both in the Close of your Discourse as well as your Discussion to do the Persons as well as Tenets of Papists all the Justice you could From your having in that Discussion occasionally so much dilated on the Moral Offices of Loyalty to our Princes without respect to their Religion and what ever Religion they may profess different from that by Law Established I shall be glad if the thoughts of all his Majesties Protestant Subjects will Receive deep Impressions of the peculiar Duties we owe to him our Great and Gracious Soveraign particularly eo nomine When ever we pray for him at the Prayers of our Church or our private Devotions let us think of him with the Honour due to a King and Gods Vicegerent Let us not Slander the Footsteps of Gods Anointed in what ever way to Heaven he hath placed the same nor yet by Reproaches make the few of this great populous Nation uneasie who as Viatores attend him in the same way but be the more Civil to them for being part of his retinue therein Since it is Rudeness for any Man to be Curiously Inquisitive into the Speculative points of Religion held by Subjects it may be thought both that and Profanation of Gods more than ordinary Care over the Hearts of Kings to be prying and intruding into the Sentiments of our Soveraign As there are peculiar Moral Offices that concern Subjects when the Prince is not in the External Communion of the same Church with them so there are such likewise incumbent on those Subjects that are in the External Communion of the same Church with their Prince and which oblige them particularly to promote the Ease and Tranquillity of his Reign It having pleas'd God by the Course of the Executive power of the Law in his Majesties Hands to free them from many Hardships to which they were before liable and to put a great price into their Hands if they have Hearts to make use of it and to give them an opportunity by their Moderation and by their Complaisance with his Majesties Measures in the Defence and Supporting of the Church of England and by their knowing in this their Day the things that belong to their Peace to compass an Universal and lasting Tenderness in the great Body of the English People toward their Persons and making the Laws and the whole Hive of the English People to guard them and the very Anger and Zeal of the Protestants to be a Defensive Wall of Fire round about them as your words are it becomes them to contribute to the ease of his Majesties Royal Cares by their being what you say they generally are and by their not Misrepresenting or Calumniating those who are of the Religion different from theirs which yet you have shew'd Father Parsons predicted they must necessarily do and by their not affecting such an excessive internal Power in the Government as you say in the distant Reighnes of some of our Protestant Princes they did It concerns them by their Reverently using their present Temporary Indulgence to effect for his Majesty that in the Case of his easing their Consciences and their Estates from some Penal Laws it may be as was in the Reign of David viz. that whatsoever the King did pleas'd all the People There is none desires more than my self that among the various Opinions in Religion all exasperations against each others Persons and Misrepresentations of each others Doctrines may for ever cease And therefore according to the expressions us'd in the Acts of the General Assembly of the French Clergy complaining of Calumny publish'd against the Doctrine of the Church and the Faith of the Catholick Church and their seeming there to restrain that Doctrine and that Faith to the Decisions of the Council of Trent and such as are of the Nature with those printed in one Column apart I in what I have Written in my private Papers concerning the Religion of the Church of Rome have observ'd the Measures that our great Writer Mr. Chillingworth hath done in his Book forecited and where he saith Chap. 6. N. 56. I do not vnderstand by your Religion the Doctrine of Bellarmine or Baronius or any other private Man among you nor the Doctrine of the Sorbon or of the Jesuits or Dominicans or of any other particular company among you but that wherein you all agree or profess to agree the Doctrine of the Council of Trent And tho in your Explication of what you mean by Popery you seem to restrain your aversion to it as comprising only the Papal Usurpations or what is Congrous to the known Distinction of the Court of Rome and the Church of Rome and profess to follow the Measures of the late Earl of Clarendon of whom Cressy in p. 101. of his Epistle Apologetical saith that he makes the Popes Temporal power to be the Hinge upon which all other Controversies between Protestants and English Catholicks do hang and depend so entirely that if that only were taken off all the rest would quickly fall to the ground I am pleas'd with his Lordship or yours having gone so far with me in my way against Popery for if any Friend bears me Company good part of my way in any Journey I shall be pleas'd therewith tho he accompany me not to my Journeys end I am yet to tell you that in my way to Heaven I have further to go than merely so far as the leaving that Temporal Power of the Pope behind me And must freely pass the bounds of Trent but yet strictly observing the Moral Offices of not injuring or troubling or Misrepresenting or Miscalling any Man for not going my way and if I find the profess'd observers of the Doctrines of the Council of Trent seeming but tacitly to reject the Disloyal Principles propp'd up formerly by the Council of Lateran and owning expresly only the Doctrines of the Council of Trent I shall not trouble my self or them to charge them with the Odious Matter of the former Council or to Recant by Words what you say so many and so great Papists have done by Actions And if the Roman Catholicks who were suppos'd to have publishâ—d that Translated Book of the Acts of the French Clergy intended only thereby to caution us against the Misrepresenting them and the Doctrine of their Church I shall be glad if the Caution may be justly pursued by all Men. But some Criticks on that Translation have presumed to Judge their publishing the French Kings Edict of the 14 th of Iuly last for Restraining the French Protestants former Liberty of Writing and Speaking against the Doctrines of the Council of Trent or as the words there are from speaking directly or indirectly after what manner soever of the Catholick Religion was perhaps done with an ill intent by some who with an Evil Eye look'd on the Kings goodness to the Church of England I am far from Attributing the Heat or Indiscretion of particular Persons to the Body of any Religionary Party
into the Popes Bull thus viz. pro quo Christianissimus Rex scripsit instead of quem Rex Christianissimus nominavit I doubt not but your Curiosity hath led you to see a Copy of the Letter writ to the French King on the 10 th of Iuly 1680. by the Arch Bishops and Bishops and other Ecclesiasticks of France appointed by the Clergy there about the last Breve of this Pope upon the Subject of the Regale in which Letter they take notice how THIS POPE required him not to subject any of their Churches to the right of the Regale and threatned him that he would make use of his Authority if his Majesty did not Submit to the Paternal Remonstrances he had often made and repeated to him about that point and they there pass as YOVR Protestants so far as to make a PROTESTATION as their word is against the Papal Vsurpation designed by THIS POPE And moreover YOVR sober party of the IESVITS have in France adhered to the King against the Pope in this Contest about the Regale But how severe the same Arch-Bishops and Bishops in France who made that PROTESTATION have since been in their ADDRESS against the True Protestants there who have been averse from the Religionary part of Popery as you call it I suppose you cannot be ignorant For undoubtedly the Acts of the general Assembly of the French Clergy in the year 1685. Concerning Religion together with their Complaint against the Calumnies and Injuries which the pretended reformed have and do every day publish in their Books and Sermons against the Doctrine of the Church presented to the King by the Clergy in a Body July the 14 th 1685. Cannot have escaped your view the same having been since printed in London Translated into English and as I suppose by some of the Roman Catholick Religion and will not trouble my self to guess for what intent of the Publisher I have looked it over and leave it to our Divines to consider whether it deserves any Answer I observed in it one Reference to Peter du Moulins Nouveaute de Papisme of the Edition of Sedan about Protestants rendring the Papists Idolatrous as invocating Saints which was an Instance of the freedom allowed Protestants in that Realm in Writing and Publishing Books against the Religion of Popery as by Law Established in France a liberty that the Publisher of that Translation hath likewise sufficiently taken in publishing it here without Licence and whereby he hath brought our Famous Whitaker and Downham Rainolds and Ames into the Range of Calumniators and Publishers of Calumny's against the Church of Rome Though the Course of my Studies hath lain much more among Law-Books than in those of Polemical Divinity yet the time I have spent on the latter hath enabled me to observe one very Inauspicious passage under the first Article and the Column of the Calumny of the pretended Reform'd about it and where the French Clergy accuse them of Calumny for saying That with the Hereticks mentioned by St. Irenaeus Roman Catholicks reject the Holy Scriptures that with the Montanists they accuse it of Imperfection that they Contemn it and afterward that the Roman Catholicks call the Scripture a Dumb Rule a Stumbling Stone a Nose of Wax a Two edged Sword And for that purpose having begun with accusing our Whitaker and Downham as Calumniators and refer'd to their works to prove it they afterward quote the Thesaurus Disputationum Theologicarum in Academiâ Sedanensi c. de summo controvers Iudice Tom. 1. p. 26. Onerant pontificij Scripturam plaustro convitiorum vocando eam Regulam Mutam lapidem scandali nasum cereum gladium ancipitem But without any undue Reflections on that Clergy I think it might have been more worthy of their great Learning and Hatred of CALVMNY and their Tenderness for the Honour of the Scripture and their Obligation to handle Theological Controversie with the fairest and softest hands they could and in short more worthy of the Honour of the Church of Rome if they had quoted Turrian cont Sadel p. 99. Canus lib. 3. Loc. Theol. Cap. 2. Sect. â—ec vero Ecchius in ench tit de ecclesiâ Hosius lib. 3. de Auth. Sac. Script Sect. fingamus p. 148. as I find them Cited by our Dr. Crackanthorp under his De loc arguendi ab Authoritate that you have referred to and whom you have Celebrated for being just in his quotations and who there speaking of Papists slighting the Scripture thus quotes these Authors viz. HI Scripturam vocant gladium Delphicum Nasum cereum ad sensum quemvis flexibilem quae non nisi ecclesiae suae authoritate authentica sit de quâ posse pio sensu dici volunt eam si destituatur ecclesiae authoritate non plus valere quam Aesopi fabulas And had further Cited some index expurgatorius for censuring the profaneness of those expressions in Roman Catholick Authors and one of whom was a Legate in the Council of Trent and another a Divine sent to that Council by the Pope There is another Eminent Father of our Church whose Writings the French Clergy might if they pleas'd have quoted for the same purpose they did those of Whitaker and Downham and that is Iewel in his Apology who in p. 106 107 108. saith Itaque Sacrosanctas Scripturas quas Servator noster Iesus Christus non tantúm in omni sermon usurpavit sed etiam ad extremum sanguine suo consignavit quo populum ab illis tanquam à re periculosâ noxiâ minore negotio abigant solent literam frigidam incertam inutilem mutam occidentem mortuam appellare Quod nobis quidem perinde videtur esse ac si eas omnino nullas esse dicerent Sed addunt etiam simile quoddam non aptissimum Eas esse quodammodo nasum cereum posse fingi flectique in omnes modos omnium instituto inservire An PONTIFEX ista à SUIS dici nescit Aut tales se habere patronos non intelligit Audiat ergo quà m sanctè quamque piè de hac re scribat Hosius quidam polonus ut ipse de se testatur Episcopus certe homo disertus non indoctus acerrimus ac fortissimus propugnator ejus causae Mirabitâ—â— opinor hominem pium de illis vocibus quas sciret proâ—ectas ab ore Dei vel tam impiè sentire potuisse vel tam contumeliosè scribere ita praesertim ut eam sententiam non fuam unius propriam videri vellet sed istorum communem omnium Nos inquit ipsas scripturas quarum tot jam non diversas modo sed etiam contrarias interpretationes afferri videmus facessere jubebimus Deum loquenâ—em potius audiemus quà m ut ad EGENA ista ELEMENTA nos convertamus in illis Salutem nostram constituamus Non oportet legis Scripturae peritum esse sed à Deo doctum vanus est labor qui scripturis impenditur Scriptura enum creatura est
of the Council of Trent were admitted by a publick Edict made concerning the same matter in the year 1579 but that the Decrees which regard discipline are not received in France because they are not ratified by the Law of the Prince although the Chief Heads which do not infringe the received Customs and Ancient Rights of the Gallican Church are Comprehended in Regal Constitutions several times published concerning that matter Which thing how grateful and acceptable it was to Pope Clement the 8 th is testified by the late King Henry the Great in his Rescript of the year 1606. And then he Quotes Cabassutius his Notitia Concil in fine for the purpose I have mentioned before and declaring out of the Records of the French Clergy viz. that in their General Assembly at Paris in the year 1615. the Canons of the Doctrine of the Council of Trent were unanimously received by the whole Clergy Father Cressy then farther addeth by way of Triumph over the supposed mistake in the said Earl in p. 131. of that Epistle And long before that even from the rising of the said Council each particular Bishop had received it in their Respective Diocesan Synods Thus Sir you see a sufficient Reception of the Faith delivered by the Council of Trent in France both by Authority Episcopal and Regal I must not here forbear to take notice that if it were true what Cressy alledgeth namely that from the riâ—ing of the said Council the French Bishops did receive it in their Respective Diocesan Synods before any PVBLISHING of it by the French King and not staying for the same they made such a kind of Invasion of the Regal power in France Namely by introducing Religionary Establishments without ITS Authority as was never practis'd by our English Clergy since the Reformation nor perhaps before it and such as the French Clergy cannot charge the pretended Reform'd with For their Petition to the King doth in p. 3. mention their i. e. the pretended Reformed having been by Edicts permitted the Exercise of their Religion and the Freedom of Acting in their Synods as they have done But this by the way If we consider the time of the very Professio fidei that the Acts of the French Clergy speak of being first own'd and that in the year 1564 the time likewise of the Confirmation of the Trent Council and which was not made nor Composed by the French Clergy but by the Direction of the Trent-Fathers and Published by Pope Pius the 4 th in the year last mentioned must it not seem hard that Luthers Book printed as was mentioned in the year 1558 and that of Melanchton's printed in the year 1562 and before the Date of their very Profession of Faith should be brought in as Calumniating it When any had a Triumph Decreed them in the Old Common Wealth of Rome the Writers of such Solemnities tell us the Custom was Vt à militibus abjectissimis quibuscunque triumphalem currum sequentibus diversis triumphantes Convicijs incesserentur nè prosperâ illâ fortunâ plus justo insolescerent But the new Church of Rome I mean the Tridentine one in France will bear no Raillery nor Calumny of Words nor yet any to ask them when and by whom their Triumph was Decreed them and if their Doctrine was Crown'd Lawfully And methinks as if Nature and its God meant that all should ludibrium debere that would Triumph over Fallibility in what Church soever Our Honest Monk whom I lately mentioned as Decreeing himself a Triumph over that great observer of all things he referr'd to I mean the late Earl of Clarendon had in his Triumphant Chariot the usual Compliment of that Solemnity viz. Hominem te esse cogita there put on him by Nature And one might to him Cite D' Ossats Letters and with some Allusion to his Words to the Earl of Clarendon say that he supposed that that Cardinal understood the State of the Council of Trent relating to France as well as any one and much better than De Marca or any one else who would make its definitions of Faith admitted in France by an Edict in the year 1579. Let any one for this purpose who pleases look on D' Ossats Letter from Rome the 19 th of November 1596 to Villeroy where he adviseth that the Council of Trent might be Publisht in France and mentions that the Clergy of France had often desired a Publication of it and saith that the Huguenots by reason of the Edict of 77. would not be prejudiced by such publication and on another Letter to Villeroy from Rome on the 19 th of February 1597 where he again presseth for the publication of that Council and saith of it La publication sans l' observation pourroit plus que l' observation sans la publication and that the Courts of Parliament and others would have no cause of complaint thereupon and that a Salvo of two or three Lines would be a remedy against any complaints and on his long Letter from Rome the 28 th of March 1599. to Henry the Fourth where he minds him from the Pope that the Councel of Trent might be Published and saith Que la pluspart des Catholiques ceux qui plus peuvent Comme les Parlemens les Chapitres les principaux Seigneurs ne veulent point du dit Concile pour n' avoir point à laisser les benefices incompatibles les confidences autres abus quae la Reformation portee par le dit Concile osteroit and on his Letter from Rome the last of March 1599. to Villeroy Animating him to promote the Publication of that Council and where he saith I never knew that that Council prejudic'd any Regal Right as some say it hath done but though it might prejudice it in some point it might however be publisht with adding thereto such a Salvo as we could have Namely as to the Prerogative and Preeminences of the Crown the Authority of the King the Liberties and Franchises of the Gallican Church the Indults of the Court of Parliament and the Edicts of Pacification and all other things that we would have excepted and on his long Letter to Henry the Fourth from Rome of Iune the 11 th 1601. where mentioning his excusatory replies to the Pope about the not publishing that Council he saith that not only the Hereticks but a great part of the Catholicks were against it and that his Holiness might remember how Henry the Fourth's Predecessors could never be brought to publish that Council I might here mention how Father Paul in his History of the Venetian Interdict p. 4. and 48. tells us that the Trent Council was not received in France in the year 1616 and that Thuanus assures us that the Trent Council was not received in France in the year 1588 and therefore not in the year 1579. according to De Marca For that excellent and most Faithful Historian Tome the 4 th lib. 93. p. 361.
and their Estates and many of which Estates were Church-Lands notwithstanding the Popes Declaration of the Nullity of that Peace supported by his Present Majejesty and as I doubt not but it always will be as well as by other Roman-Catholick Crown'd Heads And the figure the present French King made in the Munster Treaty in the year Forty Eight and in the Restauration of its effects and Vigor in Christendom in the year Seventy Nine is a sufficient Demonstration of his thinking it lawful for the Lateran Council to be Disobey'd by Popish Princes as to the point of Exterminating their Heretical Subjects I do therefore account this your Manly way of Confuting the Fears and Iealousies founded on that Council to have been at this time the more opportune and the more worthy of your Loyalty because as you have mentioned it after the End of your Discussion It may seem the Design of some People in the World abroad to encrease our Divisions and the popular hatred against Papists and Popery here by the usage that Protestants meet with there as if the Religion of Popery did necessarily Cause the same You have therefore well reputed it the opus diei here in England to shew the contrary and have done it more effectually than any late Writer of the Church of Rome I know here hath done or perhaps was able to do And your quoting for this purpose in p. 208. D' Ossats Speech to the Pope and wherein he so Argumentatively both like a Divine and a States-Man asserted the Lawâ—ulness of Henry the 4 th's of France observing the EDICTS in favour of his Protestant Subjects and wherein he mentioned how other Roman Catholick Princes had done what was tantamount to it and how that the Pope made no Reply to him thereupon may much help to shew our Timid and Iealous People that the Religionary part of Popery or Doctrine of the Church of Rome doth not oblige Roman-Catholick Princes to make the Lives of their Protestant Subjects uneasie to them It here falls in my way to acknowledge to you that the great Instances you have given in your Discourse concerning the Consummat Loyalty of great numbers of Henry the 4ths Popish Subjects to him while a Protestant and under the Popes Excommunication have been very useful for the enlarging Peoples Charitable Thoughts as to the Persons of some Papists and the tendency of their Principles to Loyalty and to the shewing that though in the Great Lateran Council wherein were 1215 Fathers it was Synodically and Categorically concluded that the Pope might absolve Subjects from their Oaths of Allegiance that yet great Numbers of Henry the 4ths Roman-Catholick Subjects knew and Practised better things and that their great Absolute and Unconditional Loyalty to him lives in the Records of the Impartial Thuanus And that notwithstanding any principles Chargeable on the Church of Rome the Faith of many particular persons in it hath by its Works shewn it self very perfect for Loyalty But here I am likewise obliged to gratifie you by my Complaisance with your Temper in differing somwhat in Opinion from you for you say you are better pleased in Conversation with those who in many points differ from you than with those who in all agree with you and am frankly to tell you that tho' I am sufficiently satisfied with your discharging of the Moral Offices of Honouring all Men and giving Honour particularly to some Roman Catholicks to whom it was due and particularly where in p. 360. You have with so great a Height of Expression Celebrated the Virtue of the Queen Dowager and from whom I had the Honour to receive Thanks by the late Earl of Ossory for the Justice I did her Majesty in a late Conjuncture Yet there is one thing at the end of your Discourse and another after the end of your Discussion wherein you are pleased to give your Judgment concerning the Papists here in geral as I would not have given mine in the Case You say in p. 285. That after the Various Intervals in which the Discourse was Written it having happened that the Papists are to the General Satisfaction of Impartial Judges of Men and things become as sound a part of this Nation as they were and are of the Dutch States and as throughout the Discourse you always supposed them Capable of being and in p. 361. You say that it is with Justice to be by all Men to our Popish Fellow Subjects acknowledged that what ever petulance some of them were formerly guilty of or of any Ambitious Design of making too great a Figure in the Internal Government of the Nation yet that the Deportment of the Generality of them hath lately appeared with such a Face not only of Loyalty but of Complaisance with his Majesties Measures in imploying the Hands and Heads of Protestants of the Church of England in the Management of great Matters of State as is necessarily Attractive of our Christian Love and Compassion c. But tho' I account my self Morally obliged to Judge several Papists of my Acquaintance to abound in Loyalty and to be such whose Moderation is known to all Men and to be no Exorbitant Affecters of making too great a Figure in the Internal Government of the Kingdom and do hope that many others are so with whom I am not acquainted and will Judge no particular Papist to believe or practise Principles of Disloyalty without particular grounds and tho' on the account of the Trite Rule that Interest never lyes I will hope that the generality of them will in his Majesties Reign and afterward be neither Disloyal nor Heady nor High-Minded nor affecters of Preheminence Yet if I were required to give my present Judgment in short of the present Temper of the generality of them as to the Qualifications about which you have given your Judgment in the Case and that too relating to future times I considering the Formulary of the Letters denoting Judgment given in the Mode of the Old Roman Laws viz. A. and C. and N. L. would not presume either to Absolve or Condemn the gross of their Numbers as to those Qualifications but would interpose the Non Liquet in their Case and much less will I Condemn your Judgment of Charity to them and say that some of your Sharp Reflections on Popery and some Papists have favoured of the Common way of some Partial Judges Byassed with an intent to bring off some Criminals Namely to make some disobliging rough Language previous to the obliging them with their Sentence at last But taking every thing in the best Sense it will bear shall suppose that your Information of the Temper of the Generality of them might be what arrived not at my Knowledge and that therefore you pronounced thereof as you have done And moreover your Discourse being Writ before the Late Kings Death I shall account it was for several Reasons a strengthening of Loyalty and weakening of the Fears of Timid Protestants for you
And do Judge that when our Excellent Divines of the Church of England shall be of Opinion that the Emissaries of Rome are not more than ordinarily busie in endeavouring to pervert any of their Flocks from their Religion they will naturally throw off Debates of Speculative Controversial Divinity For granted it must be that both Protestants and Papists do stand more in need to be taught what were the Moral Practices of the Primitive Christians than what were their Speculative Assertions And as a late Divine hath well remark'd Sixteen Hundred Years are run out since the Son of God came down to Sanctifie and Save the World which are so many Degrees whereby we are Descended from the first Perfection We are more distant from them in Holiness than in time so universal and great is the Corruption that 't is almost as difficult to revive the dying Faith of Christians and to Reform their Lives according to the Purity of their Profession as the Conversion of the World was from Heathenism to Christianity And when I consider how much the Christian Religion hath been Debased to a Religion-Trade as your Term is and and a project to advance Mens Ambition or profit and by ways and Artifices contrary to the Law of Nature and below that generous Contempt of Sordid Actions and below the fides verecundia honestas and the Simplicity of Manners that Adorn'd the Minds and the Conversations of the Antient Heathens and how much the Old pietas in patriam you have referr'd to in Cicero is evaporated among Christians and the very ideas of Heroical Actions lost that is such Actions as were term'd so as respecting the good of our Prince and Country and when I consider how by that Cruel Revengeful implacable Spirit rendring Christians worse Enemies to one another than even ever Iulian was for he in one of his Epistles to Iamblichus profess'd that he thought then was not fit for him to persecute the Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. I think it fit to teach but not to punish Fools seeing some Christians to apostatise from that which was commendable in the temper of Iulian the Apostate I cannot forbear thinking of those severe words of my Friend Dr. Hammond in the Epistle to his practical Catechism viz. As Machiavel thought Religion would emasculate and enfeeble Common wealths we have more reason to complain that it hath Debauch'd and Corrupted Lives And were it not that God hath been pleas'd to preserve a scatter'd Remnant a few in every Nation to be the Records as it were from whom it may be seen what Christianity is able to do if it may be hearken'd to Were it not that there are a few Antient primitive Spirits by whom as by a Standard others may and ought to be reformed we have reason to think and say that Christian Men are the impurest part of the World That Satans after-game hath proved more prosperous and lucky to him than his first designment did that his Night-walk hath brought him more proselytes than his unlimited range of going up and down to and fro over the face of the Earth that as Sin by the Law so Satan by the Faith of Christ hath taken occasion and so deceived and ruined us more desperately more universally than by all the National Idolatrous Customs of Heathenism he hath been able to do There is one noble Virtue of the Primitive Christians that hath indeed by the Successful labours of the Divines of the Church of England been lately much Propagated in this Land and that is Loyalty to our Princes and God be thanked that we have many thousands of the Layety of that Church who have been better instructed in that Primitive virtue then ever Bellarmine was as appears by his Quia deerant vires And I wish that for the ease of his Majesties Cares and Safety of his Government all Mens Ideas and Practices of Loyalty may grow both more refined and firm And that according to your excellent quotation out of Seneca Quanto latius officiorum patet quam juris Regula all his Majesties Subjects may practise the Primitive Obedience to the Height of all Moral Offices not to think that their being barely legales homines in doing what the Law compells them to for his Service is all the Loyalty or Obedience requisite The obvious thought of Children as well as Parents being Morally bound to be helpful to each other beyond what they are constrained to by the Law may shew us the reasonableness of the extending our Obedience to our Political Father to all the Noble heights of Virtue I-am very well pleas'd with the passages in your Discourse that brand Mercenary Loyalty in p. 274. and the I opeans you sing to the Crowns victories obtained over Mercenary loyalty And here I cannot omit being so just to your self as to acknowledge that you have as good a warrant as any Subject of the Crown I know to reprehend Mercenary Loyalty since on your modest Application to the late King upon the importunity of your friends for a Compensation of your varicus Services done him almost ever since his Restoration and the Reinbursment of your expences in his Service and on his Ministers by reference consulting my Judgment about your Case I found several thousands of pounds due to you on that account and do Judge that you never since apply'd to his late Majesty nor any of his Ministers about the same But one instance more of your unmercenary Loyalty I shall not conceal that I was assured of from a Lord in High Favour with his late Majesty Namely that when in his late Majesties Reign he knowing your Abilities to serve the King did of his own accord offer to you his readiness to move his Majesty to afford you a fair Pension you Over-Modestly requested his Lordship to move no such thing in your behalf professing to his Lordship that it should be the business of your life to promote all his Majesties Just Measures in what you could without any expectation of other reward than what the pleasure of all Actions of Loyalty necessarily included in the doing of them And to this too I might add that in the time when the late Western Rebellion was most considerable your having with other Gentlemen appear'd to his Majesty as ready at your own expence to be then in Arms to serve the Crown at an Hours warning was a further fair example of your unmercenary Loyalty And the truth is that in the Present State of England when it so much imports us to restore England to its Old Office of ballancing the World Mercenary Loyalty would be now a kind of Monster In morality It here falls in my way to observe that you have in p. 156. and 157. very usefully shewn Mercenary Religion to be a thing both senseless and odious And therefore tho you may seem the only person of the Church of Eng. who hath in print vary'd from its Homilies or Articles since his
Majesties Reign in any Religionary point Yet as to your self I have had reason to guess that you long ago in the late Kings Reign had some Theological Sentiments some what differing from what I took for our Churches Articles and that I speaking to you thereof you reply'd out of Bishop Bramhalls Iust Vindication of our Church that our Articles are not penned with Anathemas or Curses against all those even of our own who do not receive them but used only as an help or rule of unity among our selves Nor have I forgot how you once discoursed to me your opinion of the Tenet that the Souls of good Men do not immediately after Death go up into Heaven nor the Souls of bad Men then immediately down into Hell But that the former than go into a good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the latter into a bad one and that such place was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. inconspicuus as being so not in regard of it self but of us and that our Saviours Soul went 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that this Tenet was more particularly Tertullians and that he describing the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said 't was a place ubi bonis benè erat malis malè and that good Men did there in Candidâ expectare diem Judicij and that the Expression of aeternitatis Candidati was first taken occasionally from those words of Tertullian and that it seemed suitable to the Measures of Divine Iustice not to give the great Sentence concerning eternal rewards and punishments before the Trial of the Day of Iudgment and that as a Thousand years with God are said to be but one Day the time of that Trial might possibly last so long and that it might else seem a diminutio capitis for Saints to be brought from the Caelum beatorum to the Bar and that somewhat like this notion of the State of Souls after Death the Iews had and likewise all the Fathers for the first four Centuries and when some of them encouraging Men to be Martyrs said that such did uno saltu get up into Heaven and that our Saviour saying in my Fathers House are many Mansions c. and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto my self tho therefore the good will not be received by Christ into those Mansions till he comes again yet their condition will be much better in the good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then in the most prosperous State here below where they are continually exposed to the Contagion of Sin And as you have in p. 317. mentioned that some of our Protestant Divines owning this Tenet have not been therefore Censured as Popishly affected or maintainers of Purgatory so neither shall I therefore thence infer your owning the Notion of a Purgatory or Limbus nor the usefulness of Praying for any Souls in the Hades and much less that your favouring this notion of Hades by publishing it now as what some of our Protestant Divines favoured was in the least designed by you as any humouring of a Project to reconcile Churches a project that you have expressed to be so ineffectual when some well meaning Men had it in their Heads in a Conjuncture long ago and when Withers a dull Poet of the Age yet a favorite of the vulgus did in his Emblems p. 3 of his ep dedicat as you once told me amuse them with his fancies of the Vnion of Religion And as you have in your preface observed it that the few florid Sheets lately published on the Subject of Toleration have made no other figure than that of the poor resemblances of flowers extracted by Chymical Art out of their ashes and that a little shaking them together in the glass of time must make them presently fall in pieces I have observed likewise that the perhaps well meant Velleities or Wishes or little Essays of some few private Persons that since his Majesties Reign amused any by propounding a Reconciliation of Churches have appeared but like extracted resemblances of the flowers of private Mens proposals of that kind in the Conjuncture before the year 1640 and since his Majesties happy Reign they have been easily shaken in pieces Mr. Prynne in his History of the Tryal of Arch Bishop Laud in p. 191. tells us what a ferment Mr. Adams his Case made in the Vniversity of Cambridge in the year 1637. who Preaching in St. Mary's and there asserting the necessity of Auricular Confession was by Dr. Brownrig the Vice-Chancellor enjoyned to Recant that Doctrine and about which great Heats arose among the Heads of Houses there But the Sharpness of the canons of 40 against Popery shewing the zeal the Arch-bishop expressed in the making of those Canons and of that Clause in the Oath there for the abjuring Popery viz. and that I will not Subject the Church of England to the Church of Rome which Oath the Arch-Bishop in his Defence saith was a more strict Oath than ever was made against Popery in any Age or Church may easily Convince the Sagacious of the Church of Englands Sense then about any Project of Reconciling the Church of England to that of Rome being altogether vain The Arch-Bishop had it seems by long and deep observation found the project of the reconciling of our Church and Romes a thing utterly unpracticable however as to his having been formerly a Visionaire about the possibility of the same I remember I have seen some angry reflections of Dr Williams Bishop of Lincoln against him and Writ with that Bishops own Hand in the Margent of the Arch-Bishops Printed Star-Chamber Speech where over against those passages that seemed to be somewhat trimming in favour of the Church of Rome Bishop Williams wrote the nearer you come to the Church of Rome the further she will fly from your Courtship and Caresses and will tell you that Rusticus es Corydon nec munera curat Alexis But what thing the Reconcilers would be of Churches mean to themselves is sufficiently plain As to the natural meaning of any thing of that nature I call to mind that a Presbyterian Minister speaking to you once of Comprehension and of the Divines of his perswasion and that of the Church of England being that way Reconciled you told him you wished a Coalition of such with the Church of England as were formerly of his Perswasion But that you supposed by his comprehension he desired to be a Comprehensor of some of the Livings of the Divines of the Church of England and that therefore when you found any Divine speak of the Essaying to Reconcile Churches you naturally thought of those Words in the Acts of the Apostles C. 17. v. 18. What will this Babler say and Rendring the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there by Church Robber Altar Robber and Sacrilegious Person as our Broughton did and justifying that your Critical Acception of the word out of the Greek Classick Authors viz. Demosthenes and