DR. PETER HEYLYN
90. After this good letter, Mr Huish went on in his prayers as formerly, and this little Church withstood all the batteries and fierce assaults of its
contempsi, non timebo tuos)? fa219 Why may you not conclude with David, in the like sense and apprehensions of God’s preservation, that He who saved him from the bear and from the lion, would also save him from the sword of that railing Philistine: and you may see that the Divine providence is still awake over that poor remnant of the regular and orthodox clergy which have not yet bowed their knees to the golden calves of late erected, by putting so
unexpectedly a hook into the nostrils of those Leviathans which threatened with an open mouth to devour them all. I will not say as Clemens of Alexandria did in a case much like, that it is ajna>ndron ti<to indulge too much to apprehensions fa220 of this nature, in matters which relate to God’s public service: all I shall add is briefly this, fa221 that, having presented you with these considerations, I shall with greediness expect the sounding of the bell to-morrow morning, and in the meantime make my prayers to Almighty God [so] fa222 to direct you in this business, as may be most for his glory, your own particular comfort, and the good of this people. With which expressions of my soul, I subscribe myself,
Your most affectionate friend and brother in Christ Jesus, PETER HEYLYN.”
90. After this good letter, Mr Huish went on in his prayers as formerly, and
beloved brethren, let us praise God better;’ and thereupon began a long extempore Grace of his own conceiving.”
But to return again — as he had a respect to the cause of the Church, so he was careful of his own concern to answer Dr Bernard, an Irish Dean, but now chaplain to Oliver, one of his almoners, and a preacher in Gray’s Inn, who had put forth a book entitled “The Judgment of the late Primate of Ireland,” fa225 etc. In reply to which, the Doctor published Respondet Petrus, and an Appendix in answer to certain passages of H. L’Est. fa226 History of the reign of King Charles. In the one, he treateth learnedly about the Sabbath; the other relating to the Lord Primate, the Articles of the Church of Ireland, and the Earl of Strafford: to neither of which his adversaries could make a reply; but instead thereof, Dr Bernard
endeavored to procure an order from Oliver’s Privy Council, to burn the book, which caused a common report, that Dr Heylyn’s book of the Sabbath was publicly burnt. fa227 But according to the old saying, Fama est mendax; for the book never saw the fire, nor any answer to it: and if it had been martyred in the fire, it would have proved more for the author’s credit than disgrace, as Tacitus fa228 tells us in the like case of Cremutius Cordus, whose book was decreed by the Senate to be burnt — Punitis ingeniis (saith he) gliscit autharitas, — “When good wits are punished, their credit groweth greater.”
[90] An ordinary scandal hath been thrown upon learned men who have been zealous defenders of the Church of England, to brand them with the ignominious name of Papists, or being popishly affected, because they have abhorred the other extreme of Puritanism: in which kind of slanders the Doctor hath sufficiently received his share; that Hammond L’Estrange fa229 called him, “An agent for the See of Rome.” A heavy charge this is, if it carried the least semblance of truth; but what honest man may not be so belied — Si accusare suffecerit, quis innocens erit? When the Doctor in all his writings, — (and no man, I may say, more) — hath declared his
judgment against the Church of Rome; and upon every occasion, as he meets with her, whets his pen most sharply, to lance her old sores, and let the world see what filthy corruptions and errors abound in her; more particularly in his book of books, Theologia Veterum, upon the Apostles’
Creed, the Sum of Christian Theology, positive, polemical, and
philological; and in all his Court-sermons upon the Tares, especially the fourth sermon; also in his great Cosmography, where he sets out the Popes of Rome fa230 in their pontifical colors. Therefore for the vindication of him
from this foul aspersion, with which some have maliciously bespattered many of our excellent divines, I particularly thank the reverend and learned Dr Stillingfleet for his answer to T. G., fa231 who would have made use of the Puritan’s accusation for the Papist’s purpose; but the worthy Doctor quickly refuted him, and ever after put him to silence, in citing Dr Heylyn’s fourth sermon upon the Tares, where he lays at the door of Papists the most gross idolatry — greater than which was never known among the Gentiles. This being brought into discourse at such time as the
Archbishop’s book against Fisher the Jesuit was newly published, it was affirmed by some that the Doctor in his sermon had pulled up Popery by the roots, yet one of the company most maliciously replied thereunto — “ That the Archbishop might print, and the Doctor might preach, what they pleased against Popery; but that he should never think them or either of them to be the less Papists for all that.” fa232 A censure of so strange a nature, (saith the Doctor himself) that he believed it is not easy to be paralleled in the worst of times. But what need is there of producing sermons or other testimonies in his behalf, when his general conversation, more severe than ordinary, fully attested, that, as he was a strict observer of all the rites and orders of the Church of England, so a perfect abhorrer of Popery and Roman superstitions; that he would not so much as hold correspondency with a Papist, or with one so reputed; — as I can instance an example of one Mr Mood, whose family and the Doctor’s were very kind when he lived at Minster, being near neighbors; hut the gentleman afterward, changing his religion and turning Papist, came to Abingdon, to give him a visit in his new house; the Doctor sent his man Mr Gervis, who was his amanuensis, to bid the gentleman begone, and shut the doors of him, saying, that he heard he was turned Papist, for which he hated the sight of him: and so nay gentleman went away, never daring to give him another visit. In which he followed the example of his Lord’s Grace of Canterbury, that, when Con was sent hither by the Pope, to be assistant to the Queen in her religion, “the wise Bishop kept himself at such a distance with him, that neither Con, nor Panzani before him, (who acted for a time in the same capacity), could fasten any acquaintance on him; nay, he neglected all intercessions in that case, and did shun, as it were the plague, the company and familiarity of Con.” fa233
THE TRUE