him our Sovâ—reign Lord the King IS lawful and rightful King c. and so the word IS must necessarily hinder any Heirs or Successors forestalling the Market if they should presume before their time to come for our actual Allegiance however sworn to them to be paid in future time Our Law-Book of Oaths mentions a long Promissory Oath made voluntarily to Harry the 6th by 2 Arch-Bishops 16 Bishops 3 Dukes 5 Earls 2 Viscounts 14 Abbots 2 Priors and 7 Barons and but part of which I shall here set down viz. I A. B. knowledge you most High and Mighty and most Christian Prince King Henry 6. to be my most redoubted and rightwise by Succession born to Reign upon me and all your Liege People whereupon I voluntarily without Coercion promise and oblige me by the faith and truth that I owe to God and by the faith truth and ligeance that I owe to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord that I shall be without any variance true faithful humble and obeysant Subject and Liege man to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord c. and swear to endeavour to do all that may be to the weal and surety of your most Royal Person c. to the weal surety and preserving of the Person and benign Princess Margaret Queen my Sovereign Lady and of her High most Noble Estate She being your Wife and also the weal surety and honour of the Person of the right High and Mighty Prince Edward my right redoubted Lord the Prince your first begotten Son and of the Right High and Noble Estate and faithfully truly and obeysantly c. First my Allegiance to you my most redoubted Sovereign Lord during your life c. and if God of his infinite Power take you from this Transitory Life me bearing life in this World that I shall then take and accept my said redoubted Lord the Prince Edward your said first born Son for my Sovereign Lord and bear my true Faith and Ligeance to him as by nature born for my Sovereign Lord and after him to his Succession of his Body lawfully begotten c. and in default of his Succession c. unto any other Succession of your Body lawfully coming But the wisdom of any Nation making Laws and especially about Oaths as short as may be I account that those of Supremacy and Allegiance have much better that Multi-loquious one as I may call it provided for the security of our Allegiance to the King Regnant and afterward to his Heirs and Successors by plain and liquid words as far as Humane Prudence could provide for the same And because what is made by Humane Art is in danger of being by Humane Art eluded and for that we see that Nature it self hath been made a Term of Art a word that St. Paul thought plain enough when he said doth not Nature teach us that c. yet of which word a late Lawyer and Kinsman of the Great Grotius hath in his Book De Principiis juris Naturalis told us of seven significations and for that it is as easie for a captious versatil Wit to turn the word Heir or most words into as many or more the Oath of Allegiance was further with deep precaution made to exterminate all cavilling senses and calumnious interpretations and such as that of the haeres viventis by that Final Clause which Crowns that Oath and that which alone as I partly hinted before amounts to an Oath viz. And I do make this Recognition and Acknowledgment heartily willingly and truly upon THE TRVE FAITH OF A CHRISTIAN and after which it follows So help me God. That the Faith of a Christian alone amounts to an Oath I shall cite the opinion of Tuldenus the Regius Professor of Law at Lovain when writing De interpretatione Iuramenti he saith Affirmatio perfidem tunc demum jusjurandum est cum additum fuit Christianam Alciat in l. 41. c. De transact I conclude therefore that what Christian soever hath taken this Oath hath by Virtue of the words of The faith of a Christian obliged himself thereby as much as if he had said That Great Privilege of Birth-right belonging to the King's Heirs a Privilege so great that the despising of it as in the Case of Esau is applied in Scripture to mens prophaneness in despising their Inheritance of Bliss by Christianity I do as sincerely promise to defend according to my Oath and without any Fraud or Mental Reservation or the least cavilling capricious or calumnious interpretation as I value the great Privilege that Christianity hath ennobled Humane Nature with in being Heirs of God and joynt Heirs with Christ as St. Pauls words are and of being Heirs according to the Promise and may all the Divine Promises be so Yea and Amen to me and interpreted with not only a plain but a full and fair interpretation and so likewise the very Oath of God mentioned in the Epistle to the Hebrews As I do plainly and fully and fairly and with the exuberant honesty and simplicity enjoyn'd by the Christian Religion and so much transcending the Bona fides of the Heathen Morality perform my Promissory Oath of Allegiance to the King and his Heirs and Successors I shall in the last place take notice of what I have not without horror observed namely that some disloyal Authors have presumed in Print to pretend the lawfulness of Exclusion of Heirs and Successors on the account of their Religion by colour of the punishment of Idolaters according to the Iudicial Law and as to which it will be sufficient here to say that that Law was given only to the Iewish Nation and that it did never bind any else or doth and that the Divine Law natural and positive bind us to the Observation of our Oaths and that Christianity doth not found Dominion in Grace and that the Patriarchs and Ioshua and the Princes of the People of Israel made Leagues with Idolaters and on both sides there was mutual Faith confirmed with solemn Oaths and that an Oath Promissory to pay Allegiance to the Heirs of the Crown at the time of its Descent is much more lawful And I might urge that the Iewish Kings tho often idolatrous yet as the Lord 's Annointed had De jure de facto Obedience payed them without respect to their Religion or Irreligion And by Virtue of the Moral Offices of honouring all men and of the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians I shall without offending the Church I hold External Communion with venture to go as far in my Measures of Charity as some of its great Ornaments Dr. Hammond and Bishop Taylor and likewise Bishop Gunning have done in freeing many Roman Catholicks from the guilt of Formal Idolatry Innumerable Acts of Idolatry may be charged on many Persons of that Communion and particularly on all such as do worship the Cross or Saints and Angels Culâ—â— latriae and on such as in the Eucharist determine the
and Principles Religionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is Irreligionary and against Nature The words of exterminating and recalling are often used by Cicero as signifying the contrary and when Mr. Coleman's Letters shewed such an imperious design in him for the Revocation of Popery that had been driven away and banished or exterminated hence by so many Acts of Parliament and even for the Extermination of Heresie out of the North as occasioned such apprehensions in the Government of what was intended by other innocent and modest Papists that made the gentlest of Princes in a Speech in the Oxford Parliament say and if it be practicable the ridding our selves quite of all of that Party that have any considerable Authority c. none need wonder at the past warmth of Subjects expressed against the Recalling of the Exterminated Papal Power nor yet at the warmth of their Zeal against the Principles of the Iesuites propagating an Internal Power here when they had been exterminated from Rome it self and when the Lord Chancellors Speech to both Houses had mentioned the Proceedings against Protestants in Foreign Parts to look as if they were intended to make way for a general Extirpation They are poor Judges of things who think that Doctrines of Religion cannot be said to be exterminated out of Kingdoms and their Laws without the Banishment of the Persons professing them Who accounts not Protestancy sufficiently exterminated from being the State-Religion in Italy and yet Sandies his Europae speculum tells us That there were 40000 professed Protestants there Is not Iudaism sufficiently Exterminated from being the Religion at Rome tho thousands of professed Iews are there tolerated 'T is the publick approbation of Tenets or Doctrines and not any forbearance or indulgence to persons who prosess them that gives Doctrines a place within the Religion of a State for to make any State approve of a Doctrine contrary to what it hath Established is a Contradiction But the truth is the famous Nation of the Iews formerly Heavens peculiar People on Earth having not been more generally guilty of Idolatry during their prosperity than of Superstition during their Captivity and Oppression and Extermination from their Country hath taught the World this great truth that the readiest way to propagate Superstition and Error is by the Exterminium and Banishment of Persons Whatever Church any men call their Mother if the Magistrate finds them to own the Interest of their Country as their Mother and to honour their true Political Father they cannot wish their days more long in the Land than I shall do I remember under the Vsurpation there passed an Act of Parliament as 't was called for the banishment of that famous Boute-feu Iohn Lilburn and under the Penalty of the Vltimum supplicium and he shortly after returning to England and being tried in London where he was universally known and the only thing issuable before the Iurors being whether he was the same John Lilburn those good men and true thought him so much transubstantiated as to bring him in not guilty and when ever I find any Papist not only willing to change the Name Papist for Catholick but the thing Papistry for the Principles of the Church of Rome under its first good Bishops and before Popes beyond a Patriarchal Power aspired to be Universal Bishops and Universal Kings and that even a Iesuite instead of the Rule of Iesuita est omnis homo hath alter'd his Morals and Principles pursuant to the Pope's said Decree so far as truly to say Ego non sum ego I shall not intermeddle in awakening Penal Laws to touch either his life or liberty Nor can any Presbyterians with justice reflect on the Zeal of any for the Continuance of the Laws for the Extermination of Presbytery when they shall reflect on the Royal Family having been by their means as is set forth in this Discourse exterminated out of the Realm into Foreign Popish Countries and of which they might easily have seen the ill effects if their understandings had not been very scandalously dull But there is another happy Extermination that I have in this Discourse from Natural Causes predicted to my Country and that is of the fears and jealousies that have been so prevalent during our late fermentation concerning which the Reader will shortly find himself referred to in many Pages in this Discourse and to have directed him to all of that Nature would have made the Index a Book I have in this Discourse designing to eradicate the fears of Popery out of the Minds of timid Protestants by the most rational perswasions I could shewed somewhat of Complaisance in sometimes humouring their Suppositions of things never likely to come to pass I have accorded with them in the possibility of the Event of Arch-Bishop Vsher's Famous Prophecy tho I account the same as remote from likelihood as any one could with it and do believe that if that Great and Learned Man could have foreseen the mischief that Prophecy hath occasioned by making so many of the Kings good Subjects disquieted thereby and which by at once Chilling their Hearts and heating their Heads hath rendered them less qualified for a chearful and steady discharge of their respective Duties he would have consulted privately with many other Learned and Pious Divines about the intrinsick weight of the matter revealed to him before he had exposed it to the World for that in the days when God spake by the Prophets yet even then the Spirits of the Prophets were always subject to the Prophets and there is no Fire in the World so bad a Master as the Fire of Prophecy It is observable that there hath scarce since this Prophecy been a Conjuncture of time wherein men uneasie to themselves would make the Government so but this Prophecy hath been reprinted in it and cryed about and few Enthusiasts but are as perfect in it as a Sea-man in his Compass The substance of it was to foretel Persecution that should happen in England from the Papists in the way of a sudden Massacre and that the Pope should be the Contriver of it and that if the King were restored it might be a little longer deferred A person less learned than that Great Prelate could easily give an Account of the past Out-rages of Massacres that have been perpetrated by Papists and of the tendency of the Iesuites Principles to the very legitimating of Future ones but the most Pious and Learned Man in the World ought with the greatest Caution imaginable to pretend to Divine Revelation of Future Contingencies in a matter both so unlikely and so odious as this and which might probably occasion so much Odium to so many innocent Papists and so much needless trouble to so many timid Protestants That Pious and Great Prelate did not I believe foresee that at the time when his Prophecy should dart its most fearful influence St. Peter's Chair would be filled
part of its Patrimony Queen Elizabeth alienated to secure the Protestant Religion ib. The fears of Popery further Censured p. 198. Ridly and Latimer Prophesied at the Stake that Protestancy would never be extinguished in England p. 198. Roger Holland prophesied at the Stake at Smithfield that he should be the last that should there suffer Martyrdom ib. Observations on the Natural Prophesying of dying men and its effects p. 199. The Vanity of Mens troubling the World by Suppositions ib. and p. 200. 'T is a degree of madness to trouble it by putting wanton impossible cases p. 200. The Author without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only by the light of reason presageth that the excessive fear of Popery as weâ—l as its danger will here be exterminated ib. The justice of the Claim of King Charles the first to the Title of Martyr asserted p. 201 202 203. The Author judgeth that some vile Nominal Protestants by the publication of many Seditious Pamphlets have given the Government a just Alarm of their designs against it p. 203. Of Papists and Protestants being Antagonists in Shamms p. 204. Mr. Nye cited for representing the Dissenters acted by the Jesuites in thinking it unlawful to hear the Sermons of the Divines of the Church of England p. 204. False Witnesses among the Jews allowed against false Prophets p. 205. The Earl of Anglesy's Courage and Iustice asserted in the professing in the House of Lords his disbelief of such an Irish Plot as was sworn by the Witnesses tho the belief of the reallity of such a Plot had obtained the Vote of every one else in both Houses ib. Above 2000 Irish Papists in the Barony of Enishoan demean'd themselves civilly to the English during the whole Course of the Rebellion ib. Several eminent ingenious Papists in England and Foreign parts celebrated for their avowed Candour to Protestants p. 206 207 208 c. D' Ossat's acquainting the Pope That if his Holyness were King of France he would show the same kindness to the Huguenots that Harry the 4th did p. 208. Cromwel being necessitated to keep the Interest of the Kingdom divided was likewise necessitated to keep up all Religions according to the Politicks of Julian p. 211. Of the Papists calling King James Julian ib. The Author inveigheth against the Calumny of any Protestants who call any one Apostate for the alteration of his Iudgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants ib. The Author's Reason why 't is foolish to fear that any Rightful Prince of the Roman Catholick perswasion that can come here will follow the Politicks of Julian ib. 'T is shewn that any Protestant Vsurper here must act à la Julian ib. The Vsurper Cromwel shewn to be a Fautor of Priests and Jesuites by the Attestations of Mr. Prynn and the Lord Hollis p. 212 213. The danger of Popery that would have ensued Lambert's Vsurpation p. 213 214. How true soever any Vsurpers Religion is he must be false to the Interest of the Kingdom p. 214. Observed that the Kings long Parliament by the Act for the Test did enjoyn the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy to be taken ib. Those Oaths lay on the Takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors ib. Mr. Prynn's Book called Concordia discors printed Anno 1659 to prove the Obligation by those Oâ—hs to the King's Heirs and Successors commended ib. The Author mentions the Reasons that induced him to write Casuistically concerning such Obligation and promiseth to send that his Writing to his Lordship ib. The Author judgeth that he ought not to be severe to any Papist before he hath a Moral certainty of such Papists having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Pâ—pery that is unmoral or inhumane ib. The Author observes that few or no Writers of the Church of Rome have lately thought fit by their Pens to assert the Inheritable Right of Princes without respect to any Religionary Tenets they may hold p. 215. The Author thinks that for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Roman Catholick Prince of his Property and Right of Succession when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope employ their Pens for the preservation of such his property and right without respect to to any Religionary Tenets he may hold is like drawing against a naked man ib. D' Ossat affirms That the Pope and the whole Court of Rome hold it lawful to deprive a Prince of any Country to preserve it from Heresie ib. An Animadversion on a late Pamphlet concerning the Succession ib. Reflections on the House of Commons Proceedings in the Exclusion Bill ib. and p. 216. The Author gives an explanatory account of the tempus acceptabile he in p. 25 mentions p. 216. His Majesty's constant contending for the Protestant Faith celebrated and likewise his Iustice in preserving the property of the Succession in the Legal Course by all his Messages to the Parliament p. 217. The unhappy State of that Prince who shall for fear of the Populace do any Act of the Iustice whereof he doubts and much more of the injustice whereof he is fully convinced p. 217. at large The Caution to the Angel of the Church of Philadelphia applied to such a Prince viz. Hold fast that which thou hast that no man take away thy Crown ib. at large 'T is not only Popery but Atheism in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion p. 218. King James disavowed the Act of his Son-in Laws accepting the Title of King of Bohemia ib. An Observation that in the Common-Prayer in King Charles the 1 sts time relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runneth for Frederick Prince Palatâ—ine Elector of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife ib. The Author observes that in the Assembly's Directory the Lady Elizabeth is styled Queen of Bohemia p. 219. An Account of the Governments avowed sence in King James's time that any of the Princes of England ought not by becoming Roman Catholick to be prejudiced in their Right of Succession to the Crown ib. The same sense of the Government in the time of King Charles the 1 st ib. The Parliament during the Civil War projected not any prejudice to the right of Succession on the account of any Religionary Tenets p. 220. Mention of somewhat more to confirm the claim of King Charles the 1 st to the Title of Martyr beside his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue ib. An account of the Protestation of the Nonconforming Ministers in the year 1605 relating to the King's Supremacy wherein they assert the Royal Authority inseparably fixt to the true Line whatever Religion any Prince thereof may profess p. 221. The Author peâ—stringeth the Protestant would be 's and new Statists of the Age that would for Religionary Tenets barr any of the
I think that an eximious man impeacht in Parliament and there acquitted will need no Herald to proclaim his worth nor his deserving to be restored in integrum to the Royal Protection and Favour when that his own works have praised him in the gates that is in the Jurisdiction where they were so strictly scann'd My Lord if any could prove your Lordship to be a Papist he need not call that accumulative Treason in you nor need he go about by torturing the Law to make it confess many Felonies to be one Treason many Rapes to be one false coming But Popery in you would be plain down-right palpable and rank Treason by vertue of the Statute of 23 of Elizabeth Ch. 1. which makes it High Treason for any person in the Dominions of the Crown of England to be withdrawn from the Religion then established to the Romish Religion That your Lordship hath been bred a Protestant and been so as it were ex traduce there needs no other evidence then the contents of this Letter and that you have not been withdrawn to the Romish Religion you have declared by the Series of your actings against it that shew your Mind beyond the power of words and 't is by the help of that great Wisdom God has given you that our English World expects that a way may be found how to make it more clearly appear to the eye of the Law when any others have been or are withdrawn to the Romish Religion a thing perhaps at present of somewhat difficult proof For without supposing that the Pope can or will give them dispensations to take all Oaths and Tests that can be devised doth not a reserving some fantastic sense to themselves make nonsense of all Oaths and that one word Equivocation make them proof against all other words Doth not that with them sanctify or at least justify all other words they can use May they not on these terms safely swear there is neither God nor Man nor Hell nor Devil that is meaning not in a Mathematical point or in Vtopia and that they saw not such a Man such a day that is not with the eyes of a Whale And have not the late dying Speeches of some of these Imposters and particularly Father Irelands shewn us that in the points of mental reservation and equivocation they persevere in the impudent owning of that which would unhinge the World and turn humane Society into a dissolute multitude And do we not believe many to be Papists who we know have taken the Oaths and Tests Hath not a Papist some Years since writ of the lawfulness of the taking of the Oath of Supremacy I speak not this my Lord to derogate from the Wisdom of our Ancestors that appointed these discriminations nations and do think that when we have used all the lawful means we can to know who among us are Papists as certainly as we do what is Popery and to keep Papists from hurting us and themselves we ought to acquiesce in the Results of the Providence of God. But what all those means are tho I know not yet I am apt to believe that your Lordships comprehensive knowledg of men and things and of the true interest of the Kingdom hath qualified you to tell your Royal Master and His Houses of Parliament nor do I believe that the difficulty of either finding out such means and making practicable things be practised will blunt but rather whet the edg of your Industry in this case as being of Quintilians mind who Judged that there was Turpitude in despairing of any thing that could be done I think his words are Turpiter desperatur quicquid fieri potest â—Tis certainly the interest of the King and Kingdom that the numbers of the Papists here and especially of those withdrawn from Protestancy to the Church of Rome should be known in the case of which Apostates tho it be impossible without seizing on the Papers and Archives of one certain Priest to see the Original Acts of their Recantation of Protestancy yet is it most certain and on all hands confessedly true that Eminent Overt-Acts of abhorrency of Protestantisme are alwayes required at the admitting one who was of that Religion into the bosome of the Roman Catholic Church which any one will be convinced of who reads the Letter of Cardinal D'Ossat to Villeroy of the 20 th of Octob. 1603. from Rome where he gives his Opinion against the Queen of England being made Godmother at the Baptism of Madam That Cardinal who had incomparable skill in the Canon Law and the knowledg of all the Customs of the Papal See and who had lived at Rome above 20 Years saith in that Letter I account it my duty to write to you freely that that cannot be done without very great Scandal to good Catholicks nor without the extream displeasure and offence of the Pope You presuppose that the Queen of England is a Catholic but Here we know the contrary tho some believe that she is not of the worser sort of Heretics and that she has some inclination to the Catholic Religion And I will tell you moreover that tho she were in her heart of the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Religion as much as the Pope himself so it is that she having been bred up in Heresie and outwardly persisting in it as she doth she cannot according to the Canons be held for a Catholic in public acts of Religion till she hath first both viva voce and by writing under her hand abjured all Heresie and made profession of the Catholic Faith. Nor was it ever known that in the case of any Protestants Apostacy to the Church of Rome any Pope ever dispensed with those Canons and therefore it may well hence be inferr'd That if evidence just so much as the Law requires as to such Apostacy be given that no superpondium or proof of overt-acts more then necessary ought to be expected for that overt Acts almost impossible to be proved may yet necessarily be presumed but this by the way And therefore now further my Lord if fas est ab hoste doceri be adviseable in the case as strict Circumstances may be required in the conversion of Papists to our Church as are in the withdrawing of any from our Church to theirs Indeed if I were a Member of Parliament and any one there should be so happy as to invent a way and propound it whereby the present Lay-Papists in England might let us have a Moral Certainty that they neither consented to nor concealed the late Plot and likewise that they did really detest all those desperate Popish Principles that are fundamentally destructive to the Safety of the King and Kingdom and that they would harbour no Priests born in the Kings Dominions nor send any of their Children to be bred in Forrain Seminaries and on the contrary that on occasion they would discover to a Magistrate any such Priest or one who sent his Children to such Seminary
very gravely that when once he was vehement in prayer before a Crucifix at Naples he heard this voice bene de me scripsisti Thoma none likewise in that age laught at the Pope for saying bene de me scripsisti Moses The world then brought no quo warranto against the Popes Charter derived thus in his Canon Law from Moses nor that gloss on it which says Since the Earth is seven times bigger then the Moon and the Sun eight times bigger then the Earth the Papal Power must Consequently be fifty seven times bigger then the Regal dignity Our English World will no more allow of the logical Consequence of that doughty argument of Bellarmine Lib. 1. de Pont. ca. 2. sect denique sect sed There is one King among Bees therefore there ought to be one Commander chief Teacher and visible Monarch in the Vniversal Church then they would allow that argument of the Bees to give our neighbour Monarch a right to an Vniversal Temporal Monarchy The Popes vociferating of that Text Behold two Swords and while their adherents held so many Thousands in their hands might then pass muster for as good an argument of his right to Spiritual and Civil power as the words that the Lillies spin not did for the Salic Law with the help of another Army then one of Commentators The Renewall of the Popes Charter by Pasce oves was not then disallowed either for the fleecing of many Millions of Christians or killing some hundreds of thousands in the German Empire according to what has been observed by the famous Erastus in his Theses p. 72. propter excommunicatos Imperatores Reges aliquot Centena millia hominum trucidata sunt in imperio Germanico And perhaps the Popes plea for making the World a great Slaughter-house might then be admitted by the authority of the Text Arise Peter kill and eat Conculcabis super aspidem basilicum then went for a claim of Divine Right to make the head of the World to be trampled on by the foot of a bald-pated Fryar But if the Papacy the light that was in the World then was darkness as the Scripture Expression is How great was that darkness And as the Popes continued art was then to Conceal Nature so 't was not then held tanti for art in others to be Curious in following Nature when an Opinion was imbibed that the Pope could change the very Nature of things according to that saying I have been shewn in the Canon Law glo in C. proposuit de Conc. praeb c. 5. de trans◠ep Papa mutare potest rerum substantialia de Iustitia injustitiam facere mutando Iura corrigendo adeóque quadrata aequare rotundis et rotundis quadrata And for my part I should not have repined at the Popes assuming to himself the honour of the light that rules by day if he could have illuminated the World with the demonstration of the quadrature of the Circle which that gloss pretends to a great Knowable thing as Aristotle said tho not known and which secret all the penetrating Mathematicians from Archimedes down to Mr. Hobbs have wooed with very great passion and could not enjoy But during the Egyptian plague of darkness that many Ages then lay under our famous Countreyman Wicliff alarm'd the Lethargic World and he assail'd several gross Errors of Popery with its own weapons of Metaphysics and School Divinity and by means of the noise his Two hundred Volumes made in the World he dispers'd a great terror in that dark Age and as one saith Sir Iohn Old-Castle Lord Cobham and the Lollards being awaken'd out of their first sleep were desirous to rise before it was day and before the appointed time was Come for the Reforming the abuses in the Church and between that time and morning most men fell asleep again as fast as ever but yet long before the dawn of the Reformation the doctrine of Wicliffe had made such a fermentation in our English World that in the Year of our Lord 1422 that great States-man Chichley Archbishop of Canterbury in a Letter to Pope Martine the Fifth Complain'd That there were then so many here in England infected with the heresies of Wicliff and Husse that without force of an Army they could not be supprest Whereupon the Pope sent two Cardinals to the Arch-Bishop to Cause a Tenth to be gather'd of all Spiritual and Religious men and the money to be Laid in the Chamber Apostolic and if that were not sufficient the residue to be made up of Chalices Candlestics and other implements of the Church as the Acts and Monuments Attest And it is not unknown that long before viz. in Harry the Fifth's time Chichley foreseeing that a Storm was coming from the Commons on Church-Lands diverted it by engaging England in its darling popular War with France and caus'd the Clergy to contribute very liberally to it But that fermentation that Chichley said could not in the Year 1422 be checkt in peoples Minds otherwise then as aforesaid soon out-grew the power of any Army to allay for in less than Thirty years afterward the Invention of Printing came into the World by which one man could transmit more notices of things in a Day then another could by writing in a Year and which did as much out-do the publication of notions by the Goosquill as the invention of Gun-powder did the killing Force of the gray-goose-wing and which did as it were revive the old Miracle of the Gift of Tongues and Cloven too I may Call them for their being divided from the Sentiments of the Papal Holy Church and made Learning begin to fly like lightning through the World to the Controuling and detecting of the Popes Excommunicating Thunder and which shew'd the World its true face in the stream of time and shew'd the greet Fisherman of Rome dancing in the Nett and which was the true speaking Trumpet whereby a single Author could preach to the diocess of the World. And that great birth of Fate the taking of Constantinople within three years after the Invention of Printing occasioning the World's acquiring the knowledge in the West that it lost in the East and dispersing the Learned Greeks Theodore Gaza Iohn Lascaris Manuel Chrysaloras and many others to teach the Greek Tongue where they went the Press was thereby furnished with Glad tidings for the Curious World and Erasmus and many learned Papists did soon imbibe the knowledge of that learned Language and he complained in a Letter to the Archbishop of Mentz That the Friars would fain have made it Heresy to speak Greek So pleasant was it then to consider that that barbarous Generation instead of knowing Heresy to be Greek voted Greek to be Heresy and that they who had murdered so many thousands for being Heretics knew not what the very word in its original language imported The Sagacity of Erasmus could not then but easily see through the Cobwebs of the School-Divines totam Theologiam a
of Experiments of Taxes were tryed on his Subjects who payed him toward his charge of the War with France Wool and Grain as not having Mony enough to supply him wholly therewith and when as it is said in Cotton's Collections A long Bill was brought in by the Commons against the Usurpation of the Pope as being the Cause of All the Plagues Murrains Famine and Poverty of the Realm so as thereby was not left the third Person or Commodities within the Realm as lately were and the Commons did desire that it might be enacted That no Mony might be carried forth of the Realm by Letters of Lombardy or otherwise on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment But the Pope knew it seems there was mony to be had out of England though the Commons grudged it him and that a complaint of the Commons of the decay of Trade was no proof of it but rather in his case an indication of the contrary for that 't is Proverbial with Rich Men when they have no mind to part with their mony to say they have none and it appears out of a balance of Trade on Record in the Exchequer that in the 28 th year of Edward the Third the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8 d. This however shews sufficiently the Indignation of a Popish House of Commons at the Pope and his Lombard-street Bankers who convey'd his mony for him hence by Bills of Exchange and if our late Parliaments have not thought fit to comply with the demands for satisfaction of Protestant Bankers there much less will future ones favour any of the Popes Lombards That the Pope formerly had as much mony here from the publick as the King we may well believe possible since 't is generally held that Wolsey's Revenue equalled Harry the Eighth's Matthew Paris tells us Anno 1240 Misit Papa Pater noster sanctus quendam exactorem in Angliam Petrum Rubeum qui excogitata muscipulatione infinitam pecuniam a miseris Anglis edoctus erat emungere i. e. Our holy Father the Pope sent an exactor Peter Rubeus into England who with a kind of Mouse-trap trick â—â—ped the poor English of infinite Sums of Money And the expression of Wiping the English of infinite Sums of Mony was in fashion among all eminent later Writers of ours against the Papal Usurpation and 't is particularly used by Parker in his Antiq. Britan. where he saith Praeterea indulgentiarum dispensationum similiumque fraudum immensâ copiâ— infinitis pecuniis Anglos emunxerunt Nothing less then infinity of Treasure out of one Island could supply the great exacter of Rome who it seems resembled him that Cicero brands by saying infinitum genus invenerat ad innumerabilem pecuniam Corripiendam But there is now no catching a Nation in Mouse-traps As the Pope has never thought it worth his while to send Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countreys to spunge Mony out of them which he knows that great spendor called War that so generally infests them makes them have none to spare for the Popes use and Curia Romana non vult ovem sine lana so will the future vast charge too likely to be for ever incumbent on England and other parts of the World in providing and maintaining Capital Ships effectually provide against the profusion of any on the Projector of Religion at Rome and against Romes being to us as Matthew Paris called it of old barathrum proventuum And any who considers that his Majesty hath not without difficulty obtain'd Supplies of Mony from late Parliaments and that they have been all appropriated to certain publick uses may well give the Pope City-security that he shall have no Mony from England and no Man I think now supposeth that any thing that time can cause can make the Pope get much Mony out of the Exchequer of England but one who as Charoâ— says was born in a Bottle and never saw the World but out of a little hole But if according to the Calculations that have been by some made the currant Coin of the Nation doth not now exceed Six Millions and the publick Revenue in times of Peace has amounted to somewhat near one Third of that and if the Pope should be allow'd here to have a spiritual income equal to the King 's and the restored Abbots and Monks and the other Clergy be allow'd another Third for so the accounts of their proportion were totted by some Critical Calculators the whole Laity would be nichil'd as the Exchequer word is King Edward the First as the Antiq. Britan. mention sent some of his Courtiers to treat with the Clergy about the Quota of their supplying him viz Misit ex aula suâ Nuntios qui suo nomine agerent cum clero quoniam eorum tranquillitas Major fructus atque reditus annui tunc essent longe uberiores quam populi ut ad Regem in his bellicis angustiis adjuvandum se ostenderent promptiores And it appears out of Cotton's Collections That in the fourth Year of Richard the Second The Clergy confess'd they had a Third part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a Third part of the Taxes But in those ancient times of Popery beside the Clergies share in the Ballance of Land it might be justly added to the Inventory of their Wealth That they generally engrossed the highest and chiefest Offices in the Kingdom and that from the Office of Lord High Chancellor to that of the very Clerks in Chancery and other Clerks places whence to this day the officiating Registers of Courts are called Clerici or Clerks whereby they caught in a manner the whole Kingdom in a Purse-net 'T is therefore no wonder that the great affluence of the Riches of the Clergy drew to them that Popular esteem that as the Antiquaries observe the English word Sir was affixed to the Christian Names of Clergy-men from King Iohn's time down to the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and which was also express'd in Latine by the word Dominus as for example in the witnessing of a Deed Testibus Domino Willielmo de Massy persona de Bowden Matheo Hale c. And of the people calling their Parish Priests by the name of Sir William Massy and the like as in ordinary Communication we call Knights we have the instance of the first Christian on whom here for his Religion incineration was practised viz. Sir William Sautre Parish Priest of the Church of St. Scythe c. in London in Henry the Fourths time for so he is Styled in the Acts and Monuments Bishop Sanderson who in his profession of Divinity was greater then any praise was likewise so accurate an observer of the weight of what he affirmed in the Pulpit though it was not of a point of Theology that every thing he there said has a Title to be regarded And he in his Sermons in fol. ad
of Ceremonies among the Iews as would have made it forgot that it was ever made for man. The thinking sort of men found that tho the Principles of those Divines did not like the Jesuits make Calumny no mortal Sin that yet as the Adherents to Presbytery did calumniate the Constitution of the Church of England for bordring on Popery and the Royal Martyr for being a Fautor to it so they did by their Censorious tempers transfuse such an acid humour among the people that very much loosned the Nerves of the English good nature and distorted the English hospitality and therefore 't is but by a natural instinct that that old Pharisaical Leven is now so nauseous that probably any one suspected of an inclination to replant the old Presbytery here and its Arbitrary Power to excommunicate would too be staked down to a narrower tedder in Conversation and be it as it were excommunicated from Gentlemens Company as much as Make-bates or common Informers upon Penal Statutes The people heretofore found out that as Popery endangers men by the Priests not intending to make the Sacrament of the Eucharist when he administers it So that these as I said intended it should not be at all administred but to their own Sect and that the gesture of sitting at the Communion that they invited men to and thereby to their being rescued from the Popish Posture of Kneeling was but a sort of Sham in its way for that kneeling was the gesture used in the ancient times of the Church and the first that was ever observ'd to sit then was the Pope to express his State. The observing sort of Men then judged that as Sibthorpe and Manwaring had been exploded for going beyond their Credentials from Heaven as God's Ambassadors in straining the Prerogative of Princes these deserv'd to be so too for scruing the Power of Parliaments above Law and for thrusting down the King into the Class of The Three Estates and that as Sibthorpe was exposed to severe Animadversions from the Age for his Sermon of Apostolic Obedience shewing the Duty of Subjects to pay Tribute and Taxes to their Princes c. And p. 21. of that Sermon applying the words of Curse ye Meroz yea curse them bitterly c. to the promoting his illegal purpose they deserved to be censur'd for going on too with the Alarm of Curse ye Meroz thousands of times over when the Subjects were slack in paying Tribute to one another to dethrone their Prince They saw that those Divines in trying to salve the Phaenomena of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Covenant that they had taken were in the Course of their Theology continually put to it to deliberate of Rebellion and that their very deliberation of it was ipso facto one and a thing that included the horror of a mans deliberating to kill his Father and 't was but natural for the people representative and diffusive to fancy it lawful for them silently to resume the power given to those Church-men and abused by them who were always in the Pulpit and Press lowdly trumpeting forth the Iesuitical Notion of the lawfulness of the peoples resuming the Power given to Kings and as I shall never fear that the King of Spain will ever be able to take the World in a Ginne by Campanellas advise to him in Chap. 5. of the Spanish Monarchy to employ Divines to set up the Roar of unus Pastor and unum Ovile every where for the Pope so neither shall I that mens vociferating the Clause in the Covenant viz. That the Lord may be One and his Name One and in the three Kingdoms will ever again be able to embroyl them In short any one who shall consider that in Scotland Presbytery's former Kingdom of Darkness the people have been so of late illuminated as to find the way to be Latitudinarians need never have any fears and jealousies of that Governments jus Divinum again Marching hither In the first Session of the second Parliament of this King at Edenburgh November the 16th 1669. There passed an Act wherein 't was declared That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical within this his Kingdom and that by vertue thereof the ordering and disposal of the external Government and Policy of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an Inherent Right to the Crown and that his Majesty and his Successors may settle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administration of the External Government of the Church and the Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical meeting and matters to be proposed and determined therein as they in their Royal Wisdom shall think fit c. And his Majesty with Advise and Consent aforesaid doth rescind and annual all Laws Acts and Clauses thereof and all Customs and Constitutions Civil or Ecclesiastick which are contrary to or inconsistent with his Majesties Supremacy as it is here asserted and declares the same void and null in all times coming This Act of Parliament is the more observable for that it declared the extent of the Regal Power in Ecclesiasticks after that in the Year 1663 An Act passed there for a National Synod under the Government of Bishops and for that Presbytery which was before like Hame the only body in Nature that doth not content it self to take in any other body but would either overcome and turn another body into it self as by victory or it self to dye and go out was then grown so amenable to the Course of Nature in all other bodies of which one is a glue to another that not satisfied with its own former consistence it did as suddenly and easily and quietly receive in the body of Episcopacy as I may say as Air takes in light and as readily as Metals themselves receive in strong waters and then it was that Episcopacy which in the Forms of Church Government seems by its weight as Gold among Metals and indeed all bodies to be the most close and solid did there greedily drink in the Quicksilver of Presbytery But tho Presbytery then was and now is considerable in the Internal part of the Government of the Church of Scotland and is likely so to be till Christ's second coming humanly speaking with a non obstante to any thing that time can cause and will be preserved in perpetuity by the means of what my Lord Bacon calls the drowning of Metals namely when the baser Metal is incorporated with the more rich as Silver with Gold yet so willing were they in Scotland to give to Caesar the real Supremacy that was Caesars that knowing the Protestant Religion can be no more there destroyed under any external form of Church Polity then as I said Gold can be destroyed in Nature they thought it more prudent to trust the Crown with a Power of melting down that on emergent occasions and altering the Superscription of its
ever errors they fell into as I should be if I heard any Principal speak unkindly of his Second who contending for him in loco lubrico or fencing on the Ice did slip and shall be as apt as any to wish and hope that now such have consulted with their Country as the Agonothetae and know their opinions better then formerly that they will take other measures and especially when they see the present State of Christendom importuning us to be quiet more then formerly and thus in the old Agnonistic Games many of the lapsi athletae came to be Crown'd The Rule in those Games was that the Agonists were to make three Attaques on each other and he that did slip or go back in the first and second if yet he overcame in the third On-set was lawfully Crown'd and good luck say I have they with their honour who having an opportunity of a third Assault against Popery shall out-do not only others but themselves and I have the Charity to believe that what the great Athletae did in the Exclusion Bill was thought lawful by them and that they thought therein they did not transilire metas And 't is but with Justice that the generality of the People of England seem as Agonothetae to have judged of the temper of our Prince in this Religionary Certamen and I believe whatever time can cause that yet among all composed and sedate Minds his Majesties deportment in the late Conjuncture will never happen to be forgot and particularly his wrestling with his Parliaments as I may say by several Gracious Offers and Messages relating to the security of the Protestant Religion and to the making of English Men everlasting Comprehensors of the same He notified it to them by the Lord Chancellor on March the 11th 78. That this is the time to secure Religion at home and strengthen it from abroad by strengthening the Interests of all the Protestants in Europe c. The results of this Council seem to be decisive of the fate of this Kingdom c. And I must confess I wish that tempus acceptabile as I call'd it before had been accepted of that great Critical Moment of time when the curious needed no intelligence from that Oracular States-man of the measures taken abroad to extirpate Protestancy and when its Enemies in some Countries thought they had the life of that Religion as sure within their gripe as he had that of the Bird when out-braving the Oracle he ask'd if the Bird in the hand were dead or alive and when all his Majesties real acceptable offers were thus reiterated to all the noble Contenders and offered like the water of life to prevent their fainting in their Race and that without Money and without Price And because his Majesties Title hath appear'd as due to his Agonists Crown as to his Inheritable Royal one for having in the several periods of his life at home and abroad contended so earnestly for the Protestant Faith and purchased an immunity from Envy it self and that according to the right of that Law in the Code that restrains the obtaining of Immunities only to such a one who hath striven per omnem aetatem cum coaevis and hath to the Athlotletae given proof of his valour from his youth and who hath at least in tribus agonibus been Conqueror I think the rather that a Crown of Iustice is laid up for him both in time and in eternity for his preserving the property of his Line in some of those his earnest Messages aforesaid and for that he did not by the infringing the Legal Rights of that as I may say transilire lineas or by doing any thing of the Justice whereof he doubted and much more of the Injustice whereof he was fully convinced As the figure of a Crown must be entire so must every good Action consist of entire Causes that is to be rewarded with it and any Prince who doth deliberate of the doing a thing in it self unjust has need of the Caution given to the Angel of the Church in Philadelphia hold fast that which thou hast that no Man take away thy Crown and indeed for a Monarch to do an Act of Injustice is a greater misfortune to him than to be deposed the latter being but the evil of punishment and the former of sin I reading lately in Klockius de aerario was ashamed to see the 41. Summarium of Chap. 109th Book 2d to be this viz. A Iustitiâ licite in parvis subinde variariut in majoribus inviolata sit and ashamed to find in that Chapter Tacitus quoted by him for it and saying Habet aliquid ex iniquo omne magnum exemplum and Plutarch cited for saying A justitia in parvis rebus nonnunquam abeas si salvam eam voles in magnis But honest Cicero tells us better things and that Nihil honestum esse potest quod justitiâ vacat and the Christian Morallity I am sure prohibits the doing of one unlawful Act tho the effect of it would be the restoring the whole Creation in integrum to its first State in Paradice and it enjoyns the fortitude of not fearing those that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul as our Saviours words are in St. Math. 10. 28. and where he doth not say fear not those that can kill the Body but who do actually and frequently kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul implying that unjust men often labour to do that and would do it if they could and their cursed sollicitude therein is not capable of being practised more then by endeavouring to prevail on Men by fear of imminent bodily danger to warp from principles of Justice and the Scripture doth annex the Crown of Life to the condition of being faithful unto death and to not fearing the things to be suffered as 't is said in Rev. 2. 10. the ominous Text Preached on at the Coronation of the Royal Martyr And as it is a saying that Must is for the King so he that Rules over Men must be just ruling in the fear of God as part of the last words of King David assures us and must not by fear of Man do any unjust thing that would imply his intermitting the filial fear of Heaven which is justly punished by being abandon'd to the Servile Fear of Man and to that fear bringing a Snare as that Kings Son hath in his Proverbs told us and when otherwise he might have made his own wrath as the roaring of a Lion as Solomons words are And 't is when exact Justice is as it should be fixed in the Firmament of a Princes Mind that its brightness is above being Ecclipsed by any popular temptations or fears that it resembles the fixt Stars whose great height dazles the eyes of gazers and which Stars cannot be eclipsed by the shaddow of the whole earth The Populace and their Multitudes and Commotions are in the Scripture frequently compared to
here and of their strenuous endeavours to free the Kingdom from it had nothing in their Famous 19 Propositions to bar the right of any Heir to the Crown for the being a Papist The exact Collections afford many instances of their declaring That they would provide for the greatness of his Majesty and his Royal Posterity in future times and in which there was no Proviso respecting any Religionary Tenets they should profess It appears in Mr. Pryns memorable Speech in that House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the Kings answers to the Propositions of both Houses whether they were satisfactory or not in the Isle of Wight Treaty that that Parliament that was concern'd for the saving of their own Credit as well as the Souls of the People to make that Treaty to end with the extermination of Popery from England did not in the application of the most proper means for that purpose judge the debarring any Popish Prince here from his Inheritance of the Crown any proper or necessary one For in p. 58. of that Speech ' t is said As to any danger to our Church from Religion there is as good Security and Provision granted us by the King as we did or could desire even in our own terms First He hath fully consented to pass an Act for the more effectual disabling of Iesuites Papists and Popish Recusants from disturbing the State and deluding the Laws and for the prescribing of a new Oath for the more speedy discovery and Conviction of Recusants Secondly To an Act of Parliament for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion Thirdly To an Act for the due Levying the Penalties against Recusants and disposing of them as both Houses shall appoint Fourthly To an Act whereby the practices of the Papists against the State may be prevented the Laws against them duely executed and a stricter Course taken to prevent the saying or hearing of Mass in the Court or any other part of the Kingdom whereby it is made Treason for any Priests to say Mass in the Court or Queens own Chappel Fifthly To an Act for abolishing all Innovations Popish Superstitions Ceremonies Altars Rayles Crucifixes Images Pictures Copes Crosses Surplices Vestments bowings at the name of Jesus or toward the Altar c. By all which Acts added to our former Laws against Recusants I dare affirm we have far better Provision and Security against Papists Iesuites Popish Recusants c for our Churches and Religions Safety and States too then any Protestant Church State and Kingdom whatsoever so as we need not fear any future danger from Papists or Popery if we be careful to see those Concessions duely put in Execution when turned into Acts and our former Laws And afterward in that Speech p. 110. he shews how dear the Kings consenting to pass five such Acts cost him for saith he The Iesuites understanding that the King beyond and contrary to their expectation hath granted all or most of our propositions in the Isle of Wight and fully condescended to five new Bills for the Extirpation of Mass Popery and Popish Innovations â—ut of his Dominions and putting all Laws in Execution against them and for a speedier Discovery and Conviction of them then formerly c are so inraged with the King and so inexorably incensed against him as I am credibly informed that now they are mad against him and thirst for nothing but his Blood. Mr. Pryn had mentioned in that Speech before that some Jesuites and Jesuited Agitators had engaged the Army to dissolve that Treaty with the King and 't is no wonder if that prying Order who knew the Kings Aversion to Popery as well as the most stupid of his Enemies did when they saw him consenting to pass five such Bills was the more brisk in executing its Designs against him and that as Mr. Pryn saith in his perfect Narrative a Priest present at the Kings death flourished his Sword with an exclamation That now the greatest Enemy we had in the World was gone But this by the way I had not mentioned how dear the consenting to those Bills that would have been so fatal to Popery and have prevented the Phrase of its growth from being used at this time of day but that some persons not vers'd in the passages of those evil days seem to think that there was nothing of Religion to support that Kings Title to Martyrdom but what concern'd his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue In the very solemn League and Covenant its takers declared they had before their Eyes the honour and happiness of the Kings Majesty and his Posterity And I have seen a printed paper of the Presbyterian Divines of one of the Associations in the late times wherein they do expresly affirm and argue it that any of the Royal Posterity here ought not to be debarr'd from their Hereditary Right to the Crown by being either Papists or Idolaters If we look so far back as the great Conjuncture in the beginning of King Iames ' s Reign namely in the year 1605. we shall find that there was then a Paper before mentioned published in Print called a Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by the Nonconforming Ministers which were suspended or deprived that year and that the first Paragraph or Tenet in that Protestation is this We hold and maintain the same Authority and Supremacy in all Causes and over all Persons Civil and Ecclesiastical granted by Statute to Queen Elizabeth and expressed and declared in the Book of Advertisements and Injunctions and in Master Bilson against the Iesuites to be due in full and ample manner without any limitation or qualification to the King and his Heirs and Successors for ever c. And the 4 th Paragraph in that Protestation part whereof I have before recited is viz. We hold that though the Kings of this Realm were no Members of the Church but very Infidels yea and Persecutors of the Truth that yet those Churches that shall be gathered together within these Dominions ought to acknowledge and yield the same Supremacy to them And that the same is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it And in the 18 th Paragraph they say That if the King subjecting himself to Spiritual Guides and Governors shall afterward refuse to be governed and guided by them according to the Word of God and living in notorious sin without repentance shall willfully contemn and despise all their Holy and Religious Censures that then these Governors are to refuse to Administer the Holy Things of God to him and to leave him to himself ond to the secret Iudgment of God and wholy to resign and give over that spiritual Charge and Tuition over him which by calling from God and the King they did undertake And more then this they may not do And after all this we
dâ—bent ut aliquid operentur and that verba cum effectu sunt accipienâ—a And as 't is said in the Civil Law Semper in stipulationibus in caeteris contractibus id sequimur quod ACTVM est and as actus is there taken for a general word sive re sive verbis quid AGATVR here is an ACT of the Swearer done in relation to such HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and he is promittendi reus in the Civil Law Phrase and as he is there called Reus qui debitor est omninoque obligatus ex quavis Causa and as he who hath promised any thing is said Reus debendi and so Reus constitutus dicitur qui se obligavit ff Quod met Caus. l. 14. § Labeo But on the whole matter our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy contain in them nothing impossible and nothing ambiguous and do ipso facto or in plain English oblige us as soon as taken to be ready to pay our Allegiance to the King and afterward to his Heirs and Successors as respectively due according to the Legal Course of Descent And if any one be frightned with Sir W. I's Day-Dream of Treason viz. in being immediately upon the taking of the Oaths under some Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors let him repair to our Statute-Book and he will there find as good Bail provided for him in the Case as Heaven and Earth can give for in the Preamble of an Act of Parliament the King and three Estates tell him of the Duty that every true and well affected Subject not only by BOND of Allegiance but also by the COMMANDMENT of Almighty God OVGHT to perform to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS 7 o Iac. c. 6. In fine I shall hereupon affirm that should any English Subject who hath taken these Oaths live to the age of Nestor and in the course of Nature â—ee several of our Kings Heirs and Successors in the due and Legal course of Descent Succeeding one another and should such Subject be never call'd on to reiterate those Oaths in the Reign of any of them he would yet by these Oaths before once taken continue obliged to bear true Faith and Allegiance to them all Successively And thus in the first faederal Oath we read of the Father of the faithful obliged himself at once in relation to Abimelech and his SON and his SONS SON and we know how afterward God was pleased to oblige himself at once to Abraham and his SEED and how after that God was pleased to oblige himself by his Oath and Covenant made to David and his SEED as to their Succession in the Royal Throne of Iuda And 't was to this the words in the Psalms ONCE have I Sworn c. refer And therefore this Scriptural Representation of God after the manner of Men condescending in the Government of the world to bind himself ex gratiâ as aforesaid may well inculcate to us the reasonableness of our becoming ipso facto bound by our Oaths to pay the debitum Iustitiae to his Vice-Roys and their HEIRS and SUCCESSORS To proceed therefore I shall lay down this as a 6 th Conclusion and genuinely deducible from the former one viz. That by Virtue of those two Clauses the takers of those Oaths do particularly bind themselves not only against the Aiding and Assisting or Abetting any Rebellion or any Vsurpation of the rights of his Majesty's Heirs and Successors that can happen but to the aiding and assisting of the Crown and preserving its Inheritable Rights on all Emergent occasions Sanderson in his 4th Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths puts the Case concerning the Person to whom an Oath was made viz. Whether he who hath Sworn the performance of a thing to another the Party to whom he Sware being deceased be bound to make it good to the Heirs and Successors of the said Party And his words are I answer ordinarily he is It is certain that the Party Swearing is obliged if he express'd that he would perform the Oath unto the Heirs of the other It may also be taken for granted that he is bound tho he expressed it not if the Oath taken relates to DIGNITY because DIGNITY varies not with the change of Persons Whence if any Subject or Souldier Swear Fidelity to his King or General the Oath is to be meant to be made unto them also who succeed to that Dignity Yet Ames our Learned Non-conformist in his Case of Conscience 4th Book Chapter 22. viz. De Iuramento as to the 11th Question and about the Obligation of an Oath Ceasing saith Quum aufertur ratio juramenti juramentum cessat ratione Eventus qui casus est eorum qui jurarunt se obedituroâ— Domino aut Principi alicui qui postea cessat esse talis But perhaps had the Case of so strict an Oath as that of Allegiance to our Prince and his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS layn before him he would have writ otherwise of its Obligation For as the Consideâ—ation of the forâ—mentioned Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy did sufficiently prevail with the Ejected and Persecuted Divines of the Church of England and most of its Lay Members to avoid all sinful Compliance with the late Vsurpation and Vsurpers so it did likewise with many of the Presbyterians and others to avoid the same and particularly to refuse the taking the ENGAGEMENT set up by the Republicans and even to Publish in Print their holding themselves obliged by those Oaths so to do I shall instance in two that did so Mr. Pryn in his Book before cited mentions those OATHS as in direct words extending not only to the late King's Person mentioning King Charles the 1 st but his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and Inviolably binding the Swearers in perpeâ—uity in point of LAW and CONSCIENCE so long as there is any Heir of the Crown and Royal Line in being and that upon many Vnanswerable Scriptural Precedents and Legal Considerations c. He had before charged those with apparent Perjury who had taken those Oaths to the King and his HEIRS and yet repute those few Reliques of the old Parliament then sitting forcibly secluding the Lords and Majority of their Fellow Members to be a lawful Parliament within the Statute of 17 Car. Cap. 7. or submit to any Oaths Taxes or Edicts of theirs as Parliamentary or Legal I refer the Reader to the Book and which because somewhat Scarce I think to have reprinted The other Person of the Presbyterian Communion I shall refer to for this is the Author of a learned Tract in 4 to printed in the year 1650 called An EXERCITATION concerning VSVRP'D POWERS wherein the Author very substantially proves that by virtue of the Obligation to the King's HEIRS and SUCCESSORS resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it is not lawful to give up ones self to the ALLEGIANCE of an VSVRP'D Power and saith very well in p. 16. If I should do that I should yield assistance to the
41 I shall answer him that its weight hath in this present Conjuncture of 81 afforded Loyalty so great a Compensation by that late Act of Parliament there acknowledging and asserting the Right of the Succession c. and which begins thus viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereunto according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood c. that as Historians tell us how in the dark barbarous times many hundreds of years since men repaired from all Countries to Ireland to learn the Liberal Arts and Sciences I shall say that they may now profitably go to Scotland to learn Loyalty and I doubt not but that Kingdom which is so notorious for its mortal or immortal hatred of Popery call it which you will and even of that very part of it which I call the Religionary one of it having thus by the Exterminium of that irreligionary part of it viz. That Dominion is founded in Grace taught us Loyalty in the establishing the Hereditary Lineal Succession may be as instrumental in giving Loyalty in the Body of the People here its temperamentum ad pondus as it was formerly in oppressing us with its weight as a gravamen and be an occasion of blessing our Land with such a joyful Conjuncture of time as ensued after King Iames's Succession as I have before mentioned and to the Consideration of which I shall return England that had formerly by reason of the uncertainty of the Succession being like the Erratica Delos a floating Island and that too in Seas of Blood and did then appear like it afterward fixed and blessed with a Pacifick and Oracular King and as strong a Foundation for the Hereditary Monarchy as could be wished was shortly after in danger of being again unfixed by the Outrage of the Gun-Powder Treason and the Principles that legitimated that practice being really believed and practised and an account of the practice of which Treason we have in the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 2. as likewise of the fiery Principles that animated the Actors to it in Thuanus and in King Iames his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 10. a general reference is made to the violent bloody Maxims that the Powder-Traytors maintained and by occasion whereof after the designed outrage against the Lineal Succession of the Prince and the Hereditary Monarchy being in danger while such bloody Principles and Maxims were not exterminated it was in ordinary prudence requisite to apply the extraordinary Remedy of the Oath of Allegiance to rivet that Fundamental Maxim of the Crown the stronger in Nature viz. That the King never dies And the Addition of those words in the Promissory Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. HIS or THEIR Persons THEIR Crown and Dignity and which words were not in the Oath of Supremacy was a plain indication of the intention of the Law-givers to tye Mens Souls to the Hereditary Monarchy in the Due and Legal Course of Descent And moreover with a prospect to mens having a conscientious regard to the King's Heirs and Successors the Fathers of our Church then probably in the Preface of the Collect in the Common-prayer for the Prince and the King's Children as overjoyed with the sight of King James 's being enriched with a most Royal Progeny as the words in the Act of the Recognition are did cause these words to be inserted Who art the Father of thine Elect and of their SEED The Preface to the Act requiring the Oath of Allegiance hath in it the expression of Loyalty and Allegiance unto the King's Majesty and the CROWN of England and mentions the design of the Gun-powder Treason as tending to the subversion of the whole State and therefore if in the ancient times of Popery and when the Pope was generally revered here as a 13th Apostle upon any emergent Papal Usurpations which gave just cause of apprehending future ones intended and particularly in the Case of the Pope's Mandates or Bulls which were called Gratiae expectativae or provisiones and pretendedly issued out of the Pope's pious care to see a Church provided of a Successor before it needed our Kings did think themselves obliged to provide Statutes against Provisors whereby the Ius patronatus was secured to them and their Subjects and by Statutes of Praemunire did as it were build Forts before the Enemies coming the Premuniment of the Hereditary Monarchy by the Oath of Allegiance was most necessary to prevent any Papal Gratiae expectativae of the Crown and the Popes impious care to provide a Successor to its Hereditary Rights The Premuniment of some Laws by others is no new thing nor yet a new word however some idle Criticks have accounted the word praemunire in our Statutes to be barbarous for Grotius in his De jure belli c. l. 2. c. 5. § 14. speaking of some Laws of the Iews saith In quarum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Hebraei loqâ—untur praemunimentum additae sunt leges caeterae and according to the sense of some taking praemunire for praemonere the constant premonition of Heavens great Monitor called Conscience and which is the pulse of the Soul and like the Pulse is Fidelis nuncius vitae aut mortis to warn men by this Oath to defend the Lineal Succession of the Crown was no less necessary and King Iames's setling the Premonition in the minds of his own Subjects was but naturally previous to his Premonition sent abroad to Foreign Princes and States And how far Harry the 7th's Statute by which no Person who should serve the King for the time being c. should therefore be attainted or impeached might induce the Government to secure the undoubted Rights of Succession by the Oath of Allegiance being framed as it was and rooting our Loyalty thereby the deeper into our Consciences and by the fear of our being justly impeached in the Court of Conscience in omnem eventum if we defended not those Rights of Succession is obvious to Consideration As I have thus in this Conclusion shewed that it was the Law-givers intention particularly in the Oath of Allegiance to oblige us to pay our Allegiance not only to the King but to his Heirs and Successors in the Legal Course of Descent so I might here further Ex superabundanti dilate on such intention being to secure the same without any respect to the Religion of such Heirs and Successors A Prince of such profound Learning and Observation as King Iames could not be ignorant of what hath been since by the Loyal Writers of the Succession so clearly and strongly asserted viz. That the Succession to the Crown is inseparably annext to the Proximity of Blood by the Laws of GOD and NATVRE and That Statute-Laws contrariant to those are null and void and That the Hereditary Monarchy was indisputably founded on inherent Birth-right according to the Style of the Act of Recognition
the King's Heirs and lawful Successors by Virtue of these Oaths must remain uncancelled in the Court of Conscience and however any Act of Parliament supposed to be made against the Law of God may a while be de facto received in any Courts of Law yet is it in the Court of Conscience to be looked on as a poor Escrole and as not worthy the name of a Law. It is most manifest that by these Oaths there is jus alteri acquisitum I mean to the King's Heirs and Successors as well as to the King and that therefore any supposed relaxation of the Oaths without the consent of all Parties for whose behoof they were made is a thing Nugatory and not allowable in the Court of Conscience And as I have speaking cum vulgo called some Anti-Papists whose Principles tend to Faction in the State and Schism in the Church Nominal Protestants tho yet I should be still as much content with any Law that made it Penal to call them Protestants as with one that should be so to call Quacks Physicians so I should in the Court of Conscience call any Acts of Parliament that are contrary to the Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Iustice only Nominal Laws suitably to what is said in the admirable Preface of Aerodius his Rerum Iudicatarum Pandect viz. Quod si quid iniquè malo more sordibus adversus illâ—m sempiternam legem atque immutabilem hic aut illic judicatum tranaâ—ctum sit qualis fuit apud Graecos Socratis Phocionis apud Romanos Mâ—telli Numidici Rutilâ—i Rufi M. Ciceronis damnatio in ecclesiâ Flaviani Johannis Chrysostomi contrà absolutio P. Sexti Clodiorum atque adeo Gabinii quam proptereà legem impunitatis appellarunt non magis judicata aut decreta debent appellari quam Seiae Apuleâ—ae Liviae leges Leges non sunt inquit Cicero But Thirdly The just allowance of the Rebus sic stantibus that can be in this Case is this there being nothing of pretence of relaxation from all Parties supposeable these Oaths bind us to the King's Heirs and Successors as long as there is any ONE of them remaining in the World and without the insertion of the words in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I do believe and in Conscience am resolved that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve me of this Oath or any part thereof its indispensableness to those who know the Obligation of Oaths to be jure Divino naturali would have sufficiently appeared In fine there are Rationes boni mali aeternae indispensabiles and to stand to promises is one of the things that are simply and in their own nature good and it is impossible as the Scripture saith That God should lye and therefore man made after God's image must therein answer the Archetype and hereby our Princes have the Garranty of our Allegiance sworn to them their Heirs and Successors being indispensable by Popes or Acts of Parliament or by God himself for he cannot dispense with the Law of Nature Humanâ naturâ manente eadem Lastly It is most manifest from what I have already said that any such Tacit Condition in these Oaths as before mentioned was contrary to the sense of the Imposer as well as to the Words and was therefore not allowable in the Court of Conscience in this Case and I believe that the Consciences of such who have made this Objection must tell them that when they took these Oaths their sense of them was then contrary to any such condition being allowed And therefore any such After-birth of a strained Interpretation being so contrary to the Law of God and the Land and the sense of the Imposer as well as the words of the Oaths and to the sense in which they actually took them must be thrown away There hath been a third Objection if it may be called one or if yet it may be called a Scruple for I think it hardly deserves the name of that However it having got under some mens feet or into their heads it hath made them so uneasie as frowardly to trample on the Rights of Crown'd Heads and it hath troubled us by the name of Haeres viventis and as if that were a Chymaera when as indeed the Objection is altogether Chymerical When Sir L. I. had with so much clear reason shewed much to this purpose viz. That the Exclusion-Bill was against the Fundamental Iustice as likewise the wisdom of the Nation and that it would induce a CHANGE in the Government and that was likewise against the Religion of the Nation which teacheth us That Dominion is not founded in Grace and that we are to pay Obedience to Princes whether good or bad as accordingly the Primitive Christians did and that it was against the Oaths of the Nation namely of Allegiance and Supremacy and that his R. H. is the King 's lawful Heir if he hath no Child and in the Eye of the Law we are sworn to him and when he had further signalized the weight of his Political Remarks and Learning in that Speech as well of as his Loyalty so as on the account of both to merit a place for it in the English Story and had instanced in some Princes and their Subjects of different Religions living very happily together it may perhaps be a blot in that Story that Sir W. I. in an answer to that Speech granting That we are sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors said further That we are not obliged to any during the King's life but to himself for it were Treason if it were otherwise The King hath no Heirs nor Successors during his life for according to his Law meaning Sir L. I's and ours Nemo est haeres viventis In answer to which I shall say that that Proverbial Latin saying in the Law Books doth amount to no more in nature and hath no more influence on Humane Affairs nor particularly on Moral Offices than that kind of Proverbial Sayings in the New Testament viz. For where a Testament is there must also of necessity be the death of the Testator or a Testament is of no strength while the Testator liveth Every one knoweth that a Will is in its own nature revocable and Legatees and Executors may be altered by the Testator and for any one to quote it as a Maxim Nemo est Executor viventis and for a Legatee or in effect an Executor in a Will the word haeres iâ— often used in the Civil Law and by the Writers of it will be no more significant than the telling the Legatee or Executor is that they must not meddle in the Testators Goods till he be dead and it may usefully operate to divert People from the slothful Omissions of making their Wills in due time out of a fond imagination that their Legatees or Executors would have a Title to any thing before the Testators death But after what hath been said
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so