Before his suspension, Archbishop Sancroft granted a commission to three of his suffragans to act in his name: and by them Burnet was consecrated to the Bishopric of Salisbury the 31st of May, 1689. The commission did not in any way recognize the new Sovereigns: but it is argued by Birch, "This was as much Archbishop Sancroft's own act, as if he himself had consecrated the new Bishop, and he authorized others to do what he seemed himself to think unlawful."[1] The following defence appears to me to meet the charge: "There was yet neither deprivation nor suspension; so that the Ecclesiastical unity was not hitherto dissolved betwixt those who were divided about the political state: and thence if a schism could have been prevented by means of this accommodation, with all the fatal consequences which thereupon have since followed, the good Archbishop (howsoever he might be blamed for it by some) thought it not unlawful for him thus far to acquiesce, it being providentially out of his power to act, as otherwise he would."[2] It has been argued that the Archbishop by this act admitted the authority of the government, by which the subsequent deprivations took place: and that consequently, if the authority was competent to nominate to a see, it was also competent to deprive.[3] But it appears to me that the extract from the Life of Kettlewell furnishes a sufficient reply to this objection. The cases were
- ↑ Birch's Life of Tillotson, 330.
- ↑ Kettlewell's Life, 135, 136. D'Oyley, i. 439. Le Neve, i. 213. Birch says that some of the Nonjurors complained afterwards of this commission, and that the Document was withdrawn by the Archbishop's order. It was, however, subsequently restored to the Archives at Lambeth. Birch's Tillotson, 330, 332.
- ↑ Marshall's Defence, 156.
