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book_n	form_n	prayer_n	use_v	4,815	5	5.9954	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A54580	The happy future state of England, or, A discourse by way of a letter to the late Earl of Anglesey vindicating him from the reflections of an affidavit published by the House of Commons, ao. 1680, by occasion whereof observations are made concerning infamous witnesses : the said discourse likewise contains various political remarks and calculations referring to many parts of Christendom, with observations of the number of the people of England, and of its growth in populousness and trade, the vanity of the late fears and jealousies being shewn, the author doth on the grounds of nature predict the happy future state of the realm : at the end of the discourse there is a casuistical discussion of the obligation to the king, his heirs and successors, wherein many of the moral offices of absolution and unconditional loyalty are asserted : before the discourse is a large preface, giving an account of the whole work, with an index of the principal matters : also, The obligation resulting from the Oath of supremacy to assist and defend the preheminence or prerogative of the dispensative power belonging to the king ...	Pett, Peter, Sir, 1630-1699.	1688 (1688)	Wing P1883; ESTC R35105	603,568	476

Popery but some of their old stock Tho some Presbyterians have not hitherto learned that Modesty and Policy from the Papists as to leave off their unjust valuing themselves on their Numbers yet as I know not of any number of Gentlemen that would choose to live in any Parish in England under the severity of that Church Government and who would not rather desire to be exterminated from their Native Country than to live in it with Presbytery Paramount so neither do I believe that Presbytery would be endured by many of our illiterate Mechanicks now more than heretofore if they were taught its rigour And tho likewise another Sect of Dissenters more Gentlemanly than that of the Presbyterians I mean the Independants do in the little Pamphlets they write trouble us much with proclaiming their Numbers and as if they were not only the sober but the major part of the Nation they are very ridiculous in trying to make themselves that way dreadful contrary to what is in Fact true I believe that the number of those who in the late times listed themselves in the particular gathered Churches and subjected themselves to their Laws and Contribution to their Pastorage was always inconsiderable and as an Argument of that 't is in this Discourse mentioned that the Pastors of the most Opulent of those Churches in London did most readily quit their Posts when they could obtain Head-ships of Colleges and that in a Conjuncture when Independancy was in a manner the form of Church Government owned by the State. These Churches were always very few in the Country and are now fewer and scarce visible unless we will call the Bands of Quakers by the name of Churches and a name I do not hear they think fit to use I am of opinion that under the Christian Religion so much ●uller of Mystery than the Pagan Iewish and Turkish its Divine Planter did necessarily make Christians loving one another the Characteristical Mark of their being such and under the noble freedom allowed by the Protesta●ts Religion to try all things and to trust no Religionary Tenets but what they have tryed a Heterodoxy as to some speculative supposed Tenets of the Church of England may among some inquisitive persons have long gained ground and still do so There was in London an Independant Church under Cromwel's Government and Mr. Biddell was their Pastor and among other Tenets denominable as those of Religion they owned these following viz. That the Fathers under the old Covenant had only Temp●ral Promises and That the Vniversal Obedience performed to the Commands of God and Christ was the saving Faith and That Christ rose again only by the Power of the Father and not his own and That justifying Faith is not the pure gift of God but may be acquired by mens natural Abilities and That Faith cannot believe any thing contrary to or above reason and That there is no Original Sin and That Christ hath not the same body now in glory in which he suffered and rose again and That the Saints shall not have the same body in Heaven that they had on Earth and That Christ was not Lord or King before his Resurrection or Priest before his Ascension and That the Sain●s shall not before the day of Iudgment enjoy the Bliss of Heaven and That God doth not certainly know Future Contingences and That there is not any Authority of Fathers or General Councils in determining Matters of Faith and That Christ before his death had not any Dominio● over the Angels and That Christ by dying made not satisfaction for us and 't is possible that such Religionary Tenets as these which are far from being de lanâ caprinâ and are contrary to the Articles of our Church may not be extirpated tho yet I believe there will never be any Fermentation in our Church or State produced here by them if in course of time any of them should happen to be the Sentiments of any of our Princes and much less that any Prince if so opining would consute others as Hereticks with Fire and Sword and as Calvin co●futed Servetus There was likewise in our Metropolis another Independant Church of which Mr. Iohn Goodwin was the Pastor and by which Church the Tenets of Armini●s were received and which tho they have ceased to ferment the State yet the opinions of men equally pious and learned will in all likelihood be always different about the same and as to these Tenets the Questions are not such as are called Questiones Domitianae or of catching of Flies But there is a sort of Questions that is little better and that in our busie World will not usurp the time they have done and that is such as are of the Nature of that I have spoke of toward the Close of this Discourse that made the fermentation in a Church of Separatists that went hence to Amsterdam namely Whether Aron's Ephod were blew or Sea-green and tho I have asserted it That mens liberty of professing Religionary Tenets may be reckoned as a part of their Purchace by Christ's Blood yet methinks to make the Son of God leave the Bosom of his ●ather and take a Journey from Heaven to Earth to impress on it right Notions about the lawfulness of signing Children with the Cross or of mens kneeling at the Sacrament or standing at the Creed or bowing at the name of Iesus or of placing the Communion Table in the East or of wearing Surplices Tippets Lawn-sleeves or square Caps or of keeping of Holy-days or singing Psalms to Organs and to resolve the World in some plain points as namely Whether the Soveraign Power may not lawfully enjoyn the observance of the external Circumstances of Divine Worship which every man doth in his own Family or Whether it be not as lawful for the Sovereign Power to enjoyn kneeling at the Sacrament as 't is for private Persons to command their Flocks not to kneel and the resolving who doth most hurt by Christian Liberty either the Magistrate who commanding me to kneel tel●s me the thing is in its own nature indifferent and that he doth not and cannot change the nature of things in themselves or my private Pastor who shall tell me That my not kneeling is necessary to salvation and the resolving the Question Whether I may lawfully ●oyn in a set form of Prayer with a Congregation when 't is plain that another man 's conceived or extempore Prayer is as much a form to me or to another as any printed Prayer can be or the resolving what Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots calls a frivolous Question as made by some Separatists viz. What Warrant have you to use this or that Form of Prayer or to pray upon a Book and to which he answers That it is Warrant sufficient that we are enjoyned to use Prayer Confession of Sin and Supplication for Pardon c. No set Form thereof determined therefore any fit Form warrantable this Form that we

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 l●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 ●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 ●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

well come under the account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to those Opiners hath for the honour of the Church of England's Principles in his 8th Lecture and there de lege paenali well taught us in what Cases Penal Laws oblige in Conscience and shewed that they may so bind where the Legislator did intend to oblige the Subject Ad culpam etiam non solum ad paenam and in that Case saith he Certum est eos teneri ad observandum id quod lege praecipitur nec satisfacere officio si parati sint poenam lege constitutam subire and where he further saith That the mind and intention of the Legislator is chiefly seen in the Proeme of his Law in quo saith he there ut acceptior sit populo lex solet Legislator Consilii sui de eà lege ferendâ causas rationes expo●e●e quàm sit lex iusta quam fuerit tollendis incommodis abusibus necessaria quàm futura sit Reip. utilis There is a particular Principle of moment worthy of the Magistrates Survey that relates to the Gathered Churches and that is a Principle made a necessary ingredient in the Constitution of of those Churches by a Divine of the same Authority among them as Bishop Sa●●erson is in the Church of England and whom I occasionally beforementioned and that is Mr. Iohn Cotton B. D. who in a Pamphlet of his printed at London in the year 1642 Ent●tuled The true Constitution of a particular visible Church proved by Scripture wherein is briefly demonstrated by Questions and Answers what Officers Worship and Government Christ hath ordained in his Church and in the Title-page whereof is this place of Scripture viz. Jer. 50. 5. They shall ask the way to Sion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual COVENANT that shall not be forgotten in p. 1st makes his first Question what is a Church And the Answer is The Church is a mystical Body whereof Christ is the head the Members and Saints called out of the World and united together in one Congregation by an holy COVENANT to Worship the Lord and to Edifie one another in all his holy Ordinances And in another Book of his printed at London in the year 1645 called The way of the Churches of Christ in New England his third Proposition is this viz. For the joyning of faithful Christians into the Fellowship and Estate of a Church we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entring of them all together as one man into an holy COVENANT with himself to take the Lord as the head of the Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People which implies their submitting of themselves to him and one to another in his fear and their walking in professed subjection to all his Ordinances their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness unto Mutual Edification He there partly props up the Obligation of this Church Covenant on the Iewish Oeconomy mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy and other places of the Old Testament The reasonableness of Subjects not entring into Religionary Covenants without the Consent of the Pater patriae may be inferred from the old Testament where in Numbers c. 30 the Parent hath a power given for the controuling of the Childrens Vows not enter'd into by his consent but since these Principles of a new Church Covenant may seem to introduce a new Ecclesiastical Law without the King's privity and consent a thing that if our very Convocation should presume to do would bring them within a Praemunire and since the whole power of reforming and ordering of all matters Ecclesiastical is by the Laws in express words annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and particularly by the 1st of Elizabeth and since that it hath been said that even without an Act of Parliament a new Oath or Covenant cannot be introduced among the King's Subjects and moreover since all the famous Religionary Confessions of the Protestant Churches abroad assert nothing of any such Church Covenant and since Covenants and Associations have lately heard so ill in the Kingdom I think the nature and terms of this Independent Covenant ought to be laid as plain before the Eye of the Government as was the Scotch Presbyterian one Those words of Mr. Cotton of the entring them all together as one man into an holy Covenant carry some thing like the same sound of one and all and tho their thus entring into it to take the Lord as the head of his Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People may be a plausible beginning of this new Church Covenant in nomine Domini yet the following words of submitting themselves to him and to one another in his fear and their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness are words that I think the Magistracy ought to watch and to see that Dissenters have a very sound form of words prescribed to them in this Case if it shall think fit to have the same continued I have found the Assertion of a Church Covenant as Essential to the Form of a true Independent Church in many other of their Books and do suppose that this Covenant being laid as Corner-stone in the building of their Churches by Divine Right it must last as long as Independency it self and of its lasting still I met with an Indication from a Loyal and Learned Official of the Court-Christian who told me that tho several of the Dissenters called Presbyterians have been easily perswaded to repair to the Divines of the Church of England that they were admonished to confer with and had upon Conference with them come to Church and took the Sacrament yet he thought that some of another Class of Dissenters were possessed with a Spirit of incurable Contumacy by reason of their Principles having tied them together to one another by a Covenant And if it shall therefore appear to the Magistrates that they are thus Conference-proof and as I may say Reason-proof by vertue of their Covenant it will then be found that no one M●mber of a gathered Church can turn to ours without the whole Hyena-like turning and perhaps some of the Lords the Bishops may think it hereupon proper humbly to advise his Majesty to null by a Declaration the Obligation of this Covenant as his Royal Father did that of the Presbyterian Covenant In the mean time the Consideration of the Principles of Independecy thus seeming to have cramp'd the Consciences of its followers with a Covenant that is at least unnecessary and must naturally be a troublesom imposition to men of thought and generous Education who love to perform Moral Offices without entring into Covenant or giving Bond so to do may serve to

Coin in infinitum I mean its outward polity and denominations rather then that the Crown it self should be once more so fatally melted down by any of those denominations as formerly And as the Covenanting Divines of Scotland by at last consenting that some things in their Presbytery which whether tolerabiles ineptiae or substantially good I now enquire not should be preserved by Episcopacy's being the Paramount National Church Government have done that which would make it appear ridiculous for them ever again to attempt to replant Presbytery and extirpate Prelacy as formerly so likewise have the most eminent sort of our Presbyterian Divines who were associated with them by desiring since the King's Restoration to submit to Dr. Vsher the Archbishop of Armagh's Form of Episcopacy done the self same thing over and above their being then reordained by Bishops who had before received Orders only from the hands of the Presbytery and especially when it shall be considered that that Form of Episcopacy as described by that Learned and Pious Archbishop Courted them and was refused by them before our Civil War began wherein they were the Trumpeters and before three hundred thousand men were slain in England as Mr. Carew Reynel in his Book called the true English Interest Accounts the number to have been 'T is therefore with the justice of Fate that our old Presbytery too is gone among Pancirolls Res Deperditae and if it could be supposed that there was any Order of Forraigners whose avowed or known design it was by force or restless artifices and retaining Pensioners to revive that Government here in spight of our Laws I shall think the term of hostes with justice applicable to them too But there is another thing beside the Coincidence of some of the Principles of our Presbyterians with Popery that we have now too loud a Call to think of and that is that the great real part of the danger that we now are in of the inundation of Popery and its idolatrous worship is to be imputed to their having broke the Banks of the Regal Power and enforced the Royal Issue for the Safety of their Persons to be exiles abroad in Popish Countries for many years and where they might be in danger of the Poyson of Popery conveyed into them in the Vehicle of the Civilities they received from Popish Princes after they had been so barbarously treated by their Protestant Subjects who after they had by secret whispers calumniated them for being Papists here did in effect by the loud outrage of their Actions bid them go and be Idolaters there When I think of the cruelty in the late Usurpation they shewed to his Majesty in his being thus not led but driven into temptation by his Subjects I am minded of applying to it part of those words in 1 Samuel c. 26. v. 10. of David to Saul If the Lord hath stirred thee up against me let him accept an Offering but if they be the Children of Men cursed be they before the Lord for they have driven me out this day from abiding in the Inheritance of the Lord saying go serve other Gods as to the meaning of which words I shall consult no Commentators among the Critics but shall rather take it from the Assemblies Notes and I may say that in their Comment on it they write their own Commentaries and they thus à propos say I am now driven so as I cannot be present in the Tabernacle to worship God and enjoy those holy Priviledges but am forced to wander from place to place c. saying go serve other Gods that is tho not verbally yet really they have done it and as much as in them lies they have compelled me to Idolatry by forcing me an Exile to fly into idolatrous Countries c. It cannot have escaped the observation of a person so curious as your Lordship that among the many allow'd ways of Punishment among the Iews banishment was not one and the reason thereof is supposed among the Rabbinical writers to be this the Laws of the Iews and their Religion being the same thing to have banished men from their Country and the benefits of its municipal or Civil Law there had been to have banish'd them from their Religion and the means of their salvation and from doing with the Iews were so averse that even the Excommunicate among them were not removed from all parts of the Temple and were admitted there to a peculiar place But this cruelty to Souls unknown even among the stiff-neck'd hard hearted Iews was by such Christians as pretended to the greatest tenderness of Conscience practised toward their Soveraign and that to such a degree that as if they designed that the Lords Annointed the Breath of our Nostrils should be only in the infectious Air of Popery after they had exiled him from his own Protestant Realms they effected by the power of the prevalent Faction in Holland that he and his R. H's and their Adherents should be banish'd thence also nay out of France where the Air was less infected with Popery into one more pestilential I mean into the Dominions of Spain If therefore there is any number of men in these Realms that owns the old Scotch Plat-form or Presbytery and the former Methods to advance it here who shall be excessive in aggravating our danger of Popery I shall think that herein they practise a great deal of Self-denial and do not consult their own rest while they disturb that of the World and are of all men the most obliged to speak softly of that Subject But more then enuf hath been said to argue the paucity of the number of such in England The Bishops Survey of the number of the perverse Opiners in Religion mentions that two or three are called Self-willers professedly and by that number of that Sect for ought I know may be meant so many of the lovers of the old Plat-form and no name can better fit any who would maintain the Garrison of an opinion after their Commanders have slighted it then Self-willers But so much gratitude doth Popery now shew to Presbytery and to those who are call'd Presbyterians that because they magnifie and enlarge the Numbers of the Papists on all occasions the Papists do the like for them And because 't is now the mode of many timid Protestants to value themselves upon their Timidity's and on the fear of the Papists and their numbers being falln upon them as if Christ who commanded his little Flock not to fear could be pleased with his great Flock of Protestants here being in continual fear of Antichrists little one I shall now entertain your Lordship with an Account of the present number of the Papists here and some little historical Glanses about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several conjunctures of time since the Reformation and in every one of which the highest tide of their numbers hath been but introductive to their lowest Ebb. Of all Nations the

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 up●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 Traite●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

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 c●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 th●ught as I could fai●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 Fal●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

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 Excl●sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobri● 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-ha●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 Chillingwor●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 fal● 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