Clamours that have the face to compare three easie and harmless Rites with the Yoke of Moses and the Tyranny of Antichrist But thus split a Straw and lay it cross a Fanaticks forehead and as hard as it is it shall break the back of his Conscience I could have wish'd you had been as much refreshed and edified with the Arch-Bishop's Testimony as with Mr. Hales's that so instead of quoting a single Passage you might have taken upon your self the grateful penance of transcribing his whole Book and then you would have obliged us with that remarkable Prophecy wherewith he shuts up his Antiquities There is nothing more to be fear'd and provided against in this well-constituted Church of England than lest the Clergy whilst it takes pains in the Word and Truth and is with the greatest Observance subject to the Soveraign Power should be set forth as a Prey and Spoil to the Lavish and Spend-thrifts and be torn by the Reproaches and Contumelies of the Ignorant and exposed to the Affronts and Insolences of the Rascal-Rabble If this shall ever happen more heavy Scourges from God and sadder times than those of Queen Mary's Reign may justly be expected And yet thus it has been and thus it must be wherever it is the humour and fashion to vilifie the Priesthood Religion becomes contemptible with its Officers and where that loses its Esteem and Reverence Government loses its support and security And this was at the bottom of our late wild and wanton Rebellion that the People were debauch'd into a slight regard of all things Sacred and Civil by the bold and juggling suggestions of a few ambitious and sacrilegious Malecontents and then it was not only easie but natural to put Affronts upon all the Proceedings of Authority to bear down all its Remonstrances and run the Common-wealth into flat Anarchy and open War You see how little Execution is to be done upon the Church of England with the But-end of an Arch-Bishop as you express it with equall Wit and Manners Here the Quotation of my Lord Verulam which you could produce to my confusion would in my opinion have been much more to the purpose but to tell us what you can say without saying it is only to talk to your self Or the story of Pork that you forbear to tell too because you say I know it but I say I do not know it or if I did you should however have had the Manners to have told it for his Majesties sake because he knows how to make use on 't But another Qualm that is upon every turn throwing you into groaning Fits is that after all my seeming and pretended zeal for the Church of England for which you have the greatest kindness in the World were it not for the Pick-thankness and Pick pocketingness of the Clergy I shall be found by any unpack'd Jury of Divines little better than a rank Erastian a word you have pick'd up out of Bishop Bramhal though for any thing you know that may signifie a Wizard or a Magician yes or a Jewish Zealot i. e. a notorious Rogue and Cut-throat But be it what it will this too was as all the rest are J. O's grievance And you are both Crafty Colts that when you know your selves unable to answer Arguments presently spurn at them with some false and foul Recrimination I scorn'd to take any notice of his Braying and so I should of yours but that I perceive some weak and well meaning Brethren that are only wont to skim and skip over Books to be a little startled at the Impeachment because I all along discourse of the Power of the King and not of the Church though the reason of it is very obvious viz. because the Subject I design'd and proposed to treat of was the Power of the King and not of the Church so that if you and J. O. are aggrieved at any thing it is for no other cause than that I have stuck close enough to my own Argument and too close to yours Now Sir as you well remember you have for want of wiser Remarques calculated at least ten times over in what Year of the Lord and upon what day of the Month my several Books were born and then if you will compare it you will find that the juncture of Affairs to which the first was accommodated was at a certain Season after the Chatham Adventure when you began to lift up your Heads and to Nose your Governours and to make bold demands in the name of your Consciences against the late illegal Impositions of King and Parliament And you know what innumerable swarms of Pamphlets you were perpetually sending abroad only to declare to all his Majesties good Subjects that either were already out of humour or had a mind so to be that if himself or any other Civil Magistrate whatsoever shall presume to challenge or exercise any Authority over their Free born Consciences in any matters of Religion whatsoever he usurps upon the Royalty of God and involves himself in the guilt of Tyranny and Persecution This was loud and broad enough to alarm the Church of England we understood the men and their meaning and had no mind believe me to have that comfortable settlement restored to Church and State by his Majesties happy Restauration unravel'd by these Men's bold and insolent Pretences And therefore divers Persons out of pure Love for the Church and Loyalty to their Prince and Zeal to their Countrey set themselves to beat back all your new Republican Pleas of Sedition and to assert his Majesties Prerogative against all your old Shifts of Dis-loyalty Among the rest I had no more Wit than to thrust my self too forward into the Scuffle and to pursue you too close through all your peevish Clamours and Pretences For when I saw men of known and approved Enmity to the present State buzze abroad such Exorbitant Principles among the Common-People as flatly contradict all the Principles and defeat all the Obligations of Government I could not I ought not to refrain from lashing such Lewd Designs with some Warmth and Smartness of Reproof and if I have any where overlash'd it was out of an over-vehement Concern for the Peace and Prosperity of my Countrey though for my own part I am not sensible of any one Expression that is chargeable with the least Harshness or Incivility I have only express'd ill things by their Proper Names and whereas both your self and J. O. pour fourth in every Page incessant complaints of Railing and Reviling that is but an Uncivil Word that you may throw at any man that you are not fond of and it proceeds merely from your Old prodigious Pride and Partiality to your selves who whilst you make it both your Recreation and Employment to invent or blazon Slanders against the Innocent rave and fome at all Conviction of guilt against your selves I have challenged you often enough to specifie but one foul or false word in
are in their own nature capable of change and variety because their goodness and usefulness is not intrinsick but depends purely upon their institution So plainly does the good Father make Divine Institution and nothing but that necessary to erect the office and confer the dignity of a Sacrament Who then beside J. O. could have been so unhappy as to press this passage to vouch that all signs whatsoever any way appointed and used in Divine Worship without Divine Institution are and must be Sacraments I know no man more unfortunate in every thing he meddles with unless your self for though you flatly deny what he positively affirms that the Symbols of our Church are really of a Sacramental Nature yet are you fond of this Quotation that can prove nothing else but that they must be so But proceed you not content to affront the Holy Fathers I defie the learned School-men too and that notwithstanding I had before owned them fer the Authours of the Church of Englands Divinity Bravely sworn Crop after this rate such pleasant company as you can never want for proofs and though this is no flower of the Sun yet I am sure it is something that justly deserves to be call'd a Rapper I make these budgefellows the Patrons of our Church no I ever thought them since I understood them the greatest enemies of Christendom next to the Great Turk of Genevah It is these that are your implacable Divines your Jewish Zealots your Guelphs and Gibellines that are alwayes stabbing one another with their Obs and Sols and though I do not remember that they were wont very much to frequent Gaming Ordinaries yet were they the greatest players of their age at push-pin and picquet though they were not so venturous as alwayes to stake pieces that is for Dignitaries and Jack-Gentlemen but they were true Gamesters that loved play for play sake and the delight they took in wrangling and to that purpose ranged themselves into several Factions only to exercise their wit in dispute and contradiction So that the School-men in general that were so divided in all points among themselves could not be the Authours of the Church of Englands Divinity and therefore if it descended from these Doctors of the Game it must have been from some particular Cast or Family as of the Thomists or Scotists the Nominals or Reals c. for they are branch'd into as many divisions and subdivisions as a Jewish Genealogy or the Millecantons of Fanatiques Now I doubt it will be found upon enquiry that the design of the Church of England in her Reformation was to casheir all these Scholastick Innovations and to retrieve the Old and Apostolical Christianity and that the plat-form she propounded for her direction were not the decisions of the Schools but the Holy Scriptures and the four first general Councils And therefore as confident as you would seem to be in so course an untruth I shall never be perswaded that I could ever be so far overseen as to make these brawling and contentious People the founders of the Doctrines and Articles of our Church Who is able to deal with a man that is able to invent at so brave a rate But farther yet I did not put any direct slight upon the Authority of the School-men I only rejected J. O.'s quotation out of them for the same reason that I did that out of St. Austin in that he was so far from vouchsafing a particular reference to Book Chapter and Page that he did not so much as deign to name any particular Author no not so much as a particular Sect. Now I do verily believe there are very nigh a thousand great Books of Scholastick Divinity in the world and then no man I trow could think it reasonable that I should sift so many heaps of rubbish only to examine J. O's integrity in a matter of such trivial concernment especially when I was so fully satisfied of it at much smaller pains And though it is a long time since I conversed with the School-men yet for all that I dare lay your own odds it is the best argument in impudent cases that there is no such idle subtilty in all their writings as this that J. O. has cast upon them viz. where words are signs of sacred things they are signs of them as things but not as sacred for though I have no great opinion of their wisdom yet I cannot believe them so palpably foolish Though if any of them were so I have already sent them their Answer by J. O. But here methinks you your self after you have forsaken your Friends and renounced their Cause grow more nice and abstractive than these great Doctors of subtilty themselves whilst you tell us that though these Ceremonies are no Sacraments yet are they so applyed as if they were of a Sacramental Nature and Institution and that therefore they are unlawful If you mean that they are so applyed by the Church of England as if they were of Divine Institution you mean impudently if you mean any thing else you mean nothing Yes but they are imposed with so high a penalty as that they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but Divine Institution That is to say 1. That they want nothing of a Sacramental Nature but a Sacramental Nature 2. This is no more than what may be objected against all Laws and provisions of decency whatsoever that have and must have a penalty annexed to them to enforce their Obligation 3. This starts new Controversies that were never so much as thought upon by the School-men themselves viz. 1. Whether to impose any thing that is in it self no Sacrament under an high penalty be to make it an as it were a Sacrament and then 2. Whether it be unlawful for any Humane Authority to institute as it were Sacraments These are weighty Controversies and will no doubt at the day of judgement bear out all the enormities of Schism and Rebellion And now if any man can play the fool at smaller Game than you have done push-pin is too high for him he is fit for no other employment than to catch shadows and Jackalents for though they are meer nothings yet to Children they appear as it were something But the great thunderclap is still behind for whereas I concluded that the Magistrates Power of instituting significant Ceremonies could be no more usurpation upon the consciences of men than if the Sovereign Authority should take upon it self to define the signification of words little suspecting any dangerous Plot against the State could have lurkt it self under such a well-meant and as I thought in the simplicity of my heart such an harmless supposition as this that a Sovereign Prince might if he pleased refine and alter the language of his Subjects without offering any violence to their Consciences But upon this your blood rises and your zeal kindles and you thunder and lighten as if I had shaken the pillars of the Earth and
of the heads of the ensuing Discourse I tell him that I intend to bestow some Animadversions upon one J. O. But would I had told you of this fooling at first for then I had saved you the labour of your first fourteen Pages Now is it credible nay is it not most preposterous to think that you should begin your Remarques upon my Preface before you had read as you call it so much as the Preamble Or that you perused only three or four lines at a time and so fell into your Animadversions in the same order that they are publish'd No doubt you saw this fooling before you set pen to paper but had no power to save the labour of all the former Pages That had cut off the pleasant Animadversions upon the Dilemma the Press and the Importance This wit is such a tempting and bewitching thing that a man has not power to forgo a good jest unless it be now and then i. e. very seldom when he chances to think of the day of judgement But though this fooling as if you had finisht your Animadversions upon the first Page before you had read the second be silly enough yet it is not altogether so bad as confuting the first part of a sentence before you came to the full period For thus when I affirm that as for the danger of the return of Popery into this Nation I know none but the Non-conformists boisterous and unreasonable opposition to the Church of England Here you stop in the middle of the sentence and clap down a full point after I know none And then if there be none the consequence is very easie what a fool I am for my labour to print a Book upon such an impertinent Argument and so away you run with a great deal of insulting and scorn and never stop career till you come to p. 271. and there you crave mercy for taking me a little too short and so add the latter part of the sentence and then gravely confess that this indeed has some weight in it for truly before you knew none too And now though one would think no pretender to Controversial skill could ever match such trifling as this yet I remember J. O. served me just such another trick that was full as foolish and somewhat more knavish Thus discoursing of Christian Liberty I had laid down this assertion That mankind have a Liberty of Conscience over all their actions whether morally or strictly religious as far as it concerns their Judgements but not their Practices He very honestly mangles this into two distinct propositions The first that Mankind has a Liberty of Conscience over all their actions whether morally or strictly religious And this he closes up with a full period as if it were an entire Problem by it self and then gravely insults as well he might over so magnificent a Grant and yet after all was not so ingenuous as you are to cry me mercy but suffers his unwary Reader to go away with an opinion of its being the Grand Thesis of that Chapter These are Polemick Divines for the Pope and the Good Old Cause that though they can say nothing for themselves are resolved never to hold their peace and rather than give out will tire their Adversaries with such wretched and intolerable trifling as this And that was the only intention of your Libell to divert people from attending to the serious Argument but you shall not escape so I will never leave my advantage to traverse your impertinencies for I have you all at my mercy and there I am resolved to keep you and assure your selves you can never gain any thing by offering any resistance Your Cause is so lamentably weak and defenceless that you can only betray it and expose your selves by giving an occasion to the Controversie And now after all this lost labour that you are of opinion might much better have been spared we are at length arrived upon the brink of the Preface But here before you leap in it will be convenient to pitch upon some standing jest that may give rellish and picquancy to all the other insipid and phlegmatick parts of the discourse and now because neither Authour nor Chaplain nor pink of Courtesie nor Priest nor Buffoon nor Prince Volscius nor Cicero are tuant enough what think you if three or four times in every page I call my Adversary Mr. Bayes Will it not be an admirable jest to repeat the word Bayes three or four hundred times for the pleasant conceit and the pure elegance of avoiding Tautologies Yes by all means it is just as much wit as if the word had been in the language of Charing-Cross or Lincolns-inn-fields plainly Bastard or more politely Son of a Whore Or as if you had kept to the language of your own more serious Buffoonry and the word had been Baals Priest or a Locust of the bottomless Pit or an Antichristian Beast For though it might pass for a very trim fancy in Mr. Lacy to fasten this nick-name upon a vain and pedantick Poet yet for you to borrow it without leave and apply it to a Person of a Sacred and Serious Profession without reason is flat dulness and impudence For who can imagine where the conceit of it should lye to repeat a Word of another mans Invention three or four hundred times together and that chiefly for this very reason viz. to avoid repetitions Next to the killing jest of whoop and hola I never met with any thing like it You are such another man But yet so transporting was the conceit among the Brother-hood for they are most implacable wits that at your first appearance there was nothing to be found among them but Joy and Jubilee the 15th of March was not a more jovial day neither was there a greater destruction of Cheese-cakes in Islington at the opening of the New River All preciseness was laid aside not a gloomy look nor an erected white to be seen but they let down their eye-lids as their honest neighbours do upon better occasions their shop-windows And all upon the suddain they are become the most jolly and most humorous companions of the Town And the very mention of Bayes is such a splitting conceit It even endangers both their spleens and their lungs yes and their Gloves too they rub them so heartily There is great hopes that it will alter their humours and mend their complexions at least there is no doubt but it will prove hereafter an admirable specifick for Fanatique obstructions And for this you were immediately horst upon the shoulders of the people where folly and ignorance alwayes rides and carried off with victorious noise and uproar and shewn in triumph to your old Companions that little suspected you would ever have come to this in Lincolns-Inn-fields and at Charing-Cross and there leave you to be preferred to the service of Punchanella to prompt jests and repartees to his Puppets you are just a fit Oracle for such
the Propagation of such Principles as prepare People for the like Practices upon the like opportunities But in the next place as the Clergy of all Ages have ever been the greatest Obstacle of the Clemency and Prudence of Princes so are they not so well fitted by Education as others for Political Affairs Good now Sir Pol what is the defect of their education Is it that they have not that liberty that others have to frequent the Gaming Ordinaries or make Observations at Charing-Cross and in Lincolns-Inn-fields Excepting these wonderful advantages in which you indeed though very few Gentlemen beside outstrip them I cannot see what breeding other persons can boast of that Clergy-men may not have as well as they They are born as other men are with variety of natural Parts and Abilities and they may emprove them as Kings and other mortal men do by reflecting upon the Histories of former times and the present transactions to regulate themselves by in every Circumstance And though it cannot reasonably be expected they should have Royal Understandings because they were never born with them yet what hinders but they may have Gentlemens Memories and so be as fit for Government as any of their fellow Subjects and if they are not as fit as Kings themselves that is no disparagement of their abilities especially when as they have not the education so they were not intended for the Trade of Kings So that you have shewn nothing but the Impotency of your spite and Malice to pass one and the same censure upon all men of a Profession when you might with as much truth and ingenuity have pass'd it upon all Mankind However the Clergy are born capable of Wisdome as well as others and then why may they not acquire it too in the same methods with others by Study and Travel and Experience and Observation and I do not see what greater advantage you have made of these than any poor Reader might have done beside being hardned in Malice and Impudence and Shreds of Latin But still you improve when next to this Remarque upon the unfitness of the Clergy by reason of their Education for political affairs you immediately adde That they have the advantage above others and even if they would but keep to their Bibles would make the best Ministers of State in the World So that it seems by their Education that is peculiar to them as Clergy-men viz. the study of the Bible they have the advantage of all others to make the best Ministers of State in the World so ridiculous was it for you to intimate that they are not so well fitted by Education as others for Political Affairs when your very next words acknowledge that they are the best fitted of any men in the World Was ever Malice so inconsistent with it self You have an implacable mind to vent your Spleen and Rancour against the Clergy but you are so conscious to your self of Impudence and Disingenuity that you are ashamed of the folly and the foulness of your own reproaches and that perpetually runs you up into these ridiculous Contradictions Could any man in the World beside your self have been so precipitate as to suggest that the Clergy are less fitted than others by Education for Political Affairs and yet in the same breath confess that they have from that Education that is proper to themselves as the Clergy the advantage of all men in the World beside Yes If they would keep to their Bibles but God therefore frustrates them because though knowing better they seek and manage their Greatness by the lesser and meaner Maxims Good Mr. Insolence Why not they keep to their Books as well as such Truants as you This is but a ridiculous and incredible Paradox that those that are best acquainted with the Rules of Justice and Government should for that reason be under a fatal necessity not to observe them But if they are not then seeing they have the advantage of knowing better than others and seeing there is no peculiar reason to hinder them more than others from making a right use of their knowledge then it is unavoidable by the Confession of your own Malice but that they must be most likely to make the best Ministers of State in the World Nothing can possibly hinder unless God Almighty after he has bless'd men with the greatest advantages for Wisdome and Integrity should by some miraculous and immediate stroak from Heaven blast and infatuate all their Counsels Why rather than fail of your spite to the Clergy he shall come down as he did at the building of Babel to confound all the contrivances of Church-men For truly I think the reason that God does not bless them in Affairs of State is because he never intended them for that Employment Good Mr. Secretary is there nothing can escape your knowledge Are you not content to be admitted into the Privacy of Kings but you must be God Almighties Colbert understand all the intrigues of his Providence and be of the Cabinet Council to the Most high Is it not enough that you are acquainted with the King all over you have observed his parts and given an account of his memory and understanding you have kept him company and given him your Testimony of the unblameableness of his Life and Conversation you have been admitted with him into his Privy Closet and can tell what he studies and what books he reads what he censures and what he approves Great favours these for a Gentleman of private condition and breeding and yet they are not sufficient to satisfie the ambition of such a Gonzales as you but you must be flying to Heaven forsooth by the help of your Ganzas even as I would fly thither without the help of Grace And there you must be prying into all the secret Councils of Divine Providence and you can confidently tell all the thoughts and designs of the Almighty and write Gazets of what News in Heaven Of all the secret ones that ever I met with give me you for a bold one No doubt you are no ordinary Mortal and have your habitation at least in the High Places of Armageddon where J. O. dwelt when he discovered all the Methods and Maxims whereby God orders the Dispensations and Revolutions of his Providence He is the Will. Lilly as you are the Poor Robin of the Churches in so much that he is able to give them an exact Ephemeris of all turns and alterations of Weather and to advise them in all changes of Affairs still to keep on the same side with God himself let him shift parties never so often when it is seasonable to sail by a side Wind against the seeming opposition of his Providence and when to sing Songs upon Sigionoth and by some secret intimations knock quite off with him from any Good old Cause or Good old Principles That such bold Impostours should dare to challenge any interest how much more familiarity
could not endure this Naughty Town because he could not go to a Gaming Ordinary but he was sure to be rook'd of all his money But Bat yet was a good-natured Gentleman and easily reconciled and it is the common fate of all Gentlemen of private condition and breeding Come come then be friends and say no more and we will buy thee a new Muff and Peruke nay rather than fail we will present thee with Coach and Horses and Liveries and thou thy self instead of coarse Drugget shalt wear Sympathetick Silk thy Pockets shall be full of Guinies and thou shalt again frequent the Gaming Ordinaries with as much credit and as big looks as ever we will buy off such an implacable Gamester at any rate And if ever hereafter any Clergy-man shall presume to cheat you then write on and spare not we deserve no mercy if we will take no warning And if we will not paint us out in our own colours dress us up in Sambenita's with all the flames and devils in hell Tell all the world that the highest pinacle of Ecclesiastical felicity is to asswage their Concupiscence and wreck their malice That the same day they take up Divinity they devest themselves of humanity c. That the reach of their Divinity is but to Persecution and an Inquisition the height of their Policy That they are the only men who in an affair of Conscience and where perhaps 't is they are in the wrong are the only hard-hearted and inflexible Tyrants and not only so but instigate and provoke Princes to be the Ministers of their Cruelty That they are so exceeding pragmatical so intolerably ambitious and so desperately proud that scaroe any Gentleman may come near the tayle of their Mules That they are enough to deform the whole Reign of the best Prince that ever wielded Scepter that they make it their business by their leasings to keep up a misunderstanding between Kings and their Subjects That they trinkle with the Members so shamefully as to expose the wisdom of his Majesty and the Parliament to After-ages That is to say the Clergy as such are a company of proud and leacherous and cruel and inhumane and bloody and tyrannical and leasing and trinkling Knaves This I think is revenge enough for a more implacable Provocation than being only a little trinkled at Picquet especially for one that were it not for this sinister accident I wish this Dignitaries eyes had been out when he over-look'd your hand is so great a lover of the Church of England that it joys his heart to hear any thing well said of it and so great an admirer of the English Clergy that he believes that ever since the Reformation they have been of the eminentest for divinity and piety in all Christendom And so true a friend to the Bishops of England that he has for their Function their Learning and their Persons too deep a veneration to speak any thing of them irreverently To what strange passions will this gaming transport men Who could ever have thought that one that loved and honour'd the Clergy at this rate could ever have been betrayed into such rude and abusive expressions by a little bad fortune at Picquet Who could suppose it that one that was educated in the Church of England should for the loss of a few Pieces become such a fierce and over-doing Renegade as to spit in the face of every Clergy-man that comes in his way to curse solemnly his Parents for his birth as well as his education and to animate all his acquaintance to the massacring of the whole Order This I believe is such an height of revenge and cruelty that with all your reading you will never be able to find out an example to equal it among the Clergy of all Ages unless the Priests of AEthiopia who were wont to send peremptory Commands to their Kings to dye at their pleasure From whom I am apt to think the Canibals of the Race of Capons descended because of their antipathy to the Race of Kings For if they do not so openly claim yet they do as confidently exercise the same tyranny over them But beside this unhappy adventure at Picquet there is another weighty reason of your displeasure against the Clergy of all Ages which though it be not so broadly express'd yet 't is sufficiently intimated viz. That in some age or other they have been a little uncivil to Gentlemen for it was come they tell you to Jack Gentleman They tell you what they tell you They of Charing-cross or they of the Secret ones The former they wise men say never say true The latter they all men know are sadly addicted to leasing but though it were both they nay though it were all they of the Modern Orthodoxy Hungary Transylvania c. what they soever it were we have no very great encouragement to trust your Report and that for two very good Reasons first because it is possible that they might misinform you and secondly it is not impossible but that you might misreport them to us Did not they tell you that the very minute of the conception of my Preface was immediately upon His Majesties issuing his Declaration of Indulgence to tender Consciences Did not they tell you that about the days of Bishop Bramhal there were a sort of Divines of the Church of England who could never speak of the first Reformers with any patience Did not they tell you that some of my Books are already sent beyond Sea for curiosity to the scandal and heart-burning of the Reformed Churches Did not they tell you that Cats are wont to whet their Claws against the Chairs and Hangings But the Virtuosi tell me it is false and that they only stretch themselves by hanging their claws in them when they grow sleepy Did not they tell you that the main designs of my Ecclesiastical Policy were to assert the unlimited Power of the Civil Magistrate and the absolute subjection of Conscience to all his Commands to destroy the Grace of the Gospel and turn it all into a Fable to recommend the Persecution of tender Consciences and the Toleration of Debauchery Did not they tell you that Julian was the most bloody persecutour of all the Roman Emperours Did not they tell you that there were no Non-conformists and Presbyterians in Sardanapalus his dayes when there have alwayes been ill-natur'd People from the beginning of dayes Did not they tell you that I who slew all men with my own single strength had two Assistants Did not they tell you that without the sign of the Cross our Church will not receive any one to Baptism Did not they tell you that there was a great Prelate of the Church of England that writ a Book of the Seven Sacraments Did not they tell you that Augustus Caesar though he was so great an Emperour and so valiant a man was yet
that was stab'd of Alexander the Great that had almost lost all of the Queen of Sweden that was forced to resign of the sturdy Swiss that would not conform and all the other idle stories that they know how to make use of if Kings will not But I beseech you what grounds have you for these fears and jealousies of Incivility Did his Majesty ever turn his Kingdom into a Prison Did he ever weary out his Subjects so at home as to constrain them to seek a more hospitable habitation among Salvages and Canibals abroad This was the incivility that deformed his Fathers Reign and the Rock upon which we all ruined but the King observes his Sea-marks and has learnt more manners and is not so uncivil as Alexander the Great and his Royal Father were as to force them to rebel by forcing them to conform And though I have not the honour to be so intimately acquainted with his Majesty as to give him a Testimonial of the unblameableness of his Life and Conversation as you have very obligingly done yet thus much I dare say for him that he is as civil and good-natured a Prince as ever wielded the English Sceptre so that you need not doubt but that he will upon all occasions give his Subjects good-words though they give him bad ones and humour them like Children though they are never so froward and deserve to be scourged And therefore during his Reign you have no more ground to fear any danger of Incivility than I have of Popery so unnecessary and unseasonable are your Lectures of good manners at this time when his Majesty God be praised is as well provided of a Royal Nature as a Gentlemans Memory Thus far have you instructed him how to govern his Island by way of Precept but now we procede to the more instructive Topick of Example and here you have strung up as Sancho did his Proverbs an hundred idle stories of the fatal Catastrophe of ill-bred and uncivil Kings to fright him into meekness and good manners to which you might in my opinion have added one more how the Subjects of Great Britain because their King would not humour them like Children when they had a mind to play with his Crown nip'd his Prerogative suck'd his Blood subverted his Government and set up a glorious Regiment of their own I verily believe to have trumpeted this in his Majesty's ears as much as I am out of your Books for it would have been a more pertinent story for the use of Princes than Alexander the Great that had almost lost all the Roman Emperor that was stabb'd the sturdy Swiss that would not conform and the frolicksom Queen that gave the blank Town seal of which there came no harm But yet from these you threaten Kings with as much Effrontery as if you had them standing before you upon the Stool of Repentance whilst you lecture to them with the state of King Gill Scotch modern Orthodoxy with politick-Notes and Observations upon Emperors Roman and Grecian Kings and Queens School-boys and Schoolmasters I shall as briefly as I can examine them to prove you as very a Rat-historian as I have proved you a Rat-divine Your first Tale is of a Roman Emperour who when his Captain of the Life-guard came for the word by giving it unhandsomly receiv'd a dagger I suppose you mean Caligula who as Suetonius relates was stabb'd by Sabinus whilst he gave the word not as you will have it for giving it unhandsomly the murther having been plotted aforehand and though Josephus you know had a peculiar grudge against that Emperour as a most implacable enemy to the Jewish Nation and therefore to disgrace him as much as he can affirms that he was stabb'd immediately upon giving for the Word the name of a lewd woman though in Suetonius the Word is Jupiter the most sacred Word in their Religion yet will you there find that it was the execution of a premeditated Conspiracy and that the main cause of it was his frequent railing upon this Captains cowardize This is a Caveat to Kings not to presume too much upon their own Wit and their Subjects good nature and if they will be drolling upon them they may thank themselves if they receive a Dagger for a Repartee I have heard of another Roman Emperour who gave the Sword to the Captain of his Guard requiring him to use it for his defence if he govern'd well but if not to turn the point of it against himself As also of a Prince of Brabant who granted to his Subjects if himself or any of his Successours should ever attempt to violate their Ancient Priviledges a full Power of proceeding to the Election of a New Governour what disturbances ensued hereupon and how Kings approve the example I know not but this I do know that it was very weakly done to submit their Actions so entirely to the judgement of their Subjects and put it within the power of any Malecontent either to murther or depose them But being got into the Roman Empire I am you know in my own kingdom and therefore when you ask me whether had I lived in the dayes of Augustus I should not have made an excellent Privy Counsellour to him for his Father too was murther'd I would have been Privy Counsellour to Augustus with all my soul were it not that he reign'd so long ago so that had I ever been of His Privy Council I must either have been dead fifteen hundred years since or at least have been so very old that by this time I should have been altogether unfit for any publique employment though I had descended of your family of the de Temporibus otherwise I know not any Emperour of them all of whose acquaintance I should have been more ambitious He was a Prince admirable for the wisdom and magnanimity of his mind for the sweetness and facility of his manners he was one that delighted in nothing more than the entertainments of wit and ingenuity Virgil and Horace and Varius were admitted into his retired and cabinet Conversation as well as Agrippa and Mecaenas they were not only his Domesticks but his Familiars and his Confidents they conversed and laughed together as friends and companions And now who would not take it kindly to be honour'd with the favour and familiarity of so great a Prince a Prince of so good and so sweet a disposition a Prince so free from froth and groans a Prince so much to be admired for that Majesty which sat upon the forehead of his Masculine Truth and generous Honesty But had I been of his Privy Council I am confident I should never have given him my Advice to sacrifice three hundred of the Nobles and Citizens of the best Quality to the Ghost of his murther'd Father because his Natural Father old Octavius was not murther'd but being a Civil Gentleman of private condition and breeding and never having suffer'd any of his Tenants to be