English Bishops to have been legal. Grant the validity of that supremacy, and then our Reformation. was a separation, that is, a schism; because it was a revolt from lawful authority. No man will say, that in case the Church of Rome had reformed its own errors without consulting the Archbishop of Canterbury, it would have been guilty of a separation. No more were we guilty of a separation in reforming our errors, without staying for the Pope's consent: for his supremacy being an usurpation, that is, a nullity, it can make no real difference between these two cases. We are now to consider how this co-ordinate principle affects the establishment. It manifestly requires, as the Author proceeds to assure us, that the same liberty (of being established by public authority) should be allowed to all claimants; whereas it is in fact allowed to no more than one Church in the same Protestant state. In every state some one party has succeeded, &c*. There needs little more to shew the absurdity of this new co-ordinate principle, than that it requires impossibilities: for the congregational form is inconsistent with that of the Quakers; both are inconsistent with the Presbyterian; and all with the episcopal Church. To establish all, would be to confound all; and the very attempt would make public authority and public religion ridiculous. All that can be done is to establish one, and tolerate the rest; and this is done already. The Church assents to the toleration of the other forms, though none of them would assent to the toleration of the Church; and it would indeed be as unnatural to expect it,. as that the less should comprehend the greater, or that kingly * P, 34, government should be endured under a republican usurpation. Every state will naturally establish that religion which itself professes; nor can any other have the establishment, till something superior to the state is introduced; that is, till the state is changed, and the government overturned. The state may have prejudices, and establish a spurious form of religion; therefore, we never plead the establishment as an argument of the truth of our profession. The Church of England being no favourite, in any respect, with this writer, he hath indulged his contempt for that society, by throwing it into the lump amongst other professions, under the common title of a party; and he hath some reason: for then it may be asked, Why not one party as well as another? Thus he sets up the right of all, that no right may be found in any; and pleads for all, that he may overturn all, and leave nothing established in their room: for coordinate right is co-ordinate confusion; it is imperium in imperio, which hath always been reckoned an absurdity, if the powers claimed are the same in kind. If I have a right over any man, and he hath also a right over me, and our principles are at the same time irreconcileable; nothing can be settled to the world's end. Therefore, a right was originally lodged somewhere, or Jesus Christ must be supposed to have planted no Church upon earth. There was certainly a right, when St. Paul said, "Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God; whose faith follow." And again, in the same chapter,-"Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves." And if there was an original right with the Church and its rulers, it is the duty of Christians to consider whether that right is now remaining, and where it is to be found; or, if it is not found, it ought to be shewn very clearly when and how it came to be lost. At present, however, the terms of our subject lead us to enquire when the Church of England sunk into the character of a co-ordinate party, such as this Author now finds it. Was it a party at the Reformation, that is, a faction under itself? Or did the act of Reformation, as the Papists object, transmute it into a party? If not this, was it rendered such afterwards, by the successful usurpation of a domestic faction? Then may good coin be rendered counterfeit, only by being trodden under foot, and Christianity itself confuted by persecution. Then was the restoration of the episcopal form, which had prevailed from the days of the Apostles, the restoration of a party; and the restoration of the state, which rose and fell with the Church being of the same religion, must likewise have been the restoration of a party. This discovery' opens a very large field, which, if properly cultivated, will furnish us with an entire new system of ideas. A considerable branch of this system is brought out to view at p. 316 of our Author's performance; where we are taught, by some examples of modern date, that if men write and act against the fundamental doctrines of religion, the faction which ensues is not chargeable upon those men, but upon the authority which calls them to account for it, and upon all those who presume to act under the protection of the laws for the support of our common faith. Thus when Whiston wrote against the Trinity, the faction was raised by the University of Cambridge, which expelled him. When Dr. Clarke made a like effort, the faction was in the orthodox. When Dr. Clayton made his bloody speech against Athanasius, the faction was in the Irish House of Lords. And, by the same rule, when the Author of the Confessional, and his friends, shout against the Church and its doctrines, and rail at the present bench of bishops in the public newspapers, doing what they are able to stir up all the spiritual malecontents of the kingdom against the Creeds, the faction is not with them, but with the Author of the Three Letters, and all others who presume to deliver their opinion of the Confessional with much less freedom than that writer hath treated the faith and discipline of the Church. A faction used to signify a combination of bad men against lawful authority; but in the present system it means just the reverse. To conclude this chapter, and connect it with what follows, I shall here insert the words of Calvin, who, with all his aversion to Popery and unscriptural impositions, hath confirmed, with much strength of reason, and in a very small compass, that claim which this writer hath taken so much pains to perplex and overthrow. "Nos consulitis, an adigendi sint ad fidem suam publice testandum, qui se in ecclesiam admitti postulant.-Non videmus cur grave sit homini, qui inter ecclesiæ domesticos censeri vult, Christo capiti in solidum nomen dare; quod fieri non potest, nisi diserte subscribat sinceræ pietati, & ingenue errores damnet, quibus sinceritas religionis corrumpitur. Jam errorum detestatio sæpe ex circumstantiâ temporum pendet; quia prout novas turbandi rationes excogitat Satan, prudenter occurrere necesse est. Scimus quan * I call it such, because the speaker told his audience, that Athanasius waded to his episcopal chair through an ocean of blood. If the reader will consult Dr. Cave's Life of Athanasius, he may learn who shed it. A topere nobis commendet Paulus unitatem spiritus in vinculo pacis. Porro ad fovendum et retinendum inter pios consensum, plus quam necessaria est illa solennis fidei professio, denique quicunque ostabunt ecclesiam Dei stare incolumem, non ægre ferent hoc adminiculo eam fulciri. Non putamus esse qui litem moveant de generali illa professione: sed frigeret illa, nisi distinctè quisque tam hæreticis quam perversis dogmatibus renunciet. Forbes Op. fol. vol. i. p. 498. CHAP. III. Remarks on certain pretended principles of the THE Reformation, a subject very much misrepresented by interested writers, having frequently been brought upon the stage, and reformation being the object of the Confessional, I will go back again, and make some observations on the principles which our Author hath very injuriously, and without referring to any single authority, fathered upon the first reformers. I shall, therefore, endeavour to shew, these are neither the principles of the Reformation, nor of the Scripture; but that they are more probably borrowed from some modern improvers of the Reformation, of a very different temper and persuasion from the first reformers of Popery. These principles are delivered by the Author, at the opening of his work: "When the Protestants first withdrew from the communion of the Church of Rome, the principles they went upon were such as these: Jesus Christ hath by |