necessity of a Soveraign Power over the affairs of Religion from their concernment in the Peace and Government of the world I thence proceeded to enquire where and in whom it ought to reside and having shewn the inconsistency of erecting two Supreme Secular Powers one over Civil and the other over Ecclesiastical Causes I concluded that the Supreme Government of every Common-wealth must of necessity be Universal Absolute and Uncontroulable in that it must extend its Jurisdiction as well to affairs of Religion as to affairs of State because they are so strongly influential upon the Interests of Mankind and the Ends of Government And now is this to make the Ecclesiastical Authority of the Civil Magistrate absolutely Paramount without regard to any other Jurisdiction of what nature soever when I only maintain it in defiance to the claims of any other humane Power For this was the only subject of that enquiry And when I asserted the Soveraign Power to be Absolute and Uncontroulable 't is apparent nothing else could be intended than that it is not to be controuled by any distinct Power whether of the Pope or the Presbytery for they are the only Rivals of the Princes of Christendome And when I asserted it to be Universal and Absolute no man unless he would give his mind to misunderstanding could understand it in any other sense than that it was not confined to matters purely Civil but extended its Jurisdiction to matters of an Ecclesiastical Importance upon which account alone I determin'd it to be Absolute Universal and Uncontroulable This is the main and the fundamental Article of the Reformation and that which distinguishes the truly Orthodox and Catholick Protestant both from Popish and Presbyterian Recusants and is the only fence to secure the Thrones of Princes against the dangerous encroachments of those bold and daring Sects and therefore from so plain and avowed a Truth to charge me for ascribing in general terms an Absolute Universal and Uncontroulable power to the Civil Magistrate over the Consciences of men in matters of Religion argues more boldness than wit and discretion and gives us ground to suspect that these men are not less forsaken of shame and modesty than they are of Providence for it must needs be a very bold face and a very hard forehead that could ever venture to obtrude such palpable and disingenuous Abuses upon the world This I think was answer enough for him and is I am sure too much for you But when beside this I have drawn up a brief and plain account of the parts the coherence and the design of my first Treatise to prevent you from abusing the People for the future with such rude mistakes and pervertings for you to repeat the very same Leasing is if any thing is false Heraldry 't is brass upon brass And when I have there so stated the Controversy as to provide with equal care and caution against the Inconveniences of both extremes an unlimited Power on the one hand and an unbounded Licence on the other when the bounds I have proposed are so very easie to be observed and so unnecessary to be transgress'd by all Partys concern'd viz. that Governours only take care not to impose things certainly and apparently evil and that subjects be not allowed to plead Conscience for disobedience in any other case and when I have so carefully avoided all kind of severity more than is absolutely necessary to the preservation of Government and the peace of Mankind with many other things so easie and so obvious that there is scarce any thing to excuse me from Impertinency in taking so much pains to prove them but their Manifest Necessity After all this I beseech you by the tyes of ancient Friendship deal clearly and candidly with me and tell me upon what other principles I could have discoursed more safely or more innocently upon this Argument though it is possible I might have done it more wittily by the help of your friend Bays who supposing two Kings of Brentford one for example a Secular the other an Ecclesiastical King remarks upon it that the People having the same Relations to both the same Affections the same Duty the same Obedience and all that would be divided among themselves in point of devoir and interest how to behave themselves equally between them these Kings differing sometimes in particular though in the main they agree And therefore what if they should agree to divide their Empire and one be King of the Land-men and the other of the Water-men or one to rule by night and the other by day or take their turns of Government by weeks or months but this device would not do for where there are two supreme Powers in the same Common-wealth there can be no avoiding civil jars and bloody-noses So that for this reason had I been a Senator of Brentford I should have humbly proposed that either King Phys or vice versâ King Ush might be vested with the absolute and uncontroulable Power of the Empire i. e. with both kinds of jurisdiction because otherwise as he proceeds shrewdly the People being embarrast by their equal Tyes to both and the Sovereign's concern'd in a reciprocal regard to their own Interest as to the good of the People may make a certain kind of a you understand me upon which there does arise several disputes turmoils heart-burnings and all that Ay this is pregnant and demonstrative and does not sob us off as you always do with empty tittle tattle without any colour or pretence of reason And had it come to hand time enough I might have been as much beholden to it for sence as you have been for wit for so you will have it that I have pilfer'd all my best or in your own Poetick phrase rapping flowers out of Play-books and several choice ones you have in spite of Almanacks and Chronology discover'd in my first Book that were by all means filch'd out of this very Play though as fortune would have it this was not made any way publick till above two years after that But waving the advantage of Bays his Assistance and every body else and relying upon my own single strength and presumption after all my care and pains to way-lay Calumny could I ever suspect any thing in the shape of a man so desperately fallen from all sense of Conscience or Modesty as to upbraid me with ascribing an infinite jurisdiction to Princes without any regard to the Divine Laws Well! I now see what it is for a man to live in his study and be unacquainted with the world for my part I could never have supposed it possible that Mankind could ever by Travel and Conversation emprove it self to such an height of Confidence Especially when there is not any one Writer extant either ancient or modern that I know of that has so vehemently and industriously asserted the hoopableness of all humane Authority as I have done And when in particular I have spent two
and yours to demand it and whether he give it or give it not as he sees it most convenient for the ends of Government concerns neither Me nor my Writings seeing in both he exercises that Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction that I have asserted to be inherent in the Supreme Power At least you see what reason I had to discourse of the Kings Power rather than the Churches because that was the only Principle you endeavour'd to batter down and if once you could but tye up the Secular Arm you valued not the strokes of the Spiritual Rod so that had I opposed the Power of the Church to your attempts of Anarchy it had been as wisely design'd as to send forth a party of Church-men to encounter a Brigade of Horse with their Spiritual Weapons But because I see you are resolved not to spare for laying on load enough and have the confidence to impeach or suspect a man of any thing that is odious if he do not expresly protest against it and because some other men that I have more reason to satisfie than your self have fallen into the same suspicion of Erastianism take this short and plain account of the whole business for the prevention of future mistakes Religion then has a twofold End either as it relates to the affairs of this present life or of that which is to come and so is enforced with a twofold Jurisdiction or Power of Coaction suitable to its respective ends Now its design in reference to this present world is the peace of Societies and the security of Government and therefore it must be enforced by such sanctions as are proper to the attainment of that end and those are secular rewards and punishments so that this being the Office of the Civil Magistrate or as you word it according to that deep respect you profess to Princes the trade of Kings to provide for the safety or welfare of the Common-wealth all his Jurisdiction must be temporal and backt only by external inflictions as suited only to the ends of his Authority His Power then over Religion is of a Political Nature and is intended to the same purpose as his Power over all other affairs of State i. e. the publique peace and prosperity and therefore need only be exercised in the same way of Jurisdiction and this is that Authority that I have all along asserted to be the natural and unalienable Right of all Sovereign Princes But then secondly its design in reference to the world to come is purely spiritual and relates only to the welfare of the Souls of men hereafter and therefore is to be prosecuted by such enforcements as are apt to govern Souls without laying restraints upon their bodies Now the only sanctions proper in this case are the rewards and punishments of another life and this is the power of the Ecclesiastick State Authoritatively to declare the Laws of God to the People and to enforce their obedience to them from the threatnings and promises of the Gospel And to this purpose did our blessed Saviour depute the Apostolical order or succession of Apostles to superintend the Affairs of his Holy Catholique Church it is the right of their Office and Commission to consult advise and determine in all disputes that concern the Government and the welfare of all Christian Assemblies and their Decrees are obligatory upon the Consciences of men by vertue of their own proper Authority and under their own proper penalties For as all their Power is meerly spiritual so are all the Sanctions of their Laws and therefore though they cannot by vertue of their own inherent Jurisdiction punish the disobedient with Civil and Secular inflictions yet may they require and demand obedience to their constitutions under pain of the Divine displeasure and the lash of the Apostolical Rod and their sentence when regularly passed upon refractory offenders is valid and terrible as a decree of heaven and if there be any truth or sense in our Saviours words to the Colledge of Apostles that whatsoever they shall bind on Earth shall be bound in Heaven their Censures shall be approved and ratified by the judgement of the Almighty And that man deserves the wrath of God that is want only rebellious and incorrigible to the soft and gentle discipline of his Church this is such a desperate and malicious peevishness that it does of it self consign a man up to final contumacy and utter impenitence He is too stubborn and too impudent to be reclaim'd that dares rashly bid defiance to the wisdom and authority of his ghostly guides and governours but when the exterminating sentence is passed upon the Offender it smites like the sword of an Angel it throws him out of the Church and the ordinary capacities of Mercy and delivers him up to the wrath and judgment of God And this is no more than what is necessary to the very Being and Preservation of all Society in that Society cannot subsist without Order nor Order without Authority nor Authority without a Power of requiring and enforcing Obedience and therefore if our Saviour have founded a Church in the world and does design its continuance to the end of it it is necessary he should provide for its Preservation by delegating some peculiar persons to govern and guide the Society by Laws and Penalties otherwise his Church were no better than a wild and ungovernable Rabble that only meet together by chance or by humour and are under no enforcements of orderly and peaceable behaviour And this would be a worthy representation of the Church of Christ that it is only a Rout of rude People without Law or Government But as it is necessary that Ecclesiastical Affairs should be govern'd so is it that this should be done by Ecclesiastical persons whose profession and peculiar employment it is to study and understand those matters and 't is but reasonable to relye upon their judgement who ought to be presumed best skill'd in the nature of the thing it is no more than what common prudence directs to in all other affairs of life to consult and trust every man in his own profession we do not apply our selves to Physicians for the settlement of our Estates nor to Lawyers for the preservation and recovery of our healths But men are to be entrusted and employed with regard to their own proper skill and office and therefore though we should set aside the express Authority of our Saviours commission to the Apostles and their Successours for the perpetual Government of his Church the very rules of common prudence will cast the management of Ecclesiastical matters upon Ecclesiastical persons and this is so avowed a principle among mankind that the Jurisdiction proper to the Church was never yet invaded by any Laicks till t'other day the Tradesmen and Burgers of the Corporation of Geneva banish'd their Prince and Bishop and then took the Government both of Church and State into their own hands and seated the Power of the
Keys in Mr. Mayor and the Town-Clerk and issued out Excommunications under the Town Seal and every Fisherman upon the Lake Lemane if he were a Livery man of the City immediately became an Apostle and the Spirit of Infallibility forsook the whole Order of Church-men and setled upon every illiterate Mechanick that had a bold Face and a loose Tongue And with what Apostolical Wisdome and Gravity they made Religion it self ridiculous Mr. Calvin himself has inform'd us particularly in the cases of Bertileir and Perin who were absolved from the Sentence of Excommunication by the Common-Council and under the Town-Seal And 't is observable that those States that have made bold to despise or disregard the Power of the Clergy have always first prostituted the Revenues of the Church to the worst of men and in a little time the Government of it to the Scorn and Contempt of the Common Rabble And therefore all wise and pious Princes have ever chosen to govern Religion by the Counsel and Assistance of their Clergy and to be determined in Enquiries of Faith by their Decrees and Declarations for though all Power of External Coercion be vested in the Civil Magistrate yet that of teaching and declaring the Law of God is the Right and Office of Ecclesiasticks so that though they cannot force Princes to confirm and ratifie their Decrees yet may Princes be obliged by Vertue of an Higher Authority by regard to Piety and Religion by the Order and Decency of things to have reference to their Judgments though if they will not it is not in the Power of the Church to call them to an account for their Proceedings as the men of Rome and Geneva talk That shall be demanded at an higher Judicature they can only declare and discharge their Duty and leave the pursuance of their Cause to the Judgment of God For in all Affairs whatsoever capable of External Cognizance the Supreme Civil Power must and will over-rule this is absolutely necessary to the Order and Preservation of Government and the World must be govern'd as they will or not be govern'd at all And thus have I briefly proved that the Clergy must be vested with some Power peculiar to themselves both from the Institution of Christ and the nature of Society for as much as the Constitution of the Church as such is distinct from that of the Civil State so that all Christians are obliged to the Visible Profession of the Name of Christ not only without the leave but against the Edicts of the Supreme Authority of Kingdomes and Common-wealths The next thing to be consider'd against Erastus is that their Office is not merely declarative or ministerial but carries proper jurisdiction in all the Acts and Exercises of its Power and enforces all its Decrees by Penalties and Inflictions and wherever we find Coercion there is all that can be required to the Nature and Exercise of Jurisdiction that is nothing else but a Power of Imposing Laws and Inflicting Punishments and whoever has a Right to both these Acts of Government has all that Authority that is proper to Empire and Dominion and whatsoever Privileges and Prerogatives of absolute Sovereignty we can imagine they are all reducible to one of these swo Heads either a Power of requiring Obedience to its Commands or of punishing Disobedience by its Penalties and both these are apparently included in the Priestly Office that consists of two parts first the Authoritative Power of Preaching whereby they are enabled to declare Divine Laws under Penalty of the Divine Displeasure and this is proper Legislation and is declared to be so in his Original Commission granted by our Saviour to his Apostles and their Successours to the End of the World in that he sent them as his Father sent him to teach or disciple all Nations whereby he derived upon them the same Power that himself was furnisht with from above to pursue the same ends so that if he himself were entrusted with any proper Jurisdiction he has conveyed and imparted the same to the Apostolical Office and Order and that he was so is an unquestionable and granted Case on all sides and therefore he himself founds the Validity of their Commission upon the Right of his Power All Power in Heaven and Earth says he is given me of my Father therefore go c. I am now enthroned Sovereign Lord of the whole Creation and the Exercise of all my Fathers Power is entrusted to my Management and therefore in the first place I appoint and Authorize you and your Successors in my Name and by Vertue of my Supremacy to take care of the Guidance and Instruction of my Church this is the Office and Power to which you are deputed next and immediately under my self in the Discharge and Execution whereof I engage all my Power to be immediately assistant to you to the end of the World So that it is plain that their Power of Preaching and Declaring the Laws of the Gospel is properly Authoritative and of the same Nature though of a Subordinate force with our Saviours own Dominion over Mankind and all Men by Vertue of his Command and his Commission are bound to give Obedience to their Doctrines in the right and Faithful Discharge of their Trusts as to the Authorized Stewards of his Mysteries And then as for the other part of the Power of the Keys or Church Censures it is as full of Jurisdiction as any Secular Power whatsoever it judges gives Sentence and inflicts Punishment in Criminal Causes and though they do not execute their own Judgment but leave it to the Divine Justice yet where God has promised to abett their Censures by his immediate Power 't is the same thing as to all the purposes of Government as if it were done by the stroke of their own Arm and though they did but only minister to the Divine Judgement as to these immediate Inflictions of Heaven yet the sentence it self is a severe instance and exercise of Coercive Jurisdiction it cuts a man off from all the Advantages of the Communion of Saints and of our Saviours Incarnation and that is a Capital Execution and more affrightful to any man that makes Profession of the Christian Faith than all the Rods and Axes and Pillories and Whipping-posts of the Secular Power And as their Authority carries in it true and proper Jurisdiction so is it in its Kind Supreme Universal and Uncontroulable and extends to all Nations Ages and Conditions Kings and Princes are subject to the Spiritual Authority of their Doctrines they have Souls to be conducted to Heaven as well as their Subjects and therefore stand as much in need of Spiritual Guides and Instructors for if Christ have intrusted the Spiritual Government of his Church in the hands of his Apostles and their Successors then all its Members of what Rank and Quality soever are regularly to make enquiries and receive determinations of Conscience from their Mouths and when the
Bishop reproves his Prince of any enormous Vice if he refuse to hear him he sins against the Command of God who has given him Authority in his name to declare and to bind every mans Duty upon his Conscience under pain of the Divine Displeasure and it is an equal Aggravation of Guilt in all men before God to break his Commands against the Sentence and Declaration of his Officers This is so clear and obvious a Truth that if there be any Divine Institution or perpetual Necessity of a Priestly Office in the Church the greatest must be equally bound with the least to Obedience not by the Coercion of Secular Penalties but by the Tyes of Religion and the Judgments of God I mean not hereby to excuse the boldness and insolence of those men that take upon them to upbraid and expose their Prince with publick and Pulpit Reproofs This is to abuse the Dignity of their Office into the Ill-manners and Sedition of the Kirk that insulted in nothing more than putting affronts upon Kings and exposing them and their Authority to the contempt of the Rabble No but all Addresses to Superiours must be private and prudent and modest and though Kings may and ought to be inform'd of their duty as well as Subjects yet it must be done with all the Arts of Gentleness and Humility and if any man shall abuse his Sacerdotal Freedome to vent unhandsom and disgraceful Reflections upon his Superiours he deserves as much as you do the Scorn of a Buffoon and the Correction of the Stocks And now from these Premises it is very easie to determine the bounds of the Imperial and the Priestly Power notwithstanding that both are and must be acknowledged Supreme in their several Kinds The Prince is Supreme and Absolute over all things and persons within his own Dominions as far as they concern the Affairs of this present Life but yet when they are consider'd purely as relating to the Life to come the Priest is Superiour and therefore in all cases of Competition whenever they happen he can only refer the Justification of himself and his Cause to the future Judgement of God but at present he must be content either to obey the Commands or if in Cases of manifest Obedience to God he cannot to submit to the Authority of his present Superiours and if it be his Fortune to oppose the Judgment of his Prince there is no remedy but he must suffer his Lot and rather choose to be endamaged in his own private affairs than that Government should be disturbed or defeated for his sake Here then is no interfering of the two Jurisdictions the exercise of the one is Spiritual and of the other Secular and so being of different natures and to different ends they may both without any material inconvenience be supreme in their different kinds and if the Ecclesiastical State shall at any time think it self obliged to controwl the civil power it is only of a spiritual efficacy and brings no direct disadvantage to the supreme Authority because it has ordinarily no visible force but in the World to come and that makes no alteration in the present state of things So that the exercise of the supreme civil Power is as uncontroulable as if it were absolute and not limited by the spiritual because at present it must prevail as to the Government of the World and the effectual execution of its Decrees And thus have I to avoid dull or wilful mistakes as briefly as the nature of the Subject would permit proved the necessity of a spiritual Authority in the Church as a distinct society by it self and in order to its peace here and the salvation of its members hereafter And then that it is not a meerly ministerial Office but is Authoritative to all the intents and purposes of Jurisdiction and in the next place that it is supreme and uncontroulable in its own kind by any other Power whatsoever and lastly that its spiritual Supremacie is no infringement to the civil Rights of Sovereign Princes in that their Power must notwithstanding all Countermands whatsoever over-rule in the present Government of the World And now I hope you see how plainly the spiritual Power of the Church is reconcileable with the Ecclesiastical Supremacy of Kings and that there is no necessity as you dream that whoever asserts one must unavoidably casheir the other And upon review of the whole â—â—ate of the controversie 't is some comfort and satisfaction to me that as I have not vested the civil Magistrate with any other Power than what is and ever has been challenged by all Common-wealths in the World so I never could meet with any thing objected against it but what proceeded purely from malice or inadvertency And that is all the trouble I have been put to both by you and J. O. to vindicate easie and honest assertions from wilful or sleepy Mistakes But the great Misprison of all and that approaches nearest to Treason against modern Orthodoxy is my presuming to trample upon your great secret of symbolical Ceremonies which hard word is now become the only remaining Palladium of your Cause and Idol of your Conventicles for in our dayes it is not with you as it was from the Reign of good Queen Elizabeth quite down to that of the Good Long Parliament The Good Gentlemen of those times had the Holy Discipline and the Scepter of the Lord Christ to rattle in the Peoples and the Princes ears but those good dayes are gone and the Kirk-discipline when it came to be put in practice though it were an Iron rod upon the backs of Kings yet it proved such a wooden Scepter among the Common People that it quickly wore it self into sport and contempt and all the little Folk that waged War with so much zeal and fury against Prelacy and Antichrist only aim'd their stroaks at random and rail'd and raged at they knew not what till at last they became ashamed at the littleness of their own Pretences and how little all of them were able to perforn in behalf of the Divine Right of Presbytery sufficiently appears to the world by the great Smectymnuan labours Nothing but a complicated dulness could ever have brought forth such a phlegmatick and insipid Pamphlet and no man has now so little wit or so much confidence as to own much less to appear in defence of such a contemptible and baffled Cause or if there should remain a Scot or an High-Lander so unalterably peevish he lyes below both our scorn and our confutation But though their Principles have forsaken them yet they so invincible is their constancy will never forsake their Principles but having once been drawn into a Revolt from the Church by a manifest Imposture they have too much stomach to confess their fault so far as only to return back to her Communion and therefore Covenant one and all to stand firm to their party and justifie themselves as they can And then the
Friend and Foe and eating up All Men Women and Children He that came off with Honour in threescore and seventeen Duels before he was one and twenty and in forty years more by Land and Sea fought as many pitcht Battels could not have made a more war-like sound Certainly you go as I have read of one in the 5 Epist. to Marcellinus for why should not I read your Fathers as well as you read mine always hung like a Justice of Peace's Hall with Pikes Halberts Peitronels Callivers and Muskets And if you could but victual your self for half a year in your Breeches it is not to be doubted but you would be able to over-run whole Countries Hungary Transylvania Bohemia and all the other territories of modern Orthodoxy The first Argument I made use of to remove all popular suspicions of Popery from the Government was the manifest inconvenience to the State that must arise from any alteration in the Church and this I proved from those impregnable principles of Loyalty that are peculiar to our Communion from all other Dissenters so that all design of Change being so manifestly imprudent and impolitick I thought it too wild a surmise for the Wisdome of the Government unless it were not only trinkled but bewitch'd to expose it self and therefore that there could be no other probable ground of danger but from the restlesness and seditious practices of the Fanatique Party that might possibly some time or other make way for the return of Popery by making disturbances in Church and State And to this purpose I gave a large Character of the peculiar Genius and the distinguishing principles of the Church of England from the Gibelline Faction But it seems you do not like my Characters and what is that to me am I obliged to justifie them because such Jack-Gentlemen as you do not approve them If you have any thing to except you know the Law and the Press is open but your bare dislike will no where pass for a confutation And to tell us that you find on either side only the natural effect of such Hyberbole's and Oratory that is not to be believed is in a great many words only to say I lye It may be so but yet that satisfies no body And yet tell me can you deny the Loyalty of the Church of England both in its principles and practices if you cannot whatever I have said in her commendation is undeniably true and then it is you that lease Can you deny that the regular Clergy are the most zealous Assertours of the Rights of Princes and that they and only they teach subjection to be an indispensable duty of Religion without false reserves and limitations Can you deny that those Subjects that stuck to the Communion of the Church of England ever stuck to hazard Lives and Fortunes out of devotion to their Prince Can you prove that every any forsook the Royal Cause in its greatest distress that did not first forsake the Church of England Can you deny that the main Article that distinguishes ours from all other Communions is that we vest the Crown in an Ecclesiastical Supremacy which is one half of the Sovereign Power whilst they challenge it either to themselves or some foreign Jurisdiction that has no more ground of Claim beside bare confidence to exercise any Authority in the Kings Dominions than the King has in his These are the Elogies I gave to the Church of England If they are such Hyperboles as are not to be believed that is to say if they are lyes make it good or else confess your impudence to call them so not only without proof or evidence but against Experience and Demonstration And so for my contrary Character of the Fanatiques that too is all a lye or such an Hyperbole as is not to be believed and so I am answer'd but if that be all you have to say I am very well satisfied too You had done them some kindness if you had undertaken to prove either that the Preachers never taught the people Aphorisms of Disloyalty and Rebellion or that they were never engaged in actual War against their lawful Prince by their Instigation or that any of them have renounced their old Principles though they could never be prevail'd with so much as to acknowledge their Crime either to God or the King These are plain Cases of Conscience so that till they have done this if they were ever guilty they are so still And therefore when you only tell us that I have dress'd them all up in Sambenita 's painted with all the Flames and Devils in Hell All the service you do your brethren is to inform the World that whoever will draw a Fanatique to the life must get the Devil to sit for his picture and if a man cannot describe them without dressing them up in Sambenita's I cannot help that this I am sure of that I have not made one false stroke or ill feature that I cannot justifie to any Artist I am not concern'd how ugly the piece is so it be but like and yet you your self have not been able to tell me one fault that I have committed I am only sorry that they are so very deformed as you have represented them for I never suspected before you informed me either that they were so bad or the Devil so good But I know what it is that so much girds you though your guilty Conscience dares not touch it viz. that I have there proved that nothing but the Good Old Cause lyes at the bottom of all your present Schism and that the most zealous Patriots of Conventicles are such as have given the World but very little ground to suspect them from their profess'd Principles or open Practices of the least tenderness of Religion and kindness to Monarchy so that nothing better can ever be expected from them than factions and republican Designs I know this twinges to the quick it is so observable all the Kingdome over that as you cannot endure to hear it so you dare not deny it And now your appearance has amply verified the truth of the Observation When at the same time that you come forth to vindicate the Innocence and Peaceableness of the Non-conformists and pass your word to the King that they shall never lift up disloyal thought against him you cannot forbear to let us see how warmly you are concern'd to justifie the late Rebellion In that the King had turn'd his whole Kingdome into a Prison that many thousands of his Subjects were constrained to seek habitations abroad every Countrey even though it were among Savages and Canibals appear'd more hospitable to them than their own that his whole Reign was deformed with Sibthorpianism i. e. with his affecting an absolute and arbitrary Government that himself and his party were the cause of the War that the Parliament took up Arms in defence both of their Liberty and Religion and that their Cause against the King was like
whole Chapters in my first Book to prove that as the opposite opinion is no less than rank Atheism or Blasphemy so it utterly subverts the Power of all Government and irrecoverably destroys the safety of all societies in the World This Confidence of yours is so provoking that I cannot but wonder your ears have not done Penance for the rudeness of your Tongue Macedo thou art able to outforge and outbrazen ten Macedos And yet so assured are the drivers of the dissenting Herd and so silly the Creatures they stear that there is scarce a Shop-Divine in the whole Nation that does not as heartily believe this unhoopable Jurisdiction to be the only design of all my Books as he does the ten Commandments to be obligatory or the Apostles Creed to be true But when my innocence as to this charge is so infinitely clear and when they have nothing to object against me or to plead in their own behalf but upon its presumption that is a demonstrative Argument of a bassled and defenceless cause that can be defended with no other weapon but impudent and bare-faced Calumny And now when you have once taken this for granted away you run clattering with abundance of noise and nothing till you fall into another story full as lowd and ratling as this That I have complemented his Majesty so far as to inform him that he may if he please reserve the Priesthood and the exercise of it to himself So said J. O. too and was very pleasant in his Remarques upon it but was I suppose sufficiently satisfied or at least silenced with this plain and simple Answer That in the Paragraph against which this Objection is level'd I undertook to give a brief Historical account of the Original of all Civil and Ecclesiastical Government where I shewed how in the first Ages of the World they were vested in the same Person and founded upon the same Right of paternal Authority and in this State of things antecedent to all superinduced Restraints and positive Institutions I asserted the supreme Magistrate might if he pleased reserve the exercise of the Priesthood to himself And so all Writers that I know of assert as well as I. Though afterwards the Priestly office was in the Jewish Common-wealth expresly derogated from the Kingly Power by being setled upon the Tribe of Levi and the Line of Aaron and so likewise in the Christian Church by being appropriated to the Apostles and their Successors that derive their Priestly Office and Power from our Blessed Saviours express and immediate Commission Now what I affirm'd of things in the bare State of Nature without the guidance of Revelation for this man to represent it as if I had applyed it indifferently to all Ages and Periods of the Church by whatsoever positive Laws and different Institutions they may be govern'd is wonderfully suitable to the Genius of his own Wit and Ingenuity But though I think I have passed so high a Complement upon his Majesty this only troubles you how his Majesty would look in all the Sacerdotal Habiliments and the Pontisical Wardrobe Alas good man Your tender heart would not serve you to behold the Ceremonies of the Coronation The Rebels Wounds bled too fresh in your Memory it would have rubb'd up all the late sad spectacles at Cheering-Cross and minded you of all those choice ones that were hang'd to make way for this great Solemnity for whose sakes the 29. of May is annually observed among the secret ones as a day of private humiliation to bemoan the loss and commemorate the Martyrdom of so many anointed and precious Brethren But as for the malicious Consequence that you out of stark staring Love to the Church of which you are so enamour'd that it even joys your Heart to hear any thing well said of her suggest upon this Occasion that then he may and it is all the reason in the World he should assume the Revenue too it only shews your Judgment at nicking a Lucky juncture of Affairs When you have put the King in mind of his Coronation-Oath in which he swears to protect and defend the Bishops and the Churches under their Government to preserve their Canonical Privileges to confirm the Laws Customes and Franchises granted to the Clergy by the glorious King St. Edward and all other Kings of England his Lawful and Religious Predecessours Immediately whilst this Oath is piping hot to advise him to disfranchise them from the common rights of all Subjects and to invade their Proprieties not only contrary to his solemn Oath but to the most ancient and most ratified Laws of the Realm But methinks it more concerns the Parliament than any private man to chastise such bold and lavish talk as plainly subverts the very foundations of all our Proprieties in that the Churches Rights and Revenues are vested in her by as firm and fundamental Laws as any by which you or I can hold or claim our Estates so that the Laws of England have made but a very silly provision for any mans Birthright if they are not a sufficient security for the Churches Patrimony And it becomes such a tender assertor of the English Liberties to insinuate the subversion of those Laws upon which alone they are founded I hope you will be consider'd for your pains at least for your good will it is no wonder to see you upon all occasions so afraid of Pillories and Whipping-Posts for if you are resolved to follow these courses and at last go uncropt to your Grave it will be a scandal to the Justice of the Nation But before I quit this Master-Calumny of the unhoopable Magistrate it will not be improper to take an account of your Hoops and Hola's that relate to it for when you have acted over your six Plays you begin them all afresh for you have at least eleven or twelve distinct Beginnings and run them together with some few coincident passages all down with Hoops and Hola's i. e. with noise and confidence The first next to these I have answer'd is that I have asserted the unhoopable Power wherewith I have invested Princes to be their Natural Right and Antecedent to Christ c. But oh the Consequence then his Majesty may lay by his Dieu and make use only of his Mon-droit Hoop and Hola hold not too lowd for it does not so necessarily follow that because he has his Patent under the Broad-Seal of Nature that therefore he derived it not from God for as much as Nature it self has no power of making grants but all its Commissions are sign'd only by the Author of Nature and all Natural Rights whatsoever are the Immediate Gifts of his Providence that has order'd and disposed the frame of Nature according to his own Sovereign Will and Pleasure and therefore you must resolve all Natural Rights as well as all Natural Laws into his Authority for though Nature may discover yet it is only he that passes and enacts them
Accession from the Publique So that had you this or any other honest way of livelihood it might stop your mouth from bawling perpetually for the seisure of Church Revenues only in hopes of creeping into some small Office at the division of the Prey for I am apt to believe though all that know you know so ill of you that they will take it for a very strein of Candour and Courtship that all your rudeness to the Church does not proceed from meer malice to that and revenge upon the Dignitary Want will put any man that delights in Gaming out of humour but of all discontents there is nothing so peevish and so clamorous as when pride and poverty meet together in the same Gamester But that which seems to strike the greatest damp upon your mind and of which you make the oftenest complaints is that I talk so much of Pillories Whipping-posts Galleys Rods and Axes that is to say the Podâ—strabae the Tilethrae the Otagrae the Rhinolabides and the Cheilostrophia these are villainous Engines indeed but take heart Numps here is not a word of the Stocks and you since the Act of Indemnity is past and sure need never stand in awe of any more honourable Correction however suppose the worst you have read Seneca and Epictetus And what though your worth should sometime or other prefer you to the Pillory and that is not impossible yet it is no very painful Engine and Philosophers can endure any thing but smart it is only intended to make men look a little simply and put them out of countenance awhile but for confidence let you alone And now having thus far followed your dance it is time I hope to advance to serious Counsels You cry out of persecution So did Hugh Peters and so did Venner and so might all Malefactors when brought to Justice but that most of them are more modest than the most of you This is but seizing upon words and forcing them to sound or signifie any thing to your own purpose But unless all execution of Laws upon offenders deserve this hard name it is not enough for you to complain you are persecuted when you are only punish'd It is the cause that makes the only difference and you ought first to make out the iniquity of the Laws and to make good your obligation to disobedience before you can set up this out cry But to this you reply that you suffer for Conscience for Conscience what is that but that you would take advantage of it and report that I affirm there is no such thing as Conscience I would say it is for nothing For Conscience it self is an indeterminate thing and has no more certain signification than the clinking of a Bell and that is as every man fancies And though you are wont to discourse of it as though it were an infallible Oracle in your breasts or a Pope in your bellies yet had you but skill enough to anatomize your selves you would find nothing there beside Lights and Liver and Stomach and Guts and perhaps a deceitful heart for in the heart the Jews seated it of old though the Cartesian Philosophy has of late pearch'd it up into the Glandula Pinealis But wherever it resides it is not any principle of action distinct from the man himself being the very same individual thing with the mind soul and understanding so that there is no other real difference between a man and his Conscience than between a man and his mind or rather between a man and himself And therefore when you make such an heavy ditty about your being persecuted for your Conscience sake the result of it is that you are persecuted for your mind sake or suffer only because you have a mind to suffer For whatever Conscience is this is certain that it is neither the rule nor the reason of its own Actions but it is bound to guide and govern it self and all its determinations by the measures and prescriptions of its duty and that only can warrant either the wisdome or the innocence of its proccedings And therefore in any case to plead only Conscience for any action without specifying some particular Principle upon which it grounds it self and its dictate is in effect to plead any thing or rather nothing For without some certain direction distinct from it self it may signifie any thing what you please or if you please nothing And it may as well be call'd Pride Ignorance Passion Humour Peevishness Melancholy Rudeness Frenzy and Superstition as Conscience for whenever a mans mind is possest or abused with any of these unhappy Passions that to him is his Conscience And therefore if ever you intend to make out the justice of your Cause or the equity of your Grievances you must give over this hovering and uncertain pretence of Conscience in general and betake your selves to some more distinct and particular pleas and that is to appeal to the adequate rule and measure of humane actions and that is to all divine and humane Laws and if from either of these you can plead any express warrant to excuse your disobedience to the Constitutions of the Church in Gods Name plead it and then but not till then it will appear that you indeed suffer for the Cause of a good Conscience But if you have none then the case is plain that you suffer for nothing And yet it is as plain that you have not any other imaginable ground or pretext of reason to justisie your peevishness to the Ecclesiastical Laws beside the indisputable pleasure of your own proud and imperious minds for you are run off of all your old Cavils and know not what you would have beyond the satisfaction of crossing the Commands of Royal Authority For as for all your general clamours against the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Princes that they invade Gods Royalty lay waste the Consciences of men usurp upon their Christian Liberties first they signifie no more than the general plea of Conscience that whenever Superiours impose any Commands upon Subjects that they have no mind or stomach to obey they then entrench upon Gods Supremacy as the only Lord of Conscience and then it subverts all Government and cancels all Humane Laws in that they neither do nor can pass any Obligation upon any Subjects but only as they are bound upon their Consciences and lastly they will never stand to this themselves when they are urged with those horrid mischiefs that must perpetually overtake the Government if the plea be once admitted in general terms and without exception This then being quitted the Magistrate may and sometimes must restrain men in their pretences or perswasion of Religion without seating himself in Gods Throne or invading their Subjects Consciences or offering violence to their Christian Liberties And then have they nothing to pretend in their own excuse but the unlawfulness of the particular Commands themselves and this brings them to a sweet pass when they are kept to it
result of all their Messages Remonstrances and Declarations is the illegal and arbitrary imposition of unscriptual Ceremonies by which when we come to treat more closely they mean nothing else but only those three establish'd in the Church of England for they themselves never stick to allow or practise any others so these be excepted And had you wit and learning enough to judge of Non-sense you would even cross your self were it not a Popish Symbol to observe what a deal of Metaphysicks J. O. has lavish'd away upon this Argument But alas you shew so little judgment as to slide over his great depths of subtilty and fix upon speculations so wretchedly shallow that every man has wit enough to fathom their folly Thus I verily believed I had in my first Book acquitted my self manfully enough towards battering down this Theological Scar-crow that you have set up in the high places of Armageddon to fray away the People or rather Boys and Girls from the Communion of the Church by shewing that it is so far from being a crime in any Ceremonies to be significant and symbolical that it is their only nature and office so to be that the signification of all Ceremonies is equally arbitrary that it is of the very same kind and to the very same purpose with that of words and therefore that all tender Consciences have the same reason to be offended at the one as the other These I thought in the simplicity of my heart solid and satisfactory notions and counted upon it that we should never more be annoyed with such a thin and empty bubble But behold out stalks the great Leviathan J. O. and pours upon me such a volley of Distinctions as would have stunded a whole Regiment of stouter and more experienced School-men than my self In the first place he distinguishes very subtilely between the Appointment and the Institution of Ceremonies the first he allows of but the last is or may be blasphemy From hence he advances to distinguish between natural and customary signs and then of customary signs between Catholique and Topical and these all pass muster But as for all such wicked signs as signifie neither by Nature nor by Custom but only by vertue of their Institution they are full of such rank and desperate Idolatry that the people of God ought rather than suffer themselves to be defiled with them to tear the Church into Schisms and the State into Wars to murther and banish Kings to subvert the Government and destroy Religion At their own peril therefore be it as he threatens them if Magistrates will be venturing at such a dangerous extravagance of power because 1. They have not any absolute Authority over the sign and thing signified 2. They cannot change their Natures nor create a new relation between them 3. They cannot give a mystical and spiritual efficacy to them And then lastly as for the signification of words that I have parallel'd with that of Symbols the Schoolmen have demonstrated it that when they are signs of sacred things they are signs of them only as things but not as sacred Here are dragons and deeps it were worth a mans while to work in the Mines of Metaphysicks for such Jewels as these this is gibberish strong enough to make a Rosi-crucian mad and were J. O. in good earnest I should notwithstanding all Quarrels be so much his friend as to provide him a dark lodging and clean straw But what wretched fooling this is any man that has a mind to the sport may see in my Reply to him where I gave my self the divertisement of ferreting him from distinction to distinction i. e. from non-sense to non-sense And methinks it is no unpleasant sight to see a poor Rat thus to work and traverse it about to find some little hole wherein he may hide his baffled head when he can hope for no other shelter then to stand still and wink hard But as for your part though you are in the very same straits yet you have the confidence to think your self close with your eyes open and all the world staring at you Thus whereas your most astonishing objection from Cartwright downwards for just where he begun you have all left off and stand like the statue of Erasmus in the posture of turning over a leaf but without ever turning it over will stand in the same posture to the day of judgement against the Institution of Symbolical Rights is that it is no less an attempt than to entrench upon the Divine Prerogative by offering to institute new Sacraments J. O. in particular expresses his sense of it thus that to say that the Magistrate has power to institute visible signs of Honour to be observed in the outward worship of God is upon the matter to say that he has power to institute new Sacraments for so such things would be For this I took him up somewhat roundly as he deserved I upbraided him with the precariousness of the Cavil I challenged him with that plain answer that he could not but know had alwayes been returned to it viz. that Divine Institution is the only thing necessary to the nature and the office of a Divine Sacrament and so at last I dared him to renounce his Argument if he would not take notice of his answer And I could do no less when they have for above one hundred and fifty years together vext and haunted us with such a new-fangled nothing To all this what do you reply why after a tedious deal of forced mirth and grinning you gravely inform us that the Non-conformists were never so silly as to attempt to prove that these Symbolical Ceremonies are indeed Sacraments Nothing less 't is that which they most labour against And now is it not time for me to cry Victory and Triumph when I have put an end to so long and bloody a War when I have gain'd all that we have fought for ever since Cartwrights Rebellion when you your self have resign'd up the Controversie and tyed all their Champions and their Chiefteins to my Chariot wheels Are you not a trusty Patron of the dear Brethren and their dear Cause to give them all up thus broadly for a generation of egregious and incorrigible block-heads should they ever be so weak as to go about to prove that these Symbolical Ceremonies are indeed Sacraments When it is the very Curtana of the Cause when it is the only weapon wherewith Cartwright gored the Bowels of the Church and that has been transmitted successively to all their Champions down to J. O. and the Cobler of Gloster when it is so undeniably upon record in all their writings when it is the subject of so many whole Books and when it is still the last word of all their brawls and contentions So that you say well It is time indeed for the Non-conformists to desire a truce to bury their dead nay there are none left alive to desire it
management of their own affairs and all his Epistles to Princes and Prelates were written with the confidence of Papal Decrees You may satisfie your self with a multitude of instances in his Letters to the King Princes and Castellans of Poland to the Prince Elector of the Palatinate to the Church of Strasburgh to the Duke of Wirtenburgh and to the Lantgrave of Hess beside his particular missives and instructions to his Vicar-Generals residing in several Kingdoms and Provinces But to keep more closely to our own concernments by his Letters Patents to the Exiles of Francfurt the English Liturgy was casheir'd to make way for the entertainment of the Order of Geneva and Dr. Cox with his Associates Grave and Reverend Men cum gregalibus suis as he stiles them were rated for endeavouring the establishment of the Liturgy of the Church of England And when Mr. John Hooper Bishop Elect of Glocester had pickt up a quarrel against Caps and Tippets and Gowns and Rochets and Chimeres who forsooth must solicite the Duke of Somerset then the Great Minister of State to have these idle scruples dispensed with in despite of the Customes and Constitutions of the Church but John Calvin Not to mention his Letters to the King to the Arch-Bishop to the Bishop of London to Cecil and to the Lords of the Council in which he very frankly and before his advice is asked makes his exceptions to the English Liturgy and finds fault with many Popish and superstitious Rites and with an Apostolical Authority advises the Lay-Lords to set aside all prudence and worldly wisdom in carrying on the work of Reformation and admonishes the Bishops to strip themselves of all Secular Power and Jurisdiction and charges it upon the Bishop of London in particular as his duty to inform the Queen that she ought not to trust or trouble them with any more Authority than what they might challenge and exercise purely by vertue of their Spiritual Office And all this I suppose to make way for the more easie admission of his Discipline with a great many stories more that I could tell and of which Kings might by the help of their Royal Understandings make excellent use And now after all this it matters not much whether Geneva be scituated upon the South-side of the Lake Lemane or the South-west or the South-west and by West for peace sake I will grant you any point in the Compass though as far as I can learn by Maps and Books of Geography they all inform me that it stands where it alwayes did on the South-side and if they are mistaken it is none of my fault for I am no Traveller and had I been imposed upon in a matter so collateral and impertinent to my main design yet no man that had not been to seek for more material exceptions would ever have attempted to make so much noise and advantage of so small a trifle for though Geneva were removed at as great a distance as Surat and Grand Cairo yet for all that Calvin was an over-busie and pragmatical man and intermedled with several Affairs foreign to his Judicature and out of his Diocess not only before his Advice was asked but after it was refused And therefore I shall not at all concern my self to examine the Debates of your Oecumenical Council about the scituation of Geneva the discourse is suited to the wit and wisdom of the company that consists I suppose of your particular Friends that you so often remember Gilian the Cook-maid and Abigail the Chamber-maid and Mopsa the dry Nurse together with some of your Charing-Cross and Lincolns-Inn-field wits you your self being President for after having condemn'd their remarques for crude and cold conceits after a frown or two with your mouth and some smiling with your forehead they being both perform'd by the same Muscles you gravely determine that it was well and wisely done of me to choose a South-sun for the better and more suddain growth of the bramble It is such an Oracle as if there were not a South-sun on the North as well as the South side of the Lake And thus having finisht your serious counsels you are at leisure to advance to a dance and recreate your self and the company with Anagrams and Acrosticks upon Calvins Name And to confess the truth for I love wit in an enemy Lucianus and Usinulca are very pretty conceits but yet I have heard of an old Elsibeth one that in my poor Opinion is more worth than both of them though I recreate my self with believing that my simple judgment cannot beyond my intention abate any thing of the just value of your wit with others And thus having done you right as you did the Bishop by making you this pious Apology I will venture to let it out and it is Culina for beside the transprosing Wit that is common to it with all Anagrams it is an unhappy Omen to betoken how much his followers should delight in Dripping pan comforts For beside our own experience at home if we may relye upon the relation of your Travels abroad The Presbyterians are in all parts the very Canibals of Capons in so much that if Princes do not take care the Race of Capons is in danger to be totally extinguish'd The Race of Capons man This Geneva certainly is the most breeding soil whatever some Travellers may report of Africa in the whole Universe For who ever heard of any other Climate so fruitful that even Capons are able to propagate their own Race But how should Princes take care lest this Race be totally extinguish'd by the sharpsetness of the Presbyterians when there is no such Race to be found in any Kings Dominions for as I take it ever since the Bishops banishment there has been no King of Geneva His Majesties Curiosity has replenish'd St. James's Park with all sorts of Fowl from all parts of the World but could never yet that I can hear of procure one single Bird of this Capon Race So that I perceive notwithstanding all his great Alliances and Correspondences abroad he has no great interest in the Court of Geneva But you Sir have travel'd those parts and have no doubt contracted acquaintance with the good House-wifes of the Countrey it would be a very considerable piece of service to the Common-wealth in general and to your dear Presbyterian brethren in particular whose mouths you say hang so much Capon-way if you could but help us to some of the Chickens of both Sexes of this Capon-brood I am confident it would be so well accepted both in Court and City that you might easily obtain a Patent for the Monopoly and a Pension for the service Especially when they are of the greatest size of any in the reformed World so that if this race should be totally extinguish'd it might prove of fatal consequence to the Growth and Interest of the reformation in Hungary Transylvania Bohemia Poland Savoy France the Netherlands Denmark Sweden Scotland