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were disturbed by the marshal of the king's beneh, and most of them committed to the Clink prison. Next morning six or seven of the men were carried before the house of lords, and charged with denying the king's supremacy in ecclesiastical matters, and with preaching in separate congregations, contrary to the statute of the 35th of Eliz. The latter they confessed, and as to the former, they declared to the house, that they could acknowledge no other head of the church but Christ; that they apprehended no prince on earth had power to make laws to bind the conscience; and that such laws as were contrary to the laws of God, ought not to be obeyed; but that they disowned all foreign power and jurisdiction. Such a declaration a twelvemonth ago might have cost them their ears; but the house, instead of remitting them to the ecclesiastical courts, dismissed them with a gentle reprimand, and three or four of the members came out of curiosity to their assembly next Lord's day, to hear their minister preach, and to see him administer the sacrament, and were so well satisfied, that they contributed to their collection for the poor.

To return to the parliament. It has been observed, that one of their first resolutions was to reduce the powers of the spiritual courts. The old popish canons, which were the laws by which they proceeded, (as far as they had not been controled by the common law or particular statutes) were such a labyrinth, that when the subject was got into the commons he knew not how to defend himself, nor which way to get out. The kings of England had always declined a reformation of the ecclesiastical laws, though a plan had been laid before them ever since the reign of king Edw. VI. But the grievance was now become insufferable, by the numbers of illegal imprisonments, deprivations, and fines levied upon the subject in the late times, for crimes not actionable in the courts of Westminster-hall; it was necessary therefore to bring the jurisdiction of these courts to a parliamentary standard, but, till this could not be accomplished by a new law, all that could be done was to vote down the late innovations, which had very little ef fect and therefore on the 23d of Jan. the house of commons ordered commissioners to be sent into all the counties to demolish, and remove out of churches and chapels, all ima

ges, altars, or tables turned altarwise, crucifixes, superstitious pictures, and other monuments and relics of idolutry, agreeably to the injunctions of king Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth. How far the house of commons, who are but one branch of the legislature, may appoint commissioners to put the laws in execution, without the concurrence of the other two, is so very questionable, that I will not take upon me to determine.

The university of Cambridge having complained of the oaths and subscriptions imposed upon young students at their matriculation, as subscribing to the book of commonprayer, and to the thiriy-nine articles, the house of commons voted, "That the statute made twenty-seven years ago in the university of Cambridge, imposing upon young 'scholars a subscription, according to the 36th canon of 1603, is against law and the liberty of the subject, and 6 Fought not to be imposed upon any students or graduates 'whatsoever." About five months forwards they passed the same resolution for Oxford, which was not unreasonable, because the universities had not an unlimited power, by the 36th canon, to call upon all their students to subscribe, but only upon such lecturers or readers of divinity whom they had a privilege of licensing; and to this I conceive the last words of the canon refer; if either of the universities offend therein, we leave them to the danger of the law, and his majesty's censure.

And it ought to be remembered, that all the proceedings of the house of commons this year, in punishing delinquents, and all their votes and resolutions about the circumstances of public worship, had no other view, than the cutting off those illegal additions and innovations, which the superstition of the late times had introduced, and reducing the discipline of the church to the standard of the statute law. No man was punished for acting according to law; but the displeasure of the house ran high against those, who, in their public ministrations, or in their ecclesiastical courts, had bound those things upon the subject which were either contrary to the laws of the land, or about which the laws were altogether silent.

CHAP. VIII.

The antiquity of Liturgies, and of the Episcopal Order, debated between Bishop HALL and SMECTYMNUUS. Petitions for and against the Hierarchy. ROOT and BRANCH Petition. The Ministers Petition for Reformation. Speeches upon the Petitions. Proceedings against Papists.

THE debates in parliament concerning the English liturgy and hierarchy engaged the attention of the whole nation, and revived the controversy without doors. The press being open, great numbers of anonymous pamphlets appeared against the establishment, not without indecent and provoking language, under these and the like titles; Prelatical Episcopacy not from the Apostles. Lord Bishops not the Lord's Bishops. Short view of the Prelatical Church of England. A comparison between the Liturgy and the Mass Book. Service Book no better than a Mess of Pottage, &c. Lord Brook attacked the order of bishops in a treatise of the Nature of Episcopacy, wherein he reflects in an ungenerous manner upon the low pedigree of the present bench, as if nothing except a noble descent could qualify men to sit among the peers. Several of the bishops vindicated their pedigree and families, as bishop Williams, Moreton, Curle, Cooke, Owen, &c. and archbishop Usher defended the order, in a treatise entitled, The Apostolical Institution of Episcopacy ;* but then, by a bishop

Nalson in his Collections, vol. ii. p. 279, 280, and after him, Collier, Eccles. Hist. vol. ii, p. 808, have abridged the arguments of this piece; but these abstracts do not shew, as Dr. Grey would intimate, the extent of jurisdiction, or the nature of the power, according to bishop Usher's idea, exercised by the primitive bishops. They go to prove only a superiority to elders; and by a quotation from Beza, it should seem that this prelate, as Mr. Neal says, meant by a bishop only a president of the presbytery of a place or district. The presbyterians are charged with misrepresenting the bishop's opinion, and with printing a faulty and surreptitious copy of his book. If this were done knowingly and designedly, it must rank with such pious arts as deserve Severe censure, Dr. Grey. Ed.

his lordship understood no more than a stated president over an assembly of presbyters, which the puritans of these times were willing to admit. The most celebrated writer on the side of the establishment, was the learned and pious bishop Hall, who, at the request of archbishop Laud, had published a treatise entitled, Episcopacy of Divine Right, as has been related. This reverend prelate, upon the gathering of the present storm, appeared a second time in its defence, in an humble remonstrance to the high court of parliament; and sometime after, in a defence of that remonstrance, in vindication of the antiquity of liturgies and of diocesan episcopacy.

The bishop's remonstrance was answered by a celebrated treatise under the title of Smectymnuus, a fictitious word made up of the initial letters of the names of the authors, (viz.) Stephen Marshal, Edmund Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcomen, and William Spurstow. When the bishop had replied to their book, these divines published a vindication of their answer to the humble remonstrance; which, being an appeal to the legislature on both sides, may be supposed to contain the merits of the controversy, and will therefore deserve the reader's attention.

The debate was upon these two heads;

I. Of the antiquity of liturgies, or forms of prayer. II. Of the apostolical institution of diocesan episcopacy. The bishop begins with liturgies, by which he understands certain prescribed and limited forms of prayer, composed for the public service of the church, and appointed to be read at all times of public worship. The antiquity of these, his lordship derives down from Moses, by an uninterrupted succession, to the present time. "God's people, says he, ever since Moses's day, constantly practised a 'set form, and put it over to the times of the gospel. Our blessed Saviour, and his gracious forerunner, taught a direct form of prayer. When Peter and John went up to the temple at the ninth hour of prayer, we know the pray'er wherein they joined was not of an extempore and sud'den conception, but of a regular prescription; and the 'evangelical church ever since thought it could never better improve her peace and happiness, than in composing those religious models of invocation and thanksgiving,

which they have traduced unto us, as the liturgies of St. 'James, Basil, and Chrysostom, and which, though in 'some places corrupted, serve to prove the thing itself."

Smectymnuus replies, that if there had been any liturgies in the times of the first and most venerable antiquity, the great inquirers after them would have produced them to the world before this time; but that there were none in the christian church is evident from Turtullian in his Apol. cap. 30, where he says, The christians of those times, in their public assemblies, prayed sine monitore quia de pectore, without any prompter except their own hearts. And in his treatise of prayer, he adds, There are some things to be asked according to the occasions of every man. St. Austin says the same thing, Ep. 121. "It is free to ask the same things that are desired in the Lord's prayer, 'aliis atque aliis verbis, sometimes in one manner of ex'pression, and sometimes in another." And before this, Justin Martyr in his apology says, o proestos, the president, or he that instructed the people, prayed according to his ability, or as well as he could. Nor was this liberty of prayer taken away till the times when the arian and pelagian heresies* invaded the church; it was then first ordained, that none should pray pro arbitrio, sed semper easdem preces; that they should not use the liberty which they had hitherto practised, but should always keep to one form of prayer. Concil. Laod. can. 18th. Still this was a form of their own composing, as appears by a canon of the council of Carthage, anno 397, which gives this reason for it, ut nemo in precibus vel patrem pro filio, vel filium pro patre nominet, & cum altari adsistitur semper ad patrem dirigatur oratio; & quicunque sibi preces aliunde describit, non iis utatur nisi prius eas cum fratribus instructioribus contulerit; i. e. "That none in their pray

*It is to be wished that Mr. Neal had used the word opinions instead of heresies. It was indeed, the stile of the times, when he wrote, and of many preceding ages: but the application of the term conveys not only the idea of error, but of error accompanied with malignity of mind and guilt. There may be great errors, without any of that criminality, which the word heresy, in the seripture meaning of it, implieth. Besides pronouncing opinions, heresies. is rather the language of authority and infallibility, than of the enquirer after truth, and prejudieeth the mind. Ed.

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