Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
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
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
Loyalty that any Christian who hath taken these Oaths shall think sufficient doth most certainly take the name of Loyalty and Protestancy and of Christianity and even of God in vain and as the Scripture implies that there is a Repentance to be repented of I shall say that such a mans Protestancy is to be protested against And when we consider that the Presbyterian Author of the EXERCITATION beforementioned hath in p. 41. with so much Loyalty and Reason told us in terms That Obedience is owing to Princes without condition of Religion or Iustice on their part performed and the Scripture is clear for an irrespective and in regard of the Rulers Demeanor absolute subjection Exod. 20. 12. 21. 25. Rom. 13. 1 2 c. Tit. 3. 1. 1 Pet. 2. 13. 1 Sam. 24. 6 7. 26. 9 10 11. Jer. 27. 12. 29. 7. Matth. 22. 21. and hath told us in p. 56. That our Oaths put no condition on the Prince but are all absolute and irrespective and run without ifs or ands in like manner as the Obligation of Subjects Allegiance to their Sovereign is irrespective according to Divine Institution methinks it should make any Son of the Church of England to start at the thought of his being out-done in Loyalty and sworn Allegiance by a Covenanting Presbyterian for such that Author was and at the thought of any ones having taken those Oaths relating to the King his Heirs and Successors and afterward interlining the interpretation of them with ifs and ands and at the thought of such an interlineation not appearing as ill in the Court of Conscience as any would do in a Court of Law. But the truth is the Church of England appearing in this late Religionary Fermentation to have so incorporated this Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty into its Constitution beyond any other Church in the World and likewise the Doctrine of Charity and Moderation toward all Christians whether Foreigners or Domesticks whether whole Churches or single Persons as Primate Bramhal's words are that the same doth now as I may say strike the Eyes of all indifferent men and enforce it self on the thoughts of any who do but for Curiosity walk about this Sion and go round about her and tell the Towers thereof I mean do consider its Prayers Homilies Articles Canons and Ecclesiastical Constitutions it hath hereby been necessarily made like the Eagle to renew its youth and to be invigorated as with a new Soul after its Enemies thought it dead or asleep and after Mr. Hooker's shrewd guessing that after the Year 1677. That what followed would be likely to be small joy to them who should behold it For the Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty being Essential to the Peace of Kingdoms and likely to be so more and more to the Worlds end and the Church of England appearing as by consent of Parties to be THE Church that overtowers all others in the Principles for THAT Sort of Loyalty as well as in the august Principles of Charity for all Christians according to the saying of Magnes amoris amor it must naturally attract the love of thoâ—e in other Churches and supposing that any Church or People love themselves and cannot be preserved but by Loyalty Nature will direct the World to a growing love for the Church of England and therefore I am no Visionaire in predicting from natural Causes That what shall follow to the Church of England will be great joy to those who shall behold it to the very end of time And nothing could possibly in my opinion have brought it to this firm State of its Glory but the disloyal Principles and Practices of some of its Competitors and particularly the just and dreadful apprehensions given to considerate men upon some Nominal Protestants and Nominal Property-men having founded Dominion in Grace and yet having reproached the Church of England and its Divines with Popery and invited the Protestant Mobile to make a Schism from it on such an account and printed many Seditious Pamphlets for the Establishing the IF or AND-Loyalty or indeed which is all one an absolute Disloyalty and in such a Conjuncture when it would have been not more pernicious to the particular Souls of the Disloyal than to the Body of the whole Nation and to the State of Christendom Thus through the Divine Omnipotence which can bring good out of evil hath our late Fermentation been made perfective to our Church as well as the Hereditary Monarchy and the Rule of God's governing the World by the Prayers of his Church and Lusts of his Enemies been here exemplified and as the Air that is the Steem of the dull Earth or the Textura halituum terrae as Gassendus calls it is made by nature to be the Vehicle of those Beams of the Sun that dazle our Eyes thus have the Fumes exhaled by such mens Lusts of Disloyalty and Malice that darken'd their own understandings and would have obscured the glory of the Church of England been made instrumental in dispersing its brightness through the World and even in the opening of the Eyes of many to behold it with amazement and that service hath been done our Church thereby which by all the Pens of its Iewel and Hooker and Sanderson could never be effected England that had so much the Carriage and the Trade of the World till the Munster Peace of 48 could bear the Civil War after 41 and breathe under it and flourish after it but as the State of the World abroad and at home now is and likely to be our ALL must depend upon the Principles and Practice of Loyalty and therefore this new Soul I spake of as now animating the Church of England must be immortal and it may well say to it self under any Prince that can come Soul take thy ease thou hast Loyalty and the Principles of it laid up for many years and England did not before 48 more excel other Realms in Trade than its Church doth now other Churches in absolute and irrespective Loyalty That great Iudge of Churches and their Principles Arch-Bishop Laud having in p. 36. of his famous Star-Chamber Speech remarked the dangerous Consequence of avowing That the Popish Religâ—ion is Rebellion saith That some Principles of theirs teach Rebellion is apparently true c. and I shall add that some Principles of our late Covenanting Dissenteâ—s have taught it is apparently true and for such of the latter who believed and practised these Principles to reproach any Papists with Disâ—oyalty is as apparently ridiculous as was Mr. Prynn's writing two Voluminous Tractates of The Disloyalty of Papists at the time when he was making so great a Figure in the late Rebellion But however suitably to the Moral Offices urged by Ames of not condemning whole Parties of men on the account of the guilt of some Persons I have under this Conclusion cited the loyal Principles of some Recusants of all sorts pertinent to my Scope and because the irrespective Loyalty
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
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
many thousand years troubled so many Millions of Mankind seems lately to be retired to its Eternal Rest and the sullen World seems resolved to hear and read no more of it and none I believe will get or lose any secular profit by his Sentiments in that Controversie and 't is probable that the Controvertible part of Popery may thus go silently out of the Company of People in this Kingdom and without so much as troubling us by taking a formal leave give rest to it self and us and that none will in this our World get or lose by that part of Popery that can properly claim to be call'd a Religion I have usually in this Discourse called it an Hypothesis or Supposition which I chose rather to do then to call the entire Body of it a Religion which I know that it is not and cannot be and that Popery and the former Scotch Presbytery and Socinianism are not in the gross called Religions otherwise then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I will not quarrel with Papists for calling some Points before mentioned wherein Disputants will be still playing with the Dye of Controversie by the Name of Religion and I will give tho not grant them my Consent for applying that Name to the believing that the Pope is the Principium Vnitatis and there are not many Propositions in the Chronologia haeresium sectarum schismatum and in the Haeresiographis that many have Publish'd that I would think a man to have laesa principia that did call Tenets of Religion and there are in Popery many things enjoyn'd that tho I look on as needless impositions and new inventions for the diverting the Melancholy I shall not gainsay any one that shall call Religion and represent them as of Apostolical Practice tho the birth of many of them was reverâ but of yesterday And thus let the mixing of Water with Wine in the Euchaâ—ist and the fasting on Friday Pilgrimages to the Sepulchres of Martyrs the Priests using a low voice in Consecration and let the Canonization of Saints the institution of Saturday Mass in honour of the Virgin Mary the invention of the Red Hatts and Scarlet Cloaks worn by Cardinals the Institution of the year of Jubily the Popes every year Consecrating a Rose of Gold the sound of the Bell at the hour of Mid day the Rosary of the Virgin Mary and likewise the Baptization of Bells be all baptised with the name of Religion and many Notions and Practices likewise more peculiar to Popery And tho the denomination of things is from the better part as Mines are said to be of Lead or Silver c. from the quantity of the Metal there most valuable and so I can be content to call a Complication of Tenets of which some are erroneous by the name of a Religion yet in any Systeme of Religion or Confession that may happen to appear in the World more pure and exact then the Augustane or the Helvetian or the Saxonic the Gallic or English or Belgic or Bohemian and more accommodate to the true sense of the Councils and Fathers and the best Expositors then the former and containing more satisfactory explanations about the propagation and entrance of Original Sin the Nature Order and Offices of Angels and of the Consistency both of Gods immutable Decrces with the Contingency of second Causes and of the Efficacy of God's Grace with the freedom of Mans Will and of the Time Place and Antecedents of the last Judgment one single Notion relating but to a Commandment of the second Table incorporated with such a Confession of Faith would make the applying the Name of Religion to the whole to be very ridiculous and nauseous and make it more fit in the gross to be called a Confession of Faction or of Conspiracy against Mankind and any one will think so if that one Article should be thus inserted And we further think it commendable at some Seasons of the year to kill the next man we shall meet And yet as harshly as this sounds there is that in Popery and likewise in the Doctrine of the Resistance of Princes contrary to the Municipal Laws that doth hear worse and that is tho not ajustification of the killing the next man to be met with the effect of which would yet make men excite their natural Courage and fortifie it with skill and be provided with good Arms whereby to be always ready to defend their Country just as the Spartan Law of punishing no man for Theft that was not taken in the Fact made men more vigilant in the Custody of their Goods namely the killing Multitudes of the best men that can be culled and singled out of the faex of Mankind and such of whom the World is not worthy in so much that we are told by Alsted in his Chronologia testium veritatis that ab Anno 1540 usque ad Annum 1580 Novies centena millia Christianorum in Bâ—lgio Gallia Anglia Italia Hispania Religionis Causa trucidata sunt atque inter eos fuerunt 235 Barones 148 Comites 39 Principes and the killing of Ten thousand Subjects next met would not be so destructive to Kingdoms as the killing of one King for according to the computation and the Style of the Scripture he is worth Ten Thousand of us My Lord Arch-bishop Laud in his Famous Speech in the Star-Chamber p. 32 33 c. Answers some Mens Charge of Innovation against our Liturgy as to the Prayers set forth for the 5th of November and ordered they say to be read by Act of Parliament where one passage was Cut off those workers of Iniquity whose Religion is Rebellion and in the Book Printed 1635. 't is thus alter'd Cut off those workers who turn Religion into Rebellion His Grace in the p. 36. there weighs the Consequences of avowing that the Popish Religion is Rebellion and in the next p. saith That if you make their Religion to be Rebellion then you make their Religion and their Rebellion to be all one But in my poor opinion several of the great Points of their Religion so called as even transubstantiation it self and many others are not to be term'd Rebellion but other points before mentioned can properly be term'd nothing else and when all those Tenets are so complicated by them that they do all conjoyntly integrate their Religion then is there pretended Religion when really believed and practised a real Rebellion The best advice therefore that I can give to a Papist is that of the old Philosopher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 simplifica te ipsum and that of a Iewish Rabbi Comede dactylos projice for as â—uritiem The World is a weary of seeing any men joyn what God and Nature have parted and of their projecting a Communion between Christ and Belial and making Christ the Minister of Sin as the Scripture expression is A great Master of Mechanics and of all sorts of refined Learning some years since brought to light
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
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
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
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
to belong to the Pope's Authority and their own School Doctors are at irreconcileable odds and jarrs about them He had then his Eye on the Lateran Council as appears by the other words there in the Margent viz. Touching the PRETENDED Council of LATERAN See Plat. in vitâ Innocen 3. and by which Council the King knew that all except two or three of those Conclusions were concluded and defined If therefore many of the poor petty School-Doctors were so searless of the Papal Thunder as in Cases when they were perhaps unconcerned to impeach the Papal Usurpation there was no cause of apprehension in that our wise Monarch that any of his High-born Heirs and Successors would ever favour the Usurpations of that Authority When Queen Elizabeth was so firmly satisfied concerning the Loyalty of the Roman Catholick Lords Temporal and of their great Quota in the balance of the Kingdom securing their abhorrence of all Papal Usurpations as not to impose the Oath of Supremacy on them tho yet She took care to have it imposed on the Popish Bishops can we imagine that the great Interest of an Heir of the Crown in the Hereditary Monarchy did not give a Plerophoâ—y of satisfaction to that Great Monarch that such an Heir would never permit any Usurpation to prejudice his Crown Imperial Moreover if in the Case of the device of an Inheritance by Will on the Condition of the Legatees not holding this or that Philosophical or Religionary Tenet the absurdity of such Condition would not frustrate the device but would be taken as Pro non adjectâ and that thus in that known Case in the Digest viz. Of an Heir made on an absurd Condition namely On Condition he should throw the Testators ashes into the Sea the Heir was rather to be commended than any way questioned who forbore to do so how can we think in the Inheritance of the Crown which is from God and by inherent Birth-right any such supposed absurd Condition of a Prince's not believing this or that Speculative Religionary Tenet and for his professing of which he hath a dear bought Liberty by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the New Testament of Iesus Christ should be intended to operate to his prejudice But that I may in a word perimere litem about that Kings never intending the least prejudice to the Succession by any of his Successors being Roman Catholicks I shall observe that that Kâ—ng who was so great and skillful an Agonist for the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England did yet in the Articles of the proposed Match with Spain and afterwards with that of France agree that the Children of such Marriage should no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience or Religion and that their Title to the Crown should not be prejudiced in Case it should please God they should prove Roman Catholicks and that the Laws against Catholicks should not in the least touch them And that the sense of the Government then was likewise to that effect avowedly declared is manifest from the Passages of those times and the needless quarrel therefore that our late Excluders would have exposed us to with France was a thing worthy their considering But enough of this Conclusion if not too much for where the Tide of the Words of any Oath runs strong and clear we need not to regard the Wind of any Law-givers intention however yet I have made it appear for the redundant satisfaction of the scrupulous that while they have embarqued their Consciences in thâ—se Oaths they have had such Wind and Tide both together on their side and that therefore any Storms which the Takers of these Oaths relating to the Lineal Succession of the Crown may have raised either in their Consciences or the State must be supposed to be very unnatural Having thus in the foregoing Conclusions asserted and proved the Obligation relating to the Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I shall briefly answer such objections thereunto or rather Scruples for they deserve not the name of Objections as some noisy Nominal Protestants have troubled themselves and others with and so end this Casuistical Discussion The first Objection or Scruple then I shall take notice of that some have raised against the Obligation of these Oaths as above asserted is that they were made in relation to Papists only and were enjoyned to be taken for the discovery of those that were suspected to be so As to which it will be sufficient to say that it is most plain that all Persons who have taken these or any other lawful Oaths are bound by Deeds to fullfil what they have sworn in Words and it is an absurd thing to doubt whether the Law intended that those Persons should observe the Oaths whom it hath enjoyned to take them And to this purpose we are well taught by Bishop Sanderson in his 6th Lecture of Oaths That tho Papal Vsurpation was the cause of the Oath of Supremacy the arrogating to himself the exercise of Supreme Iurisdiction in spiritualibus throughout this Kingdom yet the Oath is Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude the reà son is that the intention of a Law is general to provide against all Future inconveniences of the like kind or nature c. I refer the Reader to him there at large By the Measures of that Bishop as to the Oath of Supremacy we likewise may direct our selves in the Oath of Allegiance being Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude tho that Oath was made by occasion of the Gun-powder Treason And as to the intent of the Oath of Supremacy King Iames tells us in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 108. That it was to prop up the Power of Christian Kings as Custodes utrâ—usque tabâ—ae by commanding Obedience to be given to the word of God and by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword c. by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making Decorum to be observed in every thing and Estaâ—lishing Orders to be observed in all indifferent things c. whereby his Majesty doth clearly denote the intention of that Oath to have been to extend against any Non-Conformists continuing their Schism in the Church And as to the Oath of Allegiance being intended against Protestants as well as Papists making a Faction in the State the Book called God and the King compiled and printed by King Iames's Authority sufficiently shews throughout by the Notification of the particular Moral Offices required by the Oath of Allegiance and likewise by his Subjects natural Allegiance and which Moral Offices are there strengthened with passages out of the Scriptures and Fathers and the Doctrine of absolute Loyalty is there well Established and likewise the Doctrine of Resistance