Some Queries to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to the Six other Bishops concerning the English Reformation and the 39 Articles of the Church of England. By P. M. D.D.

4to Lond. 1688

I suppose P. M. D. D. means Peter Manby, Dean of Derry. Cf. The Rubric of the Common Prayer declared by the Act of Uniformity to be a part of that statute which directs that nothing shall be published in church by the minister, but what is prescribed by this book, or enjoined by the King.

The Examination of the Bishops upon their refusal of reading his Majesty's most gracious Declaration; and the Nonconcurrence of the Church of England in Repeal of the Penal Laws and Test fully debated and argued. 4to Lond. 1688.

In the ninth volume of Somers Tracts, pp. 134-51, and Fourth Collection, vol. ii. pp. 222-43. After having traced the progress of the penal laws and the test, the author remarks: :-"Jealous as the founders of that test were (or pretended to be) of the danger of popery, they very well knew the church of England had two impreg nable bulwarks, the two great acts of Uniformity, that themselves sufficiently alone established, guarded and preserved the church of England in all points without any fortification from the test, nor indeed was the test wanted in the ecclesiastic administration, those very statutes being a greater and stronger test before: for by those statutes is the whole liturgy, the administration of the sacraments, and indeed all the canons and articles of the church supported. For by the fence of those laws first no Romanist can possibly be admitted into the clergy... ... Secondly, no other divine service as the mass or the like can be introduced into our churches already constituted or assigned for the divine service of the church of England." Our author's memory must have failed him, when he asks "Wherein and what have our churchmen or our non-dispensing churchmen suffered by all this toleration? Have they lost the least particle of their government, discipline, rights, privileges, or professions whatever?" p. 150. Doubtless," observes Hallam, "the administration of James II. was not of this nature (an extreme case of intolerable tyranny.) Doubtless he was not a Caligula, or a Commodus, or an

66

Ezzelin, or a Galeazzo Sforza, or a Christiern II. of Denmark, or a Charles IX. of France, or one of those almost innumerable tyrants whom men have endured in the wantonness of unlimited power. No man had been deprived of his liberty by any illegal warrant. No man, except in the single though very important instance of Magdalen College, had been despoiled of his property." The Constitutional History of England. vol. ii. p. 242.

Melius Inquirendum, or an impartial Enquiry into the late proceedings against the Seven Bishops, wherein the King's Supremacy is vindicated. By W. E. 4to Lond. 1688

Compare Buckle's History of Civilization in England, p. 367.

Ten Modest Queries humbly offered to the most serious consideration of the Right Reverend Father in God, Thomas Lord Bishop of St. Davids, and that they may be communicated to the rest of the Clergy at his Primary Visitation now held for that Diocese. By a true and sincere Member of the Church of England, and a wellwisher to his Lordship in all things that are good and honest. pp. 4.

Has reference to his reading the Declaration. Thomas Watson appointed 1687 and deprived for simony, May 1699, is here intended. "He was one of the worst men in all respects, that ever I knew in Holy Orders: passionate, covetous, and false in the blackest instances, without any one vertue or good quality, to balance his many bad ones. But as he was advanced by King James, so he stuck firm to that Interest; and the Party, tho' ashamed of him, yet were resolved to support him, with great zeal: he appealed to a Court of Delegates; and they about the end of the year confirmed the Archbishop's sentence." Burnet's History.

Among the various localities from which addresses "steamed up to the Throne" on this occasion (see Ralph, Mackintosh, and the Somers Tracts), Chester may be mentioned as very conspicuous for its adulation and servility. In the Political History of the City of Chester, the Charter of King Henry VII. &c., Chester, 1814, there is a circumstantial account of the preparations made by that corporation during the royal progress of James II. in 1687, with the address presented by

the dissenters. "The Corporation," said the recorder Levinz, "is your
Majesty's creature, and depends merely on the will of its creator, and
the sole intimation of your Majesty's pleasure shall ever have with us
the force of a fundamental law." Cf. Ormerod's History of the
County Palatine and City of Chester, vol. i. p. 211. Nor in the
diocese of Bishop Cartwright (of whose character see p. 27 supra)
were obedient clergymen wanting to acknowledge the King's supre-
macy, and their duty to publish in their churches whatever was
enjoined by the King or by their Bishop. See Echard, vol. iii.
p. 876. "James thought himself secure of the Tories, because they
professed to consider all resistance as sinful—and of the Protestant
Dissenters, because he offered them relief. He was in the wrong as
to both. The error into which he fell about the Dissenters was very
natural. But the confidence which he placed in the loyal assurances
of the High Church party was the most exquisitely ludicrous proof of
folly that a politician ever gave." Macaulay's Review of Sir James.
Mackintosh's History of the Revolution.

Parliamentum Pacificum: or, The Happy Union of King and Peo- C. L. ple in an Healing Parliament: heartily wish't for and humbly recommended, by a true Protestant and no Dissenter.

4to Lond. 1688

This tract contains severe animadversions on Pensioner Fagel and
Dr. Burnet.

A Letter of several French Ministers fled into Germany upon the
account of the Persecution in France, to such of their Bre-
thren in England as approved the King's Declaration touch-
ing Liberty of Conscience.
pp. 7, 4to Lond. 1688

CHAP. V.

Of the Discourses written in the representing controversy.

51. A papist misrepresented and represented, or a twofold character of popery. The one containing a sum of the superstitions, idolatries, cruelties, treacheries, and wicked principles of that popery which hath disturbed this nation above 150 years; filled it with fears and jealousies, and deserves the hatred of all good christians. The other laying open that popery which the papists own and profess; with the chief articles of their faith, and some of the principal grounds and reasons which hold them in that religion. [Narraverunt mihi iniqui fabutiones: sed non ut lex tua. Psal. 119 [sic] v. 85.] By J L, [pp. 128 and R. C. Principles, pp. 1–8], s.l. 4to 1685. [To which is annexed, Roman-catholic principles, in reference to God and the King.] And note, there are two more parts of this book. See Nos. 63, 72, infra. And four defences of this part. See Nos. 53, 56, 58, 60, infra.

Dodd attributes this book to John Gother, or Goter. I suppose the initial letters stand for Joannes Lisboensis. “John Goter: born in Southampton, educated a member of the church of England [compare the Introduction to No. 51, p. xi.] but afterwards becoming a catholick was sent over to the English College at Lisboe; where he was ordained priest and returned back into England upon the mission. He resided for the greatest part of his time in London; and appeared at the head of the controversial writers, all king James Second's reign." vol. iii. p. 482. The date 1665 found in some copies was probably intended to mislead his adversaries, because, as Dr. Todd observes, the author says expressly in the Pref. to part iii. (No. 72 infra) that the work was not published until 1685: "This book was not publish'd till after the adjourning of the first sitting of Parliament 1685, and at the opening of that Parliament the assault was given by Dr. Sherlock in his Sermon before the two Houses," (sheet a, p. 8.) "Gother's

work has always continued to be in great repute among Papists. It was republished in an abridged and expurgated form by their great champion Bishop Challoner, who was Vicar Apostolic of the London district from 1741 to 1780. It has often been reprinted since, and the twenty-eighth edition was published at London in 1832." ningham's Preface, etc. ut infra.

On the tract, Roman Catholic Principles, see page 6, supra.

The declaration of indulgence was both preceded and followed by one of the most fierce polemical controversies between Romanists and Protestants which ever agitated England. Burnet, who was deeply engaged in it, gives the following account of the manner in which it was carried on by the church of England: "Many of the clergy acted now a part that made good amends for past errors. They began to preach generally against popery, which the dissenters did not. They set themselves to study the points of controversy; and, upon that, there followed a great variety of small books that were easily purchased and soon read. They examined all the points of popery with a solidity of judgment, a clearness of arguing, a depth of learning, and a vivacity of writing, far beyond anything that had before that time appeared in our language. The truth is, they were very unequally yoked; for, if they are justly to be reckoned among the best writers that have yet appeared on the protestant side, those they wrote against were certainly among the weakest that had ever appeared on the popish side. Their books were poorly, but insolently writ, and had no other learning in them but what was taken out of some French writers which they put into very bad English; so that a victory over them might have been but a mean performance.

"This had a mighty effect on the whole nation; even those who could not search things to the bottom, yet were amazed at the great inequality that appeared in this engagement. The papists who knew what service the Bishop of Meaux's book had done in France, resolved to pursue the same method here, in several treatises, which they entitled, 'Papists Represented and Misrepresented;' to which such clear answers were writ, that what effect soever that artifice might have where it was supported by the authority of a great king, and the terror of ill usage and a dragoonade in conclusion, yet it succeeded so ill in England, that it gave occasion to enquire into the true opinions of that church, not as some artful writers had disguised them, but as