The Right Reverend Doctor JOHN COSIN Late LORD BISHOP of DURHAM His OPINION when Dean of Peterburgh and in Exile for Communicating rather with GENEVA than ROME ALSO What slender Authority if any the English Psalms in Rhime and Metre have ever had for the publick use they have obtained in our Churches Freely rendred in two Letters with Annotations on the said Letters AND A short Historical Deduction inserted of the Original Design and Sacrilegious Progress of Metrical Psalms in Vulgar Languages through many parts of France Flanders c. By Ri. WATSON D. D. Recommended for his own Vindication in an Apologetical Letter to his Friend LONDON Printed by F. Leach for Nich. Woolfe at the Seven Stars in Newgate-street MDC LXXXIV For my very Loving Friend Mr. Watson at the Princes Court in Jersey SIR THE Letter that Major Fontane brought from you was very welcome to me the rather for that I had inquir'd after you of many and could never hear of you before since the dispersion at Bristol for though I find your Name now in the review of one of Dr. Clare's Letters yet when I read that Letter at first I took it to have been Dr. VVadson from whom I had not long since received a Letter out of the West but I am glad it is you and that you have a so fair a subsistence for the present under so good a Lord What will become of us all for the future our Lord above knows to whose Providence and Goodness we must recommend our selves You say right Our Church is as much misunderstood and misconstrued here abroad as it is misused and maligned at home and I have had experience enough of both The truth is they are here so exceeding uncharitable and somewhat worse that I know not how any man who understands himself and makes a Conscience of what he does can enter into any Communion with them b in those Doctrines and Practices which they hold necessary to Salvation and wherein they make their essential note of difference their Religion and their Church to consist And that I may answer your demand in brief for they say you are all to come hither it is far less safe to joyn with these men that c alter the Credenda the Vitals of Religion than with those that meddle only with the Agenda and Rules of Religion d if they meddle no farther and where it is not in our power to help it there is no doubt but in these things e God will accept the Will for the Deed if that will without our assent or approbation to the contrary be preserved entire though in the mean while we suffer a little for it oppression must not make us leave our own Church They of Geneva are to blame in f many things and defective in some g they shall never have my approbation of their doings nor let 'um have yours h yet I do not see that they have set up any new Articles of Faith under pain of Damnation to all the World that will not receive them for such Articles and i you know whose case that is Caetera cum veneris or if you come not in other Letters as you shall offer me occasion In the mean while I will be glad to hear of h your resolution still to be constant in the maintetenance of the Ancient Catholick Faith and Government of the Church of Christ which the Church of England hath profess'd and taught us though now there be a Cloud and Storm upon it as upon what Church hath there not been more or less in the several Ages of the World If you know of any thing fit for me to hear concerning our old Friends in England you will do me a favour to impart it to Your assured Loving Friend J. C. St. Germ. Jun. 19. 1646. SIR AS I expose his Reverence's Letters to publick view so I submit my Annotations on them to your favourable censure which are as follow Annotations a AFter Sequestration of his Estate a vast debt incurr'd for advancement of the Kings Interest the sale of most he had in any sort of value even to his Plate and Coach-Horses and the Rebels plunder of what he had left at Torrington our Noble Lord had no fair means of subsistence for himself much less wherewith to exercise his liberality toward the Chaplain and few Servants he had then attending on him whom yet notwithstanding their loss of all likewise at Torrington Divine Providence preserved then and many years after in their state of exile and carried them mercifully through all the difficulties incident thereunto b If we return to them in those Doctrines and Practices whatsoever they are wherein we may which I will not presume to enumerate and moderate our selves in some measure as to the rest by the meek Casfandrian and Grotian Spirit of a mutual charitable inclination toward an amicable reunion though they continue to exclude us their Communion for not subscribing to those new Doctrines and Articles we so far shall lay the Schism at their doors and may rest satisfied in our persevering Members of that Primitive and once Catholick Church which hath prescribed an excellent Canon of Belief and Practice unto us both c For what we suppose they have altered in the old Credenda let us be so exact as we fairly may be yet not over-nicely Critical lest we become uncharitable nor so fond of our own opinions as not to hearken unto the pacific language of the learned Grotius and other eminent persons of his temper a List of whose Names he hath publish'd and whom he directs us to their search and intimacy having perhaps discovered a better meaning than we at more distance can apply to the Letter of their Profession d As I fear they do though not under the Anathema of Damnation denounced against Dissenters if a strict scrutiny were made into the genuine sense of these Confessions with other Books and Writings generally owned by them Beside that they meddle with the Agenda and Rites of Religion without any justifiable Call or Commission for which reason alone were there no other we ought not to join with them in their Publick Worship or Communion e Then God may I doubt not accept the Will for the Deed although we decline Communion or Religious Compliance with either party from both whom we differ and at many their Doctrines or Practices we justly scruple wherein I might well have satisfied my self if I had been so well acquainted then as afterward with the learned Grotius's opinion de Christiano Segrege who himself if he dyed in that state as many that mean thereby to reproach him would have believed departed I make no question a good Member of the Catholick Church and so I hope many of us lived when in our state of Exile wheresoever we found no Oratories of our own we asked admission neither into the Churches of the Roman Catholicks nor the Temples or Meeting-places of the Lay-reformed Calvinists for
of Simeon called Nunc dimittis after the Second at Evening Prayer The other two then alike permitted to choice Cantate Domino and Deus misereatur being the 98 and 67 Psalms they had translated among the rest A Prayer to the Holy Ghost to be sung they tell us before the Sermon beginning Come holy Spirit the God of might what intimates it less than that the descent of the H. Ghost may be no less confidently expected or asked upon the Minister at the delivery of his whether premeditated or extemporary Sermon than as by the Bishop Said or Sung the whole Assembly kneeling by far the more humble posture at his Ordination Their Song to be Sung before Morning and another before Evening Prayer supposeth the Congregation fully or but in part assembled If fully then it seems the Church Service must be arrested until the people have solaced themselves with a Song If not fully then most likely it is intended to find them some imployment rather than they should sit idle as if a silent and serious meditation were of no use or as if the people knowing what they are to do first after their Ministers Exhortation declared to 'em viz. to say a general Confession after him might not better be employed in a particular recollection or mental recapitulation each one of his personal transgressions omissions c. and to prepare himself to bear a sad but salutaries part in that general Confession of the whole Congregation That the Creeds the Decalogue and Pater-noster are likewise versified and left at large to be sung at pleasure does still but aggravate or aggrandize the mischief of their intention for though neither of the two latter can well be too far extended or branched into more particulars than God prescribeth us duties or is gracious to admit as Petitions put up to him which may allow some latitude to their invention we see it taken in large Paraphrases on the Lords Prayer and yet larger Expositions on the Ten Commandments The object of Faith is under as much restraint so as a little slip in comprehension of the Sense or in Poetick Licence creates somewhat as it were of a new Creed and when accurately examined either affixeth a fundamental errour or gives the lie to him that utters matter of his own invention instead of divine infusion not understanding or not believing what he in prick-song affirms he does I enter not into strict Scrutiny of what therein they have done but desire any intelligent and indifferent person to take into due consideration the Prose and Metre of St. Athanasius's Symbol if theirs in Verse we may call his and then seriously resolve me Whether he can with half that vigour and assurance declare his assent to the one as to the other so much abatement being by the inartificial Version in the grandeur of style so much distance in the elevation of affections from the language of the Saint himself though translated and that of the Poet though slickt in Rhime enough to vilifie a mans Faith in his own conceit and damp his confidence to sing or say what is the conclusion of it for considerate men will not easily advance so far as to exclude altogether from Salvation all such as have not faith enough in the fancy of a pitiful and pievish Poet we know what scruple or difficulty has been made by many sober persons at the conclusive Sentence of that Creed in Prose who doing it in no contentious but a conscientious motive a dread to denounce Damnation against such as otherwise they esteemed their good Christian Brethren I shall only blame their diffidence in the tradition of the Church which ever held it as a most Orthodox and Pious Paraphrase of the Apostles Creed And I remember very well with circumstance of time and place when a learned person consulted this Reverend Dean Whether a man might not safely remit somewhat of that rigour and yet not deviate culpably from the common path others trod in or at least omit joining with the Minister in that so determinate conclusive Sentence His Reverence's Answer in good earnest was to this purpose He could be no good Christian nor true Son of the Church of England that did not animitus and entirely assent unto that Creed say it or say it not You see Sir how many essential parts of our Church-Service they have thus entrench'd upon whereof if they would have made a continued sequence and but inserted as they use to do while they take breath a Chapter or two of their own chusing to be read by a Lay-Elder as in the Calvinian Churches their Minister would have found little or nothing for him to do but to usher in his Sermon with a long-winded Prayer and so our Liturgy as they would have it had been defeated by a meer Chant as in foreign parts they have said our Religion become nothing else but a bare Preach If hereunto I should add any Observations or Animadversions on the matter of those Geneva-ditties yea and the Psalms as they have order'd it a great deal of ignorance and folly and somewhat worse would be discovered In vain therefore do they pretend them in the Title-page that they the Psalms I mean have been conserred with the Hebrew which accord no better with those in our Psalter nor with the other in the Bishops Bible and most impudently do they obtrude upon us a publick allowance of them by the Queen or Government as must needs be meant when no such thing could be found though an argument was held about it in the High Commission Now Sir if you please we will parallel their designs which look so like one another that of the Huguenots in France together with the Calvinists in other Countreys and that of our Separatists or Puritans here in England which will appear alike the Setting up of a new Religion and in the issue a new modelling of the State too Theirs was to confound the Mass and ours the Mattins with the Vespers daily sung on both sides the water Theirs to make their Populacy no less than their Clergy concerned in Divine Offices ours to extrude or out the conforming Ministry from practising their Canon and Rubrick comfortably when they observed most of what they were appointed to do anticipated by their Psalms and Songs in Metre and so little or nothing left them of their Liturgy duty and wheresoe're they might have a Nonconforming Ministry of their own having a better esteem of the open Fields and Barns to meet in both for Singing and Preaching too than of our Churches or Steeple-houses as they rather call 'em experience hereof we have had all along among Scotch and English nor would the Dutch have done otherwise if they fought not out better conditions for themselves than could the French and so chang'd the publick face of Religion and therewith the ancient Government of their Countrey The Foreign Protestants as I have shewed you made use of Marot's and
evident enough it is the Queen either had been moved or apprehended she should be to divert the Revenues of such Livings to other uses else why was her Majesty sollicitous to open her mind in an unnecessary caution against what no body thought on but her self 4. That if any did as such Harpies may have been about her Her Majesty very piously and generously discouraged the attempt by disclaiming all thought or meaning to authorize or countenance it 5. That her Majesty secured the popular convenience and complacence by ordering Plain-Song and continuing the Common Prayer intelligible by such as would be attentive to it accordingly Sung 6. That for the more Musical Ears and distinctive Judgements in that Science her Majesty provided pecular Hymns in some better Melody not intending thereby to cherish or gratifie the Curious but administer Comfort to Pious Souls predisposed so to apply it From all which I conclude That Thomas Sternhold and his Mates or Followers were unknown to the Queen set upon their Poetical task by some that had in design not only to chace the more solemn Musick out of the Church but to divert or appropriate to themselves the Livings and maintenance of it if it could be obtained or extorted from the Superiour Power for why else should the Queen start the scruple Or why might they not hope to be altogether so successful in Sacriledge here as their elder Brethren had been in foreign parts Howsoever the industrious prosecution of this new invention cannot by indifferent and rational persons be judged to conduce so much as the former Parochial and present Cathedral practice either to the solemnity of our Service or one principal end of our Reformation viz. the intelligibility of what is Said or Sung in the Church unless Art and Science be postponed to Ignorance or our Rhimical Singers have a singular sagacity of Sense or facility of the Ear which no body must pretend to but themselves For let any person indifferently disposed though otherwise but meanly qualified to be judge in the case sincerely and ingenuously answer me Whether makes the more solemn and devoutly affecting Musick our Cathedral harmony regulated by a skilful Quire according to their Science or the flat asymphony the jarring dissonancy discordia discors in good earnest of an ignorant confused multitude met in a Parochial Church where is of course but one pitiful Proecento if the Clerk be any And Secondly Whether the like attentionhad to both the Psalms in Prose as chanted in the former be not by sar more distinctly intelligible than the rude Rhimes screamed and snuffled out in the latter But you will tell me Although not Order Custome more naturally prevalent has provided against that defect in many Churches and may be brought into the rest at the peoples pleasure viz. by the Clerks distinct reading every line before the Congregation sings it This I confess gives us a copy of some little countenance in answer to the objection but not enough to bear it self up against other inconveniences and indecencies observed in that practice by Wiser Men than they that offer to promote it Else certainly the Right Reverend and most judicious Bishop Wren would not have made a like enquiry after it as after other enormities in his Diocess of Norwich the 49th Article at his Visitation being this If any Psalms be used to be sung in your Church before or after the Morning and Evening Prayer or before or after the Sermons upon which occasions only they are allowed to be sung in Churches is it done according to that grave manner which first was in use that such do Sing as can Read the Psalms or have learned them by heart and not after that uncouth and undecent custome of late taken up to have every line first read by one alone and then sung by the people Those words by one alone were inserted afterward when his Lordship urged the same Article in his Diocess of Eley whither he was translated and complaint made of the Article to the Long Parliament by the factious William Prynne Compiler of a Book entituled Canterburies Doom pag. 372. And to the exclusion of those Rhiming Psalms out of the Service where they are too frequently intruded by popular consent his Lordship had caused to be inserted a peculiar clause in another distinct Article which was this After the Lessons doth he your Curate use no other Psalm or Hymn but those which the Book of Common Prayer hath appointed For his Lordship among other excellencies so exact a Critick in our language and observer of sense with its coherence neither of which but tript too frequently in the Geneva-Paraphrase since he could not suddenly repair all breaches nor restrain all extravagances which the Foreigners of several Nations had occasioned in his Diocess of Norwich was resolved by degrees to turn the stream into its proper Channel and keep it clear from mixing with the muddy waters of the Lake whereof Nature having given a precedent his Lordship understood a like possibility by due care in the current order of the Church As to which Foreigners above-mentioned I ask your leave Sir here to say If they had prudently and modestly used the Royal Grant of Indulgence to em from time to time of all they at first made known themselves then hoped or wished sc. That here they might enjoy the Liberty of Conscience and Safety for their Goods and Persons which their own Countrey had denied them as in King Edward the Sixth's Patent to 'em is thus expressed Proesidiis ad vitam degendam necessariis in Regno nostro egere non dignum esse duximus Granting them a place where they might exercise the Religion they had been bred up in after the rite and manner of their own Country among themselves Ubi inter suoe gentis moderni idiomatis homines Religionis negotia res Ecclesiasticas pro patrio ritu more intelligenter obire tractare possint Wherein the Gospel should be interpreted without corruption and the Sacraments administred according to the Word of God and Apostolical observation notwithstanding that they differed from the Government and Forms of Worship established in the Church of England If John a Lasco the Polonian instituted first Superintendant of that Society or Corporation could have been content with the free and quiet fruition enjoyment use and exercise of all they had asked according to the words in their Patent Libere quiete frui gaudere uti exercere for assurance of all which priviledge to be made good unto them the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs for the time being with the Court of Aldermen and Bishop of London were to be Curators and Protectors If John a Lasco like a false Lown a fly Serpent lying close under the leaves of the foresaid Patent had not watched and when he espied an unhappy rupture upon a slight occasion beginning to be made in our Church glided out of his covert on purpose to foment