A letter to the Jesuits in prison shewing them how they may get out. From Mr. William Hutchinson alias Bury for fourteen years of their society; but now of the Church of England. Hutchinson, William, fl. 1676-1679. 1679 Approx. 14 KB of XML-encoded text transcribed from 3 1-bit group-IV TIFF page images. Text Creation Partnership, Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) : 2004-11 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1). A45249 Wing H3837 ESTC R219974 99831418 99831418 35881 This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal . The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission. Early English books online. (EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A45249) Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 35881) Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 2050:4) A letter to the Jesuits in prison shewing them how they may get out. From Mr. William Hutchinson alias Bury for fourteen years of their society; but now of the Church of England. Hutchinson, William, fl. 1676-1679. 4 p. printed for the author, and are to be sold at the Bear and Orange-tree in Prince's-street, [London : 1679] Caption title. Imprint from colophon. Signed and dated at end: July, 30. 1679. William Hutchinson. Reproduction of the original in the Cambridge University Library, Cambridge. Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford. Re-processed by University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Northwestern, with changes to facilitate morpho-syntactic tagging. Gap elements of known extent have been transformed into placeholder characters or elements to simplify the filling in of gaps by user contributors. 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Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements). Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site . eng Jesuits -- Controversial literature -- Early works to 1800. 2004-06 TCP Assigned for keying and markup 2004-06 Aptara Keyed and coded from ProQuest page images 2004-07 Mona Logarbo Sampled and proofread 2004-07 Mona Logarbo Text and markup reviewed and edited 2004-10 pfs Batch review (QC) and XML conversion A LETTER TO THE JESUITS in Prison , Shewing them how they may get out . FROM Mr. William Hutchinson alias Bury For Fourteen Years of their SOCIETY ; But now of the Church of ENGLAND . Honoured Dear SIRS , DO not vainly flatter your selves with the hopes of Martyrdom ; You know as well as I can tell you : 'T is the Cause , not purely Suffering , which makes a Martyr . If the State of Venice might lawfully prohibit you their Territories , so may our Gracious Sovereign lawfully prohibit you his Dominions ; provided he tolerate ( as he does ) a sufficient number of Christian Priests and Bishops to Preach the Doctrine , and Administer the Sacraments of our Lord Jesus to his People . Seing therefore ( contrary to His Majesties Prohibition ) you have entred his Kingdoms , to the disturbance of the Ecclesiastical and Civil Peace , and to the disquieting of his pious Subjects Consciences , by telling them they are damned for not communicating with a Prelate as their supream Pastor , a thousand Miles off , who has no authority over them : Confess your fault and ask pardon , and be gone ; or else heartily joyn with your Natural Liege and his Bishops , in reforming abuses crept into the Christian world through the negligence of Ecclesiastical Prelates , and in restoring the true primitive Christian Doctrine and Discipline to our poor Country . Say no more falsly , you are hardly dealt with , to be prohibited your Native Soyl under pain of being Hang'd , Drawn and Quarter'd , for loving your Neighbours as your selves , for gently admonishing them they are precipitating themselves into eternal Misery by all manner of sins and wickedness . Say no more neither , our Blessed Lord bids you go teach all Nations his holy Gospel ; but no says King James ; I except my three Kingdoms of England , Scotland and Ireland . You are mistaken , you are not prohibited England either by our gracious Soveraign or his Royal Grandfather , for your preaching Christs holy Gospel ; but for your superadded Doctrines of the Popes Temporal and Spiritual Supremacy , of new devised Indulgences and other Trashy Tenents and practices prejudicial to our Souls health , and destructive of the Civil Polity . Joyn your selves to our Communion , and bring a long with you as much zeal as you please against all manner of sin and wickedness , only leave your Treasonable and Trashy Doctrines behind you , and you are welcom . Know my Dear Friends , God is deservedly angry with your Society for your Deposing , and other Trashy Doctrines . Do not die with an Equivocation in your Mouths , but confess ( to the glory of God and the confusion of your Order , ) that not a man of your Society hath writ against the Popes power of Deposing Heretical Princes , but either they treated not the question , or else they positively held he had such a power : As have done you know , your Santarel , Bellarmine , Suarez and others . And if your later Writers teach no such Doctrine , 't is not because they hold it not , but because they are politickly prohibited to meddle with the Controversy . Your silence in this matter is a tacit consent , unless you would positively renounce what your prime Doctors have positively taught : If this be Christian Doctrine , doubt not to die for it , if not , abjure it . And know , if you suffer Imprisonment or other Grievances for such Treasonable Doctrines , you are in the sight of God no more Confessors , or Martyrs , then common Highway-men , or other Fellons . Acknowledge all your damnable Doctrines of Deposing Princes for Heresie or Mis-government , of Equivocation , and forswearing by Oath what you are guilty of , to defend your honor , &c. For these and your other damnable Doctrines God evidently punishes you and your Party . Heartily renounce these and God and men will favour you . To say you renounce King-killing Doctrine is an Equivocation : 'T is ill halting before a Cripple ; a Deposed King is no King , but an Usurper and Rebel , if he go on after his deposition to exercise Regal power : And consequently it becomes lawful to the next man that meets him to Kill him , if the next Heir so command . So that , whosoever holds the Deposing Doctrine , necessarily holds King-klling Doctrine . And therefore if it be your unhappy fate to die at Tyburn , which I hope it will not be , renounce candidly the Deposing Doctrine , and confess ingenuously withall , that your Writers universally either teach it , or else say nothing of the Question . Our Lord Jesus is purging his Church , he abhorres the Papal Infallibility , his Spiritual and much more his Temporal universal Supremacy , your Indulgence Doctrine , your Attrition Doctrine , &c. And so must you too , if you ever expect his favor in this World or the other . If ever any ones sin was legible in their punishment , your and your parties is : Take notice then of these seroius Reflections . By a Breue from the Pope your General Licensed Santarel's Book for Deposing of Princes for Heresie or Mis-government : And you are accused that your General by a Breue from the Pope appointed Officers Military and Civil in our Gracious Soveraigns Dominions . You commonly teach the people that our Blessed Saviours natural Body is in Heaven and on Earth at the same time ; and your chief accuser must ( you say ) prove himself to have been in two places at once to make his Testimony valid . You say its Pride and unsufferable Arrogancy to question the Decrees of General Councils , undoubtly after they are in a manner universally received ; and they are looked upon as willfully blind who question your guiltiness after a whole Parliament has resolved you guilty , especially after this has been also in a manner generally believed by the whole people . You falsly maintain an usurped Papal Power , and you are accused to make use of it to Treason and Rebellion . You have notoriously abused the power of Ecclesiastical Dispensation , partly by extending it to Divine Obligations in Oaths and Vows made to God , and manifestly by making use of it to avarice and gain : And you are believed to have a Dispensation for Lies and Perjuries in the very Article of Death . Your exacting a set mulct upon Priests for Concubins , looked much like a giving leave to keep one for the increase of the Church's Treasury : And you are accused to have leave to commit most horrid Villanies for the Church's interest . You have abused the Power of Absolution , to absolve as oft as customary sinners pleased : And you are accused with perjury to attest your innocency , and then to absolve one another afterwards . Not that I accuse you of the Crimes laid to your charge , I leave you to God and your own Consciences . But I say , your Doctrines are the just cause of all your sufferings . You have taught the World to equivocate and deny with Oathes the Crimes they are guilty of , and every one is laughed at as sensless who believes a word you say or swear in your own defence . If in your persons you be innocent of the crimes you are charged with , your Doctrines are more manifestly punished by the Providence of Heaven . At length acknowledge not onely your Personal , but your very Church-faults . 'T is a notorious cheat , that your Church is chargeable with nothing but the mistakes of General Councils . If I cannot meet with an immediate Ghostly Guide , one in ten but he teaches me dangerous Doctrines ▪ and Practises , my Soul is in no less danger by my being in your Communion , than if the Errors and Fopperies of every petty Confessor were so many Decrees of Oecumenical Assemblies . That which influences our Souls either to good or bad , are the notoriously known Sentiments of our immediate Guides , and not the secret and to few known Decisions of Christian Councils . I will not say with a Friend of yours , Calumny was your crime , and by Calumuy you are punished : yet I wish you would reflect how falsly and undeservedly you calumniated the Great Mr. White , and the Divine Mr. Arnauld ( and indeed whom you pleased ) in the Court or Rome , and disparaged amongst your Devotes their incomparable Writings with blind and surreptitious Censures . We are verily guilty concerning our Brother , in that we saw the anguish of his soul when he besought us , and we would not hear : therefore is this distress come upon us , Gen. 42. 21. You may say , and perhaps truly , you never were taught your selves the Deposing Doctrine , nor never taught it others ; because the teaching of it by some of your Authors made you odious to Christian Princes , and thereupon your General prohibited all medling with the Question . You may also perhaps truly say , you do not believe the Doctrine to be true , that is , as an Article of your Faith. But what security is this to Christian Princes , whom you deem Hereticks , if in your hearts you generally think it a probable opinion , partly for intrinsecal reasons , but manifestly for the Authorities of your own , and other Doctors of your Church ? Especially you commonly maintaining as you do , that it 's lawful to follow a probable opinion , though but even extrinsecally probable , as you speak ; and this without dispute , when great Good is likely to ensue upon your acting according to such an opinion . God forbid I should go about to add afflictions to your afflictions , but I would gladly shew you how you may appease God and Man's anger against you , by inducing you to an humble and penitent acknowledgment of your manifest and notorious faults . Your blind zeal for the Pope's Temporal and Spiritual Power , has brought all this evil upon you ; examine it well and impartially , at least now when God afflicts you for the idolizing of it , lest you hear , and deservedly , Jer. 2. 30. In vain have I smitten your children , they received no correction . Acknowledge the plain truth ; the Pope , as from Christ , has no more power in England , than the Bishop of Canterbury has in Italy . All Bishops are absolute Spiritual Monarchs in their Diocesses ; Archbishops , Primates , and Patriarchs , are purely humane inventions , for Union and Order sake , in the vacancy of General & Provincial Councils ; as for a Supreme Pastor , that would be as inconvenient , as a Civil Monarch of the whole World. The Government of the Church of Christ is not Monarchical , but Aristocratical ; St. Peter was no more the Vicar of Christ , than any one of the other Apostles , they were all his Vicars , and so is every Christian Bishop , and has power all over the World to ordain Priests , to preach the Gospel , and to administer Christs Sacraments ; but by mutual accord for Order's sake , and to avoid confusion , they exercise not this power out of their particular Diocesses . The twelve Apostles divided the World amongst them , that so their labours might be more profitable , and no place left uncultivated ; the like is done and to be done by all Christian Bishops till Dooms-day come . Consider attentively , whether seeing Jesus Christ resolved his Church should be spread all over the Earth , it be not as certain he would never ordain an Universal Monarch over it , as 't is certain he would not appoint a Government which would be impracticable , useless , and sensless . A Monarch even over the Western part of the World , what mischief has it not done , in making strange Doctrines and Practises universal ? such are the Doctrines of infusion of habitual grace by the words of Absolution , Indulgences , mock-Absolutions , &c. No less notorious mischiefs has it done , in exhausting vast Riches out of all the Provinces of Europe to satiate the avarice and ambition of one Pompous See. Besides , the unanimous belief and practices of several Christian Provinces in the same Faith and Rites , what assurance does it not give for their being Apostolical ? But when all are over-awed and commanded to believe or practise as one Spiritual Monarch pleases , their agreement has far less force . Nor is there fear of as many Christian Religions as there are Christian Provinces , provided they meet frequently in General and Provincial Councils , as they ought , and determine nothing of Faith to others which is doubtful to themselves , and resolve nothing to be Apostolical , but what is so clear to them all to be so , in the holy Scriptures , Tradition , &c. as they cannot doubt but it had its origin from the Apostles ; for what 's so clear to one Province , cannot be obscure to another , consulting the same safe means of not mistaking the holy Scriptures , holy Fathers , &c. Our Judgment are as agreeing as our Eyes ▪ and no twenty men can so clearly see an object at such a distance , so as they cannot doubt they see it ; but any three men of equal good eye-sight , at the same distance , must needs see the same . If Reformers have disagreed , 't was because they stuck not to this Rule , and therefore their disagreement ought to be no prejudice to those who are resolved rigidly to adhere to it . In my next I shall hint to you the Reasons of my Change , which so much scandalizes you , but indeed ought to edifie you , and all good Christians . Your real Friend , William Hutchinson . July , 30. 1679. London , Printed for the Author , and are to be sold at the Bear and Orange-tree in Prince's-street . 1679.