be accounted Arguments and held for Evidences of the Prince of Orange acting upon Motives of love unto and care for the Protestant Religion in the invading his Uncle's Kingdoms and usurping his Crown there are none else discoverable in the whole course of his Administration and they must be either more sottish than the Soldanians in Africk or more irreligious than the Cannibals in America who can conconclude from the foregoing Practices and from such other as stand in affinity with them That he has any Religion at all or that he acts for any End but the satisfying his Ambition or upon any Motives save Pride and Haughtiness To which let me add in the last Place That if his Errand hither had been to take care of the Protestant Religion he might have done it effectually without driving his Majesty out of his Dominions Seeing there was not that Security that could have been wished or desired in order thereunto but what the King was ready to have consented unto and that more from his own Choice and Goodness than from the Influence of the Condition he was in And as all Things of which his Enemies accused him and whereof they took Advantage into which he had been misled were rectified and redressed by Acts of his own Wisdom and Grace before ever the Prince of Orange came out of Holland so he had ordered the Issuing out Writs for calling a Parliament in which the Nation might in the Ancient and Legal way have made what Provisions they had pleased for the preserving and securing our Religion and Liberties Nor is there that Man in England who retains the least Measure of Reason and good Sense let his Malice to the King be never so furious and obstinate but he must acknowledge That if the Prince of Orange had come hither upon any other Design save that of dethroning the King and usurping his Crown he might have easily compassed all the Ends published in his Declaration either by way of a private Treaty with the King himself or by the Method of a Parliament freely and indifferently chosen and permitted to sit without an armed Power and military Force upon them And as this would have redounded to the Honour of the Prince and gained him the Admiration of his Enemies and the Praises and Benedictions of his Friends so it would both have prevented a great deal of Distress Calamity and Bloodshed in Europe and have left these Kingdoms more safe and opulent than they now are and without that heap of Guilt and Infamy upon them under which they are brought But instead of treading in those paths of Truth to Mankind Reputation to himself and Justice as well as Kindness to these Nations it is known with what Neglect and Scorn he received the Proposals carried from his Majesty to him by the Marquess of Hallifax the Earl of Nottingham and my Lord Godolphinâ— and how he put the Earl of Feversham under restraint and made him a Prisoner when he came to him at Windsor with a Message from the King Nor needs there more to discover how remote he was from Sincerity in all the Pretences upon which he came hither than that he would never hearken to any Overtures which might lie in a Tendency to the making one Word of them good Thus Sir I have with all the Brevity the Subject would allow endeavoured to answer your first Question and if the Stile in some Places be a little Piquant the Scriblers for the Usurper and Usurpation have set me the President and who have been Commended and Rewarded for treating both his Majesty and the King of France with Ribbauldry as well as below their Sovereign Qualities whereas there is nothing here Undecent though some Things may appear Sharp Nor would it have answered the Majesty and Justness of the Theme to have handled it Flatly and without a Warmth correspondent to the Injury done our holy Religion in making it a Cloak to so much Villany as hath been committed And it would have been an indecorous Thing to have looked grave upon Baboons or have hunted wild Boars without a Spear or Weapon Yea it were to frustrate the great End of Languages and Speech and to quarrel with the Rules of good Sence to ascribe Mildness to Tyrants Honesty to Robbers or Truth to Lyars Adieu I am SIR Yours April 18. 1695. FINIS
that have set about it found it easy to be effected even where they have had all the Advantage imaginable to execute it And we may be speedily convinced how unfeasable such a Design would have been in England and consequently how far from being either undertaken or thought of by a wise Prince If we consider the Difficulties which have attended it in Roman Catholick Kingdoms where all the Craft and Power of wise and mighty Princes and all the Strength and Rage of the Body of the People inflamed by Bigottry have been united to compass it Is it possible for the King 's most malignant Enemies who use to speak of him with the most unparalelled Undecency and brutal Rudeness to conceive or believe that he could be so prodigiously Indiscreet and Weak as to think of banishing or overthrowing the Protestant Religion or of bringing in or setting up the Roman Catholick by a Protestant and Antipapal Army And other he had not nor ever can be in a Condition to have in this Kingdom if we speak of the Bulk of one or of one that can be Numerous and Strong And for a few Roman Catholicks mingled here and there in Protestant Troops or for two or three Regiments whereof the Generality were of the Romish Communion in an Army of those of the Reformed Profession instead of their giving us just terrour of a Design for subverting our Religion they only served to animate and provoke those vastly larger Number of Protestant Officers and Soldiers to assert their Religion with the more Courage and Avowedness and to exemplify and adorn it better by their Lives And it is but for those who were in England in 1687. and 1688. to recollect themselves and consult their Memories and they must needs confess and declare if they have not renounced all Friendship with Truth when they disclaimed Loyalty to his Majesty That they never observed that Zeal in a Brittish Army for the Protestant Religion nor that open Boldness in pleading for it as when that Roman Catholick Prince was upon the Throne and some of that Communion enrolled among them and employed with them under the same Royal Standard But what clearer and fuller Evidence could the King give in Matter of Fact that he had no Intentions to undermine and much less to subvert our Religion than the Dispensation from Penal Laws which he granted unto Protestant Dissenters and the Liberty which he stated them in the Exercise of And through his giving it upon the only true Principle on which it could be done Justifiably namely That it is the natural Right of every Man to chuse in what Religion and in which way of Faith and Worship he will venture his eternal State he could not in Justice abstracting from his Friendship avoid granting Liberty likewise to the Roman Catholicks I do know there are some People whose Malice to the King makes them not only take every Thing by the wrong handle but which hath so perverted their Reasons as to cause them to draw Conclusions directly contradictory to the Premisses from which they infer them who endeavour to obtrude upon the Belief of such as are Weak and Credulous That the King 's giving Liberty was an Effect of his Enmity to our Religion and done in pursuance of a Design to destroy it But the two Poles are not at greater distance from one another than they are from Truth and good Sense who think the King would have given Liberty of Conscience and have set his heart upon the upholding and maintaining of it if at the same time he had given place unto and entertained the least thought of overthrowing and extirpating the Protestant Religion For that Wise Generous and Royal Concession of his was so far from lying in the remotest Subserviency to such a Design that nothing under Heaven can be imagined more effectually contributory to the preventing resisting and defeating an Attempt of that kind There are few but know what Connivance had been exercised to Roman Catholicks and how Gently they had been treated notwithstanding the many Laws they were obnoxious to during the last Years of King Charles's Reign while in the mean time vast Numbers of Protestants were harrassed spoiled and imprisoned and this not only by hounding out but by enforcing those of the Church of England to fall upon the Dissenters and to execute the Laws against them with great Severity Now by the King 's Noble Christian and Heroick Act of granting Liberty the Peevishness and Enmity of Protestants against one another was allayed and extinguished and they were at ease as well as leasure to employ their common Care and unite their mutual Strength against those of the Roman Communion whom they esteemed Enemies to them both And by being taken off from scratching biting and devouring one another they began to mingle Councels and to joyn their several Interests for obviating and obstructing the Growth of a third Party that stands in terms of distance both in Opinion and Ecclesiastical Charity to the one as well as the other For though the Liberty granted by the King to Protestant Dissenters did not incorporate them into the Communion of the Church of England but supposed the contrary and provided against the afflictive Inconveniencies of it and though it did not entitle them unto and make them capable of the Dignities and Emoluments of the Church which his Majesty neither pretended nor challenged a Power to do yet through his suspending the Execution of the penal Laws which he was told he might do in virtue of that executive Power of Laws and of Administration of Government which was lodged in him by the Constitution and inseparable from his Title Right and Sovereignty there was not only a Cessation of Arms between those of the National Church and them but a Coalescence in Friendship and Zeal for their common Religion though they couâ—d not embody together for Communion in all the parts of Christian Worship and for the exercise of Church Discipline And besides the taking off the Reproach and the wiping away the Infamy which lay upon our Religion through our persecuting one another and which made us the Subjects of our Enemies Râ—â—â—ery and the Objects of their Scorn there were so many real Advantages accâ—â—ing to it by the Liberty which the King granted That theâ—e cannot be a blacker Malice out of Hell than to perveâ—t this Royal and Christian Act of his Majesty from being an Argument of his innocent and honourable Intentions towards our Religion into a Topick whereby to insinuate into the Belief of those of a narrow Compass of thought that it was only in order first to supplant our Religion and then to destroy it And it argueth an Ingratitude which our Language is indigent of Words to express the hainousness of that any Protestant Dissenters should not only concur in such a Sentiment but value themselves upon the Vivacity Strength and Penetration of their Judgment that they could foresee and discover this
to be the Motive and End of it But this may be catalogued among other of the thankful Returns which some of them have rendered the Compassionate and Good King for his snatching them as Firebrands out of the burning where he both found them and might have suffered them to have continued till they had been consumed And for gathering such Vipers as those I am speaking about off from the Dunghill where the Laws had laid them and placing them in his Bosom till they had recovered Life Warmth and Vigour to sting him by those Censures and Reproaches which are as false as they are black and villanous And I would ask those Persons If the King cast out and drove away the Devil Persecution by Belzebub or in virtue of so hellish a Conspiracy against our Religion by whom have the Gentleman at Kensington and his Tools and Co-operators at Westminster done the same Is Liberty to Dissenters not only an innocent and harmless Thing but eminently useful to the Strength Glory and Success of our Religion under one that finds it his present Interest to call himself a Protestant while in the mean time it is questionable what Religion he is of if he be of any at all and must the same Liberty and to the same People be a Plot upon and an Engine for the undermining and blowing it up and for burying all those that profess it under the Ruins of it when granted by a Catholick Monarch Surely it would not unbecome some nor be unworthy of their second Thoughts to consider That if the Prince whom they have Abdicated for this and other good Offices had not expressed the Bowels and exerted the Courage to break the Chains and to remove the heavy and insupportable Loads which many peaceable and innocent People had long worn and groaned under meerly for their Opinions and Practices in matters of pure Revelation how probable it is if not morally certain that they would have been still in their old Circumstances and Conditions of Calamity and Suffering Nor would either the Prince of Orange had the Inclination and Fortitude to relieve them nor those Assemblies since the Revolution which we call Parliaments have had the Compassion and good Nature to have consented and concurred to the easing of them For as the Generality of those stiled the Representatives of the Nation retain still their antient peevishness and rancour to Dissenters so he whom they have placed on the Royal Throne governs himself by no other Principle or Measures but those of Ambition and Interest nor would he for saving and obliging the Dissenters have ventured upon any Thing that might be disagreable to the Humour of the Two Houses or which might have cooled or abated the Inclinations of the Commons to be lavish in their Grants of Money Neither would those Sons of Sceva have taken upon them to dispossess the Kingdom of the devouring Spirit of Persecution if they had not been sensible of the Glory which redounded to the King by the Example he had set them Nor was it upon Motives of Honour and Justice that Liberty to Protestant Dissenters came to be established by a Law otherwise that Freedom would upon those very Inducements have been extended to others by the same Act But it was from Fear that the retrenching that which through the Mercy of the King they had gotten into possession of might have lost them the Affections Service and Assistance of the whole Fanatick Party and have made those People turn Jacobites upon the Foot of Interest that have not Conscience nor Principles of Vertue and Loyalty to be so But besides this proof arising from Fact by the King 's suspending penal Laws in Matters of Religion and his granting Liberty to Protestant Dissenters which puts it in a Meridian Light that he could not cherish any Thoughts or Intentions of overthrowing our Religion he was pleased to exert his Goodness in a second Matter of Fact and in a surprising Act of Grace which carried convincing demonstrative Evidence along with it that he harboured no such Design in prejudice of the Reformed Doctrine and Worship as have been calumniously fastened upon him The Generous Princely and Merciful Act which I mean was his Receiving Entertaining and Relieving the French Refugees which as he was under no legal Obligations of doing so there were Discouragements enough lay before him to have hindered and prevented it I know Sir that you cannot have forgotten with what Readiness he admitted them into his Kingdom what welcome and compassionate Entertainment he gave them and how he not only invited and required his Subjects to harbour and relieve them but to what Measure and Degree he exercised and extended his own Royal Benevolence and Charity towards them Nor was he satisfied with the bare taking them under the wing of his Protection and making them Sharers in his own and his Peoples Bounty but he entertained divers of them into his Service and admitted some of them into his Friendship and Confidence So that whosoever will allow himself leave and time calmly to consider either the King 's own Religion in which he was both Sincere and Zealous or the Terms of Amity he stood in with the King of France which he had neither Reason nor Inclination to depart from will not be able to avoid acknowledging unless he can reconcile Contradictions that his Majesty could have no other Inducement for the doing of it but that he judged it an evil Thing as well as an unwise for any Prince to persecute and drive away his Subjects meerly for their differing in Religious Matters from what was legally Established and Embraced and Professed by the Bulk and Generality of the People and that he esteemed it a Duty which he owed to God and to Mankind to entertain and succour such as suffered for their Consciences in Things purely Divine For as the King could not be insensible that it was not very Grateful to a great Number of his Protestant Subjects to see so many indigent and necessitous Foreigners received into the Nation who would not only by their Skill and Industry gain away much of the Manufacture Traffick and Employ from them but who by their frugal and paâ—â—â—monious Living would be able and therefore sure both to underwork and undersell them So it could not escape his Majesty's Knowledge and Belief that it would not be very pleasing and acceptable to the French King to see those who carried their Reâ—entments against him along with them whithe soever they went and who will be always meditating and cherishing Revenge to be so tenderly Pitied compassionately Received and safely Covered and Protected by a Prince that was not only his Allie but a Roman Catholick Yet under that view and with a cognizance of all this did the merciful King admit entertain and treat them with the same Royal Goodness and Generosity as if they had been People of the Romish Communion drove out of some Protestant Country for their