Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A70712
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The New test of the Church of England's loyalty, examined by the old test of truth and honesty
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1687
(1687)
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Wing N781; ESTC R7988
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8,085
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14
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THE New TEST OF THE Church of England's LOYALTY Examined by the Old TEST OF Truth and Honesty LONDON Printed by R. G. 1687. THE NEW TEST OF THE Church of England's LOYALTY c. THE reason why the Church of England may above any Separatists from her appropriate to her self the Principles of true Loyalty is so apparent from her constant Practise and Doctrin that one would think this Scribler of the New Test never considered it at all though he tells us he hath often consider'd because he cannot find it For I challenge him or any man to shew me any that are not of her Communion not excluding even the Calves of the Hind the Sons of the Church of Rome it self that did constantly maintain the Doctrin of Non-resistance to the Supream Magistrate and practise according to it as our Church and her true Sons have always done Was there ever any such Doctrin as the Deposing of Kings the subjecting them to a foreign Bishop or to an Assembly at home the making them Trustees of the People or ascribing an Authority Co-ordinate to theirs in the Peoples Representatives the founding Dominion in Grace or Lastly owning a Power in the inferiour Magistrates to Act without or contrary to their Commission taught by our Loyal Mother and have not some or all of these been taught by some of the other Parties So that if they are Loyal it is no thanks to their Religion for it Have not all the other Parties acted according to these Antimonarchical principles Or can the worst of our Enemies with any truth accuse our Church or her true Followers of any such Actions But what saith this Test-maker can be more ridiculous then for such who cannot pretend to infallibility even in matters of Faith to assume to themselves an inerrability in civil Obedience Oh profound Sense and Reason what cannot Men be Loyal and Act according to their constant Principles of Loyalty without being infallible Or will not this Gentleman give us leave to be so kind to him or any of the Members of the Church of Rome as to think them indued with Loyalty without robbing their Holy Father the Pope of his Prerogative of Infallibility and ascribing part to his Sons Did ever any Man of the Church of England assume to himself an inerrability in his Obedience onely so long as he kept close to his Rule his Church hath given him I am sure on the contrary the Sons of that Church that assumes to her self Infallibilty in matters of Faith can never be indued with that singular Gift of Loyalty so long as they keep themselves out of the reach of the Anathema of their infallible Council of Lateran affix'd by an inerrable Canon upon all such as deny the Pope's power to depose Heretical Princes or Favourers of Hereticks So that I must needs own if they are Loyal their Loyalty far exceeds ours since they are Loyal at the peril of their immortal Souls whereas we can only venture our Temporal concerns for our Prince If therefore you will shew your selves truly Loyal in the next Address renounce that disloyal Canon of the Council of Lateran or else we must believe either that you are not Catholicks as in your Religion you love to be called or else do but serve a turn in your Pretences of Loyalty Out of his abundant kindness to the Members of the Church of England this Gentleman is pleased to allow them to have been Faithful and Serviceable to King Charles the First we are extreamly obliged to him for this so favourable a Concession and indeed I could not but have some thoughts of presenting an Address of thanks to him for it But that he hath saved me the trouble in so well explaining it For he tells us that this was only in our own defence and not joyning with the common Enemy to cut our own Throats nay further that the Ambition of our Church occasion'd the late War and the loss of the King's Life and Crown If so then our Church was serviceable to King Charles the First with a vengeance This me thinks looks something like a Dear-joye's Witticism or in plain English a down-right Bull that we should be serviceable to our King and yet occasion the loss of his Crown and Life But it is no matter what Contradictions he writes if he can but thereby bespatter the Church of England he knows he is to deal with a People of an implicit Faith that can swallow any Contradictions or false Stories Did ever any Man thus out-face the Sun as he hath done in these Aspersions Do not all Men that know any thing of the History of the late times know that if we of the Church of England would have joyn'd with the Rebels or but have owned the Usurpers Authority we might have enjoyed all our Rites and have expected much greater Preferments Was not this then very like consulting our own present Interest to suffer Sequestrations Decimations Plunderings Imprisonments nay Death it self rather then Act against our Duty to our Prince Is it not as visible as the Sun that the first pretence for the late War was for securing of Property and that Religion was but made a stalking Horse to catch the Rabble How then was the Ambition of our Church the occasion of it But Oh the admirable Loyalty of the Romanists That served the King without any Prpspect of advantage to themselves Nay when their Services were rejected by the King and their Persons banished from his Presence Did not the Rebellious party cry out against Popery and pretend that they only designed to secure the Nation against Papists they knew or at least at first believed as he saith they should meet with no quarter from the Rebels and therefore where should they fly for safety to the Royal party but as soon as His Majesty was forced by his Parliament to discard them and that they saw the other party would receive them how many of them Listed themselves under their Banners And Vid. the Works of K. Charles the Martyr fol. 323. All Men know the great numbers of Papists which serve in their the Rebells Army Commanders and others and hath not Old Peter Du Moulin long since asserted and offered to prove it by undoubted Evidence that a Jesuit at the very execution of his late Majesty K. Charles the First was seen amongst the Rebels throwing up his Cap for Joy insulting in the most barbarous manner over that poor Prince in his last Tragick Exit So true is it That never any of that Communion served that Party This infallible Author is resolved he will do the Church of England's business for Loyalty and therefore he rakes up all the odious Acts that ever have been done since the infancy of our Church as he words it p. 4. in fine and very obligingly fathers them upon her Of all which the Scotch Answer viz. Bellarmine thou lyest is a sufficient confutation For as for that that she the Church
of England endeavoured with all her might to set up a Brat of her own to exclude Queen Mary It is so void of all appearance of Truth that it would puzzle any man by the History of those Times to guess what he means by it I suppose he means the Lady Jane Gray But was not she set up by the Ambition of Dudley D. of Northumberland who thereby hoped to have raised his Family his Son being her Husband to the Royal Dignity Did not the Members of the Church of England who were then in Power joyn against him Nay did not Northumberland himself after he was taken so true a Son of our Church he was offer to embrace the Communion of the Church of Rome to save his Life Was it not easy for the Protestants at that time to have set up her Sister Elizabeth whom they knew to be of their own Religion and to have excluded Queen Mary but so far were they from opposing the right Succession that upon her Arrival into Framingam-Castle they readily joyned with her and set her upon her Throne But after Queen Mary's Death saith he ibid. Elizabeth a known Bastard raised the Church of England as a Prop to support the Weakness of her Title Is not this said like a true Loyal Jesuit shewing the Honour he hath for Crown'd Heads by fixing upon one of the most renown'd of them the most Honourable Title of a plain downright Bastard Nay it is by so much more like him by how much it wants of Truth Was not Queen Elizabeth Daughter of King Henry the Eighth born in Wedlock after a most solemn Divorce grounded upon one of the justest Causes that could be viz. The Nullity of his former Marriage with the Lady Katherine of Spain Was not it thought at first so by Cardinal Wolsey nay by the Pope himself who had he not been overaw'd by the Emperour would have determined the Marriage unlawful nay did not he sign a Bull to that purpose I dare appeal to this Gentleman himself whether there be not far more Reason to believe it unlawful for a Man to Marry his Brother's Wife than there is to think it Lawful Now if this Question must be determined in the Assirmative doth it not directly follow that Queen Mary's Legitimacy was far more uncertain and consequently her Title did more need a Prop to support the Weakness of it than her Sister Queen Elizabeth's Henry the Eighth their Father knew this well enough and therefore settled the matter as well as he could by Acts of Parliament which right I shall not dispute But however if the Romanists thought it good against the Scotch title for Queen Mary why might not the Protestants think it as good for Queen Elizabeth But they saith he no sooner found themselves so established then they fell to making those Canibal-Laws to Hang Draw and Quarter the Priests of the Living God c. Not so fast I beseech you Sir were these Edicts made or consented to by the Convocation were these ever made Canons of our Church Why then is not the Saddle set upon the right Horse and they own'd to be the acts of State and not of our Church Again how can these be said to be true Priests of the Living God who would not own the Power that God had set over us in our Nation but look'd upon the supreme Magistrate as one deposed by the Popes Authority and adjudged to Death and therefore were continually Plotting and Contriving against her Life and Dignity and setting up the Queen of Scots Title against her which forced the Queen and her Council which had it not been necessary I am sure the Members of our Church would have thought most inhumane to take away the Life of that unfortunate Princess Now I pray what Crime is it or what fault is it in our Church if the Supream Power of our Nation does enact Laws to secure the Government Or what disloyalty is it for the Church of England not to join with Rebells or for the State to punish them by Law Oh! but these Laws are exclaimed against by all the Reformed Churches of Christendom c. p. 5. But for this we must only take this Gentleman 's bare word of the Sincerity of which this Pamplet hath already given us such undoubted Instances as cannot but prevail with us if we resolve never to be believ'd our selves to believe him but supposing any of the Reformed should speak against them have not our Governours the Power of determining by Law what is necessary for the publick Peace But however who can endure to hear Papists crying up Moderation and exclaiming against Sanguinary Laws c. For this is for the Kettle to accuse the Pot of Blackness Who I pray first enacted that Act De Heretico Comburendo and as long as they had Power nay sometimes as in the Case of John Husse c. contrary to the most solemn Promise of an whole Council of their Clergy put it in Execution Who was it that found out that old meek Method of converting Hereticks by the Inquisition or that more Harmless way now so much celebrated by the French Clergy of perswading them by Booted Apostles who will neither let them Fly nor Dye nor Sleep nor Eat in quiet till they have own'd their Conversion Who was it that Muthered such numbers of the Albigenses in cold Blood in the days of Yore and in latter times butchered so many Thousands of the English in Ireland and since that put to the Sword so many Protestants about Piedmont Who was it that murthered two Princes one after another viz. Henry the 3d. and Henry the 4th of France and raised that Bloody League called the Holy League a pattern to our Protestant-Jesuits Scotch-Covenant by which so many Thousands were destroyed by War Who was it that approved these things and made Panegyrick Orations upon them Were these Members of the Church of England or of the Church of Rome I leave it to this Gentleman to tell us in his next Pamphlet if he desires to hear any more of these matters and shall conclude this affair with an Expression of his own rightly applyed viz. That if Murtherers of their Lawful Soveraigns if making holy Leagues against them if raising Wars and Commotions in all Kingdoms and Canons of Infallible General Councils that bind them to such Actions under an Anathema be sufficient Testimenies of Loyalty we must own the Church of Rome to have been hitherto unparallel'd in her Duty but if this be not the true Test of Loyal Subjects our Rock of Loyalty is already degenerate into a Rock of Scandal of Desobedience and Rebellion p. 5 in fine p. 6. The rest of his Discourse from p. 6. line the 7th is taken up in base and false Insinuations of the Church of England's Disloyalty or at least Ingratitude to our present King in that notwithstanding his Gracious Promises and Royal Word to maintain our Religion we dare not trust