A LETTER From an Anti-Hierarchical DIVINE In the Country, To a Member of the House of COMMONS. Concerning the BISHOPS Being restored to their Votes in PARLIAMENT.  
LONDON. Printed in the Year, 1661.  
Will Boothby   

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A Letter from an Anti-Hierarchical Divine in the Country, to a Member of the House of Commons, concerning the Bishops being restored to their Votes in Parliament.  
Sir,  
IT must needs seem strange to you at the first sight, to receive any thing from me in the behalf of those Persons, whom I have to blood constantly opposed; and whom I yet think for all their unexpected, and as they say, miraculous Restitution, to be neither Jure Divino, nor Jure Apostolico. Yet, considering that his Majesty, in order to the support and keeping up his own Interest in the State, as some conceive, hath introduced Bishops again into the Church, to our no small grief; who though at present they cannot exercise that arbitrary and unlimited Power, by virtue of the High Commission, as formerly, yet have Authority sufficient, by the assistance of the penal Laws, yet unrepealed, in all places, and by their large Royalties and ample Possessions in many places, to reinforce (that, which all godly men justly enough decried formerly, as a soul-grieving Innovation, and little better than Popery itself) a conformity to the (as we yet say) empty, and unsignificant Ceremonies of their pretended Church: The very Thought of which (was it not for His Majesty's Gracious Declaration, and the Connivance of many honest and discreet Justices of the Peace, that are yet left in the Country) were sufficient to make us despond of the comfortable enjoying of our nearest and dearest Relations. But then her's the Misery, the King, as many say, can pardon, but for what concerns himself, according to that received Maxim, The Legislater hath Authority to dispense with his own Laws for any Cause, provided, that no distinct Interest be prejudiced or injured; & therefore he can reach no further in relation to the Non-reading the Book of Com. Prayer (a thing that we can never with any Credit or Reputation conform to) than the first time; for upon the second Conviction, 
Vid. Stat. before the Com. Prayer.  the Patron may present, as if the Incumbent were already dead, and in that case it may easily be guessed, what most of us may expect; Neither can we hope for the Connivance of the Benchers long; for, as a little Leaven leavens the whole Mass, so one peevish person upon the Bench, is able to do us more hurt, than the whole number can do us good, & of this, there are some experiences near us. It must therefore, Sir, from hence of necessity follow, that either we must be brought to a carnal Compliance, which will be a Spirit troubling of many precious Saints amongst us, or else, as the lesser evil, leave our Native Courtrey, and go to those Protestant Churches, beyond the Seas, where we may have the free exercise of Religion in its Primitive and Virginpurity. Now Sir, the face of things, as you know, being thus, I shall humbly propose to your wiser self, a thing that may enable us to a more comfortable support in a transmarine condition, if Providence should so order it, or else to at home. You see then that Bishops are restored to a power, (which I will not be positive in to determine they will exercise) to do hurt, it would not be amiss therefore, if the power whereby they may do good, viz their Pretences to a Third Estate, and so consequently to a Vote in Parliament, were taken into sesonable and mature Consideration. It's true, at the beginning of the War, the King was confidently cried up by us to be the Third Estate, which some of them undiscreetly granted, thereby to make the King a  Power, by which, to put the better, Gloss upon our Arming, for the asserting of the Authority of the two Houses against His; and indeed much might yet be said, in justification of the Late War, had the King been so. But now, Sir, upon second thoughts, that Opinion appears to be very incongruous to the Fundamentals: For not only my Lord Cook saith, which is enough to confute any single Authority, that the Bishops are a third Estate, but the express words of many Statutes are, that the three Estates of the Realm, are the Lords Spiritual, well be denied, but that the Bishops are a Third Estate, and accoringly they have acted since Magna Charta, and in the Saxon times too, as many say: But the Stories of those times being uncertain, as filled up with Monkish Tales, much resembling the Theomachi, of the Giants before the Theban War, amongst the Grecians, I shall wave, as not much material to the purpose. Well then, the Bishops being an Estate, and likewise the Assent of all being as necessary too, as the Veult le Roy, to the completing of an Act that shall be binding, against what may happen to Futurity, it must then follow, that it's requisite for us, in order to our sure and certain Peace, that they, as well as the other Lords, should be restored to that which hath so long been their Rights; otherwise the Precedent, may, in time to come, be of d●ngerous Consequence; for by the same Rule, that the Lords Temporal and Commons, by the Royal Assent, excluded the Bishops; may the Lords exclude the Commons; nay, more justly may the King exclued all, and after the manner of the Turkish and Russian Emperors, reduce our bravely Constituted Monarchical, into a Despotical Government. Mistake me not all this while, for what I say, is not out of any respect to them, but to ourselves: For we shall have as much, if not more advantage than any by their Restitution. For to say the Truth, at the beginning of the War, we were, you know, so transported with Zeal, of doing our Duty to God, as some holy men then thought, that we quite forgot our Allegiance to the Prince, and therefore we stand as much in need of a firm Act of Oblivion, in relation to the secure Enjoyment of the things of this Life, as of God's Mercy, in order to the Fruition of a better. It will be therefore very unsafe for us, to have that Charter, under which we claim all that we have, or may pretend to, so ill fortified, as by an Act that may be liable to a just Exception, as every Act must be, that is not ratified according to the Fundamental Constitutions of this Land: And who do you think can be well satisfied with so contingent a security, as you see all security is, without the Bishop's Assent? I know in Answer to this, it may be Objected, that there hath been several Acts of Parliament past, the Bishops being absent, the Authority of which was never yet disputed, as, 24 Ed. 1.11. R. 2. and divers others, but then the Bishops neither by force, nor any pretended Act or Order from the other Estates, were kept out: But they being then in subjection to the Scarlet Whore, were kept out by a Canon or Command from the See of Rome, or else were absent upon Choice, and therefore none of those Examples can in reason be alleged, to vindicate the forcible exclusion of them. Besides, it may deserve some Consideration, that the Act made 2 H. 4. Contra Haereticos, & ex assensu Magnatum & aliorum Procerum, the Commons either Absent, or excluded, was for that very reason long after, 25 H. 8. C. 14. repealed, as Bagshaw says in his Reading, whither I refer you. By this, you may see, Sir, that there is some possibility of hazard, though many years after, in relying upon any Act that's not made by the consent of the three Estates. All this considered, I shall propose this following, as the most convenient Expedient: Before you confirm the Act of Oblivion, let the Bishops be called in, that so there may be no just occasion of Cavil for the future: otherwise those men that will not bow the knee to Baal, that cannot conform to vain Habits and impertinent Ceremonies, cannot make a convenient Sale of their Lands, to enable to a Livelihood, amongst the French or Helvetian Churches: To which, if they do not forsake their first Love, and make shipwreck of their Faith, they must in reason be forced. For it's plain, if hereafter, the Act, for want of due Form be made null, all Estates that now are, or for many years ago were in our hands, will by the Letter of the Law be forfeited to the King, and we are not sure always to have good Kings; but we are pretty sure, that there will always be such Persons about the Court, as will be willing enough for their own Concerns, to find a Flaw in that Act, or any else. Besides, the Lawyers tell us, that no Obligation can be binding, that's entered into per dureose or Minas: Well than if at any time hereafter, a Prince should happen among us, that hath a mind to quarrel with all Acts made since the exclusion of the Bishops, and allege, that his Predecessor Charles the First was threatened and forced to assent to that Act; and therefore the Act null: we have reason to think, that there will be Lawyers enough found, to justify any Authority, in a more unreasonable thing, and so our Posterity may hereafter be forced to buy their Lands at the King Price, if they have them: But lest I exceed the length of a Letter, I shall conclude in this, that the total Abolition of the Hierarchy is not so necessary, in order to a through Reformation in point of Discipline, as the restitution of the Bishops to their Votes in the Upper House, and their Consent to the Act of Amnesty, is to the freeing of us from those Jealousies and Fears that otherwise may justly arise in relation to our Lives and Estates. Pardon me Sir, I am Yours,  
P S.  
FINIS.