Note 385 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

Clarendon, Collier, and the high church writers in general, are very proud of the superiority they fancy the king to have obtained in a long argumentation held at Newcastle with Henderson, a Scots minister, on church authority and government. This was conducted in writing, and the papers afterwards published. They may be read in the King's Works, and in Collier, p. 842. It is more than insinuated that Henderson died of mortification at his defeat. He certainly had not the excuse of the philosopher who said he had no shame in yielding to the master of fifty legions. But those who take the trouble to read these papers, will probably not think one party so much the stronger as to shorten the other's days. They show that Charles held those extravagant tenets about the authority of the church and of the fathers, which are irreconcilable with protestantism in any country where it is not established, and are likely to drive it out where it is so.