church of Rome charged with this almost an age before Dr Stillingfleet was born; and though perhaps none has ever defended the charge with so much learning as he ha. done, yet no malice less impudent than his is, could make him the author of the accu sation. It will be another strain of our author's modesty, if he will pretend that ou church is not bound to own the doctrine that is contained in her homilies, he must by this make our church as treacherous to her members as Sa. Oxon is to her, or to deliver this doctrine to the people, if we believe it not ourselves, is to be as impudent as he himself can pretend to be. A church may believe a doctrine which she does not think necessary to propose to all her members; but she were indeed a society fit for such pastors as he is, if she could propose to the people a doctrine, chiefly one of so great consequence as this is, without she believed it herself. So then he must either renounce our church and her articles, or he must answer all his own plea for clearing that church of this imputation; which is so slight, that it will be no hard matter even for such a trifling writer as himself is to do it. As for what he says of stabbing and cut-throat words, he may charge us with such words, if he will, but we know who we may charge with the deeds. I would gladly see the list of all that have been murdered by these words, to try if they can be put in the balance, either with the massacre of Ireland, or that of Paris; upon which I must take notice of his slight way of mentioning Coligny, and faction, and telling us in plain words, pag. 45, "That they were rebels:" this is perhaps another instance of his kindness to the Calvinist prince, that is descended from that great man.

If idolatry made our plot, it was not the first that it made; but his malignity is still like himself, his charging Dr Stillingfleet, who, he says, is the author of the imputation of idolatry, as if he had suborned the evidence in our plot. I should congratulate to the doctor the honour that is done him by the malice of one who must needs be the object of the hatred of all good men, if I did not look upon him as so contemptible a person, that his love and his hatred are equally insignificant. If he thinks our church worse than canibals, I wish he would be at the pains to go and make a trial, and see whether these savages will use him as we have done. I dare say they would not eat him, for they would find so much gall and choler in him, that the first bit would quite disgust them.

Samuel Lord Bishop of Oxon, his celebrated Reasons for abrogating the Test and Notion of Idolatry, answered by Samuel Archdeacon of Canterbury.

"It's better to indulge men's vices and debaucheries, than their consciences." Sam. Park. Eccles. Pol. pag. 54.

To understand this title-page, it is necessary that the reader be informed, that, in reward of Bishop Parker's obsequiousness to King James, he had, upon being preferred to the see of Oxford, obtained permission to hold the archdeaconry of Canterbury in commendam with that preferment. The archdeaconry he had obtained by distinguishing himself in the controversy between the church of England and the dissenters; and, as, in the present struggle, he assumed the appearance of compassion and affection for the latter class of protestants, his antagonists fail not to reproach him with the very different sentiments he formerly entertained respecting non-conformists. These are chiefly drawn from Parker's work, entitled "A Discourse of Ecclesiastical

Polity, wherein the Authority of the civil Magistrate over the Consciences of Subjects in Matters of external Religion is asserted." This treatise appeared about 1673-4, and greatly offended the dissenters, as appears from the intemperate titles of several answers to which it gave occasion, as, for example, " Insolence and Impudence triumphant, Envy and Fury enthroned." The vindication of the test and penal laws, which the Ecclesiastical Polity contains, is in the following tract placed by Burnet in contrast with Parker's Defence of the Indulgence.

THERE is nothing hereby intended to impugn the abrogation of the test: May his majesty's sacred will and pleasure be fulfilled, and may the rights of the English peerage remain inviolable. But there seems to have been an absolute necessity for the author of the Reasons for abrogating the Test to have repealed his most bitter invectives against the non-conformists, and his tempestuous indignation against dissenters in general, so diametrically opposite to the serene and pious desires and resolutions of his majesty to make his subjects happy, and unite them to him as well by inclination as duty; and to have shewed his compliance to his majesty in all his most laudable and generous designs, before he had singled out that particular point of the test, merely to hook in a plea for transubstantiation, and his own new-modelied notions of idolatry. But let others, whom it may concern, dispute those controversies; the present question is, Whether his Lordship of Oxon have retracted his discourses of ecclesiastical polity, or at least those passages in them which run so apparently counter to his majesty's gracious declaration for liberty of conscience? otherwise he may seem to have calculated his writings for the various meridians of state, and his arguments will not bear that weight, which (though the same, yet) coming from another person, they would have done.

Now there cannot be a more certain touch stone of truth of the bishop's or arch-deacon's (which you please, for they are both the same person's) ecclesiastical policy, than the declaration itself; only, out of his Christian charity, the arch deacon has peopled the kingdom with such a dreadful canaille, (all but those of the church of England,) that astonishment itself might wonder well, were his unconscionable epithets to be allowed, that so gracious, so indulgent, so soft and calm a declaration, should come forth in kindness to such a rabble; for those whom his majesty calls his good subjects, the arch-deacon continually stigmatizes with the foul epithets of jugglers, dissemblers, wicked, rebellious hypocrites, sons of strife and singularity, and most notorious hereticks. And, upon this supposition, as the foundation of his pile, that the generality of the people of England are such, (for he excepts none but those of the church of England,) he rears the fabrick of his ecclesiastical polity; wherein he had only this misfortune to be of a quite contrary opinion to his prince, and that his Draconicks were not repealed before the declaration came forth.

The declaration expresses his majesty's "earnest desire to establish his government on such a foundation as to make his subjects happy, and unite them to him as well by inclination as duty; which he thinks can be done by no means so effectually as by granting them the free exercise of their religion.

But the arch-deacon's politicks are of another strain; for, in his preface to his Ecclesiastical Polity, p. 12, he says, "That the aim of his discourse is, by representing the palpable inconsistency of phanatick tempers and principles, with the welfare and security of government, to awaken authority to beware of its worst and most dangerous enemies, and force them to modesty and obedience by severity of laws."

Page 52 of the same preface: "If princes (says he) would but consider how liable

VOL. IX.

1

Ecclesiast. Polit. p. 241, 242, 273, 319, 187.-Orig. Note.

X

mankind are to abuse themselves with serious and conscientious villainies, they would quickly see it to be absolutely necessary to the peace and happiness of their kingdoms, that there be set up a more severe government over men's consciences than over their vices and immoralities."

Pag. 54 of the same, he boasts his having proved, "That indulgence and toleration is the most absolute sort of anarchy, and that princes may with less hazard give liberty to men's vices and dabaucheries, than to their consciences."

But the declaration is quite of another temper: "We humbly thank Almighty God it is, and hath of a long time been, our constant sense and opinion, which, upon divers occasions, we have declared, that conscience ought not to be constrained, nor people forced in matters of mere religion."

But this will not be admitted by the arch-deacon: "For (says he, Ecclesiast. Pol. pag. 321) when men's consciences are so squeamish that they will rise against the customs and injunctions of the church, she must scourge them into order, and chastize them for their troublesome peevishness."

Pag. 324, (Ecclesiast. Polit.) he pretends to have proved the " unavoidable danger of toleration, and keeping religious differences, that religion must be governed by the same rules, as all other transactions of human life; and that nothing can do it but severe laws, nor they neither unless severely executed."

Ecclesiast. Polit. pag. 311, "If princes (says he) will suffer themselves to be checked in their laws spiritual by every systematical theologue, they may as well bear to see themselves affronted in their laws civil by every village attorney.'

Pag. 284. "But to indulge ideots in their folly because they threaten authority to be peevish and scrupulous, and to infest the government with a sullen and cross-grained godliness, (an artifice not much unlike the tricks of froward children,) is to suffer ignorance to ride in triumph; and therefore such humoursome saints must be lashed out of their sullenness into compliance and better manners. This (as the arch-deacon calls it, preface to Bramhal's Vindication) was one of his rhapsodies of hasty and huddled thoughts." Most divine words, and most seraphick charity! but the arch-deacon will have tenderness of conscience to be pride, vanity, and insolence, though all the seven champions should contradict him.

Pag. 273. "He that pretends conscience to vouch his humour and his insolence, is a villain and an hypocrite, and so far from deserving pity, especially from authority, that no offenders can more need or provoke their severity." This may be true;' but where the supreme government, which must of necessity be absolute, uncontroulable and unlimited, as well in matters of religion, &c. more sagaciously discerns beyond the arch-deacon's, that same conscience to be neither humour nor insolence, nor will comprehend it under that notion, there it is to be hoped the man is not a villain, nor an hypocrite, and so not liable to the fury of correction.

Pag. 271. "And therefore, if princes will be resolute, they may easily make the most stubborn consciences bend to their commands; but, if they will not, they must submit themselves and their power to all the follies and passions of their subjects." Probatum est, S. P.

Pag. 70. "Governors must look to be publick, and let tender consciences look to themselves. Laws must be of unyielding and inflexible temper, and not soft and easy things. Princes must not be diffident in their maxims of policy; but as they must set up some to themselves, so they must act roundly up to them." Dii te donent tonsore. Quare, Why this counsel was not taken, since the counsel was given so long before the declaration came forth? Answ. Because it was ever contrary to his majesty's inclination.

Ecclesiast. Pol. p. 27, 28, 36, &c.-Orig. Note.

Pag. 269, ""Tis all one to the concernments of government, whether tenderness of conscience be serious or counterfeit; for whether so or so, 'tis directly contrary to the ends and interest of government." Better unsaid than not believed.

Pag. 263. "And what can be more destructive to all manner of government, than to make all the rules of order and discipline less sacred than the whimsies of natick zealot?" Pray be patient, sir, there is no such thing done.

every phaIbid. "When to pick quarrels with the laws, and make scruple of obeying them, shall be made the specifick character of the godly; when giddy and humorous zeal shall not only excuse, but hallow disobedience; when every one that has fancy enough to fancy himself a child of God shall have license to despise authority." Who would have been at the trouble of all this rhetorick, had he known what would have followed? Pag. 252. "In brief, the only cause of all our troubles and disturbances is the inflexible perverseness of about an hundred proud, ignorant, and seditious preachers; against whom, if the severity of the laws were particularly levelled, how easily would it be to reduce the people to a peaceable temper? There were just three more than his number, and that spoiled the project.

Pag. 187. "What can be more apparently vain, than to talk of accommodation, or to hope for any possibility of quiet or settlement, till authority shall see it necessary to scourge them into better manners and wiser opinions?"

Pag. 219. "Tis easy and possible for well-meaning people, through ignorance or inadvertency, to be betrayed into such unhappy errors as may tend to the publick disturbance; which, though it be not so much their crime as infelicity, yet is there no remedy, but it must expose them to the correction of the publick rods and axes?" Surely, Rhadamanthus's own chaplain could not have preached more severe divinity. Pag. 271. "In brief, there is nothing so ungovernable as a tender conscience, or so restiff and inflexible as folly or wickedness, when hardened with religion; and, therefore, instead of being complied with, they must be restrained with a more peremptory and unyielding rigour than naked and unsanctified villainy."

Pag. 223. "Nay, so easy it is for men to deserve to be punished for their consciences, that there is no nation in the world (were government rightly understood and duly managed) wherein mistakes and abuses in religion would not supply the gallies with vastly greater numbers than villainy." "Tis a comfort curst cows have now short horns. However, to this the tender declaration makes a reply, declaring one of the reasons of his majesty's indulgence to be, because he finds that force in matter of meer religion tends to the depopulating of countries.

On the other side, the arch-deacon, in opposition to the king's reason, is for depopulating the land, and peopling the gallies; and arraigns that government, for want of understanding and due management, that does not observe his method of cruelty. He is for pillories, whipping-posts, rods, axes, scourges, &c. as if no government pleased him but that described by Virgil in hell:

Hinc exaudiri gemitus, et sæva sonare

Verbera; tum stridor ferri, tractæque catenæ.

Accincta flagella

Tisiphone quatit insultus, torvosque sinistra

Intentans angues vocat agmina sæva sororum.

This, in the arch-deacon's Ecclesiastical Polity; and to shew that no other government will content him but this, pag. 18, "I leave it (says he) to governors themselves to judge, whether it does not concern them with as much vigilance and severity, either to prevent the rise, or suppress the growth, (of phanaticks he means, that find themselves grieved by the penal laws,) as to punish any the foulest crimes of immorality?

And if they would seriously consider into what exorbitancies peevish and untoward principles about religion improve themselves, they could not but perceive it to be as much their concernment to punish them with the severest inflictions, as any whatsoever principles and rebellions in the state."-Well, the business is considered, and his Ecclesiastical Polity is found to be deficient!

Nay, he goes farther, and arraigns all kings and princes for their folly, under the title of governors: "For," say he, in the following pag. 19, "this certainly has ever been one of the fatal miscarriages of all governors, in that they have not been aware of this fierce and implacable enemy, (meaning the phanaticks, who care no more for whips and scourges than the devil does for holy-water,) but have gone about to govern unruly consciences, but more easy and remiss laws than those that are only able to suppress scandalous and confessed villanies, and have thought them sufficiently restrained by threatning punishments without inflicting them; and, indeed, in most kingdoms so little have princes understood their own interests in matters of religion," &c. Hearken, O ye princes of Europe! and go to school again to the author of the Discourses of Ecclesiastical Polity.

But here in another bold touch: "Prohibition disobliges dissenters, and that is no evil; impunity allows them toleration, but that is a greater; and where governors permit what their laws permit, (this is not the present case,) there the commonwealth must at once feel all the evils both of restraint and liberty. So that, as they would expect peace and settlement, they must be sure at first to bind on their ecclesiastical laws with the streightest knot, and afterwards keep them in force and countenance by the severity of the law. Their restraint must be proportioned to their unruliness of the conscience, and they must be managed with so much the greater strictness than all the other principles of disturbance, by how much they are the more dangerous." Gratias Domine, now princes understand what they have to do

Yet a little more of the arch-deacon's Ecclesiastical Polity. Beloved, in his preface to Bishop Bramhal's Vindication, (for it is not paged,) you shall find it thus written: "They (meaning the phanaticks, or complainants against the penal statutes) have been so long accustomed to undutiful demeanor, that it is feared they are grown too headstrong and incorrigible to be awed into a more modest behaviour by threatnings of se verity; therefore it will be thought necessary to bridle their ungoverned tongues and spirits with pillories and whipping-posts."

And at the bottom of the same page: "To this peevishness of their humours, I might add the restlessness of their minds that is always displeased with the settled frame of things, (innuendo, the settled penal laws,) and that no alterations can satisfy. If you condescend to their demands, you only encourage them to make new remonstrances; appease all their old complaints, and they are immediately picking new faults to be redressed. They that at first only request indulgence, will, when strong enough, demand it." In short, give the non-conformists an inch, and they'll take an ell.

"But (in the same preface) should it ever so happen hereafter, that any King of England should be prevailed with to deliver up the church," (that is to say, to dispense with the penal laws and test; for the test, notwithstanding the reasons against it, must be included in this long parenthesis, because the church framed it,) "he had as good at the same time resign up his crown.' And thus you see the danger of the present government, through the non-conformity to the arch-deacon's Ecclesiastical Polity. There is another reason why his majesty was graciously pleased to think force in matter of meer religion directly contrary to the interest of government, and this is, spoiling of trade.

Trade, cries the arch-deacon, trade! No. Let grass grow about the custom-house, rather than abate one tittle of my Ecclesiastical Polity: "For (in his preface to his Ecclesiast. Pol. pag. 49) 'tis notorious, (says he) that there is not any sort of people so