of the Grey mare is the better horse', did operate most in making Sherlock a changeling? 23. Whether Bedlam ever produced any thing half so lewd and frantick, as Cresner's lampoons upon the Apocalypse? 24. Whether the old Welch seer may not, with the help of a small looking-glass, see an old crazy-crowned infidel, since he pawned his creed in 88, that Lewis the Grand and Old Nick should be chamber-fellows in the other world, before the end of 92? 25. Whether J. C. or J. Y. have not all the reason imaginable to admit ranters, sweet-singers, Muggletonians, Jews, Turks, and infidels to be church-members, since their own hearts tell them, they are as good christians as themselves? 26. Whether, in the next edition of his shame, the renowned author of the Contempt of the Clergy' ought not to add one other lamentable reason, besides those of ignorance and poverty, viz. Time-serving, together with his own phiz in the frontispiece? 27. Whether Dame Britannia was not less culpable, in being forced to endure a thirteen years rape from Oliver and the rump, than by living a five-years adulteress now by consent? LETTER FROM A COUNTRY CLERGYMAN To his Brother in the Neighbourhood, TOUCHING SOME REPROACHES CAST UPON THE BISHOPS *. Quarto, containing eight pages. Dear Brother, THE HE unha, py flames which of late have been blown up among us, by interesting ourselves in the disputes between the bishops and the lower house of convocation, and the unkind reflexions which are but too often cast upon the greater part of those venerable prelates by many even of our order, I conceive to be so great an offence to Almighty God, so dangerous to the welfare of our church, and to be such a reproach to our holy religion, that I cannot think it a great degree of forwardness in myself, or in any other, to endeavour whatever may lie in our power to compose those sad differences and animosities, the consequences whereof look so very fatal towards us. This is the occasion of troubling you with this letter; in which I shall take the liberty to excuse myself from making animadversions upon any miscarriages of our superiors, which some of them, by inadvertency, and the common frailty of human nature, may have fallen into, that being a part which I cannot think myself by duty called to, nor to be becoming a person who moves in so mean a sphere as I; and besides, I fancy I shall find matter enough to fill up this letter, in pointing at the faults which we are guilty of on our side, and shewing, that we have taken up very mistaken characters of very good and excellent men, by taxing them for actions with which they are no ways chargeable, or for which they are no ways blameable. I. And indeed it is very dismal to consider what vile reproaches are cast upon the greatest part of those reverend persons by too many of our own coat: To hear us so frequently taxing them as affecting a tyrannical, despotick power over the clergy, as being betrayers of the common liberties of the church, mercenary instruments and parasites of the court, fanaticks in their hearts, and avowed enemies of every part of our ecclesiastical constitution, unless it be the fair revenues which they have the happiness to enjoy under it. For clergymen to utter these things in their discourse, both publick and private, and to publish the like, by writings, to the whole world, can be no ways suitable to the rules of the holy religion we profess, nor to the character we sustain in God's church; and, I think I may add, does bid the utmost defiance to the principles of the church of England, which bespeak the highest esteem and veneration for the order of bishops. This is a practice which there is none of us, some time past, but would have condemned with the greatest abhorrence and detestation. Let us, for once, suppose some body to have prophesied fourteen or fifteen years ago, that many of us who then valued ourselves so much upon our duty and obedience to our bishops, and passed such severe reflexions upon the undutiful carriage of others, that we should, within a few years, treat them with so an unhandsome deportment, and give them all those good compliments which have been so freely of late bestowed upon them, would not every one of us have been ready to return, with indignation, that of Hazael, 'Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?' This, my good brother, docs deserve a deep and serious reflexion; for these gospel duties, you know, are of eternal verity, and will be as true a thou sand years hence, as they were twenty years ago; nor can I imagine that any one of us does think that a part of our religion can grow in or out of fashion, as people's clothes do. If there are no duties owing to our diocesans, we ought to recant the error we were in, by betraying the dignity of our own order, whilst we were, in time past, so liberally paying them; or, if there be any regards owing, the methods, which have been of late taken, have been but a pretty odd way of discharging them. And, since we are entered upon this point, I will beg the freedom to recommend to your consideration something farther upon it: And let us consider, 1 II. That the very raillery we, some of us, are wont to exert upon this occasion, if it was not levelled at our superiors, and the ground of it was never so well bottomed, is a part not altogether becoming our function. We that are the ministers of Jesus Christ are obliged more nicely to follow our great Master's copy and example, who, when he was reviled, reviled not again. A christian pastor can never look with so ill a grace, as when he assumes the character of a droll, or a satyr. Sarcasm and buffoonery are at best but a sorry part of wit, and, I am confident, no part at all of religion. We frequently are commanded in scripture to afford to those who are committed to our charge a shining example of peaceableness and charity, but I cannot observe, that God has any where commissioned us a power to instruct them in the arts of taunts and invectives. This vile trade, we know well enough, was taken up by the accursed enemies of christianity. The Lucians, and Julians, and Celsus's, had singular talents this way, and did a great deal of mischief to the gospel by them; but I am at a loss to find when it received any benefit from ill-natured wits. The gospel thrived well by the meekness and patience of its first professors, and by such holy steps made its way over all the Pagan world, whilst heathenism, which was supported by the drollery and satyr of its philosophers, did daily lose ground, till it fell at last into nothing. This is argument sufficient to persuade us, that we pursue but very ill advised methods, whilst we are carrying on a cause that we are willing to have succeed, by means which are such a reproach to our profession, which shew so ill an example to our people, and which we have not the least hopes to expect, that God Almighty will crown with any manner of blessing. Now, if we would seriously apply this, we should have an end of such smart books, and fine jests upon our bishops, especially if we considered, that these jests are not only very unmannerly, as being advanced against our betters, but do likewise share a great degree of irreligion and profaneness; for those holy persons, who, by their office, do bear so nigh a relation to our blessed Lord, cannot be so unhandsomely sported with, without reflecting a reproach also upon Christ and his religion. III. And as I look upon it a great fault to make use of such unhandsome drollery upon our diocesans, so I take it to be a very imprudent and unchristian way for us to trumpet about their faults, although they were guilty of them in those particulars, and in that degree, as some of us pretend. It is a kind of a natural law, which the vilest of men are scarce hardy enough to transgress, not to vilify those of our own body, and which bear any nigh relation to us. Those unkind offices are left for strangers only to execute, every wise person esteeming it a madness to discover those defects which must, in the event, reflect upon himself. For the contempt, which one part of the body suffers, is. by an easy deduction, transferrable to the other. We of the clergy are apt to be loaded enough, of all conscience, by other people without doors; and the bishops of the church do find sufficient opposition from papists and sectaries; therefore, I presume, we clergymen are that time, in the most warrantable employment, when we our selves are proclaiming to the world what ill actions we impute to our bishops. If, as a late ingenious author says, that those men who read lessons to princes, how to strain ecclesiastical power to the utmost, without exceeding it, be church Empsons and Dudleys,' I think I may as well conclude (if I delighted in hard words) that those who accuse the bishops of their own church for such ill men as some of our order do, are church Hams and Judas's, for discovering their father's nakedness, and betraying their spiritual governors. IV. In the next place, it behoves a little to consider, before we make too bold with our bishops characters, how much we gratify our common enemies of all sorts, and expose our mother-church, by such a representation of the governors thereof, to the scorn and obloquy of those who greedily watch for such opportunities to revile us. Don't you think, that this must needs give a powerful encouragement to the several sectaries among us to come into the church, the governors whereof they see set off in those delicate colours, which some of us of late have so liberally adorned them with? What a curious history of English bishops must we expect from the next Popish pamphlets that come over from Doway and St. Omers? And what domestick authorities will be vouched to make their slanders good? It is easy enough to imagine, and common enough to observe, what fine sport the quarrels with our bishops make among our atheists and deists. Sometimes they take a handle from these differences to expose the bishops for "affecting an incompetent power, and for minding no part of their office so much, as to lord it over their fellow-shepherds; deny this, and they call upon the authorities of many of the clergy to assert it; and then it goes for undeniable. At other times they are pleased to be quit with these authorities themselves, and call them all a parcel of hypocritical sparks, that make a world of stir with duty and obedience, till it begins to pinch them, and then they fly in the face of the king and bishops without fear or discretion. One would think, that we are under a perfect infatuation to make ourselves, and the religion and church we are ministers of, a jest and mockery to these prophane wretches. But the highest degree of madness is, for some of us, to court the favour of these very men to support us against our bishops, and lay open their character so unhandsomely before such men. Certainly the affairs of the church are safer in the hands of the most tyrannical bishops, than of them who are enemies to all religion: Neither are the presbyters like to find any extraordinary redress from them, who look upon the whole function to be impostors alike. It is no excuse to say, that this freedom taken with the bishops is but by way of reprisal, to be even with a writer on the bishops side, who took as great a freedom with the inferior clergy. I must confess that I, for my part, and a great many other indifferent persons, never liked that part of that writer's book; and I think his cause had not been the worse, if it had been spared. But let him answer for that -Now as these reproaches did not proceed from the bishops, so this is the unjustest way of retaliation, to make them suffer for the faults of others; or, if the bishops had any share in promoting them, our holy religion has taught us a better lesson, than to "return evil for evil." If one part of the clergy have been falsely traduced, we should be cautious how we involve the remaining part under the same imputation. What sad events will follow upon the keenness of these disputes God alone knows; but this I am sure of, that, between this writer and his answerer, the church of England has suffered more in her reputation than will easily be retrieved: For the bishops are represented in such a dress by the one, and the presbyters by the other, that it wants only the hand of a Sanders or a Parsons to put them both together; and then out comes such a picture of the English reformation, as will make us all curse these unhappy disputes which have brought such shame upon us. V. If these considerations be not of weight enough to make us leave off this prevailing custom of aspersing our bishops, I shall add one more, and that is our oath of canonical obedience. Now we all know what canonical obedience is, viz. all that respect and submission, which the canons require to be paid to our diocesans. An injurious accuser of a bishop is by the canons to have a perpetual brand of infamy fixed upon him, and to be excommunicated: An obedience is to be paid them "in omnibus licitis & honestis, &c." Now I cannot tell how to reconcile an ignominious treatment and bespattering their character with the ecclesiastical precepts which we swear to. Our guilt must - needs stare some of us in the face, when we reflect upon this; as having taken no more care to discharge these obligations which we have so sacredly engaged to perform. This were a grievous crime, though there were sufficient ground for these clamours against our diocesans, especially to do it in the way that is generally practised; but, when there is so little foundation for these heavy imputations, I conceive it to be such an aggravation of the fault, as we can never be easy under, when we seriously lay it to heart. And, therefore, in the remaining part of this letter, I shall set myself to vindicate our present bench of bishops from these aspersions, which either by unthinking, or designing men, have of late so plentifully been thrown upon them. VI. One fault, which is mightily laid to their charge, is, their being of latitudinarian principles as they are called, that is, no hearty friends to our ecclesiastical constitution, but are rather inclined to the dissenters tenets, and endeavour by all means to bring the church to the conventicle level; and that it is in order to this end they are so very fond of setting a comprehension on foot, thereby to destroy our present church establishment and discipline, and set up something else which likes them better. But what a ridiculous calumny is this? To think that the bishops, who enjoy so great a share in the church's revenues, should be engaged in a design of pulling it down; this would be such a degree of self-denial, that their adversaries in other cases would hardly allow them. But how do they know that these bishops have such a disliking to the ecclesiastical settlement? If men's principles are to be discovered by their words and actions, the pesent bishops have both on their side to vindicate them from this asersion. Their frequent |