Selected quad for the lemma: act_n
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A46109
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An Impartial account of the nature and tendency of the late addresses in a letter to a gentleman in the country.
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Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 1621-1683.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing I73; ESTC R7672
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22,979
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40
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with the greater vigour and to execute what they intend with more bloody rage Can any man that is not void of common sense believe that we are safe and out of danger when every true Protestant is in daily hazard through their Sham-plots and by their hiring and suborning vile and execrable Villains to Swear Treason against those that have any zeal for our Religion and Civil Liberties How can we be supposed arrived at any measure of Safety when there are an Hundred things absolutely necessary to be done towards our preservation wherein the King tho' fully disposed to adhere to the Laws is in no capacity to meddle without the assistance and concurrence of his Parliament And therefore if men will after all that they have seen felt heard and read of a damnable Popish Plot to destroy the person of the King overthrow the established Religion and enslave the Nation to an Antichristian forraign Power flatter themselves upon a bare Declaration that His Majesty will Govern by Law that thereupon all is safe and secure they must not take it ill if they be thought accessary to their own and the Kingdoms ruine through their dull and blockish incredulity to say no worse SECT XVII Another ill tendency of most if not all the Addresses is the reviving the memory of the late unhappy troubles which is the interest both of His Majesty and the whole Kingdom to have buried in perpetual oblivion For the mentioning of that War with reflection and bitterness serves only to make men remember three hasty Dissolutions of Parliaments and Twelve years want of one with some other things which fell out in that space all which both preceded and had too great an influence towards the causing of it Besides there was a Massacre of the Protestants in Ireland by the Papists there and a bloody War commenced for the extirpation of the English Government in that Kingdom which as it too much exasperated the minds of men towards that unhappy War which begun here so I fear the upbraiding men too much with their concern in those troubles will not prove very useful to the party that appears most forward in it Nor is it easie to be imagined how the mention of the late War comes to be brought upon the Stage at this time of day seeing most that were believed either the first fomenters of or proved afterwards Actors in it are dead and gone and for their Children witness many of the most violent and high flown Clergy they are commonly found to be of Principles directly contrary to what they were Nay that which renders all reproachful Discourse of that War at this juncture still more strange is that the ignominy and odium of it is designed to fall upon many of the chiefest of those that served under the Banners of the late King or upon such who sprung from them that did and have their Fathers loyalty mixed with their blood And to deal plainly I know nothing that can so plausibly justifie the Parliaments Cause in that War as the telling the World that there was little or no difference betwixt their Principles and the Principles of those that set in the Two last Parliaments whose actings the Addressers do with so much indecency brand and asperse And the language that is dayly bestowed upon the Members of these late Parliaments as being men of the same complexion that they of the Parliament Forty one were will instead of leaving any reproach upon them on whom it is intended to be fastned beget a better opinion of those to whom they are compared than the Addressers would be willing that they of this Age should find reason to entertain I may add that none have lived more peaceably and with better submission under His Majesties Government than they who were engaged on the Parliaments side in that unhappy War and therefore it doth not seem an act of any great prudence to discourage them in their obedience by upbraiding them with that which the Law hath not only pardoned but which they have expiated by their loyalty since Nor do I think that when the Parliament after the Kings Restauration made the Act of Indemnity wherein among other things enacted which they judged necessary towards the Settlement of the Nation they prohibited under a Penalty one man's reproaching another with his being concerned in that War during the space of three years after the date of the said Act that ever they intended that men should afterwards with the greatest Licenciousness and Scurrility upbraid one another with it Nay they hop'd that if the Spirits and Tongues of men were so long bridled and restrain'd their Animosities would be wholy extinguished before the expiration of that time And none but men of very implacable Spirits would call over and with so much Satyr asperse men for these things especially when there hath not been the least cause administred for it unless it be that such have a greater tenderness and value for the Protestant Religion and English Liberties than to desire they should come to lye at the discretion of a Popish Prince as the Addressers plainly wish they may SECT XVIII As our Affairs are now circumstanced and as the state of the Protestant Religion stands at present in England the Addresses carry another ill Design in them which is to enflame differences further among our selves and thereby betray us into the hands of Popish Adversaries For as if the principal thing we were to aim at were not the preserving our Religion against the Conspiracies of the Papists and as if the united strength of all Protestants were not little enough to effect and obtain it no less will serve most if not all of the late Addressers than the Executing the Laws with the utmost Severity against Protestant Dissenters And as if there very thinking of a Phanatick had made them delirous they will not allow the Parliament to make the least abatement in the terms of Conformity or to give Indulgence in or dispense with one Ceremony though all the Ceremonies and the present Form of Worship and the very Hierarchy it self can plead no other Authority by which they are enjoined or by which the Subjects of this Land are bound to comply with and submit to them but some Acts of Parliament Nay so little do the persons that have Subscibed the Addresses understand the Interest of the Protestant Religion as now by Law established that they would not have an Act to be repealed which may under a Popish Prince and in case Popery come to be set up prove as fatal and mischivous to them that are at this time the Conformable Clergy as it will to the Dissenters tho' at present it do only reach and be applied to the latter And that I may not seem to impose upon them Is not all this the full and plain import of their joining Popish Recusants and Seditious Sectaries all along together Of their affirming Fanatical Parties to be as dangerous as
Popish Of reckoning up the pernicious endeavours of the Sectaries in consort with the Devilish Designs of the Papists And as if this were not sufficient to declare what they mean they not only take upon them to thank His Majesty For not passing Limitations or Nullifications of such wholesome Acts as were designed for Preservation of the Reformed Religion especially the 35th of Queen Elizabeth and for not suffering that Law and others made against Conventicles to be Repealed but they humbly pray His Majesty that those Laws now in force may vigorously speedily and equally be put in Execution against all Papists and Protestant Dissenters And particularly that the Statutes of the third of King James and the five and thirtieth of Queen Elizabeth may be put and continued in their due Execution It is something strange to find a company of men so zealous for the Protestant Religion when divers of them are the Disgrace and Reproach of any Religion which they take upon them to profess But can we believe that they are Protestants or at least that they understand the Protestant Interest who represent Dissenters as equally dangerous to the Government Established Religion as the Papists are It would administer a ground of too ill an Opinion of our Supreme Rulers and Publick Ministers should they allow and approve what these men have suggested For are there any among the Dissenters that have sworn Obedience to a Forreign Power that they should be thus put into the same List of dangerous persons to the Government with the Papists Or is there any Security that the Legislative Power can require of them for their Peaceableness that they are not willing and ready to give Yea Is not the Religion of the Dissenters established by Law as well as that of the Conformists tho' there be some things Ordained as the Accoutrements and Modes of the National Religion which the Non-Conformists cannot submit unto For as the only Foundation upon which the Dissenters go is that their Faith and Worship are agreeable and according to the Scripture which is the alone Rule of the mind of God to all his People in what they are to believe and perform So from the Authority which the Scripture hath allowed unto it by the Law of this Land and by the Consonancy of their Doctrine to the Establish'd Articles of Faith they humbly conceive that they have the countenance and warranty of the Law for their Religion Nor doth the Law disallow or forbid any thing which they profess it only enjoyns some further things which they cannot come up to And as the Dissenters do not oppose any one Doctrinal Article of the Church of England so they blame and judge no man for the Canonical Obedience that they promise to the Bishops or their Conformity to the Ceremonies but merely beg that themselves may be excused And should they be gratified as to all which in our present circumstances they do desire it would amount only to this That they may Preach the Gospel without being liable to Imprisonment Fines and Banishment Nor do they covet Ecclesiastical Preferments or Parochial Maintainance tho' were it not for some things which are made the Tests to those Places and Advantages and which without any Inconveniency might be laid aside there are many of them that are as worthy of them as others Neither can that which is stiled the Church of England suffer any diminution in the number of its Members by an Indulgence to Protestant Dissenters having both this will I give thee and thus saith the Migistrate on their side unless the Clergy should fall short in Abilities for their Function and in having Thus saith the Lord to plead for them But how dare these persons who have subscribed the Addresses assume the confidence to censure Parliaments for going about to repeal Laws which by woful Experience have been found not only useless but inconvenient both to the Protestant Religion and the Safety of the Kingdom For as Parliaments have Power to Enact Laws so they have the same Power to Abolish them whensoever they find that instead of answering the Ends which they were made for they have proved prejudicial to the Common Good And surely one may humbly say and that without the least Reflection upon the Grace and Favour with which the Addresses have been received that two Parliaments so fairly and unanimosly chosen and consisting of Gentlemen of the Chiefest Quality best Parts greatest Wisdom most plentiful Estates and firmest Integrity to the Interest of Religion and the Nation and all except a very few Zealous Sons of the Church and unfained Defenders of the present Hierarchy Discipline Forms and Rites of Worship were in all probability as able and likely to know what will let in or keep out Popery what will preserve us from or betray us into the hands and power of the Papists as Twenty or Thirty persons in a County or Corporation most of whom are not worth Forty Shillings Freehold a year and many of them not able to speak Ten words of sense together But it is easie to conjecture who in divers places set these Addressers at work and who put that in reference to Protestant Dissenters into so many Addresses namely either persons Popishly inclined that they might thereby continue and heighten our differences and make us the more easily a prey to Rome or some ignorant Clergy-men who besides their enmity at Phanaticks have little else to recommend them to the obtaining a common and civil respect but their Cassock and their Surplice SECT XIX And as if all this that I have with the greatest sincerity and justice represented unto you were not enough to blast the credit of the Addresses and to oppose the weakness and folly of such as have subscribed them there is something yet further and which is infinitely more pernicious that they pursue and aim at namely to possess His Majesty and the World with a belief that there is a design carried on by Protestants against the King and the Government Hence they not only thank His Majesty For recollecting the several steps and advances by which we were betrayed into our former confusions but take upon them to observe that there are some ill men who labour the subversion of our Religion Liberties and Properties under the specious pretence of Reformation being the same method that they brought to pass all the miseries of Vsurpation and Tyranny that this Kingdom lately groan'd under and that being seasoned with the old leaven of Common-wealth Principles they have endeavoured to make a misunderstanding betwixt His Majesty and his people and to throw us back into the same confusion we were delivered from by His Majesties happy Restauration and that not only the good order and quiet of the Government hath been most wickedly attempted to be disturbed and shaken but to be overthrown and utterly subverted and the very Monarchy it self to be destroyed Surely had these persons who