Part 19

As for the title of Queen Elizabeth to the crown, the histories lie open; and I shall not be over-forward to meddle with the rights of princes, especially since the answerer has avoided that dispute. It is enough in general to say, that her interest carried her against the Pope, whose power if good, she was illegitimate. She had also been informed by the English resident at Rome, that the Pope expected she should acknowledge her crown from him, and not take upon her to be queen without his leave. These were strong solicitations, in a new unsettled succession, for her to shake off a religion, whereof his Holiness is head on earth. What matter of conscience was in the case, I say not; but her temporal interest lies bare-faced and uppermost to view, in reassuming of the supremacy, and (to make the breach yet wider) in subverting the foundations of the faith. For the affront is the same, to turn round a man’s hat, and to strike him on the face; but the advantage is the greater in a lusty blow.

But the handle by which our answerer would have the Reformation taken, is not by the causes and effects, the means and management, and indeed the whole series of history: these are nothing to concern his present enquiry, though they raised such scruples in the Duchess, and will do in any other conscientious reader; he will have the Reformation considered his own way, that is, in the political part of it, and the ecclesiastical. Now the political part (if you observe him,) he gives for gone at the first dash: “It was grounded,” he says, “on such maxims as are common to statesmen at all times, and in all churches, who labour to turn all revolutions and changes to their own advantage.”

That is, it is common for statesmen to be atheists at the bottom; to be seemingly of that religion which is most for their interest; to crush and ruin that from which they have no future prospect of advantage, and to join with its most inveterate enemies, without consideration of their king’s interest: and this was the case of the Duke of Somerset. All which together amounts to this; that it is no matter by what means a Reformation be compassed, by what instruments it be brought to pass, or with what design, though all these be never so ungodly; it is enough if the Reformation itself be made by the legislative power of the land. The matter of fact then is given up, only it is faced with recriminations; that Alexander the Sixth, for example, was as wicked a Pope as King Henry was a king: as if any Catholic denied, that God Almighty, for causes best known to his divine wisdom, has not sometimes permitted impious men to sit in that supreme seat, and even to intrude into it by unlawful means. That Alexander the Sixth was one of the worst of men, I freely grant; which is more than I can in conscience say of Henry the Eighth, who had great and kingly virtues mingled with his vices. That the Duke of Somerset raised his estate out of church lands, our author excuses no other ways than by retorting, that Popes are accustomed to do the like in consideration of their nephews, whom they would greaten. But though it is a wicked thing for a Pope to mispend the church revenues on his relations, it is to be considered he is a secular prince, and may as lawfully give out of his temporal incomes what he pleases to his favourite, as another prince to his. But as our author charges this miscarriage home upon some late Popes of the former and the present age, so I hope he will exempt his present Holiness[80] from that note. No common father of God’s church, from St Peter even to him, having ever been more bountiful, in expending his revenues for the defence of Christendom; or less interested, in respect of his relations, whom he has neither greatened, nor so much as suffered to enter into the least administration of the government.

But after all, what have these examples to do with this lady’s conversion? Why, our author pretends, that these bad Popes, and their ill proceedings, ought as reasonably to have hindered the Duchess from entering into the Catholic church, as the like proceedings under Henry the Eighth, Edward the Sixth, and Queen Elizabeth, might move her Highness to leave the Protestant.

The subject in hand was the pretended Reformation: the Duchess observed the scandalous and abominable effects of it;—that an inordinate lust was one principal cause of the separation; that the Reformation itself was begun by worldly interests in the Duke of Somerset, and carried on by the ambition of Queen Elizabeth. Have the examples produced by our author on the contrary side any thing to do with a Reformation? Suppose, in the first place, that she had never read nor heard any of those things concerning Pope Alexander, or the advancing of nephews by profusion of the church treasure; the first is very possible, and she might interpret candidly the latter. But make the worst of it; on the one side there was only a male administration of a settled government, from which no state, either spiritual or temporal, can always be exempt; on the other side, here is a total subversion of the old church in England, and the setting up a new; a changing of received doctrines, and the direction of God’s holy spirit pretended for the change; so that she might reasonably judge that the Holy Ghost had little to do with the practices of ill popes, without thinking the worse of the established faith: but she could never see a new one erected on the foundations of lust, sacrilege, and usurpation, without great scruples whether the spirit of God were assisting in those counsels.

As for his method of enquiry, “Whether there was not a sufficient cause for the Reformation in the church? Whether the church of England had not sufficient authority to reform itself?” and, “Whether the proceedings of the Reformation were not justifiable by the rules of scripture and the ancient church?” I may safely join issue with him upon all three points, and conclude in the negative,—that there was no sufficient cause to reform the church in matters of faith, because there neither were, nor can be, any such errors embraced and owned by it. The church of England has no authority of reforming herself, because the doctrine of Christ cannot be reformed, nor a national synod lawfully make any definitions in matters of faith, contrary to the judgment of the church universal of the present age, shewn in her public liturgies; that judgment being equivalent to that of a general council of the present age. And, for the third point, the proceedings of the Reformation were not justifiable by the rule of scripture, according to the right interpretation of it by the fathers and councils, which are the true judges of it; nor, consequently, by the rules of the ancient church. But Calvin’s excuse must be your last refuge; _Nos discessionem a toto mundo facere coacti sumus_: “We are compelled to forsake the communion, or to separate from all the churches of the world.”

“These,” says our author, “she confesses, were but scruples.” According to his mannerly way of arguing with the king, I might ask him, “These” what? Does he mean—these scruples were but scruples? for the word _these_ begins a paragraph. But I am ashamed of playing the pedant, as he has done. I suppose he means—these passages of Heylin only raised some scruples in her, which occasioned her to examine the points in difference by the holy scripture. “And now,” says he, “she was in the right way of satisfaction, provided she made use of the best helps and means for understanding it, and took in the assistance of her spiritual guides.”

That she did take in those guides, is manifest by her own papers, though both of them (the more the pity) did but help to mislead her into the enemy’s country; but then, for our comfort, neither of them were church of England men, though they were both bishops, and one of them no less than primate of all England.

And now, for a relishing bit before we rise, he has kept in store for us the four points, which, about the midst of her paper, the Duchess told us she found so easy in the scripture, that she wondered she had been so long without finding them. He will needs fall into dispute with her about them, though he knows beforehand that she will not dispute with him. This is a kind of petition to her, that she will permit him to make that difficult which she found easy; for every thing becomes hard by chopping logic upon it. I am sure enough, that the wall before me is white, and that I can go to it; but put me once upon unriddling sophisms, I shall not be satisfied of what colour the wall is, nor how it is possible for me to stir from the place in which I am. Alas! if people would be as much in earnest as she was, and read the scriptures with the same disposition, the same unprejudiced sincerity in their hearts, and docility in their understanding, seeking to bend their judgments to what they find, not what they find to their judgments, more, I believe, would find things as easy as she did, and give the answerer more frequent occasion for his derision of a willing mind.

But not to dilate on that matter, I presume he will not pretend, by his disputing, to make any thing plainly appear against her; if he can, let him do it, and end controversy in a moment; for every one can see plain things, and all Christians must be concluded by the scripture. But he knows well enough there is no such thing to be performed. A mist may be raised, and interposed, through which the eye shall not discern what otherwise it would, if nothing but the due medium were betwixt, and the object before it. And that is all the fruit of this sort of disputation, and all the assistance, for which the answerer was so earnest. Upon the whole, his mortal quarrel to the Duchess is, that she would not become an experiment of the perfection to which the art of learned obscurity is improved in this our age; and the honour he has done to the church of England is, that he has used her name to countenance the defamation of a lady. I suspected whither he would bring it, when I saw that honour pretended in the beginning of his pamphlet. If he thinks his bishops have reflected a scandal on his church by their discourses with the Duchess, he ought to have proceeded a more reasonable way than to insinuate, that she forged them, without proving it. If she had been living, and he had subscribed his name to so infamous a libel, he knows the English of a _scandalum magnatum_; for an inuendo is considered in that case; and three indirect insinuations will go as far in law towards the giving a downright lie, as three foils will go towards a fall in wrestling.

To conclude: I leave it to the judgment of the impartial reader what occasion our answerer has had for his song of triumph at the end of his scurrilous saucy pamphlet. I have treated him as one single answerer, though, properly speaking, his name is Legion;[81] but though the body be possessed with many evil spirits, it is but one of them who talks. Let him disguise his defeat by the ringing of his bells: it was an old Dutch policy, when the Duke[82] had beaten them, to make bonfires; for that kept the populace in heart. Our author knows he has all the common people on his side, and they only read the gazettes of their own writers; so that every thing which is called an answer, is with them a confutation, and the Turk and Pope are their sworn enemies, ever since Robin Wisdom[83] was inspired to join them together in a godly ballad. In the mean time, the spirit of meekness and humble charity would become our author better than his boasts for this imaginary victory, or his reflection upon God’s anointed; but it is the less to be admired that he is such a stranger to that spirit, because, among all the volumes of divinity written by the Protestants, there is not one original treatise, at least that I have seen or heard of, which has handled distinctly, and by itself, that Christian virtue of humility.[84]

AN ANSWER TO THE DEFENCE OF THE THIRD PAPER.

I have now done as to matter of reason and argument:[85] the third paper chiefly relates to matter of fact; which, if I were mistaken in, even the brisk defender of it doth me that right to say, the bishop of Winchester did mislead me: For “the whole body of my answer,” he saith, “is in effect a transcript from the bishop’s preface; that I purloin his arguments without altering sometime so much as the property of his words; that I have quoted him five times only in the margin, and ought to have quoted him in almost every leaf of my pamphlet; in short, if the master had not eaten, the man (saving reverence) could not have vomited.” This is a taste of the decency and cleanliness of his style, especially in writing for princes and great ladies, who are not accustomed to such a sort of courtship to others, in their presence; but, as coarse as the compliment is, it clears me from being the author of any mistakes, and lays the blame on the bishop, who is not able to answer for himself: yet, as if I had been the sole contriver and inventor of all, he bestows those civil and obliging epithets upon me, of “disingenuous, foul-mouthed, and shuffling;” one of “a virulent genius, of spiteful diligence, and irreverence to the royal family, of subtle calumny and sly aspersion;” and he adds to these ornaments of speech, “that I have a cloven foot, and my name is Legion;”[86] and that my answer is an “infamous libel, a scurrilous saucy pamphlet.” Is this, indeed, the spirit of a new convert? Is this the meekness and temper you intend to gain proselytes by, and to convert the nation? He tells us in the beginning, that “truth has a language peculiar to itself:” I desire to be informed, whether these be any of the characters of it, and how the language of reproach and evil speaking may be distinguished from it? But zeal in a new convert is a terrible thing; for it not only burns, but rages like the eruptions of Mount Ætna: it fills the air with noise and smoke, and throws out such a torrent of liquid fire, that there is no standing before it. The answerer alone was too mean a sacrifice for such a Hector in controversy: all that standeth in his way must fall at his feet. He calls me Legion, that he may be sure to have number enough to overcome. But he is a great proficient indeed, if he be such an exorcist to cast out a whole legion already. But he hopes it may be done “without fasting and prayer.”

If the people continue stedfast to their religion, they are the rabble, and the only friends I can perceive he allows us. “My good friends the rabble,” in one place, and in another, “our author knows he has all the common people of his side.” What! nothing of honour, or dignity, or wit, or sense, or learning, left of our side? Not so much as a poet, unless it be Robin Wisdom. I pray, sir, when was it that all our friends degenerated into the rabble? Do you think that heresy, as you call it, doth _ipse facto_ degrade all mankind, and turn all orders of men, even the House of Lords itself, to a mere rabble? If all the common people be of our side, we have no reason to be troubled at it. But there is another thing of our side which you like worse, and that is common sense, which is more useful to the world than school divinity. But methinks he should not be angry with the common people, when he takes such pains to prove, “that the kingdom of heaven is not only for the wise and learned,”[87] and that “our Saviour’s disciples were but poor fishermen; and we read but of one of his apostles who was bred up at the feet of Gamaliel, and that poor people have souls to save, as precious in the sight of God as the grim logicians.” Would not any one take this for an apology for the common people, rather than for the Duchess of York, whose wit and understanding put her far beyond the need of such a mean defence? Could she be vindicated in no other manner than by putting her into the rank of the persons of the meanest capacities? But this is another part of the decency of this defence. He had several pretty sayings, as he thought, upon this subject; and therefore out they come, without regarding the reflection implied in them on a person of her capacity, as well as dignity. And so he goes on, in his plea for the ignorant, _i.e._ for the common people, as I am resolved to understand it. “Must they be damned unless they can make a regular approach to heaven in mood and figure? Is there no entering there without a syllogism? or ergoteering it with a _nego, concedo, et distinguo_?”[88] This may pass for wit and eloquence among those I think he pleads for; and so I am content to let it go, for the sake of my friends, the common people. But this is somewhat an unusual way of defending, to plead for those he professes to despise, and in such a manner as to reproach the person he undertakes to defend.

From the common people we come to churchmen, to see how he uses them. And he hath soon found out a faction among them, whom he charges with “juggling designs;”[89] but romantic heroes must be allowed to make armies of a field of thistles, and to encounter wind-mills for giants. He would fain be the instrument to divide our clergy, and to fill them with suspicions of one another; and to this end he talks of men of a “latitudinarian stamp:” For it goes a great way towards the making divisions, to be able to fasten a name of distinction among brethren,—this being to create jealousies of each other. But there is nothing should make them more careful to avoid such names of distinction, than to observe how ready their common enemies are to make use of them, to create animosities by them; which hath made this worthy gentleman to start this different character of churchmen among us, as though there were any who were not true to the principles of the church of England, as by law established. If he knows them, he is better acquainted with them than the answerer is, for he professes to know none such. But who then are these men of the “latitudinarian stamp?” To speak in his own language, they are a sort of “ergoteerers, who are for a _concedo_ rather than a _nego_.” And now I hope they are well explained: Or, in other words of his, “they are,” saith he, “for drawing the nonconformists to their party,” _i.e._ they are for having no nonconformists. And is this their crime? “But they would take the headship of the church out of the king’s hands.” How is that possible? They would (by his own description) be glad to see differences lessened, and all that agree in the same doctrine to be one entire body. But this is that which their enemies fear, and this politician hath too much discovered; for then such a party would be wanting, which might be played upon the church of England, or be brought to join with others against it. But how this should touch the king’s supremacy, I cannot imagine. As for his desiring loyal subjects to consider this matter, I hope they will, and the more for his desiring it; and assure themselves, that they have no cause to apprehend “any juggling designs of their brethren,” who, I hope, will always show themselves to be loyal subjects, and dutiful sons of the church of England.

The next he falls upon, is the worthy answerer of the bishop of Condom’s exposition, and him he charges “with picking up stories against him, and wrapping them up with little circumstances.”[90] How many fields doth he range for game, to find matter to fill up an answer, and make it look big enough to be considered? But that author hath so well acquitted himself in his defence, as to all the little objections made against him, that I can do the reader no greater kindness than to refer him to it.

I must not say, the _poor_ bishop of Winchester is used unmercifully by him, for he calls him “that prelate of rich memory;”[91] as though, like some popes, he had been considerable for nothing but for leaving a rich nephew. But as he was a person of known loyalty, piety, and learning, so he was of great charity, and a public spirit, which he showed, both in his lifetime, and at his death. Could nothing be said of him, then, but “that prelate of rich memory?” or, had he a mind to tell us he was no poet? or, that he was out of the temptation of changing his religion for bread?

The bishop of Worcester is charged with downright prevarication, _i.e._ being in his heart for the church of Rome, but for mean reasons continuing in the communion of the church of England. “Therefore,” saith he, “take him, Topham; and now what can I do more for the poor bishop?”[92] The most he will allow him is, “that he was a peaceable old gentleman, who only desired to possess his conscience and his bishopric in peace, without offence to any man, either of the Catholic church, or that of England.” Yet he hath so much kindness left for the poor bishop, that for his sake he goes about to defend, “that a man may be a true member of the church of England, who asserts both churches to be so far parts of the Catholic church, that there is no necessity of going from one church to another to be saved.”[93]

This is a very surprising argument from a new convert. Why might he not then have continued still in the communion of this church, though he might look on the church of Rome as part of the Catholic church? The reason I gave against it was, that every true member of this church must own the doctrine of it contained in the Articles and Homilies, which charge the church of Rome with such errors and unlawful practices, as no man who believes them to be such, can continue in the communion of that church; and therefore he must believe a necessity of the forsaking of one communion for the other; and that no true member of this church can, with a good conscience, leave this church, and embrace the other.