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
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
that of Christianity only too good to be fought for c. And now when you ensure us that the Fanatiques shall never rebel it is for this reason only because there neither is nor can be any such thing as Rebellion for if the last War were none you are safe for ever forfeiting your Loyalty and if that cause were too good to be fought for it will be hard to find one too bad It is well you have declared that if you can do the Non-conformists no good you are resolved you will do them no harm and desire that they should lye under no imputation on your account I am confident you intended honestly but they are more endebted to your good will than your discretion When your very Apology in their behalf brings them under the greatest imputation For this not only makes good my suggestion which you would lay by your Caveat that they are acted by men of Democratical Spirits but withal it is a stronger evidence of their continuing constant and stubborn to their old Principles because as they would never be brought to disclaim them so now it seems they are resolved to justifie them and lay the whole guilt of the Rebellion upon the King himself I know you are a wise and wary man and design'd when you set pen to paper to take upon you the Person that is Personam induere of a Royallist and not to betray the least kindness to or concern for the Good Old Cause But you are a Gamester and know what vast odds a man may lay on Natures side And thus have I more than enough vindicated every page and period of my Preface and yet the main of your business is still behind for that was the least of your design to confute me your Plot was to take occasion to fly out into invectives against the Clergy of all Ages in general and of the Church of England in particular first as the cause of the late War and secondly as the hindrance of our present settlement and then having barr'd them from trinkling with State Affairs and wheadled the King against hearkning to their Counsels though you do it so grosly and with such an impudent malice that it is like stalking by the side of a Butter-fly with a face as broad as a Brass-Copper you advise Princes to a more moderate course of Government and teach them from many sad examples to behave themselves dutifully to their Subjects upon peril of their displeasure or worse I shall as briefly as I can consider your performance in all these particulars and so leave you to the shame of your own Meditations First then having with mighty exultation of Spirit and words much too good for your heart congratulated His Majesties most Happy Restauration just as Malefactors cry God save the King because they have escaped the Gallows and so do you magnifie his Clemency Mercy and Goodness for carrying the Act of Oblivion and Indemnity through But this serenity is suddainly over-cast and you knit your brows and depress your Superciliums and at length with much fleering and more reluctancy for you are mighty sorry to speak it yet because it is a sad truth tell it him you must that the Ecclesiastical Part would not accomplish his Felicity and no wonder when the Animosities and Obstinacy of some of the Clergy have in all Ages been the greatest obstacle to the Clemency Prudence and good intentions of Princes and the establishment of their affairs Which is to say that the Clergy has not only in all Ages nay and places too been the bane of Government but more particularly the Clergy of England murther'd His Royal Father and are more accomptable for His Majesties and the Kingdoms sufferings than either the Rebels that took his Crown off of his head or those that afterwards took his head off of his shoulders But they shall answer for themselves anon we must first traverse your first Bill against the Clergy in general But who are you that are thus acquainted with the Clergy of all Ages time out of mind sure you can be no less a man than one of the Patriarchs or a fifth from Methusalem or at least Andrew de Temporibus John's elder Brother you have so general an acquaintance with the Clergy of all Ages As for the Clergy of the Ages before Noahs flood I will not contend for for any thing that I know there might be Bishops of Munster and Cullen and Strasburg in those times and I cannot disprove it but that King Nimrod's Chaplains were his Hunts-men but in all Ages since I cannot find that they have been more cruel than other men Aaron I am sure was remarkable for his meekness and mercy for though the Grand Remonstrance of Corah were intended against himself and his Bran for trinkling Moses and the Members of the Sanhedrin yet did he bestir himself to attone the Rebellion and procure pardon for the Offenders Though I must confess his Grand-child Phinehas was an arrant Jewish Zealot that is as your modern Orthodox Rabbies inform you a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat And as for the Heathen Priests though they were very famous Trinklers I do not find that they were any great Men-eaters In my Roman Empire I do not read that they were fiercer Canibals of the Race of Man or Capon-kind than the Laity nor I believe can you prove out of your 5 Ep. to Marcellinus that the Clergy were the Authours of Julian's Persecution But the bottom of all this is that the Priests have in all Ages and in all Kingdomes been advanced to places of greatest Authority next to the Sovereign Power it self The Druids of Britany the Magi of Persia the Priests of AEgypt Judaea Assyria AEthiopia are a sufficient Indication that however fanciful men may fool themselves and their Countrey with other Philosophical Models and Theories of Policy yet Religion and the Ministers of Religion will have the greatest share in the Government and the reason is as evident as the experiment is Catholique in that nothing can so truly and effectually awe the greatest part of mankind as the dread of the world to come and therefore they whose peculiar Office it is to guide and instruct men in their future concerns must and will in spite of all the witty States-men in the world have the greatest reverence power and interest with the generality of the People And thus though the Authority of the Clergy of England be at this time by reason of some malignant effects of the late war at as low an ebb as perhaps the power of the Priests ever was under any Monarchy yet it is manifest that for all their disadvantages all of the Loyal Party Nobility Gentry and Commonalty that are sober and serious in the belief and profession of their Religion cannot but have a veneration to their Persons and a deference to their Judgements How else think you could they be so easily trinkled And as for all the several
length approved and publish'd special care being taken I still relye upon the Kings word that the small alterations of it in which it differs from the English Liturgy should be such as might best comply with the minds and dispositions of the Scots and prevent all grounds of fear or jealousie and chiefly to avoid all misconstruction that some Factious Spirits would have put upon it as a badge of that Churches dependance upon the Church of England if it had been the same with the English Service-Book totidem verbis And this was the Liturgy that no doubt might be an occasion of exasperating the Bramble-Faction that were already ripe for Rebellion and resolved to improve all disgusts whether just or unjust real or pretended to authorize their disloyal resolutions But to let you into the main Mystery the circumstance that gave life and vigour to their designs was the Act of Revocation that it seems hapned to be set on foot not long before by which the King intended the Revocation of those Lands of the Church that in the minority of King James the Great Men had to the prejudice of the Crown seized on and shared among themselves to which the Occupants having no other Title beside impudent Sacriledge and Usurpation the King thought he might justly challenge them for his own Use at least from the present Possessours A course warranted as himself still tells me both by the Laws of that Kingdom and the frequent examples of his Royal Progenitors And this you may believe was provocation enough to put them into an uproar and the People were perswaded as I am informed by a good Authour from the mouth of a Noble Lord that the intendment of the Act was to revoke all former Laws for suppressing of Popery and setling the Reformed Religion in the Kirk of Scotland and this raised such Tumults that the King was forced to desist from the prosecution of the Act under that Title and to carry it on though with much opposition under another Name of a Commission of Surrendries a thing so offensive to the stomachs of the Lords of the Erection as the Lay Impropriators were there call'd that they could never digest it but first according to the usual method vented their choler in Libels and then in Rebellion For though they were satisfied for their Tythes to the utmost farthing according to the Rates of purchasing in that Kingdom yet this fretted them that they saw themselves rob'd of the dependence of the Clergy and Laity upon their Power and of that Sovereign Command and Superiority which they had by the tye of Tythes exercised over them several wayes as the King will inform you And this was the reason of State beside the ease of his Subjects that moved his Majesty to issue out this Commission For before the greatest part of the Laity were Vassals by Tenure and all the Clergy slaves by custom to the Nobility And therefore they immediately set themselves to work the People to a disaffection to his Majesties Government and to perswade them that these were the contrivances of the Bishops and that under them there were dangerous innovations design'd upon their Religion So that 't is plain as the King observes that before either the Service-Book or Book of Canons so tragically now exclaimed against were thought on the seeds of Sedition and discontent were sowen by the Contrivers of the Covenant first upon the occasion of the Revocation next upon occasion of the Commission of Surrenders and lastly upon occasion of his denying honours to some of them at his last being in that Kingdom of which he has there given a large and particular account and this brought forth first private traducing his Government and then publique Libels And now by this time Sedition was grown so ripe and ready to seed that it wanted nothing to thrust it out and make it shoot forth into an open Rebellion but some fair and specious pretence They could not yet compass the Cloak of Religion whereby to siel the eyes and muffle the face of the Multitude for by none of the three former Occasions could they so much as pretend that Religion was endanger'd or impeach'd But so soon as they got but the least hint of any thing which they thought might admit a misconstruction that way they lost no time but took Occasion by the fore-lock knowing that either that or nothing would first facilitate and then perfect their designs Now the occasion they took of fetching Religion within the reach of their Pretences was the new Liturgy And this produced I still relye upon the Kings Authority the late wicked Covenant or pretended Holy League Though following the pattern of all other Seditions they did pretend Religion yet nothing was less intended by them For when they had sayes the Royal Understanding received from us full satisfaction to all their desires expressed in any of their Petitions Remonstrances or Declarations their persisting for all that in their tumultuous and rebellious Courses doth demonstrate to the world their weariness of being govern'd by us and our Laws by our Council and other Officers put in Authority by and under us and an itching humour of having that our Kingdom governed by a Table of their own devising consisting of Persons of their own choosing A Plot of which they are very fond being an abortion of their own brain but which indeed is such a monstrous birth as the like has not yet been born or bred in any Kingdom Jewish Christian or Pagan Of which he afterwards describes a particular Plat-form as it was put in practice at Edinburgh And thus observe it you shall still find a Common-wealth and Sacriledge at the bottom of all Rebellion that appears under the mask and pretence of Religion And it was these men that raised the Tumults and trinkled the Rabble into all those disorderly courses that by degrees brought forth the Covenant and the War And it is pretty observable that the first Remonstrance at Edinburgh was made in the name of the Men Women Children and Servants who being urged with the Book of Service and having consider'd the same the Children as well as the rest humbly shew c. These were followed by the Burghours and the Burghours by the Gentry and Nobility And so at length did the Scotch-war break out in which the Liturgy was no more concern'd than the Children of Edinburgh whose tender Consciences it seems were offended at it though in truth they deserved to be soundly whipt for beginning a War for the Cause when the Cause was too good to be fought for And now consider whether you had not been better advised to let this business of the War alone when you can no other way bring your Clients off with reputation unless the King will be content to suffer Himself his Royal Father and his Loyal Subjects to be impeach'd of their Rebellion For the blame of it must light somewhere and therefore if the
a Jest or a Quibble in its confutation You are a right Champion for the Fanatique Cause that can confute any Argument with face and confidence There is no disputing such an Adversary without an head-piece This is only tilting of foreheads where the hardest skull not the fullest must get the victory Away you trifling Wretch talk you no more of Ecclesiastical Policy and hereafter never pretend to any knowledge that pretends either to Reason or Modesty for had you any sense of the former you would never have been so silly as to be so seriously scared at such an innocent and undeniable proposition or any of the latter you could never have been so impudent as to bray forth such a confident and heinous censure against it as if it were notoriously evident without proof that it directly subverts all the Principles of Religion and Government And therefore I would fain know in good earnest what your meaning was in making your first onset upon this Grand Thesis If you intended its Confutation why have you not discharged so much as one semi-vowel of exception against it If you did not to what purpose is it to trouble your self and the world with its Quotation A man in my Opinion had as good altogether unless he be very idle keep his mouth shut as gape and yet say nothing If this be the Grand Thesis in comparison whereof the rest of my Assertions as you inform us are to be reckoned no better than sneaking Corollaries and if I bottom all the foundations of Government and Religion upon it and make it more necessary to the support of the World than the Pillars of the Earth or the eight Elephants one would think this if any thing should have been battered down with knocking and dead-doing Arguments and here if any where one would have expected you should have given an hot and fierce alarm and have drawn up all your squadrons of vowels mutes semi-vowels and liquids and by the next Gazet to have heard of a sorer and more dreadful battel than ever was fought in your Grammar-War or my Roman Empire Now after all this Threatning and Preparation what a disappointment must it be to the Readers and Spectators to see so proud an He that bore up so bravely and with such a manful Confidence come off with this soft and gentle Rebuke Verily and indeed now it is a naughty Proposition ay and all that Thou a Rat-Divine thou hast not the Wit and Learning of a Mouse when thou endeavour'st to bite thou canst not so much as nibble Thou talk of Government of the Crowns and State of Princes to School Truant mind your Push-pin and con your eight parts of Speech and presume not hereafter to cavil at things that are above the capacity and concern of Boys and Girls and sucking-bottles And yet to the same purpose that is to none at all is that tedious train of Quotations that you bring in at the tail of this without passing any smarter remarque upon them than the same general censure of Malignancy though if they are chargeable there was no need of your Edition for they were in print before and therefore it is but sit you should be endited for a scandalous Plagiary to transcribe so much of my Book to no other purpose than only to make up 6 pages towards your full tale of 326. I believe it will be found against the Laws of the Stationers-hall for your Book-seller to print so much of another mans Copy after it is enter'd according to Order without his leave and consent and I hope M r Martyn will seek his remedy against the Assigns of John Calvin and Theodore Beza They are bold and sawcy fellows as it is the nature of every thing to be so that relates to Geneva But you and I will not concern our selves in their Controversies they know without our information as well as any Vermine in Christendom how to manage their own Affairs by the intrigues and mysteries of their own Trade At least it more concerns me to keep close to your self for they tell me that if a man will keep continually running after a mad dog it is the only way to secure himself from being bitten Tell me therefore quickly in answer to the Grand Thesis do you seriously believe that his Majesty has no Power in matters of Religion What then becomes of all your Acts of Parliament against Popery ever since the Reformation nay what then becomes of the Declaration it self for Indulgence and Liberty of Conscience in which his Majesty declares that he therein only makes use of that Supreme Power in Ecclesiastical Matters which is not only inherent in the Crown but has been declared and recognized to be so by several Statutes and Acts of Parliament Beside do you not think it possible for men to create publique disturbances under pretences of Religion Was there never any Rebellion carried on by popular Zeal and Reformation Did you never hear of any men that set up Christs Standard in defiance to their Princes and that fought against his Person at least only to carry on the work of the Lord and that have murther'd and banisht Kings only to dethrone Antichrist and the Whore You so great a Traveller and did you never hear the Countrey people tell stories of the merry pranks of John of Leydon and the Anabaptists of Germany You so great an Historian and never read of any Kingdomes and Empires some time or other embroil'd or destroyed by Arts of Religion You would be an Historian indeed if you could but name any one Nation in the World whose Annals do not afford us variety of sad stories to this purpose And then after all this dare you be so confident as to declare it is absolutely unlawful and in all cases for any Prince to claim or exercise any Authority over Conscience or Religion If you dare not but allow a necessity of Coercion in some cases then after all your confidence you grant the truth and justifie the innocence of the Grand Thesis viz. That it is necessary to the Peace and Government of the World that the Supreme Magistrate of every Common-wealth should be vested with a Power to govern and conduct the Consciences of Subjects in affairs of Religion An Assertion so obvious and so harmless that never any People in the World had so little brains or so much forehead as to deny it to all Intents but only the salvage Anabaptists of Germany and they indeed claim'd an absolute exemption from the Civil Power for themselves and that only upon the priviledge of Saint-ship but then they equally cancell'd all Government and protested against all manner of Subjection either to Secular or Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction But excepting these inhumane Canibals this Grand Thesis that you suppose to be so grosly absurd that barely to name it is enough to expose the person that shall maintain it as an open enemy to God and Man is so granted and undoubted
a truth that it is plainly ratified by the unanimous consent of all mankind Nay when a man has demonstrated its certainty from that unavoidable influence that Religion alwayes has upon the peace of Kingdomes and the interests of Government and from those intolerable mischiefs that must follow upon its exemption from the Civil Power from the natural tendency of Enthusiasm and Superstition to publick disturbance from the boldness and insolence of Fanatique Zeal from the nature and original of Government from the practice and prescription of all Ages and from all the topicks of Reason and Experience and when he has stated and confined its exercise within easie and discernable bounds and has prevented all cavils and pretences of dislike unless only such as dash as fiercely upon the very foundations of all Civil as well as Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction After all this pains is it not a sad thing to see all blown up with meer confidence and presumption and if a bold man will but say Tush 't is false without any proof or reason for his dislike away it all flys in fumo I have insisted the longer upon this because as it is the Grand Thesis of my Books so it is the first Essay of your courage that by this first Specimen of your Wit the World may take a true scantling of your parts and abilities But having thus nimbly dispatch'd this general Thesis you proceed to your particular Exceptions where you summ up your Charge in Six Heads which you sometimes entitle Playes sometimes Hypotheses sometimes Aphorisms and why not Plots and Scenes and Walks and under-walks c The first is the Unlimited Magistrate or as you eloquently express it pag. 246. his unhoopable Jurisdiction A Metaphor taken from a Tub I suppose because you find Power in your Book of Apothegms compared to liquor for a certain Reason known to every body though no body has exprest it so happily as your self viz. because if it be infinitely diffused or extended it becomes impotency even as a streight line continued grows a circle I will leave it to the Mathematicians to consider how it is possible for a streight line to become a circle by being infinitely streight But however for this reason it is necessary to hoop up the Authority of Princes lest they too soon weaken themselves by too great a leakage of their Power so that methinks according to your notion there is nothing so patly emblematical of Soveraign Princes as Dufoy in his Tub or a Pig under a washbole and if you would define them suitably to the conceit they are nothing else but so many vessels of Authority some Kinderkins some Hogsheads and some Tuns according to the circuit or hoop of their Government Though as you and your Puritan Coopers or as Mar-prelate words it Tub-trimmers have been pleased to contract their Power all the Empire in the world might easily be contained in a pipkin or a quart pot and he would pay dear for it that should purchase the Kings Supremacy at the price of a jug of Ale For when you have once exempted Conscience out of the circle of humane Laws the greatest and most absolute Monarchs upon earth will be reduced to as scant a measure of Authority as your Mock-kings of Brentford in that there is nothing in humane nature directly liable to their Obligation but only Conscience and therefore if that must be let loose from the commands of Superiours nothing else can bind them So wretchedly are such bunglers as you wont to talk that only suck in and then pour out your phrases by rote and at random and because some of the Ancients have sometimes discoursed of Conscience in Metaphorical and loose expressions as they do of all things else calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Domestick God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Guardian Angel c. you must by all means take them in the literal sense and discourse of Conscience as if it were some little Spirit or Puppet Intelligence within you distinct from your selves so that though you are His Majesties most humble and loyal Subjects yet as for your dear and tender Consciences you must have them excused by the Laws of Hospitality that is to say you owe him Obedience in all things excepting only those in which he does or can require it for wherever the man is bound to obey his Conscience and only that is bound to obey it being the only principle in him that is capable of Obligation and therefore if that be absolved from all engagements of Allegiance and all tyes of Duty the case is plain the whole man is at perfect Liberty And all Subjects may huff and rant it to their Princes teeth as well as your proud Almanzor Obey'd as Soveraign by thy Subjects be But know that I alone am King of me You see then there is no remedy but Conscience you must submit to the Jurisdiction of your Prince if you will submit your selves Yes but you would not have it unlimited and unhoopable as I have stated it But Sir give me leave to tell you that though it should be unlimited it does not at all follow that it would be unhoopable because it would be as you inform us like a streight line continued into a circle Now I will maintain it against all the Mathematicians in Europe Asia and Africa and the Terra Incognita of Geneva too you must bear with me for in some cases I cannot avoid this confidence that all circles as well as all other figures how big soever are hoopable things But for all my jesting my own words are upon Record where I have vested every Supreme Magistrate with an universal and unlimited Power and uncontroulable in the Government of Religion that is to say say you over mens Consciences and that is to say say I that some mens Consciences are concern'd in nothing but matters of Religion Well seeing you are content to give Macedo for a finisht and burnisht piece of modesty now then welfare J. O. for a modest thing for he had the Grace to load me with this Calumny before you but then he had the Grace to take his Answer too And it is possible though it is scarce credible that he might stumble into such an horrid mistake through haste and inadvertency for you know he alwayes writes post But what a Coloss of Brass are you that after I have given him such humbling and convictive rebuke for it persist so obstinately in the very same tract of forgery and falsification The Answer I gave him was easie enough for your understanding as meek as it is viz. That in that Paragraph where I asserted the Supreme Government of every Common-wealth to be Universal Absolute and Uncontroulable in all affairs whatsoever that concern the Interests of mankind and the ends of Government it was only in opposition to the pretences of a distinct Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction here on earth For having first asserted the
closely to prove out of the Holy Scriptures the wickedness and abomination of our Liturgy and Ceremonies And though you are here wont to rowl up and down in rambling and uncertain talk yet still the last resolution of all your Impertinency as you have been told often enough is the great Mystery of unscriptural i. e. symbolical Ceremonies for excepting these all of you allow the lawfulness of all other unscriptural Ceremonies and here after you have done your poor utmost at sending and thrusting are you forced to shelter both your Self and your Cause and at last your Quarel against them is That they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but Divine Institution that is to say they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but a Sacramental Nature But the grievance it seems is that these Humane Institutions should be made of equal force to Divine Institutions in that they are imposed with so high a penalty But what is that to you or me if our Governours should be over-severe in their making of Laws as long as they thereby enact and enforce nothing that is in it self unlawfull Beside that this is such an Objection as may be equally thrown against all Laws whatsoever in that they are all establisht upon their proper Penalties so that if it once pass there will be no Remedy left to prevent mad people from playing the Apes and Baboons in the worship as you have done the Wolves and Tygers in the Cause of God in that to restrain them by penalties and yet there is no other way of doing it will be to make Humane Institutions of equal force with the Divine But here lurks the great mischief of all your peevishness as you have been too often inform'd seeing you will not attend that your complaints are so impossible to be redrest that though we would save you from persecution yet it is not in our power to do you so much kindness in that Divine Worship cannot possibly be performed without some Arbitrary and unscriptural Ceremonies And make choice of what others you please refine and purifie them as long as you will they will still retain their symbolical Nature And then as it is necessary to the nature of external Worship to express it self by symbolical Ceremonies so is it as necessary to prevent madness and confusion that some particular Rites be determin'd and injoyn'd by Authority otherwise after what a ridiculous rate must the publique Service of God be every where perform'd when every humorous and conceited Fellow would be at Liberty to affect his own singular posture and extravagance And for this reason all Churches in the world have ever taken upon them to determine their own rules of Order and Decency and exacted Conformity to them of all the members of their own Communion And so do all the particular Clans and Conventions of the Fanatiques among themselves and without this uniformity all their Assemblies would be no better than a wild and confused rabble of people For do but suppose a mixt Assembly partly of a Congregation of Presbyterians and partly of a meeting of Quakers what an uncouth and fantastick medley would this appear to the Spectators when upon the very same Principle that the Presbyterian refuses to kneel at the Communion the Quaker refuses to be uncover'd and so still they would quarrel and combate each other as much as they do the Church This is so plain and obvious to every mans experience and they have been so often upbraided with it that no man whose confidence had not devoured his understanding could have taunted us so perpetually as you do with the indifferency of our Ceremonies in their own Natures when it is so plain that the determination of some indifferent things is absolutely necessary to the exteriour performance of Gods worship and when it is so certain that this exception if once admitted would fall as fouly upon all your several Customes as upon our Constitutions So that the Quarrel relates not so much to the particular matters in controversie between us for no man is or ever was so fond as to pretend an antecedent necessity for their particular injunction it is enough for us and too much for you that it is absolutely necessary to enjoyn either these or some other symbols as unscriptural and arbitrary as these But our main concern relates to that dangerous and exorbitant Principle upon which your Dissent and Non-conformity is founded A principle so fond and so mischievous that it will not suffer the settlement of any Church or Common-wealth in the world So little reason have you to complain of the severity of the Laws whilst the Laws are only level'd against such Principles as must eternally oblige you to be seditious and unpeaceable under all Governments and in all Churches insomuch that should his Majesty condescend to grant you a Commission to order Divine Service to your own humours if you would but be constant to the peevishness of your own Prinoiples that would bring you under as indispensable an Obligation of Non-conformity to your own Constitutions as you now pretend to lie under to ours So that you see the last Issue of this Plea is plainly nor more nor less than this that you are persecuted for your Conscience sake i. e. only because you are resolved to keep your selves under a necessity of being persecuted And this I hope at present may suffice to stop your Cry of Persecution but if this will not do then there is no remedy but I must muzle you and your whole party and that I hope to do to the purpose when I come to your State-Policy In the mean while it concerns Authority to consider whether as simply as your pretences look at top any thing but the Good Old Cause or as you mince it the Cause too good be lurking at the bottom whilst they observe such blessed Saints as you that are known to boggle at nothing your selves and withall to be the fiercest and most vehement enemies to the present form of Government to be the only men that come forth to Witness against Prelacy and Antichrist and preach such silly scruples to the Rabble as you know must be unremoveable grounds of discontent between the King and his People For as much as your general pretence viz. that if His Majesty shall ever challenge any Authority over Conscience he invades the Divine Prerogative which yet you know and sometimes acknowledge to be false destroys all Government in general in that Princes have no other secure and fast hold upon their Subjects but only by vertue of their Consciences and then as for all your particular exceptions they as apparently destroy all Church-Government in particular and are so remediless that it is not in the Power of Princes to avoid them as long as they will leave any outward appearance of Religion or Divine Worship in the World For if they will admit of any more Rites than the two Sacraments it must be
Clamours that have the face to compare three easie and harmless Rites with the Yoke of Moses and the Tyranny of Antichrist But thus split a Straw and lay it cross a Fanaticks forehead and as hard as it is it shall break the back of his Conscience I could have wish'd you had been as much refreshed and edified with the Arch-Bishop's Testimony as with Mr. Hales's that so instead of quoting a single Passage you might have taken upon your self the grateful penance of transcribing his whole Book and then you would have obliged us with that remarkable Prophecy wherewith he shuts up his Antiquities There is nothing more to be fear'd and provided against in this well-constituted Church of England than lest the Clergy whilst it takes pains in the Word and Truth and is with the greatest Observance subject to the Soveraign Power should be set forth as a Prey and Spoil to the Lavish and Spend-thrifts and be torn by the Reproaches and Contumelies of the Ignorant and exposed to the Affronts and Insolences of the Rascal-Rabble If this shall ever happen more heavy Scourges from God and sadder times than those of Queen Mary's Reign may justly be expected And yet thus it has been and thus it must be wherever it is the humour and fashion to vilifie the Priesthood Religion becomes contemptible with its Officers and where that loses its Esteem and Reverence Government loses its support and security And this was at the bottom of our late wild and wanton Rebellion that the People were debauch'd into a slight regard of all things Sacred and Civil by the bold and juggling suggestions of a few ambitious and sacrilegious Malecontents and then it was not only easie but natural to put Affronts upon all the Proceedings of Authority to bear down all its Remonstrances and run the Common-wealth into flat Anarchy and open War You see how little Execution is to be done upon the Church of England with the But-end of an Arch-Bishop as you express it with equall Wit and Manners Here the Quotation of my Lord Verulam which you could produce to my confusion would in my opinion have been much more to the purpose but to tell us what you can say without saying it is only to talk to your self Or the story of Pork that you forbear to tell too because you say I know it but I say I do not know it or if I did you should however have had the Manners to have told it for his Majesties sake because he knows how to make use on 't But another Qualm that is upon every turn throwing you into groaning Fits is that after all my seeming and pretended zeal for the Church of England for which you have the greatest kindness in the World were it not for the Pick-thankness and Pick pocketingness of the Clergy I shall be found by any unpack'd Jury of Divines little better than a rank Erastian a word you have pick'd up out of Bishop Bramhal though for any thing you know that may signifie a Wizard or a Magician yes or a Jewish Zealot i. e. a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat But be it what it will this too was as all the rest are J. O's grievance And you are both Crafty Colts that when you know your selves unable to answer Arguments presently spurn at them with some false and foul Recrimination I scorn'd to take any notice of his Braying and so I should of yours but that I perceive some weak and well meaning Brethren that are only wont to skim and skip over Books to be a little startled at the Impeachment because I all along discourse of the Power of the King and not of the Church though the reason of it is very obvious viz. because the Subject I design'd and proposed to treat of was the Power of the King and not of the Church so that if you and J. O. are aggrieved at any thing it is for no other cause than that I have stuck close enough to my own Argument and too close to yours Now Sir as you well remember you have for want of wiser Remarques calculated at least ten times over in what Year of the Lord and upon what day of the Month my several Books were born and then if you will compare it you will find that the juncture of Affairs to which the first was accommodated was at a certain Season after the Chatham Adventure when you began to lift up your Heads and to Nose your Governours and to make bold demands in the name of your Consciences against the late illegal Impositions of King and Parliament And you know what innumerable swarms of Pamphlets you were perpetually sending abroad only to declare to all his Majesties good Subjects that either were already out of humour or had a mind so to be that if himself or any other Civil Magistrate whatsoever shall presume to challenge or exercise any Authority over their Free born Consciences in any matters of Religion whatsoever he usurps upon the Royalty of God and involves himself in the guilt of Tyranny and Persecution This was loud and broad enough to alarm the Church of England we understood the men and their meaning and had no mind believe me to have that comfortable settlement restored to Church and State by his Majesties happy Restauration unravel'd by these Men's bold and insolent Pretences And therefore divers Persons out of pure Love for the Church and Loyalty to their Prince and Zeal to their Countrey set themselves to beat back all your new Republican Pleas of Sedition and to assert his Majesties Prerogative against all your old Shifts of Dis-loyalty Among the rest I had no more Wit than to thrust my self too forward into the Scuffle and to pursue you too close through all your peevish Clamours and Pretences For when I saw men of known and approved Enmity to the present State buzze abroad such Exorbitant Principles among the Common-People as flatly contradict all the Principles and defeat all the Obligations of Government I could not I ought not to refrain from lashing such Lewd Designs with some Warmth and Smartness of Reproof and if I have any where overlash'd it was out of an over-vehement Concern for the Peace and Prosperity of my Countrey though for my own part I am not sensible of any one Expression that is chargeable with the least Harshness or Incivility I have only express'd ill things by their Proper Names and whereas both your self and J. O. pour fourth in every Page incessant complaints of Railing and Reviling that is but an Uncivil Word that you may throw at any man that you are not fond of and it proceeds merely from your Old prodigious Pride and Partiality to your selves who whilst you make it both your Recreation and Employment to invent or blazon Slanders against the Innocent rave and fome at all Conviction of guilt against your selves I have challenged you often enough to specifie but one foul or false word in
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
intents and purposes could any man then that were not bewitch'd or bereft of his Understanding be so ravishingly taken with this little scrap as you are if he were not seriously of J. O's mind that our symbolical Ceremonies are Sacraments indeed And yet this ignorance as wretched as it is in it self is sadly aggravated if we consider from how small advantage and to what little purpose you have raised all this noise and triumph For J. O. having as you confess forgot to quote Book and Page I thought my self under no indispensable engagement to examine its truth or regard its Authority and therefore vouchsafed it no other answer than to tell him that it was neither civil nor ingenuous to trouble me or any man else with such objections as could not be answer'd without reading over eight or ten large Volumes in Folio No man is bound by the Laws either of duel or disputation as you know and no man better to supply his enemies defects so that if J. O. forgot book and page all the World will throw all the blame upon him alone and yet here after the manner of your modesty you crow and insult over me as a timorous and cowardly Craven that was glad of any excuse to shift or escape the challenge though I am confident no wight living could have had the confidence to do it beside your self for say what you will it is too unreasonable to expect that I should search ten Voluminous Tomes for one line only because J. O. either did not or could not quote Book and Page Yes but I could not possibly miss so remarkable a passage when it was so dirtied with the Non-conformists Thumbs But that is more than I knew or could be obliged to know before and this is the first time that ever I heard of such familiar acquaintance between the Fathers and the Non conformists however I read them not either with their Glosses or their Spectacles at least I find none of their dirty Thumb nails in my Patron 's Library Who but such a Wit as you could put himself into so good humour with so small taplash as this But yet if I will promise not to laugh at you you will tell me in the simplicity of your heart where even you your own self have met with it viz. Ep. quintâ ad Marcellinum And because you profess to do it in the simplicity of your heart for once if I can refrain at so unhappy a blunder I will not laugh no you rather deserve to be scourged for so gross and impudent a falshood for it is undeniably plain from your own Quotation that you never read it in St. Austin himself but either J. O. or some other secret friend transcribed it to vour hands and so have unwarily imposed upon your ignorance a fifth Epistle to Marcellinus whereas as Fortune would have it the fourth is the last that ever he writ to him and that which you quote for the fifth is the first But had they been as careful to prevent your mistake as they ought to have been either for your or their own credit they ought to have set it down thus Ad Marcellinum and then have added Epistola Quinta i. e. the fifth Epistle in order as they are placed in Erasmus's Edition but when you quote Epistola Quinta ad Marcellinum you need not have inform'd us that you did it in the simplicity of your heart tho' when you add that you have done this out of your own reading you betray something else beside your simplicity And whereas you profess that you have taken all this pains to save me a labour I do not see but you have left me as much to seek as J. O. did unless you had set down not only Book and Page but Tome and Edition for otherwise after all the directions you have given me and your Author gave you there is no remedy but I must be forc'd to turn over all St. Austins Works to find out his Epistle to Marcellinus and that had been a pretty task of it self but if I had searched after the fifth Epistle to Marcellinus I might have pored till the day of Judgment so that it was great Fortune that I at first light upon the Edition of Erasmus where the first Epistle to Marcellinus happens to be the fifth of that Tome But now after all to requite your kindness I mean your good will I care not though I confess to you in private that I was not ignorant of the passage it self not that I have ever read it in St. Austin or observed it dirtied with the Thumbs of the Non-conformists but I remembred that it was much teased and bandied up and down by the School-men in their taplash disputes upon Sacraments and Sacramentals yet I shifted it off upon himself to find out his own Quotation because I knew either that he had pick'd it up at all adventure or if he had not then which is somewhat worse that himself knew it to be both false and impertinent And I did not think it worth while as I then declared to trouble the World with too industrious a gleaning of all his impertinencies after so plentiful an harvest but now those little Misadventures that I then refused to prosecute for their triflingness I am forced to expose only to stifle your more daring and unlearned Clamours In short then J. O. had made very bold with his Text as he always does for his own convenience and confidently read sunt Sacramenta instead of appellantur Sacramenta a good reasonable emprovement of the Fathers words and becoming the modesty of the man And now have you not raised this great noise upon this little Quotation to very wise purpose when all you gain by it is only to discover that your friend has grosly prevaricated This might have been your answer had the Quotation served at all for your purpose as it does not for St. Austin speaks not there of the Institution of signs in general but only of such as are establish'd by Divine Authority and 't is these and none but these that he sayes become Sacraments of Religion by vertue of their institution For the plain design and occasion of his discourse was this Marcelnus had been disputing with some body in defence of the Christian Faith as there are in all Ages a sort of little conceited Folk that have no other way to pass themselves for wits than by picking up Quarrels against Religion His Adversary objects to him that if the Jewish Sacrifices were at first well and wisely instituted they ought never to have been abolisht if they were not that then it is certain they were never instituted by Divine Authority For a satisfactory Answer to this difficulty he writes to St. Austin who flatly denies the consequence because all sacrifices are of the nature of Sacraments and all Sacraments are positive and arbitrary pledges of some entercourse between God and his Creatures and so
is only in order to shew how it was misapplyed by the Fanaticks though I remember no such Allegation you might have done that too and yet preserved the dignity and reverence of those Sacred Writings which you have not done but on the contrary you have in what is properly your own taken the most of all your Ornaments and Embellishments thence in a scurrilous and sacrilegious stile admirable sense insomuch that were it honest I will undertake out of you to make a better that is a more ridiculous and prophaner Book than all the Friendly Debates bound up together I cannot but make use of this admirable way like fat Sir John Falstaffs singular dexterity in sinking of answering whole Books or Discourses how pithy and knotty soever in a line or two nay sometimes in a word And as the Friendly Debate is ridiculous and prophane so I observe that all the Argument of your Books too is but very frivolous and trivial you bring nothing sound or solid For the excellency of your Logique Philosophy and Christianity in all your Books is either as in Conscience to take away the subject of the Question or as in the Magistrate having gotten one Absurdity to raise a thousand more from it In all your writings you do so confound terms leap cross have more doubles nay triples and quadruples than any Hare so that you think your self secure of the Hunters You endeavour so to muddle your self in Ink that there shall be no catching nor finding you You so confound the Question with differing terms and contradictory expressions that you may upon occasion affirm whatsoever you deny or deny whatsoever you affirm You have face enough to say or unsay any thing and 't is your priviledge what the School-Divines deny to be within the power of the Almighty to make contradictions true You neither know or care how to behave your self to God or Man and having never seen the receptacle of Grace or Conscience at an Anatomical dissection you conclude therefore that there is no such matter or no such obligation among Christians you persecute the Scripture it self unless it will conform to your interpretation you strive to put the world into blood and animate Princes to be the executioners of their own subjects for well-doing I looked further into what you say in defence of the Magistrates assuming the Priesthood what for your scheme of Moral Grace what to palliate your irreverent expressions concerning our blessed Saviour and the holy Spirit what of all other matters objected to you and if you will believe me but I had much rather the Reader would take the pains to examine all himself there is scarce any thing but slender trifling unworthy of a Logician and beastly railing unbecoming any man much more a Divine You distribute all the territories of Conscience into the Princes Province that is to divide a thing into one part and make the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the Air and talk at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment than either Conscience or Government of Church and State that the Reader will avow that in the whole discourse you had not one lucid Interval Had you no friends to have given you good counsel before your understanding was quite unsetled Really I cannot but pity you and look upon you as under some great disturbance and despondency of mind and in as ill a case as Tiberius was in his distracted Letter to the Senate There wants nothing of it but the Dii Deaeque me perdant wishing let the Gods and Goddesses confound him worse than he finds himself to be every day confounded So all that rationally can be gather'd from what you say is that you are mad You incite Princes to persecution and tyranny degrade Grace to Morality debauch Conscience against its own Principles distort and mis-interpret the Scripture fill the world with Blood Execution and Massacre And as for Subjects no Pimp did ever enter into seriouser disputation to vitiate an innocent Virgin than you do to debauch their Consciences And to harden their unpracticed modesty embolden them by your own example shewing them the experiment upon your own Conscience first Nay you threaten you rail you jear them if it were possible out of all their Consciences and Honesty Really I think you have done the Atheists so much service in your Books by your ill handling and while you personate i. e. Personam induere one Party making all Religion ridiculous I mean the serious part of it that they will never be able to requite you but in the same manner It is true you sometimes for fashion-sake speak of Religion and a Deity but your Principles do necessarily if not in terms make the Princes power paramount to both these and if he may by his uncontroulable and unlimited Universal Authority introduce what Religion he may of consequence what Deity also he pleases This is a faithfull account of the summ and intention of all your undertaking for which I confess you were as pickt a man as could have been employed or found out in a whole Kingdom And I have herein endeavour'd the utmost ingenuity towards you for you have laid your self open but to too many disadvantages already so that I need not I would not press you beyond measure but to my best understanding and if I fail I even ask your pardon I do you right And so you are a dangerous Fellow Bayes you are an Hypocrite Bayes you are a mad Priest Bayes you are a Buffoon Bayes you are an Opprobrium Academiae Bayes you are a Pestis Ecclesiae Bayes Hola Bayes whoop Bayes whoop and hola Bayes Bayes Bayes ay and all that Bayes Quod erat demonstrandum You and I Sir have hitherto been good Friends and if you had but told me all this in private you had done a friendly office and upon your advice and admonition I might have reformed all miscarriages but whether to blazon them abroad thus publiquely without proof or instance and before you had made any tryal upon my ingenuity whether I say it were either civilly or discreetly done because you are a wise man and I have a great opinion of your Integrity I shall refer it altogether to your own judgement However if you or any friend of yours can really think that such Demonstration as this needs any other Answer beside being pitied and laughed at do but signifie your minds to me by the next Post provided you will superscribe Franck and I will promise to do you reason and give you satisfaction This is but a taste of what I might have transcribed in that the greatest part of your Pamphlet is manifestly rather Censure than Confutation But the main and most serviceable topick of impertinency is to picqueer at single words in Introductions and Transitions and animadvert upon them with the Similitude the Aphorism the Rithm the
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
great promises of Assistance and Supply and these being still diverted by endless Disputes about Liberties and Priviledges and bold demands to abate the Powers of the Crown he saw plainly as himself declares That they only made use of the necessities grown upon him by that War to inforce him to yield to Conditions incompatible with Monarchy So that despairing of any good from the Seditious Spirits of that Parliament he dissolves them And in the interval his necessities growing upon him by a new and sad disaster that had befallen his Unkle the King of Denmark He commands his Council to Advise by what means and wayes he might fitly and speedily be furnish'd with Monies suitable to the importance of the undertaking Hereupon after a Consultation of divers dayes together they came to this Resolution that the urgency of Affairs not admitting the way of Parliament the most speedy equal and convenient means were by a general Loan from the Subject according as every man was Assessed in the Rolls of the last Subsidy Upon this Result the King issues out his Declaration accordingly but assuring the People that this way to which he was forced by the urgency of his Occasions should not be made a Precedent for the time to come to charge Them or their Posterity to the prejudice of their Just and Ancient Liberties enjoyed under his most Noble Progenitors And promising them in the word of a Prince first to repay all such summs of Money as should be lent without fee or charge so soon as he shall be any wayes enabled thereunto And secondly that not one Penny so borrowed should be bestowed or expended but upon those publique and general Services wherein every of Them and the body of the Kingdom their Wives Children and Posterity have their personal and common Interest When the King and his Council had Voted the Loan they commanded Laud then Bishop of Bath and Wells to draw up certain Instructions to be communicated to the Arch-bishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergy of the Realm to stir up and exhort the People to express their Zeal to the true Religion their Duty to the King and their Love to their Countrey by a chearful complyance with his Majesties Commissions And in this was represented the Afflicted Condition of the Princes and States of the Reformed Religion in all parts of Christendom some being over-run some diverted and some disabled to give assistance The distress of his Unkle the King of Denmark the great danger of losing the Sound and thereby the Eastland and the Hamborough Trade the Confederacy of the Pope the House of Austria and the French King to root out the Protestant Religion the great Fleets both of France and Spain at that Instant endeavouring to block up Rochel together with their Land-forces on the Coast of Brittain ready to invade us And what more important Motives could have been press'd to perswade thePeople to a ready and chearful Contribution What more powerful and plausible Arguments could have been put into the mouths of the Clergy to win their Auditories to a dutiful Compliance both with his Majesties Desires and Necessities And this among other things brought forth Sibthorp's Sermon and the man did well and as became his Function to perswade the People that they ought in point of Conscience and Religion chearfully to submit to all such Taxes as were imposed upon them by Royal Authority without murmurs and disputes But if he intermedled as it is said he did with the Kings Absolute Power of imposing Taxes without Consent of Parliament according to the Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom he went both beyond his own Commission and against the Kings Declaration For what had he to do in the Pulpit with the Rights of Sovereignty and the Priviledges of Parliament It was none of his business to adjust the disputes of his Superiours and he had no Authority either from God or the King to interpose in Affairs of State his Office was to recommend the Piety and the Necessity of their Contributions and though possibly they were not under any enforcements of Complyance by the Constitutions of this Realm yet to urge it upon their Consciences from the Common Principles and Obligations both of Nature and Christianity that could not but effectually enforce their complyance with so good a King in so pious and necessary a work But if he exceeded his Commission by taking upon him to teach the Laws of the Land and determine the Rights of the Prerogative though he cannot be justified yet he ought as circumstances then stood to be in a great measure excused because he did it at a time when the King could not in the usual Parliamentary method obtain sufficient supplyes to preserve his Honour and Safety but by Concessions shamefully contrary to both and that might provoke a warm man to lavish out beyond the bounds of prudence and discretion And as for Manwarings Case I need say little to it in that it was the very same with Sibthorps only it is observable that his Prosecution was carried on with all eagerness by such Members as Pym and Rous men that took advantage of such imprudences only to give countenance to their own clamours and confirm the jealousies they had blown into the People against the King by the indiscretion of a Countrey Vicar though if there were at that time any designs of absolute Government it was to be imputed to their Impudence for when they assaulted the Royal Power with their bold and unreasonable demands they forced it to stand upon its own guard and then it was none of the Kings fault if he were necessitated to act sometimes by vertue of his meer Prerogative because there was no other way left to preserve himself or his Government in that they had brought things to that pass that nothing must be done unless he would either grant away all his Power to them or keep it all to himself for they would not share the Sovereignty with a single Person and under pretence of priviledges of Parliament assumed the Royal Supremacy and as soon as they had Power and opportunity it is well known how confidently they put in practice the very same courses which they resisted as Acts of Arbitrary Government in the King so that if He were at any time to have recourse to extraparliamently proceedings it was not from his own choice or inclinations but purely from the rudeness and insolence of their demands which were so insufferable that the case was plain that he must sometimes govern without them or not govern at all And what is to be done in that case the Law of self-preservation determines I know this may be pretended where there is no such necessity but that I cannot help if men will abuse a just pretence to authorize unjust actions It is enough to my purpose that it is plain in the case of the last King that he never made use of his Prerogative till the
Parliament began to challenge it and then he could make use of nothing else and the dispute then was not whether the Prerogative should govern but whether it were vested in him or them and that brought forth the War they fought for the Crown and when the Parliament had won it they were resolved to wear it and exercised all the Jurisdictions of Sovereign Power by vertue of their Parliamentary Supremacy But to return to Manwaring it is a great instance of the Presbyterian Humanity that though the poor man had begged their pardon with all the expressions of sorrow and humility yet no less punishment would appease their fury but to be imprisoned during their pleasure i. e. for ever to be fined a thousand Pounds to be suspended three Years and to be made uncapable of any farther Ecclesiastical preferment with many other heavy tokens of their displeasure and all this only for his too eager Zeal and forwardness in the Cause of Loyalty and so his Majesty understood it and therefore punish'd him with preferment accordingly to defie their pragmaticalness and to encourage such as promoted his and the Kingdomes service though they might fail in a point of Prudence But as for those persons that openly refused the Loan and affronted the Kings Commissions and would rather suffer Imprisonment than comply in so easie and reasonable a Demand they plainly shewed they had forgot that respect they owe to their Prince and that duty they owe to God who so severely requires them to obey not for their wrath only but for Conscience sake so that it was a manifest and unpalliable Breach both of Loyalty and Religion Especially when it was so very manifest that the King was forced upon all extraordinary courses purely by the stubborness of Presbyterian Parliaments and when they had such unquestionable assurance both from his own Temper that he could do nothing but what was just and honourable and from his Royal word that he would be always as tender of his Peoples ancient and just Liberties as of the Rights of his Crown and Soveraignty In these plain Circumstances as things stood between him and his Parliaments punctilios of Law were superseded For when it was so manifest that their demands were disloyal and unreasonable and withal that on one hand their designs were worse than their Declarations and on the other that his Majesty never intended any thing but the Peace and prosperity of his Kingdomes that was sufficient motive to overrule all good Subjects and ingenuous men not to endanger all by standing too curiously upon precedents and and niceties of old Custome But when these men first put the King upon his necessities and then defeated him of his supplies and so forced him upon extraordinary courses and then resisted his Authority and affronted his proceedings and animated the people to stand it out against his Commissioners and raised a disturbance and discontent through the whole Nation and all this when they knew his Majesties occasions so urgent and his designs so just and pious I dare determine that whatever they were by the Laws of the Land they were most notorious Rebels by all the Laws of the Gospel though what they proved afterward we all know it being these very men I mean as many of them as persisted in their stubborness for some of them were converted to a more orderly temper by the mere power of shame and modesty that were the great Authors and Ringleaders in the Long-parliament Rebellion The next fatal Rock upon which this man so learned so wise so pious ruin'd both King and Kingdome is the Rock of Arminianism for it seemed he and the Bishops had in order to setting up a new kind of Papacy of their own here in England provided themselves of a new Religion in Holland Arminianism which though it were the Republican Opinion there yet now they undertook to accommodate it to Monarchy c. But I beseech you Sir that are so deep a Statesman to inform a poor sucking Divine which way Arminianism is concern'd for or against Monarchy As for its Orthodoxy I have not a word to say especially when it has been so sufficiently determin'd by the Synod of Dort and the Assembly of West-minster i. e. all the Modern Orthodox Divines of Hungary Transylvania Bohemia and so downward to Pin-makers Hall though how it should at all conduce to Popery I must confess it is beyond my comprehension when the controversie has been always more or less disputed in all Nations under all Governments by all Sects and all Religions and is bandied as much by the Divines of the Church of Rome as by those of the Reformation And therefore when you upbraid us that in the late beating up the Pulpit Drums against Popery some were so ignorant as to fight the Papists with Arminian Arguments you would have done well to tell us the Ear-mark of an Arminian Argument I always thought they had been equally concern'd with other Protestants against the Pope and that the Arminians howsoever otherwise heterodox agree no more with some Papists in some things than the Calvinists agree with other Papists in other things so that their differences have no relation to their common Cause against Popery But to what purpose is it to talk to a Gamester of matters of Divinity For you understand none of these things but write purely by roat you find grievous outcries of Arminianism in the Long-Parliament Speeches and Declarations and you thought you might serve your turn of it as they did theirs It was an hard word that the people understood not at all i. e. as little as themselves did the thing only they taught them to hate and abhorr it as Children do Bugbears and Hobgoblins So that in those days Arminianism and Popery went always hand in hand and if they had a mind to blast any mans Reputation it was but sticking this name upon him and his business was done and among other Artifices to give better Countenance to the Cheat a counterfeit Letter was framed to the Rector of the Jesuites in Bruxels in which they inform him with what Art and success they had planted here the Sovereign Drug of Arminianism to purge the Protestants from their Heresies and to make a Party against the Puritans that were their only dangerous enemies with abundance more of the like impudent stuff though by whom it was written it was never yet discover'd yet by several passages in favour of the Puritan Faction it is evident enough to all sober men that it was a mere Gullery of their own devising And agreeably to this they were always very liberally bestowing their stroaks upon the Monster of Arminianism I desire Mr. Speaker that we may consider the increase of Arminianism an errour that makes the Grace of God lackey it after the will of man yea I desire that we may look into the very belly and bowels of this Trojan Horse to see if there be not men
in it ready to open the Gates to Romish Tyranny and Spanish Monarchy for an Arminian is the spawn of a Papist and if there come the warmth of favour upon him you shall see him turn into one of those Frogs that rise out of the bottomless Pit and if you mark it well you shall see an Arminian reaching out his hand to a Papist a Papist to a Jesuite a Jesuite gives one hand to the Pope and another to the King of Spain c. These were wonderful tricks for the deep Worthies of those times but now nothing but an incorrigible blockhead could either believe that they were very serious or if they were that they were not very silly And yet however Arminianism whatever it is may stand in relation to Popery it was a new Religion that the Prelates brought from Holland and though it were the Republican Opinion there because that Faction was there accused of designs to reduce that Common-wealth under the Spanish Government they undertook to accommodate it to Monarchy And they were no doubt deep Youths that could reconcile a Republican Religion to a Monarchical Interest nay not only so but make that the very Engine to screw up the Prerogative to an absolute Power They must be very cunning men and certainly could never have miscarried as they did were it not that God is resolved never to bless Church-men in their Statetrinklings Otherwise I would request you to tell me in the name of Machiavel which way the Kings Prerogative is concern'd whether God Almighty decreed from all Eternity to create ten Myriads of men nine whereof he peremptorily resolved to doom to everlasting misery for the Glory or rather Ostentation of his uncontroulable Power and Dominion and that they might not frustrate the purpose of his Good-pleasure as they call it resolved again by one device or other to draw them or rather than fail by his own irresistible Instigation to drive them into such practices as might deserve and by consequence justifie the severity of his proceedings Though this seems to make very much for the lawfulness and the divine Right of arbitrary Government yet I never heard of any Calvinist that urged his opinion in this matter in behalf of the absolute and unhoopable Supremacy of Kings Neither do I understand what it imports to any form of Government whether a man be a Supralapsarian or a Sublapsarian and suppose he proceed as far as Gomarus in asserting absolute and irrespective Reprobation I would fain know wherein lyes the Republicanness of his opinion and by what trinkling distinctions and subtilties the Bishops were able to accommodate it to Monarchy At least all these Speculations of absolute and arbitrary Dominion are easily defeated and over-ruled by Calvin's practical Doctrines of Government viz. that it is the duty of the Common people and their Trustees to assert the liberty of Subjects against the Tyranny and wantonness of Kings and that if they grow licentious and exorbitant in the use of their power it is then incumbent upon the popular and inferiour Officers to restrain and moderate their Excesses One such blunt assertion as this is enough to baffle all the dry and speculative Consequences of notional Decrees for these only swim in men's fancies whilst there are perpetual or at least too many occasions of reducing that to practice And though the Consequence is very obvious that if God disposes of his Creatures by an arbitrary Decree and without regard to the merits of the Cause for so he acts according to the Predestinarian Doctrine by which he pre-ordains the greatest part of his Creatures to everlasting Destruction and that he may not be defeated pre-ordains them too to as much sin as may deserve it that then his Vicegerents may govern the World by his own measures and destroy any of their Subjects as they see cause for the Interest and Glory of his or their own Empire Yet how it comes to pass I do not know or perhaps I do know the followers of Calvin have always been as eager in decrying Civil as Ecclesiastical Idolatry and to avoid the very peril and suspicion of it have every where treated Kings as roughly as if they had taken them for a Race of Capons It were easie to adde a great deal more gloss upon this hard word but this may suffice to convince a wiser man than you if he needed it that it had not the least real concernment in the disputes of Monarchy or Popery but being some Foreign Monster that no body understood it might conveniently serve at all turns for a standing pretence of jealousie and suspicion The third Rock upon which this man so learned so wise so pious ruin'd both King and Kingdom was the imposing the English Liturgy upon the Kirk of Scotland Now as to this to be short you must know that this very thing was covenanted and subscribed to by the first Reformers when they Petition'd Queen Elizabeth's aid to expel the French and was in some measure put in practice till in the Minority of King James the Scotch Reformation was as all the rest were over-run by the Bramble and so the Liturgy was by degrees neglected to make way for the new invention of extempore Prayers in which if we may relie upon the Kings word the Mass Johns prayed sometimes so ignorantly as it was a shame to all Religion to have the Majesty of God so barbarously spoken unto sometimes so seditiously that their Prayers were plain Libels girding at Sovereignty and Authority or Lyes being stuffed with all the false Reports in the Kingdom But King James as soon as he came to the use of his Royal Understanding reflecting upon the rudeness and sedition of their Prayers immediately as became a religious Prince bethought himself seriously how his first Reformation in that Kingdom might begin at the publique worship of God which he most truly conceived could never be happily effected until such time as there should be an unity and uniformity in the publique Liturgy and Service of the Church established throughout the whole Kingdom And to this end a publique Liturgy was compiled by the Bishops and others of the most Eminent Clergy and presented to the King by Arch-bishop Spotswood and being approved and ratified by Royal Assent was sent back for the use of the Kirk though as it hapned it took no great effect by reason of his Quarrel with Spain that followed immediately upon it and of his Death that followed not long after it But upon some Addresses from the Clergy of that Kingdom his late Majesty resolved to pursue the Pious and Princely design of his Royal Father to which purpose he caused the same Service-Book to be sent back to himself that after his perusal and alterations if any should be foundnecessary and convenient it might likewise receive his Royal Authority and Approbation And after many and serious Consultations with the Bishops and Clergy of that Kingdom it was at
and these quickly poison'd the people with their own principles of Sedition and Anarchy so that being before the Government was aware grown strong and numerous that made work for the Inquisition which though it soon check'd their growth yet it did little towards a total suppression of the Party partly by reason of the tenderness of the Dutchess of Parma the then Regent and partly by the Envy and Ambition of the Belgick Lords who underhand opposed all proceedings against Sectaries and Hereticks and encouraged their seditious practices so that between them both the wise and resolute Ministry of Granvel was rendred not only successess but withal odious to the people For as he was a man of extraordinary Wisdome Courage and Fidelity that sincerely pursued his Masters interest faithfully executed his Commands and kept up the height of his Authority so being an Implacable Divine he saw to the bottom of the Projects that were carried on by the discontented Lords and foresaw the tendency of Factions in Religion to disorders and seditions in the State And therefore was severe and rigorous in the execution of Laws as knowing that nothing else could ever reduce the people to any peaceable temper after they were once possess'd with such ill Principles and ill humours But for this by the advice of the Dutchess and importunity of the Lords he was removed and the rigour of Edicts remitted and that for the present seem'd to appease all tumults and discontents But by that means the dissenting and discontented Party in a little time grew so considerable as to put the King upon his former resolutions of force and rigour but it was now too late they were grown too strong for the Government When the Venom was too far spread they applyed the Antidote that did then rather irritate than expel the Poison And now too late the Dutchess of Parma saw and bemoan'd her loss of Granvil But so the War broke out with that bruitish rage and fury of the people that their Leaders repented their own rashness and join'd when it was to no purpose with the Governess to suppress Tumults and Insurrections And what were the Events and Traverses of that long and bloody War you know better than I it is enough that at length in the middest of these Confusions the Estates of the Provinces take an opportunity to seize the Government into their own hands and set up a new Common-wealth and a new Religion And this as an ingenious Gentleman tells me was not a little advantaged by a particular Accident viz Whereas in most if not all other parts in Christendom the Clergy composed one of the three Estates of the Countrey and thereby shared with the Nobles and Commons in their influences upon the Government That order never made any part of the Estates in Holland nor had any vote in their Assembly which consisted only of the Nobles and the Cities and this Province bearing always the greatest sway in the Councils of the Union was most inclined to the settlement of that Profession which gave least pretence of Power or Jurisdiction to the Clergy and though he applies the Observation only to Religion yet it is as true of the Government in that as we all know the Estates of Holland were the head of the Rebellion so that after all your Politiques you see that the King of Spain lost the United Provinces purely for want of Trinklers But supposing the truth of your story the consequence you would make of it is to deter Princes from exercising an Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction over the Consciences of their Subjects lest they exasperate such as are tender into Rebellion Or because the Church of Rome abuse their Government into Tyranny therefore we must have none at all And now it were worth while to know what your meaning should be to beat up and down thus industriously through all Histories for such idle stories as these and then to apply them as Caveats and Sea-marks and directions to Princes without ever being in the least concern'd to caution Subjects against the like wantonness upon the like occasions What else can your meaning be but to inform the world what slight pretences will serve the turn at some lucky junctures of affairs both to cause and to warrant Rebellion And the result of all your discourse as address'd to his Majesty amounts to this that by these examples he may learn to condescend to the childish humours of his Subjects and give place to their follies and extravagances whenever they grow head-strong and have a mind to take advantage of being quarrelsom for every trifle 'T is wise advice and such as would quickly make him so glorious a King as the Long-parliament made his father who gain'd so little by his condescensions to their peevishness that he thereby only emboldned them in their Impudence till in a little time no less would satisfie them but to demand the whole Sovereignty it self and when it was denyed them to fight for it In short I can make neither more or less of all this politique Lecture to his Majesty than I can of Bradshaws speech at the High Court of Justice where he justifies their proceedings by raking up as you have done Examples Ancient and Modern of killing and deposing such Tyrant and Traytour Kings as would be forcing their Subjects to conform But beside the wise instructions you have drop'd upon his Majesty and all other Sovereign Princes to humour their subjects like Children and to use their Power with so much caution and tenderness that they may not have any pretence of disturbance howsoever capricious and unreasonable i. e. in short to beware of governing their people for fear of offending them Beside this general care for the welfare of Mankind your sage Wisdom extends it self to the Kingdoms of Gill and Osbolston and wonderfully concern'd you are to settle and preserve a good Understanding between Ushers and School-boys and to this end have you enrich'd the Politiques of the World with divers shrewd and enlightning Observations against the Illegal and Arbitrary Government of whipping School-masters I never remarked so irreconcileable and implacable a Spirit as that of Boys against their School-masters or Tutours The quarrels of their education have an influence upon their Memories and Understandings for ever after then they are not Gentlemen They cannot speak of their Teachers with any patience or civility and their discourse is never so flippant nor their Wit so fluent as when you put them upon that Theme Nay I have heard old men otherwise sober peaceable and good natur'd who never could forgive Osbolston as the younger are still inveighing against Dr. Busby It were well that both old and young would reform this Vice and consider how easie a thing it is upon particular Grudges and as they conceive out of a just censure to slip either into juveline Petulancy or inveterate Uncharitableness 'T is all remarqued like a Senatour that reflects upon the Histories of