is the ready way to lose your self with both Parties Eucher I have long since learned from the Apostle that if in such Cases of Conscience I should seek to please men I should not be the servant of Christ And truly you on your part and those of the Baroccian Principles seem to me to be equally in such extremes as are destructive to the true happiness and integrity of the Church By which means you have the advantage of reproaching each other for your manifest absurdities which the defence of your principles hurries you into and thus are in a fair way for an eternal wrangle but never like to settle in a grave and impartial temper ease or satisfaction And therefore I that have been so long a seeker between you and but little the Wiser amidst your contentions and so must make the best use and practice of my own Sentiments till I can experience between you others more improving or convincing Dyscher I have been very calm all this while we have been upon the Speculation of the Baroccian hypothesis But now you
remind me of your own Principles and Senses I fear I shall fall into the Spirit of T. B. again and not use you very partially in some of my Reflexions Eucher I am sensible by experience of your infirmity And since good natur'd Men are sometimes passionate I know how to bear as well as to correct a little rudeness I pray good Brother let me know what 't is now that begins to provoke your choler Dyscher When you had spent a great many Arguments drawn out with much Pomp and Ostentation being basted in them you grow weary with strugling and fairly give up all and acknowledg that †Sol. ab pag. 27.29 an Act of State Christian cannot alone vacate a Spiritual Charge Charge by any Divine Law primitive Canon or Prescription This is as full as can be worded against the Power of the State to deprive Bishops Now see how you come about again in the very next words Yet such an Act received and admitted by the Church may from her concurrence have a just and legal Effect And then upon this Notion the Statute of Deprivation ipso facto must be taken as a Law upon the Church to reject the Recusants totally from their Stations Here you will not have the Deprivation to proceed from the Act of the State alone but to save some Honour to the Clergy you make their Deprivation valid by their Concurrence to the Act of Deprivation But I pray how did they concur Was it otherwise than by submitting to the Act when it was made And is such Submission any Authority I thought they had been quite different things Did the Clergy shew any signs or make any protestations for their Right viz. that the Act of Parliament for the Deprivation of the Bishops was not valid without their Concurrence No not a word but when it is done they submit to it and acknowledg it And you would make a Protestation against Fact that their Concurrence was necessary to it that themselves did not pretend nor dare they do it to this day It is certain the Parliament thought their own Authority sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask or think they needed the Concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid On the contrary no Clergy-men have dared to dispute it but those who are deprived And for others to imagin to come in by their Concurrence into a share of the Authority is like the fly on a Wheel of the Chariot that thought he contributed to the dust that was raised for he too gave his concurrence It is possible such Men as you should not see how contemptible it renders them to pretend to an Authority they dare not avow And upon this Foundation to raise Arguments to justify their proceedings which they cannot maintain any other way For these Men to deny themselves to be Erastians or ever to name any Ecclesiastical Authority I had almost said to call them a Church Or to speak as †Sol. c. Ab. Pag. 29. you do that the Church ought not to admit Deprivations on improper or unreasonable Demands As if the Parliament did request it from the Convocation or left it to their admitting or not admitting As if they durst dispute the validity of an Act of Parliament for want of their Concurrence As if any of them durst let such a word come out of their Mouth Behold the Ghost the Echo of a Church c. M. S. Reflex and that the consent publick and actual Concurrence of the Church is necessary to give an Ecclesiastical Effect to Civil Ordinances in Matters of the Church Now this Concession overthrows your whole Cause and being placed after the main Body of your Arguments is it self an Argument that you had little faith in them So then our Bishops being never Canonically Deprived are the yet proper Bishops of their Sees But you come like a Spiritual Jugler and perswade us that this hath been Canonically done For the Church say you ought to empty the Sees of such Incumbents that are dangerous to the Civil State But Sir must the Church cast out her Bishops as oft as they will not comply with Vsurpers c. But you say this was done by Acts of Separation properly Ecclesiastical the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church taking the Jurisdiction till the Chapter elect and Bishops consecrate another But Sir you cannot but know that the Dean and Chapter have no Jurisdiction over their Metropolitane and the See must be vacant before they can proceed to Election T. B. Sect. Pag. 37.38 Eucher I have heard with much patience yea pleasure all your Noble strains of Rhetoric and need only say If I have spoken evil bare witness to the evil but if well why smitest thou me For if the Deprived assert the Churches Concurrence necessary to give Acts of State an Ecclesiastical Effect and I grant it what Cause have you to fly in my face for even that very Concession But for you to upbraid me with my Candour who are so heedless in attending to my words as to take or set them off in other Senses than rationally can be fixed on them in their clear account of this Concurrence is neither very courteous nor prudential Let us therefore again look over these oversights and see whether we can come again to our selves First then I never said that the Concurrence of the Church was necessary either to make an Act of Parliament or to make it valid in Ecclesiasticals and particularly in Acts of Deprivation But I admitted your Principle so far and no further that her Concurrence is necessary to give Statutes an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue For an Act of Parliament may justly require of the Church some certain Ecclesiastical proceedings without any joynt Session or Consultation of the Church And such Acts shall be just and valid of themselves to oblige the Conscience of the Church to obedience or executive Concurrence As suppose an Act of Parliament repealing all the Statutes of Premunire which cramp the liberties of the Church in the Episcopal Successions and Synodical Consultations for a perfect reformation to a Primitive purity should consequently require our Bishops or Convocations to proceed upon such relaxation to provide and execute better rules of Discipline on the morals and duties of the Christian Church under their care and to renew the Commercium formatarum with foreign Churches for a general Restitution of Piety and Order to its Primitive State such a Law I think would valioly oblige the Church to Concurrence without which however actually given it could not have its Ecclesiastical Effect When King Joash commanded the Priests to employ the sacred Money to the reparation of the Lords House it was a valid command to oblige but while the Priests neglected it it had no Sacred effect 2 King 12. So when Moses spake unto Aaron Eleazar and Ithamar to eat the meat offering and heave shoulder according to set Rules the precept was very
For if all the Bishops Priests and Christian Laity with them will adhere to those whom the Statute dooms to Deprivation how can the Statute pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect And so the Church ought always to do if they shall apparently persecute her Bishops for Righteousness sake to hinder their temporal Laws from attaining an Ecclesiastical Effect against the innocent whatsoever afflictions they may suffer for the opposition And if ever Popery Arianism Socinianism or Erastianism should which God forbid press it self upon us by Act of Parliament I doubt not but our Church also will herein become Recusant against such Laws and seal their Integrity with their Blood So that in our Case the only Question herein is whether this Law upon the Church to admit the Deprivation be unjust or no If it be in the Churches Judgment she ought to refuse it if not unjust 't is admissible Now this we believe and you the contrary and God must judge between us but in the mean time the church must act according to her present Convictions Dyscher But the form of the Statute is that the Recusants shall be ipso facto Deprived which must import the actual Deprivation to be completed purely by the mere virtue of this Act antecedently to the Concurrence of the Church Eucher I would willingly allow you that this is the Sense of the Parliament if you can clear it from Non-sense of which I am not willing that great Assembly should be impeached And I will also grant you that the mere Virtue of the Statute alone can deprive them of their Temporalities without the Churches Concurrence But perhaps all Decrees of Humane Power in things dubious and future have this tacit yet necessary Supposition quantum in nobis est as much as in them lies for farther certainly no Power can go And further as to the Spiritualties 't is possible the Parliament might intend no more than this that the Recusants should be ejected or quitted by the Church upon and undoubted presumption of her submissive Concurrence or the Recusants own Cession when the Temporalities were gone and their Non-resistance to such necessary and valid Laws But the Senses of Statutes I leave to the Parliament and the Judges while yet you and I know our Ecclesiastical Principles and Obligations in matters truly Spiritual and Christian and must act accordingly whatsoever Lay-men or Lawyers think hereupon And agreeably the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church looking upon the Sees of the Recusant Bishops de jure vacant discharged the Recusants of their Authority by taking the Jurisdiction to themselves which in such Cases they judged lawful by the Laws of God as well as Man as also Canonical according to our Constitutions tho' herein they assume no ordinary or proper form of Jurisdiction over Bishops not fallen de jure from their Sees and you may very well remember that I noted against this expected Objection in our last Conference †Sol. Ab. pag. 29. that this was and might be done upon judgment of Conscience for themselves and the Church but not of ordinary Jurisdiction over the Bishop And therefore you ought not to have charged this upon us as if we herein own such a Jurisdiction which we disclaim but have proved that the Church may not upon just and necessary Causes desert her Bishop over whom otherwise she confessedly has no proper formal or ordinary Jurisdiction It is most evidently plain that if the Causes be just our Canonical and Legal Constitutions not only allow but require such a Divorce from the fallen Bishop and assign the Jurisdiction to the Church Metropolitical Now if this our Constitution be irregular and invalid why did the Deprived ever own it till now the operation of it came upon them And therefore whether this imports such a formal Jurisdiction or no which yet I deny it cannot be reproached for Uncanonical without condemning our first Reformation and those Models to which your selves have hitherto sworn Canonical observance Dyscher What I have said saves me the pains of reflecting further on what you say in calling the Concurrence of some of the Clergy the Act and Concurrence of the whole Church of England But how the whole Church of England can be represented not only without the Metropolitan and many of his Suffragan Bishops by anumber no matter how many of the inferior Clergy in direct opposition and rebellion against their Lawful Superiors how this can be justified to be a true and Canonical Repre-sentation of the Church of England I leave to you to explain and to distinguish from the gainsaying of Korah Ms Reflex Eucher Except I much forget my self I never asserted any number of inferiour Clergy-men to be Representatives to the whole Church of England nor yet that the Bishops were deprived by the Representative Body of the whole Church but this I say that the actual Ecclesiastical ejection is performed successively by several Representative parts of the whole Church as first by the Metropolitical Church and then the Diocesan Chapters representing their respective Province and Dioceses Now upon an Act for Deprivation the See upon just causes becoming de jure vacant the Course of our Ecclesiastical Politie is such The Metropolitical Church first takes and deputes the jurisdiction the Diocesan Chapters omit their acknowledgments of their former Bishops and at length upon precept proceed to a new Election Bishops upon this except in mere Translations consecrate the Elected thence the whole Episcopal Colledge own the new as do the Cathedral Clergy in their offices and devotions and all the Clergy in person and the Laity by their representative Churchwardens in admitting the Visitations of the new Prelates and executing their precepts Ecclesiastical and all Lay-men personally own them that recieve their Confirmations Benedictions or any other Sacred Ordinances from them or with them as Bishops All which being uniformly and peaceably promoted by these gradations if of much more Weight and Efficacie than a mere Synodical Censure before it has attained to such an actual consequent Reception in the whole Church And therefore when this Process is complete we may truly say the Bishops are Ecclesiastically outed not by the Church representative but by the Church original And hence such a plenary consent of the Church diffusive against a few Bishops and Clergy on the account of their Recusancy must in legal and equitable construction be presumed to proceed from a common uniform Sense of their notorious incapacity and ineptitude of guiding Consciences and exercising Episcopal Functions and Authorities under the present State And upon notorious incapacities the Church may alienate her self from the incapacitated and recurr to other Bishops for new Consecrations or Investitures especially when justly required thereto by the offended Powers And if any incapacity of exercising the Pontifical Authority had been upon Aaron especially from disowning the Principality of Moses which is or comes very near your Case and Korah had opposed him
purely on that account that contradiction had never been recorded to his infamy but his praise for ever But as to your idle Question about complying with Usurpers which like Altar against Altar is the Incipe Maenalios of your whole Ditty as it has received full answers already so here 't is nothing to our present purpose since our discourse now is founded on a Supposition of a due and full Settlement of Legal Powers in the State which ought not to be charged with formal Usurpation Dyscher We will then let alone at present the Disquisition of our capacity and proceed further in our Enquiry concerning your Churches Concurrence For least the Dean and the Chapter should not be strong enough Did they then in their Convocation make the least scruple or vote that their Concurrence was necessary to that Statute No not a syllable But you tell us how they did it The †Sol. Ab p. 28. Silence of the Convocation under the Statute of Deprivation argues their opinion to be that they were in this to yield to the State This is according to the old Proverb Silence gives consent And at this Rate the Statute of abolishing Episcopacy in Scotland must be supposed to have it's validity from the Concurrence of the Bishops and Clergy there for they too are silent And some of the inferior Clergy there But in good truth have any Clergy men in England complyed to an enacted abolition of Episcopacy here but not half so many as in England have complyed I pray you to answer me in plain terms whether you do not think the Parliament in England to have as great Power as the Parliament of Scotland And consequently might abolish the whole Order of Episcopacy in England as they have done in Scotland And for their Silence it is a strange Plea Have they liberty to assert without danger I mean in England as well as Scotland And if Silence perforce argues Consent then they are the freest Subjects of the world in France and in Turkey whose Mâ—tes are happier by this Argument and have greater Authority than our House of Commons I thought Authority could not be exerted by Silence Tho the Turk will have his Executioners to be mute he cannot command them by his Silence Doth the King say nothing when he refuses a Bill Or doth he return them a decent answer with promise of Consideration If the King says nothing when both Houses present a Bill for the Royal Assent this is a refusal of that Bill So that it is not in all Cases you see that Silence gives consent indeed in no Case of Authority That was a saying only adapted to the grant of some private favours and is but a Jest or Complement at the best When the Church saw the Bill of Deprivation pass wholly and solely in the Name and by the Authority of the State they ought to have entred their Protestation and asserted their own Right Their Silence in that Case was an yielding up and betraying their Right as it is if a Peer does not protest against any vote that passes his consent to it is implyed And therefore the Churches Silence in that Case is so far from being an asserting of their Right that it is against the common Sense and Practice of mankind so much as to alledge it M. S. Reflex you call in the Convocation for help And first you tell us what your worthy Conformists did and what was their opinion But this is just the Proverb Ask my fellow if I am a Thief But say you their sending a Convocation shews their Subjection and condemns Recusancy as an Error But the silence of the Convocation you think will work Miracles for that argues their opinion to be that they were in this to yield to the State And thus we are utterly undone with the Argument of Lovers and Fools Silence gives consent There must be many other concurrent circumstances before the least consent can be presumed from Silence For otherwise it is often a sign of indignation scorn sullennes yea even of obstinate denial it self And what they meant by their Silence you may better guess when you have resolved this Quaere whether you can reasonably think that they would have chosen him for their Archbishop whom they refused for their Prolocutor But what if they were not so silent as here you make them 'T is pity your memory is not better for thro' forgetfulness you give in evidence against your self for you tell us of a motion in the lower house of Convocation for the Restitution of the Bishops and then suspended Clergy Now would any men take petitioning for men for appearing against them But what if there had been none of this Were ever Bishops deposed by Slence T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 39. Eucher By what Arguments soever you are undone that is to your selves but I am sure I can find in you but few Arguments of Love or Wisdom in this clamorous Rant which seems designed in spite to the poor Proverb lest your Silence should seem to consent But since it is now my turn to break Silence I will speak to this point but this once and if you will not I will for ever hereafter hold my peace First then I must it seems talk of Silence of which I am taxed as if I had ascribed to it not only Consent but Authority too and actual Deprivation which are two points beyond the lines of the Proverb Consider we then at first the proverbial Importance here in the Carriage of the Convocation We were * Sol Ab. pag. 28. enquiring into the Sense of the Churches in common which you excepting against challenged a Sense of our Convocations and I tell you That their Silence under the Statute of Deprivation argues their opinion to be that they were in this to yield to the State But I well observing that bare Silence is Non-action and mere nothing and in it self simply of no determinate signification set such other positive Acts in †Grot. de Jure c. l. 2. c. 4. Parag. 5. conjunction with which this Non-action or Silence might legally and morally be interpreted to a consent of yielding herein to the State To this purpose I premised the general Conformity of most Bishops and Clergy and Laity that our sending a Convocation at their Majesties Precept shows that we own Subjection to them and condemns the Recusancy as an incapacitating Error for so I meant by softer forms of expression that I might not gaul you and so I conjoyn the Silence of the Convocation with those other positive indications that it might joyntly ground a legal Argument that in their Judgment they ought to yield to the State So that you had united Circumstances enough to have fore-strangled your Cavils if your prejudice had not blinded you On the Session of the second Convocation the Recusants were in a State of actual Suspension and the Day of Deprivation drew on Now this
the Convocation in their Judgment were to yield to or oppose for 't is impossible but they must judge one or the other to be their Duty Now if they had been of opinion for the opposition this must have been done by Synodical Remonstrance if their Judgments was for the Submission then they were to break no Silence to the contrary Now then is not their actual Silence hereupon a legal token that they thought it their Duty to yield in Silence Except we will perversly judge them silent against the Dictates of their Conscience which if you will it will lye upon you to prove it out Whensoever things are brought into such a Strait that either Silence or Contradiction must become a Duty there Silence is as moral a Token of Consent as Contradiction is of Dissent And in all cases where either Assent or Dissent is inevitably requisite and the Rule is that all Dissents must be express and protested as the forms are in the Lord's House and process of Actions in the Civil Law there Silence in Law is taken for Consent But here is yet more the King had graciously conceded a liberty to the Convocation to propose their Grievances in order to his Royal Redress So that tho' they had no Civil or Legal Liberty to remonstrate against the Statute yet they had an opportunity to have presented an humble Supplication for a relaxing Expedient or a Temperament on just Security for the inoffensiveness of the suspended Yet neither did they think themselves obliged in Duty so much as to break Silence in this manner herein And must not the State then conclude that the Church by this Silence thought it fit to yield However I hope you do not think in good sadness that their Silence did signifie indignation scorn sullenness or denial to the State For 't is true in cases of request and contract Silence is no grant of a Proposal but Silence under a Law together with a consequent Obedience to the Precept thereof is an indubitable Token of Consent which was the Churches case here while silent in her Convocation and obedient in her Metropolitical and Diocesan Bodies So much then for Consent next for the Authority which you say is not asserted but betrayed by this Silence But neither here can I agree with you For as I never said that Silence asserts Authority so neither does it betray it For your instance from the Peers does not import a Right betrayed but only a Vote consented to by Silence and this confirms my Observation and refutes you For as the Silence of a Peer surrenders not his Peerage so neither does such Silence in the Church forfeit or vacate her Authority No tho' the Church had had Right to have entred the Parliament House with Votes and Protestations But suppose it for once that the Churches Silence had betrayed her Right see upon whom the Treachery must be most unfortunately charged Did the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury and his other Recusant Colleagues that had a legal Right of Session in the Lord's House enter and enter a Protestation against the Validity of that Act as wanting their and the Churches Suffrage or Synodical Concurrence No not a jot of this And yet they by their Station as well as Cause ought to have been the first in the Protestation which if they would not make for themselevs and the Churches Rights then according to you they are Proditors and so 't is unreasonable in them or you to require the Protestation of others less concerned or obliged by their Order Cause and Principles But the truth is we had no just Cause or legal Authority of making such Remonstrant Protestations and so our Silence is not perfidious but dutiful Now this being so clearly stated all your childish trifling upon French Subjects and Turkey Mutes is very idle and impertinent since Silence does not indeed import Authority against but Submission under Laws Yet even in these French and Turkish oppressions the Silence argues an opinion that they either in Duty or Prudence are to be silent and quietly submissive And this certainly was the Sense of our Saviour in his Silence when he was led as a Lamb to the Slaughter But to deal plainly these Instances pertain not to our present Case for here ours was Silence and obedient Submission to the Commands of the State the comporting with which in Silence is a Consent to and Comprobation of its Justice and is more than a meer silent Patience under unjust Oppressions So inartificial and improper is the Objection from these poor Mutes and Vassals Thirdly you assure me that Silence is no Deprivation No verily nor did I ever hear that it was But to intercept your hast whose Silence was I speaking of And to whom did I ascribe the Ecclesiastical Acts of Deprivation Why truly I spake of the Silence in Convocation as importing their Opinion that they ought not to oppose the Laws of the State But I never said that the Convocation did deprive the Deprived No surely they sate not at the time or on the Day of Deprivation But I told you before that the Ecclesiastical and Spiritual Acts of Deprivation consisted in the Metropolitical and Diocesan Alienations effected not by mere Silence but Canonical Acts and forms of procedure And now let us see whether my Memory hath failed me any more than my Cause I here assert the Silence of the Convocation but afterward told you * Sol. Ab. Pag. 34. that a Motion for a Petition was stifled in the Lower House of Convocation †T. B. Repeats it thus You tell us of a Motion in the lower House of Convocation but leaves out the word Stifled fraudulently tho' you clip my words on purpose to abuse me For a Motion may be stifled before it is offered by one that knows that it is intended to be made But however an actual Motion of one Member may consist with the Silence of the whole Body For if the Majority Vote Silence against the Motion for a Petition the Convocation is silent and silenceth all its Members as to the Petition it self tho' some brake Silence in the silenced Motion but keep it after thro' voluntary desistence or Canonical Order Now here in fact a Motion was offered by one excellent Person but upon the report then tendred to him of my Lord Archbishop Sancroft's request to the contrary he desisted in Silence tho' you however in this Conference have thus barbarously bespatter'd him when there was just reason for your Silence But however herein you own T. B. has a very contracted Memory too when †T. B. See Lett. Pag. 42. he endeavours to discredit the Story of this Motion so stifled on the said Report But you have one Argument that will confound me into Eternal Silence or Amazement namely that they that refused Dr. Tillotson for their Prolocutor would not have consented to have had him their Archbishop Well be it so what then Perhaps if
the Election of Bishops had been freely left to our Convocations they would have admitted few or none of those whom our Kings have advanced but yet the Chapters electing have consented to the Legality of those Nominations which they have not always judged so expedient and the Episcopal Colledge have consented to their Communion with the rest of the Clergy as well in as out of Convocation as no doubt they will with the new Archbishop at their next meeting without breaking any Silence against him by way of Dissent And now at last I am come to your Questions about the Deposition of Episcopacy And first you say the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland are silent under the Abolition of Episcopacy it self and twit me that hereby belike they concur to that Act of Abolition No Brother this does not follow from me but according to you their Silence is a betraying their Right But here again you cannot distinguish the Case of quitting a Personal Right to an Authority which is our Case from the Abolition of the Authority it self Universally which is the Case of Scotland For they that can legally do the former may not legally do the latter For the King can depose the Judges but not the Courts and dismiss other Officers whose Offices he cannot abrogate And the Church can depose Priests and Bishops but not the Priesthood or Episcopacy And whether any Civil State has more intrinsick Power in the Spirituals of the Church than the Church her self ever had in most perfect Freedom judge you But here I must Advocate for the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland against your Calumnies For tho' they made no formal Protestation at Parliament yet they assert their Episcopacy by an avowed Communion of their own and a renunciation of the Presbyterian Model But as to the Civil Power of abrogating Episcopacy here I answer 't is as great as 't is any where but I find not our Parliaments to pretend to the same Opinions here as they do in Scotland and I hope you will not require me to justifie Scottish Pretensions I think the Constitutions of our Orders are founded on Divine Rules and have descended to us by Traditions truly Catholic and Primitive which here we are not so rude to profane or violate by any wanton Claims of Arbitrary Power and in my Opinion the Scots will never acquit themselves well to God his Church and the King till they copy after us where Episcopacy is as well secured as the Scriptures and Sacraments and all the most essential Parts of Christianity But if any of these ever happen to be persecuted here I hope we shall remember Him who on all such Occasions requires us to take up the Cross and follow him And now we are upon this melancholy Speculation of the Church of Scotland I fear the Presages you have made from their fall have been most influential with you to your present Recusancy to those Powers from whom you expect our Dissolution This I confess is a very deplorable jealousie for which if there had been sufficient ground as there was not yet this will not justifie Recusancy to the Civil Powers But the mischief of it is more than Personal and Temporary For hereby the Deprived Fathers who by their glorious merits in the last Reign might have been useful Mediators for the Scotch Church and Promoters of our own are now become uncapable of this second Glory and useless to the Churches happiness by this unfortunate Recusancy But herein I charge no man's Conscience but only bewail the infelicity And shall pray that the Goodness of God will so graciously dispose our Tempers and Affairs as in his own good time to set all things at Right and shew us at length the Light of his countenance Dyscher But let me put these things closely to your Conscience do you verily believe that your Church and Chapters admit the Ecclesiastical Change upon the merits of the Cause and not merely on the fear or acknowledged Authority of the State Eucher I do believe so in very deed just as I have spoken and my reason is because had the Act of Deprivation past for recusancy of Mahometism c. and the Church would never have forsaken their Diocesans nor elected any other even Orthodox Bishops the Act for Deprivation being impious and for that cause unobliging and as loose as Dr. Hody's Rules and as strait as your Principles are I put it close home to his and your Consciences whether on a Case so put or supposed you can think the contrary Dyscher Your jumble of Queen Mary's and Queen Elizabeth Bishops I shall not examine because a full answer to that either already is or suddenly will come abroad Eucher This is what above all I have ever greatly coveted and I have of late been so lucky as to meet with the Sense of †Part 2. Chap. 3. Pag. 33 34. your excellent Author of Christian Communion on this point But because you have hinted to me my shortness of memory I had rather have it repeated from your memory that we may discuss it Dyscher Indeed it was almost lapsed but now upon your Suggestion I have recovered it and will accordingly lay it before you As to this Case of the Marian Bishops saith he or of other Popish Bishops ander Edward the Sixth two things are to be noted in their removal and ejection out of their Bishoprick's One is from the Temporalities the Benefices and Preferments thereof and these Temporal Endowments are directly subjects to the Temporal Power c. The other is from the Spiritual adherence and dependence of the People on them as on heads of Church unity and Communion for religious ministrations And this there was no need to deprive the Popish Bishops of for they had already deprived themselves of it by their own Corruptions both in Doctrines and Devotions Adulterations of Religion and corrupt ministrations of the word of Prayers and Sacraments break the Ligaments which tye on People to this adherence to any Bishops or Pastors yea tho' they were Apostles themselves Tho' we or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be anathema or accursed saith St. Paul Gal. 1.8 When therefore any Bishops and Pastors instead of heading Christian Truth appear at the head of Vn-Christian Errors the people are discharged from their Obligation and Dependence upon them and are to unite themselves as they can to others who still keep firm to that necessary Truth and Gospel Worship which they have forsaken And this was done by the Popish Bishops who fed the people with false Doctrines and polluted Prayers and Ministrations which left no need of any thing more to deprive them of the Peoples Communion and Dependence these Papal Corruptions of Religious Ministrations being enough to discharge and drive them away of themselves So that the reformed Bishops when they were set at the heads of those Dioceses called