Authority was not supposed derived from him it will not follow that it was deprivable by him And if it were not then all the obligation the King could lay upon the Bishops to do as he would have them could not be in Conscience but in Interest so far only as they thought the inconveniences they might incur by his displeasure greater than those the Church might suffer by that imposition on their liberty This therefore might be born with by the Bishops so far as they might judge it reconcilable with the Churches interests And that indeed no more could be intended appears from a Paper published by Bishop Burnet from a Cottonian M S. For there is a full acknowledgment of a distinct Authority in the Bishops from the Potestas gladii lodged in the King Yet it is signed by Cromwell and that after his second and more ample Commission because he signs before the Archbishops And long after this Act between the years 1537. and 1538. as the Bishop himself conjectures Thus far therefore Cromwell himself was not very positive in that Opinion no nor Cranmer who here subscribes among the rest which makes the Spiritual Authority derived from the King So far it was then from being the Authorized Sense of the Legislators But I cannot by any means think it commendable in the Prince to impose even so far though the Right of external force be indeed his Should the Church follow his example she has as good a Right to impose on his Actings in Temporal Causes by her Spiritual Censures as he can pretend to for his interposing in her Spiritual Affairs by his Temporal Force For he cannot pretend to a more immediate Title from God for his Temporal Force than she can for her Right of inflicting Spiritual Censures And if it should be thought reasonable for either of them to make use of that Right of coercion which justly belongs to them both for imposing on the other in matters not belonging to them it would certainly be more reasonable for the Spiritual Power to impose on the Temporal in order to Spirituals than for the Temporal Power to impose upon the Spiritual in order to Temporals For my part I would rather that both would keep within their own bounds that as we must render to God the things that are Gods so we may also render to Caesar the things that are Caesars But whether the Laity did in this Act assume more than what was really their due I am not so much coâ—cerned at present It is sufficient that what was assumed by them was not sufficient either directly or by any necessary consequence to put it in their power to deprive our Bishops of their Spiritual Authority § XV. HOWEVER though hitherto they did not yet at length our Legislators of those times did advance the Supremacy as high as Archbishop Cranmer ' s Principles would warrant them But it was not before the later end of that Sacrilegious Reign In the seven and thirtieth year of it there was a scruple started concerning the Lay Doctors of the Civil Law by whom the Discipline of the Ecclesiastical Courts was managed after the death of Cromwell on account of their being Lay-men whether the Spiritual Censures issued out by such could have any effect with regard to Conscience This scruple being raised on that account of their being Lay-men was conceived by the Parliament by manifest consequence to affect the Kings Power also for such Censures because he also was a Lay-man This could not have been if they had not intended to assert such a Right in the King though a Lay-man even for Spiritual Censures For had they intended no more than that the King by his Lay Power should only oblige Spiritual Persons to do their duty in exerting that Spiritual Power which they had received not from him but from God himself in this case the consequence objected against the Supremacy had been out of doors and that which had signified nothing would have needed no remedy When therefore to prevent this consequence they assert the Supremacy in such a Sense as may qualifie the King though a Lay-man to a Right to inflict such Censures they must consequently mean it so as to assert this Right to him as a Supream Magistrate though not invested with any Power from God distinct from that of the Sword Accordingly they tell us that his most royal Majesty is and hath always justly been by the Word of God Supream Head in the Earth of the Church of England and hath full Power and Authority to correct punish and repress all manner of Heresies Errors Vices Sins Abuses Idolatries Hypocrisies and Superstitions sprung and growing within the same and to exercise all other manner of Jurisdictions commonly called Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction They tell us withal the occasion of this Objection That though the Decrees and Constitutions by which the exercise of Spiritual Jurisdiction had been confined to Holy Orders had been utterly abolished by the Act of the five and twentieth year of this same Reign yet because the contrary is not used nor put in practise by the Archbishops Bishops Archdeacons and other Ecclesiastical Persons who have no manner of Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical but by under and from your Royal Majesty it addeth or at least may give occasion to some evil disposed Persons to think and little to regard the Proceedings and Censures Ecclesiastical made by your Highness and your Vicegegerent Officials Commissaries Judges and Visitors being also Lay and married men to be of little or none effect or force And Forasmuch as your Majesty is the only and undoubted Supream Head of the Church of England and also of Ireland to whom by Holy Scripture all Authority and Power is wholly given to hear and determine all manner Causes Ecclesiastical and to correct all Vice and Sin whatsoever and to all such Persons as your Majesty shall appoint thereunto Therefore it is enacted that Doctors of the Civil Law though Lay and married being put in office by any one having Authority under the King his Heirs and Successors may lawfully execute all manner of Jurisdiction commonly called Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and all Censures and Coercions appertaining or in any wise belonging unto the same Here the Bishops are denied to have any manner of Jurisdiction Ecclesiastical but by under and from the Prince Here all Authority and Power is said to be wholly given him to hear and determine all manner Causes Ecclesiastical Here he is said by the Word of God to have full Power and Authority to exercise all manner of Jurisdictions commonly called Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction And all this is asserted as their Sense of the Title of Head and of the Prerogative of Supremacy If so the Bishops can have no Power but what is derived from the Lay Magistrate for all this is challenged to him as he is a Lay-man and therefore none but what must be supposed deprivable by him Then after their deprivation their Character is gone
the Title of Supream Head The Bishops as it is said will not swear to it as it is but rather lose their Livings The occasion seems to be that now the Succession falling to a Woman it seemed very indecent to believe her an Original of Sacerdotal Power who was by her Sex incapacitated for exercising any Sacerdotal Act to believe that a Right of Excommunication could be derived from her who was on the same account unqualified to consecrate the Eucharist and to give the Communion though they who had the Right had given her that power that she could be the Head of Sacerdotal Power to others who was not capable of being a Sacerdotal Head at all For the Apostles Reasoning holds concerning this Sacerdotal Headship which is the principle of mystical Unity that the Man in general is as much the Head of the Woman in general as the Head of the Man is Christ and the Head of Christ is God These things no doubt gave the Papists a subject of tragical Declamations then as their Books shew they did after Nor was the scandal only given to the Papists but to the Protestants also who returned from their exile with a zeal as great for the Geneva Discipline after the troubles at Frankford as the others could pretend to for the Papal And accordingly it was a Protestant that perswaded her to lay aside the Title of Supream Head or rather not to resume it after it had been laid aside by her Sister However the Supremacy it self she did resume but with such an Explication as made it thence forward tolerable The Supremacy it self she resumed as it had been practised formerly by her Father and her Brother as far as by any Spiritual or Ecclesiastical Power or Authority had heretofore been or might lawfully be exercised or used So the words of the Act run wherein she also revives the Act of 37 Hen. VIII 17. as far as it concerned the Practise of Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction by Lay Doctors of the Civil Law She also resumed a Power of issuing out Commissions for exercising Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and of giving out Injunctions as formerly Thus the Case stood in her first Parliament which began Jan. 23. and was dissolved May 8. of the year 1559. Which things if they had held had been little else besides the abatement of a word But her Injunctions themselves followed that same year after the dissolution of the Parliament wherein she remits of the things themselves at least with reference to the Oath which was first introduced in this Parliament in the form wherein we use it now In these Injunctions she forbids her Subjects to give ear to those who maliciously laboured to notifie to her loving Subjects how by words of the said Oath it may be collected that the Kings or Queens of this Realm Possessors of the Crown may challenge Authority and Power of Ministery of Divine Service in the Church She therefore tells them that her Majesty neither doth nor never will challenge any other Authority than under God to have the Sovereignty and Rule over all manner of Persons born within these her Realms Dominions and Countries of what estate either Ecclesiastical or Temporal soever they be so as no other foreign Power shall or ought to have any superiority over them She tells them therefore that if any Person that hath conceived any other sense of the form of the said Oath shall accept the same Oath with this interpretation sense or meaning her Majesty is well pleased to accept every such in that behalf as her good and obedient Subjects and shall acquit them of all manner of Penalties contained in the said Act against such as shall peremptorily or obstinately refuse to take the same Oath § XIX HERE is a fair Legal Interpretation allowed by the Regal Authority it self for whose sake the Oath was imposed perfectly discharging us who have been concerned in it from the Belief of Archbishop Cranmer ' s Principles themselves and therefore from meaning any such sense of it as otherwise mig 〈…〉 have followed and indeed must if the taking of the Oath had necessarily supposed our belief of those Principles Here we find those Principles denied to have ever been the Sense of the Legislators even in the time of King Henry the VIII or King Edward the VI. The Queen in the same Injunction calls it a sinister perswasion and perverse construction to think it was so We need not now dispute how true this assertion was for the time past It is sufficient for our purpose that from the time of this Injunction we are not obliged to mean it so how plainly soever it may seem to be supposed in the Acts revived by her Yet whâ—â— I have already said is sufficient to shew how unsteady the Legislators were in urging the belief of these Principles on them who took this Oath even when the Words of the Laws themselves did seem most literally and naturally to import them in the Sense of the Legislators themselves I have already observed the Paper subscribed by Cromwell and Cranmer himself contrary to their own Doctrine in the height of Cromwell ' s Power I have observed that Cromwell ' s opinion that Lay-men might consecrate the Eucharist was so odious even in King Henry ' s Reign that it was made an Article against him for his Attainder So also in the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum wherein Cranmer had a principal hand drawn up in the later end of King Edward the VIth the Power of the Keys is owned to have been given by Christ to the Church and the Power of Administring the Sacraments and of Excommunication â—s asserted to the Ministers and Governors 〈◊〉 the Churches and they are allowed to be the Judges who are to be admitted to the Holy Table and who are to be rejected notwithstanding the Laws made in that same Reign prescribing to the Ministers what they were to do in these very Cases notwithstanding the words of the now mentioned Acts nay even of that very Collection asserting expresly that the King within his own Dominions has plenissimam Jurisdictionem over the Bishops and Clergy as well Ecclesiastical as Civil and that both Jurisdictions are derived from him as from one and the same Fountain This Reformatio was intended to have been confirmed in Parliament according to so many Acts made concerning it if the Kings death had not prevented it Whether these things be reconcilable or not I am not now concerned It is very possible that the same Legislators may own that in certain consequence which they do disown in express terms And in such a Case the securest way for the Subject who cannot be obliged to Contradictions will be rather to be concluded by their express professions than by their reasonings and consequences where they are not reconcilable Especially where those professions are agreeable to that Practise which is notoriously allowed by the Legislators themselves Allowed Practise is granted by
Ecclesiasticks as appears from several of their Papers still preserved But they were only some few selected by himself never fairly permitted to a freedom and majority of suffrages And when even those few had given their opinion yet still he reserved the Judgment of their reasons to himself And to shew how far he was from being indifferent those of them who were most open in betraying the Rights of their own function were accordingly advanced to the higher degrees in his favour and were intrusted with the management of Ecclesiastical affairs None had a greater share in Ecclesiastical Counsels than Archbishop Cranmer Nor is there any who upon all the Questions proposed wherein Ecclesiastical Power was concerned does more constantly side with the Kings imperious humour against the true Rights of his own Order He allows the King the Rights even of preaching the word and administring the Sacraments and allows neither of them to the Ecclesiasticks any further than as they derived them from the Princes Lay Commissions He permitted indeed their Consecrations as he had found them by those of their own order but derives nothing of their Power from those Consecrations He makes the Ceremonies of Consecration indifferent things no way concerned in conveying the Spiritual Power That he derives wholly from their Lay Deputation He gives them a Power of preaching the Word and administring the Sacraments where the Lay Powers allow it and he allows them neither where the Secular Magistrate forbids them They must admit whom the Laws oblige them to admit and they must not excommunicate any whom the Secular Laws take into their protection The Magistrate notwithstanding his being a Lay-man may perform these offices himself if he pleased And the Ecclesiasticks notwithstanding their Consecration are not by him permitted to perform them unless the Magistrate be pleased to give them leave Nay so far he proceeds in his flattery of the Civil Magistrate that he allows no more gifts of the Holy Ghost in the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery than in the collation of any Civil Office Even in the Apostles themselves he rather excuses than commends all the exercise of their Spiritual Authority as necessitated to it by the exigency of their present Circumstances As if any necessity could excuse Usurpation As if any exercise of a Power not belonging to them could have been seconded by so visible manifestations of God himself as that was which was exercised by the Apostles Yet even their Authority he makes perfectly precarious He owns no obligation on the Consciences of the Christians of those times to obey even the Apostles themselves but ascribes their Obedience then wholly to their good will so as to leave it to their own liberty whether they would be subject or no. And why so Only because the Apostles had no Civil Empire This wholly resolves all obligation of Conscience into Civil Empire and makes it impossible for the Church to subsist as a Society and a Communion without the support of the Civil Magistrate Accordingly that same Archbishop Cranmer took out a Patent for his Episcopal Power preserved by Bishop Burnet full of a Style so pernicious to Ecclesiastical Authority He there acknowledges all sort of jurisdiction as well Ecclesiastical as Civil to have flowed originally from the Regal Power as from a Supream Head and as a Fountain and Spring of all Magistracy within his own Kingdom He says they who had exercised this Jurisdiction formerly for which he took out this Patent had done it only PRECARIO and that they ought with grateful minds to acknowledge this favour derived from the Kings liberality and indulgence and that accordingly they ought to yield whenever the King thought fit to require it from them And to shew what particulars of Ecclesiastical Power he meant his Patent instances the Power of ordering Presbyters and of Ecclesiastical coercion meaning no doubt that of Excommunication Nay further the same Patent gives him a Power of Executing by the Kings Authority those very things which were known to have been committed to him by God himself in the Scriptures per ultra ea quae tibi ex Sacris Literis divinitus commissa esse dignoscuntur By which we understand that no branch of Spiritual Power whatsoever was excepted Yet all this grant was to last no longer than the Kings pleasure I know not what the Lay Encroachers themselves can desire more Here is so little security for the Churches subsisting when the Secular Laws discountenance her as that she is not allowed the same liberty that other subjects have of pleading the Secular Laws already made in favour of her but is left exposed to the Arbitrary pleasure of the Prince which is thought hard in the Case of other Subjects This yoke the Politicians have lately imposed on the Church of Scotland GOD in his good time release her from it § VIII I have often wondered how the most learned Bishop Stillingfleet who first published the forementioned Papers as far as they concerned Archbishop Cranmer could think them consistent with his own Principles They are so perfectly contradictory to his Discourse concerning the Power of Excommunication subjoyned in the Second Edition of the Irenicum and indeed to the Doctrine of the Irenicum it self as far as it was consistent with it self or with any one Hypothesis For sometimes he seems to doubt whether there can be any Power properly so called without coercion or any coercion without external force As if indeed the fears of the future mischieves attending exclusion from the Priviledges of Church Communion had not been in the purest Ages of the Christian Religion more properly coercive than the fear of any evils that were in the power of the Secular Magistrate It is certain that good Christians then chose rather to suffer any thing the Magistrate could inflict than Excommunication But I more admire that such a betrayer of Ecclesiastical Rights should by our Ecclesiastical Historian of the Reformation be proposed as the Hero of his times and as Exemplary to such as might in his opinion deserve the name of Heroes still Yet he calls it a strange Commission in Bishop Bonner when he took out a Commission from the King as to his Spirituals conceived in the same terms with that of Cranmer in the particulars now mentioned He grants that Bonners inducement to take out that Commission was that it was observed that Cranmers great interest in the King was chiefly grounded on some opinions he had of the Ecclesiastical Officers being as much subject to the King as all other Civil Officers were Yet Cranmer was to be excused because that if he followed that opinion at all it was out of Conscience Why he should doubt whether he was of that Opinion I cannot guess when himself has published those very Papers of the learned Bishop Stillingfleet wherein Archbishop Cranmer does so plainly own himself of that opinion when he has also published Cranmers own
all his violences had success according to his own mind the King gave Cromwell a more ample Commission over the Bishops themselves and with Power of Spiritual Coercion answerable to the utmost rigor of these loose Opinions now mentioned And he was a person every way fitted for it As he was an intimate Friend of Archbishop Cranmer ' s so he was also a favourer of that singular Opinion which was so much for the interest of his Commission Our Historian himself takes notice of it as one of the things objected to him at his Attainder that he had said that it was as lawful for every Christian man to be the Minister of that Sacrament of the Eucharist as a Priest This clearly shews that Opinion to have been odious even then in the Consciences of the Attaindors themselves and therefore that their other Acts grounded on that and such like Opinions were not bona fide upon true conviction of Conscience Otherwise they could not have had the confidence to charge the belief of such Opinions as a Crime on him if they had in earnest believed them themselves The odiousness also of such a Power as was exercised by Cromwell appeared also in this that after him there was no Successor substituted in his place with such a Commission as his was nor any general Vicegerent appointed for executing the Kings Supremacy in Spirituals distinct from the Bishops and Archbishops However whilst his Commission held he acted to the height of what his Friend Cranmer ' s Opinion would warrant him He gave out general Injunctions for all Spiritual Jurisdictions as Bishops had done formerly for their own Dioceses He took upon him to call Bishops to an account for their administration in Spirituals Our Historian himself has inserted some of his Letters to this purpose sufficiently Imperious But however odious such general Commissions were for things beyond the Power of the Laity yet the Lay Law-makers could not be restrained from encroachments as they thought they had occasion But this they did by the degrees now intimated § XIII In the next year which was the XXVth of that King's Reign there is an Appeal allowed from the Archbishops themselves to the Kings Majesty in the Kings Court of Chancery And upon such Appeal a Commission was to be directed under the Great Seal to such Persons as should be named by the Kings Highness his Heirs or Successors which Persons so empowered were thereby Authorized to give definitive Sentences from which no further Appeal was allowed This was the very Power which had formerly been allowed to the Pope Accordingly it is enacted that no Archbishop nor Bishop of this Realm should intermeddle with any such Appeals otherwise or in any other manner than they might have done before the making of this Act. So that as the Power of the Pope was by the former Act translated to the upper House of our own Convocation in matters wherein the King himself should be concerned so here the same Power is again translated from the Convocation to the King himself and the Power of the Convocation is transacted by a smaller number and those of the Kings nomination This did put the decision of such Cases as much in the Kings Power as himself could desire though the persons to be nominated by him had been Ecclesiasticks Yet even that confinement is not laid upon him that they should necessarily be so He was therefore at perfect liberty not to exercise any part of this Power by Lay-men any further than as the Ecclesiasticks acting herein by his Commission might be supposed to derive their Power from him who was himself a Lay-man Yet even that was capable of a better Interpretation that the Commission did not give them the Power by which they acted but only Authorized them to exert the Power they had before with impunity from the Secular Laws and with the secular support This was only dare Judices as the Praetor did to particular Causes out of those who were by the Laws qualified and empowered to be Judges in general Thus Constantine the Great did dare Judices to the Donatists Melchiades and other Gallicane Bishops who otherwise was notwithstanding very wary of encroaching on the Bishops Rights in general to judge concerning Spiritual Causes What therefore was done hitherto was fairly reconcilable to our Doctrine without asserting any Right as to Spirituals derived from the King to the Bishops which as it was given by him might consequently be deprivable by him also What the King himself did in giving such a Commission to Cromwell was a Personal Act not granted him by any express Law during the time that Cromwell possessed it and therefore cannot be any just ground for interpreting the Supremacy and the Oath concerning it with relation to Posterity but must have been extinguished with his Person though he had been more constant to it than it appears he was Much more considering that even he himself did not think it fit to continue th Office after Cromwell The same may also be observed concerning the Bishops who took out Commissions for their Spiritual Episcopal Power There being hitherto no Law obliging them to do so must make their Acts also Personal For this is sufficient to shew they were not obliged to it by any Sense of the Legislators which cannot be known but by their Laws There was not so much as Proclamation for it that might reduce it to that Law which was made in the same Reign for equalling the Kings Proclamations with Acts of Parliament though that Law had continued still in force as it is certain it has not Less than one of these will not suffice for proving us concerned in what was then done as an Argument of that Sense of the Legislators which was to oblige all Posterity till the Law was repealed by the same Authority that made it § XIV THE next Act in the XXVIth year of the same King gives him as Head of the Church of England full Power and Authority from time to time to visit repress redress reform order correct restrain and amend all such errors heresies abuses offences contempts and enormities whatsoever they be which by any manner Spiritual Authority or Jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed repressed ordered redressed corrected restrained or amended c. Here are Spiritual Causes Errors and Heresies given as Instances wherein the King might concern himself And Spiritual Power in all the kinds of it is supposed in these Corrections to be performed by the King when he is allowed to correct all sorts of abuses that might by any manner Spiritual Authority or Jurisdiction be corrected No part of the Episcopal Power is here excepted not even that of Excommunication But then it is not even yet determined whether this Spiritual Authority and Jurisdiction be supposed in them who are to be by the King obliged to exercise it or whether also the Authority was to be derived from him too If the
either of Gods word or of the Sacraments the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen do most plainly testify But that only Prerogative which we see to have been given to all Godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself that is that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal and restrain with the Civil sword the stubborn and evil doers Here we have the Explication in the Injunctions approved by our Church her self who gives us the same sense in her own words expressly and is fully satisfied with our believing the Prince ' s Right to govern both sorts of Persons By this we may also know her meaning in the words immediately preceding where she mentions all Causes that she did mean only such Causes as were absolutely necessary for making the Prince's Right perfectly practicable for governing the Persons of the Ecclesiasticks We are also here clearly and expressly discharged from all Obligation to believe Archbishop Cranmers singular Opinion and consequently from the belief of that Supremacy which was grounded on that Opinion without which I do not see how our Adversaries can ever be able to justify the validity of these Lay-deprivations And none that I know of doubts but that this Article at least of our Church does as much concern our times as those wherein it was first made § XXIV YET further that no Authority may be wanting we have this same Explication in the Injunctions expressly referred to and ratified in an Act of Parliament of the same Reign of Queen Elizabeth still in force and unrepealed The words are those Provided also that the Oath expressed in the said Act made in the first year shall be taken and expounded in such form as is set forth in an Admonition annexed to the Queens Majesty's Injunctions published in the first year of her Majesty's Reign That is to say to confess and acknowledge in her Majesty her Heirs and Successors none other Authority than that was challenged and lately used by the noble King Henry the VIII and King Edward the VI. as in the said Admonition more plainly may appear The word Admonition is taken from the Title of that particular Injunction wherein it is stiled an Admonition to simple Men deceived by Malicious that there may be no doubt but that the forementioned Injunction is intended in this Act. And that the Supremacy here assumed by the Queen and said to be the same that was challenged and lately used by King Henry the VIII and King Edward the VI. may not be so understood as to exclude the benefit of the Interpretation here referred to Indeed such a rigorous Construction had been perfectly to overthrow the whole Design of the Act in referring to it But that very Expression is used in the Injunction it self from whence the Parliament took it and therefore is to be understood in a sense consistent with the rest of the Injunction and therefore in a sense consistent with the renunciation of that singular Opinion of Archbishop Cranmer how much soever it may seem to have been supposed in the words of the Acts and to have been therefore the private sense of the Legislators themselves Yet they as well as the Queen her self think it was never the Legislators design even in those Reigns where it seems indeed to have been their sense to impose the belief of it on those who should take the Oath This must necessarily have been their sense when they refer us to the Injunction as expressing that sense of the Supremacy which they allowed and approved This must make the Explication in the Injunction theirs and consequently must make the true design of this Act as full to our purpose as the Injunction it self I need not now add to this Authority the Explication of the Supremacy by Archbishop Usher and approved of by King James the I. Much less the Opinions of the generality of our Divines since the beginning of Queen Elizabeth against that Opinion of Archbishop Cranmer without which as I have shewn it is impossible for our Adversaries to prove the validity of Lay Deprivations What some of them have reasoned from the Case of Solomon and Abiathar is the less to be regarded being destitute of Principles by which the like Practise had it really been such as they think it was can be proved allowable by the Doctrine of the Gospel and the Priesthood constituted by it nay being contrary to their own Doctrine concerning the Divine Right of Administring the Sacraments All that can be said is that by defending that Right of Solomon and by applying it to the Case of the Christian Magistrate with regard to the Popish Bishops who were of another Communion they may seem to have said things consequently applicable to our present Case of Bishops of the same Communion Yet whether they would have stood by this Consequence in Case of a Lay Deprivation of Protestant Bishops our Adversaries themselves cannot undertake and it is much more probable that many of them would not have stood by it But on the other side we can also say that when they denied the Right of Administring the Sacraments to be derived from the Magistrate they must by consequence deny the Right of Spiritual Government resulting from the Right of excluding refractory Subjects from the Sacraments and from the Spiritual Body and from the Rights annexed to that Body of CHRIST himself they must I say by necessary consequence deny this Spiritual Power to be the Magistrates Right they must by the same consequence deny all Right the Secular Magistrate can pretend to deprive of this Power which was never derived from him Thus there will be Consequence against Consequence But there is this difference between the two Consequences that ours reaches the present Case fully and directly but it may be questioned whether that of our Adversaries do so For it may well be questioned whether if the Lay Magistrate may deprive Popish Bishops of another Communion it will thence follow that he may also deprive Protestant Bishops of the same Communion as I shall shew hereafter § XXV BUT the second Canon of the year 1603. is objected against us The words are these Whosoever shall hereafter affirm that the Kings Majesty has not the same Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical that the Godly Kings had amongst the Jews and Christian Emperors in the Primitive Church or impeach in any part his Regal Supremacy in the said Causes restored to the Crown and by the Laws of this Realm therein established let him be Excommunicated ipso facto and not restored but only by the Archbishop after his repentance and publick revocation of those his wicked errors Here all that is affirmed to our Adversaries purpose is only this that our Kings have the same Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical that the Godly Kings had amongst the Jews But what that Authority was or what the
as the Vows of Wives and Maids were under the Law when made against the consent of the Husbands and Parents And the will of GOD concerning the lastingness of the Spiritual Power was manifest from the will of the Ordainers who before those Lay-Patents never intended to confer Orders for any other term than that of Life If therefore such would take upon them to exercise their Spiritual Power independently on their Patent though they might contradict the designs of those who made them take out their Patents in doing so yet having indeed Authority from GOD to do so what they did by that Authority might expect a ratification from GOD and therefore must have been valid with regard to Conscience The greater difficulty was that of the others who received their first Authority from their Patents before their Consecrations These might more plansibly be thought to receive no more Power by their Consecration than what they had already received by their Patent Especially if they had the same thoughts concerning their own Consecration as Archbishop Cranmer had that it gave them no new Power but was only a Solemnity of Investiture with the same Power which they had already a Right to by their Patent And if withall the Bishops who Consecrated them had been also of the same mind and must therefore have thought themselves obliged to give them no new Power by the Authority themselves had received not from the Prince but from Christ. But I have already shewed that even in those encroaching Reigns there was no Obligation laid on the Bishops to profess their Belief of those Impious Opinions I have shewed that at the same time that they were supposed in Practice yet their Belief was Odious and Singular and in express terms generally decried I have shewed that the most received Opinion even then was that the Right of Administring the Sacraments was derived from Christ and his Apostles and by them given only to the Church and consequently that it was only given by the Acts of Ecclesiastical Consecration These things therefore being thus believed must also have obliged them further to believe that whatever Power and Authority did follow from this Right of Administring the Sacraments could not be given by the lay-Lay-Power but only by them who had continued the derivation of that Right of Administring the Sacraments from Christ and his Apostles These things therefore being generally believed by the Bishops might make them generally design the giving and receiving the same Power in their Consecrations which had been given and received by Consecration formerly What then could hinder even those Bishops which were Consecrated then from receiving it It was consequentially inconsistent you 'l say with those Patents by which they derived a Right of giving Orders and of inflicting Spiritual Censures from the King But it was no more so than those Patents were with those Doctrines that all Power of that kind was to be derived from Christ and his Apostles who had given it to the Church not to the Lay-Magistrate The consequence whereof must be that being mutually inconsistent they ought to be made consistent as far as is possible in Practice by Interpretation That is that one Duty be performed so far and so far only as is consistent with the performance of the other But in this way of proceeding it is unavoydable but that one of the two Duties must take place of the other so as to leave no place for the other any further than is consistent with the Interest of the Principal Duty And then there can be little doubt if an Ecclesiastick be Judge and of such only I am Speaking at present whether of the two Duties must be judged Principal If they be considered as Ecclesiasticks the Church is the Principal Body for which they ought to be concerned Consider them also as good Christians and as good Men and the same Obligation will hold still to prefer the Interests of the Church because they are indeed the greatest Interests in the Judgment of GOD and in the Judgment of Right Reason and the most immediatly and firmly obliging that which is indeed the immediate Subject of Obligations the Conscience All therefore that Persons so perswaded could promise and which the Magistrates of that Age acting against Principles might be Satisfied with as sufficiently answering his ends was to behave themselves in reference to the Magistrate so as if indeed they had no Power but what they derived from him That was to hold their places from whomsoever they had received them no longer than He was pleased they should hold them This Promise they might make as to the Temporalties that they would be no longer Legal Bishops entitled by the Secular Laws to Temporalties Tho' this was a particular Hardship put upon their Order For as for the Secular Peers the held their Peerage by Law not barely at the Pleasure of the Prince However these conditions importing no loss of Spiritual Authority the Bishops might with a safe Conscience submit to when imposed on them by unavoidable force They might also promise when they were deprived of their Temporals to quit their Spirituals also in order to the qualifying another of the same Communion to succeed them without any imputation of Schism But a general promise of this kind could not oblige them when quitting their Rights might betray the Church and make it depend precariously on the pleasure of the Magistrate However they not foreseeing this Case and not fearing it in the Circumstances then in view might make this indefinite Promise and intend really to fulfill it And whether they did well in doing so or no yet they might do it without owning the Right to Spiritual Power to be at the disposal of the Civil Magistrate Yet as long as they did not think it his Right they could not think themselves obliged in Conscience to quit their pretensions to their Spirituals barely because the Magistrate was pleased to invade them All the Obligations therefore they could have to do it must either have been from their Promise or from the present exigencies of the Case which might in their Opinion seem to require it Yet all this was consistent with an Opinion that whilst they had the Power they had it from an Authority Superior to that of the Civil Magistrate whâ—â—h till the Magistrate did deprive them might make all their Acts valid as done by a Divine Commission It is very plain withall that after the Patent was given yet the Magistrate himself took care to recommend them to Bishops for their Consecration Why so unless he believed that if he had done otherwise his Bishops would never have been taken for valid Bishops with regard to Conscience VVhy so if he had not therein designed to gratify the Ancient and Received Opinions concerning the Original of Church-Power which without such Consecration supposed them liable to so just Exceptions It was not the Magistrates fancy that Consecration gave them no new Power that
THE DOCTRINE OF THE Church of England Concerning the Independency of the CLERGY ON THE LAY-POWER AS To those Rights of theirs which are purely Spiritual reconciled with our Oath of Supremacy AND THE Lay-Deprivations OF THE Popish-Bishops in the beginning of the Reformation By the Author of The Vindication of the depriv'd Bishops LONDON Printed MDCXCVII THE CONTENTS § I. THE Independancy of Bishops on the State pretended to be contrary to the Oath of Supremacy P. I. § II. And contrary to the Principles on which the Popish Bishops were deprived and our present Succession depends P. III. § III. The Authority of the Primitive Catholick Church is greatâ— then that of any Modern particular one P. IV. § IV. Even with regard to our particular Church Our behaviour signifies more Love and Concern for her than that of our late Brethren does P. VII § V. We shew our greater Love to our Churcâ— particularly in not yeilding so easily as they do that she should lose her Rights on any Te 〈…〉 P. IX § VI. What we do is perfectly consistent with the Authorized explication of the Supremacy vested in the King P. XI § VII Archbishop Cranmers Opinions in Henry the VIII's and Edward the VI's time perfectly destructive of all Spiritual Authority P. XII § VIII Archbishops Cranmers Authority in these matters none at all P. XV. § IX It is not for the Interest of the Church of Reformation that his Authority in these things should be regarded P. XVII § X. His Opiniens in this matter no more agreable to the Sense of our present Adversaries than to 〈◊〉 P. XXI § XI The Supremacy and Title of Head when first assumed by Henry the VIII consistent with our Doctrine P. XXIII § XII When the King gave the encroaching Commission to Cromwell it was not yet agreeable to the true Sense of the 〈◊〉 P. XXV § XIII The Appeal allowed from the Archbishops to the Kings Commissioners in Chancery no Argument of any Spiritual Power derived from the King P. XXVII § XIV The Supremacy explained 26. H. VIII 1. not contrary to our Doctrine in this Cause P. XXVIII § XV. The Supremacy as explained 37. H. VIII 17. full to our Adversaries purpose and the sense of Archbishop Cranmer P. XXX § XVI The same notion of the Spuremacy continued also under King Edward the VI. P. XXXIII § XVII King Henry the VIII's Reign by no means to be allowed for an Age of Precedents P. XXXV § XVIII Queen Elizabeth explained the Supremacy in a sense consistent with our principles P. XXXIX § XIX That Explication discharges us now from any Obligation to believe Archbishop Cranmers Principles P. XLI § XX. What the Queen requires we can Sincerely undertake and in a Sense fully answering the Imposition of the Leg 〈…〉 ors P. XLIII § XXI The Queens Injunction excuses us from Swearing to the Supremacy over Spiritual Persons in Causes purely Spiritual P. XLVI § XXII This Injunction of Queen Elizabeth still in force P. L. § XXIII The Explication in the Injuctions Authorize by our Church in her XXXVII Article P. LI. § XXIV The same Explication of the Injunctions confirmed by Act of Parliament P. LIII § XXV It is rather supppsed than contradicted by the 2 Canon P. LV. § XXVI The Practice of the Supremacy to our times no Argument of the Imposed Sense of the Legislators against us P. LVIII § XXVII The Objection proposed that our present Protestant Succession seems to depend on the validity of the Deprivation of the last Popish Bishops which was no other than Laical P. LX. § XXVIII The Lay-Deprivations of those Popish Bishops who took out Lay-Commissions for their Episcopal Power does not by any jast consequence effect our present Case P. LXI § XXIX The Popish Bishops were of another Communion and therefore needed no other Deprivation than that of the Lay-Magistrate P. LXIII § XXX This Doctrine agreeable exactly to the Sense and Practice of Antiquity P. LXVI § XXXI If the Popish Bishops had had a better Title yet that could not have illegitimated Successors any longer than their own Lives P. LXVIII § XXXII If the Popish Bishops then had the better Title yet their discontinuance of their Succession has made their Title worse now P. LXXI § XXXIII Present Settlements give Right where no better Rights is injured by them P. LXXII § XXXIV This is proved from the Donatist and Luciferian Disputes P. LXXIV § XXXV They who took out Lay-Commissions for their Episcopal Power might yet keep their better Title P. LXXX THE DOCTRINE OF THE Church of England Concerning the Iudependecy of the Clergy on the Lay-Power as to those Rights of theirs which are purely Spiritual reconciled with our Oath of Supremacy and the Lay-Deprivaons of the Popish Bishops in the beginning of the Reformation § I. SINCE the finishing of the former Discourse I have been warned of one Prejudice ogainst the Doctrine delivered in it concerning the Independancy of Church-Power on the State very necessary to be removed in order to the preparing our late Brethren for an impartial consideration of what we have to say in it's defence That is that as our Case of Protestant Bishops set up in opposition to other Protestant Bishops deprived by an incompetent Authority is new so our Principles on which our Plea in reference to the Schism is grounded are also charged with Novelty if not with regard to the Doctrine of the first and purest Ages of the Christian Church yet at least with regard to the Doctrine of our late common Mother the Church of England and with regard to that later Antiquity which is derivod no higher than the beginning of our Reformation from Popery It is therefore pretended that our Doctrine concerning the undeprivableness of the Bishops by the Lay-Power is inconsistent with the Supremacy asserted to our Princes in all Causes as well as over all Persons that it is therefore inconsistent not only with all the Lay Acts by which the Supremacy has been asserted but also with all those Acts of the Church by with she also hath concerned her self in this Dispute with the xxxvii Article and the Injunction of Queen Elizabeth owned by an Act of Parliament in her Reign for an Authentical Interpretation of the Supremacy with the Doctrine of the Homilies and the several Injunctions of the Ecclesiasticks for explaining and recommending the same Doctrine to the Belâ—ef and Consciences of their Auditors particularly with the Second Canon which Excommunicates all those who deny the Supremacy in any of those branches wherein it was allowed either to Jewish or Christian Princes and with all those Legal Oaths for maintaning it which have been taken not only by the generality of the Laity but the Ecclesiasticks also as many of them as have been admitted to any eminent station in the Ecclesiastical Government Not now to descend so low as a particular enumeration of the suffrages of our most celebrated Writers It
is withal pretended that this Power of depriving Bishops has ever since the beginning of the Reformation been allowed in the Secular Magistrate in the Practice of this Supremacy as often as there has been occasion for it The first practice of it was lodg'd by King Henry the VIII in Cromwell a Lay-man Yet his Commission Authorized him to proceed against the highest Ecclesiasticks without exception as far as deprivation And in the same Reign Bishops were required to take out Patents from the King for even the Spirituals of their Office their Power of conferring Orders which virtually included all the Rights conveyable by Orders so conferred the Right of Preaching the Word and of Administring the Sacraments These if they were given by the Lay Power must by necessary consequence be deprivable by it also But they are sensible how little reason there is for making the Reign of that imperious and assuming Prince a Reign of Precedents in arguing that what was actually done then must therefore be presumed to have been well done and therefore fit to be done again If this were allowed they know very well that no Right whatsoever even for securing the Peoples Liberties which they pretend most zeal for who have least for those of the Clergy can be made so sacred as to restrain the Conscience of him who has by any means got the possession of an over-ruling force For he who made no Conscience of invading the Rights of those very Persons by whose intervention all other Rights were made Sacred even those of Magna Charta and the Coronation Oaths themselves not excepted could much less be terrified from invading those Rights which could pretend to no other Sacredness than what had been derived from the intervention of those same Holy Persons whose own Rights had been violated by him § II. THIS consideration therefore obliges our late Brethren to insist on the Precedents rather of King Edward the VI. and Queen Elizabeth ' s Reign which they think not so easily avoidable by us Here they tell us that all the Deprivations of the Popish Bishops were by no other than the Secular Arm. They tell us withall that the way of deprivation by Synods of Ecclesiastical Persons was in their Case perfectly impracticable No Acts could have been reputed Synodical but what had been carried by a majority of them who had been allowed votes in Synods who were only Ecclesiasticks But by this method of proceeding it was impossible that the Popish Bishops could have been deprived at all because themselves made a majority of the Episcopal Colledge Here therefore they think that we are not at liberty to question at least the validity of what was done in this affair They think we cannot do it with any consistency with the Principles on which we insist in our Plea against the present Schismaticks They think we cannot do it without subverting the Rights of those same Fathers for whose Rights we are our selves so eagerly concern'd For if those un-synodical deprivations of the Popish Bishops then were null and invalid the Popish Bishops were still the true Bishops of their respective Dioceses to whom all the Offices of the Subjects of those Dioceses were still in Conscience due And that on the same Principles on which we pretend our deprived Fathers to be still in Conscience the Bishops of those Dioceses of which they are said to be deprived and that they have still a Title to the Episcopal Dues of the same Dioceses from those who were Subjects to them before the deprivation on account of the invalidity of their deprivation as not being Synodical This being so they think it will follow further that the first Protestant Bishops must by our Principles have been Schismaticks as having been ordained into full Sees that they must therefore not have been second Bishops but none at all according to our Reasoning on St. Cyprian ' s principles And this Nullity in the Original they conceive sufficient to affect the whole Succession derived from that Original Thus they think we cannot maintain any Right in our present Fathers if vacancies made by Lay Deprivations be not allowed sufficient to legitimate their Titles who are possessed of those Sees which are vacated by no other Power than what is Laical This I take to be the utmost of what they have to say upon this Argument § III. I should most heartily congratulate the zeal of these Objectors for our Church were it really such as it is pretended to be But I can by no means commend any zeal for any particular modern Church whatsoever in opposition to the Catholick Church of the first and purest Ages We cannot take it for a Reformation that differs from that Church which ought to be the Standard of Reformation to all later degenerous Ages at least in things so essential to the subsistence and perpetuity of the Church as these are which concern the Independence of the Sacred on the Civil Authority Nor is it for the honour of our dear Mother to own her deviation in things of so great importance from the Primitive Rule much less to pretend her precedent for over-ruling an Authority so much greater than hers so much nearer the Originals so much more Universal so much less capable of corruption or of agreement in any point that had been really a corruption It is impossible that ever the present Breaches of the Church can be reconciled if no particular Churches must ever allow themselves the liberty of varying from what has actually been received by them since the Ages of divisions the very reception thereof having proved the cause of those divisions If therefore our modern Churches will ever expect to be again united it must be by acknowledgment of errors in particular Churches at least in such things as have made the differences and which whilst they are believed must make them irreconcilable Such things could never proceed from Christ who designing his whole Church for one Body and one Communion could never teach Doctrines inconsistent â—iâ—h such Unity and destructive of Communion And why should a Church such as ours is which acknowledges her self fallible be too pertinacious in not acknowledging mistakes in her self when the differences even between Churches which cannot all pretend to be in the Right whilst they differ and differ so greatly from each other are a manifest demonstration of errors in Authorities as great as her own Nor can any such acknowledgments of actual errors be prejudicial to Authority where the decisions of the Authority are to be over-ruled not by private Judgments but by a greater Authority And if any Authority be admitted as compâ—â—â—nt for arbitrating the present differences of Communion be 〈…〉 our modern Churches I know none that can so fairly pretend to it as that of the Primitive Catholick Church Besides the other advantages she had for knowing the Primitive Doctrines above any modern ones whatsoever she has withal those advantages for a fair decision which
recommend arbitrators She knew none of their differences nor dividing Opinions and therefore cannot be suspected of partiality And it was withal an Argument of her being constituted agreeably to the mind of her blessed Lord that she was so perfectly one Communion as he designed her And the acquiescence of particular Churches in her decision is easier and less mortifying than it would be to any other Arbitrator To return to her is indeed no other than to return to what themselves were formerly before their Divisions or dividing Principles So that indeed for modern Churches to be determined by Antiquity is really no other than to make themselves in their purest uncorruptest condition Judges of their own Case when they have not the like security against impurities and corruptions I cannot understand therefore how even on account of Authority our late Brethren can excuse their pretended Zeal for even our common Mother the Church of England when they presume to oppose her Authority to that of the Catholick Church and of the Catholick Church in the first and purest Ages I am sure we have been used to commend her for her deference to Antiquity and to have the better opinion of any thing in her Constitution as it was most agreeable to the Patern of the Primitive Catholick Church Here by the way I think it not amiss to take notice of a mistake common to Dr. Hody and the other Answerer to the Vindication of the deprived Bishops The rather because it is introduced by them both with some insulting triumph The Vindicator had charged his Adversaries with Heresie in regard of their singular opinions on which they insisted so far as to found their Schism upon them This they both retort upon the Vindicator himself as grounding his Defence on opinions now singular and different from the greatest numbers of our present Churches I should have thought their retortion just if the Vindicator had grounded his Defence on Opinions singular in the first Ages of Christianity But they might both of them have observed that the Vindicator did not grant this to have been his own Case He did pretend the Principles insisted on by himself to have been generally received as fundamental to all the Discipline that was practised in the first and purest Ages What was generally received then and therefore to be presumed true because it was so cannot change its nature by being afterwards as generally either forgotten or deserted in later degenerous Ages And as the Vindicators Cause did not so neither did his design nor Topick of Reasoning from the Sense of the Primitive Catholick Church oblige him to be concluded by a generality in these later degenerous Ages But this is again another instance of their advancing the sense of our particular modern Church as a standard of Primitive Catholick Antiquity But this is a deference too great not only for our own Mother but indeed for any particular Church whatsoever at such a distance from Primitive Originals § IV. HERE therefore we cannot be of our Adversaries mind But as for the Duty owing to our particular modern Church which is consistent with her Subordination we still profess as great a Zeal for her as themselves can and are ready to strive with them in a generous Aemulation who shall best express their affection to her and their zeal for her preservation Indeed our difference from them is wholly grounded on such Principles as we should think in all other parallel Cases would be taken for Arguments of a greater affection We are willing for a Vindication of her Rights to expose our selves to all the effects of the displeasure not only of her Adversaries but even of her own late Children and our own late Brethren This is a glory wherein our present Adversaries cannot pretend to rival us Whatever they pretend of good will to her they cannot pretend to suffer any thing for her So far they are froin that that they are not contented to be neuter and at least to connive at their Brethren asserting their common Mothers Rights They defend the Magistrates encroachments on their Ecclesiastical Liberties Even the Ecclesiasticks do so whilst the Magistrate has the disposal of the Ecclesiastical Revenues The Doctor has indeed wisely postponed the Vindication of the Magistrates Right for doing what has been done though nothing short of that can satisfie the Consciences of Ecclesiastical Subjects as to the lawfulness of acquiescence and submission to the Invaders of those Rights which they are by the Constitution obliged to defend as unwilling to expose himself an Ecclesiastick to the odium of betraying them He therefore here proceeds on the Supposition that the Rights of the Church are invaded not only injuriously but invalidly and pretends to prove after his way of proving by naked Facts that we not only may but must submit to the Usurpers Upon this he pretends what the Vindicator says for disproving the Right of the civil Magistrate for doing what has been done to have been impertinent To what end is all this but that he may avoid the Odium of betraying the Rights of his own Function and of defending laical Encroachments on them But I cannot conceive how this will excuse him from this charge He promises in another Book to defend professedly what he is yet so willing to be excused from even the Right of the Magistrate for such Invasions He even here makes all asserting such Rights impracticable and unavailable for preserving them He makes the Bishops whose Rights are invaded obliged in Conscience to yeild as often as they are invaded when the substituted Successor is not a Heretick that is as often as there is no other question but only that concerning Right And what can a Plea of Right signifie for preserving Right that must never be insisted on We know all Laws make frequent cessions of Right at length to extinguish the Right it self Much more that must do so which is perpetual as often as a stronger hand is pleased to invade it Much more that which must be perpetually yielded on obligations in Conscience And what can restrain the Laity from invading them as often as they please when they are told before that the Persons whose Rights they are must not 〈◊〉 ought not oppose them in it if they will be true to Obligations of Conscience When they are told also that this very consideration of an irresistible force is alone sufficient to oblige them to it Suppose notwithstanding the Bishops not satisfied with what he says to prove their obligation to recede yet he makes it impossible for them to assert their Rights for he discharges the Subjects from Duty to them whether they will or no. He pretends the irresistible force sufficient for this purpose whether the Ecclesiastical Superiors will or no. And how then is it possible for such Ecclesiasticks to assert their own Rights when they are oppressed by the irresistible force and deserted by their own Subjects He allows
promoting it This will therefore put us further upon examining whether the part acted by Cranmer was really contributive to a Reformation Had Reformation been nothing else but a Negative a removal of Papal Tyranny that to be sure was sufficiently ruined by those Principles But Reformation is a mean between Anarchy on one side as well as Tyranny on the other and is therefore equally ruined by either of the Extreams For if we consider that it is the Church which was to be reformed and that the Church as a Church is a Society it can be no Reformation which reduces it to either of the Extreams But of the two that will less deserve the name which perfectly destroys the Government of the Church and thereby dissolves the Society that was the thing to be reformed And these are the plain consequences from those Principles by which Archbishop Cranmer acted If they freed the Church from the Tyranny then in being they naturally introduced a Tyranny of more pernicious consequence than that which had been ejected by them a Tyranny of another Body of Interests frequently inconsistent with hers and withal deprived her of all security from what further Invasions soever the Lay Magistrate should be pleased to make upon her Indeed they deprived her of all possible security for her very being And though these Principles might make those who were acted by them do her kindnesses whilst her disorders lay in excess yet when that Reformation which was advanced by them had reduced her to a just mediocrity whatever should be attempted further would be Injury not Reformation Which ought by all means to make Prudent and well-meaning Historians wary how much soever they might like the things of recommending the Example to Posterity To do so is to encourage Enemies for the future and to commend them for being so when they shall be tempted to think themselves therein to follow the Examples of celebrated Heroes Archbishop Cranmer particularly could upon neither account deserve such Elogies His Principles were not naturally such as were likely to benefit the Church but to ruine her Nor were those Principles consistent with any probability of good meaning to her when he shewed himself so partial to the Magistrate against her not only against the majority of his own Order but against the Principles of his own Education upon so very small appearances on that side and against so great evidence to the contrary As little reason there is for that advantageous Character our Historian gives his other Hero the Duke of Somerset He it was that advanced the Sacriledge of the former Reign against Monasteries and now in the time of his own Protectorship against the Universities themselves Our Historian himself has published a very angry Letter of his to Bishop Ridley for opposing his designed beginnings of it in the suppression of Clare-Hall If it must be represented as Heroical to betray the Rights and rob the Revenues of the Church if it be represented so by Ecclesiasticks themselves how naturally must this tend to the encouraging the like Practices for the future How little does this become the Office of an Ecclesiastical Historian who ought to make the true Interests of the Church the Standard of his censures as they are indeed in themselves the greatest that can be by all Rules of just Estimation I heartily and seriously recommend these things to the second thoughts of that able Author not only as to his Panegyricks upon the Enemies of the Church but as to his frequent Satyrs on his own Order His meaning in both I will not take upon me to censure But let himself judge of the obvious tendency of them in this unhappy Irreligious Age we live in wherein men greedily lay hold on such Authorities as his for countenancing their wicked designs against the Church and Religion in general For my part I cannot see how the Duke of Somerset could reconcile any true zeal for Religion and the Church with his Sacrilegious designs against that very same Church whose Communion was owned by him § X. BUT to return to Archbishop Cranmer I know none of even our present considering Adversaries who either proceed on these Principles as true or who have attempted to reconcile them with the Interests of the Church or the Reformation Even the Historian himself censures them as singular Opinions in the Archbishop And so they were even in the sense of the Bishops of those times as appears from that number of them who were concerned in that Consult Few of them were for those Opinions so much for the Interest of the Secular Prince and none so thoroughly as he Nor wou'd the Court venture to trust the tryal of these Opinions to a Synod of the Bishops This made Bonner ' s Commission who perhaps gave the first Precedent of such a Commission have so few Followers that took out the like Commissions even in those unhappy times Afterwards in the latter end of the Reign of King Henry the VIII and the beginning of King Edward the VI. some more of the Court Faction imitated him There was one of a Bishop of Worcester in the beginning of King Edward ' s time transcribed for our Historians use though not published by him in the same Stile with that of the Archbishop But this might have been a consequence of that Thought of the young King himself expressed in his second Paper for not trusting the Bishops with the entire exercise of the Ecclesiastical Power and perhaps of an Order of Council pursuant to it or at the utmost of the Act made in the last year of King Henry the VIII which we shall mention hereafter But their little constancy in obliging all the Bishops to do so is a great Presumption of the difficult reception these Sacrilegious Principles met with even in those Ages But whatever reception they wet with then it is very manifest that they are singular now Our Historian himself observes that Bonner after his taking out this Commission might well be called one of the Kings Bishops Intimating that he did not deserve the name of Christ ' s. And our Adversaries who have yet appeared against us in this Question have generally owned even our deprived Fathers themselves as valid Bishops as ever both as to the Episcopal Character and as to all exercises of Spiritual Power relating to the Catholick Church notwithstanding the pretended Deprivation They only deny that they have now any Right to their particular districts and Dioceses which being vacated by the Lay Power may therefore excuse their Successors from Intrusion and Usurpation But the Hypothesis of Archbishop Cranmer would better have accounted for all that their Cause obliges them to defend For if the Apostolical Predecessors could derive a Power to our Bishops undeprivable by the Civil Magistrate they might consequently derive to them a Right to districts confined to the exercise of that Spiritual Power as independent on him as the Spiritual Power it self And if
and all their Power as Bishops of the Catholick Church is gone and all they do after the Lay Magistrate has deprived them will be perfect Nullities till they be again confirmed by Power derived from the Civil Magistrates This Hypothesis supposing the Legality of the Civil Power will indeed serve our Adversaries designs to the full But it is as notoriously false as it is notoriously true that there was even in the Apostles time a Discipline exercised independent on the Civil Magistrate And our Adversaries dare not stand by it § XVI THIS extravagant Notion of the Supremacy continued through the next Reign of King Edward the VI. Not only as that same Act continued still unrepealed but as the same Practice which supposed it continued and as no better Explication of the Supremacy was substituted in stead of it Now it was that Archbishop Cranmer took out his new Commission from the King for his Archbishoprick in the style formerly used by Bishop Bonner perfectly adapted to his own singular Opinion Now it was that the Bishop of Worcester took out the like Commission in the very beginning of this Reign Though Bishop Burnet observes that no such form was imposed on Bishop Ridley nor on Bishop Thirlby who were consecrated in the year 1550. In that same year it was that the young King himself expresses his own Opinion in these words But as for Discipline I would wish no Authority given generally to all Bishops but that Commission be given to those that be of the best sort of them to exercise it in their Dioceses By which we may easily understand that Bishop Ridley who did put out Injunctions had singular favour shewn him in that he was permitted to do so So that no general Inferences are to be gathered from his Case Yet even he and such as he were to Act by Commission which is perfectly consistent with the Hypothesis that was so destructive of the Churches Authority The only difference between him and others was that he was to hold his Authority for Life they only during the Princes pleasure But for proving the sense of the Law-makers of those times I rather chuse to insist on the expressions of the Laws themselves And those are very home to this purpose In the Statute 1 Edw. VI. c. 2. They say that all Authority of Jurisdiction Spiritual and Temporal is derived and deducted from the Kings Majesty as Supream Head of these Churches and Realms of England and Ireland They therefore enact that all Processes Ecclesiastical should run in the King's name only that the Teste should be in the name of the Archbishop Bishop or other having Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction who hath the Commission and grant of the Authority Ecclesiastical immediately from the Kings Highness They add withal that the Seal of Jurisdiction was to have the Kings Arms on it as an Acknowledgment from whom the Jurisdiction was derived There are indeed some exceptions in that same Act wherein the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other Bishops are allowed to use their own Seals But considering that the reasons given for their using the King's Arms are general such as extend to all Archbishops and all Spiritual Jurisdictions whatsoever those exceptions cannot argue any independence of the Spiritual Jurisdiction even in the Cases so excepted The Archbishop had a liberty of using his own Seal in Cases of smaller consequence which were not likely to be exempted from the Secular Power when the greater were not and in Dispensations to be granted to the King himself where though the Power had been in general originally derived from the King yet it had not been decent in the Dispensation it self to express its being so For that had been to the same purpose as if the King by his own Authority had dispensed with himself Yet the Power might have been derived from him as that of our ordinary Judges is when they give Sentence against the King in favour of a Subject by virtue of their Commission from the Crown empowering them to do so And the Cases wherein other Bishops are there allowed to use their own Seals are only such wherein their own inferiors are concerned who derive their Power from them which is very consistent with their own deriving their Power from the King Especially when this liberty is granted them by that very Power which pretended to be the Original of all their Episcopal Spiritual Power I mention not now the several Acts sufficiently frequent in this Reign requiring Clergymen to admit to Communion and empowering them to punish by Spiritual Censures though these do also proceed on the same supposal when they are not in execution of Canons made before by Ecclesiastical Authority that even such Spiritual Authority is originally vested in the Lay Magistrate For my design at present is not to enquire how far the Lay Power even the Legislative Power has encroached on the Rights of the Clergy actually but how far they have declared their encroachments included in the Sense of the Supremacy for maintenance of which the Oath was made and which must therefore be maintained by them who would then take the Oath veraciously according to the true meaning of the Legislators But what I have insisted on from this Act shews the Legislators sense of the Supremacy it self § XVII YET though this impious notion of the Supremacy was continued in the Reign of this excellent Prince who did not live to that maturity of his own Judgment that might otherwise have enabled him to have seen the falshood and all tendency of these ill Principles which had been instilled into him by his Godfather who was always the most forward promoter of them yet they were first introduced in the Sacrilegious Reign of King Henry the VIII And why should any Posterity have regard for such an Age as that was which had themselves so little for all the Acts of their own Ancestors Why should any who regard Religion have any for them who brought in principles so destructive to all Religion and to the very Fundamentals of the Church as it is a Society and a Communion Atheists themselves who have no concern for the Truth of Religion yet cannot chuse but be concerned for the security Religion gives them in their present enjoyments by the Opinions of those who do in earnest believe it true and for the restraint it lays on such not to molest them in their possessions of what they are Legally intituled to when it is otherwise in their Power forcibly to dispossess them That wicked generation broke even this security All that could have been done had been done by their Ancestors for the security of Magna Charta and the Rights of the Clergy concerned in it as the first and sacredest part of it It had been confirmed by solemn and frequently repeated grants of all the Parties who had a Right to confirm it Not only so but all the Obligations for observing it were laid on their
given formerly that their favours might not be perverted against the Interests of the Lay Power by which they had been originally granted Thus it appears had than Acts of Parliament were really true concerning all the Jurisdiction of the Spiritual Courts concerning the seculars annexed to Spirituals And even in the Spiritual Causes in which the Spiritual Judges had a Right Antecedently to the grants of Princes yet the Right of punishing refractory Persons with Temporal Coercions was the Prince's and truly derived from the grants of the Lay Magistrates So that indeed all Parts of the Spiritual Jurisdiction had some thing of Original Secular Right and therefore resumable by Princes so far as they should judge it necessary for their own Preservation And so far it was necessary to resume it and justifiable too as it was necessary for reducing Spiritual Persons to their Original due Subjection in Temporals for which the Temporals annexed to Spirituals were abundantly sufficient For this would perfectly reduce them to the same subjection under which they were before those favours were granted by the Secular Magistrate And more than that he cannot justly challenge as his due These therefore are the only Spiritual Causes that can be meant in the Oath by this explication of Queen Elizabeth and will in some sense reach all Spiritual Jurisdiction and all Spiritual Causes as there was a mixture of both Powers in the Proceedings of the Spiritual Courts of those times And this is the Explication of the word Spiritual given as I remember by Sir John Davyes in Lalor ' s Case But this will not justifie the Magistrates assuming what never belonged to him his intermeddling with matters of Faith and with Crimes not barely as Crimes injurious to the State but as Scandals to our Religion Much less will it justifie his presuming to give Commissions for inflicting Spiritual Censures From the belief of the allowableness of these things the Queens Explication will fully discharge us Yet without these things he can never pretend to a Power of depriving our Bishops of their Spiritual Power nor of absolving us from our duty to them as over us in the Lord. § XXII NOR is there any reason to doubt of the sufficiency of this Explication of the Queen for satisfying our Consciences in this Age as well as in that wherein these Injunctions were first set forth I am very well aware of the pretences of the violent Party concerning the Canons of 1640. which yet our ablest and most impartial Lawyers think to be still in force Indeed the whole Supremacy in Ecclesiasticals has been by all the Acts made in favour of it vested in the King without the least mention of the Secular States And accordingly the Prince ' s Act in such affairs has been always thought sufficient for giving Authority to them without any confirmation in Parliament And that not only for his own time but for ever till a Revocation of it by the same Power by which it was established Who doubts but the XXXIX Articles and the Canons made in year MDCIII are still good Ecclesiastical Law Yet what Authority have they to make them so besides the Regal confirmation of Queen Elizabeth for the former and of King James the I. for the later Nor was it counted material for this purpose whether any Parliament was sitting or not when the Prince was pleased to ratifie such Ecclesiastical proceedings Indeed I see no reason why it should be counted necessary that a Parliament should be at the same time when the Parliament was not necessary for their confirmation The Act for the Kings Authority in confirming Constitutions Ecclesiastical 25 Hen. VIII 19. requires no more confirmation than that of the King And King James the I. grounds his confirmation of the Canons on that Act which yet none thinks extinguished with his Person There might have been more pretended for the necessity of a Parliament sitting at the same time with the Convocation antiently than can be now Then the Clergy acted Parliamentarily and had their Members in both Houses Yet not so but that even then we have had several Synods distinct from the Parliament Now the Convocation even in Parliament time is notwithstanding a distinct Body and a distinct Assembly from it since the Clergy have been excluded from the lower House and the Bishops sit in the upper House rather on account of their Baronies than their Spiritual Jurisdiction And their meeting and acting wholly depends on the Pleasure of the Prince and is not confined to Parliament times in the Act now mentioned I see not therefore why the Injunctions may not be counted Ecclesiastical Law still on the account of the Regal Authority by which they were set forth and why the explication given in them of the Oath of Supremacy may not still be allowed as a good Authority If it be requisite that the Oath have a certain Sense the Explication of the Oath cannot be esteemed a more temporary thing than the Oath it self is This at least will be reasonable that this Sense be taken for the true Sense of the Oath till it be contradicted and another substituted instead of it by the same Authority § XXIII AND yet though this should not hold we have all the confirmation of this Particular of the Injunctions that we need desire The grant of the Supremacy to the King in the Act now mentioned under Henry the VIII was grounded on the surrendry of the Clergy as appears from the Preamble of the Act it self What therefore was surrendred by the Clergy that same was the power that by the Act was vested in the Crown But concerning the Sense of the surrendry none can be supposed more competent Witnesses than the Body by which the surrendry was made Especially when the Act by which the Oath is explained by the Clergy is not only allowed but Authorized by the Regal power to which the surrendry was made Upon this account we we have reason to believe the Explication so given to be the sense of both parties concerned in the surrendry and to be as well accepted by the Prince as given by the Clergy which should alone be sufficient to satisfy all the reasonable Scruples that can be in this matter At least the Judgment of our Church must needs be satisfactory and a sufficient Authority to explain her own sense in this matter and to shew what liberty may be allowed a Member of our Church in it consistently with the principles of his Communion and his pretentions of being a Member of it and withall how other Acts of the same Church are to be interpreted And the sense of our Church of England both concerning the Oath and the now-mentioned Injunction is manifest in her xxxviith Article So she there teaches us Where we attribute to the Queens Majesty the chief Government by which Titles we understand the minds of some dangerous folks to be offended we give not to our Princes the ministring
particulars of it were that our Church does not tell us here Yet without an enumeration of particulars none can tell what particulars were intended But these are rather to be judged of by other passages where the same Church tells us what that Authority was which she thought the Godly Kings had amongst the Jews This she her self tells us expresly in the Article She there tells us that the only Prerogative which we see to have been given always to all Godly Princes in Holy Scriptures by God himself is that they should rule all Estates and Degrees committed to their charge by God whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal and restrain with the Civil Sword the stubborn and evil doers If this Right of ruling the Ecclesiasticks be all that is asserted to the Prince by the Supremacy in Spirituals and that very ruling be only a restraining them with the Civil Sword these two things are so very exactly agreeable to our Doctrine that we can by no means be concerned in the censures mentioned in the Canon I might withall mention what I have already insisted on the approbation of the Explication in the Injunction in the same Article by which we are excused from believing that the Lay Magistrate has any Right to deprive Bishops of their Spiritual Power or from believing any thing from whence that may be solidly inferred For why should we not interprete the sense of our Church of England in her Canons by her sense in her Articles Why should we suspect she meant to Excommunicate her Members by her Canons where no particulars are expressed for particularly disowning that extent of secular Authority in Spirituals which in her Articles where she states the Question and tells us what she takes to be the Rights of Princes as expressed in the Scriptures she does not mention as a Right of the Jewish Kings nor consequently of our own We deny not our Kings a Right of driving Bishops away by the Civil Sword if no more be insisted on from the Case of Solomon and Abiathar And no more can be pretended to be the Right of our Kings by this Explication in the Article This is in truth an antient Right of the Supream Power even before it was Christian. The Emperor Aurelian had it though then a Pagan and afterwards a Persecutor and practised it with the approbation of the Primitive Church against Samosatenus Exile and imprisonment and confinement to a certain place such as that was of Abiathar to Anathoth we grant to be Temporal Punishments in the Power and Right of him whoever he be who has the Right of managing the Civil Sword But it is very plain by this Interpretation of the Queens Injunction allowed in this Article that our Church did not oblige to the rigour of some mens private opinions and particularly not to these of Archbishop Cranmer concerning the dependence of the Sacordotal Power on the Prince And therefore though there have been those who from that Case of Abiathar have inferred the deprivableness of the Episcopal Power by the Lay Magistrate there is no reason to believe that ever our Church in that Canon intended to exclude all such from Communion who could not come up to the heights of these private Oâ—â—â—ators The rather this is credible because I have already shewn that even in the times of King Henry the VIII and of King Edward the VI. when these Opinions were believed by the Legislators themselves they notwithstanding had not the confidence to impose them How much less were they likely to 〈◊〉 under King James the 〈◊〉 when these Opinions were generally disbelieved I am sure those Fathers who made those Canons could not with the least likelihood pretend that in those Times of the Primitive Church when the first Christian Emperors governed this Opinion was believed that all Spiritual Power was derived from the Emperor and was therefore deprivable by him Yet if they did not they could not give this Right of depriving Bishops of their Spiritual Power to our Kings considering that in this very same Canon they do not pretend to give our Kings any other Rights than what were owned in the first Christian Emperors by the Primitive Christians § XXVI WELL. But however our Adversaries think that the sense of the Legislators as explained by the Practise is against us that Laymen have been permitted the use of Spiritual Censures Such was that Case of Cromwell Such that of the Lay Civilians still permitted by the Spiritual Courts and defended by the Act of Parliament Such the late Commission Court empowered to suspend and deprive the Bishop of London consisting of Laicks mixt with Ecclesiasticks and a Lay President But Facts alone do by no means signifie the mind of the Legislators unless they be approved and agreeable to Principles Much less can they pretend to be Rules in Conscience to the Obedience of the Subjects For Princes do many things upon exigencies of state which even themselves do not approve when they are free from those exigencies So far they would be even themselves from imposing them generally on their Subjects Consciences And the Facts we are speaking of have been so rare and discontinued that even that is suffiâ—ient to shew that even the Princes themselves have done them unwillingly and with regret and under the necessity of those very exigencies I need not repeat what I have already observed to this purpose in the Reigns of King Henry the VIII and King Edward the VI. As for the Commission Court it is no wonder if King James the II. took the utmost liberty that Protestant Lawyers allowed as Law It is rather to be admir'd that Protestant Lawyers should help him to an Expedient so hurtful to their own Communion and that upon such slender grounds as a few Facts which they were pleased upon so little probability to allow as Precedents The Bishop of London then when it was his own case did not think the Laymen his competent Judges in order to his suspension or deprivation from Spirituals And those Lawyers who had so much zeal not as to pervert them but keep them equal and unbiassed between both extreams did think his Plea not only equitable in conscience but warrantable in Law It were well his Lordship and those Lawyers would recollect how applicable those things are to our present case which themselves so zealously defended then As for the Act in favour of the Lay Civilians it self complains of the rareness of such Examples then because of the averseness of the Bishops to imploy such persons on such affairs That is sufficient to shew how much it was even then against the sense of the Ecclesiasticks who were the only competent Judges of Right in matters of this nature with regard to Conscience Since that time it has been still more disagreeable though the Practice has continued on account of that Act in favour of it Yet it has furnished the Non-conformists with an Objection and that such an one
prepassessed by our Bishops must make the Schism and the erection of Altar against Altar imputable to them by the Principles now mention'd For theirs must be the Bishops which are Consecrated into full Sees Theirs therefore in the Reasoning of St. Cyprian ' s Age must be foras must be alieni must be not secundi but nulli And therefore the Communion which has since owned them must be divided from the true peculiar People and from all solid Claim to the Priviledges of that People § XXXIII BUT to return from whence I digressed to the Case of our Protestant Bishops true Antiquity was so far from allowing defects in Originals to invalidate Successions at such a distance as ours is from the beginning of the Reformation that they thought it not only most prudent but most just to silence such Disputes when the Persons injured were deceased and their Right extinguished with them having left no Succession behind them that might perpetuate their first Original Right In this Case they thought the Possession it self a sufficient Title to Right where there was none out of Possession that could pretend a better Right And that so as to look on it as just before GOD and as obliging the Consciences of the Subjects who had it in their Power to rebell not to do so This seems to be the ground of allowing Prescription by the Law of Nations sufficient to make a Cause just that had not been so otherwise It is indeed the Interest of Mankind in general which seems to have been the ground of this Law of Nations that all Controversies should at length have an end And it is agreeable to the same Interest that process of time and such a peaceable Possession as has no Rival that has a better Right should be allowed as an Expedient for ending Controversies concerning Right and therefore for determining the Right it self The Mischief to the Publick in disturbing a present Possession is more than can be recompensed by a Right that is no more than equal to that which has Possession already And there is no Succession in the World but in a Revolution of many Ages has some unjustifiable turns which must make its present Settlement litigious if such distant Injuries must be allowed on equal terms to do so This therefore makes it the common Interest to allow Prescription on such terms for a determination of Right And there is reason to believe that GOD who as Governour of the World is determined by the Publick Interest will judge it so and punish such as violate it accordingly Nor is there any thing in the Nature of Ecclesiastical Government as it is a Government of external Bodies and managed by Men of the like infirmities with those who are engaged in the Civil Government that can secure it against the like Violences of ambitious and unreasonable Men who will judge too partially in their own Case But it is no way probable that GOD will make any Souls but their own Responsible for such consequences as are by others unavoidable Yet such violences upon the Government may sometimes make a Breach in the due Succession and affect the direct conveyances of that Authority from GOD which is requisite for giving a Title to those Spiritual benefits to Souls which are the great designs of Ecclesiastical Communion When therefore this falls out to be the Case there will be reason to believe that GOD who judges himself as much obliged by the equity of his Covenants as Men usually think themselves obliged by the letter of theirs will perform what his Covenant would in Equity oblige him to perform notwithstanding any failings on Mans side which by the common Nature of such a visible Body as he has been pleased to constitute in his Church are unavoidable to truly diligent and Pious Communicants For this being a necessity of his own making in Constituting his Church such a Body when he might have made it otherwise his equity is more concerned to provide for the consequences of it And there is reason to believe that he has done it the same way as he has done in other visible Bodies of the like constitution As therefore by confirming present settlements where no better claim is in view GOD by the Law of Nations has taken care for the Bodies of Subjects in Secular Societies that they may not miscarry by ignorance of the duty justly expected from them in the station wherein he has placed them So there is reason to believe that he has not taken less care for the more valuable Interest of their Souls that they may not fail of the Favours designed for them by a necessity of his own contrivance and by them perfectly unavoidable And seeing he has warned us of no other 't is highly reasonable to presume he has Secur'd the validity of his conveyances by the Spiritual the same way he has done in the Secular Government by ratifying the present Constitution when it is not injurious to a better Title notwithstanding any faileurs unknown and unavoidable by the Subjects on account of the station which he has given them in it § XXXIV ACCORDINGLY it was Observable that even the two great Factions of the Donatists whose whole Schism was grounded upon an Extravagant Zeal for Discipline when they charged each other as it should seem very truly with being Traditors both of them being equally guilty they agreed to let the Controversy fall and refer it to GOD without ingaging in any farther Schism upon it Yet the Delivering up their Bibles to be Burnt was in their opinion at least such an Act of Communion with the Devil as had made the Persons who had really been guilty of it uncapable not only of Episcopal but also even of Lay-Communion which incapacity had it been proved might have made all their following Episcopal Acts questionable and justifyed Schisms in opposition to them by the same Principles by which both those Factions Defended their common Schism against the Catholick Church for the pretended Traditions of Caecilian and Felix And in this case these early Schismaticks are the more to be regarded because the Catholicks agreed with them in it that such Cases being left to GOD would not though the Facts had proed true prejudice the consequent Authority and Communion with GOD when no injury was done nor any Schism formed upon it So far they were of their minds in this particular that it is the professed Subject of those who wrote against them that such Personal crimes as these which if debated between Persons might have given one Person the advantage over another could not involve Posterity in the same guilt when there was no injury committed by it So far I say they were of their mind in this particular that they turn their Practice in this Case into an Argument against themselves as a professed condemnation of those Principles on which themselves proceeded in dividing from the Catholick Church Not much unlike this was
could hinder the Bishops and the People too who were rightly informed concerning the nature of the Spiritual Society from judging Consecration necessary for obtaining that Power which is purely Spiritual And it 's being thought necessary by the Bishops was enough to oblige the Consecrating Bishops to give and the Consecrated Bishops to receive that Spiritual Power which in their Opinion could not be had otherwise then by their Consecration And intending to give and receive it what could hinder their Intentions from the usual Success when the same Solemnities were used by Persons equally Authorized to give it with those who had been used to give it formerly Nor could the Magistrate expect that to gratify him they shou'd defraud themselves of any Priviledges or Powers received by their Ancestors and convey'd as before from Persons empower'd to administer the Solemnities and Rites of Consecration Such a Singular obsequiousness and self-denial is this He could not I say either in Conscience or Equity pretend to expect unless He had secur'd it in express Terms and exacted a particular Profession a Profession that might make it inconsistent with the Bishops Veracity to give or receive the usuall Power as by the same Solemnities and Authority it had been given and received by their Ancestors Rather on the contrary the Permission of the samâ— Solemn Rites and the same Authority in administring them as before without any new Security against the usual effect is an Argument the Prince left it to their Liberty to intend the giving and receiving the same Spiritual Power from CHRIST as had been usually conveyed by the same Ministry He therefore contented him self with the Security given him by the Patents that from whomsoever they received the Right of being Bishops in regard to Conscience yet they should not be Bishops in Law intitled to Baronies and revenues any longer than he pleased This being so it will follow that what they did before Deprivation was valid in Conscience and in Law also but what they did afterwards though that might also be valid in Concsience yet it was not to be vaild in Law Our first Consecrations were of the former sort and therefore were not the less valid in Conscience for having the accession of a validity in Law Thus our first Consecrations might derive a Title to our Present Fathers in Conscience not deprivable at the pleasure of the Civil Magistrate with regard to Conscience GOD awaken the zeal of our late Fathers and Brethern for asserting these Rights in Conscience which are so essential to their being our Fathers and our Brethren and for the Religion and Communion of our late common Churches in these Kingdoms And may our common LORD plead the Cause of his distressed and deserted Spouse THE END The Independency of Bishops on the Sate pretended to be contrary to the Oath of Supremacy * Injunct Q. Eliz. An. 1559. 5 †Eliz. 1. In App. to Bishop Burnet's 〈◊〉 of Refor And contrary to the Principles on which the Popish Bishops were deprived and our present Succession depends The Authority of the Primitive Catholick Church is greater than that of any modern particular one * P. 14. †Defence of the Church of England p. 20 21 22. Even with regard to our particular Church our behaviour signifies more love and concern for her than that of our late Brethren does We shew our greater 〈◊〉 to our Church particularly in not yielding so 〈◊〉 as they do that she should lose bee Rights on any terms What we do is perfectly consistent with the Authorized explication of the Supremacy vested in the King Arch-â—p Cranmers Opinions in 〈◊〉 cury the VIII and Edw. the VI. time perfectly destructive of all Spiritual Authoâ—â—â— See those Papers published by Bishop Stallingfleet Iren. c. ult and by Bishop Burnet Hist. of Resor Part. I. Collect. n. XXI B. III. Part II. Collect. Num. 2. Archbishâ—p Câ—â—â—mer's Au 〈…〉 〈◊〉 these matter noâ— at all Vol. I. Book III p. 267. It is not for the Interest of the Church or the Reformation that his Authority iâ— these things should be regarded Part. I. B. III. p. 204. Part. II. B. II. p. 243. His Opinions in this matter no more agreeable to the sense of our present Adversaries than to ours P. I. B. III. p. 267. The Supremacy and Title of Head when first assumed by Henry the VIII consistent with our Doctrine 24 Hen. VIII 12. When the King gave the encroaching Commission to Cr 〈…〉 it was not 〈◊〉 â—greeable to the tru 〈…〉 of the Legis 〈…〉 Vol. I. B. III. R. 278. The Appeal allowed from the Archbishops to the Kings Commissioners in Chancery no Argument of any Spiritual Power derived from the King 25 H. VIII 10. The Supremacy explained 26 H. VIII 1. not contrary to our Doctrine in this Cause Addend to the First Vol. Num. V. The 〈◊〉 as explained in 37 H. VIII 17. full to our Adversaries purpose and the sense of Archbishop Cranmer 25 II. VIII 〈◊〉 19. The same Notion of the Supremacy continued also under King Edw. the VI. Bishop Burnet Vol. II. Col. B. II. The Kings Re 〈…〉 Pap. 2. King Henry the VIIIths Reign by no means to be allowed for an Age of Precedents Queen Elizabeth explained the Supremacy in a Sense conâ—stent with our Principles Bishop Burnet p. 11. B. 111. Col. num 2. 1 Eliz. 1. Injunct by Queen Esâ—z Edition by Bishop Sparrow p. 77. 78. That Explication discharges'us now from any obligation to believe Archbishop Cranmer's Principles Resor Leg. Eccl. de Excom c. 2. De offic Jurisd omn. Judic What the Queen requires we can sincerely undertake and in a sense fully answering the Imposition of the Legislators â—he Queen's Injunction excuses us from swearing to the Supremacy over Spiriritual Persons in Causes purely Spiritual This Injunction of Queen Elizabeth still in force The Explication in the Injunctions authorized by our Church in her XXXVIIth Article The same Explication of the Injunctions confirmed also by Act of Parliament 5 Elizab. 1. It is rather supposed than contradicted by the second Canon The Practise of the Supremacy to our times no argument of the imposed sense of the Legislators against us Can. 12â— The Objection proposed that our present Protestant Succession seems to depend on the validity of the Deprivation of the last Popish Bishops which was no other than Laical The Lay Deprivations of those Popish Bishops who took out Lay Commissions for their Episcopal Power does not by any just consequence affect our present Case Vid. Specimen against Bishop Burnet p. 52 53. The Popish Bishops were of another Communion And therefore needed no other Deprivation than that of the Lay Magistrate This Doctrine agreeable exactly to the Sense and Practise of Antiquity If the Popish Bishops had had a better Title yet that could not have illegitimated Successors any longer than their own Lives If the Popish Bishops then had the better Title yet their discontinuance of their Succession has made their Title worse now 〈◊〉 Settle 〈…〉 give Right â—â—ere no better â—iâ—ht is injured by them This is proved from the Donatist and Luciferian Disputes Opt. Milev cont Parmenian L. 1. Artem. Onâ—ir 〈◊〉 1. c. 14 Adv. Euciferian They who took out Lay-Commissions for their Episcopal Power might yet keep their better Title Part. II. §. LV. p. 133. Ib. p. 131.