Part 16

But from this promise she concludes, that our Saviour would not permit the church to give the laity the communion in one kind, if it were not lawful so to do. Now, in my opinion, the argument is stronger the other way: the church of Rome forbids the doing of that, which Christ enjoined; therefore it cannot be infallible, since the command of Christ is so much plainer than the promise of infallibility to the church of Rome.

But, from all these things laid together, I can see no imaginable reason of any force to conclude, that she could not think it possible to save her soul otherwise, than by embracing the communion of the church of Rome: And the public will receive this advantage by these papers, that thereby it appears, how very little is to be said by persons of the greatest capacity, as well as place, either against the church of England, or for the church of Rome.

A DEFENCE OF THE PAPER WRITTEN BY THE DUCHESS OF YORK, AGAINST THE ANSWER MADE TO IT.

I dare appeal to all unprejudiced readers, and especially to those who have any sense of piety, whether, upon perusal of the Paper written by her late highness the Duchess, they have not found in it somewhat which touched them to the very soul; whether they did not plainly and perfectly discern in it the spirit of meekness, devotion, and sincerity, which animates the whole discourse; and whether the reader be not satisfied, that she who writ it has opened her heart without disguise, so as not to leave a scruple, that she was not in earnest. I am sure I can say, for my own particular, that when I read it first in manuscript, I could not but consider it as a discourse extremely moving; plain, without artifice, and discovering the piety of the soul from which it flowed. Truth has a language to itself, which it is impossible for hypocrisy to imitate: dissimulation could never write so warmly, nor with so much life. What less than the spirit of primitive Christianity could have dictated her words? The loss of friends, of worldly honours and esteem, the defamation of ill tongues, and the reproach of the cross,—all these, though not without the strugglings of flesh and blood, were surmounted by her; as if the saying of our Saviour were always sounding in her ears, “What will it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his soul!”

I think I have amplified nothing in relation either to this pious lady, or her discourse: I am sure I need not. And now let any unbiassed and indifferent reader compare the spirit of the answerer with hers. Does there not manifestly appear in him a quite different character? Need the reader be informed, that he is disingenuous, foul-mouthed, and shuffling; and that, not being able to answer plain matter of fact, he endeavours to evade it by suppositions, circumstances, and conjectures; like a cunning barreter of law, who is to manage a single cause, the dishonesty of which he cannot otherwise support than by defaming his adversary? Her only business is, to satisfy her friends of the inward workings of her soul, in order to her conversion, and by what methods she quitted the religion in which she was educated. He, on the contrary, is not satisfied, unless he question the integrity of her proceedings, and the truth of her plain relations, even so far as to blast, what in him lies, her blessed memory, with the imputation of forgery and deceit; as if she had given a false account, not only of the passages in her soul, and the agonies of a troubled conscience, only known to God and to herself, but also of the discourses which she had with others concerning those disquiets. Everywhere the lie is to be cast upon her, either directly, in the words of the bishop of Winchester, which he quotes; or indirectly, in his own, in which his spiteful diligence is most remarkable.

In his answer to the two former papers, there seems to have been some restraint upon the virulence of his genius, though even there he has manifestly past the bounds of decency and respect; but so soon as he had got loose from disputing with crowned heads, he shews himself in his pure naturals, and is as busy in raking up the ashes of their next relations, as if they were no more of kin to the crown than the new church of England is to the old reformation of their great-grandfathers. But God forbid that I should think the whole episcopal clergy of this nation to be of his latitudinarian stamp; many of them, as learned as himself, are much more moderate; and such, I am confident, will be as far from abetting his irreverence to the royal family, as they are from the juggling designs of his faction to draw in the nonconformists to their party, by assuring them they shall not be prosecuted (as indeed, upon their principles, they cannot be by them); but, in the mean time, this is to wrest the favour out of the king’s hands, and take the bestowing it into their own, and to re-assume to themselves that headship of the English church which their ancestors gave away to king Henry VIII. And now let any loyal subject but consider, whether this new way of their proceeding does not rather tend to bring the church of England into the fanatics, than the fanatics into the church of England.

These are the arts which are common to him and his fellow-labourers; but his own peculiar talent is that of subtle calumny and sly aspersion, by which he insinuates into his readers an ill opinion of his adversaries, before he comes to argument; and takes away their good name rather by theft than open robbery. He lays a kind of accumulative dishonesty to their charge, and touches them here and there with circumstances, instead of positive proofs, till at last he leaves a bad impression of them; like a painter who makes blotches of hard colouring in several parts of the face, which he smooths afterwards into a likeness. After this manner he, or one of his brethren in iniquity, has used Monsieur de Condom,[66] by picking up stories against him in his Preface, which he props up with little circumstances, but seldom so positive, that he cannot come off when their falsity shall be detected. In the mean time, his cause goes forward with the common reader, who, prepossessed by the Preface, is made partial to his answer. The same kind of artifice, with some little variation, has been used in other of their books, besides this present libel against the duchess.

But the cloven foot of this our answerer appears from underneath the cassock, even in the first step he makes towards his answer to the present paper; “which,” he tells us, “is _said_ to be written by a great lady.” How doubtfully he speaks, as if there were no certainty of the author! But surely it is more than barely said, for it is published by the same authority which ordered the two other papers written by his late majesty, to the press; and the original of it is still remaining in the hands of the present king. Indeed, the bishop of Winchester may seem to have given him some encouragement for this in the Preface to his Treatises, where he tell us,—that “Maimbourg, the Jesuit, recites something which,” he says, “was written by the late duchess,” and which he afterwards calls,—“the papers _pretended_ to be written by her.” But if that bishop had lived to see what our answerer has seen, her paper printed and published by his majesty, I cannot think he would have been so incredulous as to have made that doubt. It may be allowed him to suspect a stranger of forgery; but with what face can this son of the church of England suspect the integrity of his king? In the mean time, observe what an excellent voucher he has got of this dead bishop, and what an excellent argument he has drawn from him. Because he would not believe what he did not think she said, we must not believe what we know she did say. Let our author, therefore, come out of his mists and ambiguities, or give us some better authority for his unreasonable doubts; for, at this rate, if it be already suspected, whether what she writes be matter of fact, and, indeed, whether she writ at all, it may be doubted hereafter, whether she changed, and, perhaps, whether there were ever such a woman.

After he had thus begun, that “this paper was said to be written by a great lady, for the satisfaction of her friends,” he shuffles in commodious words for an answerer, and which afford him elbow-room; for he talks of the reasons and motives which she had for her leaving the communion of the church of England, &c. and of the right which all readers have to judge of the strength of them. Now, as luck will have it, none of those motives and reasons are to be found in the paper of her highness. She expresses herself clearly to write for the satisfaction of her friends, not as to the reasons she had herself for changing, but as to the censures which she might expect from them for so doing; and her whole paper shews this was her only design: So that, against the law of all romances, he first builds the enchanted castle, and then sets up to be the doughty knight who conquers it. It seems, he found that a bare denial, which is the proper answer to matter of fact, was a dry business, and would make no sport; and therefore he would be sure to cut himself out sufficient work. But it is not every man’s talent to force a trade; for a customer may choose whether he will buy or not.

This great person changed not lightly, nor in haste; but after all the endeavours which could be used by a soul which was true to itself, and to its eternal interest. She was sensible, as I before hinted, that she should lose her friends and credit; and, what to her condition at that time was more sharply piercing, expose the Catholics of England to the danger of suffering for her sake. On these considerations, she makes a plain relation of all the passages in her change; and, expecting severe censures from the world, took care to satisfy her friends concerning it. As for the reasons of it, they were only betwixt God and her own soul, and the priest with whom she spoke at last. What a wonderful art has this gentleman, to turn a bare narrative into motives and inducements? When he is arrived to the perfection of calling down a saint from heaven, he may examine her concerning them; in the mean time, he must be content with the relation which she has left behind her here on earth; and if he will needs be mistaking her scruples for her motives, who can help it?

His design, as he tells us a little after the beginning, is, “to vindicate the honour of the church of England, so far as it may be thought to suffer by the paper of her late highness.” I might here tell him, that he has an obligation antecedent to the honour of his community, which is that to God and his own conscience. But the honour of the church of England is no farther concerned in the paper of her highness, than in relation to the persons of two or three prelates; and those he leaves at last to shift for themselves as they are able, with this melancholy farewell, that—“God be thanked, the cause of our church does not depend upon the singular opinion of one or two bishops in it, wherein they apparently recede from the established doctrine of it.”

In the next place, “he is sensible how nice and tender a thing it is to meddle in a matter wherein the memory of so great a lady is concerned.”

Here he is sensible, once for all; for, after this one civility, you hear no more of his good manners, to the end of the chapter; but the honour of the church of England so wholly takes up his thoughts, that he forgets the respect which is due to her sex, her quality, her memory, her relations, and confutes her as coarsely as the parson did Bellarmine.[67]

He goes on to inform us, how hard a task he has undertaken in answering these papers, “wherein such circumstances are mentioned as cannot fully be cleared, the parties themselves having been many years dead; yet he shall endeavour to keep within due bounds,” &c.

These due bounds either are, or ought to be, respect to the great lady, and caution in regard of circumstances, which I hope he will not put upon his readers for arguments, the parties being dead so long ago.

But let the reader here take notice, that in this very place he is clapping his cups together, and shuffling his balls from hand to hand, to lay the foundation of his juggling, and to prepare the way for all the tricks which he is to play hereafter.

For, the parties being dead long since, that is, the duchess, in the first place, not being alive to justify the several conferences which she had with the bishops; nor they, in the second, to answer, as in the sight of God, whether she had such discourse with them, the field is open for him, as he vainly imagines, by laying circumstances of time and place together, and racking her own paper till it seemingly speaks against her, to render it suspected to his good friends, the rabble, that she has falsified the whole matter.

Well, we shall see what he builds upon this foundation: let him speak for himself.

“The way of her satisfaction was very extraordinary; for, towards the conclusion, she confesses she was not able, nor would she enter into disputes with any body.”

Commend me to him for a man of quick dispatch. At the first dash, he is bringing the two ends of her paper together; for he says,—“towards the conclusion she confesses.” It was well searched of him, however, to hunt counter, and run to the end of her discourse for the beginning of his own. He will lose no advantages, I warrant him. Press that home, doctor. She modestly owns, that she was neither able nor willing to enter into disputes; therefore she had no other way to satisfy herself: when the whole drift of this pious and sincere discourse is to inform her friends of the methods by which God Almighty brought her into his church; her paper being a plain and short history of her conversion.

The answerer is of opinion, there is nothing to be done, no satisfaction to be had in matters of religion, without dispute; that is his only recipe, his nostrum for attaining a true belief. But doctors differ in this point: For another witty gentleman of his church[68] desired no other epitaph upon his tomb than this: “Here lies the author of this sentence, _Disputandi pruritus, scabies ecclesiæ_;” the itch of disputation is the scab or tetter of the church. Now, if the learned avail themselves so little of dispute, that it is as rare as a prodigy for one of them to convince another, what shall become of the ignorant, when they are to deal with those fencers of divinity, who can hit them in tierce and quart at pleasure, while they are ignorant how to stand upon their guard? And yet such poor people have souls to save, as precious in the sight of God as the grim logician’s. 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_? The best on it is, 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. I would beseech our answerer to consider, whether he has argued upon his own principles, in affirming, that none can be satisfied as to the grounds of leaving one church and going to the other, without entering into dispute? Has he not allowed, that every man is to interpret the Scripture for himself, in reference to his own salvation? With what face then can he positively say,—“That this lady,” who had not only read the Scriptures, but found them in her judgment plainly to decide the great controversy betwixt Catholics and Protestants, “might not leave his church, and enter into that of Christ, by interpreting ‘this is my body,’ in the literal and obvious meaning?” If, from a Catholic, she had become a Protestant, by expounding those words in a figurative sense, he would have applauded her for not discerning the Lord’s body, and said, she was in the right to interpret for herself. But she, it seems, must be an exception to his general rule, and not have that privilege allowed her, which he dare not deny to any sectary of the nonconformists. The fanatics think the Scripture is clear in all matters of salvation; and if so, what need, say they, of those spiritual directors? Even the pillars of the church by law established, from their own concessions, are found to be but broken staffs; for, after all their undertaking to heal a wounded conscience, when the arrows of the Almighty are stuck into it, they leave their proselytes finally to the Scripture, as our physicians, when they have emptied the pockets of their patients without curing them, send them at last to Tunbridge waters, or the air of Montpellier.

“But if persons be resolved beforehand what to do, (says our answerer,) there is no such way as to declare—they will not enter into dispute.”

Here he would make us believe, that she swallowed a new religion without chewing it, because she disputed not. I have shewed already what is the common fate of disputation. But had she no other way of satisfying her conscience? (as he immediately infers she had not.) If he were not obstinately blind, or rather had not an intention to blind his reader, he might have observed the methods and gradations of her change, and that, though she disputed not, yet she discoursed (which is entering into matter of dispute) with some of the ablest of the English clergy, even with him particularly who was left by the bishop of Winchester to be her spiritual director; by which it plainly appears, notwithstanding all the jugglings and glosses of our answerer, that the better part even of his own prescription was put in practice by her, though without effect, as to her satisfaction. Why, then, does he ask so many idle questions? “Had she no divines of the church of England about her? none able and willing to afford her their utmost assistance?” when she takes care to inform the world that she had such divines, that she imparted her scruples, and, after all, remained unsatisfied with their answers.

“Persons of learning,” indeed, he says, “may possibly be satisfied without entering into disputes of matters which she had neither the leisure to examine, nor the capacity to judge of.”

Then, as I said before, the kingdom of heaven is chiefly, if not only, for the wise and learned of this world, though our Saviour was not of this judgement. But is not every man to be satisfied _pro modulo suo_, according to the measure of his own understanding? Can an ignorant person enter into the knowledge of the mysteries of our faith, when even the most learned cannot understand them? Can the answerer himself unriddle the secrets of the incarnation, fathom the undivided Trinity, or the consubstantiality of the Eternal Son, with all his readings and examinations? From whence comes it then, that he believes them, since neither the scripture is plain about them, nor the wit of man can comprehend them? As for her comparing the doctrines of both churches, no question she did it to the best of her ability; for if he will believe her in any thing, she both read the scriptures, and conferred with the most learned Protestants, before she had any discourses with a Catholic priest. But if she had not, as he rudely says, the capacity of judging in deep controversies, it is very probable she might want that of understanding the instructions of her guides; for, if I may similize in my turn, a dull fellow might ask the meaning of a problem in Euclid from the bishop of Salisbury,[69] without being ever the better for his learned solution of it. So then her capacity will break no squares, at least from the doctrine of the English church, and the Presbyterians, put them both together, as they now stand united; for, either the scriptures are clear, and then a mean capacity will serve to understand them, or, though they are never so obscure, yet the upshot of all is, that every man is to interpret for himself.

What farther quarrel he can have against the lady in this particular, I know not, unless it be upon the bishop of Winchester’s account; namely, that she refused to advise with him, and admitted the two others[70] to a conference; and what reason she had for so doing, if I were as penetrating as my author, I should undertake to demonstrate by the infallible evidence of circumstances and inferences: but since the parties are dead, and so long since, I will not give my own opinion why she refused him, and of what principles she might possibly have thought him. At present I will not trouble myself farther with that prelate of rich memory, whom I warrant you our author would not commend so much for his great abilities and willingness to resolve the lady’s doubts, if he had not some journey-work for him to do hereafter; neither will I meddle much with the long impertinent story of his letter to the duchess, and her silence at Farnham, where she would not consult him in any of her doubts. Whatever great matters are made of these by our answerer, she had a very sufficient reason for not asking his advice, as will instantly be made appear. But now our author is at another of his dodging tricks, comparing times and dates of letters, the bishop’s bearing date the 24th of January, that very year in which she changed; but that he may not puzzle himself too much in reckoning, I will unriddle the matter of fact to him, which I have from a most authentic hand. The duke and duchess were at Farnham in the beginning of September, where they continued about three days, in the year 1670. Her highness’s paper bears date the 20th of August, 1670; by which it is manifest, that it was written twelve or fourteen days before her visit to the bishop. Now where, I beseech you, is the wonder, that she spoke nothing to him concerning any points of a religion in which she was already satisfied? Would any man ask another—what’s o’clock, after he had been just looking upon a sun-dial? So that all his aggravations dwindle at length into this poor inference, that it is evident she did not make use of the ordinary means for her own satisfaction; at least (mark how he mollifies, for fear of being trapped) as to those bishops who had known her longest.

Now this is so pitiful, that it requires no answer; for it amounts to no more than that she liked not the bishop, and therefore, from the beginning, concealed her scruples from him; and she changed her religion the same year, (though before he writ to her,) because she was satisfied of another. But does it follow from hence, as he infers, that, in the mean while, she did not use the ordinary means for her satisfaction? Supposing she had liked the other two bishops as little as she did him, had she no other ordinary means but by those two, or even by any other bishops? Satisfied, to be sure, she was, or she had not changed; and if the means had been wholly extraordinary, from the inspirations of God’s holy spirit only, she had thereby received the greater favour; but not omitting to give God thanks for his supernatural assistance, she used also the ordinary means.

It appears that her first emotions were from her observing the devotions of the Catholics in France and Flanders; and this is no news to any traveller. Ask even our Protestant gentlemen at their return from Catholic countries, and they cannot but confess that the exercises of their devotion, their mortifications, their austerities, their humility, their charity, and in short, all the ways of good living, are practised there in a far greater measure than they are in England; but these are the virtues from which we are blessedly reformed by the example and precept of that lean, mortified apostle, St Martin Luther.