and five hundred of Prebends after so many shall have drawn Blanks in the Lottery of Preferment those few that shall draw those Prizes need not be envyed for what they have acquired by the Theological Profession It was both with Justice and Prudence by our Laws caution'd that so great a part of the Clerical Maintenance should arise from Tithes for by that means our Clergy are engaged to make the interest of their Country and its improvement their own and had they not had so much of their maintenance sounded on Tithes but on Money out of the Exchequer as they had before this time lost excessively by Religion so Religion would have lost their Calling for that the price of Silver falling by the plenty of it and the plenty or encrease of our people making all the Products of our Country dearer it hath been advantageous to our Clergy to receive their Tithes in kind as it hath been to Colleges to receive a Quota of their Rent in Corn. But that still the maintenance of the inferior Clergy was too mean will appear even by the late Enemies of our Hierarchy being Judges for Mr. Nye in that Book of his called Beams of former Light having spoke of the Ministers Calling being once a gainful one saith p. 123. It is vtterly otherwise now not but that there is a very liberal Maintenance appertaining to Ministers and greater by the bounty of the Honourable Parliament then the Preaching Ministry have formerly enjoyed The gradual encrease of our People and Trade hath proportionably encreased the Clerical Revenue which on the beginning of the Reformation was presently sunk so that Latimer in his Sermon before Edward the 6 th said We of the Clergy have had too much but that is taken away and now we have too little and what Iewel in his Sermon notified to Queen Elizabeth of that kind I have mention'd and so languid was the State of the maintenance of the Inferior Clergy in her time that She by one of her Printed Ecclesiastical Injunctions Anno 1599. did under great Penalties forbid all Priests and Deacons to Marry any Woman without the Advice and Allowance first had by the Bishop of the Diocess and two Iustices of Peace which I suppose was caution'd by the Queen that the many Ministers who had not competent Livings to maintain themselves might not marrying Wives without Dowries by new Births encrease the number of Paupers in Parishes It is observable that in the late times the Iesuites did publish many Pamphlets in Print against Tithes and did animate the people to make Tumultuary Addresses to the Usurpers to abolish that maintenance of the Ministers wherein as their Politicks were so unjust to our Monarch that had they succeeded they would have barricaded the way for his return in the minds of too many of the People for fear that the payment of Tithes should return too so likewise were they so ridiculous by cutting off all hopes of the return of Popery here in any Conjuncture of time that less then an Army of Bellarmines would never have perswaded the common People to hear with patience any talk of Holy Church's re-establishment here Tho as I have shewn that Tithes by reason of the equality in the Imposition of them and the diuturnity of time that hath habituated People to the payment thereof are a gentle part of the Yoke of our Ecclesiastical Government yet if the payment of them or any other Tax whether of Excise Customs or Chimny-money were for many years discontinued there would be no probability of bringing either the old Stagers or new Comers in the World to consent or hearken to their being re-established The Critical Observers of the Iewish State after Ten Tribes had made a Schism from the other two judge that there were two Conjunctures of time wherein their piecing together was fesable and that the great true Cause in Nature that hindred the Re-union of the Tribes was the aversion in the Ten Tribes to make three chargeable Journeys yearly to Ierusalem and to pay a double Tenth yearly out of their Estates besides Offrings and other Casualties to the Priests and Levites from which trouble and charge they had been relaxed by Ieroboam and by his Model of Idolatry and therefore the People having most inclination to that Religion that was cheapest and knowing that if they return'd to their old Religion they must likewise return to their old Payments to the Priests and Levites did venture to adhere to the cheaper Golden Calf and had the Iesuites here effected from the Usurpt Powers the Abolition of the Clergies Tithes which would have made the Return of the Church of England so difficult I may well argue that it would have made the Return of the Papal Religion and its chargeable Idolatry impossible whose Yoke of Payments neither we nor our Forefathers were able to fear But when senseless â—anaticks came with those Petitions against Tithes the more sagacious of the Usurpers knew that the hand of Joab was in them and they knew that hardly any Observation was more trite then that Popery gained ground chiefly in the poorer parts of the Kingdom where the despicable maintenance made the Ministry so too and where too the Pope would no more hunt for Converts then among the poor Norwegians but that it was of use to him to have the number of his Subjects increas'd in any poor places in a rich Kingdom where he tho a spiritual King might yet call his Subjects to Fight Sir Benjamin Rudyard takes notice of Popery's being an intruder among the poor Benefices of the North in the Speech before Cited and there saith p. 1. That to plant good Ministers in good Livings is the strongest and surest means to establish true Religion and will prevail more against Papistry then the making of new Laws and executing the old and there p. 3. relates what King Iames had done for the supporting of the Protestant Religion in Scotland where saith he within the space of one year he caused to be Planted Churches throughout that Kingdom the High-Lands and the Borders worth 30 l. a year a piece with a House and some glebe-Land belonging to them which 30 l. a year considering the cheapness of that Country is worth double as much as any where within an 100 Miles of London And p. 7. he mentions some Passages of Bishop Iewels Sermon before Queen Elizabeth where the Bishop having in general reflected on those that then caused the diminution of the maintenance of Ministers he further saith howsoever they seem to rejoyce at the prosperity of Sion and to seek the safety and preservation of the Lords Anointed yet needs must it be that by these means Forraign Power of which this Realm by the mercy of God is happily delivered shall again be brought in upon us Such things shall be done to us as we before suffer'd in the times of Popery c. 'T was there before mention'd how that Man of God with
Hereditary Monarchs He knew that a Popish Parliament in England had shewed their Abhorrence of the Pope's being somewhat like an Excluder-General of Kings and an Arbitrary one too as appeared by the Words in the Statute of 25 H. 8. viz. The Pope contrary to the inviolable Grants of Iurisdictions by God immediately to Emperors and Kings hath presumed to invest who should please him to inherit in other mens Kingdoms and Dominions which we your Loyal Subjects Spiritual and Temporal abhor and detest and the practices at Rome for King Iames's Exclusion had made deep impressions in his thoughts As he was a Prince of great Reading he could not but know particularly the many Anti-Monarchical Tenets that were published by many Popish Commentators positive Writers School-men Canonists and never censured by any Index Expurgatorius tho yet several Popish Authors who asserted the Power of Kings were so censured and particularly Bodin de Republicâ and he could not be ignorant of Popes having required several Crowned Heads to swear Fidelity to them and their Successors and that particularly the Pope sent Hubertus to require William the Conqueror â—o swear Allegiance and Fidelity to Him and his Successors and who magnanimously refused so to do and that the Papacy endeavoured to root its Power in the World by obliging men in their Oaths of Fidelity to any particular Pope to swear the same likewise to his Successors according to the common Style in those Oaths viz. Fidelis obediens ero Domino Papae c. suis successoribus and that thus too the Oath of all Popish Bishops at their Consecration runs and that the Great Austrian Family had not more carefully secured to it self the Scepters of the Empire by the Constitution of a King of the Romans than the Papacy had made Provision of that King 's being sworn that he would from that time be a Protector and Defender of the Pope and Church of Rome according to those words in the Oath as I find it set down in Magerus viz. Ego N. Rex Romanorum FVTVRVS Imperator promitto spondeo polliceor atque juro Deo leato Petro me de caetero protectorem atque desensorem fore summi Pontisicis sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae c. He had moreover considered the great Fermentation in the minds of so many Loyal People in England by Queen Elizabeth's being so reserved as She was in the business of the Succession and which as Dr. Matthew Hulton Arch-Bishop of York mentioned in a memorable Sermon he preached before her at White-Hall Gave hopes to Foreigners to attempt fresh Invasions and bred fears in many of her Subjects of a new Conquest and who thereupon very loyally said then The only way in Policy left to quell those hopes and asswage those fears were to Establish the Succession and at last intimating as far as he durst saith my Author the nearness of Blood of our present Sovereign he said plainly That the expectations and presages of all Writers went Northward naming without any Circumlocution Scotland There is an Abstract of this Loyal and Learned Sermon and which throughout pointed at the Succession in the History of some of the Bishops of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth printed in the Year 1653 and the fate of the Sermon was such that tho perhaps it tickled not the Ears of that Queen it so far touched her Conscience that the Historian saith She opened the Window of her Closet and gave the Arch-Bishop thanks for it No doubt but Parsons saying in his Book of the Succession That he thought the Affair about it could not be ended without some War did much heighten the Popular Fears of War happening thereupon and 't is most probable the long fear of War in that Fermentation did variously weaken the Kingdom Nor is it a new thought for the long fears of War to be held to bear some proportion to the mischief of War it self in obstructing Trade and Commerce insomuch that several Writers of the Regalia and fiscal matters among the Tractatus Illustrium have told us That Quando timor belli idem operatur quod ipsum bellum remissio sit conductoribus i. e. of the Revenue and hath Entituled them to defalcations We may imagine by the just effects of our late Fermentation what the state of the Body Politick was in that namely like the state of long tormenting anguish in the Body natural upon the pricking of an Artery and importing often more trouble and danger than the cutting of one And by the great triumphant Flame of joy appearing in the Act of Recognition in King Iames's time and which appears in our statute-Statute-Book as I may say lâ—ke a Pyramid of the Fire of Zealous Loyalty and greater and higher than any former Act of that nature we may judge how overjoyed all the Loyal People of England were on his coming to the Crown and as Pliny in his Panegyrick saith of Nerva's adopting Trajan It was impossible it should have pleased all when it was done except it had pleased all before it was done the same might be applied to the Case of King Iames's Succession to the Crown The very Title of the Act speaks the Triumph of the Hereditary Monarchy viz. A Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James his Progeny and Posterity There was an end of all the dreadful inconveniences of the uncertainty of the Succession and of the fears of the People of what was worse than being torn in pieces by wild Hâ—rses I mean the rending their Consciences by contrary Oaths about the Succession as in Harry the 8th's time There was an end of the â—ears from the growing greatness of France and fears of any Foreign Fremuerunt gentes England was restored to it self and Scotland added to it and tho Boccaline like an airy Iâ—genioso in his Politick Touchstone makes England weigh less on the throwing Scotland into the Scales any one will find that in him but grave Romancery who shall consider what with Oracular Wisdom another-guess Statos-man than Boccaline told Harry the 4th I mean D'Ossat in his long Letter to him from Rome Book 7th and Anno 1601. where he saith That the Pope desisted not to hope that his Maiesty might be perswaded by reason of State to endeavour that the Kingdoms of England and Scotland may not be joyned in the Person of one King considering the great mischiefs that the English alone have done to the French more than all other Nations put together c. And indeed that England is at this day preserved not only from the danger of being overbalanced by France but from the loss of its ancient figure of balancing the World must highly be attributed to the Hereditary Monarchy being fixt in the Line of King Iames and to Scotland being thrown into the Scales as was said and if any one shall tell me by the way that the weight of Scotland was prejudicial to Loyalty in
the exhalations of which may cast such Mists before Mens understanding Faculties as to hinder them from seeing their way in the observance of the Oaths they took and therefore as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or premuniment as I call'd it against our being future Enemies to our selves and against poor little Mortals as it were standing for the Office of Conservators of Gods glory while they are losing their own Souls by Perjury and against some Loyal Timid People troubling themselves with falling Skies and fears of Gods not upholding his Church just as Galen tells us of a Melancholy Man who by often reading it in the Poets how Atlas supported Heaven with his Shoulders was often in a Panic fear least Atlas should faint and let Heaven fall on mens heads instead of taking pains to uphold and maintain their Oaths which they swore to God in Truth and Righteousness it may perhaps be always of importance to our English World to have right Notions of the Obligation of those Oaths left behind in it When I have read many of the late Pamphlets against the Succession the Venom of which was stolen out of Doleman's alias Parson's Book and have often considered that the Government in King Iames's time might we ll be apprehensive of the mischief that Book might do with its Poyson and perhaps with its Sting in following Ages I have then wondered why none was employed to Answer it throughly a thing that I do not find was ever done unless it may be said that an Answer to the 1st part of it was in the year 1603 published by Sir Iohn Haward and that its 2d part hath been confuted by some Loyal and Learned Persons since the late Conjuncture of our Fermentation and in which time that Book of Parsons was Reprinted I am sorry that that Book and some others of Father Parsons were in some part of King Iames's time Answered as they were by the real Characters of severity that then fell on some innocent Papists and who I believe were Abhorrers of the Sedition his Books contained and on whom Dr. Donne's Pseudo-Martyr printed in the year 1610 reflects in The Advertisement to the Reader saying That his continual Libels and incitatory Books have occasioned more afflictions and drawn more of that Blood which they call Catholick than all our Acts of Parliament have done And with a just respect to the Learning in Sir Iohn Haward's Answer to the first part of that Book and by him Dedicated to King Iames it may yet be wished that with less Pomp of Words and greater closeness of Argument referring to the Principles of internal Justice and natural Allegiance and the lex terrae he had shewn the perfect unlawfulness of defeating the Title of Proximity of Blood in the Case and instead of so much impugning the Book by References to the Civil Law and old Greek and Latin Authors making for Monarchy in general or even by the places cited out of the old Testament favouring primogeniture and indeed I do not find among all our late Writers for the Succession that so much as one of them by so much as once quoting this Book of Sir Iohn Haward tho so common hath thence brought any Aid to their Noble Cause But however the Oath of Allegiance having been enjoyned since the writing of Sir Iohn Haward's Book hath given an ordinary Writer the advantage of bringing the Cause of the unlawfulness of disturbing the Course of Succession to a quicker hearing and speedier issue in the Court of Conscience which is the point I have endeavoured to carry after the end of this Discourse leaving it to Candid Men to judge of the sincerity of my performance therein and of my fair stating of the Question and the deducing genuine Propositions from it so stated and which shall yet be reviewed by me when I come to Review this Discourse The truth is when I began it I observed the generality of Men who writ against the Exclusion-Bill with a great deal of good Law History and State-policy did shew both their Learning and their Loyalty and did very usefully set forth the dreadful Confusions it would introduce and perpetuate in the State and the Illegality and indeed Nullity of any Exclusion tho by Act of Parliament was by them likewise usefully shewn but yet I think it would have been some scandal to the present Age if it had passed away without transmitting to the next some instances of Protestants who had leisure to write writing of the unlawfulness of such a Bill with relation to our Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and I was sorry to find that when the late Loyal and Learned Bishop of Winchester had afterward appear'd as the first Dâ—vine who in Print asserted That the Exclusion of the Right Heir was contrary to the Law of God both Natural and Positive and that such Exclusion was against the Law of the Land also his judgment in his Book called the Bishop of Winchester ' s Vindication given so Learnedly in the point seemed to so many of our new pretenders to Loyalty and to Conformity to the Church of England to be a kind of a Novelty But yet I observed that that Learned Prelate thought not fit there to strengthen his Assertion of the unlawfulness of such Exclusion by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Nor did I observe that among all the Loyal Writers for the Succession I had met with from first to last any one had surveyed the Question of the unlawfulness of the Exclusion resulting from our Obligation by the Oaths of Allâ—giance and Supremacy tho yet some few of them hinted the thing in general and were still answered with the haeres viventis till at last another Divine namely Dr. Hicks Vicar of All hallows Barking and Dean of Worcester honoured both himself and the Question by taking notice of it in his Iovian and in the Preface to a Sermon of his printed in the year 1684 and Entituled The harmony of Divinity and Law in a Discourse about not resisting Sovereign Princes and he in the 3d p. of that Preface observes That some men did pervert the meaning of the word Heirs in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy from its common and usual acceptation to another more special on purpose to elude the force and obligation of them which otherwise they must have had upon the Consciences of the Excluders themselves The Doctor had made himself Master of Law enough to Master the true notion of the point and did in his Preface exorcise the Fantom of haeres viventis a Noon-day Spright raised by one who was thought a great Conjurer and which had before haunted the Question and had affrighted so many from lodging their thoughts in it And tho no other of our Divines that I have heard of writ of the same nor any of the Layety otherwise than starting the Notion of it in Print yet considering the great weight of his Learning and Reason with which in
Antiochus or the Primitive Christians did under a Nero Domitian Dioclesian Maximinian or Julian and yet you see no end of this fury c. I would ask any Loyal Roman Catholick if a Clergy that could console such Lachrymists and preach Loyalty to them was not then necessary And I am sure he will say it was for that the Doctrine preached by the Author of that Book appeareth thus in the Contents of the Chapters after the end of that Epistle viz. Regal Power proceeds immediately from the Peoples Election and Donation c. By the Spiritual Power which Christ gave the Pope in his Predecessor St. Peter he may dispose of Temporal Things and even of Kingdoms for the good of the Church and the many Republican and Seditious Assertions in that Book are such that any Asserters thereof would in the judgment of our Loyal Populace be thought to merit what the Iews or Primitive Christians suffered as aforesaid And that no man dares now partly so fear of the Popular displeasure and being thought absurd say that the English Monarchy is otherwise than from God and not from Mens Election just as for fear of the People the chief Priests and Scribes and Elders durst not say that the baptism of Iohn was not from Heaven but of men is most eminently to be attributed to the late Loyal Sermons made expressly of Loyalty by the Divines of the Church of England But that I may draw toward an end of this long INTRODVCTION or PREFACE wherein yet if I have happened to acquaint any Reader with any valuable point of Truth it will be the same thing to him as the payment of a Bill of Exchange in the Portico or in the House I am necessarily to say that by the inadvertence of an Amanuensis employed in writing somewhat of this Discourse for the Press there happened to be several mistakes of words and names and one of them I shall mention here and not trust to its being regarded among the Errata viz. that whereas 't is said in p. 39 that Creswel a Iesuite writ for King Iames his Succession when Parsons writ against it it should have been said that Chricton a Iesuite then did so and so the latter part of the Volume of the Mystery of Iesuitism relates it and any indifferent man would think that Chricton writ not in earnest and that his Book appeared not on the Stage of the World but only to go off it since so necessary a Counterpoyson to Parsons his Book could never yet be heard of in any Library Some little Omissions and Errors about Letters and Pointing easily appearing by their grossness are not put into the Errata and some the Reader will find amended with the Pen. Moreover I am to Apologize for the carelesness of the Style and to acquaint the Reader that the Rule of any ones writing in any thing that is called a Letter being the way of the same Persons speaking I do thereby justify the freedom I have taken in not polishing any Notions or delivering them out with the care employed on curious Pictures and that require twice or thrice sitting and in using that colouring of words and such bold careless Touches as are to be used in the finishing up any piece at once and which the Nature of Discourse necessarily implies and in sometimes using significant expressions in this or the other Language for any thing as I do in my common Conversation with those who understand those Languages and by the same Rule I have exempted my self from the trouble of that nice weighing of things as well as of words that a Professed History or Discourse otherwise then in the way of a Letter would have required and the same excuse may serve for the Style of this Preface If the Date of this Discourse had not at the writing of the first Sheet been there inserted a later one had been assigned it but I thought it not â—â—nti on the occasion thereof to have that Sheet reprinted I hope to be able in my Review to gratifie the Readers Curiosity with somewhat more of satisfaction as to the Monastic Revenue and which in p. 92 I mentioned as not adequate to the maintenance of 50000 Regulars by my not considering how plentifully it was supported by Oblations of various kinds and other ways not necessary to be here enumerated In p. 1. I say I think it was St. Austin who said Credo quia impossibile est and have since thought it was Tertullian I care not who said it as long as I did not I have in p. 13 mentioned the Order of Iesuites as invented by the Pope in the year 1540 wherein I had respect to the time of its Confirmation from the Papacy and not of its founding by Ignatius There are other omissions and faults in the Press that the Reader is referred to the Errata for without his consulting which I am not accountable for them I am farther to say that there is one thing in this Preface that I need not apologize for and wherein I have done an Act of common Justice namely in Celebrating the Heroical Vertue and Morality of this present Pope that were signalized as I have mentioned Almighty God can make the Chair of Pestilence convey health to the World and can preserve any Person in it from its mortal Contagion But the truth is I was the more concerned to do the Pope the right I have done because I observed that after that Credit of the Popish Plot began to die that depended on the Credit of the Witnesses several Persons attempted to put new Life into it by their renewed impotent Calumnies cast on the Character of the Pope and as appeared by a bound 8 o printed in the year 1683 called The Devils Patriarch or a full and impartial Account of the Notorious Life of this present Pope of Rome Innocent the 11th c. Written by an EMINENT Pen to revive the remembrance of the aâ—most forgotten PLOT against the life of his Sacred Majesty and the Protestant Religion What AVTHOR was meant by that EMINENT PEN I know not in the least The Preface to the Reader concludes with the Letters of T. O. The vain Author having throughout his Book ridiculously accused the Pope of immorality and scandal and of being a friend to Indulgences and of favouring the loose Principles of the Iesuites and of contriving the Popish Plot and carrying it on in concert with the Iesuites concludes by saying in p. 133. This Pope had great hopes of re-entry into England by his hopeful Plot hereupon Cottington 's bones were brought to be buried here c. It was high time then for People to be weary of the Martyrocracy when the Plot came to be staruminated by Cottington's bones and the pretended immorality of so great an Example of severe Vertue as this Pope and when the belief of the Testimony against some men as Popish Ruffians was endeavoured to be supported by the Childish Artifice of
Royal Line from the Crown ib. and p. 222. The Protestants in France now about 2 Millions p. 222. Their Loyal Demeanor to Harry the the 4 th after he became a Papist ib. His condition after he became one ib. An account of the Apology for John Chastel the Scholar of the Jesuites assassinating himâ— and of the Positions in that Apology ib. The Aâ—ology affirms That Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right and that Henry of Bourbon cannot be called a King by reason of his Conversion p. 223. An account of the Gun-powder Treason out of Thuanus and the Tenets that the Traitors had imbibed from their Confessors and particularly That Heretical Princes by being reconciled to the Church of Rome recover not a Title to their Crown and that by such reconciliation they only save their Souls and that Heresie barrs the Hereticks Line from the Succession c. p. 224. Observations on the Millenary Petition in the beginning of King James's Reign ib. Observations on the Papists Petition to him about the same time p. 225. Dr. Burnet's History of the Reformation commended p. 226. The reason why the Author would have more severity shewn to a Seditious Protestant than a Seditious Papist p. 231. Mr. Fox referred to about his Question Whether the Turk or Pope be the greater Anti-Christ p. 232. An account of the Popes being Pensioners to the Turk p. 234. The Author observes in the famous Hosius of the Church of Rome a viler Blasphemy than any he remembers in the Alcoran p. 235. Observations on the Loyalty of many Papists in France to Harry the 4 th when he came to inherit the Crown and remained a Protestant and under the Papal Excommunication p. 236. Harry the 4 th an expected Protestant Successor was Primier Ministre to Harry the 3 d a Papist ib. An Argumentative Speech of an Arch-Bishop of France to prove That Harry the 4th ought not for his Religion to be debarred from the Crown ib. Maimbourg reflects on Calvin for his instigating the Magistrates of Geneva to burn Servetus ib. and p. 237. Dr. Peter du Moulin cited for saying That in the time of the late Usurpation the Jesuites were the principal directors of the Consciences of the English Papists ib. A Book published Anno 1662 observes That of the Papists in England 7 parts of 10 were Gentlemen and People of great Quality ib. The Author believes that the more ingenious and modest sort of Jesuites will by Natural Instinct be more and more ashamed of the turpitude of the former Principles of the Iesuites and particularly of the 13 th 14th 15th 30th 32d contained in the Popes Decree before mentioned p. 238. The Author judgeth that all bloody and rebellious Principles owned by any who call themselves Protestants must naturally by shame and fear decay ib. Mr. Cranford a Presbyterian Divine cited for saying in a Printed Sermon at St. Pauls in the Year 1645 That in 80 years there did not arise among us so many Blasphemous Heresies under Episcopacy as have risen in these few years since we have been without a Government and that above 160 Errors have been here since broached and many of them damnable ib. and p. 241. A Speech in a late Parliament referred to for observing that according to the best Calculation the Dissenters could not in the last Elections for Knights of the Shire bring in above 1 in 20 into the Field ib. The present Gentlemanly temper appearing in the People of England observed as to the not having râ—sentments against any men or their Converse by reason of their asserting Controverted Points capable of the name of Religion p. 241. The great Controversy about Easter now slighted ib. The Terms of Omo-ousios and Omoi-ousios will make no more fermentation in the World p. 242. The word Heresy now generally here reduced to its quiet Primitive Signification of an opinion without reference to truth or falshood ib. Our Courts Christian do no more prosecute men for being Hereticks than for being Usurers ib. There is now a more valuable libera theologia in England then was under the Usurpation p. 243. The Obligation our Land hath received from the Royal Society mentioned ib. The knowledge of Anatomy enriched within this last Century a 3d part ib. There were in the Year 1599 reckoned in Christendom 2,25044 Monasteries ib. By Herods Infanticidium a Million and 44 Thousand slain in the account of Volzius p. 214. In 45 years the Spaniards in America put to death 20 Millions of Indians ib By the growing Populousness of Mankind we must naturally hear more and more of Wars and rumours of Wars p 245. In the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr England not afraid to contend with both France and Spain ib. 2,50000 l. per Annum Calculated to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years gained to England by the Balance of its whole Trade p. 246. The Author en passant Calculates that England hath for late years gained double that Summ by the fashion of Crape ib. Ten times as much spent on the Law or Physick here as on the Clergy p. 247. By the Calculations of Cardinal Pool there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England then in France which he said exceeded England by two 3ds in the numbers of People as in Lands p. 248. The Author observes that in the Code Loüis published in the Year 1667 the Method injoyned for the registring the Christenings and Burials in each Parish in France is better contrived than that used in London ib. 'T is supposed that the publishing the Observations on the Bills of Mortality about three years before in London might occasion the aforesaid exact registring of the Christenings and Burials in France and moreover the registry of the Marriages by the Code Loüis enjoyned p. 249. The Registring of the Births and Burials is as old as the ancient times of the Romans and introduced among them by Servius Tullius ib. The prudenâ—e of the Code Loüis remarked in the numbring of the Regulars and Seculars there enjoyned ib. Sometime before the year 1588 the number of men in Spain being taken by secret Survey there were returned a 11 hundred and 25 thousand and 300 and 90 men ib. A Computation out of Thuanus of the Expences and Receipts of Lewis the 13 th for the Year 1614 ib. The Expences and Receipts of that Crown were more than quadrupled in the year 1674 p. 250. A Calculation of about a 3d part of the Current Coyn of England yearly carried into France ib. A Descant on the saying so much in vogue viz. Res nolunt male adnimistrari and an account of its Original ib. The Author supposeth that a more important Linen Manufacture will here happen from the many French Protestants here lately planted than was the Woollen one here introduced by the Dutch whom Duke Alva's Persecution brought hither p. 251. Remarks about the general sowing of Hemp and Flax here and about the designed
fumed into Mens heads in several Islands anciently and made them Prophetically Fanatick as Gryphiander de Insulis mentions and in his Chapter there De Mirabilibus Insularum saith Alibi fatidici specus sunt quorum exhalatione temulenti futura praecinunt ut Delphis nobilissimo oraculo Homines eo Spiritu Correpti dementes ac fanatici dicti quod circum fana bacchentur But it is confessedly too true That some of the Expositors of this Book and particularly in this our Island did too long here Bacchari circum Fana and have therefore justly had the name of Fanaticks and may as justly expect that their Oracles should be silenced as the Delphic was and that any persons of a sober Party drunk with Enthusiasme will not be again allowed to make all things reel into Confusion Those likewise who did here more cum ratione insanire then the Fifth Monarchy-men I mean the Assertors of Presbytery and who by the pretence of putting the Scepter into Christ's hand projected to put it into their own will find the numbers of knowing men now so encreased that our World will be more averse then formerly against their offers to mend it by their assuming of Regal Power What well willers they were to the Mathematicks of stretching out on our Church and State the Line of Confusion as the Scripture-expression is and how they thought Confusion as commendable a thing as I mention'd Antony's thinking Sedition sufficiently appears out of Mr. Nyes Book I quoted before where the great Architectonical Rule for settling a Government in the Church is rendred to be the destroying its Government by Law Establish'd and he there names it viz. Tollatur lex fiat certamen and thereupon he saith p. 187. It was moved by some Parliament men Friends to Episcopacy when it was to be removed that it might remain till a better Government were concluded but on the other hand it was prudently considered how while that form stood and had the advantage of the Law there would be no freedom in arguing about it But I account that the great Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience is contrary to that of tollatur lex viz. that no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries When ever any man quits this Principle he hath made his first step from a Precipice he is fallen from the Pinacle of the Temple and has very presumptuously tempted Omnipotence to save him after he hath thus begun to destroy himself and Religion too and has to Heavens secret Will sacrificed it s Reveal'd The shaking of this Principle is as I may say the shaking of the Earth and as Aulus Gellius tells us in his Noctes Atticae that the Romans did not know to which of all their Gods to offer Sacrifice in the time of an Earthquake but did then only worship an unknown Deity this too will be the fate of Nations where the lex terrae is shook by Enthusiasts namely that too many people will not know what God to adore and their pretended Illuminations will only serve to conduct them to such an Altar as at Athens ground under the Subscription to the unknown God and if perhaps some Enthusiastick weak Brethren arrive not at the denomination of the Forts-sprits applyed in France to Atheists they will be abandon'd to a disposition to close with the next Hypothesis of Religion they shall meet whether that of Deists Papists or Muggletonians or Mahumetans as Bodin speaking of the Cause of several Nations being fixt in their particular soiles saith alii longo errore jactati non judicio elegerunt locum sed lassitudine proximum occupaverunt To this purpose our incomparable Bishop Sanderson in his Lecture de adâ—â—quatâ Conscientiae Regulâ doth with great weight and a profound pious passion reflect on the effects of the breaking the Establish'd Religion in England by our late Reformers and saith Stetit hic aliquamdiu sed non diu stetit effraenis hominum temeritas c. hoc fonte derivata audacia effluxit tandem in apertam Rabiem exivit jamdiu in furorem Anabaptiscum quamvis quo porrò progrediatur vix habet usque tamen progreditur indies nova quotidie parturit opinionum monstra ut nisi ex sacrosancto Dei verbo didicissemus firmum stare fundamentum Dei neque adversus ecclesiam Christi praevalituras unquam ex toto Inferorum portas omnino metuendum foret ne Vniversa Christi ecclesia Atheismi velut diluvio obruta toto orbe funditùs periret Little did many of our deluded Reformers when they broke the hedge of the Law think what Serpent bit them and as little did many of their well-meaning followers think that while their Pastors did speak the Cause of Religion so fair that at that time the very poyson of the aspes of Popery and Superstition was under their tongues for that No Principle hath in it more of the Popishness of Popery if I may so say in the resemblance of the aggravation of Sin by it self viz. the sinfulness of Sin then the legitimation of unjust things by holy ends and this too our last mention'd Bishop brands in his Praelectio secunda De bonâ intentione where having mention'd that a Cardinal telling the Pope in a Conclave that somewhat he propounded to be done was not just and that the Pope reply'd Licet non posset fieri per viam justitiae oportere tamen fieri per viam expedientiae he goes on thus Nimirum is thoc est sapere haec est ex Iesuitarum ni fallor officinis deprompta Theologia omnia metiri ex Commodo Sanctae Matris Ecclesiae sacrosancta dei eloquia qua lubet inflectere Nasi ad instar Cerei torquere distorquere invita Cogere in rem suam And too little do many who justly Complain of Popery's having supported it self by Arbitrary Power on Earth reflect on their having supported that Power against Earth and even against Heaven it self and that the fumes of their Enthusiasme do vainly try to erect a Pillar of smoke against Heaven as I spake before of the Iesuites Morals setting up one of Ignominy against it and that it is an unlucky part of the Arbitrariness of Popery to transplant some of its odious Principles among other Sects as the Devil can at pleasure transform himself into an Angel of light The general received notion of Superstition is that 't is a needless fear about Religion and there is no fear more needless and irrational than that of Gods being unconcern'd in its Protection the which to imagine is more unworthy of the Deity and a greater tendency to Atheism then was the delirium of Epicurus about God's Carelesness of humane affairs and in relation to which Tully in his De Natura Deorum having discours'd of one that deny'd
to have wherewithal to eat Bread if they be executed according to the said Proclamation It was but about October 1673 that the House of Commons in an Address to the King took occasion to say It is now more then one Age that the Subjects have lived in continual apprehensions of the encrease of Popery and the decay of the Protestant Religion but what Mr. Coleman's apprehensions were of the Growth of Popery on the 5th of February 1674 I have shewn before and am of opinion That though possibly in the following course of time to the birth of the Popish Plot the coming of many Romish Missionaries here might make some accession to the Number of the Papists that however the Laity of them here Inhabitants hath in its Numbers sensibly decreased and will do so more and more till the most timid Protestants shall be no more aggrieved at their Number then of that of the Muggletonians or of the Sweet Singers of Israel That the discovery of the Popish Plot hath had a natural Tendency to the abating the Number of their perswasion must be granted by all who believe there was one and who know that the blustring attempts of the Conspirators to subvert the Protestant Religion and which have therein failed must end in the better settlement of it as all Storms that do not overthrow a Tree confirm its growth Mr. Care in his History of the Popish Plot mentions That the Iesuites and Seminary Priests in England at the time of the Plot were about 1800 a Number far inferior to that in the Conjuncture in King Iames ' s time before mention'd And short of the Number mention'd by Prynne in a Book of his Printed Anno 1659 called A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done spoken by and between Mr. Prynne the old and new forcibly Secluded Members and those now sitting c. where he saith p. 44 That an English Lord return'd from Rome about four years since averr'd that the Provincial of the English Iesuites when he went to see the Colledge in Rome assured him That they had then above 1500 of their Society of Iesuites in England able to work in several Professions and Trades which they had there taken upon them the better to Support and Secure themselves from being discovered and infuse their Principles into the vulgar People Mr. Coleman complains of a Conjuncture as to Popery that he writ in that tho the Harvest was great the Labourers were very few but Mr. Prynne supposeth the Labouring Jesuites who wrought in the Trade of Religion and in other Trades too were here after the year 50 above 1500 and it may therefore be well conceived that there were many Jesuites here beside who could only manage their Tools in the former Trade and perhaps as many Seminary Priests as Jesuites And no doubt without some hint of notification from some one of the Iesuits Provincials their Number in any Protestant State can hardly be conjectured in regard of their Proteus-like varying their Shapes accordingly as a Description of them is given in the Book called The Emperor and the Empire betray'd where 't is said There are in the Society of Iesus Men of several sorts some of which are dispens'd with not only to lay aside the Habit but to marry and bear all sorts of Dignities and he further presumes to say That the Emperor was thus in this Order in his younger days Mr. Prynne in p. 42. of that Book averrs That Oliver Cromwel declared to his Parliament Anno 1654 That the Emissaries of the Iesuites then came over in great swarms and that they had then fixed in England an Episcopal Power with Arch-Deacons and other Persons to pervert the People a thing they never since the Reformation I think attempted in any Conjuncture till Quarto Caroli and then as appears out of Rushworth ' s Collections in a Conference between the Lords and Commons and managed by Secretary Cook he said There was at that time a Popish Hierarchy established in England that they had a Bishop Consecrated by the Pope and that Bishop had his subalternate Officers of all kinds as Vicars General Arch-Deacons Rural Deans Apparitors and that they were not Nominal or Titular Officers only but they all Executed their Iurisdictions and made their ordinary Visitations throughout the Kingdom kept Courts and determin'd Ecclesiastical Causes But it appears not that they had any such Hierarchy here at the time of the Plot or that they have any thing like it at this time in this Realm Mr. Prynne tells us in p. 49. of that Book That in that Conjuncture in Cromwel's time above 30000 Popish Pamphlets were permitted to be Printed and Vended in England and that of this the London Stationers complain'd in Print But 't is very little that they have Printed here since the King's Restauration and the same private Presses which gave Birth to the few Pamphlets they printed would have done it to as many Volumes as ever Tostatus as Mr. Prynne writ if they had pleased The great Number of the Protestants must still be naturally attractive of the lesser to it for the preservation of their Persons tho at the price of the diminution of their Numbers as a drop is best preserved in the Sea tho it be there swallowed up This Notion is well confirm'd by Edmund Spencer in his Observations of the History of Ireland in former times where he shews in what course of time a handful of English planted among the Numerous Irish must of necessity become Irish as indeed his own Family there did as I am told and that Cromwel speaking to the Grand-child of Spencer in English that on the account of the Fame of his Ancestor he should enjoy his Estate was not by him understood And there is no doubt but time will illuminate the Papists as to the Pope's Politicks being inconvenient to them and only convenient to himself For the same Principle in Politicks that makes every lesser State have a regret against being United to a greater namely for fear of its being absorbed thereby a Notion lately in vogue when the Union of England and Scotland was agitated engageth the Pope to keep the Papists from a Coalition with the Protestants here that would drown the visibility of their Numbers and consequently the appearance of the Numbers of his Subjects in this Realm for so in effect they are The true Cause therefore in Nature that made the Pope by his Bull in Queen Elizabeth's time prohibit the Papists from continuing to come to our Churches and to our Common-Prayer a thing they would else still have done was the Pope's being enabled by such Prohibitions to put Marks on his Sheep whereby to know them and their Numbers And which had he forborn there had probably been no Number of them returnable in the Bishops Survey 'T is therefore not to be wondred that our Church got nothing but the destruction of its Hierarchy in the last Age by the Policy
Harry the 8ths time so it may perhaps as justly be said that they are in debt to the Crown for the safety of the Protestant Religion since Queen Elizabeth's who as I have been informed from some well Vers'd in our Exchequer Records alienated more of the Patrimony of the Crown then any English Prince ever did and that in order to her raising those great Sums before mentioned which were necessary for the securing the Protestant Religion and rivetting it in fast to our Laws and Government and I am the more apt to credit such my Information because I see not by what other way she could raise those vast Sums but by such alienation of the Crown Lands her ordinary expences probably coming near such her receits which one may partly guess by what Sir Robert Cotton in his abstract of the Records of the Tower touching the Kings Revenue affirms Ex Computo Dom. Burleigh The saurar that Anno 12 her Revenue besides the Wards and Dutchy of Lancaster was 188197 l. 4 s. and the Payments and Assignmets were 110612 l. 13 s. of which the Houshold was 30000 l. Privy Purse 2000 l. Admiralty 30000 l. and Sir Robert Cotton in that Book mentions that she did pawn her Iewels in the Tower and often morgage her Land which no doubt she was constrained to do for the great end aforesaid her ordinary Revenue and extraordinary Supplies of Subsidies not being adequate to the great Sums that her Measures of State and Religion caus'd her to expend And to how low an Ebb the Crown Lands were fall'n in the late Kings time from what they were in the 12th year of her Reign and when they were perhaps about 200,000 l. per Annum appears in a Book of Mr. Christopher Verion an Exchequer man dedicated to Sir Iohn Culpeper under Treasurer of his Majesties Exchequer where 't is said that the Revenues of the Kings Lands now in charge before his Majesties Auditors amounted in the whole to 100,000l per Annum and consisted then for the most part of Fee-Farms and certain Rents I have before mentioned that she laid the Foundation of the Protestant Religion being here semper eadem as in the Metropolis of Holland the Foundation of a House ordinarily costs as much as the superstructure thus expenceful to the Crown did the Foundation of Protestancy by her prove and she needed not the Precaution in these words of St. Luke For which of you intending to build a Tower sits not down first and counts the cost whether he hath sufficient to finish it lest happily after he hath laid the Foundation and is not able to finish it all that behold it begin to mock him saying This man began to build and was not able to finish She laid the Foundation of our English Gospel so deep in the Law of the Land that God be thanked the Romanists have not been able to mock it further then by calling it a Parliament-Religion and by my consent let them that way still mock on and I shall mock at them who think that any Religion but protestancy here will ever have a Parliamentary Sanction and if Popery had not been a Parliamentary Religion here in the Marian dayes her Reign had not as I may say been infamous by the occasion of any Noble Army of Martyrs nor the Eclipse of Justice and Mercy and the English good nature in her vile Quinquennium been made an Epoche of Horror in the English Story as great Eclipses of old in Chronology like notches in the Line of Time for Mens Memories to fasten on served as dates of Epoches to measure it by and setting aside some just ground of fear of Poperies being here permitted by Heaven to be an Epidemical opinion of Religion as a just Punishment of such defection from Morality I think the fear of the Kingdoms being Shipwrack't on it and sustaining thereby such persecution as was in Bohemia would be as much to be mocked as Shakespears Shipwrack in Bohemia and the fear of the Writ De haretico comburendo grillading any more Christians be as ridiculous as Lithgows mentioning in his Travels that in a hot Country he saw Geese roasted in and by the Sun. But My Lord raillery apart the Protestant Religion that before Queen Elizabeth's Reign was only like a Picture hanging on the Wall and easie to be removed without Fatal Prejudice to the Kingdom hath since been so incorporated into our Laws and the heart of our Politicks that like the old Fresco Painting appearing on Walls and there wrought deeply in it cannot be removed but with the Wall it self and whatever Popish Bishops or Iudges any Prince of that persuasion may possibly hereafter appoint they must till some of our Acts of Parliament can be Repeal'd which declare Popery to be against God's Law give Judgment that it is so accordingly as 't is rationally resolved in Vaughan's Reports in the Case of Thomas Hill vers Thomas Good where 't is occasionally said That if a Marriage be declared by Act of Parliament to be against God's Law we must admit it to be so for by a Law that is by an Act of Parliament it is so declared There is nothing I am more ashamed of in many Protestants who pass for first-rate ones and carry not only swoln Sails of Profession of it but Flaggs as Demagogues then to see them as I said value themselves on their excessive Fears of Papists and Popery I would wish that such intimidated Protestants if really they suffer that Passion and are afraid of the Fire of those Faggots that they are more distant in nature from then from the heat of Mount Aetna and talk after the Rate of the Martyr in his Letter to Cranmer that they must prepare to hold out to the Fire Inclusive would not by their pittiful ill boding fears stain the Noble Prophecies of some English Martyrs when the Fire was kindled about them at the Stake The Acts and Monuments will tell them how at the Martyrdom of Ridley and Latimer That when a Faggot was kindled with fire and laid down at Ridleys Feet Latimer spake to him in these words Be of good comfort Mr. Ridley and play the man We shall this day light such a Candle in England as I trust shall never be put out But what is somewhat more extraordinary and which I remember not to have heard any one observe out of the Acts and Monuments is in the Relation of the Tryal of Roger Holland a Merchant-Taylor of London how Bishop Bonner heard him say after the Sentence of Condemnation was read God hath heard the Prayer of his Servants which hath been powred forth with Tears for his afflicted Saints whom you daily persecute But this I dare be bold in God to speak which by his Spirit I am moved to say that God will shorten your hand of Cruelty c. For after this day in this place shall there not be any by you put to the Tryal of Fire and Faggot
the taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and thereby the laying on the takers an Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors that was to outlast the Life of the King and without any distinction of the Religion true or pretended of such Heirs and Successors Of the Obligation to the Kings Heirs and Successors arising from those Oaths Mr. Pryn in his Concordia Discors Printed in the Year 1659. hath writ usefully but because since the time of the late fermentation many Pamphlets have been writ pro and câ—n of the Political part of the Question relating to a Popish Successor and none that I have heard of has professedly writ of the Casuistical Part thereof and particularly with relation to those Oaths and because I have heard that in some discourse about the same in some good Company where the Obligation by those Oaths to the Kings Heirs in point of Conscience hath been asserted some good men have been blundered but of their apprehending the same by mistaking the saying in the Civil-Law that nemo est haeres viventis and likewise some things obvious in the Common-Law and I did fear that it might thence grow a common and vulgar error that there is no such Obligation resulting from those Oaths and that as a Supine neglect of the use of means to find the true sence of the same would be very culpable so that a serious and dispassionate representing the same would to all men that regard the weight of an Oath be very acceptable I have with as much recollection of thâ—ught as I could faiâ—ly and impartially writ my opinion thereof Casuistically and shall very shortly send it your Lordship for your perusal And indeed as I should not think I dealt candidly with any person of the Popish perswasion if I should be severe to him before I had a Moral Certainty of his having imbibed any of the Principles imputable to Popery that may be called unmoral or inhumane so it would especially seem to me somewhat like the drawing on a naked man for a Protestant at this time to write for the devesting any Popish Prince of his legal Property when few or no Writers of the Church of Rome either do or dare for fear of offending the Pope draw their pens for the preservation of such his property without respect to any Religionary Tenets he may hold What the Pope did to obstruct King Iames's Succession I have mentioned and what favour any Protestant Prince can hope for from the Holy See may appear out of D' Ossat's Letter to Villeroy in the Year 1598. Book 4th where having spoke of the Artifices used to the Pope to make him believe that if Harry the 4th recovered the Marquisate of Salusium it would be Commanded by Hugonots he thereupon adviseth the King to declare the Contrary to the Pope and adds I would not interpose to write this to you if I did not know that the Pope and all this Court hold that to maintain the Catholic Religion in a Country and to preserve it from Heresie his Holyness may and ought to deprive the true Lord and Possessor of it and give it away to any other who hath no property therein and who shall be more able and willing there to preserve the Catholic Faith. I met with some passages lately in a Pamphlet that concerned the Succession where the Author having liberally descanted on the words Heirs and Successors in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy saith as I will not take up Arms without the Kings Commission nor enter into any Association to commence in his life time against his Consent c. so any one by whom or for whom any resignation of his Majesties Power shall be extorted shall not reign over me and there was another very course expression there applyed to a very fine Person and one so every way truly great that every Age doth not produce viz. That the House of Commons conned little thanks to George Earl of Hallifax c. but according to the licence of Speech used by that Author I shall venture to declare that where ever I have a Suffrage in the Choice of a Parliament-man if any Candidate shall tell me that he served in the place before and was for an Exclusion Bill rather then the Kings Offers and without advising with his Country would have any one of the Royal Line Secluded from his Title to the Throne on the account of any Religionary Tenet for our English Antiquities afford Footsteps of Parliament-men on some weighty matters consulting their Towns or Counties that chose them such a one if I can help it shall never represent me and moreover he who doth not with acknowledgments of Honour and Gratitude to the Earl of Hallifax mention that Bill that he brought into the House of Lords in order to the extermination of Popery that I spake of before and with it lodged in our Statute Book that man if I can help it shall never represent me I am not so rash in my efforts against Future time as perhaps that Author was and can cite a great Name for the reasonableness of Representatives advising with those they represent in matters of great moment to the State and to this purpose the Lord Viscount Falâ—land Secretary of State in a Printed Draught of a Speech concerning Episcopacy c. saith p. 4. Mr. Speaker Tho we are trusted by those that sent us in Cases wherein their opinions were unknown yet truely if I knew the opinion of the Major part of my Town I doubt whether 't were the intention of those that trusted me that I should follow my own opinion against theirs and thereupon his Lordship advised the House of Commons not to do any thing against Episcopacy and at least to stay till the next Session and consult more particularly with their Electors about it And if according to the example of that great man any of our Contenders against Popery had thought fit to consult with those they represented about the meeting those Royal and Frank offers with hearty embraces they would perhaps have found the generality of those they represented zealous for their so doing and if they that perhaps with a well intended Gallantry of Courage and scorn of Popery threw out the Bills that came from the Lords in the Year 1677 should ask those they represented if they do not now wish those Bills had then passed into Laws I believe they would say they did and if they were asked whether that Bill I mentioned before that was brought in by the Earl of Hallifax had not likewise passed into a Law I believe they would wish it had I presume not to inveigh against any of our late Loyal Parliaments whatever slips in Politics were by any there made or Arbitrary Votes there passed against particular Persons and am as impatient when I hear any inveigh against our Representatives who in the contention of Popery exerted all the strength of the faculties of their minds what
it What a diminution was it to the honour of the Age that the Popularity of Sir W. I. a person who in the florid part of his youth appeared but an Entring Clerk or one who entred Judgments for Attorneys and in the greatest Figure he made in Parliament or the Court acquired no fame by various Learning and Skill in the Politicks or by having profoundly studied the great Book of the World should yet as with the Impetus of an Oracle run down the great Characters of this Lord and of your Lordship and the Earl of Hallifax that are known to the World to be so great for Loyalty and Learning and the Comprehensive Knowledge of the present and past State of Christendom and that after that Loyal and Learned Person and undefatigable assertor of our Laws and Religion Sir L. Ienkins had with great Reason and Courage in a Speech in the House of Commons against the Exclusion Bill affirmed that the passing the same would be contrary to the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and Sir W. I. thereupon answering it with the Non est haeres viventis he had somewhat like a general humme of Applause from the House and almost as if his had been the voice of God and and not of Man But on this occasion I should be unjust and too reserved to your Lordship if I should not tell you that a Gentleman of good parts and a great Estate a Member of that Parliament acquainted me that he being then one of the great Admirers and Followers of Sir W. I. and frequently present with him in the most private Cabals did observe him to be full of fears of the Courts being brought to favour the Exclusion-Bill as supposing that the Parliament would be thereby engaged to part with great Sums of Money and that he observed Sir W. I. and others of the Cabal were at a stand in their Politicks as not knowing what steps to make next if that Bill had passed and the Consideration whereof he told me made him not desirous to participate further in their Councils Thus just is it for Heaven sometimes to blind and confound and abandon good men in their Councels when they abandon plain Principles and Dictates of Reason and when they will not do what they know to suffer them not to know what they do and particularly not to know while they were so busily founding Dominion or Empire in Grace that they were riding Post to Rome as fast as ever that Father of the Trent-Council did who was so often employed to the Holy See to bring thence the Holy Ghost in a Cloak-bag It is some Consolation to your Lordship to have fellow sufferers in the Obloquy cast upon you by the Tongue of a young Man in a matter so remote from verisimilitude and not worth the twice naming and whose Person I thought not worthy the naming once however a Loyal Parliament thought his Accusations worthy the Press and in whose reproach that Honourable Person and your Lordships old friend the Earl of Peterborough shared with you But by what I have found to be the judged Character of that Lord among the most Impartial Studiers of Men in the Age I may justly say that the honour of the Age was a fellow sufferer with you both by the publick Countenancing of the dirt by so obscure a hand thrown on a Person of so Noble Descent both from Father and Mother and of so much Courage and Loyalty and Learning and on whom his great knowledge of all History Ancient and Modern hath so much accomplished as a States-man and one who in his Travels in the World abroad left there such impressions of his real value on the most Critical Observers that his Prince thought him to be the most proper Person to employ abroad as Ambassador in negotiating the Marriage between his Royal Highness and the Princess of Modena whereby we may yet hope for an Heir Male to inherit the Crown of England I never heard that any thing but sham could represent this Lord otherwise than a true Son of the Church of England and having once or twice seen him en passant at your Lordships House and observed the lineaments of Honesty and Honour in his looks do think that his very face may serve to confute thousands of such Tongues as that which aspersed him But both his Lordship and yours have likewise in that Persons Accusations and in the greatest Circumstances of improbability been fellow sufferers with the greatest Subject and therefore need not be ashamed of your fate according to what the Famous Historian so well said Post Carthaginem captam vincâ— neminem pudeat Yet having said all this I shall say that perhaps had it been the fortune of that Loyal Parliament to have sate longer it might too have happened that none of your Lordships that I have named would at last â—ave thought it Parliamentum sine misericordia and that I believe you will not find any future one so and that your Lordships who have so eminentâ—y supported the Northern Heresie so called will be like the North Magnetick and attract a general popular love which after all its variations will return again to you But 't is high time for me to take off my hand from this Map of the Future State of England that as a Predicter rather than a Prophet I have here so particularly delineated and as one who according to what is in St. Mathew When it is Evening say it will be fair weather for the Sky is red c. and from Natural Causes have as well as I could discern'd the signs of the times and what it may be a shame for any one that is a piece of a Philosopher to be wholly ignorant of when the inspired Prophet tells us that the Stork knoweth her appointed times and the Turtle and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming and that 't is obvious that the Beasts of the Field as well as Birds of the Air foresee unseasonable weather from the disposition of the Air. Nor is it hard for any Considerer now in relation to some of the Popish and Protestant Recusants to undertake what the Magicians Astrologers and Chaldeans durst not to the King of Babylon I mean to tell them what their Dream was they dreamt to rule us still by a Nation within a Nation as the Mamalukes did Aegypt they dreamt of Offices and like idle Millenaries of Lactantius his golden Age when the Cliffs of the Mountains shall sweat out Honey and the Springs and Rivers shall flow with Milk and Wine and of a pingue solum that shall tire no Husbandmen and of such a Country as Campania the Garden of Italy that shall not be called terra del lavoro But I do predict that the noise of the World and their being necessarily disturbed by the busie in whose way they stand will awaken them and that if they will have any food to raise the vapours that will again
that I affirm therein we have obliged our selves to by our Oaths is so incomparably asserted in a long Speech of that Great Man of the Church of Rome Reginaldus Belnensis Arch-Bishop of Bourges in France I shall refer any one to it as printed in â—huanus The Speech was spoke in a Famous Assembly and on a great occasion for to make way for the quiet Reception of Harry the 4th of France while a Protestant into the Throne and it was framed with such profound thoughts of Loyalty and with such extraordinary Learning referring both to the old and new Testament and to Fathers and Church History and Civil and Canon Law and with such close and nervous argumentation to evince the Divine Right of Allegiance due to Princes and particularly without any respect had to their Religion that it may pass for one of the best Bullwarks of absolute Loyalty I know of next to the 13th of the Romans and other things contained in Holy Writ And because I think no serious Christian who reads â—t will ever find in his heart afterward to ridicule passive oâ—edience or make ridiculous Platforms of Conditional Loyalty I do intend to Translate and Publish it Moreover because there is in that Speech one Noble peculiar Character of the Moral Offices of Loyalty wherein it is pity that the proverbial English good nature should in any men come short of that of the French Civility and any Protestants Loyalty of a Roman-Catholicks I mean that Arch-Bishops honouring the Mind and Soul of his Prince who was not of the Communion of his Church and even then vindicating him from Heresy and saying That he ought not to be thought a Heretick and propping up his honourable thoughts of his Prince with a Quotation out of St. Austin viz. That he was not to be reckon'd among Hereticks who without pertinacy defended his opinion tho erroneous c I think the hanging up so great a Picture in publick view wherein that Man of God did with such exquisite draught design and colour thus paint his Princes Character and that of his own Loyalty to Eternity may be variously useful and the very sight of the great Colours in which cannot methinks but raise the little ones of Blushes in any Nominal Protestants who do with such foul and hard hands handle the Religionary Concernments of Kings who are Nominal Gods and make no difference between the danger of Heterodoxy in Subjects and in Princes I have mentioned it that there is less danger of any Princes believing or practising what may favour the Papal Usurpation than of such Belief or Practice in a Subject and it were an easie matter to instance in many erroneous Religionary Tenets which as held by Parties among Subjects may cause general apprehensions of danger but from which as held by a Prince it would be ridiculous to fear any ill or to imagine that the Prince can imbibe the dregs of those Tenets as they discriminate discontented Parties as for example how can any one fear that a Prince by believing that Personal Reign of Christ on Earth for a thousand years would hurt his own Government or that a Prince by â—eing a Socinian â—ould hold the Tenet of the unlawfulness of Defensiâ—e War or that a Prince who favoured the Order of the Iesuites would approve of their Teâ—ets of Calumny and Equivocation c. and several of their vile Casuistical Tenets or that any Magistracy would permit some of their Apologies and particularly that of Guymenius to be so much as published in the Laâ—guage of the Country But the truth is we are Morally bound to make a great difference in our Demeanor toward our Princes when supposed to erre in opinions about Religion from the Measures we are allowed to take in relation to our â—ellow Subjects so erring Error is a part of Humane frailty and Subjects are Morally bound to conceal the frailties of their Kings and not to censure or publish them to their dishonour and are to be more ready to Apolâ—gize for their Princes on all occasions than for their Parents Sâ— Peter in that Verse where the Duty of honouring all Men and loving the Brotherhood is mentioned subjoyns a particular Precept of honouring the King. We are never to think of the hearts of Kings but as being in the hâ—nds of God nor of any Mists of Errors that may be in their heads without thinking of the Rays of the Divine Power that like a Glory surrounds theirs and which in the usual Concourse of Providence do dissipate all danger from any Errors within them Tho in mens beliefs who are Subjects Religionary Errors are often complicated with Irreligionary ones yet we are to think of the Oyl of the Lords Annointed as uppermost and appearing above such latter Errors and suppressing the Fumes of them in the minds of Princes and are to fear no more harm from the Persons of our Princes than from our Guardian Angels differing from us in many great Religionary Speculations and are to think with honour of our King as an Angel of God to discern between good and bad Religion and Irreligion and it is an absurd thing for any not to imitate the Popish Arch-Bishop aforesaid in clearing his Prince tho of another Communion from Pertinacy since such a Moral defect is a humour of positiveness that of all men Kings are most naturally free from and whose becoming dissidence of their own understandings how great soever is Conspicuous by the wearing away so much of their lives in hearing the advise of their Council And when ever Passive Obedience is called for by Princes and must be readily payed as a due Debt we are even then to strain our most improved thoughts to find an honourable Interpretation of our Princes Actions in like manner as some of the Loyal Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church have done as appears by a Great Observation in their Book called the Policy of the Clergy of France a Book that Maimbourg in print hath acknowledged to be the best lately published by their Party viz. That their Princes never made any great Assault on the Papal Power but what cost their Protestant Subjects dear This This is Loyalty worthy the name of Christian and after all if yet any men will make wanton Suppositions of the beliefs or practices of Sovereigns being never so contrary to Religion let those know that an absolute and irrespective Loyalty is that which by these Oaths they have obliged themselves to and that therefore it is an absurd thing to attempt to exclude any Heir of the Crown from his Birth-right on any pretence of his Religion or other pretence whatsoever since we must pay an absolute Obedience and Allegiance to him immediately on the Descent of the Crown to him and accordingly as by these Oaths we have obliged our selves to do Having thus in these Conclusions asserted the Obligation relating to our Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the plain and genuine Sense of the
Advenae from the Country and to which it may be added that the Burials from what they were in the Year 79 viz. 21730 falling back about 700 in the Year 80 yet in the Year 1681 were in all 23971 and so for every Thousand gradually dying more in those Years referred to 29000 were supposed to have in the same gradually lived more than in the former and all which years before mentioned were of ordinary health But the Year 1681 having produced that Pacific Royal Declaration and the Congratulatory Addresses thereupon and likewise that encrease of the Burials before mentioned that might be supposed to happen partly by the Advenae from the Country being for some time necessarily detained in the Metropolis in making preparations there to leave it and by some of them in the mean time dying and partly from some new Pâ—upers then coming from the Country to hide their heads in obscure places in London and which they durst not shew in the Sun-shine that Declaration had made in the Country and partly by the deaths of many Loyal Persons in London whom the Addresses and expectations of Preferment for their Loyalty brought thither yet the Burials in the following year viz. 1682 being but 20690 was a considerable indication of the abatement of the popular fears which led so many timid Persons from the Country with hopes to find our Metropolâ—s to be the most quiet part of the Nation as the most quiet part of a Ship is naturally that which is nearest the Main-mast and the Burials in the year 83 being but 20587 gave an indication of the Advenae from the Country not then encreasing and although the Total of the Burials for this year 84 was 23202 yet it being most probable that there dyed above 3000 of Infants and of Aged and infirm and indigent People by the Accidents of the extraordinary Frost it may be well accounted that the popular fears have not been in this year augmented Altho during the so long continuance of the general ferment in the Kingdom after the Plot-Epoche and in which interâ—al so great a part of the following Discourse was printed Sheet by Sheet I could not after the King and Pope had both of them by written Edicts as it were denounced War against the Tenets of the Iesuites that included so much Hostility to the Church of Rome as well as of England but participate in the general heat against those Tenets and improve the occasion of writing polemically about the same yet I think none could more carefully observe the Laws of Military Discipline than I have those of Loyalty in not going beyond the Measures of the Government and in following the Standard of the Royal Pen set up in the Proclamations and likewise in the Declaration aforesaid Dr. Donne dedicating his Pseudo-Martyr to King Iames begins his Epistle by saying that as Temporal Armies consist of pressed men and voluntaries so do they also in this War-fare in which your Majesty hath appeared by your Books and not only your strong and full Garrisons which are your Clergy and your Vniversities but also obscure Villages can Minister Souldiers c. Besides since in the Battel your Majesty by your Books is gone in person out of the Kingdom who can be exempt from waiting on you in such an expedition That Learned Monarch in his printed Premonition to all Crowned Heads free Princes and States doth Magno Conatu go about to prove the Pope to be Anti-Christ and very subtilly discusseth the Moot-points out of the Apocalypse that refer to it and from that one word of Anti-Christ the Papacy hath since the Reformation received much more prejudice than hath the Reformation from that other famous word of Heresy and the Compellation of Anti-Christ is especially a more terrible weapon against the Pope when used by the hand of a King. But I must frankly say should my Prince Combat the Pope with this name in Print and descend to Command my poor Service in that Warfare I should humbly apply to him to excuse me therein and as it was observed concerning Aretine that he left God untouched in his Satyrs giving this reason for it Ille inquit non mihi notus erat so I shall say the same thing of Anti-Christ But when the Thunder of the Royal Power was in so great a number of Proclamations heard all over Christendom against particular persons and their known Principles and Designs his Subjects might well think it a part of Loyalty during that time to wear Clouds in their Brows and to be tributary to the Royal Cares by endeavouring in their several Capacities to support the Throne and to concur with the constant Practice of Nations in receiving the beliefs of Matter of Fact as stated by Soveraign Power according to the common saying of Imperatori seu Regi aliquid attestanti plenè creditur It is this Teste of the Sovereign as I may say with allusion to the words in our Writs of teste me ipso that will be the Clew to the Historians to guide them in that dark and intricate Labyrinth of time I before spoke of and will probably be helpful to any ingenious Protestants or Papists who shall write its History when they shall from the many Collections of the Pamphlets relating to that time treasured up by the curious see so many bold and contradictory Shamms and Affidavits fighting with each other for that belief in a Future Conjuncture that they could not obtain in the past and 't is nothing but the declared Sense of the Government that in such odiosa materia will qualifie a judicious Historian to do right to himself or his Reader or even to his History and keep it from being thrust down among Narratives It may be rationally supposed that when Princes and their Ministers do think fit to notifie their judgments of some matter of Fact wherein they might receive the first Information from Persons lyable to exception that there were many concurrent Circumstances lay in the Balance before them and which perhaps they might not think convenient to divulge and moreover it is a thing commonly observable that Divine Providence doth influence the understandings of Princes who are its instruments in the Government of the World more signally than of other men and that Crowned Heads are still blessed in some measure as of old by another Spirit coming on them than what animated them while private persons and that therefore their asserting of Facts of State is more to be revered than that of other men I therefore in the Case of the shamm of throwing the Odium of a Plot upon Protestants in one particular Conjuncture have not come short of or gone beyond the Measures of the Government nor do I believe that any Historian of it will. And when I did read the various Pamphlets and did confer Notes with some of the Curious about the last mentioned Shamm and participated with the Loyal Protestants in their Concern and Sollicitude for
use not unfit otherwise this Form thereof allowable And let a man demand of one of them when he prayeth what Warrant he hath to use that Form that he then useth he can answer no otherwise So for a Book the means of help are not determined and this one among others this therefore not unwarrantable And if one of them should be asked how he proves it warrantable to use a printed Book to read on at Church he shall not be able to make other answer than as before and further hereupon the resolving of another Question viz. Whether one man eminent for Piety and Learning or perhaps eminent for neither is able without premeditation to make as fit a Prayer for the People to say Amen to as a hundred Persons eminent for both are able to frame with lâ—ng study I say to make an Elias and much more the holy Iesus to come down from Heaven to solve such doubts as these is an extravagance Parallel with the Error of those old Poets who would on all occasions introduce Gods to end doubts that were never fit to be begun by men and wherein there was not dignus vindice nodus and against which the judicious Poet gave the known Caution of Nec Deus interfit c. The holy Iesus by his Tacit Rejection of Questions as impertiment that the World thought of more moment than some such as are above named when he forbore to give his thoughts of Pythagoras his pre-existence of Souls upon the Question put to him viz. Who did sin this Man or his Parents that he was born blind shewed he thought it not for his honour to have it supposed that it was part of his Errand from Heaven to set the World rightin Speculations of Philosophy and so he threw that famous Notion off as a Titivilitium Chemnitius in his Harmony taking notice of our Saviour's reprehending in the Pharisees their use of Oaths and thereby invocating God as a Witness in the Occurrences of their common talk and Conversation saith In re levi ne magnum quidem virum in testem vocare auderemus as I find him cited by Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots and wherein he doth so learnedly confute the superstitious conceit in some of the unlawfulness of the use of Cards and Dice in recreation as likewise the other of mens being obliged to count every thing unlawful that they have not a Scriptural Warrant for Yet since his writing of those Books of Lots thousands of such our superstitious Protestants have not â—crupled to throw the Dye of War and to appeal to the Lord of Hosts by the Decision of Battel to signalize the truth in some of those nugatory and others of those plain points before-mentioned and our Land groans under the guilt of the Blood of hundreds of thousands of Subjects as well as of the Royal Blood by Questions on which an ingenious man would scarce think a drop of Ink necessary to be spent But I have in this Discourse express'd my belief That the fierceness of our Dissenters humour of quarrelling about such little Ceremonial matters will be naturally reclaimed by the influence of the Civility appearing in the many French Protestants here into a Complaisance with our King's and Church's enjoyned Ceremonies that all the learned Books of our Divines have not been able to work in them the Civility of the French humour making it natural to those Protestants as I â—ave remarked not only to comply with Princes but even their Fellow Subjects in the use of all Ceremonies they expect and as I have in many places of this Discourse and particularly in p. 239 expressed my thoughts that the sicarious Principles of the Iesuites will naturally evaporate by fear and shame so I have in the following Page that all Rebellious Principles of any Nominal Protestants will by fear and shame in our populous English World be abandoned and do think That to the shame of quarrelling about little matters the shame of doing it before Strangers being super-added will prevent our future disquiet thereby Let them ask those Protestants who are fled hither from Persecution the Circumstances of which are with great Judgment stated by Dr. Hicks in his Excellent printed Sermon on that Subject if in case their great Monarch had excused them from Conformity to the Gallican Church in the points of Praying in an unknown Tongue and the Worshipping the Host and the Forbidding the Cup to the Layety and the other momentous Religionary points controverted between Papists and Protestants and had enjoyned them only such things as our Religion by Law Established doth whether they would have with the hazard of their lives made a migration hither from the best Country in the World their Native Soil or have made their Monarch and his Ministers at home uneasie by Complaints of Persecution and by raising of any dust about unnecessary Questions as aforesaid Leo After tells us that the Inhabitants of the Mountain Magnan on the Frontiers of Fez have not thought fit to be at the Charge of any settled Judicature or Parade of the Law to support their Polity but to the end their Controversies emerging may be decided and that impartially they stop some Travellers passing that way to give Judgment in the same and that himself in his passage there was detained many days to perform the Office of a Judge and that his performance of the same was rewarded by the Inhabitants defraying the Charges of his Stay and some of those People were ashamed perhaps to trouble him a Stranger with vilitigation or querelles d' alleman And thus perhaps may those Protestant Strangers that Providence hath sent hither prove to our Religionary branglers useful itinerant Judges and their patience in their Judicature will in my opinion deserve to be well rewarded and for the greatness of its burden from the minuteness of its Controverted Causes and whereby Strangers are imposed on by as needless trouble as Travellers would be if in the several Territories they passed through the Inhabitants should desire them to weigh their Air. But I hope the Non-Conformists to the Gallican Church will find those to ours ashamed to entertain them here with the Crambe of old Controversies of Ceremonies and things Indifferent and that those Strangers will not find themselves invited hither by Nature as to a Theatre where they shall only see our digladiations with Air or beating of the Air as the Scripture Expression is and much less where they shall see any Dissenters implicitly swallowing the Doctrine of Resistance and weighing nothing but Air. It was I think a little before the Migration of so many French Protestants here that some of the Faex of our Dissenters were so shameful as to Nick-name our Clergy But I do account that the inquisitive and Philosophical Temper of the Age shining with so much lustre in our English Clergy and which temper is as naturally accompanied with the gentle warmth of Charity for the Persons of different
convellere and it may well be supposed that I having partly grounded my Conjectures of the happy Future State of England on the former fashion of Polemical Writing being passed away could not be much tempted to Controversy The Iesuites and Casuists may still hold the 23d Tenet branded in the Pope's â—ecree as long as they will without any disturbance from my Pen viz. Faith in its large sense only from the Evidence of the Creation or some such Motive is sufficient for Iustification and so likewise the 46th Tenet there viz. frequent Confession and Communion even in those that live as Heathens is a Mark of Predestination and many other Tenets there relating to Religion and which the Pope with so great a Pastoral Sollicitude hath damned as at least scandalous and pernicious in Practice and hath prohibited to be defended by any under the pain of Excommunication ipso facto But there are other Tenets by him in that Decree condemned that I have in this Discourse dilated on as Convulsive of Humane Society which the Pietas in patriam occasioned in me such transports of passion against that I wished he had signalized with sharper words of Censure than those beforementioned and that I thought the Excommunicatio Major with the Ceremony of lighted Torches too little for and even an ordinary Anathema in their case to be a Complement or a kind of sham censuring them as abominable and not good or somewhat like the Censure pro formâ shot off against the Munster Peace and I supposed that if he had Sentenced them to be absolutely in themselves evil he would have satisfied every one that he had put the World out of their Gun-shot by his putting it out of his power to dispense with them However finding that Decree of great moment to Christendom and yet by the generality of Papists or Protestants to have been not much more regarded than are the Copies of the Dialogues between Pasquin and Marphorio that come here I have deliberately Surveyed it and done it what right I could And by occasion hereof do here call to mind a Remark on the Papacy I met with in a Pamphlet of one of our Dissenters viz. That if the Pope were a good man he might do a great deal of good Tho for sometime after I had begun this Discourse I was somewhat a Stranger to the great Character of the present Pope and so continued till reading the Preface of Dr. Burnet's very learned Book of the Regale I sound he there Celebrated him in these words viz. That he is a man of great probity and that on his advancement to the Papacy he conceived a very ill opinion of the whole Order of the Iesuites I since found cause from the Universal Concurrence of all Impartial men about the same to have the firmer opinion of the quiet of England and do expect from the influences of such a Pope on the Loyalty and Religion of the Roman Catholicks of England some advance of its happiness Tho most men may have only little Ideas of the Deity as of somewhat above the Clouds that as a great Cypher only surrounds the World yet the wiser few who have particularly observed the watchful Eye of Providence over the Critical passages and windings and turnings in their own lifes cannot but be sensible that in the designation of persons at stated times to be at the Helm of the Church of Rome and who are necessarily to have so great a share in the External and a much greater in the Internal Government of the World the great Governor of it and preserver of men is no unconcerned Spectator It is I think most highly probable that at a time when the World being filled with the Jesuites Principles and Casuistick distinctions Vertue it self was grown an empty Name and the Casuists Project of finishing Transgression and making an end of Sin in a subtle way and contrary to the plain Method intended by our Saviour had in a great part of the World almost finished the most Vital part of Christian Religion I mean plain and downright Morality and at a time when some Virtuosi in Italy and elsewhere half-witted and half Atheists taking it for granted that in what hearts soever the Jesuites and Casuists Religionary Model had prevailed the simplicity of the Gospel was extinguished were observed to talk of Albumazar's fond prediction of the Christian Religion lasting but about 1460 years and Criticising of the time from whence its promulgation and likewise the promulgation of those Casuistical Tenets bore date did prophanely insinuate their Miscreant-Conceptions of the Christian Religion not lasting till the time assigned in the Scripture for Christs surrendring his Mediatory Kingdom to his Father I say it is most highly probable that at such a time and when the Jesuites Interest too had so much Prosperity as to tempt them to think that the Mountain of their Religion should never be moved that nothing less than the great Vertue and Courage of this Pope appearing by his said Decree could secure Vertue it self and the true Christian Morality and give the World occasion to say with some Alteration of the Question put to Esther viz. Who knoweth not that he is come to Rome ' s See for such a time as this is The Mountainous heap of Rubbish in the Iesuites and other Casuists Principles and even in the Canon Law appears very stupendious to the World but considering the Christian Heroical Acts of this Pope and who for his severity against the abuses of Indulgences hath been by some Papists called the Lutheran Pope as I said and for his anger against the Jesuites Principles been called the Iansenist Pope by others I think another great Question in the Prophet Zechary may be here not improperly applied viz. Who art thou O great Mountain before Zerubbabel Little did the Iesuites think that when they Crowned the Papacy with a double Crown I mean of its infallibility in Law and likewise in Fact a Crown much more glorious than its Triple one any Pope would ever uncrown their Principles and expose their baldness to the World and little do they who fear that ever this Pope will occasionally dispense with any mens practising these Principles think of the security they have against the same from his inflexible Virtue and perfect Antipathy to injustice and which are judged to be so inherent in his Nature that I shall here occasionally say that as I was somewhat a Stranger formerly to the Character of this Pope so I believe some of the Plot-witnesses were that reflected on him so ignominiously for undoubtedly had it been understood by them they would never have thought their Credibility could have out-lived their first attacquing it It may possibly be here objected by some Critical Inspectors into the late Papal Transactions that Alexander the 7th as this Pope observes in the beginning of his said Decree did first damn some of the Iesuites Principles viz. in the year 1665 and that
Guymenius shortly after in that year appearing in Print as a Champion for the Principles so damned the College of Sorbon shortly after that damned the Work of Guymenius in the 11th of May the same year and that in the latter end of Iune so shortly following in the same year the same Pope Alexander the 7th damned that very Sorbon Censure of Guymenius and that therefore 't is possible the great Scene of Vertue appearing in this Popes said Decree may with a short turn of Apostolical Power receive too the Fate of Pageantry and presently disappear and that the great Mountain which his Faith hath removed into the midst of the Sea may in little more than the twinkling of an Eye return to its old place But in Answer to which I shall do that right to the Papacy to clear the mistake in the objection and inform the Reader that tho Alexander the 7th did Ex Cathedra damn that Sorbon-Censure as aforesaid yet it appears out of the Condemnatory Bull it self that what that Pope there did was not out of favour to Guymenius or the Iesuites themselves or their Tenets and that to satisfie the World in that point he there gives the reason for his damning the Sorbonists Censure namely because it intermedled in Censuring some other Propositions or Principles of the Jesuites that concerned the Authority of the Pope the Iurisdiction of Bishops the Office of the Parish Priests and the Privileges granted by Popes and but for the Sorbons complicating which with their Censure of the other Scandalous Principles of the Iesuites no doubt but the Sorbon Censure had stood as a Rock unshaken Let therefore such who fear every thing fear that this great Pope will after his said Condemnatory Decree appear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Condemned while I observe it for the honour of his Iustice that he made that Decree and for the honour of his Prudence that before Nature had caused the detestable Principles therein censured silently to evaporate he gave the World this loud warming of them as it likewise may be for the honour of that great Seminary of the Divines of our Church of England our University of Oxford observed that before the Seditious Principles and Tenets of Iesuites and some Dissenters came to be naturally exterminated out of the English World by fear and shame they notified them to this Age and to Posterity There is no Subject that hath since the year 1641 more employed the English Press than that of Liberty of Conscience pro and con and the fiercest and sharpest of the Writings concerning it were what passed between the Independents and Presbyterians on the occasion of Presbytery's great Effort to make the English Nation by one short general turn Proselyted to its Model and when it pushed for the auspicious fate of former great Religionary Conversions happening as it were simul and semel and when Nations seemed to be like the Hyena which having but one Back-bone cannot turn except it turn all at once But the Independents observing the Kingdom and Presbytery frowning on one another thought they could do nothing more popular than to take the Arguments they found in the many Pamphlets of the Presbyterians lying on every Stall for toleration under the old Hierarchy and turn them upon Presbytery and every one then who had fears and jealousies of the Arbitrariness of Presbytery seem'd to be a well wisher to those Books for Liberty of Conscience and the destroying of the Credit of Presbytery by Books that had so much contentious fire in them was really an acceptable sweet-smelling Sacrifice to the Nation And after the King's Restoration tho some few Books were writ of that Subject and with much more Candour than the others yet the Yoke of the King 's Ecclesiastical Laws was so easie to the People as that the Writing of Books against it was not encouraged by Popular Applause The King's Declaration of Indulgence afterward appearing and as not gained by dint of Pen but ex mero motu was applauded by some few particular Writers among the Popish and Protestant Recusants discoursing in Print at their ease of Liberty of Conscience But as if Nature meant that Books of that Subject should no more here divert the curious World the Empire toleration had thereby gained did presently labour under its own weight and the Non-Conformists being jealous of that Declaration proving a President of the Prerogatives suspending Acts of Parliament in general and suspecting that the Popish Recusants would have the better of that Game as supposed to have many great Court-Cards here and abroad in the World and likely to have more while the Protestant Recusants had not so good in their hands tho yet they had here what amounted to the point in Picquet I mean the advantage of their Numbers did presently thereupon cause all the Cards to be thrown up but first had in Concert with the dealers provided for the packing them to their own advantage in a new Deal In plain English some Loyal Persons and firm Adherents to the Church of England in the House of Commons thinking that Declaration illegal and whether justly or no I here presume not in the least to question endeavoured tanquam pro aris focis to get that Declaration Cancell'd and knowing they could not effect the same without the help of the Dissenters Party in Parliament engaged their help therein by giving them hopes to carry an Act of Parliament for their Indulgence but what a little fore-sight would have made appear to them impossible to be gained for many Considerations too obvious to be named And the natural result of this Fact which is on all hands confessedly true cannot but be the making of the former fashion of Polemical writing for liberty of Conscience to pass away We have since seen some few Florid Sheets published by some of the Dissenting Clergy on that Subject but they have made no other Figure then that of the poor Resemblances of Flowers extracted by Chimical Art out of their Ashes and any little shaking them in the Glass of Time must make them presently fall in pieces I have in this Discourse expressly owned my having no regret against any due or Legal Relaxation of the Penal Laws against Recusants but what any due or legal way may be therein I enquire not The power of the King in dispensing with the Penalties in case of particular Persons was not that I hear of in the least Controverted in the Debates of the Commons about that Declaration And Fuller in his Church History relateth that when Bishop Williams was Lord-Keeper there was a Toleration granted under the Great Seal to Mr. Iohn Cotton a Famous Independent Divine for the free exercise of his Ministry notwithstanding his dissenting in Ceremonies so long as done without disturbance to the Church and the lawfulness of which particular Indulgence I suppose none in that Age controverted as I think none would any thing of that kind in this
ends therein contained I fully assent unto and have been as desirous to observe but the rigid way of prosecuting it and the oppressing uniformity that have been endeavoured by it I never approved This were sufficient to vindicate me from the false Aspersions and Calumnies which have been laid upon me of Iesuitism and Popery c. And recollect whether tho that Covenant was contrary to the Oath of Allegiance any thing yet could be more contrary to that Covenant than that House of Coâ—â—ons acting single or any thing could be more contrary to the plain literal Sense of the Covenant than that refined pursuit of the Cause owned by a person of such refined and real great Abilities and within the Prospect of Eternity and whether the owning of the same then contrary to the literal Sense of the Covenant was a proper Medium for him to use then whereby to clear himself from the aspersion of Iesuitism There was another person of great Theological Learning and strong natural parts who lived about that time I mean Mr. Iohn Goodwin the Divine I before mentioned and who in two Books of his the one called Redemption Redeem'd and the other of The Divine Authority of the Scripture hath signaliz'd his great Abilities but in the very Pamphlet where he presumes to vindicate the very Sentence against the Royal Martyr and to make the same Coherent with the Scotch Covenant he in p. 51 saith Evident it is that those Words in the Covenant in the preservation and defence of the true Religion and Liberties of the Kingdom import a Condition on the Kings part without the performance whereof the Covenant obligeth no man to the preservation or defence of his Person or Authority and yet allowing the Words to speak for themselves they do not say in HIS Preservation and Defence c. but in THE Preservation and Defence c. plainly referring to the same Preservation and Defence of Religion and Liberties which is before promised and sworn to in this and the preceding Articles as evidently referring to the same Persons Preservation and Defence of them here who are to preserve and defend them in the former Clauses and who are to preserve and defend the Kings Majesty's Person and Authority in this namely the Covenanters If the Covenant had intended to ground the Preservation and Defence in this Clause upon another Person or Persons as the performers beside those to whom the same Actions are referred immediately before it would have pointed them out distinctly but when it expresseth no other the plain ordinary Grammatical construction will attribute them to the Parties before nominated and cannot put them on any other And the Premisses notwithstanding Mr. Goodwin concludes that if that his Anti-Grammatical Paraphrase were not the true meaning of those words beforementioned in the Covenant it was unintelligible by him and his Words are these If this be not the clear meaning and importance of them the Covenant is a Barbarian to me I understand not the English of it Thus naturally is it even for the learned and unstable to wrest not only the Scriptures but even their own subscribed Covenants where the words have no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to their own destruction and the destroying of common Sense when they recede from the common Principles of Loyalty and Allegiance There was likewise another Person reputed one of first-rate Parts and great Learning in the late times who published a Book called The lawfulness of obeying the present Government and in his 11th Page there directs the World to make this Enquiry viz. Whether there be any Clause in any Oath or Covenant which in a fair and common sense forbids obedience to the Commands of the present Government and Authority and referreth particularly to the Clause of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in the former of which 't is said I shall bear faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs and Successors and in the latter I shall bear faith and true Allegiance to the Kings Highness his Heirs and Successors He there goeth on very Childishly to sell the World a Bargain by trying to puzzle it with Questions viz. If it be said that in the Oath of Allegiance Allegiance is sworn to the King his Heirs and Successors if his Heirs be not his Successors how doth that Oath bind Either the Word Successors saith he must be superfluous or it must bind to Successors as well as to Heirs And if it bind not to a Successor as well as to an Heir how can it bind to an Heir that is not a Successor And if you will know the common and usual sense which should be the meaning of an Oath of the word Successors you need not so much ask of Lawyers and Learned Persons as of men of ordinary knowledge and demand of them who was the Successor of William the Conqueror and see whether they will not say W. Rufus and who succeeded Richard the Third and whether they will not say Harry the 7th and yet neither of them was Heir so in ordinary acception the word Successor is taken for him that actually succeeds in the Government and not for him that is actually excluded May we not to this Questionist who was as I may say such a Mountebank of a Casuist put the Question of Tertullian Rideam vanitatem an exprobrem caecitatem And may we not properly bring in St. Austin's Casuistical Decision as to things of this Nature Haec tolerabilius vel ridentur vel flentur i. e. A man is at liberty either to laugh at or lament them I have in p. 41 of this Discourse mentioned D' Ossat's Observation of Father Parson 's often contradicting himself and that very grossly in his Book of the Succession as it happens to all Persons in passion as able as they are who are not guided by truth and reason but transported by interest and passion and I shall here further remark out of the same Letter of D' Ossat by me there cited that to those words last mentioned he there adds this viz. I will here name two of his Contradictions He opposeth to the King of Scots among other things to exclude him from the Succession of England That he was born out of England of Parents not subject to the Crown of England He likewise opposeth to Arabella among other impediments That she is a Woman and that it is not expedient for the Kingdom of England to have three Women Queens successively and that often the Children of Kings have been excluded for being Women and yet not withstanding he adjudgeth the said Kingdom to the Infanta of Spain by preference even to the King of Spain her Brother as if the said Infanta were not a Woman as well as the said Arabella I had almost forgot to observe how the Author of The lawfulness of obeying the present Government that useth such thick paint of Equivocation in his sense of the word Successors having pushed on his Question
and a printed Devotional Office called The Office of the immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin our Lady approved by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul the 5th had been much in vogue in the Papal World yet the Pope by his Decree of February the 17th 78. damned that Office and as I may say threw it over board And of this the Author of Iulian the Apostate might have took notice if he had pleased when in his Comparison of Popery and Paganism he instanced in the transprosing of part of the Psalms to the Virgin Mary after the mode of this Office that had been suppressed about 4 years before The old stubbornness of Popes against the making any Reformation of Abuses and Errors in their Church hath been commonly observed but I believe that considering the great Figure England makes in the World it may not be unlikely that the brisk Spirit of Opposition against Popery that had displayed it self in England for about 8 years before the Plot-Epoche and the sharp and learned Books that were in that Conjuncture printed here against the Abuses of the Church of Rome might much contribute to the laudable Proceedings of this Pope in those Decrees I have mentioned And therefore when Nature had thus enforced the Papal Chair in so great a Measure upon Recantation and a great deal of pretended infallibity was thrown over-board and that even relating to some Principles that might be called Religionary it may reasonably be thought that the same operation of Nature will produce among our little Protestant Recusants a tacit renuntiation of the Irreligionary part of those very Principles that both the World and themselves must needs see they have transcribed from Popery The Complication of the Principles of Irreligion that hath joyned the Iesuites Popery with that of our former Presbyterians Popery hath long been as visible as the great Isthmus I spake of that joyns the Mexican and the Peruan parts of the new World and as I being to explain as in a Dictionary what I meant by Popery I would not expose my self to the Critical Religionary Controvertists by nicely defining Popery the Observation being no less than a Rule in the Civil Law that omnis definitio in jure Civili periculosa est parum est enim ut non subverti possit but gave the Description of my sense of it as before in this Preface so if I were to give a Description of our Scotch Presbytery as Covenanted to be here introduced I would take the said Description of Popery and only mutatis mutandis say that by Presbytery I mean the power of our Presbyters in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on men and the Presbyters jurisdiction interloping in that of our Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Jus Divinum and as they are Christs pretended Vicars and do account that its intended Arbitrariness here in England justly appeared as terrible as that of Popery and that our Consciences being enslaved to a Foreign Bishop is not more inglorious than their being so to our fellow Subjects and that a blush being divided among ten thousand Ecclesiasticks after they had out-raged our Laws and our Consciences would have here been no more seen by us than one at Rome on occasion of any Popes there blushing after they had so done I have observed in this Discourse how that part of Presbytery that may tho erroneous be called Religionary as practised in some Foreign Churches hath here decayed and must so naturally more and more and was glad to hear That since the putting the Laws in Execution against Protestant Recusants those of them who were called Presbyterians have on recollection of thought and after Conference had with our Divines forborn their former Schismatical Separation from our Churches and that particularly in our Metropolis they have in all things been ameinable to the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church except as to the submitting to have their Children baptized with the use of the Sign of the Cross there and their Superstition in not complying with which will I hope not be long lifed The gradual encrease of the Christenings in some Parishes in the Country that I have seen Accounts of and in which places the Dissenters formerly were very numerous hath been to a far greater Proportion than the gradual Encrease by me remarked as to London and within the same years And a Learned Divine who is Minister of a Parish not far from London hath acquainted me That the number of Communicants being there about the beginning of those years but a 100 hath since arisen to 400 and I believe that generally the numbers of Conformists may have much encreased in the Country beyond the proportion of their Encrease in the City and may probably do so for some years Tho there are several Merchants and rich Traders in our Metropolis who are Dissenters yet I have observed that the gross of their numbers consists there of ordinary Retail-traders and as these have been naturally Sufferers there by the Cities so much removing Westward and by the Retail-trade being so much gone to the other end of the Town and are likely so to be more and more so it hath been and will be natural to them to be more and more querulous according to the saying of Omne invalidum est Querulum And in this Case it will be natural to them both to support their decaying Trade by Religionary Combinations and perhaps to fancy Religion it self breaking together with their Bankrupsy and both for the Consoling one another as Socii doloris and likewise relieving one another thereby to endeavour to keep Heterodox Religionary Societies as long and as much as they can But Necessity the known Mother of Industry must naturally in time cure them of their Poverty and Temptation to Heterodoxy thereby Our Quakers are by many thought to be a kind of a Roma subterranea but whether justly or no I enquire not nor shall I give my opinion in it till the Principles of their Light within shall be exposed to that without many of which Principles have hitherto been by them kept as hid from the World as were the Subterraneous Lights preserved in the Roman Monuments and as to which Principles they are perhaps conscious that when they shall be exposed to the Air and Light of the Sun they will be as naturally extinguished as those Monumental Lights were when occasionally brought into the open Air. But one of their known Tenets being the unlawfulness of Oaths I account they have an advantage thereby beyond the Presbyterians or Independents in their Claim to Indulgence by demanding it in a Doctrinal point wherein there is Dâ—gnus vindice nodus by reason of some words in the 5th of St. Matthew and 5th of St. Iames seeming primâ facie very emphatically and vehemently to forbid all manner of swearing as the Commentators generally observe And in this point they are entituled to a very true and
only attacked and whereby you have that fastness where one-a-brest can keep down a Multitude is power Your affability and good Nature that endear you to so many is power and makes the hearts of men to be your Pyramids And all these sorts of power in you which make every party wish you to be theirs make up so bright a beauty in your mind as may well cause jealousie in that party that by loving you think they have Right to be again beloved by you I mean the English Protestants who court you and to whom you have so long engaged your self and especially when they shall find their Rivals boast of the kindness you have for them and that too at such a time as this when the Protestants seem to have the concern of one that is playing his last stake and which only can make him fetch back all he has lost a time when any one who pretends to a cold harmless neutrality doth really intend an exulcerated hatred a time wherein he that is not with us is against us however it may have hapned that in some lazy conjunctures when Papists and Protestants were half asleep both here and in the Neighbouring Continent that then he that was not against us was with us a time cum non de terminis sed de totâ possessione agitur A time wherein as in that of the tempest that happen'd to the Ship that carried Iona among the heathen Mariners we see almost all namely the Papists calling on their God and the Church of England likewise and the dissenters in the several persuasions on theirs with this difference that no man is now asleep but all in it are waking some at work to save the Ship and others to bore holes in it as if they were concerned to have it cast away as being not owners in it and as if they had secured their own merchandize in it which they purchased by the money they took up at Bottomry from Rome or its agents and knew how to secure themselves in the Cock-boat We have had dull and lazy conjunctures of timeâ—heretofore insomuch that many years ago a Divine seemed to begin a Sermon on the Gun-powder Treason day before a great Academick audience as it were yawning and in his sleep with these words Conspiracies if not prevented are rather dangerous then otherwise And thus the ingenious Comedy tells us of a Hero that as he was in the height of his passion with the greatest zeal making Love instantly dropt down into a deep sleep but 't is no time for yawning when the Earth begins to yawn under us And tho times have been heretofore influencing the Protestant cause like the Sun in March that could only raise the vapors of Popery in the body of the Nation and not dissipate them 't is now supposed to be otherwise and as I have heard that the Earl of Hallifax in his Speech in the house of Lords having spoken of his hatred to Popery excellently well added somewhat to this effect And we may now exterminate it if we will. And therefore with that now I think the ecce nunc tempus acceptabile festina salvare may be applyed to the Kingdom And if as the School-men tell us Angels may dance upon the point of a Needle we may imagine many both good and bad ones dancing on this point of time 't is on this moment the Nations eternity depends Every one now is as good a Conjurer as Friar Bacon and can make a Brazen head say time is by which words I believe the learned Roger Bacon meant only that in the vessel of Brass wherein the exquisite chymical preparations for the birth of gold were laboured the nick of opportunity was to be watched under pain of the loss of all the fire and Materials and art and labour according to that of Petrus Bongus Ibi est operis perfectio aut annihilatio quoniam ipsa die immò horâ oriuntur elementa simplicia depurata quae egent statim compositione antequam volent abigne as I find him cited by Brown for it in his vulgar errors where he further saith Now letting slip this critical opportunity he missed the intended Treasure which had he obtained he might have made out the tradition of making a brazen wall about England that is the most powerful defence and strongest fortification which Gold could have effected My Lord my opinion was askt in a letter from a very honest Gentleman and much your Lordships Servant Whether you should not do your self and your Religion a greatdeal of Right by printing in this juncture some of the excellent and large discourses you have formerly writ against Popery and the substance of the answer I gave him was to this effect That tho I would not diswade your Lordships now publishing any thing relating to the tenets of that pretended Religion that might import Protestants to understand more cleerly then they did in which way they have been advantaged by the Bishop of Lincoln's Book against Popery yet that I thought the great bulk of Popery could no more be destroyed by notions and arguments then a capital Ship could be sunk with bullets for that supposing they did all light between wind and water the Papists have thousands of Plugs ready to be clapt in there and thousands of men in that great vessel ready to apply them and tho I thought there was a time for writing of Books it was when there was a time for reading them that is when people had time to read them but that now the most curious works of Whiteakers and Iewels and Rainoldses would be no more regarded then attempts of shewing the longitude would be to Navigators while under the attack of a Fire-ship as I said or while they were making their way through the body of an Enemies Fleet. I know that 't is said to be an old Sybilline Prophecy that Antichrist shall be destroyed by paper viz. Antichristum lino periturum but alas that way is now as insignificant in the case as to think that the dominion of the Sea can be built up by Seldens Mare Clausum or destroyed by Grotius his Mare Liberum or any way but by thundring Legions in powerful fleers Indeed our paper pellets that the press since its licence hath shot against Popery I mean the innumerable little sheet-pamphlets that have come out against it may find time to be read and to give us diversion but the Papists looking on their Church as a great First-Rate Mann'd with Popes and Emperors and Princes and Fathers and Councels and innumerable Souls there embarqued in the Sea of time for the great Voyage of Eternity do account our little Protestant honest Sheet-authors firing at them daily to be only like the Yacht-Fan Fan's attacking De Ruyter But my Lord there is another Reason why a person of your Lordships great Power and Abilities should not at this time embarrase your self with writing No not those defences of your
as I find him Cited by Dr. Donne in his forementioned book p. 135. He quotes there Mariana de Rege l. 1. c. 7. for cautioning against a King being a self-homicide by drinking poyson prepared and ministred by another he being ignorant for after he concluded how an heretical King may be poisoned he is diligent in this prescription That a King be not constrained to take the poison himself but that some other may administer it to him and that therefore it be prepared and conveyed in some other way than meat and drink because else saith he either willingly or ignorantly he shall kill himself so that he provides that the King who must dye under the Sins of Tyranny and heresie must yet be defended from concurring to his own death tho ignorantly as tho this were a greater Sin. Is not this pleasant to see any of them catching of Kings in a Theological Mousetrap and playing with them like Mice before they devour them to see them sweeten a Cup of poyson for a King with their damn'd Church Sophistry and to sham men as licorish Flies to be Swallowed up in the Cup I wish that some of the most considerable of the Grandees of the Church of Rome could Answer this accusation of their shamming otherwise than by committing it de novo for if they say that some of their Doctors write against this and other crimes as well as some for them as particularly some write against the use of equivocation And as Father Parsons the Jesuite writing against King Iames's succession another English Jesuite namely Creswel writ for it and so that when some of their Doctors break the Churches head others presently gave it Plaisters is not this a fearful shall I say or Contemptible sham Do we not know that the discipline of their Church is as exact as any Military discipline can be by which alone it hath preserved it self so long in being and that none among them can publish books without passing several Courts of Guards of Superiors nor contradict one another in rules of practice more than Trumpeters of an Army dare sound a charge or a retreat but when commanded to it And what a face of something like sham the present Popes declaration about some opinions of the Casuists carries with it I have already mentioned and doth not every one know their avowed doctrine de opinione probabili Namely that tho an opinion be false a man may with a safe conscience follow it by reason of the Authority of the teacher and that a Confessor is bound to absolve the penitent when there is but one opinion for his being absolved tho he believes that opinion not only improbable as to the principia intrinseca but false In Sum according to the old observation of Poperies prevailing by haveing that in it which may fit the temper and humor of every individual person and to be like Manna answering every mans tast whether he hath a gusto for miracles or even for starving or abstinence for business or retirement for Life or for death for Honor or for begging it may to these be added that if any one affects to be a Ruffian or one of the Popes Sheriffs as aforesaid there is a most ample field in the killing of Kings firing of Towns Massacring their Inhabitants for the talent of such a Pavure diable and indeed incarnate one to expatiate in and if any account it a luscious thing to be cheated or to be shammed as some few or to cheat or sham as many think it behold a Religion made for the nonce in that point too But while they are thus playing with all things Sacred and profane he that sits in the heavens has them in derision and leaves not the Protestants to fall finally as a portion to Foxes such who turned tail to tail carry firebrands between them and their shammes do only enter on the Stage of the World to be instantly hissed off My Lord I have not been rash in Censuring either the principles or practices of some Roman Catholicks as aforesaid And particularly I well know that even the most ingenious of our English Papists cannot now in this Conjuncture endure to hear of Father Parsons his book writ by him to Invalidate the Right of King Iames to succeed Queen Elizabeth principally because he was as Father Parsons thought an heretick A very great Man that Iesuite was and so Considerable that one of our eminent Divines in his Sermon in print gives him this Character That he was perhaps one of the greatest men that the order of the Iesuits has produced And methinks 't was pitty he should play at such small game of sham when he publisht that book as to entitle it to Doleman an honest secular Priest whom Parsons hated and to make him odious laid the brat at his door Moreover a kind of inglorious sham it was that Creswel who was Parsons his fellow Iesuite writ as I said at the same time for King Iames his Right to the Crown not out of any desire he should enjoy that Right but that on all events they might have something to say in apology for their Society and bring Grist to its mill For if King Iames had not come to the Crown of England the honour of hindring his Succession had been attributed to Parsons and Creswel the Jesuit expected the Credit for his writing on the Event falling as it did Thus I remember to have heard a Passage of two Astrologers who on the day before the former great Prince of Parma was to throw the die of War agreed together to predict luck to him perfectly contrary to one another that so they might save the credit of their art by one of the artists being in the Right The Author of the book called the Catholick Apology with a Reply c. and which book I think the Author of the Compendium mentions as one of the books writ by the Roman Catholicks of England since the Kings Restoration saith p. 366. speaking of Dolemans book For Dolemans book who wrote it God knows Parsons deny'd it at his death and I believe he was not the author because in several of his works he speaks very much to the advantage of King Iames. But as to Father Parsons having in that Conjuncture been of the Spanish faction and having apply'd his whole soul and strength to hinder King Iames's Succession and his having writ that book the Great foremention'd Cardinal namely D'Ossat who in several of his Printed Letters gives the World a more satisfactory and particular Scheme of the whole design to hinder that Kings Succession to the Crown of England than I know any or all else to have done saith among his letters printed in folio at Paris 1664. in that in book 7th Anno 1601. a letter to the King letter 131. what may be thus render'd in English viz. It may please your Majesty to remember that since the year 1594. there was a book printed in
fate of those grand Impostors too be after their detection to march out of the Church and that without the Parade perhaps of noise of Trumpet or beat of Drum. There needs no battering Ram against Fraud but Detection And these Arbiters of Calumny that like the Month of March came into the World as a Lion may perhaps go out of it like a Lamb and their Morallity naturally come into the number of Pancirols Res deperditae and as not worthy of any Humane care to conserve after it has with so much violence been labouring in vain to destroy that old great invention of God the Law of Nature Let any great East or West-India Company in the World but once as a Public Society renounce the observation of Faith or Patronize Cheating and no other Company need envy their growth or Continuance or pick holes in their Charters and retain the loudness of Lawyers to dissolve them And such is the fate like to be of any Religionary Society None need ask where are the Fighters or where are the Disputers of this World to confound an order whose Casuists make Lying lawful and yet make it lawful to kill one that gives the Lye. And the truth is it is already through the Providence Divine and likewise the Providence and Circumspection of Men so effected That these lewd Moralists that call themselves the Fellows of the Holy Iesus these crafty Companions are so detected in the Church not only as Cheats but as having the Plague that they are avoided by many of the Orders that own the Pope as their Chief who will neither admit them to Prattique nor Quarrentine and they are in a manner reduced to the state of those Princes who force a Trade at home and only drive one with their own Plantations abroad They are already come to the state of Bessus his Collegues in the Comedy a sort of military pretenders who after their Buffetings and Spurnâ—ings they had took from so many did support their Credit only by this Combined Determination namely that they were valiant among themselves and this is the present state of these expos'd Casuists of the Church Militant that have been so long imposing on the World by force and fraud 't is agreed on by them that they are Iust among themselves With the help of all that Nature and Art can do they can never recover the wounds that have been given them by the publication of the Les Provinciales or the Mystery of Iesuitism discovered in Certain Letters written on occasion of the differences at Sorbonne between the Jansenists and the Molinists with additionals and were Printed in the English Tongue in the Year 1658. And that Great Court of Conscience that is a Court alwayes open and where the Judges are too many to be all brib'd or aw'd however some may sleep which I may call Conscientia humani generis having arraign'd and condemn'd their Casuistical Tenets as infamous they are after an Impeachment and Sentence in that Court to expect no pardon the World will never forgive nor forget their making Calumny a Venial Sin nor their particular bringing into the Field for the service of the art of strongly calumniating Battalions of Fathers Schoolmen Divines of other Orders by Guimenius who in that Book of his before mentioned brings in a multitude of great names of those great ranks not only to Justify but even to Sanctify the Crimes charged on them in those Letters and as 't was said of old Citius efficies Crimen honestum quam turpen Catonem so in Guimenius we do not see any rascall Deer who were Justly markt or wounded thrown out of the herd of the Jesuits but we see Men who were besmear'd with their own filth and the Dirt the World threw on them out-braving the light and to cleanse themselves from imputed guilt running into the Crouds of Casuists of their own and other Orders as likewise among the Fathers Divines and Schoolmen and so Magnanimously Impious was he as to make Acts of Cheating and Calumny to be patroniz'd by holy Church and openly to excuse the putting Gods Mark on the Devils Merchandize and to stamp in effect a legitimacy on them with an effrontery only to be parallel'd with that which Tully tells us concerning Antony the Oratour who being to defend a Person accus'd of Sedition boldly went to prove that Sedition was no Crime but a very Commendable thing But after all their long Casuistical weighing of the Dirt of Vice in Aurificis staterà or rather in Essay-Masters Scales which turn with the 300 th part of a grain and as some contriv'd by an honourable Person of the Royal Society will turn with the thousandth part of one it Can never be forgot that they tell us this Dirt is Gold. Nor can or will the bold Artifices of the Jesuits before mentioned in eluding the Popes Decree of the 2 d. of March 1679. against their unmoral Divinity and of which Declaration the Cloud contains Thunderbolts of Excommunication against their Tenet of lawful Lying and Perjury and Equivocating and of Dissembling in the administration of the Sacraments be ever forgot even by many thinking Papists or indeed the thinking part of Mankind And Protestants may well ask all Papists that Call those damn'd Tenets of the Jesuits by the Name of Religion Where was your Religion before the birth of Luther for Luther was born above half a hundred years before the birth of the Society of the Jesuits Nay since that Religion has been damn'd by that Decree of the Popes we may ask them Where is your Religion now where is the Popes Infallibility so much avow'd and Idolised by the Iesuites heretofore What is not the Pope infallible in his Chair in the Inquisition was his Chair in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican and attended there by the most Eminent and most Reverend Lords the Cardinals of the holy Roman Church being specially deputed by the holy Apostolic See to be the General Inquisitors for the whole Christian Common-wealth against all heretical pravity I say was that Chair the Chair of Pestilence Are not you as Heretics self-Condemn'd in having procur'd your infallible Popes Condemning Decree to be suppressed in France as coming from the Pope in the Court of Inquisition Alas do not we know that 't is all one as to the value of the Coin Let the Prince's Mint be kept in this place or the other and that 't is the Sanction of the Pope either in the Consistory or in the Inquisition at Rome that gives the standard of weight and fineness to any Doctrinal Propositions and that makes them current Do we not know it out of the History of the Councel of Trent that the Pope told the Cardinals in Consistory that they had only Consultive Voices to put things to his consideration and that the Decisive Voice belong'd only to him Do we not know out of that History Book 7th that Laymez the General of the Iesuites spoke with
by Some non-Papists I know not My Author for it is Mr. Iohn Gee Master of Arts of Exeter Colledge in Oxford in his Book 4 to Call'd New Shreds of the Old Share p. 103. Printed at London in the Year 1624. In any such wretched Contention between the faex Romuli and any of the Protestants here who should become most impure by Calumny as the Protestants being much more Numerous than the Papists would be able to out-shamme them and to make the more plain detections of the Shammes contriv'd by their Adversaries it would likewise go the harder with any Sect that the Majority of Numbers would thus run down with Shammes in this Nation at this Conjuncture of time when the many swarms of those who offer at Wit and think they merit the being call'd Witts by doing the exercise in a Coffey-house Call'd Baldring that is with a serious grave face telling idle feign'd Stories farced with particular Circumstances to ensnare the belief of the Credulous which kind of ungenerous triumphing over weak Understandings by ridiculous Shammes is a false sort of wit and humour below not only the gravity of the English Nation but the levity of the French and used by none but Fools who stand for the place of being Knaves There is no doubt but the talent of these foolish Shammers as their interest and dependances or humors incline them to wish well either to Popery or Protestancy extending to abuse the belief of the unthinking Vulgar with little romantic Stories concerning those Religions helps to Convey them into the Press which gives wings to these Shams presently to fly round the Kingdome If the Papists think the Press hath not in any of the Pamphlets it dayly spits charged them with Calumny and of Such a Nature as to bring universal odium on them by alarming the Kingdom almost as much as it could be by forrain invasion and occasionally laying a Tax on men to buy what Arms for their defence the Law allowes I will ask them what they think of one of our printed Intelligences that Came out on the 26 th of February 1680 1 wherein 't is said Last Fryday came a Letter from Stafford directed to one Bacchus Tenant to the Lord Stafford from one Wilson in Cheshire but ordered to be left with one Finny of Stafford to be sent to the said Bacchus but Finny observing Letters so directed to pass through his hands and apprehending they might relate to some dangerous Correspondence took the liberty to Open this and therein to his great surprize found directions to Bacchus for burning of Stafford and several great Towns upon which making a speedy discovery to a Magistrate Bacchus was sent for who after some evasions did confess he had received Letters to that purpose And just now the said Wilson is apprehended and committed and confesseth he was by the order of a Certain Lord to fire Stafford Drayton Shrewsbury Nantwich Chester Congerton New-Castle Under-Line and two more and that he was to have 900 l. for fireing those Nine Towns. I having never heard of any Proclamation or proceedings either of the Magistracy or Lievtenancy of this Kingdom after such an alarm of public hostility and of a Rebellion hatch'd in the Kingdom nor of the last punishment inflicted on the pretended Certain Lord that was the General of those Incendiaries did look on them under the Notion of an Army in disguise But whatever ground the Protestant Religion hath got or shall get by these poor means I desire that it may go to the Next occupant for not only the ayr it exhales is Pestilential but it includes that ayr in it which may produce Earthquakes which dangers therefore the New Popish or Jesuited Religion must be exposed to by the ayr of Shams and Calumnies My Lord I shall here entertain your Lordship with somewhat very Remarkable out of the Book of Father Parsons of the Succession whereby you will see that instead of Allowing the oportet esse haereses he doth in effect tell us that while the Kingdom has two Religions in it oportet esse Calumnias that great Jesuite having with much agility danced on the high rope as to the Casuistical part of the Question of the Succession affects to do it too in the Politics but miss'd his Center of gravity in his motion both as a Divine and a States-man and did shamefully fall in either Capacity as your Lordship will find by the reading of his words He saith p. 217. being near the Conclusion of the first part of his Book And thus much now for matter of Conscience But if we Consider Reason of State also and worldly Policy it Cannot be but great folly and oversight for a man of whatsoever Religion he be to promote to a Kingdom in which himself must live one of a Contrary Religion to himself for let the bargains and agreements be what they will and fair promises and vain hopes never so great yet seeing the Prince once made and settled must needs proceed according to the Principles of his own Religion it follows also that he must Come quickly to break with the other party tho he loved him never so well which yet perhaps is very hard if not impossible for two of different Religions to love sincerely but if it were so yet many jealousies suspicions accusations Calumniations and other aversions must needs light upon the Party that is of different Religion from the State and Prince under whom he lives as not only he Cannot be Capable of such Preferments Honours Charges Government and the like which men may deserve and desire in their Commonwealth but also he shall be in Continual danger and subject to a thousand molestations and injuries which are incident to the Condition and state of him that is not Current with the same Course of his Prince and Realm in matters of Religion and so before he be aware he becomes to be accounted an Enemy or backward man which in Mind he must either dissemble deeply and against his own Conscience make shew to favour and set forward that which in his heart he doth detest which is the greatest Calamity and Misery of all other tho yet many times not sufficient to deliver him from suspicion or else to avoid this everlasting perdition he must break with all the temporal Commodities of this life which his Country and Realm might yield him and this is the ordinary end of all such men how soft and sweet soever the beginning be This Iesuite who was before mention'd to have been Call'd one of the greatest Men that his Order has produced was here it seems a States-man in his heart and no More and has very honestly foretold all Protestants that shall live under a Prince of another Religion how dishonest Roman Catholics will prove to them The Jesuite was here an Almanac-maker who predicted nothing to Protestants but Lightning and Thunder and too the Continual Raining of Snares upon them during such a Conjuncture and
the head-ake the Pen-knife and Books of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a piece of his Shirt much reverenc'd by great belly'd women the coals that roasted St. Laurence two or three heads of St. Ursula Malchus his Ear and the paring of St. Edmund ' s Nails and likewise the trumperies of the Rood of Grace at Boxly in Kent and in Hales in Glocestershire things name◠as trumperies in p. 495 and 496 by Herbert in that History and as adjudged to be such by H. the 8 th And no doubt but the Number of such would be very great who having great Summs of Money given them would be content to offer small ones in Devotion to such Images and many Candidates for preferment among some that now look big for and among Dissenters that look big against the Church of England would produce Certificates of their Constant good affection and Zeal for the Roman Catholic Church and any Legate that came to reconcile us to the Church of Rome would be thought by many to have brought the Holy-Ghost in his Sumpters thô we know what the Inside of Campegius his was made of It is moreover possible that Protestant writers may come not to have that freedom of the Press that Popish now have and all the luxury and wantonness and humor of the Press in sending forth innumerable Pamphlets against Popery in this Conjuncture may perhaps prove but like the jollity of a Carnival to usher in a long melancholly Lent. I will grant that 't is possible the Writ de haeretico Comburendo being now Abolished that destroyed so many Protestants by retail certain bloody men may find some Invention to destroy them by wholesale and to something of that nature Bishop Vshers Prophecy referred of the Raging Persecution of Protestants yet to come and not lasting and when their enemies will ipsam saevitiam fatigare and in the violence of such predicted cruelty not being long lasting that great Prelate erred not from the Nature of things more then he did when he Prophecy'd of an Irish Rebellion Forty years before it hapned for that usually happens once in so many years through the force and numbers of the Irish within that time outgrowing the English and their allowing themselves the repossession of their Estates by that time as a Iubile I will further grant that the discipline of our Church of which I think the Constitution is the best that the world can shew may be Crusht as I said before and our Dissenters then in vain wish that they had the tolerabiles ineptiae as your Lordship knows who imperiously call'd them in the Room of the intollerable abominations of the Mass and 't is possible that divine Iustice and Power may permit the doctrine as well as discipline of our Church to be supprest totally and finally in this Realm and that the prediction of that Great Man of God whô since his death has been as generally styl'd the Iudicious as Lewis the Iust was elsewhere so vogued I mean Mr. Hooker may impress a deep horror and a too late repentance on us who in his 5th Book of Ecclesiastical Polity in the end of the 79th Paragraph p. 432. of the old Edition speaking of the ill affected to our Church saith By these or the like suggestions receiv'd with all Ioy and with all sedulity practiced in Certain parts of the Christian World they have brought to pass that as David doth say of Man so it is in hazard to be verify'd concerning the whole Religion and Service of God the time thereof peradventure may fall out to be Threescore and Ten years or if strength do serve unto Fourscore what follows is likely to be small joy to them whatsoever they shall be that behold it Mr. Hooker did first print his 5th Book in the year 1597. the first four of his Polity being before printed in the year 1594 and so the period of Fourscore Years in his prediction was in the Year 1677. Thô that good man pretended not to be a Prophet yet according to the old saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. he is the best Prophet who can guess well both our Church of England and the Dissenters and Papists too have found that Mr. Hookers prudence had so much divination and his divination so much prudence that the small joy with which they have beheld the external face of Religion here since 1677. hath shew'd us that he guess'd shrewdly I have only affirm'd that humanly speaking and according to the common course of nature Popery cannot be the overgrown National Religion of England but am not ignorant that the sacred Code hath given us instances of Omnipotent power punishing even Heavens peculiar people by the Course of Political and Ecclesiastical Power running out of the common Channel of the Nature of things and particularly by a succession of Ten evil Kings one after another For thô humane Nature is so inconstant and men generally so apt to reel from one extream to another that the World growes as weary of the prevalence of Vice as of Virtue and after a long age of Dissoluteness and Luxury a Contrary humour reigns as long in the World again a humour that then excludes all Voluptuaries from Public Trusts for an Age together and a humour of which I think we now see the Tide Coming in and thus ordinarily scarce any Kingdom hath more than two or three good or bad Princes successively for any considerable space of time Yet after the Ten Tribes had made their defection from the Line of the House of David they were punish't by a Succession of Ten Kings and not one good one in the whole number thô some of them were less ill than others so that no Marvel if the weight of the impiety of so many successive ill Princes sunk them into the power of the Assyrians and to this their doom that passage in the Prophecy of Hosea refers which the vulgus of the Scriblers against Monarchy so Miserably detort and wracke as I may say to their own destruction namely I gave thee a King in mine anger and took him away in my wrath for the Prophet there had not his Eye on Saul or on a particular Person but on the whole succession of Kings after their Rent from Iuda from Ieroboam to the Last under whom the Catastrophe of their Captivity was Such Kings were given them by Heaven as were proper Instruments of Divine wrath and when they were took away from the Stage 't was that other worse might enter and make their Condition more Tragical But secret things belonging to God I pry not into the Book of Fate but Confine my sentiments alone to the Book of Nature In an Excellent Sermon of the Dean of St. Pauls 't is with great Piety and Prudence said We have liv'd in an Age that has beheld strange Revolutions astonishing Iudgments and wonderful Deliverances What all the Fermentations that are still among us may end in God alone knowes I
Populum on 1 Cor. 7. 24. pag. 195 and 196 speaking of the Monks saith It is well known in this our Land how both Church and Common-Wealth groan'd under the burden of these heavy Lubbers The Common-wealth while they becamâ— Lords of very little less by their computation who have travelled in the search â—hen one half of the temporalties of the Kingdom and the Church while they engrossed into their hands the fruits of the best Benefices of the Realm allowing scarce so much as the Chaff to those who tread out the Corn. This profession is God be thanked long since suppressed There is nothing of them now remains but the rubbish of their Nests and the stink of their memories unless it be the sting of their Devilish Sacriledge in â—â—bbing the Church by damnable Impropriations He had before said they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Slow-bellies Stall-fed Monks and Friars who liv'd mew'd up in their Cells like Boors in a Frank pining themselves into Lord and beating down their bodies till their Girdles crackt But though it hath been truly observ'd That the not providing for the augmentations of the poorer Livings in England was a scandal to our Reformation in that it made so many scandalous Livings and consequently so many such Ministers and it has been in one of Queen Elizabeth's Parliaments notify'd by Dr. Iames as Townsend's Collections mention that of Eight Thousand and odd Parish-Churches then in England but Six Hundred did afford a competent Living for a Minister And it has been publickly aver'd by Archbishop Whitgift That there were Four Thousand Five Hundred Benefices which are not worth above Ten Pound a Year in the King's Books yet the dispersing of so much of the Church Revenue among the Laity hath had this effect namely to engage the possessors of so great a proportion of the Land of England to be Champions against Popery and one other good effect within my own observation it produced in the late times when Tithes themselves were thought Delinquent namely that the Impropriate Tithes saved the others And the not augmenting the poorer sort of Livings the which mostly were in Cities and Corporations in the Countrey hath not however prov'd any augmentation to the interest of Popery For though the Reliques and Images and Shrines of Saints there that brought a concourse of Offerers and Offerings thither enrich'd those places and the Churches and had the effect of Staple Ecclesiastical Commodities and Harry the Eighth's abolishing them reduced the value of the Livings there almost to nothing they grew by occasion thereof afterward to be receptacles for heterodox Divines who seiz'd on the Livings there in a manner derelict and finding the Genius of Trading people averse from Ceremonies did represent the few and innocent and indeed decent ones of the Church of England as odious to them and therefore were sure of pleasing their auditors by constant declaiming against those of Popery that were so many and cumbersome and had caused so much blood-shed and were known to be Ceremonies both mortuae mortiferae And as Doleman alias Parsons observed in his time that the strength of the Puritans lay in those Corporate Towns and Cities there will the hatred of the Principles of the Papists probably for ever encrease I have for this purpose found it truly observed in a Discourse in octavo concerning Liberty of Conscience Printed for Nath. Brooks at the Angel in Cornhil That the Puritan Preachers by their disesteem of Ceremonies and external Pomp in the worship of God were the more endeared to Corporations and the greater part of persons engaged in Trade and Traffic who hate Ceremonies in general and what does unnecessarily take up time And that persons who nauseate Ceremonies in Civil things will loath them likewise in Religious as a man who has an antipathy against Muscadine in his Parlor cannot love it at the Sacrament And that if we reflect on those who did most love Ceremonies heretofore in our Nation we shall find them to have been persons of the greatest Rank and Quality who did effect Ceremonies in Civil things or of the poorest sort who did get their daily bread by the Charity of the other So natural is it for men to Paint God in Colors suitable to their own fancies that I do not wonder at Trading Persons who hate Ceremonies that they thus think God in respect of this hatred altogether such as themselves That Discourse had before set forth That 't is natural to Men who live by Trade and whose being rich or beggars depends much on the honesty of their Servants to be enamoâ—â—â—â— on that Preaching that is most passionate and loud against what looks like luxury and is apt to occasion unnecessary expences to them And therefore no humane Art will ever Reconcile them to one Casuistical Tenet that is so so branded in the Pope's said Decree of the second of March viz. Servants of either Sex may secretly steal from their Masters for the value of their service if it is greater than the Salary which they receive The Mystery of Iesuitism letter 6 pag. 80 cites for this Tenet Father Bauny's Summary p. 213 and 214 of the sixth Edition viz. May Servants who are not content with their Wages advance them of themselves by filching and purloining as much from their Masters as they imagine necessary to make their Wages proportionable to their services On some occasions they may as when they are so poor when they come into service that they are obliged to accept any proffer that 's made to them and that other servants of their quality get more elsewhere At the rate of this Moral Theology no Tradesman knows what Mony he has either in his Pocket or Compter or what Cash in his Closet nor indeed any King what Treasure he has in his Exchequer But notwithstanding the aversion of many persons of high Birth and Breeding and who are lovers of Pomp and Ceremony in matters Civil and likewise in Religious from the contrary humour of Trading Men yet is there one thing that hath and always will in spight of all differences in Religion occasion an entercourse of Civility between the former Class of Mankind here and the latter and 't is that necessity of nature that makes the Borrower a Servant to the Lender namely that the expensive former Classe taking up Mony at interest from the more frugal latter obligeth them to give the Lenders the respect of fair quarter And thus according to that Bull in Tacitus That in some parts of Scotland the Sun shines all night long there will still during the contrariety of their tenets and humours and which are as opposite as light and darkness occasionally arise a clear understanding between them And of the Redundance of Money the Puritans party had in the late times and of their designed employing it for the greatning the interest of their party the establishment of Feoffees by them for purchasing Impropriations is a great
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
taught to know the Numbers of all people but our own But in this State of improvement that the World is arrived at I do account that all who shall hereafter employ their Pens about that greatest exercise of humane Wit and Judgment call'd History and shall not found the weight of their Remarques upon the Numbers of the People they write of will no more be termed grave Authors or indeed ought but grave nothings and such who deal irreverently with a World that is weary of trifles and from which they are to expect no other Doom then that of the Annales Volusi And though as to the faetus populi as well as to the faetus pecuniae called faenus accidents may happen that may cross the Rule of encrease in both Cases as in the latter by Bankrupts and in the former by Plague or War c. and thus once as to the Romans Censa sunt Civium Capita 270 Millia and in the following enrollment but 137 Ex quo numero apparuit saith the Historian quantum hominum tot praeliorum adversa fortuna populi Romani abstulisset as if he would infer that the losses they received from Hanibal had swept away 133000 Citizens yet do such exceptions but confirm the Rule the which may be made out by continued mean proportionals But this by the way If my Lord Herbert who mentions pag. 121 of his History That in the Year 1522 Warrants were issued out Commanding the Certificates of the Names of all above sixteen Years old had set down the total number of the persons certified he had much more obliged the World then by many things in his History I do not remember that any of our Historians of those times do relate the Numbers of the Religious Persons that all the suppressed Monasteries contain'd We are told by Godwin in his Annals That the number of the Abbies that were in England is not easily cast up and the Names of the chiefest and whose Abbots had voices among the Peers in Parliament he thereupon enumerates But Weaver in his Funeral Monuments p. 104 mentioning That all the Religious Houses under the Yearly value of 200 l. being given to the King and that they were all worth per annum 20941 l. saith That the Religious Persons put out of the same were above Ten Thousand My Lord Herbert p. 441 speaking of that sort of Monasteries being dissolved in the 27 th year of the King's Reign makes Thirty or Thirty two Thousand pound yearly thereby fall into the King's hand And p. 507 makes the total yearly value of all the Religious Houses suppressed to be 161100 l. It may therefore be thence infer'd that if Thirty Thousand pound yearly maintain'd 10000 Religious Persons that there were maintain'd by the 161100 l. above 50000 Religious Persons or Regulars And according to the aforesaid rate of the yearly value of the Land viz. 161100 l. the allowance to each came to somewhat above 3 l. per annum the which shews that those Lands were not sold to half the value because less then double that Sum cannot be imagined to have maintain'd such a person then I do account that supposing the Parishes to have been then in England and Wales as Cambden in his Britannia says 9284 that the Secular Clergy added to the Number of the Regular only the last said Number For then the Canon Law which requires that Orders shall not be given to Men without Titles being strictly executed there were perhaps not more Parish Priests in England And the adding to those Numbers the Dignitaries viz. Two Archbishops and 24 Bishops and 26 Deans and 60 Arch-Deacons and 544 Prebendarys and several Rural Deans doth enlarge the Sum to another Thousand of Persons who lived by the Altar Moreover there being then estimated to live in Oxford and Cambridge about Sixty Thousand Students who in expectation of Church-preferment as either Regulars or Seculars abstain'd from Marriage I account that the Number of Persons then ty'd by Caelibate from encreasing and multiplying the people to be above 120000 as at present above double that Number are in France What accrued to the Secular Clergy then or since by Tithes ought not to have been looked on by any one with an evil Eye as I suppose by Mr. Fish it was not For as to the nature of the payment of Tithes according to the judgment of Sir W. P. in his Book of Taxes and Contributions p. 58 It may be said to be no Tax or Levy in England whatever it might have been in the first age of its Institution And this notion of his may be extended even to that which is called a Tenth but is revera a Fifth I mean the Tith of arables in regard of the charge of Culture and Seed which is ordinarily at least as much as the Rent of the Land because it is a charge equally incumbent on all proprietors of such Land and for that the true notion of Wealth and Riches depends on comparison and 't is only the inequality in the proportion of the Tax that is the sting thereof But that which Mr. Fish chiefly level'd his Calculations at was the excessive share in the Wealth of the Kingdom the Monks and Fryars had who did so little for its preservation and the encrease of its Numbers What an infinite number of people saith he might have been encreased to have peopled the Realm if this sort of Folk had been married like other Men Instead of using his Rhetorical Expression of infinite I shall affirm that these 120000 adult able persons living in Celibate might according to the notion of the Observator of the Bills of Mortality That every marriage one with another produceth four Children viz. Two apiece for each Sex have more then doubled their number in the same age by which any one may well conclude that as the number of the people of England is now vastly encreased by the dissolution of Abbies so it would likewise be so diminished by their re-establishment To effect therefore to lessen thus the number of the people of England when the French King with great wisdom has by the Revival of the Roman Immunity of the Ius trium librorum and the application of others laid so a great Foundation for the growing populousness of France would too much expose us to his power and derision The Divine Wisdom's allotting to the Levitical Tribe the affluent quota it enjoy'd is very justly took notice of by those who discourse of the Clerical Revenue The Author of the Present State of England saith That our Ancestors according to the pattern of God's ancient people the Iews judged it expedient to allot large Revenues to the English Clergy and that the English Clergy were the best provided for of any Clergy in the whole World except only the Nation of the Iews among whom the Tribe of Levi being not the Fourth part of the twelve Tribes as appears in the Book of Numbers yet had as Mr. Selden
confesseth and that by God's own appointment three times the Annual Revenue of the greatest of the twelve Tribes Doctor Covel in his Modest and Reasonable examination of some things in use in the Church of England Printed Anno 1604 saith in Chapter the Eleventh Thatâ—the Levites were not the Thirteenth part of the Jews and yet had the Tenth Wherein that Doctor agreed with the sense of the Fathers of the Council of Trent who as 't is mention'd in the latter end of the History of that Council said That in the Mosaical Law God gave the Tenth to the Levites who were the Thirteenth part of the people prohibiting that any more should be given them But the Clergy now which is not the Fiftieth part hath gotten already not a Tenth only but a Fourth part But by exacter Calculations 't is apparent that the Levites though a small Tribe if a Tribe there being twelve beside scarce the sixtieth part of the House of Iacob had perhaps a Sixth of the whole profits of the Land They had the Tenth or Tith of the Land together with its Culture they had in Iudaea a small Country 48 Cities with their Suburbs 2000 Cubits from the Wall on every side and their first-fruits and a great part of the manifold Sacrifices and free-will-offerings of the Male Children of Israel which were to appear thrice yearly before the Lord with some Offering and whatsoever House Field Person Beast c. was by a singular Vow given to God which was to be valued by the Priest himself and all these duties were brought in to the Priest without charge or trouble and those Cities and Lands descended from them to their posterity from generation to generation as also did their Tithes and Offerings I shall here observe that that which hath probably induced so many to err in making the number of the Levites so great as aforesaid was their not considering what yet is really true in Nature namely That the number of people of any Nation from a month old and upwards for so the Levites were counted Numb 3. 39. is more then double their number from Twenty years old and upward and so the rest of the Tribes were numbred Exod. 33. 26. Numb 26. 62. And therefore I infer that the Levites were but about a sixtieth of the number of the other Tribes But during the Theocracy that the Iews sometimes lived under or while God was their King it being worthy of the Divine Empire to design and promote the wealth of its Subjects and consequently that they should encrease and multiply for that alone is real wealth there was no Celibate among the Levites or any degree of Ecclesiasticks to hinder the same Having thus in the way of Calculation glanced on the Ecclesiastical Polity of God's peculiar People or Subjects I suppose the rectitude of that Rule will shew the obliquity or warping of the practice of the Papal Clergy For if we do admit as I believe we well may that there are seven Millions of people in England of which 120000 is a sixtieth part this old Church Polity of the Popes Clergy doth Toto Caelo differ from that of the Israelites in that they spend double the proportion of the wealth of the Kingdom and yet live in Celibate or without multiplying And as Mr Fish in effect said in that his Book do hinder procreation by promiscuous coupling with other Mens Wives But 't is a known great truth that the great business of the Monks and the Ratio studiorum of the Papal Clergy was not to make the Kingdom populous but to depopulate We have for this the testimony of Walter Mappe Arch-deacon of Oxford who was bred up with Henry the Second that the Abbots and Monks in that time were very Criminous in the point of depopulation whence that Proverb arose Monachi desertum aut inveniunt aut faciunt wherever they seated themselves they either found the place a Desart or made it one 'T is said of them That they laid more places waste then ever William the Conqueror or his Son Ruâ—us did when they demolished and destroyed many Parishes to enlarge the bounds of the new Forrest In that Fleet of depopulators there was one first-rate one namely The Abbot of Osney who was for his Talent of depopulating so remarkable that 't was observed that he made all paupers that dwelt within the purlieus of his Possessions And of this Henry the Second took such notice that one day when he had not poor people enough for his Alms on some great Festival he said in a fit of anger That rather then his bounty should be unemployed he would make as many beggars as the Abbot of Osney had done One would think that the Monks should have been well willers to the encrease of the populousness of the Kingdom for that thereby the values of their Lands would have been encreased a thing no doubt that appeared visible to the Reasons of the more Sagacious among them But there was another thing they found palpable that is they found themselves well at ease even to envy in their vast share of the wealth of the Nation whereby they Lorded it over both God's inheritance and the Laity and therefore they did not fancy the sight of the Sea of the people increase by the coming in of the Tide of new generations that would have produced much more persons to maligne and perhaps contest with them they naturally therefore wished the sweet absence of such company from the World just as in Ireland and other thin peopled Countries the Natives living at their ease have sharp regrets against the accession of strangers though they know it would raise the value of their Lands and as in America the Natives wish no improvement to their Country from the Spaniards The Monks had got the Monopoly of Religion and near half the Land by it and not having any certain Issue to endear posterity to them and consequently to oblige them to promote the wealth of the Kingdom in general and to consult thereby the good of surviving parts of themselves for that figure Children make as to Parents they and the Abbots and Popish Bishops cared for no more then being warm in the Pyes Nest while they lived and 't was as natural to them to repel the thoughts of Colonies of people advancing the wealth of the Kingdom by new generations as 't is natural to present Trading persons to prevent the publick good of an Act of Naturalization And as this advancement of depopulation was therefore the interest of the present Monks and Priests so was it of the present Popes who knew they were sure of receiving Aids and Contributions from them as long as numbers of other fresh comers did not drive them off the Stage One would rather wonder that our Popish Monarchs saw it not sooner their Interest to crush the Politics of these holy Depopulators and Pastors that turned the Kingdom into Sheep-walks and who minding chiefly the encrease
of Cattle by pasture hindred that encrease of Men that the advancement of Tillage would have produced and the furnishing the Crown with more Subsidy Men and Soldiers But this supineness of our Kings was not only caused by Superstition and a vitiated fancy in Religion an Idol to which Philip the Second sacrificed his Son and therefore might be well supposed prevalent with others to wish the generation of their Children or Subjects restrained but our Kings were not then stimulated by necessity to promote the populousness of their Realm for that their riches and strength depending on comparison the same Religious Orders did by Celibate and Depopulation equally obstruct the Wealth and Power of the neighbouring Kingdoms as well as this and by that means they were not our over-match But the course of encreasing Generations having operated so far as to awaken the World and Men for not having so much Elbow-room as they had jostling one another by the violence of War the politics of Statutes against Depopulation were forced and reinforced on this Realm And like as Men so too will such Statutes beget one another as I may say to the end of the Chapter Nor is the power of the Kingdom ever likely again to be really emasculated by such as pretended To make themselves Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake and honoured not the Founder of Christianity of whom since he for the good of Mankind made his first Disciples fishers of Men it may seem unworthy that he should intend the hurt of States and Kingdoms by making the following Doctors of his Church Pastors of Sheep Sir Thomas Moor in the first Book of his Vtopia doth with a sharpness worthy his excellent wit tell us That certain Abbots holy Men God wot not profiting but much damnifying the Common Wealth leave no ground for Tillage they enclose all in pastures they throw down Houses they pull down Towns and leave nothing standing but only the Church to make of it a Sheep-house And afterward saith That one Shepherd is enough to eat up that ground with Cattle to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite And he in that Book calls the Fryers errones maximos and desires they might be treated like Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars And in the Second Book contrives a Model of the Priesthood so as not to make it such a Nusance to the Civil Government as the Papal one was accordingly as has been before discoursed For one of his fundamentals there is That the Priests should be very few and that they should be chosen by the people like other Magistrates and with secret voices and enjoyns to his Priests marriage and makes them to be promoted to no power but only to honour Sir Thomas More it seems was far then from Writing at the Pope's Feet the Character that was afterward given to Bellarmine's style and there was as little occasion for a peace-maker's interposal between him and Fish as is between two wrangling Lawyers at a Bar. But the matter is well mended with our English World since the time of the Supplication of Beggars as appears by the multitudes of the healthy and robust Plebs of our Nation that Till the Earth and Plough the Sea and who by the proportion of the Mony Current coming to their hands having fortify'd their Vital Spirits with good diet there is finis litium and an end of such Lamentations as the beginning of that Supplication to the King in part before referred mentions viz. Most lamentably complaineth of their woful misery to your Highness your poor daily Beads-men the wretched hideous Monsters on whom scarcely for horrour any eye dare look the foul unhappy sort of Lepers and other sore people needy impotent blind lame and sick c. How that their Number is daily so sore encreased that all the Alms of all the well disposed people of this your Realm is not half enough to sustain them There is no doubt but their indigence was extream when they were to glean not only after the Reaping of the Monks but after the Ecclesiastick Beggars the Fratres Mendicantes or as they were then called Manducantes had been satiated in diebus illis and when Holy Church almost engrossed not only the wealth but the begging in the Kingdom And he who now looks on our English infantry when they turn their Plough-shares into Swords will see nothing of the horrour of starvelings in their faces and the Writ de leproso amovendo is in effect obsolete in nature as that too de haeretico comburendo is abrogated And within the Term of about twenty years that the Observator of the Bills of Mortality refers his Calculations to he mentions but six of 229150 dying of the Leprosie What the Bills of Mortality in France may contain about deaths by the Leprosie happening there in late years I know not but do suppose that the general Scurâ—e appearing in the skins of the Pesantry there condemned to Sell their Birth-right of nature for no Pottage and to eat little of the Corn they Sow and to drink as little of the Vines they Plant and to taste little of Flesh save what they have in Alms from the Baskets of the Abbies and who are Dieted only for Vassalage may be an indication of the Leprosie having still its former effects among them But our English Husband-men are both better fed and taught and the poorest people here have so much of brown Bread and the Gospel that by the Calculations on our Bills of Mortality it appears that for so many years past but One of Four Thousand is starved 'T is therefore I think by instinct of Nature That our Yeomanry in the Country though not addicted to mind niceness of Controversie in Religion nor to be dealers in the Protestant Faith by Retaile are great Whole-sale Traders in it and will as soon suffer their Ploughs to be took out of their Hands as their Bibles from under their Arms And they have been generally observed since the Plot and some years before to manifest in common discourse their robust abhorrences of Popery as supposing that under that Religion they could neither save their Souls nor their Bacon Doleman alias Parsons in the Second part of his Book of the Succession speaking of the Numbers of the Papists here makes it very considerable In that the most part of the Country people that live out of Cities and great Towns in which the greatest part of the English forces are wont to consist are much affected ordinarily to their Religion meaning the Popish Religion by reason the Preachers of the contrary Religion are not so frequent with them as in Towns c. But were he now alive he would find the Scene of things changed in our Country Churches since Queen Elizabeth's time in whose Reign a Book was printed Anno 1585 called A lamentable complaint of the Commonalty by way of Supplication to the High Court of Parliament for a learned Ministry He would find
Scene of Merchandizing was not open'd in Europe till about 6 or 7 hundred years ago and till then none were there worthy the names of Merchants except some few in the Republicks of Italy who lived in the Mediterranean parts trading with the Indian Caravans in the Levant or driving some inland Trade and then and some hundreds of years afterward the Nations in the worst Soil of Europe being the greatest breeders and having superfluity of nothing but people had no invention for living but by being Murderers and by the boysterous Trade of Fighting their way into better Quarters and during that dark and Iron Age that produced Herds of Men void of knowledge there was nothing in humane Conversation or discourse valuable and in our European World it was scarce worth Men a few steps to gain one anothers acquaintance but on the gradual encrease of knowledge there Men found a readier way at once with delight and profit to exchange Notions and Commodities of Traffick and the Protestant Religion at last drawing up the Curtain that kept all things obscure on that Stage of the World Men being better taught the knowledge of the God of Nature and of Nature it self were grown worth one anothers knowledge and were for the surprizing brightness of their intellectual Talents gazed on by the wondring World like in Machines Gods coming down out of Clouds and it was worthy of the bounty of Heaven then to spread on the Earth the Commerce of Men and the Medium of Commerce too and to allow them to converse together with more splendor by the Donative of the American Mines when the dawn of the knowledge a little before that of the Reformation had rendred them conversable Creatures and fit for the interviews of one another and shortly afterwards by a mighty encrease of Navigation many did pass to and fro and knowledge was more and more encreased Thus as I have some where read of a saying of one of the Fathers Deus ambit nos donis formâ suâ the Divine Goodness provided that the World should Espouse the beauty of the Reformation with a great Dowry and that it should appear particularly in England with the great Figure that Wisdom makes in the Proverbs Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour And the truth is conspicuous in our English History that former intervals of some Efforts of Trade and of some of withstanding the Papal Encroachments were alway contemporary and liv'd and dy'd together and they were no sooner risen out of the Grave where the barbarity of former times depressed them but they were again found in one anothers Embraces That the Stock and Wealth of the Kingdom is vastly encreased since Harry the 8ths time is visible to any one who considers what Stow saith in his Annals on the Year 1523 the 15th Year of his Reign That when in a Parliament held at Black-Fryers and where Sir Thomas More was Speaker 800000 l. was required to be raised of the fifth part of every mans Goods and Lands that is 4 s of every Pound to be paid in 4 years but it was denyed and it was proved manifestly that if the fifth part of the substance of the Realm were but 800000 l and if Men should pay to the King the fifth part of their Goods in Money or Plate that there was not so much Money out of the Kings hands in all the Realm for the fifth part of every Mans Goods is not in Money or Plate c. And then consequently if all the Money were brought to the Kings hands then Men must barter Cloath for Victuals c. And there it was further Argued that the King had by way of Loan 2 s. in the Pound which is 400000 l. and if he had 4 s. more in the Pound 't would amount to 1200000 l which is almost the 3 d part of every Mans Goods which in Coyn cannot be had within the Realm That the Merchandizing Trade of England was before the Reformation and sometime after managed chiefly by Forraigners we Learn out of Heylin's Edward the 6 th p. 108 where he saith that Edward the 6 th Supprest the Corporation of Merchant Strangers the Merchants of the Stilyard concerning which we are to know that the English in the times foregoing being neither strong in Shipping nor much accustomed to the Sea received all such Commodities as were not of the growth of their own Country from the hands of Strangers resorting hither from all parts to upbraid our laziness namely Merchants known by the name of Easterlings who brought hither Wheat and Rye and Grain c. for their encouragement wherein they were amply priviledged and exempted from many impositions I shall here deduce a proof of the growth of the Revenue of the Nation from the growth of that of the Church and to prove that the Revenue of the Church Nation of England were in the year 1660 about Quintuple to what they were at the time of the Reformation I shall say first that Godwin in his Catalogue of Bishops makes the Revenue of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops to be valued at the time of the Reformation near 22000 l. per Annum and if we admit the Revenue of the Deans and Chapters to be double the Sum viz. 44000 l. then will the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy appear to have been then 66000 l. per Annum But Dr. Cornelius Burgess a Man vers'd in the speculative and practick part of Sacriledge doth in his Book concerning Sacriledge call'd Two Replies and Printed Anno 1660 affirm that the Bishops Deans and Chapters Lands were at the end of the late Civil War sold for two Million three hundred thousand pounds and he saith there was offer'd since his Majesties Restoration seven hundred thousand pounds more to confirm that Sale whereby the value of the said Land is made to be in the year 1660 3 Millions And Mr. Prynne in his Printed Speech in the House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the satisfactoriness of the Kings Answers to the Propositions of both Houses doth in Page 68 there affirm That near one half of the Arch-Bishops and Bishops Possessions and Revenues consists in Impropriations Tithes Pensions and the like and if we may suppose the like as to the Revenues of the Deans and Chapters then according to that Estimate will the value of the whole Revenue of the Hierarchy of our Church be about 6 Millions the twentieth part whereof viz. at twenty years Purchase is 300,000 l. per Annum and the 12 th part of the same viz. at 12 years purchase is 500,000 l. per Annum so that what at the time of the Reformation was worth but 66000 l. per Annum was in the Year 1660 worth between 300 and 500000 l. as aforesaid In the next place I shall prove the Remainder of my Position that the Revenue of the whole Nation is about Quintupled also for that the
subject that are equal to great Parishes c. Moreover the Grants from the Crown of Extraparochial Titles in several Counties may serve for an indication of great numbers of people that are not Inhabitant in Parishes and so likewise may the Multitudes of those people who live in Forrests and which places are generally accounted by the Law to be Extraparochial The Number of Parsonages and Vicarages in Edward the 1 sts valuation whereof there is a Manuscript Copy in the Bodleian Library was about 8900 and into that number the Chappels are not accounted but of the Chappels many since have grown up into Parsonages and this would likewise induce one to think the number of our Parishes at this time to be greater then the common Estimate especially when according to the Kings Books which respect the valuation in Harry the 8 ths time the number of them is considerably above 9000. But what may seem more strange is that some men of Thought and Learning have attempted even by Calculation to prove that the people of England have for a very long space of time decreased in their numbers and particularly the Author of a Book in Quarto called An account of the French Vsurpation on the Trade of England and the great damage the English yearly sustain by their Commerce Printed in the Year 1679 and Writ with excellence of Calculation in some parts thereof and yet that Author doth p. 16 say And I can easily believe that 1000 years since this Nation had a much greater stock of people then now it hath for the Rome-Scot or Peter-pence which was but one Penny a Chimney granted by Offa and Ina Saxon Kings to the Pope did amount to 50000 yearly and the Hearth-money which is two Shillings the Hearth and one Stack of Chimneys may have many Hearths doth not amount to 300,000l yearly whereas if the number of Chimneys charged with the Romescot had been two Shillings a Chimney it would have amounted to 1,200,000 l. yearly So that we may conclude there were then more Buildings and Chimneys and so by consequence more people But had that Author considered that the Romescot or denarius sancti Petri was only an annual Penny from every Family or Houshold and that it amounted to 300 Marks and a Noble yearly as Blunt says by that reckoning it would have appeared that there were not then in all England 50000 Families liable to that Duty whereas there are now above a Million of such Families so that now the people and Families of England are twenty times as many as they were then which agrees pretty well with my Lord Chief Iustice Hales's reckoning That great person in his Primitive Origination of Mankind yields that the people of England are at least 6 Millions and doth too in Page 205 say That he doth not know any thing rendred clearer to the view then the gradual encrease of Mankind by the curious and strict Observations on the Bills of Mortality and doth very elaborately make a comparison between the numbers of the people in Glocestershire and particularly some great Towns and Burroughs there as Thornbury and Tedbury as they were at the time of the making up of Domesday Book and as they now are and shews That there are very many more Vills and Hamlets now then there were then and few Villages or Towns or Parishes then which continue not to this day and that the number of Inhabitants now is above 20 times more through the general extent of the Country then at that time and afterward saith if we should institute a later Comparison viz. between the present time and the beginning of Queen Elizabeth which is not above 112 years since and compare the number of Trained Soldiers then and now the number of Subsidy men then and now they will easily give us an account of a very great encrease and multiplication of people within this Kingdom even to admiration It would be no difficult thing to fortifie the observation of the great gradual encrease of the people and particularly of those in the Parishes of Glocestershire by the shewing the encrease of their worth and riches in the several publick Valuations and their present real value from whence their growth in the numbers of their Inhabitants may be well inferr'd as for example in Edward the 1 sts Valuation Tedbury is valued Ecclesia de Tedbury 36. m. i. e. Marks and in Harry the 8ths Valuation is valued at 36l 13 s 2d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum Thornbury in Edward the 1 sts valuation is valued at 47 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 120 l. per Annum Berkley in Edward the 1 sts Valuation comes to 36 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum I have instanced in these places as referred to by Hales and shall here as to Gloster only further observe that there are more places in the Decanatus Glocestriae in Harry the 8 ths valuation then were in Edward the 1 sts as for instance Edward the 1 sts Valuation doth in the rural Deanry of Glocester comprize 6 Churches and a Chappel but Harry the 8 th doth in the Deanery contain above 20 Churches and a Chappel I shall here corroborate his Lordships remark of the encrease of Families in another Town in Glocestershire which he calls Dursilege and which is in Edward the 1 sts Valuation called Dursly and valued as a rectory there at 10 Marks per Annum and in Harry the 8 ths as a Rectory at 10 l. 14s 3d. and is now let for 72 l. yearly I have observ'd a suitable difference between the former valuations of other Livings in that County and their present real values His Lordship having before justly acknowledged that it was a laborious piece of work to make a Calculation of the number of Inhabitants at this day throughout England did however in a way very worthy of his great judgment adapt his Estimate to the extent of one entire County for had he gone less and restrained it to this or that Parish the gradual encrease of the People there might have fallen short by particular accidents and to this purpose we have it in Mr. Bentham's Christian Conflict p. 322. that 11 Mannors in Northamptonshire have been enclosed with depopulation and have vomited out their former desolate owners and their posterity Many ingenious persons have applyed their thoughts to several ways of Calculation whereby to discover the total of the number of the People in England and in the Investigation thereof some concern'd in the management of the Hearth-money have reckon'd that in England and Wales the number of Hearths of rich and poor is 2 Millions and 6 hundred thousand and that at a Medium there are between 4 and 5 persons to a Hearth and accounting but 4 persons to a Hearth they suppose that at that
flatter a Prince with Insinuations of the Greatness and Extent of his Power is not more unusual then for Mendicant Poets to over-act their part in Panegyricks or for the Celebrators of any particular bright beauty in Verse to represent her as the Empress of all Hearts and thus the Famous Campanella after he had made his Present of the Universal Monarchy to Spain sent it too a Begging into France as appears out of Arch-Bishop Laud's Book against Fisher pag. 210. where he saith that lately Friar Companella hath set out an Eclogue on the Birth of the Dauphin and that permissu Superiorum in which he saith that all the Princes are now more affraid of France then ever for that there is provided for it Regnum Universale the Vniversal Kingdom or Monarchy The words there are in the Margin Quum Gallia alat 20000000 hominum ex Singulis Centenis sumendo unum collegit 200000 strenuorum militum stipendiatorum commode perpetuoque propterea omnes terrae Principes metuunt nunc magis a Gallia quam unquam ab aliis Paratur enim illi Regnum Vniversale F. Thoâ—ae Companellae ecloga in Principis Galliarum Delphini Nativitatem cum annot discip Parisiis 1639. Cum permissu Superiorum Yet with a Non obstante to the Politicks of Campanella and his pittyful great Flatteries I shall venture to pronounce the Great French Monarch who is certainly as great a Prince in the Intellectual World as in the other and is truly by the bright Sun of Reason non pluribus impar no Designer of taking the Dimensions of the whole Globe of the Earth with Chains and do think the most Christian King out of his Royal Prudence less inclined to favour the servile Flatterers who would set him up to be King of Christendom then was formerly the Catholick Monarch to encourage those who render'd him aspiring to be the Vniversal one a Title which according to the excellent saying of Mr. Cowly in his Brutus None can deserve but he who would refuse the offer Nor do I doubt but that if ever the greatest Prince in Christendom should be abandoned to the Vanity of attempting the particular Conquest of Great Britain and Ireland his Power in the Ballance of the VVorld would as soon and as sensibly grow insignificant thereby as did the King of Spains ' by the Design of 88. And as the Fate of the great temporary Disturbers of Mankind hath been their constant Augmentation of their own Expences which was a just pecuniary mulct from Heaven on their Ambition for their encrease of the charge of divers Nations in the posture of Defence so is it likely to be more and more to the end of Time And it was sufficiently exemplified in the Result of the Pope's and King of Spain's Politicks in 88 which reduced them to attempt the Remedying of the Prosuâ—ion of their Treasure by sending as I may say Canonical Waste-Paper to the West-Indies and the loss too of their Cargo of that as appears by Malynes in his Lex Mercatoria where he saith pag. 126. That in the year 1561 Pope Sixtus Quintus caused two Ships to be Laden out of Spain for the West-Indies with a 100. Buts of Sackâ— 1400 little Chests containing each of them three ordinary small Barrels of Quick-Silver weighing 50 l. apiece to refine the Silver withal in the VVest-Indies and a great number of Packs of Printed Bulls and Pardons granted at that time to make Provision against Hereticks because the year 1588 had so much exhausted the Treasure of Spain These two Ships were met with at Sea by Captain VVhite who was Laden and Bound for Barbary and brought into England by him where the Commodities were Sold But the Popes Merchandise being out of request and remaining a long time in Ware-Houses at the disposal of Queen Elizabeth at the last at the request of her Physician Doctor Lopez she gave all that great quantity of Bulls to him amounting to many thousands in number And he and another sent those Bulls into the VVest-Indies where they were no sooner Arrived but the Popes Contractors for that Commodity did Seise on all the said Bulls and caus'd an Information to be given against them that they were Infected as having been taken by Hereticks T was alledged that they were Miraculously saved but they were lost and Confiscated Malynes further mentions That he was employed to appraise the Lading of those Prizes and to certifie what it cost and what it might have been worth in the VVest-Indies according to the rate of every Bull tax'd at two Rials of Plate and some four and some eight Rials according to their Limitation every one being but one sheet of Paper and by Computation the Lading did not cost 50000 l. and would have yielded above 600000 l. He had before said That every Reasonable Soul of the Popish Religion in America must have one of these Bulls yearly and that these Bulls contained a Mandate that their Beds should be sold who would not take off one of them It seems by the way that all that Treasure of Indulgences bestowed by Queen Elizabeth on Doctor Lopez could not oblige him from designing afterward to take away her Life by Poyson But this was the result of the Trage-Comedy or rather Farce of 88. and Broyl on the Coast when Spains Invincible Fleet that had in it but 8350. Seamen proved the sport of Fortune and of the VVinds and the fatal VVrack of its Treasure insomuch that it could never since if then aw the world by the Number of Mariners Men who love not to be paid with Tickets even in this VVorld and much less to receive them as payable in another the which is the true Notion of Paper-Indulgences It is agreed on by all Writers that the Spanish Armada consisting of 130 Ships then had in it but the Number of Seamen before-mention'd and of those too a great part borrowed from diverse Countries and 19290 Land Soldiers which Naturally clogg'd its Sea Service for the Antipathy between those and Seamen in Ships is such that unless the Seamen are the Major part there they are apt to look on those as intruders and as such who stand in their way and in their light But in a Remonstrance to the Earl of Nottingham Lord High Admiral from the Trinity House Anno 1602. Extant in Sir Iulius Caesar's Collections 't is mention'd that in 88. The Queen had at Sea 150. Sail of Ships whereof 40 only were her own and 110 were of her Subjects and that in the same year there were English Ships employed in Trading Voyages into all Parts and Countries to the Number likewise of 150 Sail of about 150 Tunn one with another and that all those 300 Ships were Manned with 30000 Seamen that is the Queens Forty with 12000 and the 110 with 12000 and that in the other 150 were 6000 Seamen But it is not unworthy to be remark'd that notwithstanding the Concurrence of Providence with the Gallantry and Numbers
in that Quarter to put an end to that which begins in Nomine Domini and that they will not be the rather willing so to do in regard that the North made the World feel the Malignity of both those Proverbs by its old well-meant charity to the Bishops of Rome And since in the days of Popery here in Harry the 8th's time it did pass in Rem Iudicatam that the Pope had no more power over us by the Scripture then any other forrain Bishop it cannot now but seem ridiculous to scruple whether he can thence claim more authority here than any other forrain Prince and he who was exploded here formerly when the Critical Spectators were not so many for having ill acted the part of a King on our stage of the World would be thought mad for personating one after the Play is over Thus too in a less people World Bartolus the famous Lawyer pronounced it to be Haeresie to deny the German Emperor to be King of the Vniverse the which any one would now account Madness to affirm And if in France hundreds of Years ago its Monarch greeted the Pope with the terms of fatuus amens for claiming a Supremacy in Temporals there 't is impossible he can be otherwise thought there now prosecuting a claim to Supremacy in things Ecclesiastic for even his pretensions to that the Clergy of France have damned in their Declaration by setting a General Council above him and which Declaration the great Monarch hath there ratify'd by a perpetual and irrevocable Edict And 't is but with a Consonancy to the nature of things that the Papal Infallibility should be concluded against in that Declaration and since as the Author of the Policy of the Clergy of France relates the Roman Catholick Church there doth so much swarm with New Phil sophers there call'd Cartesians and Gassendists whose new Philosophy has been there by Zealous Catholics observ'd to have ruin'd the mystery of the Real Presence for so the words are in that Book 't is no wonder if the growth of the Messieurs les scavants encreasing with the Populacy of that Realm makes any man's belief of his infallibility pass for a degree of madness accordingly as Mr. Hobbes Chap. 8. Of Man well observes that excessive opinion of a man 's own self for Divine Inspiration and Wisdome becomes distraction and giddiness and this probably may be the final result there of the late fermentation about the Regalia c. and the Pope be tacitly thought so as aforesaid and his Power there insensibly evaporate and without any visible distrubance given to it by the ratio ultima Regum for no prudent person would declaim reproachfully against any of a quiet Phrensy or molest and vex such a one tho living near him and would much less project the disgrace or mischief of such an one living at a great distance tho he should assume to himself bigger Titles than ever the Kings of India or Persia did and call himself Son of the Sun or Lord of the Sea and Land or like some of the Roman Emperors challenge Divinity or be styled Dominus Deus noster Papa And thus may the Pope quietly go on longer to call himself Monarch of the World without being call'd Names for it in France just as the Dukes of Savoy style themselves Kings of Cyprus without any gainsaying from the Turk who likewise did not menace the Pope for causing the Brother of the Vice-Roy of Naples to be in Rome proclaim'd King of Ierusalem nor when that Gentleman in Requital of that favour from his Holiness caused the Pope to be in Naples proclaimed Caliph of Bandas was the Mogul aggrieved thereby And thus probably too will the Enthusiast's who assert a Millennium or Universal Reign of Christ on earth with that quietness and gentleness that the ancient Fathers before the first Nicene Council did pass off the Stage of the World but it will seem ridiculous not to bind such Fifth Monarchy Men in Chains as Mad-men who have in England and Germany endeavoured to biâ—d Kings so and Nobles with Fetters of Iron and who would again make Convulsions in the State by the Diseases of their minds as once Mahomet's Epileptic Fits shook the World and who by promising us a new Heaven and a new Earth would confound the old and only give us a new Hell broke loose But the World will not now be blunder'd into Confusion by such wild Reformers In the Book of the Apocalypse of which Bodin tells us in his Methodus ad facilem Historiarum Cognitionem that Calvin's Opinion being ask'd he answer'd Se penitùs ignorare quid velit tam obscurus scriptor it must be confessed that the Majesty of the Style is agreeable to that of the rest of the holy Text and that the predictions of the future State of the Church and of its splendor in the World are not grosso modo utter'd or attended with any irregularity but on the contrary that God appears there as the God of Order and applying all the exactness of proportion and number and its very fractions to the great things foretold After one Verse hath accounted the number of the Beast to be 666 the next mentions St. Iohn's Vision of a Lamb standing on Mount Sion and with him an hundred forty and four thousand The Bodies of the Witnesses are mentioned to be unburied three days and an half The 4 Angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour and a day and a Month and a Year for to sâ—ay the third part of Men. The Woman was to be in the Wilderness 1260 days and to be nourished there for a time and times and half a time Blood came out of the Wine-Press by the space of 1600 Furlongs There were Seal'd of all the Tribes of Israel 144000. And in the State of Babylon mentioned in Cap. 18th where the voice from Heaven is heard Come out of her my People though all the various Sects of Religion that thrust one another into Babylon will admit of no proportion in their revenge yet it is there say'd Reward her even as she rewarded you and double unto her double according to her works in the Cup which she hath filled fill to her double But near the end of that Book where the great Scene of The New Heaven and the New Earth opens and the Vision of the New Ierusalem is described a Golden Rod was given the Angel to measure the City and the Measures thereof are particularized And tho I pretend not to understand the meaning of any of these obscure passages of Scripture yet one thing seems to me there as Conspicuous as the Meridian Light namely That as the Divine Providence did found the Old World in Number Weight and Measure so it likewise will the foretold New One. The exactness of the Numbers described by St. Iohn in that Prophetick Book written in the Island of Pathmos hath assured us that his imagination was much above the Vapors that
not Published I think by a friend to the Papists for the Author there Names them and the respective Parishes they lived in and the total number of Men and Women there was 317 of which only one Man was there called Monsieur tho yet six others seem'd to me there to be of French Names and one there has a Dutch Name and only one person in there call'd an Italian so that notwithstanding the great Cry of Forraign Papists in and about London they did but little more then make a Number and the persons there reckoned for St. Martins in the Fields are but 22 and for Covent-Garden but 4 where yet the Bishops Survey makes 64 and for St. Margarets Westminster that Printed Paper makes but 4 of which the Number it seem'd in 41 proved so dreadful to Justice Howard St. Andrews Holborn has in that Paper but 6 which in the Bishops Survey has 13. St. Giles in the Fields has in that Paper but 23 which has in the Bishops Survey 126. The Savoy in that Paper has but 6 which in the Bishops Survey has just the same Number and St. Giles Cripplegate has there but 2 which in the Bishops Survey has 20. Of the care that was probably taken in those Parishes in London that made Returns in that Survey Covent-Garden-Parish and some others are Instances in one thing namely that there are near so many houses as Returns are made for or not many more Thus in Covent-Garden the Conformists return'd are 790 the Papists 64 the Nonconformists 6 and so Servants and Children and Lodgers being not return'd as Dr. Glanvile saith the persons of Men and their Wives return'd in all there are 860 which agrees pretty well with the number of houses there which are about 460. I suppose that Printed Paper by the Number of Inhabitants included only House-keepers as the Bishops Survey did and tho it is not to be doubted but that when that Survey was made there were in the respective Diocesses Deaneries and Parishes therein return'd at least the full Number of the Papists therein mention'd yet the Popish Plot about two years after occasioning the other Paper it may be supposed that what by many Popish Families removing out of the Realm and what by many of them coming to our Churches the Number of the Popish Recusants did there considerably decrease as it has from the beginning of the Reformation gradually done unless in some particular Intervals or Conjunctures and is likely so to do till the uncouthness and strangeness of their Principles and Scarcity of the persons that own them shall make them tolerable as Rarities I did before in this Letter thus far accord with Mr. Nye that Popery since the Reformation may have sometimes acquired a new vigour and that it hath not always since its first assaults against Popery gain'd ground of it proportionably but whatever the Fate of the Ejected Puritan Divines in Queen Elizabeth's days was and whether deserv'd or not and properly or not timed I enquire not tho yet in our days the plenty of Conformist Divines is such visibly that the supply of all our good Livings needs not crave Aid from Dissenters but do on all thoughts made persist in my opinion that Protestancy hath since its being first espous'd here as a Religion propagated it self by the great encrease of its followers except in some infectious Intervals of time as I may call them Thus tho the Obsarvator on the Bills of Mortality hath taught us as aforesaid that every Marriage with another produceth four Children yet in times of Pestilence we are told by him that the Christnings decrease and that a Disposition in the. Air toward the Plague doth also dispose Women to Abortion and considering this we may well infer when the Burials do much exceed the Births in any City reverà and not seemingly by the not Registring all the Births that tho the Bills of Mortality tell us that there dyed then none of the Plague and that there were then Parishes infected with the Plague none yet there is then a Pestilence there Reigning And thus is it a Pestilential time with a Church when more Apostatise from it then are born or as I may say regenerated into it or converted and therefore by such times we are not to estimate the encrease of the propagation of the Numbers of the Church of England There was a time in Queen Elizabeth's Reign that the Reformation was honour'd by all Englands populace being of a piece almost and worshiping God in the way prescribed with one heart and one mind and then as we are told by Sir Re. Cotton p. 42 and 43. Of his considerations for repressing the encrease of Papists till the 11th of her Reign a Recusants name was scarce known c. the name of a Papist smelt rank even in their own Nostrils and for pure shame to be accounted such they resorted duly to our Churches but when they saw their great Coriphaeus Sanders had slâ—ly pinn'd the Name of Puritans on the Sleeves of Protestants that encountred them with most courage and percâ—ived that the word was pleasing to some of our own side c. That saith he brought plenty of water to the Popes Mill and there will most Men grind where they see appearance to be well serv'd But the accidental encrease of their Numbers in any Conjuncture was carefully regarded by the State and to this purpose we are told it in Heywood Townsends Collections that Dr. Bennet acquainted the House of Commons that there were 1500 Râ—cusants in Yorkshire which he vouched upon his Credit were presented in the Ecclesiastical Court and before the Council at York Popery it seems then gain'd ground in the poor North having lest it in the warm South and to this day in the Northern parts of England where the Livings generally are poor the light of the Gospel hath not quite dissipated the Mists of Popery in somuch that if any one shall tell me that the Province of York which bears but a 6 th part of the Taxes and hath not in it much above a 6 th part of the people that the Province of Canterbury hath yet contains at least the half of the number of Papists that the Province of Canterbury doth I shall not contradict his Estimate It is the Observation of Dr. Fuller in his Church History of the part of England Trent North that 't is scarce a third of England in ground but almost the half thereof for the growth of Recusants therein And thus as the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath observed that Northern as well as Southern Countries are infected with great Plagues altho in the Southern Countries they are more vehement and do begin and end more suddenly it may be said that the infection of Popery doth yet continue in our Northern parts But that the Papists valued themselves on their numbers throughout England toward the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign appears out of that Pestilential Book
of Father Parsons about the Succession part 2 d where he weighs the several parties of England in the Ballance of State and saith It is well known that in the Realm of England at this day there are three different and opposite Bodies of Religion that are of most bulk and do carry most sway and power which three Bodies are commonly known by the Names of Protestant Puritants and Papists and afterward speaking of the Great Power of the Protestant Party for wealth and force He saith p. 140. A chief Member of the Protestant Body is the Clergy of England especially the Bishops and the other Men in Ecclesiastical Dignities which are like to be a great back to this Party at that day c. meaning the time after the death of Queen Elizabeth when her Successor should enter on the Stage and then having weighed the Puritan Party and its interest he saith The third Body of Religion which are those of the Roman who call themselves Catholicks which is the least in shew at this present by reason of the Laws and Tides of the time that run against them yet are they of no small consideration in this Affair to him that weighs things indifferently and this in respect as well of their Party at home as their friends abroad for at home they being of two sorts as the World knows the one more upâ—n that discover themselves which are the Recusants and the other more close and privy that accommodate themselves to all external preceedings of the time and State so as they cannot be known or at leastwise not much touch'd we may imagine that their Number is not small throughout the Realm c. The Vigour of the hopes that Popery had in that Conjuncture appears out of that great Historical Letter of D'Ossat to his King Anno 1601 where he makes such a judicious abstract of this goodly Book of Parsons for so he calls it Ce beau livre and Animadversions on it and saith 'T is about four years ago that the Pope did Create in England a certain Arciprestre to the end that all Ecclesiasticks and Catholicks of the Realm should have one to whom to go and have recourse about the things relating to the Catholick Religion and by means thereof to be united among themselves and to understand what shall be good to be done for their preservation and the re-establishment of the Catholick Religion and some have given his Holiness to understand that by that means he would make a great Party of the Catholicks in England for what he would effect and then acquaints the King That the Pope had sent three Briefs to his Nuntio in the Low-Countreys for him to keep till the death of Queen Elizabeth and after that to send them to England one to the Ecclesiasticks another to the Nobility and another to the third Estate by which the said three Estates are admonished and exhorted by his Holiness to remain united together to receive a Catholick King that his Holiness shall name and such a one who shall appear acceptable to them and honourable and all this for the Honour and Glory of God and for the restoring the Catholick Religion c. Here was it seems one Brief more sent to England then Mr. Marvel mentions in his Growth of Popery where he saith That the Pope sent two Briefs in order to exclude King James from the Succession to the Crown In fine Popery was in a Storm during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in it the Papists were sometimes carried up to the Skyes and then down again and in their Enterprizes with variety of success in some conjunctures their fortune was to reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and as in a Storm many hands are necessary so on the whole matter they found need of the numbers of more hands then they could command and their Numbers decreased in the ballance of the people here as much by the King of Spains Ambition as did the numbers of the Papists in the United Provinces thereby And as they look'd big on the account of their numbers in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign so they did in the beginning of King Iames's and as D'Ossat said in that Letter to Villeroy of April 2d 1603. You will find that the Spaniards who are most troubled about this Event meaning of the Succession will be the first to Congratulate the King of Scotland so it happen'd here with the Papists as appears by a Book in 4 to Printed for Ioseph Barnes at Oxford Anno 1604 called A Consideration of the Papists Reasons of State and Religion for toleration of Popery in England intimated in their supplication to the Kings Majesty and the States of the present Parliament where in their Supplication at large Printed they in the beginning thereof in a profession too as inauspicious as was possibly say that His Majesties direct Title to the Imperial Crown of the Realm both by Lineal Descent and Priority of Blood and your Highness most quiet access to the same do exceedingly possess and englad our hearts The Tide of the Succession against which they had striven was made by Fate to run smooth and clear and they were resolved to appear on the Surface of it with a nos poma natamus Gabriel Powel of St. Maryhall in Oxford the Publisher of that Book saith in his Animadversion on the said beginning of that supplication How can Papists without blushing acknowledge his Majesties Title to the Crown of England to be direct seeing they have heretofore most indirectly and most unjustly oppugned the same which Traiteâ—ous Parsons confesseth albeit for excuse he assureth himself that whatsoever hath been said writ or done by any Catholick against his Majesty which with some others might breed disgust hath been directed to this end to make his Majesty first a Catholick and then our King as if Treason and Treachery against his Highness could make him a Catholick and impugning of his direct and just Title tended to make him King. Rob. Parsons in his Treatise of three Conversions in the dedicat Addition to the Catholicks But tho they gave themselves as it were an Act of Oblivion as to the many Treasons of Parsons his Book of the Succession yet in this supplication they forgot not again in effect to use Parsons his division of the people of England into three parts and so to shape the Estimates of their Numbers and they say in their first reason of State the World knows that there are three Kinds of Subjects in the Realm the Protestant the Puritan and the Catholicks affected and by general report the subject Catholickly affected is not inferiour to the Protestant or Puritan either in number or alliance c. And saith Powel in his Notes on that Clause If by Catholickly affected you mean plainly Papists the World knows that in comparison of the Protestants they are but as it were a handful of Thieves among honest Subjects however
when by the ill Poets of the Play they shall be well paid to line the Pit Boxes and Galleries to cry it up and thus the Wit and Philosophy of a great Lady have been Celebrated in the Vniversities by Heads of Colledges and lodged there in Libraries on the expectance of her being a Benefactress And if any Tecelius would come not as a sturdy Pardon-Pedlar as before to require Mony the which thing then proved so destructive to Popery but to distribute it there would be enow to receive it and among the Indigents for a while according to the Stylus curiae Romanae in Mr. Colemans Letter of March the 12 th 74 to the Internuntio a little Mony I say a very little will do But Conclamatum est as to the state of Religion it self as well as of the Power of any Prince when men come to be bought by him either into Religion or Loyalty The profusion of Money in the way of Legacies by any one is a sign of his being near his end and Tacitus therefore saith it not improperly of Otho Pecunias distribuit parce nec tanquam periturus And thus is any Princes Power and likewise Religion near expiring when once he comes to buy of Hydras heads as Mr. Hobbs's expression is in his History of the Civil Wars I know that it hath been the common practice of Kings to buy of Demagogues and some of their Ministers have perhaps been apt to think that those who formerly were by their Artifices able to make the Disease of Sedition in the minds of the people had likewise the greatest skill to cure it in like manner as any Doctor of Phsick who could make a Quartan Ague or any other Disease would be held in the greatest repute for ability to cure it it being perhaps more easie to make a Disease then to cure it as composition is more easie then Analysis and Multiplication then Division but the too dear bought experience of Princes hath seal'd the Probatum est in this case of all popular Wizards losing their power of charming when they have been Captivated with Royal gifts Witches according to the vulgar received opinion being unable to hurt when they are in Jayles There is another Notion I dâ—scanted largely on before and that overstocks the Market of expectants to be bought off Namely that all men naturally think themselves equally wise and therefore as any Ship that sails faster then another is in the Sea-phrase said to wrong it so are men apt to think themselves wrongd by those who with Gales of Court preferment get beyond them Moreover tho the power of Gold be still what it always was namely the most ductile thing in nature next to degenerate Man made ductile by it yet will any Prince be impoverish'd who buys Gold or Men of golden Abilities and great Parts too dear by Preferments and Donatives for such Donees will be Continuando-beggers and everlasting expectants of further Gifts and their conversion either to a Princes Interest of State or Religion must be still nourished by the same thing it was made of and therefore it was worthy the wisdom of Solomon to observe That he that oppresseth the Poor and giveth Gifts to the Rich shall surely come to want And most certainly here as in France the Play of a Prince who shall use that Game to win Souls will not be worth the sorry Candle of Conversion he shall light up and the Conversion of Sharpers will be of such who will soon run away with the stake of their Souls they have laid down The Fisherman of Rome St. Peter's pretended Successor can neither in France nor here with a drag-net of Conversion catch thousands of Souls at a draught as St. Peter elsewhere did but must Angle for every Convert and that with a golden Hook of which the value is more considerable to be lost then is that of the Fish to be taken and from which Hook too it can invisibly get off at pleasure A Prince of that Religion will have more occasion for the multiplying Miracle of the Loaves then that of Transubstantiation and the Multitude that follow his Converters for the former Miracle will be apt as soon to leave him as they did our Saviour who followed him on that account The Observator on the Bills of Mortality shews us that in December 1672. The Protestants in Paris were but as one to 65 and 't is confessedly true on all hands that the great Scene of the late French Conversions lies in Paris and even there the present Ecclesiastical Policy is to Attaque tâ—e Fleet of the Hereticks rather by Merchant-men then by Fire ships I have never heard of any Bishops Survey of the persuasions there relating to Religion but in the Index of Mersennus his Comment on the first 6 Chapters of Genesis I find it said Atheorum numerus Luteciae p. 671. and Athei in Gallâ—â Germaniâ Scotiâ Poloniâ p. 673. I could find neither of those places in the body of the Book but observe that in the Learned Fryars Dedicatory Epistle to De Gondy the Archbishop of Paris he says Quibus addo te hujus urbis orbis Parisiensis ut vigilantissimum Praelatum sapientissimè constitutum esse in quâ sicut eximiam plurimorum virtutem atque pietatem admiramur à multorum etiam infesto immani scelere longissimè abhorremus ad cujus fastigium non video quid adjungi possit cum numen omne pernegent ex eorum mente quibuscum familiariter degunt sensum Divinitatis consensum pro viribus evellunt Quamobrem impii suorum numerum in hac Parisiorum luce ingentem esse aiunt atque gloriantur But I have heard some more conversant in that Book then I have been relate how that great Master of Numbers doth make the Atheists in Paris to be 20,000 and it being justly to be supposed that those 20000 Miscreants being wretchedly poor for that as Aristotle has long since well observ'd rich men are naturally 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or lovers of God who hath provided so well for them they would presently seem Protestants to qualifie them for turning Papists and receiving their Conversion Money and would say as of old accipe pecuniam dimitte asinum and instantly swell up the number of Converts in Paris But Popery gains nothing in reality by those fugitive Converts for the Fool that saith in his heart there is no God will be easily brought to say in his Soul there is no Soul and therefore say I caveat emptor to Messieurs the French Converters the volatile Converts for a good quantity of solid Gold sell them but a little Quicksilver or rather Smoak and I think they may as well employ their Money in converting the Poysoners There is another thing that makes it very impolitick thus to throw away good Money on bad Converts and that is what hath been observed to be the effect of this expenceful project in France namely that it
most vital part Sincerity hereby in danger to be exterminated For as 't is a thing well known to Merchants and Goldsmiths and Mint-Masters that if the Par as they call it or exact Proportion between Gold and Silver be not observ'd in any Country either the Gold will carry all the Silver out of it or the Silver all the Gold so it may be affirm'd too That if there be not a Par or Proportion observ'd as to Religion and Profit or Wealth either the Religion of a Country will carry out all the profit or Proventus of it or the profit will carry out or exterminate Religion I will not therefore here Prophecy that the World will never but say that it can never be fixed in a quiet and orderly State and free from the Importunity and Sedition of Hypocrites till its Present State be such that Men can neither get nor lose by Religion And till the World recovers this Golden Age namely that Gold cannot carry out our Religion and People us with Hypocrites or our Religion Gold the World will be but a great disorderly House and scarce worth any Mans being Monarch over it As the Irish call their last Rebellion by the name of the Commotion so some have happen'd to call the Present State of Peoples Minds in England which is so disorderly by the name of a Fermentation and this Fermentation can never be over in our English World till there shall here be neither profit or loss by Religion and that no Man shall be more or less Rich by more or less Combining with any Party to cry up or decry any Religionary Tenets or Propositions One would wonder that since Religion and particularly the Christian with its Credenda doth Crown the reason of Man and likewise annex by the exuberance of the Divine benignity a Crown of Glory hereafter to the Believers that any Men should for their belief of Propositions not contrary to reason and wherein the credit of the propounder was supported by Miracles expect to be rewarded in this World a humour that hath been regnant even among Christians from the time of our Saviour's being on Earth to the present Age and a humour that so poyson'd the Iews of old that they thought it not Tanti to have their minds freed from the slavery to Error unless the Messias would have deliver'd them from the servitude of the Romans and because he did not and did decline the being made an Earthly King when the Iews with their Hosannas were tempting him to it they Accused him Capitally for saying That he was a King whenas it was not he but they that said it and they put him to Death reverà because his Kingdom was not of this World and a humour that would not quit the Stage when the first Christians did but boldly still faced the World as appears by the notion of the Millennium having been so much applauded by all the Fathers of the Church and the Christians before the first Nicene Council But methinks from the Example of the Christians of old who did Ambire Martyrium to such a degree that St. Gregory saith Let God number our Martyrs for to us they are more in number then the Sands as if the work had been too hard for another Archimedes with his Arenarius to Calculate the number of the Martyr'd Christians and one Author accounts that excepting on the first of Ianuary there is no day for which Records do not allow 500 Martyrs at least and that for most days they allow 900 and who did ennoble the Christian Religion by shewing to the World an Example of Contempt of Death and even of Life beyond that of the Ancient Romans I say from the Example of those Christians who did in shoals dye daily for their Religion Ours may if they please be taught the modesty not to expect daily livelihoods from it and to account they have very fair play if they do not lose their livelihoods by it 'T is moreover observable that under the Iewish Theocracy Providence had then so ordered things that no Man should get or lose by Religon The Tribes had then their shares of the good Land by lott and the Levites only had that affluent proportion of the Proventus of the other Tribes that I have before Calculated and which would have tempted many of the other Tribes to have march'd over to the Officium and Beneficium of the Priesthood had not God their Monarch provided against that by the confinement of the Administration of the Priesthood to one Tribe and its descendents by natural generation But as to the notion of getting or losing by Religion I shall recommend to your Lordships reading a small Pamphlet printed in two sheets of Paper in Folio and call'd The great Question to be consider'd by the King and this Parliament c. to wit How far Religion is concern'd in Policy or Civil Government and Policy in Religion c. On the disquisition of which a sufficient Basis is proposed for the firm settlement of these Nations to the most probable satisfaction of the several Parties and Interests therein and subscribed by the name of Philo-Britanicus Who the Author of it was I cannot learn but do easily find by the Book that he is a Man of great Acumen of thought and that Matters of Religion and State especially relating to this Kingdom have been very much thought of by him and that the Author was certainly neither Papist nor Presbyterian and so far from being a favourer of the Church of England that he doth interminis make the publick Maintenance of the Clergy to have been the Bone of Contention in these Nations p. 8. and there saith It will be found to stand on the same foot with Abbies and Nâ—â—neries and their Lands and there further as a propounder would give all the Church-Lands to the Crown and the Tithes to the People and then tells us That all Fears and Iealousies and Animosities on the account of Religion will be pluck'd up by the Roots That Author in p. the 5th doth very acutely observe That Popery hath two Parts the one is that which is meerly Religious that is which relates properly to Religion or Conscience and which is peculiar to them such as the believing of Transubstantiation Purgatory Adoration of Saints and Images yea and the superiority of the Bishop of Rome over other Churchmen all which and those of this kind may be believed and professed without prejudice to Civil Society and as being matters relating to Conscience come not properly under the Magistrates Cognizance the other part is the opinion of the Pope's Power over Princes and States his obsolving the people from their Obedience his giving them dispensations to kill Princes and destroy them and allowing them not to keep faith to Hereticks and such like which as they are destructive to Government are truly no part of Religion but a politick contrivance long hatch'd by the Bishop of Rome and his dependants
a flame of Zeal reflected in these words on the Queen her self Our posterities shall rue that ever such Fathers went before them and Chronicles shall report this Contempt of learning among the Plagues and Murrains and other Punishments of God they shall leave it written in what time and under whose reign this was done If the good Bishop had considered the vastness of Queen Elizabeth's Expences before mention'd in desending the Protestant Cause contra gentes he would have given her day to have built and endowed some Churches and to those expences before mention'd it comes into my memory here to add what I then forgot which is related in the Travels of Mr. Fines Moryson who was Secretary then to the Chief Governor of Ireland in her Reign viz. That she expended in 4 years time on that Kingdom a Million and one Hundred Ninety Eight Thousand Pound Sterling which Sum so laid out then on Ireland will seem the more considerable when by a late Report of the Counsel of Trade in that Kingdom drawn by Sir W. P. The currant Cash of that Kingdom is made to be but Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pound Sterling But this by the way and to resume my discourse of our Clergies neither getting nor losing by Religion I shall say that as the acceptable free restoration of the Church as well as the Crown to its Lands shewed that there was no fear of its injuring the Ballance of the Kingdom or hurting Religion by its weight so hath the following acquiescence of all dis-interested men in the same evinced that weight to be no gravamen In a Pamphlet called a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country Printed in the Year 1675 generally supposed to be writ by the Earl of Shaftsbury and which asserts the Justice of the Declaration of Indulgence the Author in p. 5. speaking of the Church of England becoming the head of the Protestants at home and abroad saith For that place is due to the Church of England being in favour and of nearest approach to the most powerful Prince of that Religion and so always had it in their hands to be the Intercessors and Procurers of the greatest good and protection that Party throughout all Christendom can receive And thus the Archbishop of Canterbury might become not only alterius orbis but alterius Religionis Papa and all this Addition of Honour and Power attain'd without the least loss or diminution of the Church it not being intended that one Dignity or Preferment should be given to any but those that were strictly conformable The natural inclination in all ingenious Men not to cast an evil Eye on the Church Revenue appears in Mr. Marvel 's Second Part of the Rehersal transpos'd p. 146. where he saith I am so far from thinking enviously of the Revenue of the Church of England c. That I think in my Conscience it is all but too little and wish with all my heart that there could be some way found out to augment it And our ingenious and great Lord Chancellor Bacon in his certain Considerations touching the pacification of the Church of England hath with great equity decreed our Parliaments to be in some sort indebted to the Church Moreover that Gentlemanly way of writing used by our great Divines in a late Conjuncture against Popery and so suitable to the refinement of Wit and Reason in the Age and wherein without the Pedantry of unnecessary Words or Quotations or raising a dust out of the Learned Rubbish of the Schoolmen they generally with a manly Style and clear reason and skill at that weapon got the Sword out of their Enemies hand by the Argumentum ad hominem and shewed us that Popery and Implicit Faith were not Calculated for the Meridian of this Age hath I think made all ingenious Men Conformists in this opinion that if their Genius had been cramp'd with the res angust a domi their thoughts had not in their Books appeared so great and therefore I hope that all the well writ works of their hands and seasonable discourses against Popery at that time when it was ready to curse us and to rise up against our Religion will make all thinking Protestants to say Amen to that Prayer of Moses Bless O Lord Levi 's substance accept the work of his hands smite through the Loyns of them that hate him that they rise not again It will I doubt not appear to rational and thinking men that our little interloping Churches or Congregations that set up with their precarious Power and small stock of Learning or Revenue will no more be able to break the great Compacted Body of the Papal Church that hath the Monopoly of the Religion-Trade in so many parts of the World then a few interloping Merchant-men to break the Opulent Dutch East-India Company who have engross'd so much of the Spices of the World that sometimes they cause several Ships loadings of them to be at once consumed as knowing what quantity and no more will be useful to the World. And somewhat like that thing too the Polity of the Anglican Church in Harry the 8 th's time perform'd while it drove a Religion-Trade with Rome and yet consumed a great quantity of its superfluous Merchandize and the same thing hath been done by our National Church as to remaining parts of the Romish Superstition in succeeding times and indeed Superstition which is a kind of Nimiety of Religion is so incident to Humane Nature and is so destructive to the Polity of Churches and the substantial Commerce of Nations that it is worthy the Power and Care of Nations to consume it And considering that the Church of Rome hath still valued it self for being terribilis sicut castrorum acies ordinata it is a vain thing to contend with such a Regular Church Militant without our having of general Officers and as exact a Conduct or to think to have such Officers without Honourable Maintenance from the Publick For none doth go a Warfare at any time at his own charge When I think how in the Primitive times while a Cloud of Persecution was always over the head of the Christians that yet they strain'd themselves so much in Contributions for the Pastorage of their Souls that all the Pastors then were so far from losing by Religion that some were tempted to that Office for filthy Lucre as we may see out of Peter Ep. 1. Ch 5. Vers. 2. tho yet too so little comparatively was to be gain'd by all thereby that others probably undertook that Office by constraint as the same place intimates and that therein the Apostolick Prudence was conspicuous in ordering it upon the whole matter that the generality of Pastors then should not get or lose by Religion I may reasonably conclude that we who live in the flourishing and prosperous State of Christianity ought to provide that the meanest Pastor of Souls in England may live competently and decently by that
he pleased And there in Book 7th 't is said That the Pope on further application from the Ambassadors of Princes that that Clause might be damned as contrary to the liberty of Ambassadors and Bishops in propounding what they thought profitable those for their States and these for their Churches the Pope gave them good words about it but did nothing and Book 10th The Spanish Ambassador desiring the Retractation of that Clause and that otherwise the Council could not be called free and that its freedom was to be dated only from the time of such Retractation and that the Emperor insisted on its abrogation and that by reason of that Clause no German had yet come to that Council yet nothing was effected for its revoking and still the Proponentibus legatis stood as a Rock and all their Addresses dash'd themselves in pieces producing nothing but the froath of excusatory words from the Pope about it and in fine all that could be gained was in the end of the Council after that Clause had had its full effect and done all its Execution against the freedom of the Council and particularly of the Ambassadors and Bishops there and was like a Post-horse ridd to his Stage and had brought all the Cloak-bags with the Holy Ghost from Rome to turn it to grass with a Formal Declaration or Protestation contrary to Fact that the meaning of the Synod was not by that Clause to change in any part the usual manner of handling matters in general Councils c. A crying Con licensa to the Bishops and Ambassadors after the cutting of the Throats of their Liberties And now can any Opiniatre yet further think that a Representative of English Commoners will ever think those Republican Projectors of liberty who do bare faced cut them off from the freedom of their share in Enacting any thing but what another House shall propound and that nothing shall have the Sanction of Law but what enters the Stage with a proponentibus Patriciis or by the Proposition of any other House the Style of one of Cromwels two Houses and who do set up for Inventors in Politics by reviving the exploded Constitution of the Athenians among whom Anacharsis observed Wise men did consult and Fools determine But the days are pass'd and gone that gave People of subtle and uneasie Brains the leisure of digging in Politics further than the Center which whoever doth digs not downward but upwards and that Center I account the ancient lex terrae to be and he who hath got beyond that doth digging upwards destroy the real Foundations of Churches and States while he is laying imaginary ones But since according to the saying in hieme nil movendum men of Sense who love to be tampering with Physick in other seasons will in that be averse from stirring the humours and trying Conclusions on themselves and in the churlish State of the World abroad that is in prospect all State Empirics that would any where advise a change of Fundamental Governments will find an unruly Patient of the World and all our sober Political Virtuosi will be necessarily inclined to study how to maintain and support our old Government instead of projecting any new one And in order to the support of our old one I dare say that there will be no more suspension of Royal Aids on the account of the Arminian Controversie or the freedom of our Wills while we are busied in preparing to defend the freedom of our Estates and Bodies from Forraigners and securing both Prince and Peoples not being predestinated to ruine by them The Extinguishing the maintenance of the Clergy will not pass for a new Evangelical Light but the exactest provision for the Enabling Crown'd Heads to support their Civil Government and their Clergy and with the observance of equality and proportion in the same respecting the State of their Kingdoms will be worthy the thoughts of the most illuminated Doctors for as among the Divines it is on all hands agreed that from the 40th Chap. of the Prophecy of Ezekiel to the end of that Book the thing chiefly designed in the Portraiture of the great Vision of the Prophet is to represent the figure of Church and State under the Gospel so there is great proportion kept in the same and not only the curious colouring but the exactness of draught and design required in a great Historical Painting and no wonder if the same appeared so express'd on the Table of the Prophets imagination when God himself was pleas'd there to paint it partly after the exactness and proportion of the Iewish Oeconomy and with many Additions of Curiosity and to which tho a litteral interpretation is not applicable and on which tho no expectance of the Erection of another material Temple at Ierusalem or in Iudea is to be founded or of 12000 Reeds of Land for the Temple and Priests yet may it thence be naturally inferred that the preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and Priest and with respect to number Weight and Measure in the Future times of the Gospel was then the care and design of Providence The 45th Chapter that doth so nicely assign the Portion for the Prince and Priest ordains or rather predicts a Royal Patrimony for the Prince in the way of a ballance of Land as 't is said in the 8th Verse In the Land shall be his Possession in Israel and my Princes shall no more oppress my People and the rest of the Land shall they give to the House of Israel according to their Tribes The consideration of this may probably reforme the men of curious imagination who are still making the Metal of Government more fine than the Standard and thinking to leave out there the necessary Mixture of the baser allay that the frail State of humanity requires to make it currant and without which it would be too brittle for use and projecting how to make the Government of Church and State with ease to live upon nothing or on Taxes in a confused and blundering manner laid when the thought of an inspired Prophet in this Vision relating to the time of the Gospel the which is called by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews the time of Reformation applied all the exactness of Mathematics to the supporting both the Crown and use of the Keys by an ample and certain Revenue And as the great Tax of Augustus on the Roman World or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of Capitation or Pole near the time of our Saviors Birth served to confirm the Christian Religion in the accomplishment of the Prediction of Christs being born in Bethlem and to cause Ioseph and Mary's going thither a resembling effect in the Confirmation of the most rational kind of the Christian Religion I mean the Protestant do I expect from our Future Legal and Equal Taxes and as I mentioned my Lord Bacon's saying of the Parliaments being yet in debt to the Church since
with Oyl to strengthen themselves did then that they might the better lay hold on one another and might not slip out of each others hands Se mutuo pulvere sive arenâ aspergere ac propemodum faedare a thing too many among us have done outright and thereby shewed themselves not to be so much as almost Christians and a ridiculing humour of throwing dirt that the Colluctations about the Land on the Continent of Christendom will I believe ridicule out of our World at least and unteach us the turpitude of such Railery and make the Doctrines of speculative points of Religion to give us no more disturbance than doth or ever did the Doctrine of Lines and Figures And as the more ingenuous and true sober part of the people is now moved with pity to Nonconformists for being led away by the Nose from our Churches by the Iesuites a thing that Mr. Nye himself affirms in his Book called A Case of great and present use whether we may lawfully hear the now Conforming Ministers and printed Anno 1677 and the not thinking which lawful he makes a misperswasion and saith in p. 24 and 25 In most of the misperswasions of these latter times by which mens minds have been corrupted I find in whatsoever otherwise they differ one from another yet in this they agree that it is unlawful to hear in publick which I am perswaded is one constant design of Satan in the variety of ways of Religion he hath set on foot by Iesuites among us and doth the more pity them for that some well meaning persons among them who were blindfolded into some of their Nonconformity by Iesuitic Emissaries had not heretofore their Eyes opened to see that the same persons were often Sollicitors with Magistrates to do their duty and put the Laws in due Execution against them for their Nonconformity and that such Emissaries had thereby an occasion of saying to them according to the Style of the Chief Priests after they had blind-folded our Saviour and then smote him Prophecy who is he that smote thee and for that such well meaning persons have been observed at the same time to importune the Almighty That he would open the Eyes of Kings and Princes so hath it likewise general resentments of Scorn and Anger against the Principles of those bantring Popish Seducers who as they have some Emissaries here to kill Souls and others probably ready on occasion to kill bodies have distended the Doctrine of Popery abroad in the World to such an excess of Cruelty that no man can Calculate the number of Gods it hath made or of men it hath destroyed and I hope that such Iesuited Emissaries will in time generally appear not only hateful but ridiculous to our Papists themselves for who indeed can choose but laugh at the discussing or deliberating of the Question in p. 98. Of the Mystery of Iesuitisme viz. Whether the Iesuites may kill the Iansenists So very hateful are their Principles to some of our ingenuous English Papists that I have heard a Great and Noble Person mention it with Contentment that some of that Order of False Prophets were since the Popish Plot executed for it tho yet he doubted of the Veracity of the Witnesses against them I very much differ'd in my Judgment from that of that Noble Person and would have no man damnified in the least for the greatest Crime but by Witnesses greater than all exception and do account it easier to give Heaven an occount of Mercy than Justice but yet on the recollecting of my thoughts I have found it so incident to humane nature to delight by ill Witnesses to punish the avowers of false Religionary Principles that I have read it among some Rabbinical Observators of the Customs of the Iews that they anciently allowed of false Witnesses against false Prophets and of whose being such the Sanhedrim did cognosce and so they impiously reputing Christ to be such did barefaced bring forth false Witnesses against him and he could not be allow'd to except against their Persons but only against their sayings as discordant and to this purpose we find it in the Gospel of St. Mathew Ch. 26. Vers. 59 60. Now the Chief Priests and Elders and all the Council sought false Witnesses against Iesus to put him to death but found none yea tho many false Witnesses came yet found they none At the last came two false Witnesses and in St. Mark Ch. 14. V. 56. and 59. 't is declared how the Testimony of the False Witnesses agreed not together I have mentioned this as not in the least intending to reflect on the testimony of any one Witness ever produced in behalf of the Crown in any Criminal Cause in any age of time and do think that according to the saying that defensio non est deneganda Diabolo and that as a railing Accusation is not to be brought against the Devil so much less ought a false Testimony And I am moreover in any Point relating to the safety of Princes Lives and when there are exasperated Parties in a Kingdom criminating and recriminating each other about the same inclined to do what is fairly to be done to support the Credit of Witnesses considering as the Observation is that as he who is bound to the King his Bond is good for nothing to any one else so he that during such a Conjuncture is a Witness for the King is liable to so many Volleys of Dirt from some one of the inraged Parties and to have all the particular excesses and extravagances of his Life so display'd as to endanger his Testimonies usefulness in other cases But yet if any Magistrate finds the Testimony of Witnesses he would support to be insupportable and doth not believe them to be fide digni he is obliged Morally to avow such his Sentiment thereof when he is legally put upon it And here I cannot pretermit an occasion of mentioning your Lordships great Courage and Justice in an Affair that my Correspondent writ to me of namely that when some Witnesses had in the House of Lords been Examined about a Popish Plot in Ireland and that the Vote of every one in that House was given for the reallity of that Plot except your Lordships you entered your dissent as not believing any such Plot in Ireland as was by the Witnesses sworn which was certainly most worthy of your Lordship to do if you thought not the Witnesses worthy of your belief and your Caution in your so judging that the Papists in Ireland designed not such a Plot to be Executed in that Kingdom was the more remarkable in regard that 't was some time since published in a large Pamphlet of the Growth of Popery that the Irish Plot was a thing contrived only to divert and hound us away from the pursuit and Examination of the English one And yet the same Witnesses as I was inform'd obtain'd that belief from a Loyal and Honourable House of Commons concerning the Irish
some Papists whose names the Age riseth up to for their great advancement of real Learning I mean Peiresk Descartes Gassendus Mersennus had as much tenderness for any differing in judgment from them as Protestants can have and that mighty hunter after knowledg Peiresk was so far from eagerness in pursuing the blood of Heretics that being one of the Judges for Capital Causes in France he would always come off the Bench when Sentence of death was to be given though against the most outragious Murderer and he always carried in his mind a charity large enough to embrace the whole World and maintain'd a constant Correspondence with Salmasius Causabon and other Protestants and did put Grotius on the writing his De jure belli pacis that hath taught more Civility to Nations than the Modern Papal Christianity hath done and who hath there so perfectly manumitted Secular Magistrates from being obliged implicitly to execute the Sentences of Ecclesiastic Judges that he hath there asserted it l. 2. c. 26. § 4. Quin probabile est etiam Carnifici qui damnatum occisurus est hoc tenus aut quaestioni actis inter fuerit aut ex rei confessione cognita esse debere causae merita ut satis ei constet mortem ab eo commeritam idque nonnullis in locis observatur nec aliud spectat lex Hebraea cum ad lapidandum eum qui damnatus est testes vult prodire populo Deut. 17. By the 7th Verse of that Chapter the hands of the Witnesses were to be first on him to put him to death which Law no doubt had the effect of a Caveat with men against their ambitus of the standing Office of Witnesses by tacking thereunto the standing Office of Executioners Moreover both common observation and Cursory looking into Books and indeed common sense will teach us that the Papal Principles do not oblige men at once to fence against Heretics lives and against impossibilities nor to endanger themselves by fighting with the Wind-mills in Heretics Brains That great Cardinal D' Ossat whom I have so often here cited and who was so renown'd for his probity as well as comprehensive knowledg of matters of State doth in the 86th Letter that is to Villeroy in the Year 1597. give him an account of his discourse with the Pope on the occasion of his Holyness angrily resenting Harry the 4ths observing the Edict of pacification and that D' Ossat thereupon said That it was necessary for the Peace of France that the Edict should be observ'd that for want of such an Edict France had not been quiet for 35 years That the Date of the Edict 1577. shewed 't was not the present King but the late King 12 years before his death that made it that the late King and King Charles his Predecessor and Brother did not make such Edicts of Pacification with their good liking and frankly but were constrain'd to it by necessity even for the good of the Catholic Religion and the Realm after having found that many Wars made by Heretics served for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and order c. And that besides that necessity hath no Law in whatever Subject and Matter it be Jesus Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn that other Catholick Princes used so to do whom none spoke ill of for it That the Duke of Savoy as great a Zealot as he makes himself for the Catholic Religion doth tolerate Heretics in their Religion in the three Valleys of Italy of which he is Lord. That the King of Poland did as much not only in the Kingdom of Sweden but of Poland that all the Princes of the House of Austria and who are Celebrated for being Pillars of the Catholic Church did as much not only in the Towns of the Empire but also in their own proper Estates as in Austria it self from whence they take their Name in Hungary Bohemia Moravia Silesia Lusatia Stiria Carinthia and Croatia That Charles the 5th Father of the King of Spain was he that taught the King of France and other Princes to yield to such a necessity by making the Interim that every one knows even after his having Conquered the Protestants of Germany That his Son the King of Spain at this day who is reputed to be Archi-Catholic and to uphold the Catholic Religion as Atlas doth the Heavens doth yet tolerate in his Kingdoms of Valencia and Granada the Moors with their Mahumetanisme and hath caused to be offered to the Heretics of Zealand and Holland and other Heretics in the Low-Countries the free exercise of their pretended Religion if they will for the future acknowledge and obey him c. And concludes his discourse to the Pope saying That the Kings ablest Counsellors were of opinion that if his Holyness saw things so near as the King did and that the Pope was to Command France in the State the Realm was at present his Holyness would not in this point do less than the King did To all which D' Ossat saith The Pope made no reply And I think it may with parity of reason be affirmed that if the Pope himself were to Command England in the State it is in at present he would be no hammer of Heretics so as to knock any one of them on the head I know that after the date of that Letter viz. Anno 1597. of D' Ossat's last mentioned the various Revolutions in Christendom made the Scene of the toleration of Heterodoxy in those Countries to be altered with a Vengeance for six years after the death of D' Ossat viz. in the Year 1610. King Phillip the 3d of Spain made an Edict for the exterminating the Moors with their Mahumetatisme out of his Realms and which was executed with great Cruelty and the Vnion of Vtrecht entered by the Provinces in 1579 and the blow given to the Spanish Monarchy by Queen Elizabeth in 1588 and the Patronage the United Provinces had from her and the kindness they found from Harry the 4th of France made his Conditional offers of favour to the Dutch Heretics not thank-worthy but even at this very day tho in the Low-Countries both of the United and Spanish Provinces there is a certain reciprocal liberty for the Papists in the Dominions of the States and for the Protestants in the Dominions of the Spaniard yet is the liberty not equal for in the United Provinces the States allow the Papists a certain number of Priests to officiate among them in sacris which is done by an express Concession But in the Spanish Dominions there is no such Concession and the Ministers who there privately officiate among Protestants do it at their peril And in the Year 1599. Ferdinand of Austria expelled the Lutherans out out of his Provinces and in Austria Bohemia
Moravia and all the heritable Lands of the House of Austria Franconia Bavaria and the upper Palatinate no Protestants are permitted to have the publick Exercise of their Religion and the Effects of the Emperor's Persecuting the Protestants of Hungary the World knows and feels and have with horror gazed on the Protestants of Transylvania putting themselves under the Protection of the Turk that they might enjoy their Profession of Christianity And how the Bohemians were treated by a Jesuited Emperor twenty years after 1579 I have spoken when I gave an account of the Jesuites Emblem painted on the Arms of Austria viz. I have practiced That the Duke of Savoy practiced nothing of Cruelty to his Heretical Subjects in the Valleys about the time 1597 those poor Protestants may under God thank their old friend Harry the 4th who in the year 1600 took almost his whole Country after his having been before in a Contest with him by way of demand for the Marquisat of Salusses and his having applied to the Pope to interpose therein the Emperor having likewise demanded that Marquisat in Right of the Empire and while that Duke was in fear of being fleeced by the Pope and Emperor and Harry the 4th 't is no wonder if he suffered his Heretical Subjects to graze or sleep in whole Skins in the Neighbouring Valleys of Piemont but in the year 1655 there ran in those Valleys such a torrent of Protestant blood as did bear away all the dire Examples of Cruelty before it that History could shew as appears out of Sir Samuel Morelands History of the Churches in those Valleys and Book 4th and Chap. 4. where in his Audience Speech as Envoy to the Duke of Savoy in the behalf of the Protestants in those Valleys on that sad occasion he saith Si reviviscant omnes omnium temporum aetatum Nerones quod sine ullâ celsitudinis vestrae offensione dictum velim quemadmodum nullà ejus culpâ quicquam factum esse crediâ—us puderet prefecto eos ut qui nihil non mite ac humanum ad haec facinâ—ra si spectas excogitasse se reperirent interim exhorrescunt Angeli Mortales obstupescunt Ipsum coelum morientium clamoribus attonitum esse videtur ipsaque terra diffuso tot hominum innocuorum cruore erubescere And as for the Kingdom of Poland the fear of the Turkish Power then gave the Prince there no leisure to attend squabbles about Heresy and Heretics and as for the interest he had in Sweden which too in the year 1599 had a Popish King as Sandys saith in his Europae Speculum that year writ yet were the Papists there then as he saith few and consequently the Heretics too many to be persecuted The very Interim spoke of by D' Ossat or Formula inter-Religionis as 't was called was a double bottom of Popery and Protestancy and nothing was expected to be its Fate but Divulsion Alsted in his Chronology mentions its Date with the words of Infaelix partus and the Protestants in Constance rather than they would embark in that double bottom threw themselves overboard into the Sea of the Power of Ferdinand King of the Romans and Brother of Charles who soon used them not as their Protector but their Conqueror and 't is notorious that the Interim was professedly designed to continue only till the Council of Trents determinations were ended and 't is likewise as notorious that that Council was called designedly and reverâ for the exterminium of Heretics and its being called ad restituendos collapsos eclesiae mores was but umbrage and shamme And what Quarter Heretics were to expect from the Tridentine Spirit Father Paul hath told us in his History p. 693 and that as to the year 1563. Advice came to Rome that the King of France had made a Peace with the Hugonots the particular Conditions being not known of yet And the Pope thinking it proceeded from some Prelates who tho they did not openly declare themselves to be Protestants yet did follow that Party he resolved to discover them and was wont to say he was wronged more by the Masqued Heretics then by the bare-faced Whereupon the last of March he gave order that the Cardinals who governed the Inquisition should proceed against them The Cardinal of Pisa answering that there was need of proper and special Authority the Pope ordain'd that a new Bull should be made which was dated the 7th of April and contained in Substance that the Pope being Vicar of Christ to whom he hath recommended the feeding of his Sheep and to reduce those that wander and to bridle with temporal Penalties those who cannot be gain'd by Admonitions he hath not since the beginning of his Assumption omitted to execute this Charge notwithstanding some Bishops are not only fallen into Heretical Errors but do also favour other Heretics opposing the faith For Provision wherein he commands the general Inquisitors of Rome to whom he hath formerly commended this business to proceed against such tho Bishops and Cardinals inhabiting in places where the Lutheran Sect is Potent with Power to cite them to Rome by Edict or to the Confines of the Church to appear personally or if they will not appear to proceed to Sentence which he will pronounce in private Consistory The Cardinals in Conformity to the Popes Commands cited by Edict to appear personally at Rome to purge themselves from imputation of Heresie and of being favourers of Heretics the Cardinal of Chastillon the Arch-Bishop of Aix the Bishop of Chartres and other Bishops in France His Holyness it seems thought that Cardinal and the Arch-Bishop and the Bishops to be Protestants in Masquerade and has given an example to some Furiosi among Protestants thus to miscal some of the better sort of them In fine that which I aim at by referring to these Historical Passages is this to shew that some of the very Grandees of the Church of Rome hold Principles in Religion that allow indulgence to the persons of Heretics I have instanced how D' Ossat in the Popes presence was a Confessor for moderation in this kind and spake like a skillful Divine when he said That Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn and Theophylact on that place tells us that by Tares are meant Heretics Nor can it be unknown to men of great thought among the Papists that the sanguinary usage of Heretics hath much encreased their number not perhaps will it be denyed by the Critical Judges of things in the Papal World what was by one of our beaus esprits and great States-men I mean the Lord Viscount Falkland observed in Print That the Massacre in France made more Protestants in one night than all Calvins Works have done since their first publication According to that Observation That nothing surfeits soner than man's flesh 't is but natural to suppose that the
Person as of very great Abilities so of a great and frank inclination to employ them even to the over-obliging a Country and which though naturally attended with envy from some must too be with acknowledgements from others of that Dignity and Authority that his mind is possessed of and such as Valerius Maximus speaking of as innate in Famous Men who have no extrinsic Authority saith of it Quam rectè quis dixerit longum beatum honorem esse sine honore And he who in the course of his History and his other Works hath appear'd so Impartial and Accurate in his Observations of Men and things may very well be supposed not to have been partial in his comparison of Papists and Dissenters nor do I think he receded from his usual close judging of things when in one of his Books he said that it is not to be denied that it were better there were no Revealed Religion in the World then that Mankind should by its influences be so vitiâ—ted as to become more barbarous and cruel then it would be if Acted by no higher Principles than those are with which Nature inspires Men. I will not with our Learned and Reverend Iudge undertake to compute how many times Popery is worse then the Religion of the Romans but this I will say that had I been in the Roman Senate and had there heard any one propound to them a removal of their minds out of that Coast of Religion which by the light of Nature lay open before them into the Region of the Iesuites Morals I would have said My Masters let us keep where we are and should have expected that the Reasons I would have urged for their so doing would have had the effect of the good Omen that happen'd in that remarkable Crisis when the Roman Senators were debating whether they should quâ—t Rome or remove to Veij and when a Souldier then coming on the Guard and his Captain being heard to cry out to him Signiser signum statue hic optimè manebimus occasioned their adhering to Rome I think that no Protestant who compares the Tenets of the Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time with the Tenets of Popery will prefer the latter before the former But it is not deniable that before King Iames's time and then and since many Puritans and Nonconformists have made great Schisms in the Church and disturbances in the State and that especially in some particular Conjunctures The great Epoche of 41 in England and likewise in Ireland will in our Histories preserve the Memory of the outragious Principles of many Presbyterian Divines in the one Kingdom and of Popish ones in the other but if any shall be so partial to the Papists as either to justify their Commotion in Ireland or to deny all part of the influence that Commotion had on ours here he will find himself a vain imposer on the World. A great inspector into our modern English Affairs I mean the late Earl of Clarendon hath in his Animadversions on Cressys 's Book against Dr. Stilling fleet said That nothing can be stranger then that Mr. Cressy should so magnify the general obedience of all Roman Catholicks that none of them was ever in Rebelâ—ion against the King or his Father when he knows very well and hath some marks of it that the whole Irish Nation very few Persons of Honour excepted joyn'd in Rebellion against the King but for that Rebellion neither Presbyterian Independant or Anabaptists had been able to have done any harm in England For the Scots Rebellion was totally suppressed and their Army disbanded before the Irish Rebellion begun It was that which produced all the mischief that succeeded in England and gave those Sects in Religion opportunity to bring in their Confusion to the destruction of Church and State c. But as to the Papists coming in for their share in the guilt of our Commoâ—ion here we have the incontestable Authority of the Royal Martyr who in one of his printed Declarations saith And we are confident that a greater number of that Religion meaning the Popish is in the Army of the Rebels then in our own and 't was there before said All men know the great number of Papists which serve in their Army Commanders and others The Author of the Regal Apology printed in the Year 48 in p. 36 answereth that part of the Declaration of the House of Commons that so unworthily râ—flects on his Majesty as to offering a toleration to the Papists in Ireland tontrary to his former resolutions which saith the Author was on great and pressing necessity which hath no Law and to that degree of necessity as the two Houses had driven him so the Consequences were to be set on their Score not his own yet even then in his Letters about that Affairs published by themselves he doth insist on it that the Bargain may be made as good as can be for him But I have seen other Letters from one of his Secretaries to the Irish which I am assured were true wherein where these expressions after expostulation of their delays in his Assistance He is inform'd that taking advantage of his low Condition you insist on something in Religion more then formerly you were contented with He hath therefore commanded me to let you know that were his Condition much lower you shall never force him to any further Concessions to the prejudice of his Conscience and of the true Protestant Religion in which he is resolved to live and for which he is ready to die and that he will joyn with any Protestant Prince nay with these Rebels themselves how odious soever meaning his two Houses rather then yield the least to you in this particular I should with extreme reluctance touch the Sores of these Sects who yet have both at several times given such deadly wounds to the peace of the Kingdom but that they are Nusances to the publick quiet in raking up the odious Comparisons of one anothers practices and that the Papists on the occasion of any of the worse sort of Protestants or Nonconformists being Convicted of Sedition or Treason a thing that may be expected from the degeneracy of Humane Nature to happen oftener from some of a Religion of so great Numbers then from a perswasion that has Comparatively but a handful of men for its Disciples just as accordingly perhaps where one Papist is hanged for Clipping or Coyning twenty Protestants are so â— are so apt to expect that the World should acquit the present Principles and former practises of that Sect from Disloyalty on their Out-cry that they are no Puritans or Presbyterians and as ridiculously as if a false Coyner Arraigned for the Fact should trouble the Court with a Plea and Noise that he was no House-breaker and but that on the detection of a Plot of Papists several persons that have in their publick Capacities done many Acts of Hostility to the Interest of the Kingdom yet entirely by being more
in p. 702 and in the following Pages viz. Whether the Turk or the Pope is the greater Antichrist and at last saith p. 710. In comparing the Turk with the Pope if a Question be asked whether of them is the truer or greater Antichrist it were easie to see and judge that the Turk is the more open and manifest Enemy against Christ and the Church But if it be asked whether of them two hath been the more bloody and pernicious Adversary to Christ and his Members or whether of them hath Consumed and Spilt more Christian Blood he with Sword or this with Fire and Sword together neitheer is it a light matter to discern neither is it my part here to discuss who do only write the History and Acts of them both And I then telling the Nonconformist that the Iews for many obvious reasons did prefer the Doctrine of Mahumetanisme to that of Popery some Papists beforemention'd had prefer'd it to Protestancy and as he the Nonconformist had preferred it to Popery he mention'd his fears that a sort of Enthusiasts among us called Seekers might hereby be in great danger of stumbling on the Religion of Mahumetanisme accordingly as of old when one went to demand of the Philosophers of the several Sects which was the best of them every one named his own Sect or Party in the first place but all of them in the second place granted Plato to be the most eminent that is the next best whereupon those Seekers preferred Plato because setting aside prejudicate Affection and Self-Love Plato's Philosophy had thus carried the Garland I then took occasion to tell the Company that I thought 't was extremely unjust to prefer Mahumetanisme with the many ridiculous and senseless things it comprehends to Christianity in Papists blended with many erroneous Tenets which yet are capable of the name of Religion and such as those great pious Papists beforementioned viz. Father Paul Thuanus D'Ossat Erasmus Peiresk perhaps own'd the belief of as many thousands of others may still likewise do but frankly interposed my opinion that I thought that Popery complicated with the real belief of the Iesuites Morals and their vile Casuistical Tenets branded by the present Pope was as unworthy of God and Humane Nature as any Hypothesis of Religion could be and I as frankly told the Nonconformist whom I looked on as one who would not outrage the Law of the Land to advance the Gospel that tho some erroneous points relating to Nonconformity might without absurdity assume the name of Religion yet among whomsoever those Tenets should be incorporated with the real belief and practice of the lawfulness of the Doctrine of Resistance and of any persons Reforming the World by Arms without Warrant from the Municipal Laws so to do yet such a Faith would be Faction and such a Nominal Religion would be a real Rebellion and much worse then Mahumetanisme I farther acquainted the Company that according to the discreet Motto of the House of Ormond Commâ— je trouve and the Mode of the Age to take the measures of knowledge by experiment the usage that the better sort of Christians have found under Turcisme hath been by very many degrees milder then under Popery Erasmus indeed was of a contrary opinion for in his Vtilissima Consultatio de â—ello Turcis inferendo printed in the Year 1530 he saith that Exaudiuntur interim 〈◊〉 voces abominandae qui jactant esse tolerabilius agere sub imperio Turcâ—â—orâ—â—â— quam sub Christianis Principibus ac sub Pontifice Romano and there he goes on at large to prove the inconvenience of living under the Turkish Government but the order of the Iesuites was not then invented and after a hundred years observation since Protestants have judged as they did in Erasmus his time And in a Popish Book called the Right of the Prelate and the Prince I find Luther de soecul potestat cited p. 55. for saying that the Turk is decies probior prudentiorque nostris principibus And I think it may seem greater wisdom in him to sell such Heterodox People for slaves that he takes by force than to burn them But in the Year before that Book of Erasmus was printed I find in Magerus his Advocatia Armata Laurent Surius in Comment rer in orbe gestar ad annum 1529 cited for the Hungarians throwing themselves on the protection of the Turk rather then they would be deprived of their Right to chuse their King and it seems under Popery in that Kingdom they had a greater kindness for the Turk then the Emperor of Germany And the great Observer Thuanus on the Year 1597 in his 3 d Tome discoursing how the Germans being under apprehensions of the Power of the Turk and of Spain at the same time were thoughtfully weighing their danger Et Comparatione Alchorani cum inquiâ—itione Hispaniensi factâ an potius cum Orientali quam occidentali Turco sibi rem esse velint thereupon saith si quidem res merito suo ac semoto omni affectu privato aestimetur haud dubium esse quin optione datâ— orientalem eligant quippe ut viribus praepollentem sic victis tolerabiliorem faturum c. Dr. Heylin likewise seems to favour that opinion for in his Geoghraphy in Folio he saith The Turks compel no man to abjure the faith in which he was born I have heard many say that 't is better for a man that would enjoy Liberty of Conscience to live in the Countries professing Mahumetanism than Papistry And I think I have read it in the Author of the Zealanders Choice that if he were to lay the Scene of his life any where with respect chiefly to the freedom of owning any Religious Sentiments it should be either in Amsterdam or Constantinople As I was reading the other day in an old Canonists Tractate of Heresy I found this Position asserted there that 't is unlawful for a Master of Requests to deliver a Petition for Mercy to be shown to a Heretic but then I occasionally thought of a more manly and god-like temper shining in part of the Alcoran as Mr. Gregory relates it in his Opusc. where he saith The Mahumetans have another Lords Prayer called by them the Prayer of Jesus the Son of Mary and that endeth thus And let not such an one bear rule over me that will have no mercy on me for thy mercies sake O thou most merciful He who separates Mercy from Justice is unjust to the very name of Justice and robbeth it of the better half of its signification leaving its Teeth and Claws and taking away its Heart and Bowels Iarchas the Indian and chief of the Brachmans in Philostratus is brought in finding fault with Apollonius Tyaneus and others of the Greeks for that they confined and applied the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to those only who do no wrong to one another and telling them that they were in an error for saith he among the chiefest Offices of Iustice 〈◊〉
sententia hic pronuntiata fuit Quaenam illa Reus est mortis Hanc sententiam à spiritu sancto profectam esse non est dubium O hominem sacrilegum blasphemum Ille ne Reus mortis qui innocens innoxius vitam dedit But as inhumane as any Principles of Papists or Mahumetans or any Enthusiasts or as desperate as the very Iesuites beforementioned ones are supposeable to be and as much as any of Mankind can strive to delude others by Implicit Faith yet as it is in no mans power presently to believe what even his own and much less what his Guides appetite would have him notwithstanding any Ecclesiastical Association he may have prosessedly linked his Faith in so no man can ensure the continuance of his Belief or its holding for a Moment and therefore the more absurd and inhumane any mens Tenets are I shall expect them to be the less believed and for the less time and it is more then Holy Church can know that any one at all believes as it believes how great soever the number that pretends so to do appears Of all Papists not professing themselves bound to withdraw their Allegiance from Heretical Princes and even from such as by a particular Bull were Excommunicated by the Pope History affords many Examples and particularly of the many Loyal Papists who when the inheritable Right of the Crown of France was devolved on the King of Navarre a Protestant and as such Excommunicated with their Lives and Fortunes asserted his Title to the Crown Any of the Readers of Thuanus know that in Book 93 't is related how when many Papists would have debarred him from the Succession and that the minds of those qui in Castris erant were in that point variously affected yet Major sanior pars sic existimabat nullam publicae salutis spem superesse nisi servato legitimae successionis ordine and so were for Harry the 4 ths Right therein and whom they believed was late reconciled to the King his Predecessor for that he did per eum res administrare as the Historian's words are i. e. Harry the 4 th a Protestant Successor was Primier Ministre to Harry the 3 d a Papist And not only the Major part and the sober Party of the Popish Souldiery i. e. in Thuanus his words sanior pars was loyally addicted to the Right of the Protestant Successor but several of the Grandees of the Popish Clergy were so and particularly the Arch-Bishop whose Speech for that purpose Thuanus Book 106. sets down wherein 't is said Neque verò aut Regis personam aut subditorum robur debilitatemque heic considerandum esse quando Reges lege ad regnum vocantur Neque exemplis doceri posse quicquid contrajactetur in priscâ lege populum Israeliticum ob Religionem regibus suis defecisse c. sed totum id Deo dijudicandum reliquisse in cujus manibus regum corda sunt quae ille pro arbitrio quo vult inclinat Quid in Christianâ Ecclesiâ Nonne Christum generis humani redemptorem ejusque beatissimam matrem nomina sua apud censum Augusto imperante Gentilium sacris addicto professos esse Nonne Caesari suo Petri nomine tributum pependisse Quod verò de legibus civilibus imperialibus constitut affertur quibus Manichaei Arriani à dignitatum magistratuum ac publicorum munerum participatione excluduntur id intelligi de magistratibus inferioribus non de principalibus qui nisi cum excidio populorum Reip. eversione jure suo privari non possunt de quibus decernere ad solius Dei Omnipotentis Iurisdictionem pertinet The whole Speech is argumentative to that purpose out of the old and new Testament and Fathers c. and that Noble Loyalty of those Papists to a Protestant Successor met with a requital as to their Religion and thereby I may say in the Scripture expression that they did at once heap both a Crown and Coals of Fire upon his head Any one may be rather apt to think me less sanguine as I may say in my belief of Shame 's operating more and more among both Lay and Clerical Roman Catholicks and even among our Jesuited Protestants I mean many of our Non-Conformists that have had sanguinary and disloyal Principles transfused into them by Jesuites to the making them out of love with such Principles when he shall consider how the ingenious Maimbourg doth in the 6 th Book of his History of Calvinisme reflect on the great Calvin for his opinion and practice relating to the punishment of Heretics with death and instanceth in the Case of Servetus who was burn'd by the Magistrates of Geneva as an Heretick on Calvin's instigating them so to deal with him as Maimbourg tells us and concludes his Historical Account of the Parisian Massacre with the mention of the said opinion and practice of Calvin and doth with great Judgment and Candour thus observe viz. On á veu neanmoins de tout temps que le moyen le plus efficace quand l' heresie est deja puissamment etablie n' estoient point les supplices beaucoup moins la violence le trop de Rigueur Bien loin que le massacre qu' on fit a Paris entant d' autres villes ait aneanti ou du moins affoibli le Calvinisme qu' au Contraire il en devint plus enracinè plus puissant plus formidable qu' auparavant Les Huguenots ne voulurent plus se fier aux declarations que l' on fit pâ—ur les rasleurer c. Alsted in his Chronology of Heresy tells us that Michael Servetus Hispanus docuit nullam esse in Deo realem generationem aut distinctionem and Calvin in his Opuscula saith of Servetus vel sola modestia potuisset vitam redimere but I believe the World will grow more modest then to burn men for immodesty and 't is most certain that as the World grows the nearer to its Period and growing more and more populous that populousness will naturally tend to unite all Countries at home by preparing them to resist Invasion from abroad and make the fantastical squandring away the Members of the Common-wealth more and more ridiculous and insensibly to grow out of fashion Thus 't was with the increase of the People among the Jews and Turks that the Sicacious Zealots among the former and Dervices among the latter did gradually decrease and at last insensibly grew obsolete And thus of old did Draco's Laws evaporate Aulus Gellius tells us in his Noctes Atticae that Draco Atheniensis vir bonus multáque esse prudentia existimatus est jurisque divini humani peritus fuit Is Draco leges quibus Athenienses uterentur primus omnium tulit In illis legibus furem cujuscunque modi furti supplicio capitis puniendum esse alia pleraque nimis severe censuit sanxitque Ejus igitur leges quoniam videbantur impendio acerbiores non
into the Field of Time have yet grown up and how many even of the higher Class of understandings have been tempted to believe the predictions of the illiterate and that such could read the Book of Fate who yet could read no other as appeared by Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher being tainted with some belief of the holy Maid of Kent's Sayings or at least seeming so to be and that the prediction of things as I partly before hinted may help as a Natural Cause to give them Birth I wishing so well to my Country and its Religion by Law Established have however adventured from Natural Causes to give my judgment for the future State thereof as I have done not despairing of its influences on some present Despairers And moreover the Class of Magna nomina who have faulter'd in their measures of Prophecy is so great that an obscure mistaken person may well hope to hide himself among them Father Parsons aliâ—s Doleman in his Book of the Succession doth p. 258. give his final Conjecture of the great future Event of the Succession after the death of Queen Elizabeth saying My opinion is that this Affair cannot possibly be ended by any possibility moral without some War at leastwise for sometime at the beginning and gives his reasons for that his opinion And how all our hot Apocalyptick Men and Teazers of Anti-Christ have erred in the times of the great Changes they have predicted in the World is obvious and therefore the most sagacious of that sort of Expositers have made the things they have foretold to be far distant in time and before which they knew they should long be in the number of Non entes doctores as one calls the Schoolmen and thus likewise the ingenious Author of the Treatise of Taxes and Contributions printed in London 1667 doth p. 23. say that Before five hundred years we may be all transplanted from hence into America these Countries being over-run with Turks and made wast as the Seats of the famous Eastern Empires at this day Mr. Herbert our pious Vates made Religion standing a tiptoe to take its flight thither many years ago And the ingenious Author of the Zelanders Choice hath therein told us that the French would never part with Vtrecht and that our King's Declaration of Indulgence would never be recalled but the contrary happened in both Cases and the Vote of the House of Commons in order to his Majesties recalling the latter was carried by the Party there favouring the Nonconformists and could not have been without them which that Author did not foresee and that those Nonconformists would be well neither full nor fasting and therefore their reflections on the King's Ministers for denying Indulgence to them since ought to be very gentle Mr. Fox in his Martyrology in one Volume p. 694. gives us this conjectural prediction that the Turk will seize Rome and founds one of his reasons for it on the 18 Ch. of the Rev. and that he shall consume it with fire and Ribera the Iesuite in Chap. 14th of the Rev. saith Romam igitur non tantum propter priora peccata conflagratarum esse magno incendio sed etiam propter illa quae extremis illis temporibus commissura est ex hujus Apocalypsis verbis adeo perspicue cognoscimus ut ne stulâ—issimus quidem negare possit Neither Mr. Fox nor the Iesuite name any particular time when Rome shall be consumed with Fire but many whose Enthusiastic fancies have played with the fire of Rome adventured to lay the Scene of its ruine in the Year 1666 and to assert this a Latin Book was professedly writ and called Romae ruina finalis Anno Dom. 1666. and printed in London in the Year 1663. in the Title whereof 't is said that Rome shall be incendio delenda in the Year 1666. And no doubt our many Prophetic Writers that read that Sentence as from Gods Tribunal that Rome shall be destroyed that year angered the Conclave there and they might well think that to such hot heads there belonged incendiary hands and accordingly as it was before cited out of the Pampâ—let called The Arts and pernicious designs of Rome wherein is shewn what are the Aims of the Iesuites c. the Author makes the Conflagration of London in case it were a practice of Humane Contrivance to have been caused by Rome and the Consistory there and the Iesuites as being willing to signalize that year of 666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some that predicted Romes utter destruction then 't is possible that they might grant against our City the reprisal of performances for our Prophecies against theirs which if they did was a Revenge very disproportionate for according to that rule of the Pharisees revenge namely an Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth they should only have equipped Airy Prophecies against us and not Fire-ships and by a little obvious Art have hounded the number of the Beast 666 upon us And though I am sufficiently convinced by the Quotations out of the Canon Law and the Canonists referred to in Gundissalvus that the Tenet of burning whole Cities if the Majority thereof are Hereticks is chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it and tho the Lord Chancellor and two Houses of Commons and the Magistrates of London have given their judgment of the Causers of that Fire as aforesaid and tho one of our great Divines and whose Name all Protestants in our Land must mention with great honour Dr. William Lloyd Dean of Bangir hath in his Funeral Sermon of Sir Edmund Godfrey p. 38. speaking of the incredible patience found in the Citizens of London at the time of its Conflagration as an effect of the Protestant Religion further said Tho so many believed and very few much doubted whence it came that it was from the same hands which we justly suspect for this wickedness meaning the Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey yet was there no Tumult rose upon it no violence done that extended to the life of any Person yet shall I never without the knowledge of convincing proofs of such a Fact projected or modelled by some in Authority in the Church of Rome and the Spiritual Guides of our Lay-Papists charge the Odium of the Fact on more of them than make the least of numbers nor yet the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists here at home or abroad in the World and would say that as infallible as the Pope was he knew not what spirit he was of when he thus in his Law called for fire on Heretical Cities I allude to our Saviour's words to the Disciples that importun'd him to call for Fire from Heaven to burn the Samaritans I know the Roman Catholick Author of the forementioned Pamphlet called the Arts of Rome c. in the Epistle of it saith of the Jesuites and Fryars that what they hold lawful to be done
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
particular Law hath declared the Militia to be solely in the King I most humbly take my leave of your Lordship at present and am My Lord Your Lordships most Faithful Servant To the Right Honorable THE LORD MARQUESSE OF HALIFAX MY LORD ACcording to the Common Civility of Ships paying a Salute to the Forts on the Coasts they come near the Course of my handling the following Subject necessarily giving my Thoughts an approach to the Considering the great use that Providence not long ago made use of your Lordship's great Abilities as a Fortification for the Defence of the Hereditary Monarchy I have held it here but common Iustice to Congratulate to your Lordship your heroical Loyalty and great Success therein on one MEMORABLE Day It pleas'd God in whose Book the Members of Mens Bodies and Talents of their Minds are written then to call forth your Head and Heart and Tongue your flowing Elocution your fixt Iudgment your great Presence of Mind and Thought your comprehensive Knowledge of the past Publick Affairs at home and abroad and even the generous ferment in your Blood and to put them all to signal use in preserving the whole Body of the Kingdom Your Lordship's Goodness was herein the more God-like for that as the great benign Father of the Creation was pleas'd with being a Benefactor to such whose Ingratitude he foreknew and to some who would render him as negligent of the Concerns of his Creatures and to others who would represent him as unjust in his Prescriptions and cruel in his Designs and taking pleasure in the Destruction of Souls so your Lordship was resolv'd on your Beneficence to your Country in the black Conjuncture of our Fears and Iealousies and you were then Communicative of the brightest Beams and sweetest Influences of your serene and great thoughts to it when you knew that by some of the People for your so doing you would be maligned and mis-represented as an hostis Patriae I shall Presume to give your Lordship no further trouble then by the syncere Profession of my being My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE OBLIGATION Relating to the King's Heirs and Successors In point of Conscience discuss'd As resulting from the OATHS of ALLEGIANCE and SUPREMACY and the Takers of those Oaths proved to be thereupon become bound to bear Faith and True Allegiance to those HEIRS and SUCCESSORS in the Due and Legal Course of DESCENT I Shall without Proem or Passions here approach to the Great Areopagus of the Court of Conscience and having stated the Question of what Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors results from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in point of Conscience shall deliver my judgment of the same in some Conclusions and answer Objections that may occur I shall here take Notice that the word Obligation from being Originally a Band or Ty of the Law for Payment of Debts hath been since frequently applied to the discharge of Moral Offices Obligatio est juris vinculum quo necessitate restringimur alicujus solvendae Rei Instìt de Obligationibus And pursuant hereunto men may be properly said to pay their Allegiance to Princes in discharge of their Natural Obligations and their Oaths But here I consider not the extent of the Obligation of the Natural Allegiance that English Subjects owe their Monarchs nor yet their Obligation to Allegiance from the Divine Law positive nor from the Lex terrae tho yet I account it very plain that we are on all those accounts bound to pay them Allegiance but do choose to confine my discussion of the Obligation to Allegiance as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and as mentioned in our Statutes in relation to our King's Heirs and Successors and most particularly from that CLAUSE in the Oath of Allegiance viz. I will bear Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty his HEIRS and SUCCESSORS and him and them will defend to the uttermost of my power against all Conspiracies and Attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity c. And THAT in the Oath of Supremacy viz. And do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King's Highness his Heirs and lawful Successors and to my power shall assist and defend all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors c. And I here enquire how far the Obligation resulting from those Clauses in those Oaths in Relation to such Heirs and Successors may be judged in point of Conscience to extend As to the Question thus explained and stated I shall lay down these following Conclusions First That those Oaths and indeed all others do respect a Duty to be performed in the Future time that is at the least some time tho perhaps a very small one after the Obligation contracted as is well open'd by Sanderson in his first Lecture of the Obligation of Oaths and where he shews that this happens in every Oath assertory as well as promissory for whoever sweareth obligeth himself ipso facto to manifest the truth in that which he is about to say whether it be in a matter past or present by an Assertory or in a Future matter by a Promissory Oath Secondly That by that part of an Oath Promissory contained in the forementioned Clauses of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy as likewise by all other Oaths Promissory the Party swearing is bound to endeavour for the Future as much as in him lieth by his Deeds to fulfil what he hath sworn in words and this Sanderson in his second Lecture hath well asserted as to an Oath Promissory viz. That he who endeavours not to perform that which he hath promised is guilty of Perjury in the Court of Conscience 'T is plain that in an Assertory Oath if I took the same with a wellcompoâ—ed mind and have given my Testimony truely I have discharged my Duty and have my Quietus from my Conscience for the same But in an Oath Promissory and particularly in the Promissory part of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I am not discharged by the sincerity of my intention in my promise I have engaged my self to Action and have lanched my self into a Sea of Business from that time forward till the end of my life and as there is occasion and opportunity I am to DO what in those Clauses I have promised to the King and his Heirs and Successors And thus the Style of DOING runs in Numbers 30. 2. If a man swear an Oath to bind his Soul with a Bond he shall DO according to all that procedeth out of his mouth Thirdly That those Oaths and all others are to be taken in the sense of the Imposer For the Oath being taken that the Imposer may be assured that the promise of the Person swearing shall be effectually made good to him there would be no assurance thereof in
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
great vehâ—menâ—â— and Master-like in the Councel about two hours proving that the Power of Iurisdiction was given wholly to the Pope and that none in the Church besides â—ath any spark of it but from him and that while Christ liv'd in the flesh he govern'd the World with an absolute Monarchical Government and being to depart out of the World he left the same form appointing his Vicar St. Peter and his Successors to administer it as he had done giving him full and total Power and Iurisdiction and subjecting the Church to him as before to himself That in Councels be they never so frequent if the Pope be present he only doth decree neither doth the Councel any thing but approve and therefore it has been always said Sacro approbante Concilio yea even in Resolutions of the greatest weight as was the Deposition of the Emperor Frederic the Second in the General Councel of Lions Innocent the Fourth a most wise Pope refus'd the approbation of that Synod thaâ— none might think it to be necessary and thought it sufficient to say prâ—sente Concilio How comes the Case now alter'd when we behold the Iesuites now crucifying the Decree of their King the Pope after all their former Hâ—â—anna's to him while he was mounted on the World as his Ass and after all their deaâ—â—ing of the World with Blessing him in nomine Domini and see them now putting but a reed of Infallibility in his hand and see his Scepter in theirs and see their fourth Vow to the Pope annull'd and what performance then can Hereticks expect from any Promises they make to them and might not the Iesuits wiâ—â— the salvo of a Protestation against the Inquisition or with a thousand Expedients if they had pleas'd allow'd Receipts from the Inquisition to rid the World of a Pestilence as frankly as Protestants use the Jesuits Powder against Agues and without intending more Honour to that Court than the Sacred Writ did to the Devil in recording for our instruction several things by him spoken And have not we a candid account of this Arcaâ—um in a very Ingenious Discourse lately Translated into English and call'd The Policy of the Clergy of France to destroy the Protestants of that Kingdom and writ in the way of a Dialogue between a Parisian and Provincial where p. 67 and 68. Le Cheise and the Iesuits Party are said to have effected the suppression of the said Decree in France upon pretence that it issued from the Tribunal of the Inquisition and that in the Draught of an Order of a Parliament in France for the suppressing the Publication of this Decree these words were put viz. Tho that these Propositions are justly Condemned and that Father Le Cheise caus'd these words to be raâ—ed out and has put in their stead That even the good things which come to us from the Tribunal of the Inquisition ought not to be receiv'd But if upon occasion of what was discours'd by that Author it be further said that the setting up of those unmoral Casuistical Tenets in France was the erecting a Pillar of ignominy against God I will ask if one who is revera an incompetent Iudge shall go to demolish any such Pillar set up against my Father and I have already own'd that that Iudge doth infallibly know the bounds of his Iurisdiction and have obliged my self to him by the foremention'd fourth Vow that what thing soever he shall Command that belongs to the profit of Souls and the Propagation of the Faith I will without any tergiversation or excuse execute as far as I am able for this is the Jesuits fourth Vow to the Pope shall I then be active in the hindring a Decree of this Nature given by this Judge from being executed at the same time I Protest against it shall I make no Protestation for the honour of my Father And do you think in this Inquisitive Age the Cheat of an Inquisition will elsewhere pass long since that Court that is used by ordinary Inquisitors for the torturing the Bodies of Christians and mutilation of the Image of God cannot be allow'd to shew severity to the body of Sin to the Image of the Devil in depraved Minds and that while your unerring Iudge of Law and Fact is in Person there praesiding Are not you that surpreâ—â— the Dictates of your own Vniversal Pastor such unreasonable Men as we may well pray to be delivered from All our Jesuited Papists must still expect Expostulations of this Nature Their Head was before at Rome and their Brains too but if they now make a Schism from the Pope himself they will come under the Denomination of Acephali the Name of some ancient Heretics that is the People without a Head unless they will own the Hydra of the Jesuits for their Head which it seems the Hercules of Rome could not subdue I believe many of them will consider what sure footing they have where they are while they see their Moses flying from his own Staff when made a Serpent I mean his Order of Jesuits and see the Collusive or Sham-Serpents of the Jesuits devour those of their Moses and Juglers by Deceptio Visus and lying to impose on the eyes of the World against the sence and reason of Mankind and even of the Pope himself and 't will be very ridiculous for them who have been cheated out of their own Religion to think that some who are the Jesuits Bubbles can cheat us of ours and that while they are grown Seekers they should make us loose our Church and that when the Spiritual Monarchy of the Pope is in a manner Run Down by the Republic or Society of the Iesuits they should think to cheat us of our King and Church and that our Religion can be run down by such Spiritual Outlaws and Rebels against the Pope himself and such as perhaps the Pope may in time be induced to oblige the World by suppressing after their Injuring all Morallity and the most vital parts of Christian Religion and the great avow'd use of his Power in the whole Christian Common-wealth by their Suppression of his said Decree I hope while the Fan is in his hand he will throughly purge his floor and esteem the Disposals of rich Benefices in France to be poor Regalia sancti Petri for him to vindicate in Comparison of the lives of the Souls of his Flock that he and all ingenuous Knowing Mankind Know must be destroy'd by such Casuistical Principles and without his doing which he cannot in the least deserve the Title of his Holiness For the determining the truth about such Principles he need not say as one of his Predecessors did about the Iansenian Speculations that he had no skill in Divinity A very little skill in Natural Divinity and such as may be had by the Reading a few Lines in Tully's Offices would accomplish any one with what would demonstrate the things allowed by the Casuists to be unworthy both of the Divine and
the least if the Oath were to be interpreted otherwise than in the Imposers sense and under this Conclusion it may be properly added that where that sense is sufficiently manifest in the words it is exactly to be stood to as Sanderson hath well shewed in his second Lecture of the aforesaid Subject and where having shewed how we must take heed that we impose not on the Oath we have taken or any part thereof other sense than that which any other Pious and Prudent Man and who being unconcerned in the Business is of a freer Iudgment may easily gather out of the Words themselves he saith That we become without question guilty of the heinous Crime of Perjury if that milder interpretation which encouraged us unto the Oath chance to deceive us And in his 6th Lecture § 7. he saith As it is one kind of Perjury to strain the words during the Act of Swearing unto another Sense than that wherein they are understood by the Auditors so it is another kind of Perjury having sworn honestly not to proceed sincerely but to decline and elude the strength of the Oath tho the words be preserved with some new forged inventions variously turning and dressing the words to cloak the guilt of their Consciencâ—s as Tacitus saith of some and he concludes that Section by saying That where the words of an Oath are so clear in themselves that among honest men there can be no quâ—stion of their meaning the Party swearing is obliged in that sense which they apparently afford and may not either in swearing or when he hath sworn stretch those words upon the last of his Interest by any studied interpretations There appeared nothing more detestable to the Eye of the old Civil Law then fraud and trick and particularly the destroying the true Sense and meaning of a Law by a cavilling fraudulent interpretation that retains the words but confounds the ends for which the Law was made and accordingly 't is said in the Digests In fraudem legis facit qui salvis verbis legis sententiam ejus circumvenit But this in the Case of an Oath was more abominated and accordingly Cicero tells us that Fraus adstringit non dissolvit perjurium And if the Civil Law was afterward so provident for the honour of Humane Nature as to determine in the Case of an unask'd free gift that Cum in arbitrio cujuscunque sit hoc facere quod instituit oportet eum vel minime ad hoc prosilire vel cum venire ad hoc properaverit non quibusdam excogitatis artibus suum propositum defraudare tantamque indevotionem quibusdam quasi legitimis velamentis prolegere any one may judge how much it abhorred any thing of fraud in the evading of the payment of a due subjection to Sovereign Power acknowledged by what the thinking Heathens term'd Sacramentum as if the most eminent or only thing emphatically Sacred and religiously to be observed I should not since the Extermination of the Iesuites Doctrine of Equivocating have thought it worth while so much to dilate on this plain Conclusion before the publishing a Pamphlet in our Metropolis in the Year 1680 called An Account of the New Sheriffs holding their Office made publick upon reason of CONSCIENCE respecting themselves and others in regard to the Act for Corporations and in which ACT tho the Lawgivers meaning of the Oath thereby imposed is most apparently manifest out of the Words yet the Author of that Casuistical Pamphlet makes it lawful to take the Oath and subscribe the Declaration and not in the literal strict Construction but in an imaginary sense topp'd upon the Lawgivers and that nothing but a vitiated fancy or injudicious mind could imagine I was sorry to hear that that Pamphlet was writ by a Non-Conformist Divine and that in a Conjuncture when the Magistrates of that City were so hot against the name of Popery any men should be so zealous for the Thing called Iesuitism and that any men by attempting to rivet Equivocation into their Model of Protestancy should at once endeavour to rob us of the Energy of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and of the Test it self and to make the sacredness of all Oaths whatsoever to evaporate Let any sober Person of the Dissenters Party but seriously read that Pamphlet so scandalous to Protestancy and it cannot but give him the Alarm of coming out from among them for that he must do that would come out even from the Iesuitick Equivocation If there were not a Church of England Protestancy in that Loyal City I may without unjust reflection say it that Magistrates who were Accessory to the erecting that Paper-Monument to Equivocation and to the trying to help it to a jus Divinum and to be a part of pure Religion and undefiled could bring little honour to our Metropolis by calling it a PROTESTANT CITY on its Monument of Stone As we find in the Book of Iudges that all that saw that inhumane Butchering and Quartering out into pieces of the Levites Wife by her own Husband cried out and said There was no such thing done or seen since the time that the Children of Israel came up out of the Land of Egypt until that day I believe it may be affirmed that never in any PROTESTANT City in the World since the time that it was free'd from the Egyptian Servitude of the Papal Impositions was any such barbarous butchering of the Obligation of an Oath by Equivocation in a printed Case sent about the Kingdom by the pretended Espousers of Protestancy ever done or seen And according to the saying that Nisi serpens serpentem comederit non fit draco it may be said that the most superlative and dreadful outraging of Oaths cannot be compassed but by the Consciences of pretended Protestants digesting the old Equivocation of the Iesuites When I consider this therefore that the false Protestant Discusser of that CASE of CONSCIENCE of the SHERIFFS doth determine that by taking up Arms against the King mentioned in the Oath is to be meant against HIS RIGHTFUL GOVERNMENT and that the Oath must be taken in the SENSE or MEANING of the Major part of both Houses that passed it and then makes their meaning so opposite to their words and do recollect what is so clearly laid down in my Lord Chancellor Hatton's Treatise concerning Statutes and the Expositions of Acts of Parliament viz. That the Assembly of Parliament being ended functi sunt officii and that as to all of the lower House who are by Election their Authority is returned to the Electors so clearly that if they were altogether assembled again for interpretation by a voluntary Meeting eorum non esset interpretari and that then the interpretation of the Statutes falls into the hands of the Sages of the Law and when I consider that great Caution of Sanderson in his said Book that where we depart from the words of an Oath to the intent it must be well proved that
there was such a meaning I have a great Compassion for men that are trick't into Perjury by the artifice of any Casuists and as I have mentioned a Crafty Counsel at Law to be justly odious and a Crafty Councellor of State to be more so do account a Crafty Casuist to be most abominable What effect that Pamphlet hath had in debauching the Consciences of the Non-Conformists in thus distorting the natural sense of that Oath by a calumnious and fraudulent interpretation and whereby such mens tenderness of Conscience may have become Armour of Proof against all Oaths I know not The Paper mentions its being design'd for the edifying of others and that word of edifying minds me of the saying of Qui judicat contra conscientiam aedificat ad gehennam and the which too is justly applicable to a Protestant Casuist that giveth Judgment for equivocation And it may with a pious horror be thought of that if Christianity and its Morals should happen to be generally depraved by such Sophisms and Chicanery as that Pamphlet is stuffed with there may be cause of fear that the Son of Man at his second coming will not find so much as the old bona fides of the Heathens on the Earth That any Non-Conformists of the present Age may see how much the Casuistical Theology of that Pamphlet hath degenerated from the Rule about the interpretation of Oaths that was in vogue among those of the former I shall refer them to the Learned Casuistical works of Ames a Pious and Learned Independent Divine of that Age printed at Amsterdam in the Year 1631 and where in his 4th Book Chap. 22. De Iuramento he very learnedly inveighs against the use of Equivocation and Mental Reservation in Oaths and maketh it to be Equivocation Cùm verba ipsa quae usurpantur sunt ambigui sensus illo sensu accipiuntur à jurante quem audientes cupit celare ut alio sensu ab ipsis accipiantur and coming to determine that Question viz. In what sense ought the words of an Oath to be taken he answers viz. In that sense that we judge they who hear us will conceive that is regularly in that sense that the words have in the common use of men because the signification of words depends on mens use And he there afterward coming to this Question viz. Are the Words of an Oath always to be taken strictly as they sound answers That an Oath by reason of the danger of Perjury is of strict right and interpretation so that it may not admit those larger Explications which in other Facts and Sayings often take place Fourthly As a Humane Law forbidding a thing simply evil or commanding a thing in its own nature good doth induce a new Obligation in Conscience so doth the Addition of an Oath imposed by the Law for the avoiding of that thing so simply evil super-induce a farther Obligation to avoid it and therefore the Persons who take the Oath of Allegiance invoking God as Witness and Revenger that they do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear according to these express words by them spoken and according to the plain and common sense and understanding of the same words Without any Equivocation or mental Evasion or secret Reservation whatsoever and heartily willingly and truely upon the TRUE FAITH of a CHRISTIAN are under a more especial and particular Obligation to abhor all subtle and cavilling interpretations of the sense of the said Oath Fifthly As the plain and common sense and understanding of the words in the Clauses respecting the Future time of bearing Faith and true Allegiance to his Majesty c. do lay an actual Promissory Obligation on the swearer to bear the same to him during his life so reddendo singula singulis they lay an actual Promissory Obligation on the swearer to bear the same to his Heirs and Successors afterward in the Due and Legal Course of Descent The Promise in the Clause of the Oath of Supremacy runneth thus viz. and DO Promise that FROM HENCEFORTH I WILL bear Faith c. And words could not express an actual Obligation incurr'd and to have some Operation in the next Moment of time both in relation to his Majesty and his Heirs and Successors more clearly than those have expressed the same And the Promise sworn in the Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. I will bear Faith c. doth likewise after the Oath sworn immediately operate in its Obligation to the King and his Heirs and Successors in the next Interval of Time imaginable however the word henceforth be not there used as in the former Oath for the Clause of the Oath of Allegiance binding me not only to preserve the King but the Hereditary Monarchy I could not be effectually enough by the Oath obliged to the same without being obliged in the shortest time afterward not only to forbear prejudicing any right that belongs to the King and his Heirs and Successors but to defend the same The pointing of men to an ordinary Lease where the Lessee at the perfecting thereof enters into an actual Obligation both in Law and Conscience to pay his Rent to the Lessor his Heirs and Assigns that is as it shall become due to each respectively shews a present actual Obligation incurr'd of discharging any Future Dues successively and as I said reddendo singula singulis to be familiar enough to common thought and vulgar apprehensions and likewise the word Heirs to be so too The many who take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy have spent enough time and perhaps too much ventured eternity in thinking of and providing for their Heirs and who commonly as landed men know that by virtue of right either immediately or mediately derived from the Crown they are only enabled to say They are seized of this or that Land in their Demesne as of Fee and which is as much as to say It is their Demesne or proper Land after a sort because it is to them and their Heirs and that such Fee doth vi termini imply Fealty and Fealty sworn and the thought of which would on the turning of the Tables make them sufficiently apprehensive of their danger if there could be any ambiguity in the word Heir or the Crown granting Land to them and their Heirs forever I shall here take occasion by the way to reflect on an Antimonarchical saying I met with printed as spoke in Parliament by a great Demagogue some years ago viz. That the Cottager here holds his right by the same Tenure that the Crown holds its For it is false that our King or the Crown oweth Fealty to any Superior but God only The King's Throne is the Throne of God and the Style of Crown'd Heads is Dei gratiâ and by him Kings Reign But to proceed If there could be Ambiguity in the word Heirs the worth of our Magna Charta would soon be depretiated and it would be but Res unius aetatis and particularly where