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TO MY

REVEREND AND WORTHILY DEAR FRIEND,

MR. WILLIAM STRUTHERS;

ONE OF THE PREACHERS OF EDINBURGH.

THE haste of your letters, my reverend and worthy Mr. Struthers, was not so great as their welcome; which they might well challenge for your name, but more for that love and confidence which they imported. Thus must our friendship be fed, that it may neither feel death nor age.

The substance of your letter was partly relation, and partly request.

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For the first rumour had in part prevented you, and brought to my ears those stirs which happened after my departure; and, namely, together with that impetuous protestation, some rude deportment of ill-governed spirits towards his majesty. Alas, my dear brother! this is not an usage for kings. They are the nurses of the Church. If the child shall fall to scratching and biting the breast, what can it expect but stripes and hunger? Your letter professes that his majesty sent you away in peace and joy and why would any of those rough-hewn zealots send him away in discontentment? But this was, I know, much against your heart, whose often protestations assured me of your wise moderation in these things. How earnestly have you professed to me, that if you were in the Church of England, such was your indifferency in these indifferent matters, you would make no scruple of our ceremonies! Yea, how sharp hath your censure been of those refractories amongst us, that would forego their stations rather than yield to these harmless impositions! So

[This letter, as appears from the bishop's autobiographical sketch, was written soon after king James's visit to Scotland in 1617, when he was endeavouring to bring about an uniformity between the Churches of England and

Scotland. The five Articles referred to, were admitted by an Act of an Assembly convened at Perth, Aug. 25, 1618, and afterwards, in 1621, confirmed by Act of Parliament.]

much the more therefore do I marvel, how any delator could get any ground from you whereon to place an accusation in this kind!

But this, and the rest of those historical passages, being only concerning things past, have their end in my notice. Let me rather turn my pen to that part which calleth for my advice; which for your sake I could well wish were worthy to be held such, as that yourself and your colleagues might find cause to rest in it howsoever, it shall be honest and hearty, and no other than I would in the presence of God give to my own soul.

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Matters, you think, will not stand long at this point, but will come on further, and press you to a resolution. What is to be done? Will you hear me counselling, as a friend, as a brother? Since you foresee this, meet them in the way, with a resolution to entertain them and persuade others.

There are five points in question: the solemn festivities; the private use of either sacrament; geniculation at the eucharist; confirmation by bishops.

For these, there may be a double plea insinuated, by way of comparison, in your letters: expedience in the things themselves; authority in the commander. Some things are therefore to be done, because they are commanded; some others are therefore commanded, because they are to be done: obedience pleads for the one, justice for the other.

If I shall leave these in the first rank, I shall satisfy; but if in the second, I shall supererogate; which if I do not, I shall fail of my hopes.

Let me profess to you seriously, I did never so busily and intentively study these ritual matters, as I have done since your letters called me unto this task. Since which time, I speak boldly, I made no spare either of hours or papers. Neque enim magna exiliter,nec seria perfunctorie; as I have learned of our Nazianzen: and besides, this, under one name, seemed a common cause, and therefore too worthy of my care.

These are not, you know, matters of a day old; neither is it his majesty's desire to trouble you with new coins, but to rub up the rusty and obliterate face of the ancient.

And surely the more my thoughts were bent upon them, the more it appeared to me that his majesty's intention is to deal with your church as he hath lately done with your universities; from which, I know not what indiscreet and idle zeal had banished all

higher degrees: the name of a school-doctor was grown out of date: only one graduate, that I heard of, at St. Andrew's, outlived that injury of the times. Now comes his majesty, as one born to the honour of learning, and restores the schools to their former glories. This is no innovation, you will grant, but a renovation. No other is that which his majesty wisheth to your church.

For, tell me, I beseech you, my dear Mr. Struthers, do not you think that those which took upon them the reformation of your church went somewhat too far, and as it is in the fable, entrapped the stork together with the cranes? I know your ingenuity such as you cannot deny it. This you will grant apparently in the church-patrimony (witness your own learned and zealous invective how miserably spoiled); in the exauthoration of episcopal office and dignity; in the demolition of churches; and too many other of this stamp so violent was that holy furor of piety, that hence it might well appear what difference there is betwixt the orderly proceedings of princely authority and popular tumult.

And why should you not yield me this, in the business questioned? Do but consider how far it is safe for a particular church to depart from the ancient and universal, and you cannot be less liberal. Surely no Christian can think it a slight matter, what the Church, diffused through all times and places, hath either done or taught. For doctrine or manners there is no question; and why should it be more safe to leave it in the holy institutions that concern the outward forms of God's service? Novelty is a thing full of envy and suspicion; and why less in matters of rite than doctrine? The Church is the mother of us all: the less important those things are, which in the power of a parent she enjoins, the more hateful is the detrectation of our observance. You remember the question of the Syrian's wise servants, Father, if he had commanded thee some great matter, wouldst thou not have done it?

True it is that every nation hath her own rites, gestures, customs; wherein it was ever as free for it to differ from the rest of the world as the world from it: yet, in the mean time, the sacred affairs of God have been ever acknowledged to have one common fashion of performance; in those points especially, wherein hath been an universal agreement. Every face hath his own favour, his own lines, distinct from all others; yet is there a certain common habitude of countenance, and disposition of the forehead, eyes, cheeks, lips, common unto all; so as who under this

pretence of difference shall go about to raise an immunity from such ceremonies, do no other than argue, that, because there is a diversity of proportions of faces, we may well want a brow or a chin.

There is nothing that the pontificians do so commonly and with so much noise upbraid us with, as our discession from the mother church; that is, as they interpret, the Roman: neither is there any one amongst all the loads of their reproaches, that hath wrought us more envy than this. And how do we free ourselves from the danger of this odious crimination, but thus, not to stand upon the imperious title of motherhood; that since, for order's sake, we acknowledged this primacy of the western church, we never departed one inch from the Roman, save where she is perfidiously gone from God and herself?

Now, the cases questioned are, for the most part, only such, as you will confess, before the suspicion of antichristian apostasy, to have obtained each where in the Church.

Begin, if you please, with the solemn festivities.

Turn over, I beseech you, the histories of times and places; you shall never find where these were either newly appointed, or not constantly and continuedly observed in the Church of God. I confess, with Socrates, that neither Christ nor any apostle enacted a law for these; but withal, I must put you in mind, that what he denies to constitution he grants to custom: and, observatio inveterata, that I may speak with Tertullian, præveniendo statum facitb.

As for the solemn feast of Easter, which the Ancyran council called diem magnum, how hotly the Church, even then in her swathing bands, contended about it, all the world knows. I speak nothing of the friendly differences of Polycarpus and Analectus, nor of the Angel of Hermes. The east and west were in this point fearfully divided: one part pleads a tradition from John and Philip, the other from Peter and Paul: both sides fought long and sore at last the Roman victor won the day, postquam Asia episcopos fulmine sacro perculisset. Let Irenæus deeply censure him as a furious disturber of the public peace; I meddle with neither part. This strife, at last well laid, is after revived by the Syrian divines. How strongly doth the famous Nicene council oppose itself to these new Tesseradecatites, as those

b [Tert. De Corona, c. iii. Paris. 1675. p. 101.]

с

[Bin. t. i. p. 650.]

times called them! Yea, what other cause was there, except the madnesses of Arius and his followers the Meletians and Colluthians, of calling that venerable assembly together? After all this, what discourses passed betwixt Leo the first archbishop of Reme and Paschasinus Lylibetanusd were needless to rehearse; and how hot Chrysostom was in this cause, need no other proof than that, as Socrates witnesses, he took away the churches from them which tied Easter to the fourteenth moon. Now then, wherefore, I beseech you, was all this Asian conflict? wherefore this triumph of Victor? wherefore this infamous brand of the Quartadecimani? Wherefore were those paschal letters of the ancient or golden number, or the calculations of the bishops of Alexandria, or the curious determinations of the Nicene Fathers, or the nice reckonings of Leo and Paschasinus, if this might have passed for lawful, with one breath to deny the day, and with one dash to blot it out of the holy calendar? Certainly the ancients knew not how to be thus witty; neither durst they thus boldly cut that knot, in the untying whereof perhaps they overspent their care and diligence. O ridiculous head of antiquity, if this short course might have been safely held in those former ages! Yea, tell me, I pray you, in all your readings, where ever you met with any man, besides those whom the Church hath held worthy the black mark of heresy, who either denied all observations of this solemnity, or approved the refusal of it by others. I can name you Aërius, a man blemished with more than the scars of one heresy. "And what," saith he, "is the pasch that you keep? You are again addicted to Jewish fables. We must keep no pasch, for Christ our pasch is offered for us." And I can show you Epiphanius, flying in his face with this just reply: "Who is likely to know more of these matters; this seduced wretch, which is yet living in the world; or those witnesses which have been before us, and had the tradition of the Church with them; which received from their fathers that which their fathers received from their forefathers, and still retains what they taught, both for faith and traditione?"

The same reason is there for the other feasts. Unto this of the Easter, that I may speak in Leo's words to the bishops of Sicily, is added the sacred solemnity of Pentecost, in memory of the coming of the Holy Ghost, which depends upon the time of

d [Bin. t. i. pp. 971, 972.]

e

[Epiph. Opp. Paris. 1622. t. i. lib. iii. pp. 908, 910.]

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