gentlemen their due) they have saved their adversaries all the trouble in this point, and they have something else to do than to beat so common and trite an argument to trouble the world with any more libels, when they find so many made to their hands by the gentlemen themselves."[1]
It would be almost impossible to specify, much less to notice at length, all the productions of the parties engaged in this controversy. I must content myself, therefore, with directing attention to some of the more important.
In the year 1692 was printed anonymously and privately a work of considerable size, "The Unity of the Priesthood, &c." By the Nonjuror to whom I have already alluded, who lived at the time, the work is ascribed to Dr. Bisby. The writer commences by stating, that the appointment of a new Archbishop was the occasion of his undertaking: "Of the ill news you have sent me, none sits so close upon me as the news of a new Primate and new Bishops: the old ones being living, and neither canonically heard, nor judicially deprived: a project utterly dissonant to all primitive practice, to the ancient constitutions and canons of the Church: and which if not timely compromised, must necessarily beget and perhaps unavoidably propagate a lasting schism among us."[2]
An ancient MS. had been discovered in Oxford, containing a set of Canons, which it was thought
- ↑ Remarks on some late Sermons, &c. 28.
- ↑ Unity of Priesthood necessary to Unity of Communion in a Church. With Some Reflections on the Oxford MS. and the Preface annexed. Also a Collection of Canons, part of the said MS., faithfully transcribed into English from the Original, but concealed by Mr. Hotly and his Prefacer, 4to. 1692.
