can very well comply with the Equal and Hereditary Monarchy of England I never was an Enemy to the word Monarchy nor design'd to interrupt the Succession of the Crown nor do I think it the Interest of any Man that loves Peace and these Nations to do it On the contrary I at this day affirm tho we ought always to have expected Terms from King James or have sent them to him We ought not tho I would have good Ones even now to make such as would make him justly Uneasy so unreasonable Ones as would be unfit for him to grant We must deal impartially if we would ever compose Things We ought to shew our Claim or at least our Necessity and we ought to couch Things in such Words as tho they speak plainly our Sense may have a due Regard to his Dignity Forgiveness and Righteousness have been preached to him as the certain Establishment of his Throne He has been humbled by Afflictions He has heard of his Mistakes and has hearkned to free Advice He has Reason to have it and he has Temper and perhaps both he and we may be the better for our Tribulations if we once accommodate our Disputes I never flattered the King I have spoken plainer to him than I write now and I believe I am not the less acceptable to him for my Plainness And as to any Objection and Scruple that may be raised by a Declaration that is Published in his Name I must say I know no more than he that Reflects upon it whether it be King Jame's Declaration or no For about three Years since there was a Declaration Published in his Name and for the Spreading of which several People were Imprisoned That I was afterwards told by the Author King James knew nothing of And I must say further That that Declaration that has been lately Published does not answer to the Spirit I left him in many Months ago for as I said he told me he sent me to make a * The Word BARGAIN is a term of condiscending Language BARGAIN to know what it was his People would have I can't answer for what Accounts other People sent him but I am sure he will so far justify me as to say I have been ever against excepting Mens Lives or Fortunes I have been ever for being very Explanative about the Liberties of my Country and if any body with him or any here have led him into Measures that are disgustful to the People I think I may boldly aver It is Misinformation and not Malice that makes him â—vable to Misconstruction Those that wish for the best Things are the shyest have ever been too shy towards him and it is not impossible that this Government may bribe Some body to give too plausible Names and Reasons for those Things that may turn to the King's Prejudice as some did here before the Prince of Orange came But the day that he really refuses from any sort of Men that can shew a probability of bringing him home any Proposals that have tendency to Universal Good he gives leave to his Subjects to have recourse to the Laws of Self-preservation Then and not till then he Abdicates his Crown This is speaking plain English you see I speak plainly concerning what the King must do Therefore let me also speak some plain Truths and rehearse some Matters of Fact to my Countrymen And here I will begin with asserting That if the People would be true to themselves at the Restauration and careful iâ— the Elections of Members to Parliament we need no other Treaty but what the King will be forc'd to make good in the first Sessions We need not fear French oâ— Papists We are too large and too brave a Country tâ— be a Plantation France cannot spare from off the Continent Men enough to govern us contrary to our Inclinations And tho our Histories talk of our being Conquered any Man of Sense sees it was by Composition It was from Parties within and not from Force without us As for the Roman Catholicks their Numbers are inconsiderable and tho they have good Estates and some Men of great Natural Sagacity amongst them yet their having been out of Business keeps them from understanding the Knack and Turns of it And whatever weak People think a King of that Perswasion in a Protestant Country is more properly than any other Laws can make him a de bene plaâ—cito King. Sir Will. Temple's Observations upon the Netherlands and his Essay upon Governments can never be too often read by Prince or People The one may be taught by it how to Govern and the other cured of unreasonable Fears Standing Armies are the justest dread to Civil Liberties but they are many ways as dangerous to Kings as they can be to their People A beloved General may turn their Competitor and every Mutiny shakes their Thrones And the King that will make his Subjects Slaves by their hands must be as much and more a Slave to them If the Troops are Foreign he must be the Tributary and Vassal of that Prince who lends them and if they are home-bred Forces the Dispositions of the Populace will infect the Army But besides all this no Country tho they may maintain Forces enough to suppress a sudden Insurrection can possibly maintain enough to govern contrary to the general Genius of the Nation The People of Turky hold all their Lands of the Crown and like their Government and as for the Peasante of France they talk daily of their grand Monarch An ill concerted Conspiracy may miscarry Hot-headed Men may expect too soon to fire their Country-men but general Dissatisfactions are no more to be withstood than general Conflagrations When Necessity and Self-preservation arm Men let their Weapons be what they will they will cur their way through all Opposition Indeed if a People are divided as we are the Danger must be common or very notorious before they make use of their Intrinsick Power But if some Laws were enacted to keep Ecclesiastick Controversies out of the Pulpit and the People were not taught to believe what in cases of Extremity humane Nature will never practise If Divines are not suffered to dispose of the Kingdoms of this World Civil Crimes and Rights will be soon called by their proper Names and we shall recover our Liberties in a Parliamentary way before Things grow desperate It is dangerous and ought to be criminal for them to pretend to set out the Boundaries of Government They may preach in general submission to Authority but they are not to bring Texts of Scripture and much less Aristotle's Ideas or Zenophon's Cyrus to overthrow our Statute-books and depretiate the Laws of England By an Act of Parliament in the time of King James the First no Man that was not Batchellor in Divinity was to preach about Predestination or Free-will because that Controversy then troubled the Church and sure I am That the Clergy of no Degree ought to preach about
Charters for personal Male-administrations and I am confident that even all the Non Swearers of the Church of England would have been willing to have assertained our Constitution and secured our Administration when the Prince of Orange came they were weary of pretended unlimitted Prerogative to say no more and I think I ought not if I would please them or you But pray what harm had it been if we had not changed the Name of our King if we had altered the complection of Affairs is it not a shame that Sir Thomas Clarges and Sir Christopher Musgrave c. should have consulted Amendment more than those that have taken the Degree of Doctors at the King's head Club and at Richard's Coffee-house Is it not a shame that you would not make the Embryos of necessary Insurrections less liable to prosecution in the last Session and that you could in the Convention suspend the Habeas Corpus tho when you gave the Crown you declar'd it a fundamental right If you have Liberty to elect Kings why are you so Angry at those that will Chuse their Old one again and perhaps upon more honest Limitations than you Created yours The word Limitation puts me in mind that I promised to shew that you are too violently apprehensive of Slavery and therefore I will once again say you did not make the best use of your Victories over King Charles the First because you brought them to a point wherein the Consciences of most rebuked them and wherein the generality were not likely to succumb and you were as indiscreet in the management of King Charles the Second's timerous Nature who would have denied scarce any thing but the Bill of Exclusion at the time that that was first on Foot and indeed would have found no Party to buoy him up in the denial of any thing else To obviate your unreasonable fears of Slavery I beseech you to consider whether History gives an Account of any People that have been made Slaves but by their own Inclinations to be so unless by an entire Conquest and I once again affirm it is not in the Power of France to conquer England unless by our own Divisions and those Divisions would soon cease if we did not oppose the bringing home King James upon civil Securities The Prince of Orange hates the Persons of the Whigs and more their Principles and makes all those of them he imploies change them or at least act against them yet their implacable hate to King James will not let them tho they have so much punish'd him and themselves forgive Errors in him which they commend in this Man and if King James is ever Restored it will be easy to misrepresent their Notions by reason of the Men that profess them Whereas would they plead for their Liberties under a Restoration and not talk in prejudice of the Establish'd Worship of the Church to pull down which is neither the Business nor the desire even of any wise Dissenter the Church of England will joyn to ask and expect all Things that can make our Constitution happy and Stable not only under any Popish but under all Kings Reflect seriously whether the body of the Nation which is mostly composed of the Church of England has not been Strugling these last 50 Years for more Liberty this may instruct the Whigs that they need not fear the loss of it and King James that he must give it The nature of our Scituation of our Tenures of our Inclosures and especially of our People is a full Security that we shall never loose our beloved Liberty and Property unless the Whig Party are so unreasonable that they chuse to embroil us in Civil Wars rather than to hearken to any Proposals from King James or joyn with others to send Proposals to him The Reduction of Ireland and the Cessation of the Highlanders have not ended the Jacobite Quarrel and tho this Defeat of the French by Sea damps the wild and vissionary Jacobite yet it will not put an end to our Miseries Were King James dead the Prince of Wales would be thought on and those that believe successive Monarchy are very much what ere you think satisfied of his Legitimacy But were he and the Child of which the Queen is lately delivered of and King James also dead if the Princess of Orange should die the Princess of Denmark must be a most resigned Woman if she did not ask for her Right Whatever others can I can yet see nothing but Confusion and Calamity intollerable and eternal Taxes together with the loss of Trade and Honour on the one hand and on the other hand our antient Plenty and our ancient Government without Sunderland being remade Secretary of State or a general Excise Establish'd which are the resolv'd on Methods of King William But I must yet give an Account of the most dreadful Hobgoblin of all Popery I believe as little of its Creed and as ill of its Practices as any body but I would take a new Method to civilize those wild Men that you think Beasts of prey I would treat them better I would enfranchize them I blame neither Papist nor Fanatick for being in a Plot till they are impartially dealt with And â—â—t I can and do and ever did and I am confident 〈◊〉 shall comply with the Church of England so 〈◊〉 not personal Concern makes me say this but a 〈◊〉 Perswasion that I have had these Twelve Years That where a Nation is divided into Sects Church and State Matters ought to be distinct As we manage the point the Papists will be Vassals for the Court of Rome and Spies for every Catholick Monarchy from whence they may hope a deliverance as well as Flatterers of Prerogative but if you would blend them with all the other Sects they would not be tasted in the Composition nor would they be looking for Succours from abroad But when I have said all this let the Roman Catholicks at their peril endeavour to be invidiously Preferred or engross the King we can put a Bear-Skin upon them when we please And if a King of their perswasion will be the King of their party the next Revolution will extirpate Papists and the Royal Line to boot and now we can cut off and abdicate Kings in the face of the World We shall learn Massacres and turn into a perfect Common wealth I will allow you Gentlemen to believe Transubstantiation but I advise you as a Friend not to trust to Miracles but to allow that natural weight will be too hard for all your Superfine projections So that tho I am for your having utmost Liberty and tho I am as much an Enemy to Civil Inquisitions here as to your Religious or rather irreligious one in Spain yet I would have you remember that I say you are to have that Liberty only upon your good Behaviour If King James comes in if you will not as industriously as any other Party promote the general Good. If you will not be as Zealous for it as your Predecessors when they got Magna Charta you will be a hated Faction still and find me too true a Prophet at last I think the French never were but I believe every body will allow that they have now no reason to be so Vissionary as to expect to make us a Colony and if any Catholicks or mad Tories still expect Force from abroad shall set King James upon the Throne they are madder than any set of Men but those Whigs that fear a French Conquest and from thence Popery and Slavery I have treated upon odd Things and in an unusual Manner and perhaps shall have tired the Peruser but to speak in a very few Words the drift of the whole It is to invite all my Country-men to be ready to receive the King upon such large and comprehensive Measures as ought to satisfy all Parties it is to incline all Parties to be reasonable in their demands and to persuade King James to give such Terms as the People will thank him for now and will have or eternally be restiffe and uneasy it is to perswade all English men to consider Church and Civil Matters a part it is to incorporate all our Sects into one National Interest It does allow Government from God but the Specification from Men. It is not to quarrel with Hereditary Monarchy but desires we may be safe in our Lives and Fortunes and that we should Sacrifice them for the Publick against Enemies abroad rather than by intestine Jars In a word all this Ramble is to persuade to a new Magna Charta To Peace and Justice which God grant may be the Conclusion of all our dismal Appearances I wish Men would rather cast about in their thoughts how to draw such a Magna Charta than to make opposition which can never determine the Controversy as long as any one Branch of the Right Line is alive I wish they would rather think who should Represent than who should Fight for them To conclude I expect to please no one Party because I appear to be of none bigotly but write for the general Good tho I think what I have set down are Truths Yet I fear they are too strong to be digested they do not close with the Partialities of any sort of Men however they are well meant and I leave the issue to the great Disposer of all Things and Men to jumble and cut and be unfortunate till they find by Experience according to the Title of this Discourse That Honesty after all is the best Policy FINIS
the Prerogative and our Privileges Their Stake is not generally great enough to keep them from Flattery and sinister Interpretations by which too many of their Predecessors have been raised to Church-Dignities They understand not our Laws nor have they much credit for these Reasons with the People and they ought now to have less since so many of their Coat have prevaricated In a word They ought by their Function to understand the Mysteries of Religion and leave the Arcana Imperii to the Lay-men They ought to be punished if they call Men Idolaters Schismaticks Fanaticks Rebels Traytors Seditious Persons with the c. of their Billingsgate Rhetorick Liberty of of Conscience will make one part ill Manners and Crimes against the State are proper for the Cognizance of the Civil Power nor do I believe it was ever better'd by the Interposition of any Sort of Priests Nor indeed is Religion it self the better for the Affectation of the Gentlemen of that Robe to intermeddle with Matters meerly Temporal But God knows they are too often buzzing that this and that Thing is Republican and they have needless Apprehensions for their Church As for the Common wealth Principles scarce any body carrys them so far as to be against having a Single Person at the Head of our Affairs and as for chopping and changing Kings or rebelling when their is Occasion I do not find the Church of England is so much behind hand with any other Sect She can lead the Dance and tho she may pretend Weariness before it is at an end yet she can comply for Company But after all this is said I think her of all the several Churches the best for this Nation and so do almost all English-men which leads me as the Parsons Phrase it to shew the unreasonableness of her Fears As much as the Church of England Men have carressed and writ for an Arbitrary Power NOTHING ELSE CAN PULL DOWN THEIR CHURCH and she might see by what followed the two Tolerations since the Royal Blood was Restored That however she has treated the Dissenters they will never joyn to pull down the Church of England and let in Popery Nor will she ever again be worm'd out of her Discipline if she never yields to Comprehension OR IS NOT TOO PLAINLY AN ENEMY TO CIVIL SECURITIES But I have made too long a Digression and perhaps some may uncharitably think I like too much the subject Matter of it but I only design the good of the Clergy and the general Peace of England No Man can have a greater value than my self for all those of that Order that are serious Christians and Sufferers for their Principles but if they will consider how many of those that were in the late Civil Wars and in this Revolution went constantly to the Church of England they will not think it very Advisable for Princes to govern themselves by supposing that that Men will live up to Doctrines that I shall not say are mistaken in Idea but only assert that they are too Self-denying to be expected in practice from our profligate Age. I make profession of great Plainness but I beg a candid interpretation from the Church of England for what I have said And from the Whigs of all Sorts for what I am about to say to them I think they have not made the wisest Use of the Kings they have quarrelled with and that they are too frantickly Apprehensive of Slavery There are great Lengths that all Mankind will go with them Many of the Church of England joyn'd with their Principles at the beginning of the late Civil Wars and their Consciences did not misgive them till they had humbled that unfortunate Prince into such Concessions as would have effectually secured the Rights of Englishmen Let any body look over the Offers that King made and especially at the Isle of Wight Treaty and then tell me Whether there was any Reason to bring the Reproach of King Charles's Murther upon these Nations I am not just if I don't say the Whigs are too soon displeased and carry their Points too far and that they over-rate their Numbers The Men of the best Quality and Estates have generally a mind to Peace and are not so eager for Critical Reformations Some of the Whigs therefore start Grievances before others feel them and are hazarding our very Fundamentals for the Chimera's of a warm Imagination and a punctilious Nicety which jollier Heads and sweeter Natures can never comprehend and at last they weaken themselves by Subdivisions They spin their Thread too fine their Speculations are scare Practical and end in Vision Tho they are for Liberty in Religion they are for Persecution for Fire and Fagot for Extremity in Politicks The Bulk of Freeholdors will stick by Essentials but the Whigs almost Nick-name their own Notions and then it is no wonder if the Tories take them for Scarecrows and Bulbeggers and that the Propegaters of such Doctrines are represented unreasonable Men rather Beautefeux than Patriots Your out word your own Opinions and you talk Hyperboles and Catachresses and the Tories think you Lunaticks because they don't understand your Language you ought seriously to consider your Numbers and you will not find disproportion enough between you and those Tories to make it reasonable that they should wholly subscribe your State Creed and perhaps there will be less reason if you look back and find that tho some fierce Men of that Party and God knows there are such in all Parties may have been for screwing up Monarchy too high yet many that are for supporting the Church of England and limitted successive Monarchy have always joyned in all honest and moderate Things Indeed when King Charles the Second returned his first Parliament gave him more Power than they were afterwards willing he should keep but were not the Whigs as mad at the Inauguration of the Prince of Orange If the Church of England in the Reign of that Prince did not hunt so hard when the Popish Plot was on Foot I suppose many of you are at this dâ—â— convinced you were too Keen and that the Business was a little over Swore If they opposed the Bill of Exclusion without peradventure they were in the Right of it For it was purely Personal in its Regards loving one Man more than Liberty and Hating another more than Slavery and miserable is that People whose Security is more from the Temper or Religion it self of the Magistrate than the Constitution of the Government I cannot but bemoan what we lost by your heat at that Time. If you say the Church of England Quo Warranto'd Corporations They did it no more than the Fanaticks Regulated them I think it unjust to charge Parties with the Faults of particular Persons There was but a few of either Party concerned in either of those evil Steps and it s as unjust to take away the Reputation of either Party for the Miscarriages of those few as to take away