that you are not subject to the Statutes of the Parliament in such matters, nor to the subsidies, other charges, and impositions that are raised in England, except (which God forbid ever should come to pass) the King were detained prisoner by the enemy. In matters ecclesiastical you are freed from the Bishop of Coutances, and under that of Winchester, yea even of old by the Pope's authority and consent of the two Kings, from whom also in part, your neutrality in times of war is approved, excommunicating all such as would molest you. Ye cannot shew concerning your privileges, but only what is renewed as often as there is a new King. And for the Patent which you say you have procured from his Majesty for matters of Religion; first, it is in general terms, and without any clause derogating from the authority of your Bishops. Secondly, if it be questioned it may be told you, that it was surreptitious, and granted you before the King was well informed of the business. To conclude; you must understand, that

in matters of Religion the King's Majesty will do nothing without the counsel and advice of the Archbishop and your Bishop of Winchester; wherefore you may do well to insinuate yourselves in their favour, and conform yourselves to them, as we have done in the beginning. You may reduce the decrees of the Church of England, and the use of the Book of Prayers, to a good and Christian discipline, far more solid, and better grounded, than that for which ye so earnestly bestir yourselves.

I must add one word more, which will be hard of digestion; this is it, that you may be upbraided, that as many Ministers, that are natural of the country, being not made Ministers of the Church by your Bishop, nor by his Dimissories, nor by any other according to the Order of the English Church, you are not true and lawful Ministers. Likewise that as many among you as have not taken institution and induction into your parishes from the Bishop, nor from his substitute lawfully ordained and authorized so to do, ye

are come in by intrusion and usurpation of cure of souls, which nobody could give you but your Bishop, that is, in terms and words evangelical, that you are not come into the

66

sheepfold by the door," but by elsewhere, and that by the ecclesiastical laws you are excommunicants aud schismatics. I know well enough you do not regard such laws, and think that your privileges will exempt you from them, wherein you greatly deceive yourselves. For a man may tell you, who are ye that would have your ecclesiastical decrees made by private authority, to have force of laws, and dare scorn and reject those of the English Church, made by public authority, by far honester men, greater scholars (without comparison), more learned, and far more in number, than you are? The King's Majesty by his royal authority hath approved them, this realm hath received them. But what are your Synodical decrees? who be the authors of them, and who be they that have approved them? It is winked at, and your ignorance is borne with; but think

not, that that which is born in you be any such thing as virtue. Your privileges do not stretch so far as that you may make ecclesiastical decrees: had it been so, the Priests had retained Mass and Popery: in that you hold a contrary course to that of the English Church, whereof you are and must be (if you be Englishmen) members, it proceeds from nothing else but from the connivance and indulgence of your Governors, who have given too much credit to the French Ministers, and partly in the beginning to the stubbornness of the Papists of the islands. When your Governors shall have a liking to the English reformation, then will they make you leave the French reformation: you sail against wind and tide; you think that the Governors you shall have hereafter will be like Sir Thomas Layton; you are deceived. Though this day you had compassed your wish, to-morrow or the next day after, at your Governor's pleasure, all shall be marred again.

Finally, the ecclesiastical government which

you ask, hath no ground at all upon God's word. It is altogether unknown to the Fathers, who in matter of Christian discipline, and censure of manners, were more zealous and precise than we are. But you cannot, of all the learned and pious antiquity, shew one example of the discipline or ecclesiastical order, which you hold, as your Bishop, in his book of the Perpetual Government of the Son of God's Church,' doth learnedly teach. I pass over what I have myself written concerning it in my book, De diversis Ministrorum gradibus, and in my Defence against the Answer of Mr. Beza, and more largely in my confutation of his book, De triplici genere Episcoporum. I cannot wonder enough at the Scotchmen, who could be persuaded to abolish and reject the state of Bishops, by reasons so ill grounded, partly false, partly of no moment at all, and altogether unworthy a man of such fame. If the Scots had not more sought after the temporal means of Bishops, than after true reformation, never had Mr.