that they may reform, without giving up either APPEND. their authority or revenues; and be still as great, but much better bishops, under our circumftances, than under their own. As to the Pope's authority, I take the difference to be only this; that we may all agree (without troubling ourselves with the reason) to allow him a primacy of order in the episcopal college; they would have it thought necessary to hold communion with him, and allow him a little canonical authority over them, as long as he will leave them to prescribe the bounds of it: We fairly say we know of no authority he has in our realm; but for actual submission to him, they as little mind it as we do. At present he has put them out of his communion; we have withdrawn ourselves from his; both are out of communion with him, and I think it is not material on which side the breach lies. I No. XI. A letter from Archbishop WAKE to Feb. 5. 1781-19. O. S. DO not doubt but that mine of the 18th of January, with the two inclosed for my Lord STAIR and Dr Du PIN, are before this come safe to you. I should not be sorry if, upon this late transaction between the doctor and ministry, you have kept it in your hands, and not delivered it to him. I had just begun a letter to Dr PIERS, but have thrown aside what I writ of it, since I. received your last; and must beg the favour of you to make my excuse to him, with the tenders of my hearty service, till I see a little more what the meaning of this present inquisition is. I am not so unacquainted with the finesses of courts, as III. APPEND. not to apprehend, that what is now done may be as well in favour of the doctor's attempt as against it. If the Procureur General be indeed well affected to it, he might take this method not only to his own security, but to bring the affair under a deliberation, and give a handle to those whom it chiefly concerns, to discover their sentiments of it. But the matter may be also put to another use, and nobody can answer that it shall not be so: and till I see what is the meaning of this sudden turn, I shall write no more letters for the French ministry to examine, but content myself to have done enough already to men who cannot keep their own counsel, and live in a country where even the private correspondence of learned men with one another must be brought to a public enquiry, and be made the subject of a state inquisition. I am not aware, that in any of my letters there is one line that can give a just offence to the court. I have always took it for granted, that no step should be taken towards a union, but with the knowledge and approbation, and even by the authority of civil powers; and indeed, if I am in the right, that nothing can be done to any purpose in this case but by throwing off the Pope's authority, as the first ftep to be made in order to it, it is impossible for any such attempt to be made by any power less than the king's. All therefore that has passed hitherto, stands clear of any just exception as to the civil magistrate; it is only a consultation, in order to find out a way, how a union might be made, if a fit occasion should hereafter be offered for the doing of it. Yet still I do not like to have my letters exposed in such a manner, though satisfied there is nothing to be excepted against in them, and I think 1 fhall be kind to the doctors themselves, to suspend, at least for a while, my farther troubling of them. I hope you will endeavour, by some or other of your III. your friends, to find out the meaning of this mo- APPEND. tion; from whom it came; how far it has gone; what was the occasion of it; and what is like to be the consequence of what the Abbè Du Bois says of my letters, and how they are received by him and the other ministers. I shall soon discover whether any notice has been taken of it to our ministry; and I should think if the Abbè spoke to your Lord about it, he would acquaint you with it. No. XII. Extract of a letter from Archbishop WAKE to I Feb. 24. 1718. DO not at all wonder that the Cardinals RoHAN and BISSI should do all they can to blacken the good Cardinal de NOAILLES, and in him the party of the Anti-Constitutionists, but especially the Sorbonne, their most weighty and learned adversaries: and I am sensible that such a complaint is not only the most proper to do this, but to put the court itself under some difficulties, which way soever it acts upon it. But I am still the more curious to learn, if it were possible, not only the proceedings of the ministry above board hereup. on, but their private thoughts and opinions about it. I am under no concern upon my own account, farther than that I would be unwilling to have my letters scanned by so many great men, which will scarcely bear the judgment of my very friends. You must do me the favour to get out of your doctors what will be most obliging to them, whether to continue to write to them, or to be silent for a while, till we see what will be the effect of this enquiry. In the mean time, it grows every day plainer what I said from the beginning, that no reformation can be made but by the authority, I 3 III. APPEND. thority, and with the concurrence, of the court; and that all we divines have to do, is to use our interest to gain them to it, and to have a plan ready to offer to them, if they should be prevailed upon to come to it. I am at present engaged in two or three other transactions of moment to the foreign Proteftants, which take up abundance of my time; God knows what will be the effect of it. Nevertheless, if I can any way help to promote this, though I am at present without any help, alone, in this project, I shall do my utmost, both to keep up my poor little intereft with the two doctors and their friends, and to concert proper methods with them about it. The surest way will be, to begin as well, and to go as far as we can, in settling a friendly correspondence one with another: to agree to own each other as true brethren, and members of the Catholic Christian church: to agree to communicate in every thing we can with one another (which, on their side, is very easy, there being nothing in our offices, in any degree, contrary to their own principles); and would they purge out of theirs what is contrary to ours, we might join in the public service with them, and yet leave one another in the free liberty of believing Transubstantiation or not, so long as we did not require any thing to be done by either in pursuance of that opinion. The Lutherans do this. very thing; many of them communicate not only in prayers, but the communion with us; and we never enquire whether they believe Consubstantiation, or even pay any worship to CHRIST as present with the elements, so long as their outward actions are the same with our own, and they give no offence to any with their opinions. P. S. Since this last accident, and the public noise of an union at Paris, I have spoken some III. thing more of it to my friends here, who, I begin APPEND. to hope, will fall in with it. I own a correspondence, but say not a title how far, or in what way, I have proceeded, more than that letters have passed, which can no longer be a secret. I have never shewn one of my own or the doctor's to any body. No. XIII. Extract of a letter from Archbishop WAKE to March 16. S. V. 1718. THANK YOU you for your account of what passed between Mons. Hop and you, relating to the project of an union: I doubt that gentleman will not be pleased with it; because, indeed, the Gallican church will never unite with any church that has not an orderly episcopacy in it. I am very sorry my poor letters are made so public. The next thing will be, that either the imprudence of our friends, or the malice of our enemies, will print them; and then I shall have censures enough for them, perhaps some reflections printed upon them, or answers made to them; but this shall not engage me in any defence of them," or in taking any farther notice of them. I beg you to keep those I have written to yourself from all view; for 1 have no copies of them, and I wrote them as I do my other ordinary letters, without any great thought or consideration, more than what my subject (as I was writing) led me in that inftant to. This is the liberty to be taken with a friend, where one is sure what he writes shall go no farther; but, for the same reason, will require the strictest suppression from any other I cannot yet guess what this turn means, nor how it will end: I wish your doctors could give you some farther light into it. view. 14 P. S. |