Part 18

This being matter of fact, and of unquestionable truth, I hope the answerer will acquiesce in it. What he will think of his bishop, concerns not me; but as a Protestant, he has reason for his thanking God, that the cause of his church does not depend on the singular opinion of one bishop in it. It appears plainly by this relation, that the bishop of Worcester was ignorant, almost to the last, of her conversion; so that if that will serve our author’s turn, he is acquitted from intending any such act of charity; but that he contributed to it without any such intention, is apparent.

Yet our author will not so sit down; he will condemn her Highness from her own words again; and prove, from her saying,—“that she owed the blessing of her conversion to God Almighty,” that therefore the bishop could have no hand in it.

What obligation has he to defend the honour of his church by a piece of sophistry? She owed it wholly to Almighty God; for “of ourselves we can do nothing.” But, as the answerer confesses, this excluded not her own endeavours; God inspired her with a desire of being reconciled to his church, in answer to her frequent prayers,—not by immediate illumination, or shewing her the right belief miraculously, but by affording her the ordinary means, and conducting her by his good spirit in the use of them. If she had been immediately enlightened, she needed not to have recourse to any of the bishops; but it pleased God, who often works good out of evil, that the arguments they used, or rather the answers which they made, produced a contrary effect, and added more to the desire she had to be a Catholic: in this sense, therefore, it may be said, that the bishops sent her to the priest; for an unresistable, overruling power made them contribute to her change, by opposing it; and the very hands which laboured to hold her fast in the Protestant persuasion, carried her half seas over, and put her into other hands, which carried her the other half. Truly they would have received hard measure, if they had been found guilty on the statute of persuasion, who, far from endeavouring to make her change, dissuaded her from changing, though the Protestant flints happened to strike Catholic fire; so that I cannot but think there was an extraordinary hand of Providence in her case, and of which she had reason to be extraordinary sensible. But we must have, I perceive, a care of praying, and owning benefits from God; for that, or nothing, made her pass for an enthusiast with the answerer; she did nothing besides praying, which our author does not acknowledge it her duty to have done. She read the history which was put into her hands, to confirm her in her first belief; she examined the scripture; she conferred with her divines; and yet he can make an obstinate woman of her, for doing that very thing to which he would advise her. “But,” says our author, “all pretenders to enthusiasm do as solemnly and wholly ascribe the blessing to Almighty God, and look on it as the effects of such prayers as she made to him in France and Flanders.”

They ascribe it indeed wholly to God in our author’s sense, but not in her’s; for she meant not immediate illumination by the word _wholly_, as I have already proved; they may look on their false light as the effect of their prayers; but she looks on her conversion as the effect of her’s, after having used the means.

“He had thought,” he says, “that the pretence to a private spirit, or enthusiasm,” (for he joins them both afterwards,) “had not been at this time allowed in the church of Rome.”

Somebody once thought otherwise, or he had never diverted the young gallants of the town with his merry book, concerning the fanaticism of the church of Rome.

He next enquires, what need she had of an infallible church, if she owed her change so wholly to Almighty God?

_Wholly_ is already explained to him, and then his argument is of no more force against her, than against all Catholics who have once been Protestants; which is a new subject of dispute, and foreign to the argument in hand.

“Her conclusion,” as he tells us, “is, that she would never have changed, if she could have saved her soul otherwise;” whereupon he infers, “if this were true, she had good reason for her change; if it were not true, (as most certainly it was not,) she had none.”

But her words (which he hath falsified in this place) are these: “I would never have changed, if I had thought it possible to have saved my soul otherwise.” He never misquotes without design. Now by altering these words—_if I had thought it possible to save my soul_, into these—_if I could have saved my soul_, he would shuffle off her true meaning; which was, that her conscience obliged her to this change. And that is a point he would not willingly have touched; for he cannot deny, upon his own principles, but that, after having examined the scriptures, as she professes to have done as well as she was able, concerning the points in dispute, and afterwards using the assistance of her spiritual guides, the two bishops, she was to judge for herself in the last resort; and the judgment she made, according to her conscience, was, that the scripture spoke clearly in behalf of the Catholic church, or church of Rome, as he calls it: therefore, according to his principles, and her conscience, she was to be of that church, of whose truth she was thus convinced; so that whether she could be otherwise saved or no, was not the proposition to be advanced, but whether she thought it possible to be otherwise saved. And therefore, though it were true that she could otherwise be saved, yet she had a sufficient reason for her change, (though he says she had none,) which was, her conscience; and supposing that were erroneous, yet, upon his principles, she must be the judge of it without appeal.

“Her scruples began upon reading Dr Heylin’s ‘History of the Reformation;’ and there she found such abominable sacrilege upon Harry the Eighth’s divorce, King Edward’s minority, and Queen Elizabeth’s succession, that she could not believe the Holy Ghost could ever be in such councils.” Thus he compendiously quotes her paper, as being, it seems, ashamed of the particulars therein mentioned; but for once I will follow him his own way.

To read Dr Heylin’s history, in order to settle her, he confesses, was none of the best advices given to such a person. He is much in the right on’t, as appears by the success; and I add, nor any other, either Protestant or Catholic writer then extant; for no paint is capable of making lovely the hideous face of the pretended Reformation. “But,” says he, “there are two distinct parts in the history of it, the one ecclesiastical, the other political; the first built on scripture, antiquity, and the rights of particular churches; the other 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.”

But why might not her Highness consider it her own way, which is that of nature, in the causes which produced it, and the effects which it produced; though I doubt not but she considered it his way too, because a child could not have missed it, that very distinction being inserted into the history by the author himself. Now the immediate cause which produced the separation of Harry the Eighth from the church of Rome, was the refusal of the Pope to grant him a divorce from his first wife, and to gratify his desires in a dispensation for a second marriage. Neither the answerer, nor I, nor any man, can carry it so high as the original cause with any certainty; for the king only knew whether it was conscience and love, or love alone, which moved him to sue for a divorce. But this we may say, that if conscience had any part in it, she had taken a long nap of almost twenty years together before she awakened, and perhaps had slept on till doomsday, if Anne Bolleyn, or some other fair lady, had not given her a jog: so the satisfying of an inordinate and a brutal passion cannot be denied to have had a great share at least in the production of that schism, which led the very way to our pretended Reformation; for breaking the unity of Christ’s church was the foundation of it.

I pass over the manner of those first proceedings, and the degrees by which they came to terminate in schism, though I doubt not but her Highness was sufficiently scandalized in both, and could not also but observe some of the concomitant causes, as revenge, ambition, and covetousness; all which, and others, drew with a strong bias towards it. But the immediate effects, even of this schism, were sacrilege, and a bloody persecution of such as denied the king’s supremacy in matters wholly spiritual; which no layman, no king of Israel, ever exercised, as is observed by my Lord Herbert[79]. As for the Reformation itself, what that produced is full as obvious in the sequel of history, where we find that chanteries and hospitals, undevoured by Henry the Eighth, were left only to be morsels for Edward the Sixth, or rather for his ministers of state; and the reason was given, that the revenues of them were fruitlessly spent on those who said prayers for the dead. Now this was as naturally produced from the Reformation, as an effect is from the cause; so that, as it is observed by some, had that young king reigned any considerable time longer, the church of England had been left the poorest of any one in Christendom; the rich bishopric of Durham having been much retrenched by him, and it is probable those of Rochester and Westminster. Harry the Eighth had indeed eaten so much of the church’s bread out of his son’s mouth beforehand, that even Calvin complains of it in a letter to Cranmer, (concerning the paucity of good pastors in England,) in these words: _Unum apertum obstaculum esse intelligo, quod prædæ expositi sunt ecclesiæ redditus_; “one open obstacle I find to this, (he meaneth the increase of good pastors,) is, that your church revenues are exposed to rapine.”

Besides these things, what an usurpation this change of religion caused is most notorious; that of the Lady Jane Gray being evidently grounded on the testament of Edward the Sixth, by which she was made his successor, because she was of the Protestant religion.

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.