give way to a Successor of the Conquerors Nomination But this the Church is obliged to not for mere wrath but also for Conscience sake towards the reason of the Cause and the Law of God that requires Subjection to humane Constitutions But the Drs. Hypothesis puts the whole Proceeding against the deprived as injust and formally invalid to all intents whatsoever and makes the act of Deposition simply Secular without any Concurrence of the Church Eucher If a Bishop should be by the Civil Power Condâ—mned to perpetual and close Imprisonment or be banished for ever from his Country so that it is impossible for him to perform the Duties of a Bishop or should he be carried away Captive we know not where or from whence we cannot redeem him Nay suppose the Banished the Imprisoned the Captive Bishop should expresly require them upon their Duty oâ— Câ—â—onical Oath never to accept of any other Bishop as long as he by the common Course of Nature may be supposed to be living or till they be assured he is dead what must be done in such Cases c Case of Sees pag. 6 7. Dyscher The Church must abide by the Government of their Clergy in such Cases and in all Cases where the peculiar Office of the Bishops is wanting apply to other Bishops for their Succour and Aid Eucher But what if the Diocese be so set or restrained that the Church cannot have recourse to other Bishops as suppose in the Isle of Man or any other impediments preclude a Capacity of such Negotiations with other Bishops who can bear such an hard saying that the Church must not admit a new Bishop of her own when she may meerly because the ejected Bishop with whom we can have no correspondence is ill natur'd and grudges that benefit to the Church Dyscher I am hard pressed here I pray how will you steer in this dangerous difficulty between the quick Sands that lie on both sides on the Drs. loose Principles for your Cause and the strict Rules of ours Eucher Why truly I must so far concur with the Dr. as to grant that the Church has a Liberty to admit a new Bishop in such Cases if he be otherwise Canonically qualified Dyscher Does Banishment Imprisonment or Captivity cutting off all capacity of commerce vacate the See and exauctorate the injured Bishop Eucher It does render the See actually empty for the time but yet I will allow you that the Bishop is not exauctorated but that upon removal of the impediments his Authority would immediately exert it self and run on in its old Channel and ought to be received on the Original Title as being still Bishop of his Diocese except his supposed prohibition of another substitute Bishop forfeits his Right Title and Authority Dyscher This is odd Doctrine If the Bishop does not forbid the Church to substitute another which not to do may be presumed for a Cession then he still continues Bishop if he forbids a Substitution then he quits it by forfeiture I pray how can you make out these Paradoxes Eucher Thus if a Bishop shall enjoyn Orders to the Dissolution of Discipline he ipso facto becomes irregular and forfeits And such would be the effect of this supposed Prohibition of a Substitute But if he admits a Substitute upon the necessity of Discipline not otherwise to be supported he still continues Bishop and is to be received for such in full Authority immediately upon his enlargment and recovery Dyscher This does not extricate but involve and double the Paradox For thus there may be two Bishops of the same See at once and a Successor to a present Proprietary which Successor is to be again thrust out as uncanonical and no Bishop of such Diocese on the return of the former Eucher Two Bishops there then will be at the same time of one and the same See though not in it But the second will not be a proper Successor but a Sagan or Vicar to the absent and so to give place to the returning Proprietary till the See shall become wholly vacant of the Proprietary Bishop by death or otherwise except there be some other exceptive provision in such extraordinary Cases For according to this Rule of Prudence the Church of Jerusalem proceeded in the case of Narcissus * Case of Sees c. Chap. 1. pag. 6. alledged by the Dr. which is much like this supposed Case before us Oppressed with calumnious Perjuries Narcissus retires from his See to deserts and unknown Fields for many years not plainly renouncing his Station however Upon this the Prelates of the bordering Churches fill his Place with other Successors in all three before his return never undoubtedly designing to exclude Narcissus if he should return whose Glory and Innocency Heaven it self had signally vindicated But so it happen'd that after the death of the third intermediate Bishop Gordius Narcissus returns and the Church requires him to resume the Throne Episcopal not on a new but his old Title But because through the great infirmities of his old Age he could not bear the fatigue of his Office it was agreed that one Alexander should be his Sagan or Partner in that Prelacy the original Authority of Narcissus being thus derived to Alexander and by him to be administred in ease to Narcissus Dyscher But this does no Service in our case for our former Proprietaries are ejected and others set in to exclude them though present and claiming their proper Relation to their Dioceses Nor does this account of yours reach the design of those instances given by the Dr. in which the Intruders asserted a Title against the unjustly and invalidly expelled Proprietors Eucher I am not yet come to those Instances I only tell you what may be done in the Case of a Banished Deprived or Captive Bishop hereby rendred uncapable of his Functions which I here proposed from the Dr. though I confess to you as a Friend that this Plea and Case of the Drs. as well as all his Lay-instances throughout his Book are far more Impertinent to our present Case than as he says your Vindicators discourses were to the Baroccian Hypothesis Dyscher This is pretty Inadvertency if you can make it out Eucher Why look ye Deprivation or Deposition in our Sense and Case is the Divorce or Dissolution of the spiritual Relation between Priest and People but Banishment Imprisonment and Captivity makes no such divorce And this the Dr. Fundamentally grants in supposing his Lay-ejections to be invalid Deprivations or Depositions and though he generally calls these Lay-ejections and Banishments by the name of Depositions yet upon a cogent pinch he grants that Banishment from a Bishoprick though inflicted on purpose to part the Bishop from his people is no Deposition for so he †Case of Sees c. Ch. 4. pag. 56. expresly asserts of S. Hilary that he was never Deposed but only Banished and allows him to be still actual Bishop of Poictiers since there
is still asserted while the people turn to both sides with the Secular Wind 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And I believe no body can make it out And I think we must make the Proceedings of the Church at the best to follow the pretended measures of Right and Rule or condemn them for wrong in every Instance produced by the Dr. Dyscher What course then will you take to excuse the Churches in admitting and maintaining Anti-Bishops against the Invalidly ejected Proprietors still claiming Eucher Upon what particular Motives they did Act it is impossible for me to determine but I think I can set such Rules according to which they might act validly not otherwise First then I admit that all the Imperial Ejections were not proper Depositions but either Antecedents or Consequents of them Now if the standing Councils of the Churches find the Bishop wickedly ejected by the Secular Arm or without any declared Cause they ought not to admit any other Bishop without the consent of and during a capacity of Communication with the Ejected or his Deputies But upon defect of such Capacity they may admit an Orthodox Bishop as a Sagan not as an Anti-Bishop to the absent to resign and concede at his return Much of this Photius engaged to the Ignatians under his hand if the Drs. Metrophanes be true in this particular †Case of c. Ch. 14. Pag. 148. * that he would carry himself toward Ignatius as towards an unblamable Patriarch and neither spake any thing against himself nor approve of any that should do so But being hereupon received t is said he took away the Paper he had so Subscribed and then deposed Ignatius He was therefore sensible that such a Subscription would have engaged him to Resign whenever Ignatius should return It being a Contract not to stand as Anti-Patriarch against Ignatius But in Case the Expulsion be for Notorious Villany incompatible with Episcopal Sanctity then even without a Synodical Sentence the Councils of the Church may establish another Successor as in the Case of †Vindic. of Dep. Bâ—sh Pag. 71. c. Case of Sees c. Callinicus Patriarch of Constantinople banished to Rome for open and effectual High-Treason in whose stead Cyrus was admitted And here your Vindicator acknowledges there was no need of a Synod to deprive him upon the notoriety and heinousness of the Guilt and the Dr. rightly observes against him that there was no need of a presumed Cession in Callinicus but then the Church if she acted Piously look'd on more than bare possession in Cyrus namely to the ill Merits as well as Fortunes of Callinicus as the just ground of quitting him for Cyrus Indubitable charges of the Secular Powers removing the impeached Prelate beyond the reach of Ecclesiastical Communication the standing Council of the Church may admit another for the present reserving the Cause of the Ejected to Ecclesiastical Cognisance whensoever there shall be opportunity and Equity binds the Ejected to admit these Ecclesiastical procedures because just and necessary And with this Design the Councils of the Church might admit new Bishops when the former had fallen under Imperial or Civil Condemnations to remote Exiles for Crimes charged on them by the solemn Credit or Averment of the Secular Powers to whose Proceedings and Declarations in the mean time we owe a just Defference and Veneration And if in all those the Drs. Instances wherein heinous crimes are pretended as the true causes of the Exiles the Churches had admitted the new Ones with such a Reservation of trying the Causes perfectly upon a fair opportunity I think their new Admissions had been not only valid but just too and a charitative Presumption of such intention in the Churches Admissions of the New Bishops will I believe excuse those Admissions at our Tribunal from Schism and Invalidity But when all comes to all none of this Hypothesis these Questions or instances are applicable to our Case for our ejected Fathers are not removed from the free presence of and Communication with their Diocesses so that they need not any other Substitute for want of their Presence and Authority from whom if there were no other Cause or Reason we could not recede without their Concession And this is conclusible from †Case of c. Ch. 4. §. 1. Pag. 41. the Drs. own words and instances For saith he should our Magistrates like the Persecutors those Ages viz. the three first centuries endeavour to destroy Christianity by depriving us of our Bishops and by suffering none to be substituted in their Rooms then those Bishops would be our own Bishops and as such we should still adhere to them As the Church of Antioch stuck to Eustathius ejected by an Heretical Synod and banished by the Emperour †Case of Sees c. 〈◊〉 4. §. 1. Pag. 41. till the Catholick Bishop Meletius was settled in his See upon which Eustathius quitted his Episcopal Care and Government and not before Now from hence 't is plain that Civil Separations are not real Deprivations or Depositions and that the Admission of an Heretical Intruder thereupon does not create a Deprivation of a Catholick Bishop from his Church So that all the Question remaining herein is whether the Introduction of an Orthodox Bishop be an effectual Deprivation For if so the Orthodox Church introducing the New Orthodox Bishop must intend to deprive the former Good Persecuted Confessor Bishop but who can think that an Orthodox Church will or can do this according to the Rules of Orthodoxy But then again this is no Lay-Deprivation and yet on the Drs. Hypothesis must be Unjust Invalid and Uncanonical and yet I pray must it be done by an Orthodox Church according to the Rules of Orthodoxy Even so it must be according to the Drs. but not the Catholick Principles But if the Church by the introduction of a New does not intend to deprive the Old then the Old Bishops Title and Relation to his Church is still retained and permanent and the New is no anti-Anti-Bishop to the Old but must resign upon the return of the former except it be otherwise Canonically contracted And in the Drs. own instance who can think that the Catholick Church in Antioch by admitting Meletius did depose Eustathius to whom they ever had so firmly adhered during all the Arian Persecution It must therefore be resolved that Eustathius directed or admitted the Introduction of Meletius in that hereupon he omitted and quitted his Episcopal Care or that the Church admitted him not against Eustathius but in his stead until his Return and Restitution upon which Eustathius wholly Resigned or discontinued and gave place And so the same may be well judged †Case of c. Ch. 17. in the Succession of Macedonius to Euphemius in the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate even as the Case is Stated by the Dr. especially since Macedonius besides other good Offices would not wear his Omophorion in the presence of Euphemius shewing
remind me of your own Principles and Senses I fear I shall fall into the Spirit of T. B. again and not use you very partially in some of my Reflexions Eucher I am sensible by experience of your infirmity And since good natur'd Men are sometimes passionate I know how to bear as well as to correct a little rudeness I pray good Brother let me know what 't is now that begins to provoke your choler Dyscher When you had spent a great many Arguments drawn out with much Pomp and Ostentation being basted in them you grow weary with strugling and fairly give up all and acknowledg that †Sol. ab pag. 27.29 an Act of State Christian cannot alone vacate a Spiritual Charge Charge by any Divine Law primitive Canon or Prescription This is as full as can be worded against the Power of the State to deprive Bishops Now see how you come about again in the very next words Yet such an Act received and admitted by the Church may from her concurrence have a just and legal Effect And then upon this Notion the Statute of Deprivation ipso facto must be taken as a Law upon the Church to reject the Recusants totally from their Stations Here you will not have the Deprivation to proceed from the Act of the State alone but to save some Honour to the Clergy you make their Deprivation valid by their Concurrence to the Act of Deprivation But I pray how did they concur Was it otherwise than by submitting to the Act when it was made And is such Submission any Authority I thought they had been quite different things Did the Clergy shew any signs or make any protestations for their Right viz. that the Act of Parliament for the Deprivation of the Bishops was not valid without their Concurrence No not a word but when it is done they submit to it and acknowledg it And you would make a Protestation against Fact that their Concurrence was necessary to it that themselves did not pretend nor dare they do it to this day It is certain the Parliament thought their own Authority sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask or think they needed the Concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid On the contrary no Clergy-men have dared to dispute it but those who are deprived And for others to imagin to come in by their Concurrence into a share of the Authority is like the fly on a Wheel of the Chariot that thought he contributed to the dust that was raised for he too gave his concurrence It is possible such Men as you should not see how contemptible it renders them to pretend to an Authority they dare not avow And upon this Foundation to raise Arguments to justify their proceedings which they cannot maintain any other way For these Men to deny themselves to be Erastians or ever to name any Ecclesiastical Authority I had almost said to call them a Church Or to speak as †Sol. c. Ab. Pag. 29. you do that the Church ought not to admit Deprivations on improper or unreasonable Demands As if the Parliament did request it from the Convocation or left it to their admitting or not admitting As if they durst dispute the validity of an Act of Parliament for want of their Concurrence As if any of them durst let such a word come out of their Mouth Behold the Ghost the Echo of a Church c. M. S. Reflex and that the consent publick and actual Concurrence of the Church is necessary to give an Ecclesiastical Effect to Civil Ordinances in Matters of the Church Now this Concession overthrows your whole Cause and being placed after the main Body of your Arguments is it self an Argument that you had little faith in them So then our Bishops being never Canonically Deprived are the yet proper Bishops of their Sees But you come like a Spiritual Jugler and perswade us that this hath been Canonically done For the Church say you ought to empty the Sees of such Incumbents that are dangerous to the Civil State But Sir must the Church cast out her Bishops as oft as they will not comply with Vsurpers c. But you say this was done by Acts of Separation properly Ecclesiastical the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church taking the Jurisdiction till the Chapter elect and Bishops consecrate another But Sir you cannot but know that the Dean and Chapter have no Jurisdiction over their Metropolitane and the See must be vacant before they can proceed to Election T. B. Sect. Pag. 37.38 Eucher I have heard with much patience yea pleasure all your Noble strains of Rhetoric and need only say If I have spoken evil bare witness to the evil but if well why smitest thou me For if the Deprived assert the Churches Concurrence necessary to give Acts of State an Ecclesiastical Effect and I grant it what Cause have you to fly in my face for even that very Concession But for you to upbraid me with my Candour who are so heedless in attending to my words as to take or set them off in other Senses than rationally can be fixed on them in their clear account of this Concurrence is neither very courteous nor prudential Let us therefore again look over these oversights and see whether we can come again to our selves First then I never said that the Concurrence of the Church was necessary either to make an Act of Parliament or to make it valid in Ecclesiasticals and particularly in Acts of Deprivation But I admitted your Principle so far and no further that her Concurrence is necessary to give Statutes an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue For an Act of Parliament may justly require of the Church some certain Ecclesiastical proceedings without any joynt Session or Consultation of the Church And such Acts shall be just and valid of themselves to oblige the Conscience of the Church to obedience or executive Concurrence As suppose an Act of Parliament repealing all the Statutes of Premunire which cramp the liberties of the Church in the Episcopal Successions and Synodical Consultations for a perfect reformation to a Primitive purity should consequently require our Bishops or Convocations to proceed upon such relaxation to provide and execute better rules of Discipline on the morals and duties of the Christian Church under their care and to renew the Commercium formatarum with foreign Churches for a general Restitution of Piety and Order to its Primitive State such a Law I think would valioly oblige the Church to Concurrence without which however actually given it could not have its Ecclesiastical Effect When King Joash commanded the Priests to employ the sacred Money to the reparation of the Lords House it was a valid command to oblige but while the Priests neglected it it had no Sacred effect 2 King 12. So when Moses spake unto Aaron Eleazar and Ithamar to eat the meat offering and heave shoulder according to set Rules the precept was very
For if all the Bishops Priests and Christian Laity with them will adhere to those whom the Statute dooms to Deprivation how can the Statute pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect And so the Church ought always to do if they shall apparently persecute her Bishops for Righteousness sake to hinder their temporal Laws from attaining an Ecclesiastical Effect against the innocent whatsoever afflictions they may suffer for the opposition And if ever Popery Arianism Socinianism or Erastianism should which God forbid press it self upon us by Act of Parliament I doubt not but our Church also will herein become Recusant against such Laws and seal their Integrity with their Blood So that in our Case the only Question herein is whether this Law upon the Church to admit the Deprivation be unjust or no If it be in the Churches Judgment she ought to refuse it if not unjust 't is admissible Now this we believe and you the contrary and God must judge between us but in the mean time the church must act according to her present Convictions Dyscher But the form of the Statute is that the Recusants shall be ipso facto Deprived which must import the actual Deprivation to be completed purely by the mere virtue of this Act antecedently to the Concurrence of the Church Eucher I would willingly allow you that this is the Sense of the Parliament if you can clear it from Non-sense of which I am not willing that great Assembly should be impeached And I will also grant you that the mere Virtue of the Statute alone can deprive them of their Temporalities without the Churches Concurrence But perhaps all Decrees of Humane Power in things dubious and future have this tacit yet necessary Supposition quantum in nobis est as much as in them lies for farther certainly no Power can go And further as to the Spiritualties 't is possible the Parliament might intend no more than this that the Recusants should be ejected or quitted by the Church upon and undoubted presumption of her submissive Concurrence or the Recusants own Cession when the Temporalities were gone and their Non-resistance to such necessary and valid Laws But the Senses of Statutes I leave to the Parliament and the Judges while yet you and I know our Ecclesiastical Principles and Obligations in matters truly Spiritual and Christian and must act accordingly whatsoever Lay-men or Lawyers think hereupon And agreeably the Dean and Chapter of the Metropolitical Church looking upon the Sees of the Recusant Bishops de jure vacant discharged the Recusants of their Authority by taking the Jurisdiction to themselves which in such Cases they judged lawful by the Laws of God as well as Man as also Canonical according to our Constitutions tho' herein they assume no ordinary or proper form of Jurisdiction over Bishops not fallen de jure from their Sees and you may very well remember that I noted against this expected Objection in our last Conference †Sol. Ab. pag. 29. that this was and might be done upon judgment of Conscience for themselves and the Church but not of ordinary Jurisdiction over the Bishop And therefore you ought not to have charged this upon us as if we herein own such a Jurisdiction which we disclaim but have proved that the Church may not upon just and necessary Causes desert her Bishop over whom otherwise she confessedly has no proper formal or ordinary Jurisdiction It is most evidently plain that if the Causes be just our Canonical and Legal Constitutions not only allow but require such a Divorce from the fallen Bishop and assign the Jurisdiction to the Church Metropolitical Now if this our Constitution be irregular and invalid why did the Deprived ever own it till now the operation of it came upon them And therefore whether this imports such a formal Jurisdiction or no which yet I deny it cannot be reproached for Uncanonical without condemning our first Reformation and those Models to which your selves have hitherto sworn Canonical observance Dyscher What I have said saves me the pains of reflecting further on what you say in calling the Concurrence of some of the Clergy the Act and Concurrence of the whole Church of England But how the whole Church of England can be represented not only without the Metropolitan and many of his Suffragan Bishops by anumber no matter how many of the inferior Clergy in direct opposition and rebellion against their Lawful Superiors how this can be justified to be a true and Canonical Repre-sentation of the Church of England I leave to you to explain and to distinguish from the gainsaying of Korah Ms Reflex Eucher Except I much forget my self I never asserted any number of inferiour Clergy-men to be Representatives to the whole Church of England nor yet that the Bishops were deprived by the Representative Body of the whole Church but this I say that the actual Ecclesiastical ejection is performed successively by several Representative parts of the whole Church as first by the Metropolitical Church and then the Diocesan Chapters representing their respective Province and Dioceses Now upon an Act for Deprivation the See upon just causes becoming de jure vacant the Course of our Ecclesiastical Politie is such The Metropolitical Church first takes and deputes the jurisdiction the Diocesan Chapters omit their acknowledgments of their former Bishops and at length upon precept proceed to a new Election Bishops upon this except in mere Translations consecrate the Elected thence the whole Episcopal Colledge own the new as do the Cathedral Clergy in their offices and devotions and all the Clergy in person and the Laity by their representative Churchwardens in admitting the Visitations of the new Prelates and executing their precepts Ecclesiastical and all Lay-men personally own them that recieve their Confirmations Benedictions or any other Sacred Ordinances from them or with them as Bishops All which being uniformly and peaceably promoted by these gradations if of much more Weight and Efficacie than a mere Synodical Censure before it has attained to such an actual consequent Reception in the whole Church And therefore when this Process is complete we may truly say the Bishops are Ecclesiastically outed not by the Church representative but by the Church original And hence such a plenary consent of the Church diffusive against a few Bishops and Clergy on the account of their Recusancy must in legal and equitable construction be presumed to proceed from a common uniform Sense of their notorious incapacity and ineptitude of guiding Consciences and exercising Episcopal Functions and Authorities under the present State And upon notorious incapacities the Church may alienate her self from the incapacitated and recurr to other Bishops for new Consecrations or Investitures especially when justly required thereto by the offended Powers And if any incapacity of exercising the Pontifical Authority had been upon Aaron especially from disowning the Principality of Moses which is or comes very near your Case and Korah had opposed him
the Election of Bishops had been freely left to our Convocations they would have admitted few or none of those whom our Kings have advanced but yet the Chapters electing have consented to the Legality of those Nominations which they have not always judged so expedient and the Episcopal Colledge have consented to their Communion with the rest of the Clergy as well in as out of Convocation as no doubt they will with the new Archbishop at their next meeting without breaking any Silence against him by way of Dissent And now at last I am come to your Questions about the Deposition of Episcopacy And first you say the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland are silent under the Abolition of Episcopacy it self and twit me that hereby belike they concur to that Act of Abolition No Brother this does not follow from me but according to you their Silence is a betraying their Right But here again you cannot distinguish the Case of quitting a Personal Right to an Authority which is our Case from the Abolition of the Authority it self Universally which is the Case of Scotland For they that can legally do the former may not legally do the latter For the King can depose the Judges but not the Courts and dismiss other Officers whose Offices he cannot abrogate And the Church can depose Priests and Bishops but not the Priesthood or Episcopacy And whether any Civil State has more intrinsick Power in the Spirituals of the Church than the Church her self ever had in most perfect Freedom judge you But here I must Advocate for the Bishops and Clergy of Scotland against your Calumnies For tho' they made no formal Protestation at Parliament yet they assert their Episcopacy by an avowed Communion of their own and a renunciation of the Presbyterian Model But as to the Civil Power of abrogating Episcopacy here I answer 't is as great as 't is any where but I find not our Parliaments to pretend to the same Opinions here as they do in Scotland and I hope you will not require me to justifie Scottish Pretensions I think the Constitutions of our Orders are founded on Divine Rules and have descended to us by Traditions truly Catholic and Primitive which here we are not so rude to profane or violate by any wanton Claims of Arbitrary Power and in my Opinion the Scots will never acquit themselves well to God his Church and the King till they copy after us where Episcopacy is as well secured as the Scriptures and Sacraments and all the most essential Parts of Christianity But if any of these ever happen to be persecuted here I hope we shall remember Him who on all such Occasions requires us to take up the Cross and follow him And now we are upon this melancholy Speculation of the Church of Scotland I fear the Presages you have made from their fall have been most influential with you to your present Recusancy to those Powers from whom you expect our Dissolution This I confess is a very deplorable jealousie for which if there had been sufficient ground as there was not yet this will not justifie Recusancy to the Civil Powers But the mischief of it is more than Personal and Temporary For hereby the Deprived Fathers who by their glorious merits in the last Reign might have been useful Mediators for the Scotch Church and Promoters of our own are now become uncapable of this second Glory and useless to the Churches happiness by this unfortunate Recusancy But herein I charge no man's Conscience but only bewail the infelicity And shall pray that the Goodness of God will so graciously dispose our Tempers and Affairs as in his own good time to set all things at Right and shew us at length the Light of his countenance Dyscher But let me put these things closely to your Conscience do you verily believe that your Church and Chapters admit the Ecclesiastical Change upon the merits of the Cause and not merely on the fear or acknowledged Authority of the State Eucher I do believe so in very deed just as I have spoken and my reason is because had the Act of Deprivation past for recusancy of Mahometism c. and the Church would never have forsaken their Diocesans nor elected any other even Orthodox Bishops the Act for Deprivation being impious and for that cause unobliging and as loose as Dr. Hody's Rules and as strait as your Principles are I put it close home to his and your Consciences whether on a Case so put or supposed you can think the contrary Dyscher Your jumble of Queen Mary's and Queen Elizabeth Bishops I shall not examine because a full answer to that either already is or suddenly will come abroad Eucher This is what above all I have ever greatly coveted and I have of late been so lucky as to meet with the Sense of †Part 2. Chap. 3. Pag. 33 34. your excellent Author of Christian Communion on this point But because you have hinted to me my shortness of memory I had rather have it repeated from your memory that we may discuss it Dyscher Indeed it was almost lapsed but now upon your Suggestion I have recovered it and will accordingly lay it before you As to this Case of the Marian Bishops saith he or of other Popish Bishops ander Edward the Sixth two things are to be noted in their removal and ejection out of their Bishoprick's One is from the Temporalities the Benefices and Preferments thereof and these Temporal Endowments are directly subjects to the Temporal Power c. The other is from the Spiritual adherence and dependence of the People on them as on heads of Church unity and Communion for religious ministrations And this there was no need to deprive the Popish Bishops of for they had already deprived themselves of it by their own Corruptions both in Doctrines and Devotions Adulterations of Religion and corrupt ministrations of the word of Prayers and Sacraments break the Ligaments which tye on People to this adherence to any Bishops or Pastors yea tho' they were Apostles themselves Tho' we or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you let him be anathema or accursed saith St. Paul Gal. 1.8 When therefore any Bishops and Pastors instead of heading Christian Truth appear at the head of Vn-Christian Errors the people are discharged from their Obligation and Dependence upon them and are to unite themselves as they can to others who still keep firm to that necessary Truth and Gospel Worship which they have forsaken And this was done by the Popish Bishops who fed the people with false Doctrines and polluted Prayers and Ministrations which left no need of any thing more to deprive them of the Peoples Communion and Dependence these Papal Corruptions of Religious Ministrations being enough to discharge and drive them away of themselves So that the reformed Bishops when they were set at the heads of those Dioceses called
communicate with us in all that is Lawful Now it is actual Communion in all publick Offices and Worship which you require from us and the reason you give why we should pay it is in the words before cited the sence of which must be that your Church is ready with a Remonstrance to afford the same Communion to the Church of Rome that is Actual Communion in Publick Worship So with an insignificant Remonstrance you can go to Mass and are willing to do it See this and a great deal more such stuff in T. B's 2d Lett. p. 12 13. Eucher This is indeed a notable fetch that I should excite you to rejoyce with us for Redemption from Popery and yet profess a readiness and desire to communicate in it and in that very communion to remonstrate against it This no doubt would be a very pleasant way of accordance with the Roman Forms and yet at last when I invited you to Communicate with us in all that is Lawful I meant only what you think Lawful what is by us both confessed Lawful not to what we only think Lawful against your opinion and to this end * Sol. Ab. p. 3. that you might the better heal what you think we do amiss and so much agreement I confess we owe to all that is good in the Church of Rome and by us acknowledged for such as well by them But that I invited you not to any actual Communion in any thing you judge Unlawful while you judge it so appears in that I required not your presence to * Ibid. page 15. that Prayer of New Allegiance on the 29th of May while you are under the perswasions of its Impiety But in truth having as I thought proved us not to be actually Unchurched I willed that you should yield us so much Communion as may signifie your acknowledgement that we are yet of the Church of Christ viz. in all those Offices which you can Judge Good and Lawful in order to an easier accommodation for so I presume of this Church and of you too that you would not refuse any good Ecclesiastical Negotiations which import some though not a plenary Communion with the Church of Rome in order to a Restitution of the Churches of Christendom to a Primitive Frame were the Church of Rome disposeable thereto And they that will deny this to any corrupt Churches I think are not real Christians nor so much as externally qualified Members of the Church Catholick and to this innocent purpose and consequence only were my words so exactly ordered with a design to stave off all Catches herein that nothing but an inexcusably wretched spite and bitterness could have hewn out of them so perverse and undesigned a construction Dyscher I am not satisfied that you will allow our Deprivation to be a Persecution only on supposition that it be for adherence to the Doctrines of the Church or the Laws of God What if neither the Laws of God nor the Church had been concerned and they had had only occasion to stand to the Laws and Constitutions of the Land which forbid force against and Deposition of Kings and exclusion of the Heir I think this had been no ill Cause c. T. B's 2d Lett. Eucher I did not mention the Laws of the Land because till they are Authentically Vacated the Laws of God and the Doctrines of our Church do assert their obligation on our obedience so far as it is in our power to perform it and a voluntary violation of the Laws and Constitutions of Civil Government is a violation of the Laws of God which the Church Preaches in her Doctrine Therefore I allow you that adherence to the permanent obligation of the standing laws of the Land is a good Cause for the maintenance whereof all Sufferings are Persecutions and all the voluntary Agents in them Persecutors But if the reason or obligation of any Law ceaseth or if you mis-understand Laws and will oppose your private Judgment on them against the received and constant Judgment and Practice of the Nation on our Laws then your Sufferings upon such Prejudices cannot come under that black Character which is a thing enquireable between you and me Dyscher Then I take it for a very odd demand that we must give in a very clear proof that we are Ejected for adhereing to the Laws of God I pray who are they that ought to bring this clear proof I have heard some say that it is an Axiom in Law that they who expect the benefit ought to make the Proof Now you get all into your hands and would you give no Reason for it And yet it would be but to little purpose to prove to a Thief that he has stolen my Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 14. Eucher But do you not consider that in Law and Reason whoever accuses any man before a Judge ought to prove his Bill if the Accused plead Not Guilty And you by complaining to the World of the wrong done to K. James and the Deprived Appeal not to them whom you account Thieves but to all others to avoid their Communion Now to draw off all People from their Communion it is necessary to prove their actions Illegal according to the Laws of Tenure in the Crown and the Ecclesiastical Promotions since they whom you implead challenge those Laws for their Justification And further by your leave he that is out of Possession but lays a claim of Right and expects the benefit of it ought to prove his Claim and the Possession of the Adversary injurious For they that are in peaceable or legal form of Possession have no need to make nor consequently to prove a Claim if not disproved Beside your Case is not concerned meerly in your own personal Right but in the Consciences and Salvation of other mens Souls even of those whom you call Thieves and therefore you are obliged to convince them of the unlawfulness of such Changes which they think lawful and not only so but in the present circumstances necessary Dyscher But I will further examin your own Proposals and Concessions herein * Sol. Ab. p. 4. An untainted Loyalty you approve while the Obligation lasts and we desire no more But then you think the Obligation may cease not only by Death or Resignation but also by Cession Nor do I think it worth while to dispute this with you provided it be real not forced not falsly imputed For so any man that is driven out of his House or takes a Journey from Home may be interpreted to have quitted his Estate by Cession But when Cession is real it can only affect the Party who makes it and ought to be no injury to the next Heir But has that person made a Cession who tho' to preserve his Life he fly from fraud and irresistible force yet all the while claims his right calls on all persons to do him justice and useth all honest means that may be to
was no other Orthodox Bishop there Now our enquiry as the Dr. sets it is of an unjust and invalid Deposition by a Lay-power or Irresistible Force and the Admission of a Successor consequent thereupon Now if Banishment and by parity of Reason Imprisonment and Captivity is not a Deposition how are these pertinently alledged for such in our Question Then again if upon Banishment the Deposition consists in the intrusion of another and this be unjust and invalid how is the intruded a right Successor to whom the Churches obedience is due Or if he be not right i. e. Canonical how is this obedience due Must we pay obedience where it is not due Or is there any due where there is no form of Right Or is there any form of Right created by an Act not only unjust but even invalid and consequently null Then again every one of the Drs. instances of Lay-deprivations are nothing but meer Banishments and Imprisonments and so no Depositions from their Spiritual Powers or Relations as he confesses in St. Hilaries case though elsewhere he commonly calls them Depositions without thinking of it But if the Depositions consist in the consequent intrusions these being invalid as well as unjust oblige to nothing but Repentance and Restitution And so his infinite expence of Reading and Criticism is all at once unfortunately thrown away But there is one thing farther considerable in the last Question of the Dr. and that is the impossibility of performing the Episcopal Functions consequent to these Lay-Banishments and Imprisonments For if this incapacity gives those violences the forms of Depositions then it appears not that all the Lay-instances produced by the Dr. were Depositions and perhaps none of them since the Episcopal conduct might be carried on by Communicatory Letters to the Dioceses and other Social Bishops to act for them according to the constant practice of Exiled and Imprisoned Bishops from the days of the Apostles But if the persecution be so straight as to preclude all capacity of such Pastoral care a new Bishop may be set to supply the defect but not to exclude the Right of the ejected to govern for him not against him and to resign upon the return of the Proprietor On this account it must be resolved how the ejected Bishops reteining their Claim or Right mentioned by the Dr. or his Baroccian Treatise owned those Orthodox Persons that filled their places in their Absence Thus * Case of Sees c. pag. 59. Briccius might call Armentius Brother and Bishop of Tours while he was returning to lay Armentius aside upon a Presumption that Armentius never set up against him nor would oppose his Restitution if yet there be any credit due to the Story On some such confidence * Case of c. Ch. 7. pag. 82.90 c. Elias might Communicate with John and his Communicants at Jerusalem not only because John was Orthodox but because he kept not the See from Elias as a Rival or Anti-Bishop but only continued that Care for the Church during Elias's Incapacity For their Mutual Friendship is a demonstration that John did not still oppose Elias and Elias ratified John's Present Government by his Communion which was if not a Cession as your Vindicator conceived yet a Valid Concession for the time being For tho' John was one of Elias's Expellers yet after John had opposed and baffled the Emperor and therein seconded Elias's Cause This with the Mediation of those Martial Monks Theodosius and Sabas might cool all Elias's former Resentments and procure his Peace and Ratification of John's Government That Elias was not obliged by Canon to acquiesce is manifest not only from many Canons to the contrary but the practice of many others produced by the Dr. who endeavoured to recover against the Orthodox Intruder received by the Church on the Drs. Fundamental Law of Necessity If then Elias acquiesced not by Law but Choice this made a Ratifying Concession to John's Government and hereupon Theodosius and Sabas might well Communicate with both since they both held Communion one with the other either by the Cession or Concession of Elias But here a shrew'd hard Question Intervenes If the Church always owned the Orthodox Possessor of anothers Chair without Schism how could the Orthodox ejected Bishop rival and contest the Intruded Possessor without Schism or injury done in challenging his Right while yet his Right would be taken for quitted if he should not challenge it Now during the Challenge he must renounce the Possessor and all Communion with him as such whom yet the whole Church according to the Dr. lawfully receives for the Diocesan Now if the Ejected will be in the Communion of the whole Church they must own their Anti-Bishops and so it will be their Duty to loose their Right to Intruders or if they may refuse the Anti-Bishops without Fault how can others lawfully own them and their Possession of other Men's Sees never validly vacated Methinks Apparent and Confessed Right should obtain in Judgment against possession manifestly without Right nor is it a Rule of Conscience or Religious Peace but Carnal Fear and base Interest that inclines to the contrary Hereupon I conclude that the best Title John had to the Churches Communion was from the Concession of Elias And your Vindicator had great reason to suppose something done on Elias's part to the confirming of John's Prelacy from the Communion that is asserted to have been between them For being apparently no Anti-Bishops the Natural and Legal Presumption must be that Elias allowed him and that was a Canonical ground for the Churches regular Communion with him tho' before there seems none except Elias had been removed beyond all Capacity of Communion which it's plain he was not So then it is not the Substitution of a New Bishop in the Chair of another utterly latent or removed from all possible Communication that makes a Schism but when one is set up to Exclude the other Violently and Invalidly Ejected from the Administration of his Office either at present or hereafter while in a Capacity and Readiness to perform his Functions Thus Pope Martin whom the Dr. hath also instanced pronounces it Unlawful for the Church of Rome to admit another Bishop during his Life and Spalatensis alledges that Authority and Rule for Canonical and Good Yet when he was Condemned at Constantinople and the Church of Rome had taken him for dead and so chose Eugenius no wonder that Pope Martin receiving News of this before his death prayed for Eugenius thus chosen because he knew the Romans had not set him up as an Anti-Bishop and could not doubt had his return been possible but that his Church and Eugenius too would have joyfully re-inthroned him But in cases of Competition as in the Ignatian and Photian War if the Church or the Competitors can be on both sides excused from Schism upon every turn and invalid Act of Lay-Power against which a good and valid Title
valid yet because of their actual Omission it wanted an Ecclesiastical Effect Lev. 10. So when a Statute of Deprivation requires the Church to eject Recusants from their Stations if the cause be necessary or just the Statute is valid to oblige the Conscience of the Church to an executive and concurrent obedience yet if the Church will by no means yield to such command of the State whether just or unjust valid or invalid in its obligatory intentions it cannot actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect and Issue and all that the Civil Powers can do on the refusal is to subject the Church to temporal Punishments Nay in the same Genus of Civil Government the Decrees and Judgments of the Kings Courts notwithstanding their perfect justice and validity cannot have their Civil Effect if the subordinate officers neglect or refuse to execute them T is true there is a difference between the Civil obligations of Under-Officers to their Superiors in Secular Authorities and those of the Church to the Civil Powers in matters Ecclesiastical For that Civil Officers are obliged only to observe the Legal forms of process in the Orders of their Superiors and are not tied to enquire into the inner justice of those Orders But the Church when under any Laws or Commands of the State may and ought to judge for her self and her conscience toward God Whether the matters enjoyned her by the Laws be consistent with the Laws and Principles of Christianity and the Churches fundamental Constitution against which she is never to admit them to an Ecclesiastical Effect but must bear the penal Consequences with all meeknes and resignation And this is not only the Right and Duty of all Churches as sacred Corporations toward all humane laws in matters moral or Religious but of every single Christian also And if this be not admitted up goes Hobbism and the Civil Powers may enact Deprivations Excommunications and Anathema's for mens refusing the Alcoran Paganism Socinianisme and even Atheism it self and for owning the Scriptures Creeds and Sacraments But you that think us such a soft and waxen generation would have found this Right asserted even unto Martyrdom against all such deprivations had they been enacted upon causes apparently injurious or imposed on the Church For in the late Reign not only you but others also opposed the growth and menaces of Popery with a burning zeal when we had no present prospect of any thing but Fagots Dragons and most Christian Bridles And that all these Armies of Worthies should all of a sudden grow base abject and irreligious cannot easily I am sure not fairly be presumed But in cases which the Church judges equal she may concur and submitt and when she may so do it can be neither religious or prudential to provoke or incur a persecution by a needles and obstinate refusal which is our Sense upon the Causes and Law of the present Deprivations But is it not a pretty exception against this Concurrence because it is yielded by Submission not Authority For did I ever assert of an Authority in the Church to refuse her Duty against which certainly there lies no Authority And I told you †Sol. and Ab. pag. 28. that the Church here concurs by Submission as judging it her duty herein to yield to the State But in such Cases if you will needs require the Churches Authority I will remind you what I told you †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 29. last time that the Church has an Authoritative Right to judge in such Cases whether she may or must concur or no. And hence a Right essentially belongs to it to examin all the Causes of the Secular Demands so that if she finds there be no grave Reasons to move the Church to the required Severities she ought to disobey as my Lord Bishop of London well did when required to suspend Dr. Sharp indictâ Causâ c. And for this I alledged out of Nazianzen one of the Noblest Instances in all Antiquity wherein the Bishops of Cappadocia refused to depose or reject the canonically settled Bishop of Cesarea notwithstanding all Julians terrors and commands of which I wonder Dr. Hody took no notice But I add also that if the Church finds those Causes sufficient she may if necessary she must admit the Laws enforcing them and not wantonly pretend Authority against duty nor use her liberty for a cloak of maliciousness And I can never imagine that this Right of the Church was ever suspected much less opposed by any Powers or Legislators truly Christian But if Civil Powers will make irreligious Laws in maters Spiritual will you immediatly oblige the Christian Councils to invade the Senate House or Courts of Civil Judicature with Protestations against their Procedures before the Laws come home upon us and press us to actual Concurrence Surely the Primitive Christians did not so against the Edicts of Heathen Powers For tho' Christianity will warrant meek and petitionary Apologies yet will it not justifie sawcy Remonstrances and Prohibitions upon Legislators who must pass undisturbed and unaffronted in their measures and we must with all meekness of behaviour wait the eventual prosecution of the Laws if we cannot divert it by fair atonement and when it comes refusing calmly the required Sins commit our selves and Cause to him that judgeth righteously So that all your Harangues about running into Parliament House with Proclamations or Protestations for our against their Authority are injudicious immodest and seditious proposals tho' we had known the demands of the State to have been unlawful which we yet acknowledge to be otherwise And that we should cease to be a Church because we are not officiously rude to the Legislators who may sometimes happen to be causelesly unkind or hard hearted to us We are neither to precipitate our zeal manners confession or sufferings but let the will of God be done upon us when his own time comes Since even the vilest Laws of men have this obligation and validity upon the Consciences of Subjects to restrain all indecencies and disturbances against them and the Legislative For if the Senate has not Authority to oblige us to evil it has to modesty and abstinence from their Presence and Consultations But the Parliament thought their Authority alone sufficient to deprive the Bishops and did not ask nor think they wanted the concurrence of the Clergy to make their Act valid very well they did not think so And if you confine this sufficiency to a valid Obligation on the Church to submit and concur this opinion of the Parliament is very true tho' I believe they ground it not upon any mere pretended Arbitrary Despotick Power but upon the Weight and Sanctity of the Causes on which they founded the Law But if you think it the opinion of the Parliament that their Acts can actually pass into an Ecclesiastical Effect without Ecclesiastical Concurrence you fix an opinion on them rather to be charged with Non-sense than Falshood