Part 14 (2/2)
There is and always ative of the Prince or State and that of Conscience, which on this occasion is defined as ”every private s”
”Do subjects rebel against their Sovereign? 'Tis Conscience that takes up ars? 'Tis under the conduct of Conscience Do they separate from the communion of the Church? 'Tis Conscience that is the Schis that a man has a mind to is his Conscience”
(_Ecc Politie_, p 6)
How is this coe which would have met with John Austin's warm approval
”The Supreed, must of necessity be universal, absolute and uncontrollable For if it be limited, it may be controlled, but 'tis a thick and palpable contradiction to call such a power supreme in that whatever controls it must as to that case be its Superior And therefore affairs of Religion being so strongly influential upon affairs of State, they must be as uncontrollably subject to the Supreme Power as all other Civil concerns” (_Ecc Politie_, p 27)
If theand blasphemy, why not as to rites and ceremonies of public worshi+p? (39) Devotion towards God is a virtue akin to gratitude to ion is a branch of race is a uage What is there to make such a fuss about? he cries Why cannot you come to Church? You are left free to _think_ what you like Your secret thoughts are your own, but living as you do in society, and knowing as you must how, unless the law interferes, ”every opinion must make a sect, and every sect a faction, and every faction when it is able, a war, and every war is the cause of God, and the cause of God can never be prosecuted with too much violence” (16), why cannot you conforh it does not profess to be prescribed in all particulars, contains nothing actually forbidden in the Scriptures? What authority have Dissenters for singing psalms in metre? ”Where has our Saviour or his Apostles enjoined a directory for public worshi+p? What Scripture conificant cereue and Covenant, viz that the whole congregation should take it (1) uncovered, (2) standing, (3) with their right hand lift up bare” (184), and so on
In answer to the objection that the civil ht establish a worshi+p in its own nature sinful and sensual, Parker replies it is not in the least likely, and the risk must be run ”Our enquiry is to find out the best way of settling the world that the state of things admit of--if indeed mankind were infallible, this controversy were at an end, but seeing that allthat there is an absolute necessity of a supreme power in all public affairs, our question (I say) is, What is thetheht be, but that really is
And this (as I have already sufficiently proved) is to devolve their h it may be imperfect and liable to errors and mistakes, yet 'tis the least so, and is a much better way to attain public peace and tranquillity than if they were left to the ignorance and folly of every private man” (212)
I now feel that at least I have done Parker full justice, but as so far I have hardly given an example of his familiar style, IParker hated ainst the weakness which is content with passing penal laws, but does not see the these trumpery tender consciences ”Most s, acted by fond and absurd principles and imposed upon by their vices and their passions” (7) ”However, if the obligation of laws nably is every ainst all the coovern him farther than he himself pleases, and if he dislike the law he is sufficiently excused (268) A weak conscience is the product of a weak understanding, and he is a very subtil man that can find the difference between a tender head and a tender conscience (269) It is a glorious thing to suffer for a tender conscience, and therefore it is easy and natural for soainst the commands of authority, thereby to make themselves obnoxious to some little penalties, and then what Godly ood conscience” (278) ”The voice of the publick law cannot but drown the uncertain whispers of a tender conscience; all its scruples are hushed and silenced by the commands of authority It dares not whimper when that forbids, and the nod of a prince awes it into silence and submission But if they dare to ainst the rebukes of their superiors, then there is no remedy but the rod and correction They must be chastised out of their peevishness and lashed into obedience (305)
The doctor concludes his treatise with the words always dear toopinions, 'What I have written, I have written'” (326)
Whilst Parker riting this book in his snug quarters in the Archbishop's palace at La to take the communion on his knees in his parish church; and Dr Manton, who had been offered the Deanery of Rochester, was in the Gate House Prison under the Five Mile Act
The first part of _The Rehearsal Transprosed_, though its sub-title is ”Ani what grounds there are of Fears and Jealousies of Popery,” deals after Marvell's own fashi+on with all three of Parker's books, the _Ecclesiastical Politie_, the _Bramhall Preface_, and the _Defence of the Ecclesiastical Politie_ It is by no ive a fair notion of the _Rehearsal Transprosed_ in a short coument The parson wrote ive a better description of Marvell's method than in Parker's oords in his preface to his _Reproof to the Rehearsal Transprosed_, which appeared in 1673 and gave rise to Marvell's second part:--
”When,” writes Parker, ”I first conde but a serious prosecution ofHistories or Plays or Gazettes, nor going on pilgri the Alps, nor being a cunning Gamester that can qualify a man to discourse of Conscience and Ecclesiastical Policy; in that it is not capping our Argu up Proverbs and Similitudes upon one another that willfor bias this is no unfair account of Marvell's method, and it was just because this was Marvell'sand in pleasing the town, and that hewith a fair measure of interest and enjoye except on the stage
The hulishmen Bishop Burnet calls Marvell ”a droll,” Parker, as to be a bishop, calls him ”a buffoon” Marvell is occasionally humorous and not infrequently carries a jest beyond the lirave Yet when he is, his gravity was treated either as one of his feebler jokes or as an impertinence But as it is his wit alone that has kept him alive he need not be pitied overmuch
The substance of Marvell's reply to Parker, apart altogether fro:--
”Here it is that after so great an excess of wit, he thinks fit to take a julep and re-settle his brain and the governrows as serious as 'tis possible for a madman, and pretends to sum-up the whole state of the controversy with the Nonconformists And to be sure he will make the story as plausible for himself as he may; but therefore it was that I have before so particularly quoted and bound him up with his oords as fast as such a Proteus could be pinion'd For he is as waxen as the first e of posture does either alter his opinion or vary the expression by which we should judge of it; and sitting he is of oneof another Therefore I take ht with a wind as boyes do; or with the lacqueys at Charing-Cross or Lincoln's-Inn-Fields to play at the Wheel of Fortune; lest I should fall into the hands of my Lord Chief-Justice, or Sir Edmond Godfrey
The truth is, in short, and let Bayes make more or less of it if he can, Bayes had at first built-up such a stupendousHe had put all princes upon the rack to stretch therows a circle, he had given them so infinite a power, that it was extended unto ih he found it not till it was too late in the cause, yet he felt it all along (which is the understanding of brutes) in the effect For hence it is that he so often coht that supremacy over consciences, to which they were so lately, since their deserting the Church of Rohtly understood, and many expressions of that nature: whereas indeed the matter is, that princes have always found that uncontroulable government over _conscience_ to be both unsafe and impracticable He had run himself here to a stand, and perceived that there was a God, there was Scripture; the istrate himself had a conscience, and s apparently evil' But after all, he finds hiain at the sael God, and Scripture, and conscience will not let hiistrate enjoyns things apparently evil, the subject may have liberty to relorious an enterprize to be abandoned at the first rebuffe Why, he gives us a new translation of the Bible, and a new coht be allowed in a Church to be constituted, not in a Church constituted already That tenderness of conscience and scandal are ignorance, pride, and obstinacy He saith, the Nonconformists should communicate with him till they have clear evidence that it is evil This is a civil way indeed of gaining the question, to perswade men that are unsatisfied, to be satisfied till they be dissatisfied
He threatens, he rails, he jeers them, if it were possible, out of all their consciences and honesty; and finding that will not do, he calls out the istrate, tells hiovern out the pillories, whipping-posts, gallies (=galleys), rods, and axes (which are _ratio ultiument, ay and his first too), and pull in pieces all the Trading Corporations, those nests of Faction and Sedition This is a faithful account of the su, for which, I confess, he was as pick'd a dome; but it is so oose but would grow giddy with it”[165:1]
In reply to what Parker had written about the unreasonable fuss made by the Dissenters over the ”two or three symbolical ceremonies” called sacraments, Marvell says:--
”They (the Nonconfors should be i of a sacramental nature but divine institution And because a human institution is herein made of equal force to a divine institution therefore it is that they are aggrieved For without the sign of the Cross our Church will not receive any one in Baptis no man is suffered to come to the Communion But here, I say, then is their (the Nonconfors indifferent and that have no proper signature or significancy to that purpose should by command be made conditions of Church-communion I have reater latitude, but if, unless they should stretch their consciences till they tear again, they cannot conform, what reht and title to the Church and to the ordinances of God there, than the Author hath to his surplice Bishop Bramhall saith, 'I do profess to all the world that the transfor of indifferent opinions into necessary articles of faith hath been that _insana laurus_ or cursed bay tree, the cause of all our brawling and contention' That which he saw in matter of doctrine, he would not discern in discipline
It is true and very piously done that our Church doth declare that the kneeling at the Lord's Supper is not enjoined for adoration of those ele the other ceremonies as before But the Romanists (from e have them and who said of old ould coe) do offer us here hty matters to which nevertheless the conscience of our Church hath not co which came in first with the doctrine of transubstantiation, the Romish Church do reproach us with flat idolatry, in that we, not believing the real presence in the bread and wine, yet do pay to soans had declared to the prirains of incense was only to perfume the room--do you think the Christians would have palliated so far and colluded with their consciences? Therefore although the Church do consider herself so much as not to alter her mode unto the fashi+on of others, yet I cannot see why she ought to exclude those from communion whose weaker consciences cannot, for fear of scandal, step further”[166:1]
With Parker's thunders and threats of the authority of princes and states, Marvell deals more in the mood of a statesman than of a philosopher, more as a man of affairs than as a jurist He deplores the ferocity of Parker's tone and that of a certain nuy
”Why is it,” he asks, ”that this kind of clergy should always be and have been for the uinary counsels?
The former Civil War cannot ood-natured, but they are still for running things up unto the same extremes The softness of the Universities where they have been bred, the gentleness of Christianity, in which they have been nurtured, hath but exasperated their nature, and they seem to have contracted no idea of wisdo For whether it be or no that the clergy are not so well fitted by education as others for political affairs I know not, though I should rather think they have advantage above others, and even if they would but keep to their Bibles, ht enerally observed that things overnment If there be any council more precipitate, more violent, more extreme than other, it is theirs
Truly, I think the reason that God does not bless them in affairs of State is because he never intended them for that employment”[167:1]