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
King had prejudged against all the Argument for Abdication and had been a virtual Sentence that he had not abdicated And they could not well have resumed that debate without rejecting his Letters after reading and censuring their own admission of them which would more justly have exposed their Wisdom and offended you than the measures which they observed But after judgment past for the Abdication they could not admit his Letters under the Royal Style because they had judged that he was not our then King and so the Admission of his Letters as their Kings had been a virtual Reverse of that their Judgment in the same Session and Breath by which they had rendred themselves if not altogether incompetent yet very injudicious Judges And if after Judgment against his then Sovereignty they had sent to him under the style and salutation of late King and have made him King a-new had it not been a wise Transaction much to their Credit Thanks and the Nations Interest So much then for the Conspiracy Next for the Authority which you say was none since no National Subjects of a Sovereign Monarch can be his Judges And by Mr. Johnson's leave I will say so too and did say so * Sol. Ab. p. 4. most expresly tho' you in great sincerity take no notice of it because it it seems it was not considerable enough But is it not a very considerable Assertion That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions and doth not exert any Royal Power or presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supreme Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty which is not to make them Judges of the Kings Person but in the want of his Person of the State of the Kingdom and the Rights of the Nation in Order to Settlement And can you either disprove this saying or charge it or me with Regicide Principles Clamat Melicerta periisse frontem de rebus may well deserve your remembrance here especially since I told you * Ibid. p. 9. that King James was never in Law subject to them or under their Power But as to the Authority of the Estates to convene when there is no King actually regnant you may learn if you please that tho' the Estates were created by Kings yet their Rights and Charters are perpetual and constituted for a fundamental Council to the Land under the King while we have one governing but when we have none authoritative of themselves to resettle the Nation the best manner they in their judgment may or can And this right they have in common with all the like Orders of Estates in all other Kingdoms otherwise the Nation would not have been so earnest for a Free Parliament when that liberty was opened to them by General Monks Conduct Dyscher I shall talk with you about that Parliament by and by And when I have told you That your second Parliament hath no more Authority than your Hocus Pocus transubstantiating Convention that riotous Assembly all whose Acts were contrary to Law and censurable by Law and so cannot confirm them I will examin your grave Position That when a King is fled from his Throne into foreign Dominions or doth not exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People the Estates of this Land are the Supream Domestick Judges upon the Tenure of the Sovereignty But am I bound to follow their Judgment against manifest Right and my known Duty T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher No no by no means but in such a Crisis you have no other known Duty toward any Settlement but to abide by that which they establish in the Land for the time being for that all Rights and Duties then debatable are in such junctures determinable by them to all Civil Effects and Obligations and therefore their Judgments ought not to be opposed by any slanders or factions whatsoever even tho' King James from abroad condemns them Por a Foreign Censure is no Civil Judgement and by consequence of no legal validity or virtue Kings sometimes suffer wrong but whensoever by these sufferings they are removed from their People the Estates must provide for the Nation as they can and as they do we must be content nor has the suffering King any Right to engage us from abroad to the contrary And this Authority even without a King is so full in it self that it needs no Ratification on the post-fact to make its Acts obliging or effectual tho' such a declarative sort of Ratification as our second Parliament made be of use to satisfie unsetled minds and second a former Obligation which was what I had respect to when I said We are the more to submit to the proceedings of the Convention and first Parliament since the Kingdom hath ratified their proceedings in a second viz. by a Declarative Recognition and reinforcement of their legality and virtue Dyscher After all your considerable Assertions are but a malicious insinuation against your suffering King as if he ran away thro' wantonness and would have nothing to do with us T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. And herein Mr. Johnson seems more sincere in his wickedness than your Dawbers For he tells your Parliament that there was no Desertion * Pres to the Commons before his Argument p. 16. For King James must needs go and leaves us to understand the rest of the Proverb by an Aposiopesis that he was Devil driven And so far speaks plain as to say That he was as much driven from England as Nebuchadnezzar was driven to Grass and he claimed as he fled by the Rochester Letter And he further shews * Ibid. p. 19. That no advantage could be taken of a Kings withdrawing himself from the Government if it had been voluntary as all the World knows it was not without a Summons sent after him to return again in forty days And therefore he roundly professes that the people abrogated their King after his Expulsion And whence is it then that he exerts not his power You know he exerts all the power he can that he doth not more is not his fault but yours you may have both his Power and Presence among you too if you please But will you contrary to your Duty and Oaths keep him out by force of Arms and then plead your own wickedness in your Defence T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17. Eucher Mr. Johnson falsly owns the fact you charge upon the Nation for the sake of his Principle which his spite to all Kings and Kingly Power has cast him into viz. That the People may Depose their Kings as often as they judge them Peccant which is almost as often as they please But 't is notorious that the Estates judged the Throne made Vacant not by their Act of Abrogation but the Kings own Abdication which if so all the world knows it must be in some degree Voluntary Now here will I challenge Mr. Johnson to say out Does that claim of the then
Allegiance to the * Lib. 1. Can. 27. King de facto * Ibid. Chap. 28. tho' he come into the full Settlement by wrong and injurious means and requires only a National Submission or a continuance of quiet possession to the form of * Ibid. Chap. 30. a full and thorow Settlement owning the original wickedness of the seizure to be no Legal Bar or impeachment to the Authority of their Government into which they are formally and fully settled And such was the State of the Caesars in the Empire when the two great Apostles required Christian Subjection to them not on the moral justice of their Titles of which they could be no Judges but on their actual settlement in the Concession and Submission of the Senate and other popular Powers And such also was the reason of subjection in those instanced Changes on which that Convocation wisely grounded this their now celebrious Determination But since you have again upbraided me with Mr. Johnson I cannot choose but observe how naturally men that run into contrary extreams do meet in the other side of the Sphere as you and your greatest Adversaries do in this present Controversie And you both therefore fall into the same absurdities Now here Mr. Johnson either understands not the formal Nature of a full Settlement of if he does he is inconsistent with himself For if as I have proved a National Admission constitutes a Settlement how can Mr. Johnson explode Settlement when he places the Right of Kings in the Admission of the People But if he requires any moral justice to make the Act of the People Rightful then if the People fail in that moral Justice how can their Constitution be really Right by which Justice it self is violated And such failure in a People is no impossibility except you will entitle them to an infallible Sanctity in all popular Actions As for example Mr. Johnson produces but one Authority * Arg. 1. p. 50 51. out of Knyghton to prove that Kings acting perversly against the Laws may be deposed and some one of the Royal Race advanced by the Peers and People I will not now strive to weaken the Authority and Credit of the Author herein nor the Truth of that Power which the then Lords and Commons claimed against their King neither will I alledge the many Changes and Statutes since that seem to have abrogated the popular right of Abrogation but suppose that this still is the Right of the Nation against their Kings yet if the People should on false pretences and imputations abrogate their King this Act could not be morally Just and Right tho' it were in form legal and if the Subjects that are innocent are not to admit what is thus externally Legal except it be also altogether Rightful then are they not bound to stand by any Popular Abrogations which they know or judge to be morally faulty and consequently may oppose all new Titles if they are founded in the real Right of such Abrogations And to come close home to the Case if King James were not really guilty of every one of those Enormities to a Title upon which such Statute did legitimate the Abrogation and the Convention had really abrogated their King without accurate conviction of all those guilts recited by that lost or undiscoverable Statute quoted by Knyghton then had their Abrogation been a nullity as not being Rightful But further if men shall object that Knyghtons relation of a Statute not seen by himself but only said to be objected by the Peers and the Commons is not a Record nor a valid Testimony to any Civil Consequences as being not upon Oath liable to Error and uncapable of judicial forms of Discussion besides its singularity where shall we find a bottom to authorize King James's abrogation For 't is not enough to a Judicial Conviction or effect or surmise that Richard destroyed that Statute in the Tower upon such a general crimination that he defaced Statutes of which there is no particular form of Conviction extant no not in Knyghton who yet is the only Traditor of this Transaction but you must bring us legal proof for what must legally concern us And yet nothing else that Mr. Johnson hath cited out of Law Books nor King John's Charter in the Pastoral Letter doth amount to a Popular Right of Abrogation but only to a limited power of resisting Kings on their oppression of the Laws and Constitutions So that whatsoever has in fact been done toward our several Changes must not all be taken or sworn to as Right but the consequent Settlements by National Acts must be taken for formally Legal for the time being and submitted to under that Notion leaving the real Right of the procedures to Gods judgment because there is none other under Heaven to adjust it above the National Sanctions Dyscher I did not interject the mention of Mr. Johnson to justifie all his Principles but only to alledge for our Cause those Right Concessions of our greatest Enemies as more candid and clear from jugling than you even in his greatest bitterness I will now dismiss him and produce you what a Friend of mine impartially reflected on this pretended Authority in the Judicial Opinions of Parliaments viz. that you cannot but know that this Power of Parliaments is absolutely denied by that Party against whom you dispute and we do not think it reasonable to be convinced without proof viz. that what is thus done is agreeable to the Laws of England MS. Reflect Eucher If you are not inwardly convinced of the truth of their Judgment upon their Power and of the lawfulness of their Constitution founded thereupon I cannot help that Neither is the Care of the State so much concerned to enforce such an inward conviction tho' it is to perswade it and to silence Contradictions But as I have often told you Judicial Opinions must overbear all private ones to the contrary as to all Civil Consequences This the peace of mankind the necessity of ending Controversies and the fundamental Reasons of Government do universally require so that you must assign some Superior Court or Judge within the Kingdom to be determined by if you will not stand to their Judgment or expose all to private judgments the first of which is impossible to be sworn and the later impracticable in a Society And to turn the dull point of this Objection on your self the Parliament doth not think it reasonable to be determined by Private Judgments especially those of the professed Enemies of their long-settled and immemorial Authority And what if I oppose the general Trust of the Nation in Civils to the publick Judgment of our Parliaments rather than the contrary Decisions of some private Zealots and Casuists whose Senses are seldom uniform often impracticable and always inauthoritative Will you here set your Private Judgments in battle array against the Authority and Judgment of the whole Nation and the Publick Estates thereof Or whether
of Crimes * Sol and Ab. pag. 19 20. as Apostasie Heresie Schism c. and demanded whether the Clergy and People may desert a Bishop under such pestilential crimes and impostures and procure another from Social Bishops For if they may Canonically do this in such Cases then perhaps they may canonically do so in other which tho' not so designedly malignant yet necessitate an exauctoration tho' founded in meer infirmities and too pious prejudices as I explained my self in those very passages at which it seems the gall of T. B. is exasperated Dyscher Well I think it not decent for us to draw hard on this invidious subject let us if you please discuss the Canonical forms of your procedure herein which your party generally defends from pretended precedents of Civil Authorities over the Jewish High Priests and the Practice of Christian Churches in submission to Imperial Orders especially the Greek Church under Turkîsh Changes made in their Patriarchal See Now the most famous instance among the Jewish High Priest is that of Solomons deprivation of Abiathar Which tho' you endeavoured to parallel to our present Case yet herein I brought you such just exceptions as neither you nor all your Party will be able to take off For if the Crime was nothing like if there was such a difference between the Constitutions of the Jewish and Christian Churches if it was a manifest Cession on Abiathar's part all which I well proved then that Instance can by no means come up to this Case T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 36. Eucher Tho' I could not deny the force of your reasonings upon this instance yet have I consulted my friends upon it as well as you have done upon me And the chiefest of their senses I will lay before you to which if you can make any weighty reply you must not thence conclude a vice or fault in the Cause for if I cannot defend it my self perhaps its proper Patrons may who as they have singular Opinions so have they as singular abilities to maintain them Dyscher This is a secure Caution for your own Reputation tho' it betrays an inward suspicion of the Arguments you intend to produce But however since it is but just that no personal defects should prejudice a good Cause and that one man's Errors should not affect another man's Estimation I grant you your Demand and therefore I pray proceed Eucher Have you not seen the Book entitled The Case of Sees Vacant c. whose learned Authors felicity is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This great man pretends to dissolve all your machins against this grand Precedent for a Lay-Deprivation and I will exhibite you his Argumentations according to your and his Order First then he observes that * Case of Sees Vacant c. Chap. 2. § 2. this perhaps may be the Plea of our Adversaries in answer to the examples of the Jewish High-Priest that the Office of a Bishop amonst us is much more Spiritual than the Office of those High-Priests To that Plea I answer that he that considers the true and full import of the Question now before us will find it to be no other than this whether a Person duly invested with an Ecclesiastical Office of God's own Institution and Ordinance being deposed by the Lay-power any other can lawfully succeed in that Office Now as to God's particular Institution and Appointment whatsoever otherwise the difference may be which is needless for us to contend about it is certain that the Jewish High-Priests were rather superior than inferior to our Bishops 'T was by God himself and that too in an extraordinary manner that the Office of the High-Priest was instituted and it was from God alone that he received his Authority If therefore a Person was accepted by God as a true and real High-Priest tho' put into the room of another deposed by Civil Authority then a Bishop likewise may be truly a Bishop and accordingly ought to be received tho' put into the place of a Bishop deposed by that Power To this I add that the annual Expiation for the Sins of the whole People was to be performed by the High-Priest This was the chief of the federal Rites of that Religion and that to which our Saviour's offering himself up a Sacrifice is particularly compared in the Epistle to the Hebrews And this they did ex opere operato so that it was of the greatest Consequence to the Jews to have this Divine Institution performed by one appointed to it by God And tho' no provision was made for Cases of necessity yet necessity was understood to be a provision for it self And it is certain these annual Expiations were accepted of God till our Saviour's days For that is a certain Consequence of their being still in Covenant with God since these Expiations were the yearly renewing of that Covenant Nor can any of the performances of the Christian Priesthood be compared to this unless we believe the Power of Transubstantiating These examples of the Jewish High-Priest alone were there no other to be alledged would sufficiently warrant our submission to our present Possessors Dyscher This Doctrine of that learned Doctors is very new and amazing in every Sentence of it as also is his original Principle But whether it be of sincere Metal or no must be tried by the proper Touchstone First then it is strange that he shou'd affirm it certain that the High-Priests are rather Superior to our Bishops as to the Divinity of their Institution For are not Bishops instituted originally by God himself and in a manner more extraordinary than that of Aaron's Consecration For this appears indeed in the Levitical Law to be divinely solemn and glorious as far as external Pomp and Ceremony could adorn it and an Oracular Power of Judgment in things Temporal sanctifie him but yet as the Agent for God in this Consecration was a Servant only viz. Moses so the Oracular Sanctity was not purely Spiritual But the first Bishops were the Apostles made so not by the Hand of a Servant but the Son of God himself in our own Flesh ordaining them with an extraordinary Power of Miracles of all kinds with the insufflation of the Holy Ghost in order to the remission and retaining of sins upon the Soul by the Acts of an Authority to be ratified in Heaven To them the Sacraments were committed the Laver of Regeneration and the Mystery of our Incorporation into Christ and Participation of his Holy Spirit besides the glorious Effusion of the Spirit on them at the Feast of Pentecost consecrating them Preachers of the Resurrection of Christ with an amazing Glory in the sight of all Nations gathered together at Jerusalem in a manner more superlatively divine than any the meaner Forms of Aaron's Investiture Besides the Doctor may as well prefer the Institution of the meanest Levites to that of the Highest Apostles upon the same grounds on which he hath so superexalted the Jewish Pontiff who was
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
will all cease and sink of Course when once men see we scorn them For Shame Conviction and Reproach of Conscience upon the sense of our magnanimous and meek Patience will naturally quench the Spirit of persecution and open a glorious liberty and venerable Authority to the Church of God But our base fears of worldly greatness on one hand and the baser affectation of it on the other hath universally effaced all the glories of Religion and Piety throughout the world and looks like a gloomy prognostic of Ecclesiastical Ruines and Confusion But that †This is the strain of Dr. Hody's great adversary Clergy men themselves should court and invite an Hierarchical servitude and apply the bowstring to the throat of their holy Mother by Principles contrived to strangle all her Apostolical Powers and Authorities is such a daring presumption as needs a greater than the annual Expiation And if the Dr. should live to see his Principles pursued by either Civil or Tyrannical Powers to the arbitrary Subversions of Gods Priests or if otherwise he shall live to think feelingly of that most holy Authority vested in Bishops by God himself whose Ambassadours Vicegerents and Representatives they are the contempt of whom affronts even Christ himself he will not think every violent Intruder that like a Robber comes not in by the door to be a regular Messenger of the Lord of Hosts and that the most audacious Sacriledge hath entitled him to a Divine Character and consecrated his Authority and Communion He will then with sighs and unappeasable groans of Spirit anathematize the instances and design of his Baroccian Treatise and the ill use of his own infinite reading and diligence to recommend the baseness and villanies of degenerous Churches concerning which at present I leave him and his Adversaries to fight it out at Argument In the mean time I will only note that tho' Civil power or force may put intruding Bishops into the Palaces and Revenues of the Bishopric's by un-canonical Violences yet they cannot be possessed of Spiritual Authorities by any mere secular or incompetent Power or Authority and so we on our part deny the Drs. Intruders the present possessors of the real Episcopacy in the abused Dioceses Eucher If the Dr. should hear you talk at this rate he would not take it very kindly I believe But I will make proof of your prowess against him in the famous instance of Solomon and Abiathar For the Dr. having asserted Abiathar properly deposed by the mere Royal act and power of Solomon refutes five or six principal opinions to the contrary and among them yours of Cession with such a contemptuous turn of hand as exposes it for ridiculous For he utterly baffles you with the bare repetition of the LXXII version on which you seem to lay the greatest stress and force of your opinion And it is no small impeachment of your understanding to take that as an Argument for your Cause which it notoriously condemns Let me therefore clear up your eyes with some of the Doctors Arguments You therefore say that * Sol. Ab. pag. 22. King Solomon did not properly and judicially deprive Abiathar of the High-Priesthood but only commanded or required him to quit it on pain of death And to this purpose you quote the words of Solomon to Abiathar according to the Hebrew and the LXXII which latter you paraphrase so as to infer an option in Abiathar whether he would with dishonour retire from his Office or suffer death this latter being in the rightful Power of the King if Abiathar would not yield in the former So that Abiathars Priesthood determined on his own volutary Cession not the Kings Ecclesiastical sure Now how does the Dr. cut off this * Case of Sees pag. 18. In answer to this saith he I need but produce the words of the LXXII 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This excepting the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are removed from the latter Clause to the antecedent agrees exactly with the Hebrew and the natural Sense of these words is no other than what we have in our English Translation with which all Interpreters agree Josephus as is plain * Case of Sees pag. 18. from his words above produced the Chaldee Paraphrast the Syriac and the Arabic and the old Latin Translators who all understand the Texts of a Positive and Authoritative ejectment And that it was a positive command not an Opinion proposed to Abiathar but an absolute Deprivation is yet more plain from the words which immediately follow so Solomon thrust out Abiathar in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. So the Doctor Dyscher 'T is strange that so Learned a man could fancy this to be an answer especially since I see not how he can clear himself from inconsistency or open error For if it were a positive command to Abiathar as he grants how could it be an absolute Deprivation which he asserts I owned it to be a command as positive and requiring as the Dr. but for that very reason denyed it to be a proper Act of Judicial Deprivation because judicial Sentences are not direct commands on the Offenders to excuse their own punishments but decrees of punishments to be executed by other hands as in Joabs Case which so apparently differs in Form from this of Abiathar Besides a command of self-execution as it may actually so may it lawfully be disobeyed and rendred ineffectual and it is in any such mans choice whether he will submit to it or no and the truth is no man will yield thereto but for fear of greater Danger Now if there had been no other prospect of Danger Abiathar would not have obeyed this so positive command of Solomon and if he had not actually obeyed the mere command being frustrate by his neglect had not been an absolute Deprivation that then which in it self was no absolute Deprivation without Abiathars consent and obedience which was not alone so as the Dr. contends and his office became void by Cession not mere Deprivation For it is a great mistake in the Dr. to imagine that positive commands destroy Option For tho' the commands of God upon our Practices are all as absolute as possible yet are they proposed to our option Thus saith God in his * Deuteronomy Ch. 30. v. 19. I set before you life and death blessing and cursing therefore choose life that thou and thy seed may live The Law and Gospel though in the preceptive part they are most properly Laws yet have also the nature and form of a Covenant in them and the punishments inflicted by vertue of them are justified not only from the nature of the crimes but our own option But let us see whether this command were so positive as these Laws whether it were so much the declaration of the Kings own will as a concessive indulgence to the will of Abiathar It is plain then herein K. Solomon offered him an easier condition than his
inviolate against all routs and tyrannical confusions Will not they think a temporal distress incurred for adherence to the fundamental Laws of Catholic Communion less hurtful than a general and causeless deturbation of the pious and regular Priests of God Almighty Can they think it sinless to permit an arbitrary divorce of themselves from their relation to God and the Souls of their People and to let in greedy wolves who covet nothing but the promotions of the Church and for that Cause will pretend an outside Orthodoxy in all other points For put the Case in Fact that once again an O. C. should oppress all by the Sword and turn out at once all the Bishops and Clergy of this Realm and bring in another Set into their Places must the Christian Laity renounce their Canonical relation to the former and embrace that of the imposed and irregular Ministers Or let us look up unto God and enquire within our selves whether of these will God accept for his Servants Must God submit to an irresistible Mob or Hector too Or must we admit those for Gods Messengers whom God never sent and will never own And must this be yielded by us toties quoties whensoever our too mighty Enemies will sport themselves upon us with such a form of persecution I am afraid if this mysterious Secret had been known in the three first Centuries the Heathen Powers when baffled in their other methods of hostility against the Church would have took up this as the most successful because most Orthodox and Christian way of persecution Now suppose such a design had been projected against the Apostles to deprive them of the places and exercise of their Apostleship and to fill their Room with other Orthodox pretenders would the Apostles in Council have allowed people to reject them and receive the intruding Apostles Or could any intrude by the help of the Secular Powers without Sin and Schism and Sacriledge Or would the Apostles have censured these Invaders and have still maintained their own Functions Eucher As to the Office which was peculiar Apostolic necessity was laid upon them and wo had been unto them had they not preached the Gospel in obedience to God rather than man But in that Office as such there could be no successor and so they were to be continued as foundation stones whereas the Episcopal Office is not peculiarly personal but successive Dyscher I will not here except against the validity of this Distinction in these Offices but will put the Case as you set it Suppose the Heathen Powers had passed Seâ—â—ence on the Apostles that being permitted the functions distinctly Apostolical they should not execute their Episcopal Authorities any where nor be received by the Churches as their Bishops but that others provided by the Heathen Enemies should be vested in their Episcopacy would the Apostles have quitted their Episcopacy to which Christ gave them Commission When St. Paul bids the Elders of the Asian Church to take heed to the Flock of which the Holy Ghost had made them Bishops Act 20.28 must that Authority received from the Holy Spirit have conceded to an enstallment of Nero or Domitian Or would the Holy Ghost have truckled under the persecuting Powers and have hallowed the Intruders and deserted those of his former constitution by Apostolic designation And would the Apostles and their first successors with their flocks have judged persecution of their bodies greater than this of their Spirituals that so they should concur in this to avoid the other and be content to submit to the Conduct and Communion of Neronian Bishops that had dethroned the Apostles of our Blessed Saviour and by the heathen sword assumed a Spiritual Jurisdiction over them When Ignatius says that the Bishop and his Presbytery are to be received as Christ and his Apostles with several other earnest and Seraphic Elogies would he have allowed them to be forsaken at the pleasure of an Heathen Mob or Tyrant in exchange for others set up by Idolatrous craft and force Clemens Romanus would not allow this in a domestic Mob in the Church of Corinth and would he concede it to a Mob of aliens and Pagans Eucher I cannot tell how to answer this but perhaps the Dr. may when it shall be offered him Dyscher In the mean time then I take the Bishops to be the Supreme Ecclesiastic Judges as well in the dispensation with as the execution of all secondary Canons whensoever exigences unforeseen or more important than those Canons require their present Relaxation But such dispensing Power lies not upon the fundamental Rules of their Order and Union to dissolve their own being and Authority at the pleasure of the Churches Enemies for no other motives but those of secular terrour for mere fear whereof no Bishop can dispense with his union towards his Colleagues nor Clergy or People be dispensed with as to the Laws of their subordination in the Ecclesiastic unity Eucher Why then you must bring this admission of new Bishops c. violently obtruded upon the violent expulsion of the former into the Catalogue of Sins which the Dr. excepts out of his Principle But he withal denies such admission to be sinful because they are not against the Law of God nor do they make us accomplices to the injustice nor violate the Obligations to our Canonical Obedience nor is the Ordination of the obtruded a mere nullity Dyscher As to the two last Suggestions I shall say nothing to them if the two former are not provable against the Doctor For my Canonical Obedience belongs to my proper Bishop whoever he be and the Ordination of Anti-Bishops is †Treat of Ch. Com. Part. 3. Ch. 6. not censured for a mere Nullity by all our Worthies tho' it is by our Vindicator Let us then begin with the first Consideration whether it be not a Sin by the Law of God I pray how does the Doctor make out the Negative Eucher He says That the Scripture in our Case is altogether silent 'T is true it bids us be obedient to our Governours and that Command reaches as well to the Spiritual as to the Temporal But when there are two that stand Competitors and both claim our Obedience to which of these two our Obedience ought to be paid it leaves to our Wisdom to determine Dyscher You ought here to observe that our Question runs about the Duty or Lawfulness of admitting Intruders upon an open and contested Expulsion of Right not where the Title or Right is dubitable Now when an Intruder contests for the holding an Ecclesiastical Function against the Rightful Proprietor that is invalidly and uncanonically thrust out doth the Law of God leave it to our Wisdom and not to our Justice to determine or does it leave it to our Wisdom to determine according to regular and confessed Justice or according to irregular and confessed Wrong For the Law of God requires us to render suum cuique every Man his due
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
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever
name they might give it to put a better gloss upon the thing they were no Parliament till King Charles made them so for he their lawful King by an Act in Legal Parliament might stamp on them that Character and give them that Authority and Force which they had not before and thus several of their Acts might become Laws by virtue of that after Ratification not by any force of their own But as for calling back the King that was not making any new Law but enforcing the old and was not so much an Act of Authority as Obedience and Duty And if you could find out the same way you would be the best Friends to your Country and your selves T. B's 2d Lett. p. 17 18. Eucher To answer according to the way and order you lead me as I have before told you we are now under no obligation to call in King James so being under another settlement things are not out of Order and Unsettled as they were upon the convening of that Free Parliament and as there is no occasion so there is no opportunity to attempt it But whereas you charge the Subjects in general with Rebellion and Expulsion of their King 't is a broad slander and falshood for beside the far greater numbers of the people that never moved it seems that very few that actually went over to the Prince ever designed the expulsion of King James but only the secure reduction of him and his exorbitant claims of omnipotent Prerogative to the just limits of Law and Reason by Parliamentary ways of Composure Which tho' they could not procure yet did they not expel him but he went off himself either for fear of Life or obstinacy against a Parliamentary Discussion or because of the fatigues of an unsuitable Government But as to the Convention it self it rebelled not against him for had he continued his Presence they would have desired to meet by his Call and then I believe not an Hair of his Head had fallen to the Ground whatsoever his too conscious fears and apprehensions were since the only Argument for the Vacancy of the Throne was founded in his Abdication and that in his Departure from us and leaving us in a state of Anarchy upon which it was not possible that they could rebel against him without his Presence As for your innate Authority to wish and vote for Right I allow your meaning tho' not the impropriety of your words for an inward Right of wishing well is no proper Authority which imports a Superiority over Inferiors nor are private wishes formal votes in Civil Matters in which an Authority to vote is not a natural Right of every man but a positive Power of constituting Orders And in Civil Negotiations all private wishes must concede to publick Suffrages and Determinations And the Land sent up that Free Parliament not on their Natural Rights but Civil Capacities of voting and doing the best Right they could And tho' they did well in bringing back the King de jure having no other King de facto established nor any impediment to the Reduction of the Heir Lineal yet if there had appeared to them any such obstacle as would have rendred his Reduction destructive to the Nation and its Fundamental Liberties and Constitutions according to the Aspects of our Case they would have made some other provision for the time being with which the Nation would then and ought to have acquiesced and so would a good Prince too but there being no difficulty in that Juncture they did their Duty in restoring the King And as for the Name and Character of Parliament whensoever de jure enstamped on them it matters not for they were in that Juncture and those Circumstances a Legal and Authentick Council of the Land tho' extraordinary and whatsoever Settlement they had made for the time being had been valid from their Authority as well as what they did had also authority both from their Duty and the Kings consequent Ratifications for single Acts may have sometimes plural Authorities and Confirmations But to convince you that Conventions of Estates in such Junctures and Confusions are by themselves authoritative to resettle I will discuss it with you and I pray answer me fairly Dyscher Pray try your skill Eucher First then in such a State of Confusion as that in which King James left us has the Nation any Right or Reason to consult for some security order and settlement Dyscher It seems reasonable that this be allowed Eucher By whom then should a National Consultation be transacted Or who should or can be so regularly and efficaciously entrusted as the old standing Council of the Land Dyscher I must confess I cannot assign any Council so proper as that and none else that can be pretended legal Eucher Must the Determination of this Council be allowed any publick Efficacy or Virtue to oblige Dyscher Yes if it pass according to Right Eucher But if they judge their Determination to be right must their Judgment take place to all Civil Effects against all private and extrajudicial Objections or no Dyscher Yes except the prevarication is notorious Eucher Notorious To whom notorious Dyscher To all men to the whole Nation to their own Consciences as the Exclusion of King James was Eucher Then no Notoriety less than National shall justifie a Recusancy to such publick Decision Dyscher I were as good as allow it for it seems so Eucher But how shall we discern such a general Notoriety Dyscher By the general and unanimous Censure of all Orders of Men that adhere to the ancient Laws of the Government and fundamental Principles of our Constitution Eucher This will become such an intricate and endless debate whose are the Legal Principles that it will create an intestine War in order to a Decision You must therefore admit a notorious generality or majority of the People or all Orders in it comprehensively or else we shall never get out of the brake or be relieved by any National Consultation if such indeterminate Surmises or Pretensions shall interrupt its Obligation Dyscher Be it so what then Eucher Then I think I have fairly gained my Points for these Concessions admit in a State of Anarchy upon an Abdicant Desertion a Convention of Estates to be Lawful and Authoritative without a Kings Commission or Presence Secondly That the Acts of our Covention were and are valid as not being censured for other but admitted as such by the generality or notorious majority of the Nation which is sensibly apparent by comparing the numbers conforming with the Recusant Conformity and Recusancy being the only proper and legal Tests of Mens Senses hereupon Tho' the Authority of our National Council is such as needs no after Ratification from the disfusive Multitude or the original Freeholders or Burgers of the Land because as the Lords are primitively Councellors for themselves so the Trust signed to the Representative House is total and absolute without need of any
subsequent Ratification or Power of Revocation by their Principals Dyscher But notwithstanding all pretences they ought to have recalled King James and it being in their Pawer to do it 't was piacular wickedness to omit it and erect his Adversary this is obvious to common Sense and the first simple Notions of Right and Wrong against which no civil forms or combinations can oblige Eucher You are no competent Judge upon them or us what Right required them to do in their then exigencies and if in truth they could not do what you would have had them nor well and safely do otherwise than they did then all this black Charge turns to a blanck and comes to nothing Now 't is true the Prince had no setled or proper Jurisdiction or legal Authority strictly taken to enforce a Convention or any thing upon it nay they had liberty before the judgment of Abdication to have voted King James's Revocation But if they had done so and the Prince in bar thereto had pleaded the Desertion to have been an Abdication devolving the Title to his Princess according to the ordinary and legal course and so had required them to dissolve if they had dissolved what could such vote have effected If they had not dissolved the refusal might have opened a Scene of War between the Prince and the two Houses And considering how great the even minor number in the Houses which might have sided with the Prince would have been and the vast and zealous Army which he had about him with all the formed advantages and preparations of War together with the hearts of at least the general multitude are you sure that the naked Majority of the Convention could have safely adventured the dispute with cold Iron Or if upon a casual adventure they had been conquered how could they have evaded the Prince's Arbitrary Power Or if during the War King James or the French had supervened and carried it had not all the Laws and Liberties of the Nation dipt and sunk under Absolute and Popish Power and that most probably French or a la mode de France All this is obvious to common Sense and was undoubtedly much more so to that National Assembly which otherwise wisely composed all Domestick Riots as well as secured us from foreign Inrodes and little deserve the reproach of Riotous or Juglers which manners to your own deprived Fathers and other your Friends that sate there should have taught you to forbear Dyscher Whereas you tell us 't is a prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy I hope Sir you do not think I require a King to be present when he is absent and then with your good leave I think it no such peevishness to act by his Commission in his absence but that it is a thing which if it can be had ought rather to be done Richard the First was engaged in the Holy War when his Father died * This is false for he was King before he went and deputed the Bishop of Ely Chief Governor It was Edward the First that was proclaimed King while in the Holy Land but he was never Prisoner so that he was far enough from his Throne and unable to exert any Royal Power or Presence to his People And to make the matter worse in his return he was taken Prisoner and detained in Germany In this Case had you been one of the Estates you would have been for setting up another King that would exert his Royal Power and Presence to his People but they had another sense of their Duty they mourned under the common Calamity caused all proceedings to pass under his Nane and stretched their Purses to redeem him c. T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher But here currente Rotâ you have omitted something considerable and inconsiderately offered what is not so For I only state the Case when a King that was actually in the Throne goes off from it and resigns all to Anarchy which is justly interpretable to an Abdication of Government which was not Richard's Case which is therefore instanced altogether impertinently Yet in that * See Sir Richard Bakers Reign of Richard the First very Case whatsoever had been the procedures of the then Estates for the time being the subject people must have acquiesced in their judicial determinations and presumed them Legal till reversed in as Legal and Authentick Forms of Judgment tho' Richard had lain for ever unredeemed because the multitude are uncapable of judging our National Laws Rights and Capacities and cannot act regularly to the recovery of Right or performance of a National Duty Yet it is bold in you to say that my Vote would have passed against Richard's restitution since I that have well known the motions and sympathies of my own Soul thro' all this Revolution should certainly have been carried by my Bowels for that unfortunate King James against the wiser and major part of that Assembly you traduce But besides your insincerity in this parallel and your Censoriousness on me you seem to pervert or misunderstand my meaning when I said it is prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission when he is gone and hath left all in Anarchy For tho' it is then only proper to require a King or any person to restore his Presence when he is absent when during his Absence his presence is needed yet I never was so silly as to think Presence and Absence competible and connecessary at once or that a Commission in time of Absence was improper to supply the desect of personal Presence according to that ridiculous guise you clap upon my words but my apparent palpable intention was that it is prodigious peevishness to require a Kings Presence or Commission as necessary to make the Session of Estates Authentick when he affords neither Presence nor Commission for want of which all is left in supine and gasping Anarchy which were my express words on purpose set to obviate this and other like Cavils tho' honestly omitted by you for inconsiderable tho' therein lies the main force and form of my Argument which is like to stand unmoved notwithstanding all the impotent flurts of unmanly peevishness Dyscher At last you say the Estates of any Nation being * Sol. Ab. p. 4. invited by a victorious and unresisted Power may come together and treat with him that thus calls them tho' he hath no antecedent Authority strictly taken to call them Here is a pretty fetch in the word unresisted Power for irresistible you knew it was not and if it was unresisted whose fault was that May they refuse to resist an invading Power when they are able And may they make that disobedience the reason of their Compliance with him and casting off their own Sovereign But if without dawbing you had put the Case as it was it ought to run thus The Estates of any Nation or the natural
would arise another Relation and then he in these Dominions must follow her Fortunes not she his But to let this pass all that has been done is contrary to the Duties of those Relations which they were and are under by the Fifth Commandment T. B's 2d Lett. p. 25. Eucher But all this is but noise and shuffle For why had you not openly denied or yielded the truth of my Proposition that a Wife is to follow her Husbands Fortune Order and Authority against the will of her Father if she thinks her Husbands Case to be just For tho' you will say * These words I unawares omitted in the last Citation of T.B. This Judgment is not worth a Farthing except the Cause be just in it self Yet be it just or unjust she must act upon her own judgment of it And to what purpose have you such a care that she follow him not thro' thick and thin in his sins Did I ever assert that liberty to a Wife or to the Princess of Orange Do not I expresly except out of this Case * Sol. Ab. p. 7. all violations of all those Decencies that are yet notwithstanding her Marriage due by the Fifth Commandment to her Father which are consistent with her Husbands Rights and Interests and in her Rightful Power to perform But this was another inconsiderable which you in great sincerity have omitted that it might not justifie my piety to the Fifth Commandment and prevent all occasion of reproach But I think you are a very loose Casuist for a Wife between the Authorities of Husband and Father if you think that the Husbands Power limits the Wife only in those Commands of the Father that are in themselves inconsistent with the Duties of a Wife whether the Husbands prohibition intervene or no for except this be your meaning 't is nothing to the purpose nor against me For it is not the Husbands Power but the Law of God that binds the Wife from the violation of her Duties to her Husband as it does bind her to keep her Duties to her Parents and all other persons even Subjects that have no power over her But by your favour if a Father commands a Married Daughter in any indifferent thing importing in it self no ill to her Husband she has no absolute Authority to promise or do it but on grant or just presumption of her Husbands leave for if he forbid it at any time before it is done the Wives hands are in duty bound up from the performance and how faulty soever the Son in Law be in his perverse and needless inhibitions the Daughter is discharged of all Guilt in the non-compliance to her Fa-Father So that strictly speaking all Imperial Power meerly human is in things that in themselves are left at liberty by the Laws of God And now whether I have said any thing more or worse than this speak out without wrigling and subterfuge And yet to deal openly with you and piously I hope with the Laws of my Creator I think there is a great latitude of equity in this Fifth Commandment and that it consists not in a meer indivisible point nor is founded meerly in the Relation but the Causes and Designs of it by the Ordinance of God and Nature For Parents being Vice-Gods to their Children while under their Family and Dominion the more they Resemble God in their Offices of Piety especially toward God and their Children the more their Children are bound to honour them even when they are sent off from the House of their Parents to found new Families and to subsist freely by themselves For tho' the ties of proper subjection are then loosed yet the Duties of Honour still remain uncancelled But if the Parents recede from their Piety toward God the common and Supreamest Father of all the greater this impiety of Parents is the less Honour is due to them even from their own Children And I truly am of Opinion that if such Impiety grow up to perfect Atheism or Defiance of God from which all the long and tender Supplications of the Children cannot reduce them the Chidren are discharged from all the Offices of Personal Honour toward them tho' not of Pity and Compassion for them And upon this ground the Law of Moses does not exempt Enticers to Idolatry from the Vengeance even of the nearest Relations Deut. 13.6 to 11. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother or thy Son or thy Daughter or the Wife of thy Bosom or thy Friend which is as thine own Soul entice thee saying Let us go and serve other Gods Thou shalt not consent unto him nor hearken unto him neither shall thine Eye pity him neither shalt thou spare neither shalt thou conceal him But thou shalt surely kill him thine Hand shall be first upon him to put him to death and afterward the Hand of all the People And thou shalt stone him with Stones that he die because he sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God c. So that all such Persons were by the Law of God looked on as a common Pestilence not to be honoured loved or cherished but destroyed by the nearest Relations Dyscher But Parents here being omitted out of this exact Catalogue of other Relations it shews them to be not within this Law and therefore that this Law does not derogate from the Honour due to Parents by the Fifth Commandment tho' they entice their Children to Idolatry the Reason being grounded on the Authority of Parents over Children which would be nulled if Children might prosecute this Law upon their Parents And for this Cause also by this Law the Wife is not required to destroy her Idolatrous Husband Eucher If you will literally interpret this Law only of the very Relations that are expressed than all other even less Relations will be exempt which is unreasonable But if you will argue a majori ad minus that if none of these Relations are exempt surely no less Relations ought to be judged discharged then the relation of Parents to Children being less than that of the Wife to the Husband and no greater than that of Children to Parents will be concluded within this Law Nor could their Natural Authority indemnifie them for all that was from and under God and was ipso facto forfeit whensoever they rejected God for Idols Otherwise such an exempted Authority of Parents must have been a Snare to the Children to draw them from the Lord their God or at least to restrain them from asserting their God impartially against all his Enemies And in the same Chapter Idolatrous Cities were to be utterly destroyed by all the rest of the People without regard to any Relations dwelling in them for when the Judgment of God was past upon them all Natural Relation and Authority ceased as to all consequent offices of Respect Love or Honour when the impious Apostates were convict and doomed to excision 'T is true indeed that Law being in its
as if he had said My Protestant Nobles Clergy Magistrates Officers and Souldiers do you actually fight for me execute all my Commands be passive under all my Contrivances against your Religion Laws and Liberties and when I have gained my ends I 'll make you all sworn Slaves and Papists or else Iâ—le melt your Grease for you But to return from this pertinent Sally as to the Law that I set it rightly as it stands at this Day from a long Descent is notorious to the World from the Judicial and received Determinations in Parliament and the King's Courts so often pleaded and alledged by the Advocates for our present Allegiance to whom and to whose Originals I therefore refer you Only I think fit here to relate the yet unpublished sense of a most judicious and excellent Person sent me before any Prints appeared on this Subject His words are these What I principally insist on is That our Law requires Subjection and Obedience to the Powers in being To prove this I shall here set down the words of Sir Edward Coke and in the Margin note the Authorities to which he refers Sir Edward Coke speaking of the Statute of the 25th of Edward the Third concerning Treason saith that this Statute is to be understood of a King in Possession of the Crown and Kingdom Vid. 11. Hen. 7. c. 1. For if there be a King Regnant in possession altho' he be Rex de Facto non de Jure yet is he Seignior le Roy 4 Edw. 4.1 Instit part 3. fol. 7. within the Purview of this Statute And the other that hath Right and is out of Possession is not within this Act. Nay if Treason be committed against a King de Facto non de Jure and after the King de Jure cometh to the Crown he shall punish the Treason done to the King de Facto and a Pardon granted by a King de Jure that is not also de Facto mark this for it concerns the Nation against wheedling Declarations is void So to the same effect Judge Hales his Pleas of the Crown pag. 11. This Argument saith my invaluable Friend I take to be of great force because the measures of Subjection are not the same in all Countreys but must be taken from the Laws and Customs of every Countrey Thus he And if you will impartially reflect upon your own Words in which you blame me for inferring that King James when he returns may punish Men for breaking Allegiance to King William these words concede it For if you admit unto me a breach of Allegiance in facts committed against King William you then presuppose an Obligation for Allegiance to him so broken and to break a Duty is punishable by the penal Sanction or virtue of that Law that makes it a Duty and therefore if not punished nor pardoned before the return of the King de Jure he may punish it as a Crime against his Laws And your taking the instance of the Oliverian Common-wealth to this your concession impudently admits Allegiance due thereunto and makes the Opposers thereof Traitors and Legally punishable by King Charles the Second for High Treason But in Truth no Laws had engaged Allegiance to O. C. or his Common-wealth as they have to Kings de facto And moreover if the Estates themselves in free and at that time and case extraordinary legal Parliament upon the antecedent Expiration and in utter Renunciation of that Common-wealth and all other Forms of Democracy recalled him it had been Treason to have opposed and Loyalty to have concurred in that their Restitution But I stated the Case of O. C. so clearly in our last Conference that I fancy it beyond the power of T. B. himself as spiteful as he is to parallel the Tenure of O. C. with that of King William whatsoever he may without Argument rant and rave to the contrary As for the Reproach of stirring up the Powers or the Mob against you I reply that you prevent me in that Intrigue your selves and I will give you any Form of Security either Sacred or Secular upon Soul or Body or Goods that I will never provoke them against you as much as your selves have done and still for ought I see persevere to do Dyscher We are very luckily fallen in again upon the mention of O. C.'s Authority and Settlement over us I pray let us review that Article For tho' T. B. for want of Argument cries out stark shame upon you and is once oh wonder ashamed for you in such a sort of Civility as he never vouchsafes himself how much soever he needs it because you will not be confuted by his Brass and Impudence and our Learned Pens I will see what Grace may be wrought in you by some Impartial Reflections of a softer Metal but of great weight You make a pretty sort of disparity between the Tenure and Settlement of King William and O. C. * Sol. Ab. g. 12 13. Because O. C. was not King as if the Charm lay in a word Call him Hospador if you will for me Is not the Duke of Muscovie King of that Countrey because he is called Duke It is the Authority and Power we are speaking of not by what Names it is called M. S. Reflex Eucher I took my self for a Conjurer nor will I endeavour to enchant you with words instead of things since your Temper will not hearken to the voice of the Charmer charm he never so wisely And therefore without troubling the Peace of that great Duke you may please to remember that there is an old received and approved distinction between the Titles and Characters of King and Tyrant The former is he that Reigns according to the Laws and Forms of Civil Constitutions and his Character and Authority is Grateful and Honourable The latter Rules by meer force oppression and bondage without any Civil Form of Tenure or Settlement by a power only potential not potestative and therefore without a proper Authority And this Character is in most especial manner given to Usurping Rebels as well as to Foreign Invaders to destroy which Tyrants the Universal Sense of Nations ever judged it lawful because they have no Form of Title but that of the Sword Violence and forcible Entry Now King William holds this Sovereignty by the former legal way of National Contract and Civil Establishment but O. C. had no other Mode of Profession but Tyrannical and so had no legal which is the only Form of Authority And yet beside perhaps the very Style of King is necessary to the real Sovereigns of England in order to their Claims of Allegiance by virtue of the old Oath and Laws tho' when new Laws and Constitutions extinguish the old a new Allegiance may be due to a new Sovereign under any other Titular Style But if this Style be thus necessary to oblige our Allegiance by the old Laws then for want of that very Character no Allegiance was due
to O. C. by our old Laws which was the first thing in question But then I proceeded further and shewed * Sol. Ab. pag. 12 13. that he had no legal Form of Settlement in the Sovereignty by any other Laws to which I refer your Memory and Consideration For the improvement of which I will further demonstrate that he was no King either in Name or Thing For first he was Created even by his own Faction not Sovereign but Protector only of the People And that Office was not Royal as appears by the third and fourth Articles of the Instrument of his Government instituted by his Officers first and after again pretendedly confirmed by his pretended House of Commons which he had first purged of all suspected Persons and this after he had refused the Style of King which he saw would not pass Muster in his Army Tho' therefore he Ruled by the force of his Confederacy yet not as legal Sovereign nor according to any Law or lawful â—orm of Constitution even in that false Authority But if you will allow meer Force to be sufficient to a Settlement and Constitution then all the little Elves and Goblins of Power that after him pretended to sit at Helm in the whole course of those Changes till the Return of the Royal Family were all worshipful Mushroom Sovereigns forsooth And what I have heard a Person of great Parts Honour and Authority sometimes say that tho he is no very Old Man yet he hath seen five and twenty Governments in England was perhaps as severely true as it seemed pleasantly spoken Have you any more Straws to pick in this Matter or will you dismiss me in peace Dyscher No no Friend you must not think to slip your Collar so You say that O. C. did not and could not pretend a National Contract as having no House of Lords nor free House of Commons Whatever he might do I am sure that he did pretend that he was advanced to the Government by the Consent and even Grant of the People of England What was it else he did pretend M. S. Reflex Eucher Tho' I mentioned his Non-pretension as well as incapacity to pretend a National Contract to argue thence that really he had none yet the intended force of my Reasoning lies in his real want of such Contract of which his Non-pretension in his Case and care for Pretensions is a Moral Argument For had he really had it the Civil effect had been the same without a Pretension which alone can have no Civil Efficacie or Obligation But however that I may not seem to neglect your Pretences let us examine his I allow therefore that he made some Pretence but none to the Lord's House which he utterly cashier'd which yet however had been and still is necessary to a National Contract I allow you also that he pretended his Advancement by the People as the word restrainedly signifies the Commons of England and he had a small Colour for this in the acknowledgment of the Usurping Pack that pretended to sit for the Common People of England against all the Laws and Rights of the People And yet had these been a free fair and full Representative they could not have given O. C. a Legal Dominion over the superior Estate of Peers because the Commons never had it themselves But as the word People properly comprehends all subject Orders Estates or Persons of the Realm so neither did nor could he pretend an Advancement by the People But the main point we are concerned in and which you can say nothing for pertinent to our Debate is to what State Stile or Character he was advanced or pretended to be advanced by them whom he called the People Was it to a real Royal Soveraignty No no his Mouth Watered his Bowels hanker'd at it but he was however forc'd to sit down and pretend only to a Protectory Trust for the Commons of England Dyscher This I confess reduces me to some difficulty and unexpected Surprize Yet will I repeat to you the remainder of what my reflecting Friend remarked that in the next place for the justice of his pretence that he had no House of Lords I suppose he made that no pretence against himself as you would have me believe MS. Reflex Eucher Truly I never perswaded or tempted you to believe that O. C. made any pretence against himself I only told you that he neither did nor could pretend the Contract of the Lords House and can you prove the contrary Dyscher But he did not think a Lords House necessary to make a National Representation It could not be so originally And therefore they as Lords are no Parties in the Original Contract We know an * This is false for there were near 200 excluded Members that could not sit to make it an entire House House of Commons hath Voted them useless And at this Day the Lords do not pretend to the Right of granting away the Money of the People And I suppose it is upon this Account that they do not look upon themselves as the Representatives of the People MS. Reflex Eucher Here I think my self obliged to do your Party right that these are not their common Sentiments This was a singular Nostrum of your assuming Emperick to heal a diseased Cause But by the good leave of the Lords and Commons whom I have no mind to set at variance we will sift these odd Politicks Is it then first of all likely that O. C. did not think a Lords House necessary to a National Contract If he did it 's no matter if he did not think them National Representatives The Language of Men herein is various many Men commonly assert the whole Parliament to represent the Nation since what is Enacted by them and the King altogether is taken for the Act of the Nation But strictly speaking the Lords are no formal Representatives nor did I ever say they were tho' you would trump the term of Representation upon me to ensnare me to a concession that the Lords represent But I am not so to be tricked I know the Lords to be an Estate Originally Principal acting Personally for themselves in their own Right and Name not in the Name or on the Mission of others and under the King they are the upper part of the Parliament and People in the most comprehensive Sense of this word But the lower House only are the Representatives of their Respective Counties Cities and Burroughs in whose Name and Right they Act for all the Commons of England But if O. C. knew the Lords House necessary to the King himself to Enact the Bills even of the Commons into Laws could he think them needless to the legitimating his Order or his Acts Surely he could not except upon this one only supposition that he thought nothing could legitimate it which is indeed not improbable but then that exauctorates the Commons also of that Power by which he pretended himself advanced
of humane Confederacies And truly if K. William himself would upon reference made deliver his sense he would declare K. Lewis more injurious than K. James in this war for K. James seems to have some colour for provocation but K. Lewis had none to engage in K. James's quarrels But if he engages on other Reasons then he is not an enemy on K. James's account but his own And if K. James and K. Lewis should ever happen to come into K. Williams hands there would be so sensible a difference in his respects toward them as would discover his resentments of French injuries as greater than K. James's tho' unquestionably he would shew a Royal compassion to them both And now I am provided with a Reason why I dislike your Prayers for victory to the late K. James against K. William First because your Prayers assert the late K. James to be our present King and import K. William to be the Nations Enemy whereby you condemn and pray against the present Constitution of which by our Law and consequently God's Law you are subjects not Judges nor de jure Adversaries Again you confess you pray absolutely against K. William as K. James's Enemy And this you must judge of him either in the moral or military sense If in the moral you must then do it either of infallible certainty or opinion only The former the matter is not capable of because of the darkness of men's interiour passions and the disputable nature of Civil Titles But upon mere opinions you ought not to pass absolute Censure upon any mans Conscience and become his utter Enemy by your own choice And yet were K. William infallibly and certainly injurious to K. James yet since K. James's Cessation of war to pray for such victories of blood which you alone account victory is to pray for a return of a Cessant War in order to a sanguinary Victory and its Consequences If you take K. William only as a military Enemy he was then innocent and so your Prayers then aimed at the ruine of the innocent and his Cause But now he is no military Enemy to K. James 't is more impious to pray for his Ruine which K. James himself does not now attempt Upon which even K. James himself has opened our Church-Doors to you to joyn with us in our Prayers for King William and Queen Mary But if you take the French War to be K. James's we have all reason to thank you kindly for your Prayers in a time of such a dangerous War as not only affects all our Temporals but our very Church and Religion the noblest Structure and Bulwark of the Reformation Of which God in mercy make you truly sensible and even in this respect turn the hearts of the Fathers to the Children and the disobedient to the Wisdom of the Just Amen Dyscher Yet I find you are not so confident for all your forms of Devotion For †Sol. and Ab. pag. 15. You think there is one Prayer on the 29th of May so dangerous that you graciously give us leave to forbear to be present at it But Sir who gave you Authority to dispense with terms of Communion You have done more I fear than you will receive any thanks for None you are like to have from us who have no â—eed of your License and you ought not to expect it from those who will think their Authority hereby invaded T. B. See Lett. pag. 33. Eucher This I confess is a dangerous foyl Nor was I well aware of that nasute quickness which appears in this Stricture But as argute as you are was it I that thought this Prayer dangerous or my brother Dyscheres Was it not you that complained that in that Prayer there is a vow of Allegiance to K. William and Queen Mary which upon your Principles you cannot be present at or concede Well then this was so and what said I Then forbear to be present at it But must this presently be interpreted to an Act or Power dispensing with the Duty Truly I intended no more but to yield that therein you must be left to act according to your own Principles and Convictions and adventure the Displeasure of the Powers and legal Consequences thereupon whom and which I believe you would not much more exasperate by this one omission once a year if you constantly joyned in all our other daily Prayers and otherwise live inoffensively So it is ordinary to use the Imperative in a bare permissive without a concessive Sense as Do if you will since you cannot be perswaded take your own Course run your own risks play your own game take your own fortune counsels c. And tho I confess this is form of permission that merits no thanks so neither did I court any thanks herein either from you or the Public For as for you in this hard time you are not very liberal in point of gratitude as I have found by my own experience And I pray God you fail not in this Duty towards God for his mercies to the Nation as you do towards those that wish you well because they run not with you into your unaccountable excesses But as to our Governours if I have not hereby arrogated the dispensing Power I hope I have not much offended them If I have for your ungrateful sakes I will endeavour to atone for this one offence and have a Care how I ensnare my self again upon your Score Dyscher But yet you think we need not be so very coy as to this Prayer For you say that you have been assured by a good Author that the Recusant Bishops did not all stick at it but that some gave directions and consent to the use of it and also before their Suspension deputed Persons to administer the Oath in the Execution of the Authorities and Offices Episcopal Sir If I should say your good Author was an arrant lying knave I hope you would not only pardon my bluntness but also be more careful for the future how you gave any credit to such Persons T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 33. Eucher Indeed Sir if you prove that excellent Person whom you know not to have deceived me with a lye I am your humble servant But I cannot but smile within my self to think how when this your treatment comes to his knowledge that religious and prudent person will entertain the blunt Character considering his most tender Compassions to the Condition of the Deprived But in truth the reasons of his discovering this advice and consent were not calumnious but conscientious as exhibiting matter in a religious Conference for consideration and practice in these various turns of things humors and sentiments But I have been told that in Law negatives cannot be proved but by inference from positives which I doubt will hold you a tugg tho' your tongue be all teeth and jawbones Dyscher As for this pretended Deputation I will set before you the true story and then you and
crime deserved tho' the Dr. to serve his Hypothesis extenuates the guilt of his Rebellion And if this be in fact so then it seems rather a Concession with a mixture of Counsel than a mere austere command of Retirement for so verbs of the imperative Mood very ordinarily signifie and Solomons kind reflection on his Liturgies and Sufferings in the days of David fairly appear to intend so much If a Traytor were thus spoken to by his Prince never see my face more get the out of this place for this shall satisfy me instead of thy forfeited life or else thou art a dead man even to day the Traytor would interpret the recession to be a condition of Life rather than a precept of Civil Duty And his submission would be rather his choice for himself than any Service to his King And certainly he might refuse such offer at his choice and peril as Malefactors sometimes chose the Gallows rather than Transportation This option proposed to Abiathar in this Form the whole Text in every version sufficiently exhibits but the Septuagint most expresly in the citra position of these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 within the first Clause and comes more up to the Hebrew than our Translation for the Hebrew and the Septuagint by a man of death intend the sense of a dead man and this signifies rather a Menace or Sentence of actual death especially when joyned with these words in this very day than a mere merit of death as we render it But such a Menace with a Concession of voluntary exile to Anathoth must be conditional if he went not thither and so admits option And moreover according to the Hebrew Structure of the words we must admit this interpretation from the Drs. own Authorities For thus Abravanel alledged * Case of Sees pag. 21. by the Dr. out of Areschmuth gives his formal sense upon this place Solomon commanded Abiathar not to stir a foot from the place assigned him i. e. Anathot For otherwise if he should dare to sally out hence his Blood should be on his own head as he had also intimated unto Simei the Son of Gera. And this is manifest from the words of Solomon but to day I will not slay thee as if he should say but I will slay thee on that day on which thou shalt dare to go from thence any whether Now if hereupon the Blood was to be on his own head if he stirred was it not put to his option in the sense of Abravanel whether he would confine himself within Anathot or die And if there were such option in his Continuance there was so in the first Recession There are * Vindic. of Depr Bish pag. 71. Christ Com. part 2. ch 3. p. 31 32. some of us make this act of Solomons a Banishment and not a proper Deposition the natural consequent of which Banishment was the debarring him the exercise of the Pontifical Office which Abiathar must be supposed to accept as a Favour and not insist upon his Right But then this Exile must be voluntary and that makes the Cession And I desire the Dr. if he can to discover any other form or importance in the words of Solomon For tho' he says the following words so Solomon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thrust out Abiathar make it more plainly to appear a mere absolute Deprivation by the alone act of Solomon without any Cession in Abiathar yet he cannot but feel a conviction within himself that this note is far from Cogent For he well knows that in all Languages verbs Actives have a great Latitude of signification as to the Forms and Manners of action and denote as well a moral as a natural influence And here the manner of Solomons ejecting Abiathar is at full declared moral only by enjoyning him to retire from Jerusalem to Anathoth on pain of death and it is in vain to strain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to any other conception And truly since so many Learned men not concerned in our Case have had various notions of this procedure I wonder why the Dr. is so earnest to force this instance to an absolute Deprivation Why should he be fond of multiplying examples of Lay or Invalid Depositions Are there not too many such injurious Attempts at the fewest but we must needs rake and hale in more than really are to swell the number and improve the mischief of ill Precedents only to give colour to an odd and invidious Hypothesis Is the Baroccian trifle tanti Is there so much of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in it as to enflame the Church of England I am afraid there is and nothing hinders the present accension but dearth of paper scarcity of money and the danger of unlicensed Printing But however I hope I shall stifle it in this instance in which I only am engaged let others try and take their Fortunes in the rest Eucher But by your good leave Sir you shall not escape so for your Arguments and the Drs. drawing me contrary ways I would gladly see my way clear between you and get me out of the maze if possible Dyscher Then go you on as you think fit Eucher The Dr. then first of all tells us * that whatsoever is necessary for the present Peace and Tranquillity of the Church ought to be made use of †Case of Sees c. Chap. 1. provided it is not in it self Sinful and the ill Consequences which may possibly attend it are either not so mischievous to the Church or at least not so likely to happen as the Evils we endeavour to avoid Vpon this Maxim the Antients always prefer'd the Peace and Tranquillity of the Church to all other things the Essentials of Religion excepted There was no Custom or Law of the Church so Sacred or inviolable but what they readily sacrificed whensoever necessity required to the Peace and Tranquillity of it And in proof hereof the Dr. brings you several full Instances and Authorities to which I refer you and on which I demand your Opinion Dyscher I may allow every jot of this to be true but who shall judge for the Churches Practtice concerning the necessity and the Exigences the Evils and the Dangers thus to be balanced Eucher For a Province the Metropolitan and Bishops and where the Clergy have a Canonical Right they also are to be admitted In a single Diocese the Bishop and his Clergy especially the Chapters and if the Laity be concerned it is fit these Debates be managed in the presence of such standing and communicant Laic's as shall there appear in their own concernments Dyscher Can any resolves be valid against the Colledge of Bishops in a Provincial Synod or against the Bishop in a Diocesan Consultation Eucher No. Dyscher Will not the College of Bishops and the body of the Clergy think it Essential to Christian Religion to preserve the Hierarchy and Authority of the Priests Sacred and
and there is no Wisdom against Right But the Phrase of leaving things to our Wisdom imports a Liberty undetermined by God which we may use as we judge expedient and what God hath so left by the Silence of his Word is under no Divine Law and consequently by this Law we are at liberty to take or choose whether of the two Competitours we in our Wisdom think most convenient to the good of the Church and hereupon as many violent Competitors as any Illegal Rout shall obtrude against Right may draw after them so many several Parties according as they in their Elective Wisdom shall determin And is this the way of Ecclesiastick Peace Unity and Happiness against the danger of exteriour Persecutions For if force shall put in Competitions I doubt the Competitions must be ended by force where divided Wisdom cannot fix a determinate Unity But the Eighth and Tenth Commandments expesly forbid men to take or covet anothers Right and leave us no liberty to determin otherwise So that no man ought to intrude into anothers Bishoprick For a Deprivation that is apparently invalid cuts off no Right or Title before Rightly and Authoritatively vested And he sins whosoever puts himself into possession of such Right which is canonically permanent in the former Possessor Had the Emperors pretended a Deprivation of the Apostles Episcopacy had it been lawful for any other Bishop to have rejected them or seized their Archiepiscopacy and have subjected the Apostles to their Ecclesiastical Government Or will the fear of force necessitate a Man to admit an injurious consecration to another Divine Authority But what shall be done if no Bishops will confer the Sacred Order on him What must they be also obliged by a Rout to give the Holy Ghost to qualify the Intruder If not then this is what they may refuse to sacrifice to the present secular Tranquillity of the Church And if the Bishops may refuse to ordain a man may refuse to be ordained to an Intrusion because it is an Intrusion And if so the whole Church may refuse the Intrusion But if the Bishops are obliged hereto for fear of force then even the injured Bishops may be bound to consecrate others into their own injuriously deprived Authorities and so the Apostles had likewise been obliged against their own Divine Commission But if this be allowed the result will really be that the Apostles and all Bishops Authority either actually ceases or ought to be quitted by their own Cession or Concession at the command of mere Force out then the producer is not invalid unjust or uncanonical in the Ejection and consequently agrees not with the Drs. Hypothesis But God that is a God of order not of confusion would not permit the deturbation of Aaron nor the Substitution of any Intruder by the Mob or Princes Numb Ch. 16. Ch. 17. Nor would the Ancients have confirmed Novatian had he driven away Cornelius from the See of Rome upon a presumption that they were left at discretion or obliged to sacrifice the Laws of the Sacred Union For they had other Senses and Wisdom when they so severely provided against such forcible Entries by the 30th Canon Apostolick If any Bishop say's that Holy Canon making use of worldly Princes does by them get himself possessed of a Church let him be Deprived and Excommunicated and all that Communicate with him Now if necessity vacates the obligations of all Canons not excepting those of Episcopal Constitutions how came these Wise Men of the East to make a Canon against irresistible necessity if the terrour of Temporal Persecution be such And why does Athanasius and other Fathers object this Impiety to the Arian Intruders For if there were no fault in the Intrusion but only the Arianism then those Fathers ought only to have upbraided them with the Arianism not the Intrusion But if the Fathers justly condemn the Intrusion then they were not to admit what they righteously censured And if the Fathers were not to admit Intrusions neither were the people to admit them for by so doing they would become accomplices to the Evil and for that cause are Excommunicate by the said Apostolick Canon And what I pray has the Doctor to evince the contrary Eucher If saith he a Landlord be unjustly and invalidly dispossessed of his Estate by an incompetent Authority who thinks the Tenant an Accomplice to the injustice because he pays his Rent to the present Possessor Should the Clergy refuse to submit to the Bishops in possession it could only serve to draw down Ruin upon themselves it cannot restore those whom the State has Deposed It is not our Submission to the present Possessors that ejects the former for they are already irretrievably deposed and more to this purpose Chap. 1. Pag. 5. Dyscher Here the Dr. hath out-pitch'd you two bars length between Lord and Tenant for * Sol. Ab. p. 6. 7. you assign Rents and Homage to the actual Landlord who is visibly Legal tho' not honestly Rightful since all Lords and Tenants must be admitted for such that are in by Law But the Dr. requires no Forms or Formalities of Law to warrant the payment of Rents or Oath of Fealty For he say's * Case of Sees c. p. 6. If a Lord be dispossessed of his Mannor by an incompetent Authority that cannot be resisted a Conqueror suppose or an unlawful Court who thinks the forsworn for submitting to the new Tenants Possessor Who makes a difference there between a Competent and Incompetent Authority Why does the Oath which he took to the Rightful Lord cease to oblige him 'T is because when he took the Oath he took it only on this Supposition that the Lord was possessed of the Mannor The Peace and Tranquillity of the Publick and the good of Tenants in general give that Restriction to the Oath Now here I must set you upon the Dr. who would never allow forcible Entry or Possession to be legal or valid and thereupon assert the Resistance of O. C. to be just whereas the Drs. Principles justifie the Engagement to his Government against King and House of Lord's But now for the present I will assume your Notions and reply upon the Dr. First of all that upon all Conquests a Publick Settlement gives a legal form of Title and secondly in a Government full settled there cannot be an Unlawful Court nor can any Man be ejected by an Incompetent Court if he will legally except against the Incompetency Otherwise if an Alien get in by a mere Formal Rout of Robbers the Tenant owes him no Duty and pays it on Peril of Repayment or Penalty to the Legal Proprietor And Men are always wary upon the Competitions of several pretending Landlords to be secured in their Payments from the other Claimers from which they know the mere present Possession is not a Legal Security always But beside this is not a Parallel Case nor is there the same parity of Reason in a Real
Estate and the Personal Authority Here is a Man that really was and still Asserts himself Christ's Ambassador Residentiary Vicar and Vice-gerent Comes a Tyrant or a Rout and violently expells this Ambassador This is a Crime against the Laws of Nations and the Rights of Royal Majesty and is a direct affront to our Lord Christ But this is not all This Tyrant or Rout corrupts a few of other our Lord's Ministers and they in their Lord's name give Credential Commissions to an impostor set up by these Enemies of our Lord to supply the defect of the ejected Ambassador this augments surely not lessens the insolence and no Prince whatsoever can connive thereat without severe and vindicative Resentments Now whether shall the Church own for Christ's Messenger him that he sent but others barbarously expelled or him that he sent not but others impudently obtruded Doth not our Saviour say to them whom he sent as his Father sent him He that despiseth you despiseth me and he that despiseth 〈◊〉 dâ—spiseth him that sent me And can we admit this contempt upon his Messengers without being Accomplices therein And what if this is necessary for the Clergy at present to save their promotions Must we value these before the Divine Laws of the Hierarchy and Communion Are we thus taught to contemn the World indeed as to quit all the Authorities of our Lord's Dignation rather than loose a little Worldly Interest When our Lord saith He that loveth the World or the things that are in the World more than him the love of the Father is not in him nor can he be Christ's Disciple But however if the Clergy be not degenerous they can preserve their Bishops in the exercise of their Spiritual Auâ—â—oâ—â—ties tho' not in the Enjoyment of their Estates and Temporalities For from what is Spiritual no Secular force can alone Depose them without Câ—usâ— and the concurrence of the Church Shall outward force force us into Intestine Schism or Disorder or can no Division from our Fathers be Schismatical admitted for fear of Temporal force But one thing more will I ask the Dr. whether we must admit such Deposition as violent Power pretends to before a new violent filling of the Sees with others If not then are we not to Sacrifice all the Secular Peace and then the See being not vacant by such pretended Deposition either the Deposition formally consists in the new Intrusion and so the Intrusion must on the Drs. Hypothesis be invalid and so cannot oblige us to admit it or if the Intrusion be not the Deposition then the former Bishop c. is not Deposed and the latter either is not possessed or two anti-Anti-Bishops can be and are joyntly possessed of the same Episcopal See and Authority But if we may or must abide by the pretended Secular Deposition before a new Intruder then what if the Secular Tyranny will not concede us any Bishop Must we Sacrifice here too No here the Dr. is tender and will not Sacrifice he will have some Bishop or other by Mr. Mobs favour whether his Irrestibleship will or no. Now then let us reduce this Prudential Principle into Practice and if you can bear a little teizing I will discuss its Virtue Eucher Proceed Dyscher Suppose then upon an Irretrievable Deposition of Bishops by mere force the Tyrannick Powers neglect to new furnish the Churches what course must they take for a Supply Eucher Petition those Powers thereunto Dyscher What if these Powers Conscious of this your Drs. Principle always give fair Promises but never intend to repair the Breach how long must the Church wait Eucher Till such time as they see no hope of relief and as long as the Church can forbear without damage to the Substance of Religion Dyscher Well then suppose the Church can forbear no longer or the Tyranny absolutely denies to fill the Sees who shall then provide for the Church Eucher The other Undeprived Bishops and Clergy Dyscher But while or before they go about this the Irresistible Irretrievably deprives them also how shall the Cut go then Eucher Then the Church-wardens must try what they can do for their People Dyscher But let them be Irretreivably Deposed too and how then Eucher Then the multitude of Christian Churches Dyscher Tho' here I could demand how an unorganized Multitude can Act Uniformly yet I will not pinch you that way but what Priests must or can they provide the Old that are Deprived or New Eucher The old Case of Sees c. pag. 41. Dyscher What upon their Old Title or your New Investiture Eucher Here I am in a strait but let it be on their Old Title what then Dyscher Then they may not abide by the pretended Forcible Deposition till a new Intrusion nor is that Deposition Irretrievable as the Dr. sometimes supposes it for an Irretrievable Deposition is an effectual one whose effect cannot be vacated or reversed while yet at another time the Dr. allows the Deposition to be Invalid but an Invalid Deposition is null 't is no Deposition whereas an Irretrievable Deposition is a most effectual and real one as I have said Eucher Well then what if to avoid these difficulties we allow the reinvestiture of the former Priests by a new Title Dyscher But they will not accept it as knowing that their old Title is permanent and unimpaired by the null pretended Deposition and consequently that a pretended new Investiture is null because needless and anticipated besides we know that the acts of mere Laity cannot Canonically erect an Hierarchy Eucher Let them then procure a new Sett Dyscher But where will they find Persons qualified or willing to enter into such a deposable Office or to ordain them against Mr. Irresistibles will who will presently Irretrievably Depose them To this issue of Absurdity and Contradiction the Drs. Principle must of necessity bring him And he were better resolve that the Church may admit an open and utter Dissolution of the Hierarchy than dwindle it away after this poor precarious manner of Sophistry Have you any thing more to alledge from the Doctor Eucher Yes yes If the Bishop of a Frontier Town will not own the Authority of a Conqueror and is therefore Deposed by that Conquerour I desire to know of you whether the Clergy of that Town are Perjur'd if they own that Bishop whom the Conqueror thinks fit to set over them Case of Sees p. 6. Dyscher I smell your design well enough to bring me into a snare but I can answer the Dr. upon your Principles For if the Conqueror be not settled in Form of Law all he does is of no Validity and the Clergy are to have no regard to his violences upon the Bishop nor his Illegal intrusion of another But if he upon Conquest hath attained to a Formal Settlement there is a just Cause on the Merits of which the Recusant Bishop at the Command of the Conqueror may be ejected by the Church and
give way to a Successor of the Conquerors Nomination But this the Church is obliged to not for mere wrath but also for Conscience sake towards the reason of the Cause and the Law of God that requires Subjection to humane Constitutions But the Drs. Hypothesis puts the whole Proceeding against the deprived as injust and formally invalid to all intents whatsoever and makes the act of Deposition simply Secular without any Concurrence of the Church Eucher If a Bishop should be by the Civil Power Condâ—mned to perpetual and close Imprisonment or be banished for ever from his Country so that it is impossible for him to perform the Duties of a Bishop or should he be carried away Captive we know not where or from whence we cannot redeem him Nay suppose the Banished the Imprisoned the Captive Bishop should expresly require them upon their Duty oâ— Câ—â—onical Oath never to accept of any other Bishop as long as he by the common Course of Nature may be supposed to be living or till they be assured he is dead what must be done in such Cases c Case of Sees pag. 6 7. Dyscher The Church must abide by the Government of their Clergy in such Cases and in all Cases where the peculiar Office of the Bishops is wanting apply to other Bishops for their Succour and Aid Eucher But what if the Diocese be so set or restrained that the Church cannot have recourse to other Bishops as suppose in the Isle of Man or any other impediments preclude a Capacity of such Negotiations with other Bishops who can bear such an hard saying that the Church must not admit a new Bishop of her own when she may meerly because the ejected Bishop with whom we can have no correspondence is ill natur'd and grudges that benefit to the Church Dyscher I am hard pressed here I pray how will you steer in this dangerous difficulty between the quick Sands that lie on both sides on the Drs. loose Principles for your Cause and the strict Rules of ours Eucher Why truly I must so far concur with the Dr. as to grant that the Church has a Liberty to admit a new Bishop in such Cases if he be otherwise Canonically qualified Dyscher Does Banishment Imprisonment or Captivity cutting off all capacity of commerce vacate the See and exauctorate the injured Bishop Eucher It does render the See actually empty for the time but yet I will allow you that the Bishop is not exauctorated but that upon removal of the impediments his Authority would immediately exert it self and run on in its old Channel and ought to be received on the Original Title as being still Bishop of his Diocese except his supposed prohibition of another substitute Bishop forfeits his Right Title and Authority Dyscher This is odd Doctrine If the Bishop does not forbid the Church to substitute another which not to do may be presumed for a Cession then he still continues Bishop if he forbids a Substitution then he quits it by forfeiture I pray how can you make out these Paradoxes Eucher Thus if a Bishop shall enjoyn Orders to the Dissolution of Discipline he ipso facto becomes irregular and forfeits And such would be the effect of this supposed Prohibition of a Substitute But if he admits a Substitute upon the necessity of Discipline not otherwise to be supported he still continues Bishop and is to be received for such in full Authority immediately upon his enlargment and recovery Dyscher This does not extricate but involve and double the Paradox For thus there may be two Bishops of the same See at once and a Successor to a present Proprietary which Successor is to be again thrust out as uncanonical and no Bishop of such Diocese on the return of the former Eucher Two Bishops there then will be at the same time of one and the same See though not in it But the second will not be a proper Successor but a Sagan or Vicar to the absent and so to give place to the returning Proprietary till the See shall become wholly vacant of the Proprietary Bishop by death or otherwise except there be some other exceptive provision in such extraordinary Cases For according to this Rule of Prudence the Church of Jerusalem proceeded in the case of Narcissus * Case of Sees c. Chap. 1. pag. 6. alledged by the Dr. which is much like this supposed Case before us Oppressed with calumnious Perjuries Narcissus retires from his See to deserts and unknown Fields for many years not plainly renouncing his Station however Upon this the Prelates of the bordering Churches fill his Place with other Successors in all three before his return never undoubtedly designing to exclude Narcissus if he should return whose Glory and Innocency Heaven it self had signally vindicated But so it happen'd that after the death of the third intermediate Bishop Gordius Narcissus returns and the Church requires him to resume the Throne Episcopal not on a new but his old Title But because through the great infirmities of his old Age he could not bear the fatigue of his Office it was agreed that one Alexander should be his Sagan or Partner in that Prelacy the original Authority of Narcissus being thus derived to Alexander and by him to be administred in ease to Narcissus Dyscher But this does no Service in our case for our former Proprietaries are ejected and others set in to exclude them though present and claiming their proper Relation to their Dioceses Nor does this account of yours reach the design of those instances given by the Dr. in which the Intruders asserted a Title against the unjustly and invalidly expelled Proprietors Eucher I am not yet come to those Instances I only tell you what may be done in the Case of a Banished Deprived or Captive Bishop hereby rendred uncapable of his Functions which I here proposed from the Dr. though I confess to you as a Friend that this Plea and Case of the Drs. as well as all his Lay-instances throughout his Book are far more Impertinent to our present Case than as he says your Vindicators discourses were to the Baroccian Hypothesis Dyscher This is pretty Inadvertency if you can make it out Eucher Why look ye Deprivation or Deposition in our Sense and Case is the Divorce or Dissolution of the spiritual Relation between Priest and People but Banishment Imprisonment and Captivity makes no such divorce And this the Dr. Fundamentally grants in supposing his Lay-ejections to be invalid Deprivations or Depositions and though he generally calls these Lay-ejections and Banishments by the name of Depositions yet upon a cogent pinch he grants that Banishment from a Bishoprick though inflicted on purpose to part the Bishop from his people is no Deposition for so he †Case of Sees c. Ch. 4. pag. 56. expresly asserts of S. Hilary that he was never Deposed but only Banished and allows him to be still actual Bishop of Poictiers since there
was no other Orthodox Bishop there Now our enquiry as the Dr. sets it is of an unjust and invalid Deposition by a Lay-power or Irresistible Force and the Admission of a Successor consequent thereupon Now if Banishment and by parity of Reason Imprisonment and Captivity is not a Deposition how are these pertinently alledged for such in our Question Then again if upon Banishment the Deposition consists in the intrusion of another and this be unjust and invalid how is the intruded a right Successor to whom the Churches obedience is due Or if he be not right i. e. Canonical how is this obedience due Must we pay obedience where it is not due Or is there any due where there is no form of Right Or is there any form of Right created by an Act not only unjust but even invalid and consequently null Then again every one of the Drs. instances of Lay-deprivations are nothing but meer Banishments and Imprisonments and so no Depositions from their Spiritual Powers or Relations as he confesses in St. Hilaries case though elsewhere he commonly calls them Depositions without thinking of it But if the Depositions consist in the consequent intrusions these being invalid as well as unjust oblige to nothing but Repentance and Restitution And so his infinite expence of Reading and Criticism is all at once unfortunately thrown away But there is one thing farther considerable in the last Question of the Dr. and that is the impossibility of performing the Episcopal Functions consequent to these Lay-Banishments and Imprisonments For if this incapacity gives those violences the forms of Depositions then it appears not that all the Lay-instances produced by the Dr. were Depositions and perhaps none of them since the Episcopal conduct might be carried on by Communicatory Letters to the Dioceses and other Social Bishops to act for them according to the constant practice of Exiled and Imprisoned Bishops from the days of the Apostles But if the persecution be so straight as to preclude all capacity of such Pastoral care a new Bishop may be set to supply the defect but not to exclude the Right of the ejected to govern for him not against him and to resign upon the return of the Proprietor On this account it must be resolved how the ejected Bishops reteining their Claim or Right mentioned by the Dr. or his Baroccian Treatise owned those Orthodox Persons that filled their places in their Absence Thus * Case of Sees c. pag. 59. Briccius might call Armentius Brother and Bishop of Tours while he was returning to lay Armentius aside upon a Presumption that Armentius never set up against him nor would oppose his Restitution if yet there be any credit due to the Story On some such confidence * Case of c. Ch. 7. pag. 82.90 c. Elias might Communicate with John and his Communicants at Jerusalem not only because John was Orthodox but because he kept not the See from Elias as a Rival or Anti-Bishop but only continued that Care for the Church during Elias's Incapacity For their Mutual Friendship is a demonstration that John did not still oppose Elias and Elias ratified John's Present Government by his Communion which was if not a Cession as your Vindicator conceived yet a Valid Concession for the time being For tho' John was one of Elias's Expellers yet after John had opposed and baffled the Emperor and therein seconded Elias's Cause This with the Mediation of those Martial Monks Theodosius and Sabas might cool all Elias's former Resentments and procure his Peace and Ratification of John's Government That Elias was not obliged by Canon to acquiesce is manifest not only from many Canons to the contrary but the practice of many others produced by the Dr. who endeavoured to recover against the Orthodox Intruder received by the Church on the Drs. Fundamental Law of Necessity If then Elias acquiesced not by Law but Choice this made a Ratifying Concession to John's Government and hereupon Theodosius and Sabas might well Communicate with both since they both held Communion one with the other either by the Cession or Concession of Elias But here a shrew'd hard Question Intervenes If the Church always owned the Orthodox Possessor of anothers Chair without Schism how could the Orthodox ejected Bishop rival and contest the Intruded Possessor without Schism or injury done in challenging his Right while yet his Right would be taken for quitted if he should not challenge it Now during the Challenge he must renounce the Possessor and all Communion with him as such whom yet the whole Church according to the Dr. lawfully receives for the Diocesan Now if the Ejected will be in the Communion of the whole Church they must own their Anti-Bishops and so it will be their Duty to loose their Right to Intruders or if they may refuse the Anti-Bishops without Fault how can others lawfully own them and their Possession of other Men's Sees never validly vacated Methinks Apparent and Confessed Right should obtain in Judgment against possession manifestly without Right nor is it a Rule of Conscience or Religious Peace but Carnal Fear and base Interest that inclines to the contrary Hereupon I conclude that the best Title John had to the Churches Communion was from the Concession of Elias And your Vindicator had great reason to suppose something done on Elias's part to the confirming of John's Prelacy from the Communion that is asserted to have been between them For being apparently no Anti-Bishops the Natural and Legal Presumption must be that Elias allowed him and that was a Canonical ground for the Churches regular Communion with him tho' before there seems none except Elias had been removed beyond all Capacity of Communion which it's plain he was not So then it is not the Substitution of a New Bishop in the Chair of another utterly latent or removed from all possible Communication that makes a Schism but when one is set up to Exclude the other Violently and Invalidly Ejected from the Administration of his Office either at present or hereafter while in a Capacity and Readiness to perform his Functions Thus Pope Martin whom the Dr. hath also instanced pronounces it Unlawful for the Church of Rome to admit another Bishop during his Life and Spalatensis alledges that Authority and Rule for Canonical and Good Yet when he was Condemned at Constantinople and the Church of Rome had taken him for dead and so chose Eugenius no wonder that Pope Martin receiving News of this before his death prayed for Eugenius thus chosen because he knew the Romans had not set him up as an Anti-Bishop and could not doubt had his return been possible but that his Church and Eugenius too would have joyfully re-inthroned him But in cases of Competition as in the Ignatian and Photian War if the Church or the Competitors can be on both sides excused from Schism upon every turn and invalid Act of Lay-Power against which a good and valid Title
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
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
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