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'I beseech you,' says Bishop Nicholson, hear for disparaging word of its system, when me speak; it may be "in voce hominis tuba it had been cut down to the ground, and Dei," God's trumpet at my mouth; and if you salt had been sown where it grew. We will but listen and suffer yourself to be roused have seen it spring up again more vigorous by the shrillness of the sound, you may perhaps than ever. It has now stood more storms yet make a stand. Consider where you are, and retreat. The enemy smiles at your separation; and shocks than have beaten upon any the angels would rejoice to behold you return other member of the Catholic Churchback to your mother the Church of Old Eng- a Reformation, a Rebellion, a Revolution land. She is indeed now "as the teyl-tree, or the political conflicts and corruptions as the oak, when they cast their leaves, yet the which followed them-that fearful convul substance is in her." Her beauty is decayed sion in France, which shook popery to through bitter affliction and her face furrowed with sorrows, there is nothing now left about its centre, and led it captive in the perher to make her lovely; yet she is your Mother son of its head;-and the spread of a still; she washed you with water, she gave you manufacturing system which has done so milk when a babe, she fed you with strong much to corrupt the whole framework of meat when a man; she honoured you with society. She is now about to enter once orders when grown; for a Mother's sake I more into the conflict with popery, her crave one good look, some pity, some regard! Why fly you from her? I cannot conceive you which she has hitherto stood alone and inveterate and strongest enemy, against think her so dishonest as some separatists report: if you should, I should grow angry, and triumphed. She is entering on this by hertell you, that in her constitutions she came self, not depending on foreign aid, nor nearest the apostolic church of any church in even on the arm of her own natural supthe Christian world; and this I openly profess port, the State. Within the last ten to make good against any separatist whatso years she has roused herself, like one that ever. Many ungracious sons I confess she had, and they brought an aspersion upon her, and the has been paralysed from a bed of sickness, vials of God's wrath have been justly, justly I and is feeling for her weapons and plantproclaim, poured upon her for their iniquities. ing herself for the combat, and stretching The constitution was good and sound, the exe- out her arms to the most distant councution passing through some corrupt hands too tries, with an energy and strength which often subject to reproof. Let not her then who have astonished all who have beheld it. had declared her mind by rules and cautions The Church on all sides is gathering against all abuses, and taught what only she would have done, be charged with her sons' ir-round her. The East is willing that she regularities.' [1]

And few indeed there were who thus required to be recalled to the fold of their mother:

should come and help it. Germany is seek ing from her the great blessing of episcopacy. Four whole continents, India, Australia, Africa, and America, are, with small exceptions, open before her, in which Eng land may plant the truth, as in her own pe I cannot deny,' says Bramhall, but that culiar province, without violating any Casome of us have started aside like broken bows, tholic principle, or exposing herself, as po out of despair in this their bitter trial, wherein they have had their goods plundered, their espery must expose itself, to a battle with extates sequestered, their persons imprisoned, isting rights, and to ultimate expulsion. their churches aliened; wherein they have been Such a field was never before opened to any divorced from their nearest relation, and disabled Christian Church, not even in the time of to discharge the duties of their callings to God; Constantine. And if, as yet, she is weak, wherein some of them have been slaughtered, and faltering, and unable to realise such a others forced to maintain themselves by mechanic labours, others thrust out of their native prospect, her weakness is from past discountries, to wander like vagabonds and exiled ease: it is not inherent. Had we done beggars up and down the merciless world. But, everything we should do, then indeed we God be praised, they are not many. If we compare this with any the like persecution in Europe, you shall never find that so few apostated.' [2]

might despair. Had we taught men to love their Church, had we cherished obedience to our bishops, had we given alms and offerings as she exhorts; had we been diligent in her service, regular in her the strength and nourishment which she prayers, constant in seeking at her hands offers-had we brought out and acted up to her principles--and then failed-then (1) Bishop Nichoison's Apology, p. 42. we might have doubted if God had given But (2) Archbishop Bramhall, Sermon on the Resto- to her power to guide and save us. ration, Works, p. 957. this has been neglected: let it be tried;

God forbid that any different voice should be heard in the Church of England at this day! They did not despair or permit themselves to utter one faithless

and then we shall be able to estimate the fame, as if they had nothing worth conenormous strength of Catholic truth as es- tending for. He knew that, if one thought tablished in our own blessed Church. And more than others can 'strengthen the let us fight the battle manfully and honest- weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees' ly, without those artificial aids and unnatu--if anything can make the bad to cast ral excitements, by which popery endeavours to stimulate morbid imaginations, and to force a hot-house piety. Let us fight it, as God himself has placed us here to fight with the world.

off his sins, and the coward to rush into danger, and the effeminate to steel him. self for the stake, it is the sense that they are members of a body glorified in past time, full of hope to be glorified hereafter, It is better, it is a sign of more real and and now beset with perils and distresses. healthy strength, to be able to contend, He never turned their eye upon some however unsuccessfully, against myriads dream of imaginary peace and happinessof enemies, than to enjoy peace without least of all on the pleasant fields which any. There is more real unity(1) of faith their enemies possessed in quiet. He in the adherence of ten men to a definite never thought to nerve them in the cause creed like our own, than in the acquies- of their country, by telling them how much cence of ten millions in such a lax profes- happier they might have been, if it were sion as popery. There is more true unity other than it was; or bidding them to stay of heart in the free accordance of a few by it now, merely because they could minds, permitted to differ, than in the find refuge in no other. He told them subjection of the whole world to a yoke rather of its greatness and its power. He which it dares not shake off. And there bade them 'gaze on and feed their eyes is more true holiness in the discharge of a with the sight of this greatness day by single duty in the midst of the temptations day;' that they might become 'enamourof the world, than in the flight from temp-ed of it,' as men devoted to some beloved tations and duties alike, in the artificial being, and so sacrifice their lives and all atmosphere of a monastery. But, above to its service, like those who through sufall, let us not commit treason to our fering and toil had won for it its past Church, by accustoming the young and glories.(1) And so long as this voice was the ignorant to think of her with misgiving or contempt.

When he, who knew so well how to rule and mould the minds of the Athenian people, was called to rouse them to the conflict in defence of all they loved, while the enemy was ravaging their fields, and the plague devastating their homes, he spoke to them not in words of despondency, as if they had no strength to fight; nor disparagingly of their country and its

heard, so long the Athenians triumphed, God forbid! let us repeat once more, that any other voice should be heard in the Church of England among us now! If indeed we are lying in darkness, under a curse from God for some sin of ourselves, or of our forefathers, let the sin be wiped out-if for sacrilege, let the sacrilege be restored-if for rebellion, let us be more earnest in allegiance—if for intemperance in asserting our Christian independence, let us pray more fervently for the peace (1) What manner of peace and unity was that,' and reunion of all Christian churches-if says Jackson, speaking of this boast of popery, for neglect of the talent committed to us, any other than such as usually is found in any poin failing to bring our heathen empire into litical Argus-eyed tyranny, before the sinews of it shrunk or the ligaments be dissolved? Where no man the fold of Christ, let us go forth more may move but he is seen, nor mutter but he is boldly and more heartily into that vast heard; where the least secret signification of any field of Christian labour. But let us not

desire of freedom in speech, or liberty in action, is lay upon the parent the sins of the childinterpreted for open mutiny, and the least motion unto mutiny held matter sufficient for a cruel death. ren; or think that Abraham is despised These were the bonds of your peace and unity in before God, because the Jews have been this point of your ccclesiastic monarchy. As for rejected. De ordine dico,' says Bishop your peace in other speculative points of less use or Andrewes, 'non de hominibus (nihil atticommodity to your state, it was like the revellings or drunken concerts of servants in their night-sport- net) qui quales quales sunt Domino suo ings, when the master of the house is asleep in a stant vel cadunt.'(2) retired room. Any schoolman might broach what opinion he list, and make his auditors drunk with it; others might quarrel with him and them, in as uncivil sort as they list, so no weapon were drawn against the Pope's peace, albeit in the mean time the Scripture suffered open violence and abuse.'vol. i., p. 314.

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III. There is one especial point in the constitution of the English Church, which

(1) See the Speeches of Pericles. Thucydides, lib. ii. (2) Concio in discessu Palatini,

1613.

ed for refusing the oath of allegiance. (1) If under such trials the loyalty of the suffering Church of England, and her devotion to the State, never forsook her, how would she now grieve over any outbreak of impatience, when the throne is still established and bound to her by the coronation oath, when the great majority of the Parliament is once more with her, and mainly sins against her by officious offers of assistance; and when every day she is obtaining a deeper hold on the af fections of the people, and the respect of government!

requires to be guarded at present against and 400 clergy, were suspended and depriv a disposition to censure and mistrust her; which in any mind is sad, but in the young and ignorant is unspeakably unseemly. They have been awakened to a sense -a right and worthy sense-of the spiritual independence of the Church, as holding her spiritual privileges and spiritual being wholly and immediately from God. And it is difficult, without more thought and learning than it is possible for them to possess, to reconcile this always with the claims of the civil power to take a part in ecclesiastical affairs. That the line is hard to draw all must acknowledge-as hard as to distin. Let us remember that these great men guish the confines between mind and body; were the firmest supporters of the spiritbetween the respective provinces of the ual independence of the Church. With husband and wife; between the free agen- Nazianzen, they magnified the spiritual cy of man and the influence of external authority, as far more ample and excelcauses; between the action and counterac- lent than that of civil princes, insomuch tion of any two bodies co-operating to the as it is fit the flesh should yield to the same work, in the mixed circumstances of spirit, and things earthly to things heavenall human relations. And the jealousy has ly.' With Chrysostom, they placed the undoubtedly been fretted in inany minds priest's tribunal much higher than that of by recent acts of a parliament, no longer the king; who hath received only the adessentially bound to the communion of the ministration of earthly things-but the Church. Into these specific cases it is un- priest's tribunal is placed in heaven, and necessary to enter. The general princi- he hath authority to pronounce sentence ple of the intimate association between the in heavenly affairs.' (2) 'Our king,' says Church and the State, as maintained by Bishop Andrews, speaking authoritatively, the Church of England, derived from the under the name of supremacy, introduces not ancient Church, and enforced by our a new papacy into the Church. As not Aaron greatest divines, is all that need be the priest, so not Jeroboam the king, may set touched on. And the testimony of these up a golden calf of his own for the people to last is of the greatest weight, because adore; or frame new articles of faith, or new forms they spoke under circumstances far more of worship. He claims not, he does not permit trying than any to which we are exposed. with Oziah, or of touching the ark with Uzzah. himself to possess, the power of burning incense The Church of England is not now in The office of teaching or of explaining the law a worse position with respect to the State, he never assumes; nor of preaching, nor of leadthan when Whitgift was compelled to re-ing in divine worship, nor of celebrating the monstrate with Queen Elizabeth against sacraments, nor of consecrating either persons sacrilege; (1) when Hooker bewailed the daily bruises that spiritual promotions used to take by often falling;' (2) when Jackson remonstrated against Simony; when Hacket was compelled to plead before a House of Commons, not against a

re-distribution, but an alienation of cathedral property; when the whole power of Parliament was in the hands of the Puritans; when the Monarch himself, in his own person, was the author of that lax toleration, through which heresies and Atheism first, and popery under their cloak at last, estab

lished themselves in the bosom of the empire; and when the Primate, five Bishops,

[1] Walton's Life of Hooker. [2] B. v. s. 31.

or things: nor the power of the keys or of ecclesiastical censure. In one word, nothing does it lawful for him to touch, which belongs to the he assume to himself, and nothing do we hold priestly office or to the privileges of the priestly order. (3)

Sanderson. [6] And thus Bilson, with So Hooker. [4] So Bramhall. [5] So them, distinguished:

The government of princes is public, of bibishops is persuasive; of princes is lordly with shops is private; of princes is compulsory, of rule, of bishops is brotherly with service; of princes is external and ordereth the actions of

[1] Life of Sancroft, vol. i. p. 447.
[2] Field, B. v. p. 611.

[3] Tortura Torti, p. 380.

[4] B. viii. vol. iii. p. 351; 8vo., 1793.

[5] Works, pp. 25, 190, 191, 340.

[6] Episcopacy not Prejud., s. xi.

And this their obedience to the State was

reverence.

the body, of bishops is internal, and guideth the [ motions of the mind. . . . . . And therefore, not a mere passive subjection, but a hearty though bishops may be called governors in respect of the soul, yet only princes be governors of realms: pastors have flocks, and bishops have dioceses: realms, dominions, and countries, none have but princes and magistrates; and so the style, "governor of this realm," belongeth only to the prince, and not to the priest, and importeth a public and princely regiment with the sword, which no bishop by God's law may claim or use.' [1]

·

that the most high and sacred order of Kings They taught, with Bramhall, is of Divine right, being the ordinance of God himself, founded on the prime laws of nature, and clearly established by express texts both of the Old and New Testament. Moreover, that this power is extended over all their subjects, ecclesiastical and civil.'(1) They recognized that absolute and sovereign Yet, with this solemn protest against civil princes, [even] while they were infidels, Erastianism, they never swerve from had true dominion, rule, and authority, holdtheir loyal and hearty recognition of the ing it as immediately from God, not dependCivil power as united with the Church. ing on any rule of the Church.'(2) They By Beveridge, side by side with the di- acknowledged with Laud, that great and vine authority of the apostolical office, undoubted rule given by Optatus, that wherethis loyalty is set as an especial proof of soever there is a Church, there the Church 'the same spirit still working in our is in the Commonwealth, not the CommonChurch, which wrought so effectually upon wealth in the Church:-Non enim respubthe Apostles.' [2] With Hooker so strong lica est in Ecclesia, sed Ecclesia in repubis the sense of the joint and inseparable licâ est.' With Laud also they alleged it as functions of the State and the Church for a proof against the claims of the Pope :— the preservation and safety of God's people, that he proposes this as the true inscription, style, or title of all churches, as yet standing within this realm: By the goodness of Almighty God and his servant Elizabeth we are. [3] So Bishop Mountagu con.

nects them :

'For if the Church be within the empire or other kingdom, it is impossible the government of the Church should be monarchical: for no emperor or king will endure another king with in his dominion that shall be greater than himself; since the very enduring it makes him that endures it, upon the matter, no monarch.'(3)

'Them, myself, whatsoever I have said or done, or shall hereafter do any way-" Libens, They never took it for granted 'that the merito, more majorum"-now and ever I ecclesiastic power, as well directive as coerhave, I do, I will refer and submit, and in most cive, is entirely seated in the body of the lowly, devoted, humble sort, prostrate upon bended knees unto this Church of England, and clergy, as it is an order of men distinct from the true defender thereof, his most sacred Majesty; humbly craving that royal protection which sometime William Ockham did of Lewis of Baviera, the emperor, "Domine imperator, defende me gladio, et ego te defendam calamo."' [4]

So Bishop Bilson :-

The strife betwixt us [against popery] is not for bishoprics and benefices; but for Christ's glory and the prince's safety.' [5]

If in the convulsions of the Reformation the great blessing of episcopacy was preserved to us, it was due, according to Bishop Andrews, under God, to the fact that' our kings were propitious. (6)-So Bishop Hall. (7) So Hickes.(8) So Stillingfleet.(9)

[1] True Difference, p. 238.

[2] Sermon on Christ's Pres. with his Ministers.
[3] Epist. Dedicat. to Eccl. Pol. vol. i. p. 125.
[4] Appeal to Cæsar, p, 321.

[5] True Difference, p. 8.

(6) Third Letter to Du Moulin; Wordsworth's Christ. Inst., vol. iii., p. 259.

(7) Vol. x., p. 281.

(8) Serm., 13, vol. ii., p. 216.

the laity.' They never invested 'the body
of the clergy with all the privileges and pre-
rogatives of an absolute independent common-
wealth, able to make laws by itself;' not
permitting 'the body or community of the
laity (no, not as it consists of prince and peo-
ple, of magistrates and private men) to be
any parts or members of the Church, or of
that society which hath power to make laws
ecclesiastic. Knowing, as Jackson contin-
ues, and he repeats the warning more than
once, that these be the premises, which,
once granted, will necessarily bring forth
that dangerous conclusion' [the formation of
some visible centre of unity in the Church]
'which will inevitably draw all states and
kingdoms, as well heathen as Christian, into
the Romish net.'(4) They show no sym-
pathy with Hildebrand,-that 'Firebrand,'
as Brett calls him, 'both of Church and

(1) Answer to De la Militière, p. 28.
(2) Field, book v. p. 609.

(3) Optat., lib. iii., c. 3. Laud, Conference with

(9) Defence of Discourse concerning Idolatry. Fisher, p. 132.

Epist. Dedicat., vol. v.

(4) Vol. iii., pp. 906, 907.

monarchs of the Roman Communion do in effect retain at this day.'(1)

State ;'(1)--Casaubon's 'Hildebrandinæ hereseos auctor;'(2)--Usher's 'Fatale Portentum Prodigiumque Ecclesiæ ;' (3)-Bishop Patrick's 'First Great Troubler of the Christian though not without first dwelling upon the And so Bilson sums up this question, World ;'(4)-- That man of admirable pride,' answer to be made to God, 'if hands be hastisays Bishop Overall, over whose heretical ly laid on ;' and upon the 'burden of connovelty, and most insolent attempt, many science,' which princes undertake, if in choosfalse colours have since been cast, to covering those that shall guide the Church under the lewdness and deformity of it.'(5) Still less would they hold up Becket to reverence or allow him to be a martyr :

:

'We do abominate that murder, as lawless and barbarous,' says Bramhall. But we do not believe that the cause of his suffering was sufficient to make him a martyr; namely, to help foreigners to pull the fairest flowers from his prince's diadem by violence, and to perjure himself, and violate his oath. All his own suffragan bishops were against him in the cause, and justified the king's proceedings.'(6)

And Bishop Bilson goes still further. quarrel, he says, was one of those

' of their own nature wicked and irreligious; his pride was intolerable; his contention with the king detestable; his end miserable. We conclude him to be a shameful defender of wick edness, an open breaker of his oath, and a proud impugner of the sword which God hath authorized, as the Scripture teacheth. And albeit we like not the manner of his death, that private men should use the sword which is delivered unto princes, yet the cause for which he withstood the king was enormous and impious; and dying in that, though his death were violent, he could be no martyr.'(7)

means they can, that no venomous, nor un-
them, they fail to provide, by the best
clean thing, so much as enter the House of
der it with his negligence:
God to defile it with his presence, or disor-

ters of each parish by the lord of the soil were
'If the allowance given at first to the minis-
matter enough in the judgment of Christ's
Church to establish the right of patrons, that
they alone should present clerks, because they
alone provided for them, the prince's interest to
confer bishoprics hath far more sound and suffi-
cient reason to warrant it. For, besides the
His maintenance which the kings of this land yield-
ed when they first endowed bishoprics with
lands and possessions, to unburthen the people
in that respect have as much right as any pa-
of the support and charges of their bishops, and
trons can have; the pre-eminence of the sword
whereby the prince ruleth the people, the peo-
that in elections, as well as in other points of
ple rule not the prince, is no small enforcement,
government, the prince may justly challenge the
laws prescribing no certain rule. And, lastly,
sovereignty above and without the people, God's
though the people in former ages, by the suffer-
the election of their bishops, yet now, for the
ance of magistrates, had somewhat to do with
avoiding of such tumults and uproar as the
primitive church was afflicted with, by the laws
ple's interest and liking is wholly submitted and
of this realm and their own consents, the peo-
inclosed in the prince's choice; so that whom
the prince nameth the people have bound them-
selves to acknowledge and accept for their pas
tor, no less than if he had been chosen by their
own suffrages. And had they not hereunto
agreed, as by parliament they have, I see no
let by God's law but in Christian kingdoms,
when any difference groweth even about the
election of bishops, the prince, as head and ruler
of the people, had better right to name and
elect than all the rest of their people. If they
concur in judgment, there can be no variance;
if they dissent, the prince, if there were no ex-
press law for that purpose (as there is with us),
must bear it from the people; the people by
God's law must not look to prevail against their
prince.'(2)

If jealousy is felt of the appointment of bishops by the Crown, Bramhall pronounces that

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the nomination and investiture of bishops in England doth belong to the Imperial Crown, by law and custom immemorial;' and hath been so practised both before the Conquest and since -a practice approved by the canons and constitutions of councils, of Popes, and received into the body of the law-a power which the Christian emperors of the primitive times practised both in the eastern and western empires; which the most Christian King of France and other

(1) Church Govern., c. xviii., p. 403. (2) Ded. to King James. Wordsworth's Christ. Inst. iv., p. 63.

(3) De Eccles. Success., p. 58 et seq. (4) Devotions of the Romish Church, p. 212. (5) Convocation Book, b. iii., c. 8. Bishop Hall's quaint language is to the same effect, but far stronger. Works, vol. ix., p. 269.

(6) Just Vindication, p. 95.

(7) True Differ., p. 483. So, at great length, Stillingfleet. Answer to Cressy, vol. v., p. 710 et seq.

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'And this, says Field, can in no way prejudice or hurt the state of the Church, if bishops (to whom examination and ordination pertain eth) do their duties in refusing to consecrate and ordain such as the canons prohibit.'(3)

[1] Tom. iv., Dis. vi., p. 989.

son, Episcop. not Prejud., s. iii., 32.
[3] Field, b. v., p. 695.

[2] Perpetual Govern., p. 362, 366, So Sander

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