ingredient to a full Settlement or the Obligations to Allegiance founded thereupon For if a Nations Settlement be not full under New Powers till all the former lineal Heirs be Extinct or cease making their claims from Forreign Dominions I know not how many Ages may sometimes be necessary to fill the Settlement and it will be very hard if submission thereto for want of such a ground of plenitude should be Treason and all Sanguinary Commotions against it Pious and Loyal till the claim of all the Succeeding Heirs Lineal shall surcease for ever Or if you will allow a term for Prescription against all after claims then you must allow that a Settlement attaining to Prescription may exclude a Native Right or that a Native Right ceases by such a Tract of Continuance If it excludes Right only then you are no more to comport with it than with present Settlements exclusive if the Right ceases I pray shew me by what equity mere time can destroy a right in me Anno. 93. which was whole and within Memory Anno. 92. especially since the Regestries of Lines Royal usually endure as just Records that will out-live the longest ocular Testimonies and personal Memories whatsoever For the reason why Prescription passes Title is when there is no Authentick Evidence or memorial to the contrary And I will further note that the same Laws of Nations which admit prescriptions as a form of Title do not therefore assert the Title really right in the original means of procuring it but only externally Legal for want of better Evidence Prescription in it self being the weakest form of Title that must give place to all others if verified in foro and its ground or reason is only a supposed Composition Real I say supposed only not Asserted And those very Laws of Nations do not always suppose those Compositions every way right but only Legally Authoritative and Settling and do indeed allow such present Settlements within memory to be as Legal and Valid as those which being out of record and beyond memory can but be supposed Legal and this with more reason because men can better judge of what is present than of what is past into a Tohu an Age in which all things are forgotten Dyscher You are very long and I am almost tired considering the Zeal that is in me Eucher I have kept you so long under the Fatigue because what I ever thought has lately appeared in your Prints that the total ground of the Schism between us lies in this point of Right For you all say that Allegiance follows a thorow Settlement but a thorow Settlement is founded in the Right of him that Reigneth So that if admit the wrong then immediately all our Prayers for him are Immoral Polluted and Abominable as conteining Imprecations against the right and justice of him that is wronged and giving God Praise for the Advancement of the Usurper which we blasphemously attribute to God Whence there follows a necessity that all good Bishops Priests and People renounce Communion in these Liturgies and with all that use them and that if hereupon they be deprived by the Usurpers of all the Publick Advantages of their Ministry they must keep up holy Ministrations among themselves for so the Rule is set and agreed for with most prodigious Zeal and no less Accuracy and Learning by your admirable Author of Christian Communion But I wonder this great Man did not see how Tottering and Casual the visible State of Religion then must be upon every turn of the secular State and the various Competitions for the Sovereingty For how is it possible that Godly Pastors and their Flocks can be all unanimously certain at all times whore the real Right and Justice lies when matters of Fact and Law are so remote from their Cognisance Nor will your evasion of doubtful Cases which you allow much to heal the matter For in all such cases some will assert an indubitable Right others a dubitable one and that on both sides at the same time And thus your indubitable Men must fall into a state of Schism or Separation from each other upon their contrariant confidences in the Right of the opposite Claimers And your dubitable men must either be neuter to all Communion or choose a Communion with one or other of the indubitables at all adventure which to do with a doubting mind is a Sin and Snare And so it is in our present case Some says 't is indubitable that K. James is King de jure and that K. William is not King at all others say as indubitably that K. James is not King at all but K. William is King de jure others own K. William to be King only de facto and K. James de jure others that are indubitably for his being de facto doubt his being de jure King And a great number through ignorance confide or doubt more or less in all these points which they cannot reach Now since Practice must follow Principles and rules of Conscience how shall we settle all these under one Religious Communion on that Authors Maxims There is no possible way but by following the direction of the Convocation Book in Obeying the thorow Settlement of the King de facto made by publick Submission or continuance the form of which being a point of Law not Religion must be determined and defined by the Supremest Domestick Judgment we have in Civils which Certainly is that of Parliament after whose Decisions we need no further Torment our selves in vain about Antecendent questions but consider the Right we have as well as Duty to Live quiet under Publick Formal and Judicial Settlements which we are to take as Gods Ordinance for the time being By which Rule we shall secure our selves from both Extreams either of owning forcible Entry for Legal Title or proper Settlements or of Asserting all Change of Government to be Invalid and unobliging as Contrary to the Law of God who we know changeth Times and Seasons and all the Kingdoms of the Earth and Dissolves and Resettles all the States of Men under proper Laws of Constitions according to the Just and Unsearchable Counsels of his Will And now I will only apply your Rules of Communion to our Case and so dismiss this Theorie If this present Settlement be full and the Judgment of the Nation herein against your Right then all your Prayers and Execrations against the present State are Irreligious Immoral Polluted and Abominable and under an ipso facto Anathema upon which all Christians must abhor your Communion even without any Ecclesiastical Sentence as being self-condemned and cut off And if all these Dangers and Snares await us upon every Civil Change upon Mens Private Cross Opinions about Right and Plenitude of Settlement Christian Religion Ecclesiastical Union could not have continued a Twelve-Month under the Changes of the Empire from Nero to Vespasian but must have Expired before it had been Exposed to the World And I desire
Subjects of any Sovereign Prince may combine with and invite in a foreign Prince and when he comes tho' with a contemptible force they may forsake their lawful Prince and then by their Treachery having left him helpless and hopeless may treat with a Foreigner drive away their own King give his Crown to the Foreigner and maintain it with their Swords and Purses without which he could not keep his illgotten Goods T. B's 2d Lett. p. 18. Eucher It confessedly seems as I stated the Proposition you cannot deny the perspicuity of its Truth and therefore you invert it to an invidious Paraphrase which in many parts of it is not truly applicable to that which was the Subject of my Apology viz. the Authority of the Convention For all your aggravated Invitations Combinations Revolts Treacheries and Derelictions allowing or supposing them to be no other than you describe them are not chargeable on the whole Estates of the Land especially when in Convention And even thus I will renew my Position That by the Laws of Nations if a foreign Prince procure the Revolt of a vast part of another Princes Subjects thro' the terror of which the helpless Prince leaves his Kingdoms in Anarchy under the Army of the foreign Potentate who thereupon calls the Estates of such deserted Nation to treat for a Settlement they may convene and treat with him upon such invitation For it is the necessity the subject Nation stands in for a Settlement that warrants and legitimates such Treaties by what means soever those exigencies are introduced whether by foreign Force or intestine Commotions jointly or severally throwing all into Anarchy and Disorder But if the charge of the Revolt preclude the legality of any mans Session that incapacity ought to have been objected and if over-ruled protested against in Convention as I have already told you which not being done they were all in Law Reason and Civil Construction lawful Agents and Councellors As to the word Unresisted Power I confess I used care indeed but no trick for it was too hard for me to judge whether the Prince's Power were irresistible or no and so it is in many cases in which Parties yield rather than run the hazard of a Battle But every one can tell when it is or is not actually resisted and the Proposition is as true of an unresisted as well as irresistible Power Tho' take you all the Forces foreign and domestick joyned to the Prince when the Convention was called you will think it hard for any Subjects to have resisted them when the King himself long before durst not but disbanded and quitted thereby all pretensible Duties in the Subjects to take Arms. And the Conventioners deserve to be your humble Servants for putting them upon such an Essay But if you will require where the fault of this non-resistance really lies I think you may find it in him that neither could be induced to call a Parliament nor to fight it out After which double miscarriage and flight out of the Kingdom I think no man was obliged to resist or take up Arms but to desire such a Settlement as the State of Affairs would admit As for the Wars we maintain with our Purses against all the Enemies of our present Settlement they are just according to all the Rules and Forms of Civil Laws to which you your selves contribute as well as we only with more Crime as doing that against your Consciences which we admit upon Principles to us appearing good But if you think your Exigencies legitimate your payment of Taxes to prevent new danger so we think the general Exigencies of the Nation did legitimate this Settlement and do still justifie our plenary Submission thereunto according to the Sense Laws and Usages of all Nations As for those you call Revolters they were not the Subject of my Discourse whom I therefore leave to God who as he saw the provocations so did he also every mans purposes and trains of thought in that Insurrection according to which at the last day they shall each man be judged But for those that lay still I know no legal summons they had from King James to rise in Arms to make that quietness a breach of Allegiance in which certainly you Jacobites are as culpable as the others and in one degree more in that when you might and upon your Principles ought to have taken Arms for him you would not and now when you neither can nor ought clamour for new Seditions and Commotions by which we must inevitably fall a prey to France and a Burnt-Sacrifice to Rome Dyscher I will now for the present intermit the Remarks I collected at Gilman's Coffee-House and bestow some other impartial Reflexions on your Grand State-Principle on which you raise your other Arguments Here then I must tell you That you set up new Principles which the Church of England hath always declared to be erroncous and grounds of Rebellion viz. you set up the Parliament above the King and that we must take our measures of obedience only from the Parliament * Sol. Ab. p. 31. to whose Judgment say you in all Civils all Subjects must submit And upon this you Ground all your Superstructure as that King James's * Ibid. p. 8. Tenure has been publickly judged by this Natition to be extinct * p. 9. and that this Nation hath justified King William 's Cause which is to conclude upon us Beyond this you allow no no man to look or enquire The whole Body of the Church are to be taught by the Parliament and to have an implicit faith in them against the King in all Cases whatsoever so that * Ibid. p. 4. the Churches Loyalty is to follow the Civil Judgment concerning the Object of our Allegiance and the Tenure of Sovereignty And by this Rule if a Parliament change a King every day the Church is bound to swear to every one the Parliament can solve their Oaths But there was a time when the Church thought it their Duty to be Teachers and particularly as to Loyalty as being a principal part of Religion and even against a Parliament Here unfortunately four or five lines were broken off the MS. Reflections but as I well remember the sense was such as is included within these brackers and their Doctrine was owned by all true Sons of the Church of England I mean the Old Church of England in the Reign of King Charles II. This was their Doctrine and Practice and generally of the whole Church of England ever since the Reformation as is plain in her Homilies Articles and Canons c. And you do not attempt to disprove these but only assert the contrary and so leave it as a thing settled and sure MS. Reflections That the Churches Loyalty as to the Object is to be guided by the true Constitution of the State I deny not but I shall never yield what you would thence slur upon us that it is to
penal sanction but positive local and judicial does not oblige us but the natural reason substrate thereto supposes and indicates all obligations of Duty from all Relations whatsoever forfeited by Atheism and avowed Irreligion And accordingly Asa dishonoured his Mother in devesting her of her Royal Dignity because she had made an Idol in a Grove 1 King 15.13 2 Chron. 15.16 Nor is this any breach of the Law of Nature but the observation of it for the Law of Nature being nothing else but pure Abstract Reason and Equity whatsoever is consonant to this Equity comports with the Laws of our Nature By these Laws the sins of Men-rescind their Rights in many benefits which had been due to them in a state of Innocency The Law of God requires us simply to honour all men it being the natural due of our beings framed after the Image of God and yet wicked and ungodly men are to be shunned as spots and blemishes by the Law of Nature and to be made Anathema by the Censure of the Church For the Foundation of all Authority whatsoever is God and all Obligations to all Duties Civil Moral and Religious are founded in him so that an avowed rejection of God puts men out of all claims of Authority which alone is originally Gods for a renunciation of God is an effectual renunciation of all just and real Authority whatsoever The Fifth Commandment therefore being not a meer positive Precept but a dictate of Natural Equity is interpretable to particular Acts according to the Rules of Equity and must concede to superiour and more important Obligations which will sometimes require us to hate Father and Mother that is to disregard their Commands and forsake their Persons to keep Gods Commandments Luke 14.26 If a Son be a King and the Father a Subject he must deal with his own Father as a Subject in Civil Causes nay as a Malefactor if necessity requires A Son is bound to defend even by the Sword if there be no other way his Wife and Children from the Sword of his Father and to save his Country by the Detection of his Fathers Treasons And many such Cases more there may be wherein intolerable wickedness on one hand and greater Obligations on the other cut off the Ties of Honour and Union between Parents and Children Husbands and Wives and all other Temporal Relations since what separates men from God may well disengage them one from another And to put a particular Case if a Prince marry a Kings Daughter and Heiress and the King after becomes suspected of an Imposture to pervert that Daughters inheritance and upon demand will not refer that doubt to the Arbitration of his own Senate but to elude the Hopes and just Expectations of his Son in Law Daughter and his own People in this and other momentous Concernments he puts all the Laws Liberties and Religion of his Kingdoms in a Course of Subversion and ruin under Arbitrary and Foreign Powers may not such a Son in Law endeavour to put a stop to these Measures and to force such a King to do right And is such Prince's Wife bound to oppose her Husband in these just Causes to abet her Fathers injustice and unnatural Impiety And if the Father being thus pressed by the Son in Law rather than do the justice demanded will fly for the succour of his injustice to another unjust King the Enemy of his People and in the mean time leave his Kingdom in Confusion which shall subject it more effectually to his Scourge upon his return with Foreign Forces may not such Prince and such Kings Daughter and a confused Nation unite and settle it against the ruins otherwise inevitable to them all For if Natural Ties sometimes give place to Civils of greater weight here surely is as fair and just an instance for it as well can be imagined or alledged out of History And that Civil Obligations of greater moment do preponderate against Natural you your self confess when you rightly say had not the constitution been for the time being lawfully altered the Crown coming to the Princess of Orange by meer Descent the Prince here must have been her Subject tho' by the Matrimonial Laws of Nature he is her Lord. It is indeed a melancholy Speculation when the impieties of such near Relations break off all the Natural Links of Duty and Union which must never be receded from as long as the Union is tolerable and consistent with Superior Obligations but of two Evils the least is always to be chosen and where two Offices are incompetible the more important is to be prosecuted And yet tho' this be lawful and necessary 't is sometimes a Tragical Scene under which even the Righteous Parties are to mourn and lament their infelicity in falling into such Straits and Temptations and are incessantly to pray that God would put a just and good End to the Disaster and in the mean time to make necessary Justice and Piety the only Rule and Reason of their Actions in such a State of Division and inevitable Contention And such being the form of the present Affairs if you needs will censure the Morals of your Sovereigns you ought to allow their Measures all the Charity the Case will bear which hitherto seems the Care of Gods Especial Providence for us And if it be so it is a dangerous thing to Curse whom the Lord hath Blessed But I have told you these things concern not us in our Civils and it is therefore best to leave things secret and above us unto God the Lord and Judge of all men But as to the Change it self it is an apparent delivery and blessing to the Nation in the best manner attainable by any means less than supernatural For a deliverance it is plain we needed which could never have been secured had King James continued undisturbed in his Reign Now if an unrelated Prince had desired to help us yet he had had no Civil Interests to have grounded a defence or rescue us from any Civil Laws or Laws of War Then the Sovereignty given to a Stranger had been a cutting off the Line Royal which neither Atwood or Johnson have * Since Johnson will give Richard Rich a Right yet asserted lawful by our Rules It would also have been a punishing the sins of the Father upon the Children and inevitably have involved us in intestine Wars Then again if the Princess of Orange had invaded her Fathers Kingdom and Crown by any Hostile Forms this would have looked more violent and unnatural and seems more than the Princely Lady in Temper or Duty could well or easily have attempted Time was before a calm and thorow consideration of things that matters seemed hard but I am now convinced that no other Person under Heaven could in human prospect be so proper a Redeemer as his present Majesty nor any Form of Settlement devised to fore-fend the Ruin of this Nation upon whose Strength the Security of
which they accept for their Majesties under that Interpretation contracts no Evil he thereupon takes in their Sense as judicially Legal and no other This I think is no Cozening of the State in the Swearer but a fair sincerity before God and the World and answerable at any Tribunal whatsoever Have you any thing more to say upon this Point Dyscher My Friend T. B. suggested no more matter of Arguments to me hereupon but only huffed and laid about him what that innocent Sense might be and the double boil'd Crambe of Swearing to Usurpers to maintain their Usurpations that while you make such a Pother about Senses your Conscience lies snarling within as he does without when he scorns your Pity and stiles you meek For-swearers meek Rebels meek Traitors meek Turks meek Jews meek Renegadoes and taxes your Merciless High-Priest for want of Bowels to a poor Boy whom it seems some of his Party had imployed in carrying Seditious Libels I will not tell you the manner of his Fury but it so startled me that I thought verily I must have sent for the Doctor Ser. J. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 27 28. Eucher But what say you to the danger of the Law even when King James returns if you treasonably break your Allegiance to King William Dyscher In this I find you are a Man tam Marti quam Mercurio otherwise called an Ambodexter For if you cannot perswade us you will affright us into the Oath or any thing else For you endeavour to possess us with an Opinion that King James if ever he returns will hang all them that do not Swear and pay Allegiance to William An hard Case that a Man can't be Wise and Honest without Hanging But why this extreme Severity Why Because the Lineal Heir may hang a Man as a Traytor for breach of Allegiance to an extralineal King Well but if King James should hang up all that did not pay Allegiance to William one would think he should not spare those who would not pay Allegiance to himself and this would make clear Work When Edward the Fourth first joined Battle against Henry the Sixth did not you think this would have made a powerful Speech for him to his Souldiers Gentlemen go on couragiously your Cause is good the Crown is evidently my Right and if I can recover it by your assistance I will certainly hang you up every Man for fighting against the extralineal King Henry Sixth who here appears in the Field against us and keeps me from it Sir I do not believe there is any Law to hang a Man for Loyalty and of all Men living I least fear it from King James T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. And I appeal to your self whether you can believe that Interpretation you put upon our Laws * Sol. Ab. pag. 12. viz. That King James may Hang Men as Traitors for breaking their Allegiance to King William This is the same as if King Charles the Second should have Hanged Men as Traitors to the Common-Wealth of England who restored him to his Crown M. S. Reflex But in Truth all this Hanging stuff seems to have another Design not to tell what K. James may do but what you would have others to do as if they were excusable for any severity towards those who deny them that for which even King James himself may punish them It is a pious hint to your Government and your Mob T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 30. Eucher I was willing to have saved you if it had been possible out of Error that so I might have kept you out of Danger But if there be no such Danger I am very glad of it What King James will do I am no Arbiter nor did I ever assume upon me to discover his Intentions I only minded you what by our Laws he may do if you are guilty of Treason against Allegiance required by our Laws to the present Sovereign But you according to the sincerity of a Zealot repeat me to have said that King James may hang you for not taking the present Oath that I may stir up the Powers and Mobb to do so presently But I thank God for your sake that tho' the Laws are severe upon unhappy Clergy-Men that cannot conform to the Oath yet such Recusancy does not by any Law make Men Traitors as not being made Treason If you live otherwise quietly and contrive no Seditions neither I nor the Laws can touch your Lives either now or hereafter in any Revolution But if you will incur Treason against extralineal Kings the Law since Henry the Seventh may be in force against you under the recover'd Reign of the Lineal however they stood in the Days of Henry the Sixth 'T is true Heirs Lineal that promote such Treasons may and no doubt always do stake Faith and Troth not only to indemnify but prefer their Adherents But in Edward the Fourth's Age and Army the Souldiers were not Lollards and Hereticks with whom the most Holy See and the more Holy Society will keep no Faith especially to succour and secure their Heresie He that hath seen what has been may easily see what will be if he will not shut his Eyes * See the state of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James And in England among all other advances remember the Fanatick Commissions for enquiry into past tho' legal Prosecutions against Conventicles on purpose to enrage them to join their Skeems with the Papists to cut our Throats who had but just before saved the Kings own Throat from the same Hands But if the Old prudent Câ—ution 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will produce no faith in you I leave you to your own Paradise Dreams and Dotages since the sagacious Observation of the Poets never quadrated so well to any person or purpose as me and mine upon this occasion invitum qui servat idem facit occidenti And yet for all my good will the sport you make with me in your Edward the Fourths Martial Oration exposes your Principles perhaps more than my Law For by the straiâ—s you have made upon the Duties of Christian subjection which Custom has named Passive Obedience Edward the Fourth's Souldiers had been bound to have fought for him tho' he had made them such an Oration which could not have been imprudent upon your Principles of Christian Loyalty But if such an Oration would have justified the consequent Revolt or recession of his Army then is this Nation and all the Protestants of King James's Army justified in their leaving him and going over to the Prince since his assumed Dispensing Power and superlative Prerogatives the Obedience contracted to the Sec of Rome and the Society of Jesus and all his hasty steps he made to the dissolution of our Laws Liberties and Religion were a Proclamation as fatal to this Kingdom and his Protestant Souldiers as the Speech you have framed for King Edward And they took the Language and intention of his Actions accordingly
not persevere in your Sin since it is one of those Sins that shuts out of the true Chuch of God For if it were necessary I could prove that its Principles destroy the Churches Fundamentals and Structure if such Principles which destroy all Morals and all Faith and Truth among men can be said to do so by which men may exclude themselves as well as be thrown out by others without an Authentick Act of an Ecclesiastick Judic tory and your instance in the Roman Church is Insignificant for we do not communicate with it but that of the Eastern Churches is still less to the purpose for I am not satisfied that either they have condemned us or we them as Schismaticks and Dr. Basier was desired by some of the Greek Clergy to Communicate and Minister among them neither did he refuse it T. B.'s 2d Lett. p. 10 11. Eucher But Brother it is not enough to call things by hard Names but it is necessary to shew wherein the iniquity consists and by what Law For submission to a Civil Constitution after its settlement is no Perjury Robbery Rebellion nor Impiety if men contribute no antecedent Evil to the Change and it is this meer Submission which I undertook to defend as being the only thing that can be charged on the Ecclesiastick Body And tho you pretend it unnecessary yet you can never carry your cause that we are Self Excommunicate upon the malignity of our Principles except you prove it and shew that our Maxims destroy all Morals and all Faith and Truth among Men since you load us with such an heinous and general charge and I know not to what purpose you discoursed me last or discourse me now except it be to convince me of the Reality and Anathematizing guilt of our Sin in this Submission Here then you must to the Law and to the Testimony and make up a very exact proof in order to Conviction for Men are not to be harangued into condemnation by meer unproved and general clamour but by very articulate evidence only which therefore I shall expect from you in the course of this Conference In the mean time when I alledged that we own the Roman and Greek Churches to be Churches notwithstanding their far greater Pollutions and Confusions than can be imagined in our present Ecclesiastical Change that hence I might evince us not to be Unchurched i. e. cut off from being Members of the Church Catholick as not having been condemned out of it by any Ecclesiastical Sentence 't is strange you should censure this instance for impertinent upon these pretensions that we refuse the Roman but admit the Greek Communion for by your favour in order to Unchurching which very intelligibly is the making us no Church of Christ you must have proved our Change more censurable than all the Pollutions of the Roman and Greek Churches And since you accuse us as Self-Excommunicate and therefore uncapable of your Communion which yet you deny not to the Greeks as being with you no Schismaticks the instance of that Churches Corruptions was not less but far more pertinent to our Cause for if their Corruptions are far greater than ours and yet cut them not off from the Right of Catholick Communion I think we are as much entituled to that Communion who have far less and fewer Irregularities So that except you can prove our Change more Irregular than the State of the Greek Church you cannot out us of that Communion you assert to them Here indeed you saw your self pinched and so shift off the matter with a piff as if I would be shaken off with an empty Scoff of Impertinence No no I will sit a little closer on your Skirts and though I shall not exagitate or upbraid all the known disorders in that distressed Church yet will I object to you the many Arbitrary Changes of their Patriarchs made by a Mahometan Emperor and admitted by them toties quoties whensoever the Grand Seignior has a mind to ease their Purses of that money which the new Patriarch is to tax on the Church as the price of his Advancement without any other Provocation or Inducement whatsoever Is not this a greater corruption than any can be imagined in our Change This you know was what I intended and yet you condemn not them as Schismaticks though here are frequent Deprivations and New Advancements admitted by the Greek Church to the Will of an Infidel Prince without any other crime of the Deposed and only for Monys sake Dyscher I did indeed in our last Conference * Sol. Ab. p. 24 29. censure this Blemish in the Greek Church But here I will give you the answer of one of our most puissant Advocates concerning this disorder in the Greek Church with his Apology foâ— the like frequent Depositions of the Jewisâ— High-Priests * Christ Commun Part 2. cap. 3. p. 32. In these alledged State-deprivations of the Jewish High-Priests either of Abiathar by Solomon or after they came under Roman subjection of the Chief Priests by the Roman Procurators there was only a Change of Persons but matters of Religion went on every thing the same in Doctrines Practices Prayers Sacrifices and Services of the Temple and the Synagogues and when these are not corrupted Gods faithful Ministers may yield their personal claims to State-Deprivations to secure Protection and Civil Benefits to the Church This also clears the instance of the Submission of the Greeks on the frequent Deprivations of their Patriarchs by the Turkish Governors The benefits of Incorporation which they propose to secure thereby are not the most tempting lying not so much in being priviledged and beneficed by the State as in not being persecuted but tolerated under it And their submission for keeping on this State-benefit such as it is is not without detriment to the Church tho' their breaking with the State they fear would be more detrimental the Turks making their new Advancements for Mony to be levied on the Church by the new Patriarch to the countenance and growth of great Corruption and to the bringing of the Church in debt But as to the course of Religious Ministrations they are the same under both Patriarchs in the same Doctrines of Faith and Manners Prayers and Publick Offices But now you know with us here is a change in all these parts of our Religion in teaching men to swear falsly to rob our King Bishops and Priests and to pray for Robbers and Usurpers against the just and true Proprietors Eucher But all this Charge of Alteration in Religion is downright Calumny uncapable of any proof in any one particular For we preach only Submission to a Legal Change of Governors and pray for them that are set over us by Legal Rules of Constitution Therefore tho' Governors like the state of all things temporal are liable to changes yet the Rules and Forms of our Religion and Morals are still permanent and unaltered And here I think I may
uncertain Rochester Letter make the Abdication manifestly false since he says it makes the Disertion so Here I doubt his Courage will fail him lest his Argument and his Dedication follow the fate of the Pastoral Letter And yet it is manifest that though K. James made many large and previous steps to the Subverting our Constitution yet the Final Abdication of the whole Government consisted in his Desertion from whence the Vacancy Commenced and if this were no otherwise manifest we have Mr. Johnson's own Averment who tells us * ibid page 29. That we have an Act of Parliament which declares the Realm of England to have been Sovereign during that time of Vacancy between K. James's second flight and K. William's Admission by ordering all Indictments from the time of K. James ' s withdrawing till the 13th of February to run in their Name 'T is true indeed that meer Local Desertion of the Land of which there may be many Causes does not ipso facto extinguish the Sovereignty except it be judicially interpretable to an Abdication from other concurrent Circumstances and Indications on want of which a demand of Return becomes reasonable and the neglect thereof interprets the Recession to an Abdication but when there are evident tokens of yielding up a Government in the form manner causes and circumstances of such Local Desertion then a summons of Return is not necessary in point of Law or National Duty upon the antecedent forms of Virtual Abdication apparent in such Departure If therefore his Act of Disertion in its own form made a Legal and Effectual Abdication his Rochester Letter imports no more than that his words and actions are contradictory in quitting by deed and claiming by word the same Right at the same time Upon this Abdication therefore the Throne becoming actually Vacant was by the Act of the Nation filled up with their Majesties And here upon whatsoever powers K. James endeavours to Exert as they do not reach us nor send out their vertue by legal ways of course so are they too late and out of season not to mention that his late ways of Exertion under French Conduct how honest soever you may call them look not very natural or smiling upon English Men If we sum up the matter he was ruining all the Laws and Liberties with the Religion of the Lands he Ruled and they were just on the Precipice under his Exertions so that the Nation needed and gasped for relief under them Upon this the Prince of Orange having Great Interests and Legal Expectations here comes over with a declared Intention to set all things at Right in such order as the English Parliament should adjust which was a fair and most equal design this then was the time for K. James to have Exerted his Royal Power Justice too in calling a Parliament for such purposes according to the sense of the whole Nation earnestly recommended to him by his Prelates Nobles and Counsellors for a long time by sundry Addresses even to the last and he having sent out some writs thereunto seemed a while enclined but upon Romish Advice recalls that purpose and instead of doing us that Justice was resolved to contest it with the Sword Hereupon his Army which had he called a Parliament to have healed the Nation would have secured him against all Forreign and Domestick Violence sunk their Affections as having no maw to Fight for him against their Native Country Liberties and Religion disperse by degrees and great part go over to that which they knew to be the Juster Cause and he being thus daily weakned retires disbands the rest and even not then calling a Parliament to help himself and us out of the Confusion he flies away to the Grand Enemy and Terrour of this Nation and leaves us to shift for our selves under those Aspects and apprehensions of dangers that lay before us If then he would not exert a Legal Power when he might 't is too late to offer at any Forreign ways of Exertion after a New Settlement or 't is at least unreasonable to demand our Reception of them to the destroying of our Redeemer after a National Allegiance given him for his sake who ever pursued our general Ruine against the Laws his Oath the ties of Natural Affection and the Sighs Groans and Requests of his Loyal People And whereas you say we may have his Power and Presence too if we will as lovely as that may be fancied 't is more than you can warrant For if we were disposed to accept your offers if he should come with a French force are you secured that the French would permit him to be as free and independent a Monarch as before 'T is possible they might erect him for a Vassal titularly Royal till their strength were fixed and then upon demand of Expences or other pretexts pick a quarrel with him to annihilate him for their Masters Glory Or supposing the French King for once a true Friend to King James would not his Forces make King James an Arbitrary Monarch here to exert more than a legal Power over all the Bodies and Souls Estates Coffers and Purses of the Nation If we had had any maw for such Power we might easily have had it while he was here and not have been beholden to the French for the Commodity But if King James should concert privately with us to return without any French measures or services can you assure us to keep this secret from the French King Or if you fail in point of secrecy are you sure he will let King James go or treat with us in neglect of his Interests and Pleasure Or would he not rather Bastile him for Ingratitude and treat him hereupon after his usual methods of humanity Thus pretty are your Projects to expose the Fate and Fortunes of Nations upon and discover such a distemper in the Brain as requires the Law of Bedlam rather than any other consideration Dyscher When we deny the Authority by which your Estates sate you ask us by what Authority was that Free Parliament called or sate that voted in King Charles the Second Sir if you please let another be called and vote in King James the Second When things are out of Order and good men set them to Rights again I do not think any man will oppose it upon the score of some small niceties but when subjects rebel against their Prince and drive him away and make that the ground of their going on and doing farther wickedness I cannot understand the Authority of this There is certainly in every man an innate natural Power and Authority to wish well to and vote for Right By virtue of this when things were in confusion the Subjects of King Charles the Second returning to their Wits and Allegiance send a convenient number to act for the whole who recall their rightful King and if you should do so likewise I should not be very quarrelsom with you But whatever
particularly named above other Orders in these national Prayers against Enemies And the reason is obvious because the interest of the whole Nations is summed up in the Felicity of their Kings So that they that are his Enemies are taken for the Nations Enemies also in these Prayers In praying therefore against K. William's Enemies we consider him not merely as a single solitary Person but as our Sovereign Head on whose welfare our own also depends and so in his Enemies we pray against our own also Seventhly we must enquire whether K. James must in our Prayers inevitably come into the number of K. William's enemies and so by civil Construction the Nations enemies Now when these Prayers were first ordered and received K. James was in no part of his old Dominions nor in any actual sensible military Hostility against K. William any where For tho' the Irish were in Commotion yet K. James was not there nor does it appear that they acted on his Commission but mere presumption and that not against K. William till his Armies came thither but their domestic Protestants only It seemed a while as if K. James had sat down and yielded up to his fate and state of desertion After the settled course of these Prayers re-animated by the French King he enters â—â—â—land and K. William follows In the mean time â—he course and sense of the Prayers was still the same râ—â—ning in generals and not altering by those changes bâ—yond the Irish Channel as there was no reason they should And so K. James was no more particularized after than before this in our Prayers Yet if his personal behaviour toward K. William at the Boyne doth not evince the contrary I will allow you that then he was a military enemy But still the grand question is whether also he was a moral enemy and so within the intention of our Prayers by his then present breaking it off from England and his designs thereby to recover England And plain it is that the sence of our Nation which is valid and cogent to all Civil obligations doth conclude him an injurious and moral enemy to K. William and this Realm For Ireland belonging thro' a long fixed Right to the Crown of England it must appear injurious after an effectual Abdication of this Crown and a Settlement of a Title therein upon K. William to invade Ireland and so to reduce us here under war for a recovery thereof and a defence of our own land from his illegal claims and pretensions And whereas without any sense of modesty you say that I assert K. James and K. William not to be enemies but good friends viz. that K. James is so friendly to K. William for that he intends K. William no injury you may resume your forehead and remember that I only said we are not sure that K. James designs K. William injury But what we are not infallibly sure of we may verily believe and presume from all the Rules of humane Judgment upon acts of Hostility And in all humane opinion his Invasion of Ireland was injurious but since all judicial Determinations must be left and referred to God's Judgment we not mentioning K. James in the number of K. Williams Enemies do not pass our internal and personal Censure on the Conscience of K. James before our God but remit that to God the Judge of all Kings and Nations But if private Persons will intermix their own personal opinions upon such superiour Causes where they need not then they who think K. James a moral Enemy to K. William do use our forms against him on that presumption of his injury they that do not think so of K. James do not in this form of Liturgy pray against him And the Liturgy not compelling us in the acts of our Religion to condemn K. James as morally injurious does not oblige any man determinately to involve him under any of our imprecations And whereas our Prayers are upbraided in the second Chapter of your first Book of Christian Communion as directed against Right for the maintenance of wrong it hereby appears how much mistaken that great Author was for whosoever can but comport with the Sovereign Style of their present Majesties may use these Prayers without prejudice to any real Rights of K. James or his own private opinions concerning it As to K. James's Personal hurt or injury let them that can feed an evil wish it for me God hath disabled him from overturning our Constitutions and hath settled us under good and equal Governours and that is enough and if K. James be elsewhere happy as long as he hurts not us we need no further trouble our selves or him And I do verily believe their present Majesties as little require my Prayers for his hurt as you do For time was when he was in the hands of K. William who had he designed to hurt him might have done it and thereby have prevented all the pretensions that have cost so much Blood and Treasure in Ireland But 't was piously done to abstain his hands from Royal Blood and leave the Issues of his undertakings to the Rules of innocency on which only he could dare to pray for and expect God's blessing But further you have forgotten one Argument perhaps because it was inconsiderable whereby it appears that our prayers are not pointed against any Rights of K. James or to any hurt of his Person for that we pray for all Christian Kings Princes and Governours even thâ—se against whom we wage open war And out of these Prayers we do not except even the most Christian King but pray for the preservation of him also in all his Rights our war not obstructing this practice of Piety even to our greatest enemies which we observe from the precept and example of our most blessed Saviour And therefore though it were true what you would seem to prove in form of Argument that K. James is accounted a greater Enemy and if you please add a greater King too than the French King yet no Enmity ought to be great enough to overcome our Religion and Charity in praying for our very greatest Enemies even while we pray against their Enmities But let us however see whether K. William and his Subjects do take K. James for a greater Enemy than the French King who it seems to you is accounted an Enemy only for asserting K. James's Cause First then if we take the moral notion of Enemy no man can judge whether K. James or K. Lewis has the greater internal enmity against K. William If we go upon the military notion it is apparently false that K. James either is or is accounted a greater Enemy than he that is the greatest in Arms of all the Christian Monarchs So that your axiom from whence you form your Argument Propter quod unumquodque est tale id magis est tale tho' true in Physical Causalities and Operations yet fails in moral Influences and Inducements such as are the reasons
of humane Confederacies And truly if K. William himself would upon reference made deliver his sense he would declare K. Lewis more injurious than K. James in this war for K. James seems to have some colour for provocation but K. Lewis had none to engage in K. James's quarrels But if he engages on other Reasons then he is not an enemy on K. James's account but his own And if K. James and K. Lewis should ever happen to come into K. Williams hands there would be so sensible a difference in his respects toward them as would discover his resentments of French injuries as greater than K. James's tho' unquestionably he would shew a Royal compassion to them both And now I am provided with a Reason why I dislike your Prayers for victory to the late K. James against K. William First because your Prayers assert the late K. James to be our present King and import K. William to be the Nations Enemy whereby you condemn and pray against the present Constitution of which by our Law and consequently God's Law you are subjects not Judges nor de jure Adversaries Again you confess you pray absolutely against K. William as K. James's Enemy And this you must judge of him either in the moral or military sense If in the moral you must then do it either of infallible certainty or opinion only The former the matter is not capable of because of the darkness of men's interiour passions and the disputable nature of Civil Titles But upon mere opinions you ought not to pass absolute Censure upon any mans Conscience and become his utter Enemy by your own choice And yet were K. William infallibly and certainly injurious to K. James yet since K. James's Cessation of war to pray for such victories of blood which you alone account victory is to pray for a return of a Cessant War in order to a sanguinary Victory and its Consequences If you take K. William only as a military Enemy he was then innocent and so your Prayers then aimed at the ruine of the innocent and his Cause But now he is no military Enemy to K. James 't is more impious to pray for his Ruine which K. James himself does not now attempt Upon which even K. James himself has opened our Church-Doors to you to joyn with us in our Prayers for King William and Queen Mary But if you take the French War to be K. James's we have all reason to thank you kindly for your Prayers in a time of such a dangerous War as not only affects all our Temporals but our very Church and Religion the noblest Structure and Bulwark of the Reformation Of which God in mercy make you truly sensible and even in this respect turn the hearts of the Fathers to the Children and the disobedient to the Wisdom of the Just Amen Dyscher Yet I find you are not so confident for all your forms of Devotion For †Sol. and Ab. pag. 15. You think there is one Prayer on the 29th of May so dangerous that you graciously give us leave to forbear to be present at it But Sir who gave you Authority to dispense with terms of Communion You have done more I fear than you will receive any thanks for None you are like to have from us who have no â—eed of your License and you ought not to expect it from those who will think their Authority hereby invaded T. B. See Lett. pag. 33. Eucher This I confess is a dangerous foyl Nor was I well aware of that nasute quickness which appears in this Stricture But as argute as you are was it I that thought this Prayer dangerous or my brother Dyscheres Was it not you that complained that in that Prayer there is a vow of Allegiance to K. William and Queen Mary which upon your Principles you cannot be present at or concede Well then this was so and what said I Then forbear to be present at it But must this presently be interpreted to an Act or Power dispensing with the Duty Truly I intended no more but to yield that therein you must be left to act according to your own Principles and Convictions and adventure the Displeasure of the Powers and legal Consequences thereupon whom and which I believe you would not much more exasperate by this one omission once a year if you constantly joyned in all our other daily Prayers and otherwise live inoffensively So it is ordinary to use the Imperative in a bare permissive without a concessive Sense as Do if you will since you cannot be perswaded take your own Course run your own risks play your own game take your own fortune counsels c. And tho I confess this is form of permission that merits no thanks so neither did I court any thanks herein either from you or the Public For as for you in this hard time you are not very liberal in point of gratitude as I have found by my own experience And I pray God you fail not in this Duty towards God for his mercies to the Nation as you do towards those that wish you well because they run not with you into your unaccountable excesses But as to our Governours if I have not hereby arrogated the dispensing Power I hope I have not much offended them If I have for your ungrateful sakes I will endeavour to atone for this one offence and have a Care how I ensnare my self again upon your Score Dyscher But yet you think we need not be so very coy as to this Prayer For you say that you have been assured by a good Author that the Recusant Bishops did not all stick at it but that some gave directions and consent to the use of it and also before their Suspension deputed Persons to administer the Oath in the Execution of the Authorities and Offices Episcopal Sir If I should say your good Author was an arrant lying knave I hope you would not only pardon my bluntness but also be more careful for the future how you gave any credit to such Persons T. B. Sec. Lett. pag. 33. Eucher Indeed Sir if you prove that excellent Person whom you know not to have deceived me with a lye I am your humble servant But I cannot but smile within my self to think how when this your treatment comes to his knowledge that religious and prudent person will entertain the blunt Character considering his most tender Compassions to the Condition of the Deprived But in truth the reasons of his discovering this advice and consent were not calumnious but conscientious as exhibiting matter in a religious Conference for consideration and practice in these various turns of things humors and sentiments But I have been told that in Law negatives cannot be proved but by inference from positives which I doubt will hold you a tugg tho' your tongue be all teeth and jawbones Dyscher As for this pretended Deputation I will set before you the true story and then you and
none away nor made them break off from any just and due Spiritual Dependence on their former Bishops whose own heretical Doctrine and corrupt Ministrations had made the people cease from depending any longer in Conscience upon them They wanted only to be Lawfully empowered and regularly ordained themselves by Episcopal Imposition of hands as all those reformed Bishops plainly were and so were no Spiritual Intruders nor guilty of any Civil Vsurpation or Injustice But where Bishops are Orthodox and are deprived for their adherence to Truth and Righteousness both in their private Practice and Publick Ministrations the people are still left Spiritually to depend on them And so we our selves should have thought at least we all seem as if we should if by Gods Providence the Civil State had gone on to ddprive our reformed Bishops for sticking to the Doctrines and Worship of the Reformation and had set up Popish Bishops in their places c. Vide. Eucher This Doctrine of that learned Person must be admitted with a grain of Salt or else it will be very unwholesom and prove very convulsive in the Ecclesiastick Body For tho every single Christian is to abhor and defie all false Doctrine condemned by the unanimous Sense and suffrage of the Universal Church from Divine Authorities yet single Persons cannot distributively and alone reject their Bishops as not Bishops for heretical Opinions or corrupt Ministrations which the general Body and all Orders of the Church do not uniformly censure irregular and renounce their Authors except a just and regular Sentence pass in form against them When Churches are concorporated into Provincial and Diocesan Unions there must be some public conduct for the diffusive multitude to a due discussion of Principles in order to such Divorces Thus of old when grievances arose from suspected Bishops the people appealed to Synods to judge upon their Cause but in Cases notorious they addressed to other Churches Bishops and Synods to allow their necessary Rejection of their irregular Bishop and ordain them others And this usage was as common as useful till the Papal Usurpations rendred it impracticable in the Western Church and so necessitated extraordinary forms of reformation For here the Prince and the People and a great Body of the Clergy having an Ecclesiastical Cause of Controversie against the Marian Bishops unrelievable by any fair domestic or foreign Synod were forced upon the Notoriety of the Evil to use extraordinary measures of purgation not by rabble or incoherent Partitions but by a National Judgment in Parliament as a middle expedient as well against intestine Schisms as Romish abuses upon which discharge of Papal Tyranny a way was opened to that true and uniform Sense of true Religion which the whole emancipated Church presently received with a glad and chearful Uniformity which was a felicity however not atchievable by a loose unorganized Multitude Since then the whole People of this Land did in their National Senate Vindicate the pure Religion established in former Convocations from the Marian Bishops the enacted Deprivation was designed more against their Spiritual Conduct than their Temporal fortunes and the People followed that publick intention not their own private counsel in the reception of new Bishops and the models of reformation And herein such measures of prudence were observed which cannot be secured in a promiscuous multitude which I wonder that Author did not consider For a Priest is not immediatly upon dropping of an Error materially heretical to be taken by all at random for a formal and self-deprived heretic or Anathema but he must be previously heard and admonished and only upon incorrigible Obstinacy to be rejected with appeal unto God and an apology to all Churches or Spiritual Fathers unconcerned and untainted But then this is a Canonical form of exauctoration by the Church not a formal Self-deprivation otherwise upon this Authors Principle all the Hierarchy of the Romish Communion was long self-deprived before the Reformation and totally exauctorated and how then will he justify our Episcopal Succession For such ipso facto irregularities that are so in their own nature and not by mere Canonical Ordinance degrade as well as deprive from not only Order but Communion to which of old upon Penitence they were wont to be restored not as Priests but as Laymen for that such a fall was an ipso facto Degradation of Order in which there were to be no public Penitents But now if we make such Deprivation the Act of the Christian People as we must then it and all the previous process thereunto must be executed by some formed Session or Council for the Place and People concerned but for the whole People of this Land we have no Council but that of Parliament And here it must be noted that a Christian Parliament hath as much Spiritual Right against heretical Priests as the common Christian Multitude and if the Multitude may on such notorious Corruptions eject one and procure another Bishop even without the Consent of civil Powers according to this Authors Doctrine surely such Right much more belongs to the Christian Legislative to which the Care of Religion does by Divine Ordinances belong as well as to the Hierarchy and common Multitude which had a real need of their Counsel and Conduct in so great a Difficulty The People therefore in Parliament did their Part in the Ejection of the Marian Bishops and all the Chapters and other Ecclesiastical Orders sequaciously concurred and completed the Design of that Act in their Alienation from the condemned Recusants And tho' all this was done for refusing the Oath of Supremacy yet that Recusancy being grounded on false Principles in Religion and maintained in Defence of the Romish Usurpations and Corruptions the Statute of Deprivation had not only a civil Intention but Religious also and was received accordingly But all this while I find no Answer to that famous Passage quoted by me †Sol. and Ab. Pag. 32. out of Dr. Hammond's Tract of Schism tho' of so great Moment and of so great Strength to justifie such Statutes of Deprivation for the Security of the civil Government against Seducements and Seditions But if you would take my Counsel I would advise you not to lay the Cause of this Controversie in Points of Religion nor make common People the Judges of them for fear of a Snap that perhaps you are not aware of Dyscher What what do you mean I am a little startled at this Suggestion since we are where we were and have neither altered the old Doctrines nor the Practices they direct to Eucher Do not you remember that that great Man who wrote the Vindication of the Deprived Bishops vehemently argues †Vindic. of Depr Bish pag. 24.25 26 27. that not only Errors whether great or small but even unnecessary Truths become Heresies when they are made the Causes or Characters of different Communions And such all Principles and Rules of Christian Morals inforced on peril of Sin
and Damnation not required by the word or law of God must in their own nature be And thus in the ancient Church all rigorous Doctrines which made sins where God hath made none draw after them inevitable Separations and so became Heretical Dyscher Well how doth this affect us Eucher I am afraid in all your Principles which make our present Allegiance Illegal and Irreligious Dyscher I pray form them into propositions and make your convictive Strictures upon them if you can Eucher I take no delight in such an Employ It is no pleasure to me to wound or grieve you but as the setting before you the danger of your Principles may correct the precipitancy of your Zeal I will obey and observe your direction First then Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to be subject to the Human Constitution and the Authorities that are as Gods Ordinance teacheth practical Errors Min. But so you teach Men against the present Constitution and Authorities Ergo. Concl. You teach Men practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth it to be Perjury to swear Allegiance to a new settled Sovereign upon the Desertion of the former to whom we had sworn Allegiance teacheth practical Errors Min. But such is your Doctrine contrary to Bishop Overals Convocation book Ergo. Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Form Maj. Whosoever teacheth to disobey Princes fully settled in a Government procured by ill means teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do ye in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo Concl. You teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men not to pray for Kings and all that are in Authority teacheth Men Practical Errors Min. But so teach most of you in the Reasons of your present Recusancy Ergo. Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men presumptuously to speak evil of Dignities teacheth practical Errors Min. But so do most of you Ergo Concl. Most of you teach practical Errors Again in another Instance Maj. Whosoever excommunicates or teaches Men to refuse Communion with Men that have sworn Allegiance to Powers fully settled acts upon and teacheth practical Errors Min. But so most of you act and instruct Men against our Communion because we have sworn Allegiance to the Powers fully settled over us Ergo Concl. You act upon and teach Men practical Errors And now considering all wherein I have answered you what can you say hereto Dyscher I answer we do not deny any of your Major and general Propositions but we deny your Minors that we teach such Doctrines for our Recusancy But we teach that those Major Maxims do not affect our particular Case for that these are not Constitutions Authorities or Dignities fully settled on which the Church according to the Apostles requires respect and obedience Eucher This is like those prevaricating Salvo's which your Author of Christian Communion upbraids us with †Part 3. Ch. 5. in eluding general Precepts from influencing in particular Cases but to omit this I have however gained another advantage and success by my Advice viz. that in the matter of Allegiance you must quit your Pretensions to Ecclesiastical Doctrines as the grounds of your Recusancy Deprivation and Separation and consequently there is an End of your low and causeless Clamours for your glorious Passive Doctrines as the Cause of your Sufferings all the remaining Question now being between us whether the present Constitution be fully settled which is a Point of Law not Religion to be resolved by the State not the Church by the Court Civil not the Court Christian And hereupon such Civil Judgments are to be secured by Religion and Conscience while they stand reversed and so you are obliged to acquiesce in the Judgments of our Parliaments in this Point But while you oppose this upon Principles of Conscience consider the Danger of Heresie which lies before you Maj. Whosoever teacheth Men to oppose the Course of public Judgment in Civils upon private Opinions to the contrary teacheth Rules of Sedition against Civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Min. But you teach Men to oppose the public Judgment of the Nation for our full Settlement in the present State Ergo Concl. You teach Rules of Sedition against civil Government it self and in them practical Errors Or thus in another Form Maj. He that teacheth Men to act against confessed Principles of Truth ought to be exauctorated Min. But you teach Men to practice Disobedience contrary to those Principles of Truth which you are forced to confess Ergo Concl. You are to be exauctorated Now I cannot for my part see how you can avoid this Charge which your own rigours against us have extorted from me And yet I have urged it for no ill Ends but only to lay before you the ill Aspects of your Division upon those your very Principles in which you glory For here I can more justly enclose you with your Vindicator's Dilemma viz. that if you separate without Principles you are then Schismatical if upon Principles you incur Heresie But if this be so the Church and State may according to your own Rules eject you without a Synod which I compassionately beg you tenderly to consider Dyscher Well let our Cause be what it will in Fact or Opinion I look upon these Lay and Parliamentary Forms of Deprivation to be very dangerous to the Spiritual Franchises of the Church tho' we suppose that such servile and gradual Concurrences of the Church do give them an Ecclesiastical Effect for that they destroy out of the Faith of Christians the Sense of those Spiritual Liberties and Authorities of the Church that by a Divine Charter and an Apostolic Descent belong to her and instil a fatal Erastianism into men's Principles and for that Cause ought not to be received but censured by the Church for that your Party founds their Authority on this false Proposition that the Church and State of England are the same Society whereas there are many Subjects of the State that are no Members of the Church as Apostates Papists Heretics and all unbaptized Persons Tho' yet were this Hypothesis true that all the same persons were equally Members of the Church and State yet as they are a Church and spiritually sociated they must be governed by a Spiritual Authority and as a State by the Civil Power of the Sword nor must the identity of the People confound the Distinction of Powers Besides as we are a Church we are of Right sociated into the unity of the whole Catholic Church to be maintained by an uniform Ecclesiastical Conduct the only ligament of Catholic Communion but as we are a State the Catholic Church is not concerned with us to take any Cognisance of our Civil Procedures but if as a Church we corrupt the Ecclesiastical Government into Civil we break off and excommunicate our selves from the Catholic Unity by deserting the Catholic Forms and Ties of
Union Eucher As to that Principle of the Identity of Church and State and the Consequences Men draw from thence to assert the Right of Civil Authority in Spiritual Processes I leave it to them whose Heads are clear enough to justifie it But for my own part allowing your exceptions to the contrary yet our Case has justified it self ex naturâ Rei And I must further advertise you that this Church has long submitted to the use of such Powers over us and that fundamentally in Q. Elizabeth's Reformation and in many other matters in which the State had not so much pretence of Right or Necessity all which have passed uncensured by us but in this whether well or ill God must judge The Subscription of a Popish Clergy to avoid a Premunire drew after it such Acts of Parliament as thro' which we can make no provision for the Church noâ— move a question for her good without Royal License nor have so much freedom in our Concernments and Duties as every little Corporated Burrough has in it's voluntary Councils which tho' it be a tolerable Condition under a good King that has a Zeal for Christianity yet under an Irreligious King 't is an absolute Bondage and bar to the Primitive Purity Course and Vigour of Religion In the Reign of Edward the VI. they struck out the Ordinaries names out of all Processes Ecclesiastical and set in the Kings as if all Church Power had been derived from the Crown the non-payment of Tenths tho' omitted by mere neglect and not on any Principle of Opinion remains yet a Cause of Deprivation And those shackles which the State of old thought necessary to restrain us from Popery now the reasons of that Conduct are cessant become great Obstacles to the Primitive and Catholic Reformation of our yet remaining defects of which thâ—s Church upon a just liberty and Authority restored her would become the first Example and the noblest Standard Yet all this Subjection we have born in Silence tho' hereby only can Popery be reduced whensoever a Popish Conjuncture shall arise upon us and no Body has yet dared to offer a good mediation with the Public for a Temperament in these things And if our dulness herein has not been by us or you accounted Schismatical shall we be judged Schismatics in admitting these much more reasonable Deprivations in which the Lay-powers are concerned not only in point of Care and Interest but even in certain and undubitable measures of Right Dyscher How so Sir Eucher As the State is the Churches Hospital so a Corporal or Civil Communion is substrate to the visible Communion of the Church For tho' I allow you what you * Sol. ab pag. 25. justly challenge to the innocent a primitive fundamental and undeniable Right to good as well in common as in consecrated Places yet it is certain that in order to this Claim they must give all just security and assurance of their innocency upon Test demanded by the Civil Powers that are Guardians of these fundamental Liberties to all good Subjects of which innocency an Oath of Allegiance seems the most obvious proper and usual Form of security between Subjects and Sovereigns Otherwise the Civil Powers may restrain those Libeties of which they are the Trustees Thus a Civil Soveraign may prohibit and punish all conversation with the Enemies or Recusants of his Civil Authority Now conversation simply in it self alone is a secular communication but absolutely Fundamental to the Ecclesiastical which is a visible Communion in Spirituals Though then the Secular Authority alone as such does not touch the Spirituals yet it may upon just and legal Causes take away all that secular and local Communion that is substrate to the Ecclesiastical And he that may upon Recusancies of Subjection forbid all personal Communication with a Recusant may forbid it in any certain Place Time Matter or Measure and consequently at all such Times and Places when and where the Recusant may call upon him to attend in Spirituals But this Right and Authority of the Magistrate I lodge not in arbitrary will respectively but on the nature and merit of the provocation And the Right which the Christians have to the Liberty of their Sacred Functions is not peculiar to them as Christians by a Charter altogether unconditionally exempt from Civil Powers and so a Right of Gods positive constitution in the Church as a Society founded by Christ liable to no secular Reflections for any Cause whatsoever but is a common and natural Right to all Persons of clear and unspotted innocency as such to do that which is good originally due to them from the Creation And hence Civil Powers becoming Judges of our Morals and Innocency are Guardians of that natural Right but may justly deny it to others but will not approve their innocency by due Tests to the Public Peace of the Government to which Recusants therefore the rightful Capacity Ecclesiastical Communion is lost when the natural Right to Society is either totally or in the proper opportunities of sacred Communion justly denied by the Civil Powers And to say true he that by ill Principles or Practices deserves the loss and deprivation of all common Society much more deserves the deprivation of the Spiritual that stands as a Super-structure on the other And therefore if our ill merits Authorize the Powers to take away at the bottom the Foundation of our Religious Commuion they can tho' not directly and immediatly touch yet undermine the spiritual Structure by destroying its secular Foundation which lies within the Authority and Care of Civil Powers So that in this respect and form an Heathen Prince may rightly deprive seditious or disloyal Priests of the Priviledge of actually using their Ecclesiastical Functions by rightly denying them so much secular Society as is Fundamentally requisite to the exercise of them And thus far a Statute of Deprivation may have this Civil obligation that no Subject shall yield corporal Communion with Recusant Priests when they call him to sacred Offices any where and Laws may shut them out from consecrated Places that there may be no such local Society in them And if such Recusancy against civil Powers be notorious confessed or avowed then is such Act of State both just and civil only but at the same time the bottom of the Recusants Ecclesiastical Offices is righteously and validly taken away Dyscher Well well notwithstanding these Subtilties yet the Temporal Powers cannot take away the actual Relation between Priest and People tho' they may suspend or incapacitate them hereby from the actual Ministeries of their Orders And so hence accrues no Right to civil Powers to impose new Bishops on the Church Eucher There are two known Canonical Causes of depriving Spiritual Persons Immoralities and erroneous Principles So that if either of these hath merited and drawn after it a Forfeiture and Deprivation of all that secular and local Communion and Society which is necessary to the
as if he had said My Protestant Nobles Clergy Magistrates Officers and Souldiers do you actually fight for me execute all my Commands be passive under all my Contrivances against your Religion Laws and Liberties and when I have gained my ends I 'll make you all sworn Slaves and Papists or else Iâ—le melt your Grease for you But to return from this pertinent Sally as to the Law that I set it rightly as it stands at this Day from a long Descent is notorious to the World from the Judicial and received Determinations in Parliament and the King's Courts so often pleaded and alledged by the Advocates for our present Allegiance to whom and to whose Originals I therefore refer you Only I think fit here to relate the yet unpublished sense of a most judicious and excellent Person sent me before any Prints appeared on this Subject His words are these What I principally insist on is That our Law requires Subjection and Obedience to the Powers in being To prove this I shall here set down the words of Sir Edward Coke and in the Margin note the Authorities to which he refers Sir Edward Coke speaking of the Statute of the 25th of Edward the Third concerning Treason saith that this Statute is to be understood of a King in Possession of the Crown and Kingdom Vid. 11. Hen. 7. c. 1. For if there be a King Regnant in possession altho' he be Rex de Facto non de Jure yet is he Seignior le Roy 4 Edw. 4.1 Instit part 3. fol. 7. within the Purview of this Statute And the other that hath Right and is out of Possession is not within this Act. Nay if Treason be committed against a King de Facto non de Jure and after the King de Jure cometh to the Crown he shall punish the Treason done to the King de Facto and a Pardon granted by a King de Jure that is not also de Facto mark this for it concerns the Nation against wheedling Declarations is void So to the same effect Judge Hales his Pleas of the Crown pag. 11. This Argument saith my invaluable Friend I take to be of great force because the measures of Subjection are not the same in all Countreys but must be taken from the Laws and Customs of every Countrey Thus he And if you will impartially reflect upon your own Words in which you blame me for inferring that King James when he returns may punish Men for breaking Allegiance to King William these words concede it For if you admit unto me a breach of Allegiance in facts committed against King William you then presuppose an Obligation for Allegiance to him so broken and to break a Duty is punishable by the penal Sanction or virtue of that Law that makes it a Duty and therefore if not punished nor pardoned before the return of the King de Jure he may punish it as a Crime against his Laws And your taking the instance of the Oliverian Common-wealth to this your concession impudently admits Allegiance due thereunto and makes the Opposers thereof Traitors and Legally punishable by King Charles the Second for High Treason But in Truth no Laws had engaged Allegiance to O. C. or his Common-wealth as they have to Kings de facto And moreover if the Estates themselves in free and at that time and case extraordinary legal Parliament upon the antecedent Expiration and in utter Renunciation of that Common-wealth and all other Forms of Democracy recalled him it had been Treason to have opposed and Loyalty to have concurred in that their Restitution But I stated the Case of O. C. so clearly in our last Conference that I fancy it beyond the power of T. B. himself as spiteful as he is to parallel the Tenure of O. C. with that of King William whatsoever he may without Argument rant and rave to the contrary As for the Reproach of stirring up the Powers or the Mob against you I reply that you prevent me in that Intrigue your selves and I will give you any Form of Security either Sacred or Secular upon Soul or Body or Goods that I will never provoke them against you as much as your selves have done and still for ought I see persevere to do Dyscher We are very luckily fallen in again upon the mention of O. C.'s Authority and Settlement over us I pray let us review that Article For tho' T. B. for want of Argument cries out stark shame upon you and is once oh wonder ashamed for you in such a sort of Civility as he never vouchsafes himself how much soever he needs it because you will not be confuted by his Brass and Impudence and our Learned Pens I will see what Grace may be wrought in you by some Impartial Reflections of a softer Metal but of great weight You make a pretty sort of disparity between the Tenure and Settlement of King William and O. C. * Sol. Ab. g. 12 13. Because O. C. was not King as if the Charm lay in a word Call him Hospador if you will for me Is not the Duke of Muscovie King of that Countrey because he is called Duke It is the Authority and Power we are speaking of not by what Names it is called M. S. Reflex Eucher I took my self for a Conjurer nor will I endeavour to enchant you with words instead of things since your Temper will not hearken to the voice of the Charmer charm he never so wisely And therefore without troubling the Peace of that great Duke you may please to remember that there is an old received and approved distinction between the Titles and Characters of King and Tyrant The former is he that Reigns according to the Laws and Forms of Civil Constitutions and his Character and Authority is Grateful and Honourable The latter Rules by meer force oppression and bondage without any Civil Form of Tenure or Settlement by a power only potential not potestative and therefore without a proper Authority And this Character is in most especial manner given to Usurping Rebels as well as to Foreign Invaders to destroy which Tyrants the Universal Sense of Nations ever judged it lawful because they have no Form of Title but that of the Sword Violence and forcible Entry Now King William holds this Sovereignty by the former legal way of National Contract and Civil Establishment but O. C. had no other Mode of Profession but Tyrannical and so had no legal which is the only Form of Authority And yet beside perhaps the very Style of King is necessary to the real Sovereigns of England in order to their Claims of Allegiance by virtue of the old Oath and Laws tho' when new Laws and Constitutions extinguish the old a new Allegiance may be due to a new Sovereign under any other Titular Style But if this Style be thus necessary to oblige our Allegiance by the old Laws then for want of that very Character no Allegiance was due