PARKER
689
PARKER
chaplain to archbishop Sheldon ; in 1670 he became archdeacon, and in 1G72 a prebendary of Canterbury, and had the livings of Ickhara and Chartham. When king James II contemplated the reunion of England with tlie general Church, with its head in the Koman pontiff, he looked among the English divines for per- sons who might be willing to assist in his designs, and, among other persons, he fixed upon Parker, wlio was made by him bishop of Oxford in January, 1G8G ; and when Hough was deprived of the presidencj' of Mag- dalen College, it was given to Parker. It is said that he was then inclined to popery. It is very reasonable, however, we think, to believe that these favors were really tlie price of his religion, which he did not scru- ple to offer up as a willing sacrifice to his ambition. In this new change Parker became one of the Romish mer- cenaries, prostituting his pen in defence of transubstan- tiation and the worship of saints and images. To this purpose he published a piece, Dec. 16, 1687 — though, according to the printer's style, in 1688 — entitled Rea- sons for abrogaiing the Test imposed upon all Members of Parliament, anno 1678, Oct. 30, etc.; first written for the author^s satisfaction, and noio published for the benefit of all others whom it may concern. The papists, it is certain, made sure of him as a proselyte, and one of them tells us that he even proposed, in council, whether it was not expedient that at least one college in Oxford should be allowed the Catholics, that they might not be forced to be at such charges by going beyond the seas to study. In the same spirit, having invited two pop- ish noblemen, with a third of the Church of England, to an entertainment, he drank the king's health, wish- ing a happy success to all his affairs; adding that the religion of the Protestants in England seemed to him to be in no better condition than that of Buddha was before it was taken, and that they were next to atheists who defended that faith. Nay, so notorious was his conduct, that the cooler heads among the Romanists condemned it as too hot and hasty. Bisliop Parker's authority in his own diocese Avas so very insignificant tliat when he assembled his clergy, and desired them to subscribe an *• Address of Thanks to the King for his Declaration of Liberty of Conscience," they re- jected it with such unanimity that he got but one clergyman to concur with him in it (Burnet's History of my Own Times, vol. ii). Bishop Parker encounter- ing contempt with all good men, trouble of mind threw him into a malady of which he died at Magdalen Col- lege, March 20, 1687. Sir James Jlackintosh (Miscel- laneous \Vo?-ks, ii, 156) says that Parker refused on his death-bed to declare himself a Roman Catholic. How- ever true or false this may be, it is certain he sent a " Discourse" to James, persuading him to embrace the Protestant religion, with a " Letter" to the same pur- pose, which was printed at London (1690, 4to). Bishop Parker's only work of anj' permanent reputation is en- titled De Rebus sui Temporis Commentarius, but it is disfigured by party virulence, and is in no respect trust- worthy. This treatise was not published till 1726, when it was given to the world by his son, Samuel Parker (2). A translation of it by the Rev. Thomas Newlin was published in 1727. Bishop Parker was a most inveterate opponent of Cartesianism. In his Disputu- tiones de Deo et divina providintia he contended in the scholastic spirit equally against the philosophy of Des Cartes and that of Hobbes, making no distinction be- tween the mechanical features of each, and not discern- ing that while the one was atheistic, the other was as strikingly theistic in its spirit and tendency. The ether publications of bishop Parker are : A n A ccount of tlie Government of the Christian Ghnrchfor the first s'ix Hundred Years, particuhvly showing, I. The apostolical Practice of diocesan and metropolitical Episcopacy. II. The Usurpation of patriarchal and papal A uthoi-ify. III. The War of Two Hundred Years between the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople for universal Supremacy (Lond. 1683, 8vo) : — Religion and Loyalty ; or a Demon-
vii.— X X
stration of the Power of the Chi'istian Church within it- self the supj-ejnacy of sovereign Power over it, the duty of passive Obedience, or non-resistance to it, exemplified out of the Records of the Church and the Empire from the beginning of Christianity to the end of the Reign of Julian (Lond. 1684, 8vo): — Religion and Loy ulty, the second 2)art; or the Histo)-y of the Concurrence of the impei-ial and ec- clesiastical Jurisdiction in the Government of the Church, from the beginning of the Reign of Jovian to the end of the Reign of Justinian (Lond. 1685, 8vo) : — History of his Own Time [translated], ivith an Account of his Con- version from Presbytery to Prelacy (Lond. 1728, 8vo) : — The yEra of the Church immediately after the Apostles (Tracts of Angl. Fathers, iii, 138). See Darling, Cyclop. Bibliogr. ii, s. v. ; Macaulav, Hist, of England, ii, 321 ; iii, 113 sq., 124-127; Perry, 7/ wC. Ch. of England, ii, 397, 448, 480, 502 ; Stoughton, Eccles. Hist, of England, i, 444 sq. ; ii, 109, 134 sq. ; Debury, Hist. Ch. of Eng- land, p. 73 sq. ; (Lond.) Gentleman's Magazine, Ixx, 7 sq. (J. H. W.)