defensive arms to hurtful animals by whom they often Suffered and sometimes by their very Shepherds who in Sheering them would cut their Skins Apollo told them that no Beasts were so much the Favorites of him and of men as they for that whereas others with great anxiety were forced in the Night the time of rest and sleep to seek their Food that they could not do with safety in the day Men the Lords of the Earth bought at dear rates pasture grounds for Sheep and that tho men did make Nets feed Dogs and lay snares for hurtful Beasts they employed Shepherds and Dogs to guard Sheep and that no Shepherds could deal ill with their Flocks without being chiefly cruel to themselves and that therefore their security lay in not being able to fright their Shepherds Thus every one is naturally abhorr'd who attacks a Naked man and from such a one Lions themselves either through fear or generosity have made their Retreat The holy Writ affords us a memorable Instance of the Divine displeasure in the 38 th of Ezekiels Prophesie against Gog and Magog who are there branded as the Invaders of a defensless City 'T is there mention'd in v. 10 th and 11 th Thus saith the Lord God it shall also come to pass that at the same time shall things come into thy mind and thou shalt think an evil thought and v. 11 th And thou shalt say I will go up to the Land of unwalled Villages I will go to them that are at rest that dwell safely all of them dwelling without walls and having neither Bars nor Gates and in v. 12 th to take a spoil and to take a prey to turn thy hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited and upon the people that are gather'd out of the Nations which have gotten Cattel and goods that dwell in the MIDST or navel of the land But it then follows v. 14. Therefore Son of man Prophecy and say unto Gog Thus saith the Lord God in that day when my people of Israel dwells safely shalt thou not know it that is thou shalt know it to thy sorrow and by thy bitter experience of my wrath what it is to disturb my harmless and quiet people in the World. The Comparing of the following 16 th and 18 th v. shew this to be the meaning of v. 14 th And I believe if any of the people of Gog and Magog were allowed by the Law to live apart by themselves they might in any defenceless City be as secure from danger or fear of the Protestant Israel as they pleased It hath been well observed by a great Enquirer into humane Nature That a restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death is a general inclination of all mankind and the cause of this is not alwaies that a man hopes for a more intensive delight then he has already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present without the acquisition of more And from hence it is that Kings whose power is greatest turn their endeavours to the Assuring it at home by Laws or abroad by Warrs But as much as it is the inclination of the unthinking or brutish part of Mankind that power should be like the Crocodile alwaies growing the soberer few do know that power will destroy it self if it shall be still ascending and hath not a Center wherein to rest and be quiet just as fire would perish in nature and destroy it self if there were not an Element allow'd it wherein to leave burning And that therefore Augustus wisely designed a Law de cohibendis imperii finibus And that the experience of Antient and Modern times hath taught the teachable part of mankind That great Empires have sunk under their weight and have lost the length of their power by the widening it and that Kings whose power is greatest as was said sometimes turn their endeavours to the Assureing it at home by Laws which by giving it some bound are like letters about the edges of our coyn Decus tutamen to it the which makes it so Sacred that 't would be both Treasonable and Ridiculous to clip it and that as the Bees by their King have given the world an instance in Nature of Kingly power so they have likewise another of Kings governing by the power of Laws 'T is a common observation That tho Bees are little angry fighting Creatures upon occasion and leave their stings in the wounds they make Rex tamen apum sine aculeo est the King of the Bees is without any sting and the curious work of the Hive goes on with a great deal of Geometry and idle Drones are thence as it were legally expel'd who would there invade property Nor need the King of the Bees say the Naturalists have a sting for the whole Hive defends and guards him as thinking that they are all to perish if their King be destroyed And this would be the case of the Papists if they would be content so to part with the sting of their Power that it could not hurt either King or Kingdom and might not come to lose it self by so doing they would have the Posse of every County to defend them they would have the Laws and the whole Hive of English men to guard them the very Anger of the Protestants would be a defensive Wall of Fire round about them 'T is true that wild Animals are by their constant fears of danger habituated to more cunning then Tame ones of the same species but all their little cunning renders them not so safe as the great wisdom protection of the Law doth the other and ranging and out-lying Deer thrive not so well as those that are in the Forrests And here it falls in my way to observe that the Kings cautioning by the Law of the Forrests that the Mastiffs shall have the Power took from them of hurting the Deer may well insinuate into us the reason and equity of all our Laws that hinder its being in the power of a man to be a Wolf to another and of the Power inherent by the Law of Nature in all Soveraign Princes to restrain any undue Power of Subjects from violating the Public peace As the Law of God and Nature command both Iustice and Mercy to be shewn to Beasts so doth the Law of England provide that any mans person and Estate should be seized into the Kings hands in case of some wild cruelty to his Beasts for he would appear in the eye of the Law an Idiot or a Lunatic that should put his Horses or Asses to the Sword. That which I mention'd of the Laws providing that the Mastiffs of any Inhabitants in Forrests shall not have Power to hurt the Deer is called by the Forrest Law Lawing of Mastiffs or the Expeditating them that is the three Claws of their Fore-foot to the Skin
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
Primier Ministres adorers who are always pleasing or troubling him with their sacrifices do all with sudden confusion leave him when he begins thus to fall as if Thunder-struck from Heaven We find in Rushworth that Iune the 13 th 4 Caroli it was ordered upon the Question That the excessive power of the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of the Evils and Dangers to the King and Kingdom And we may well suppose that if a Parliament doth still as one man set themselves against a Monopolist but of one little pedling commodity that they will look on a Chief Minister as one that would or in effect doth monopolize the Beams of the Sun I mean the Kings Eye and as one that alone hath the Kings Ear and as one that is the great forestaller of the Court-market of preferments And happy it is for a Chief Minister that the way of Parliamentary Impeachment hath been in such antient usage for that rids the people of the outrage of that Minister and that Minister of the outrage of the people Our Stories speak How barbarously Cruel the brutish Rabble was to Dr. Lamb called the Duke's Conjurer and the reason why the people hate those they call Conjurers so much is because they think such have a power to hurt their Children or Cattel and the same reason makes them hate one that they look on as a Kings Conjurer who they think can hurt their Property and one who on occasion can raise up Domestick and Foraign Devils to molest them and especially if he cannot lay those Devils when he has raised them and who can if he will put the People to charge and to the danger of starving to feed his familiar spirits When once the people find by any mans power the fence of the Law begun to be broken down they will go in at the gap and 't is nothing but the Law that secures a chief Minister and them against one another St. Austin therefore doth rationally in his De Civitate Dei charge the miserable condition of the Romans on the contempt and breach of their Laws and saith he people were promiscuously put to death not by Judgment of Magistrates but by Tumults Neque enim Legibus ordine potestatum sed turbis animorumque Conflictibus Nobiles ignobilesque necabantur Your Lordship therefore when you had been a repairer of the breaches of the Nation and of the Law therein and in the Scripture expression a restorer of paths to dwell in as easily and unconcern'd gave up the great depositâ—m of power the King and Kingdom entrusted you with as ever you restored the least to a private person and have ever since among the Councellors of your Prince both endeavoured to make your Country safe by giving Counsel against any Neighbour Nations being too powerful and to make your self secure by your not grasping more power than you saw in the hands of each of your honourable Colleagues as well knowing that any single Minister that shall here set up to be a Dispenser of the Soveraign Power had need either still wear a Coat of Male and an Iron Brest-plate or bind the whole Kingdom to the Peace Your Lordship can hardly look into antient History without meeting Examples of the People like the Leviathan playing in the Ocean of their power and spouting out their censures both with fury and wantonness when they are dooming the great You know the Lacedemonians did reprimand their Lycâ—rgus because he went with his head stooping the Thebans accused their Paniculus for his much spitting and the Athenians Simonides because he spoke too loud the Carthaginians Hannibal because he went loose in his garments the Romans Scipio because he did snore in his sleep the Vticenses Cato for his eating with both Jawes the Syllani Iulius Caesar for wearing his girdle carelessly the Romans were angry with Pompey for scratching himself but with one finger and likewise for wearing a garter wrought with Silver and Gold on one leg saying that he wore such a Diadem about his foot as Kings do on their heads though yet it seems the only cause of his wearing it was to hide a Sore place there And in these above-mentioned cases we are not to think that those Ancient and wise people who thought the rest of the world barbarous could censure those persons so barbarously for those sensless reasons but out of a hatred to the persons Censured were resolved to strike at the first thing they met how innocent soever in it self in persons they thought they had reason to represent odious A late Great Man who in a Public Speech in Parliament render'd the English tongue as having the Monopoly of the term good Nature found that they had not engrost the thing when they imagined that his Ministry Monopolized much of the Regal power And another eminent person afterward a Minister to His Majesty Suffered as a favourer of the French at whose imprisonment I have heard that the Lovâ—re rang with as much joy and triumph as if they had carried the point in a great fight at Land or Sea and he likewise suffered obloquy as if concern'd in the infamous murder of Sr. Edmond Godfrey from which he was certainly as free as from having killed Iulius Caesar And how far the embroider'd garter about his leg made him like Pompey Envyed I know not But as I said 't is a chief Ministers power the people of England strike at who may not be unfitly resembled to Alexanders Bucephalus that would let none but Alexander ride him nor could Alexander himselfe do it till by holding him against the Sun he kept him from being frighted with the sight of his Shadow And when one Subject seems to be the representative Shadow of the body of the whole people the Sight of him frights them so as to make them uneasie to be ruled And therefore I think his Majesty did rationally provide for the public Security when he signified His pleasure in a Speech in a late Parliament about not Ruling us by a single Ministry I should not wonder if your Lordship were called a Papist if you had been the possessor of any such power that name being now the angriest the people can throw at any one as it was before the late Warres when Archbishop Laud who had writ so well and so much against the Papists fell under the weight of that name But really by the power of that chief Ministry he had in the State of England after the death of the Duke of Buckingham And at that time the currant definitions of a Papist and of one who enjoyed Arbitrary Power were the same And the things made conveâ—â—â—ble or Devils dancing in the same Circle And so likewise the Vouge at this time obtains among the populace who cannot see through the hard words and things in definitions and if you ask them what is a Papist they will tell you he is one that is for Arbitrary Power and asking them what is one that
the City of London was burnt in the Year 1666 by the Papists designing thereby to introduce Arbitrary Power and Popery into this Kingdom they will not think it strange that they should not be permitted to live in any of our Cities again till they have shew'd how orderly they can live in one of their own And therefore I think we may without breach of Civility or at least violation of justice apply to them some part of the words which I find quoted by Dr. Bramhall Lord Bishop of Derry in his just vindication of the Church of England out of Gers. part 4. Ser. de pace unit Graec. as the farewell Speech to the Bishop of Rome when the Graecian and all other Eastern Churches parted from him whom they acknowledged only as a Patriarch Namely We acknowledg your Power we cannot satisfie your Covetousness live by your selves How it is in the case of the People of Switzerland Papists and Protestants living apart by themselves in several Cantons cannot be unknown to your Lordship Nor that the Protestants and Papists when they there made their League at first joyntly to maintain their Liberties against the House of Austria then agreed upon this also That if any of the Natives living in the Cantons of either side should change their Religion that then they should be permitted respectively to sell their goods and transplant themselves to the Canton whose Religion they embraced But I shall tell your Lordship That of late the Popish Canton Switz did break this agreement and would not suffer some of their Native Inhabitants to partake of this freedom and did confiscate the goods of some Families that changed their Religion and at the instigation of the Fryars and Iesuits they condemned some of them to death and others to the Gallyes which was the cause of a Commotion among them The Gentleman of Ireland who discourst somewhat to me of the Transplantation of the Irish Papists told me it was into the Province of Connaught and think into the In-land parts of that Countrey for to have trusted them to live in Maritine Towns there whereby they might have let in an invading Popish or other Forrainer were to have trusted them with the power of the Keys of the Kingdom And he further told me That the transplantation was managed with much satisfactory tenderness to those Papists and that as to English and Irish it had partly the nature of a bargain that gave content on both sides and secured them against each other after all the mutual exasperations that had passed and when 't was fresh in the memory of both English and Irish that 't was the promiscuous and scatter'd dwelling of the English among the Irish before the Rebellion that tempted the Irish to butcher them and made the English Sheep for the Slaughter and when it was not likewise forgot that in former Wars the partition or distinction of the English Pale did secure the English inhabiting within its district I askt the Gentleman if they were not stinted to a certain number of Priests and care taken that none of them should be Iesuits and that the chief Governour of the Countrey should know their Names and whether any Priests Natives of that Country were allow'd them as to which enquiries he did not fully satisfie me but I supposed that since all Religions have a Priest-hood that somewhat of that kind was allowed them and that since the Order of the Iesuits was invented in the Year 1540. by the Pope as a Poysonous Stumm to put a new fermentation into the Romish Ecclesiastical Rites and Discipline which were almost dead with age and like vina vetustate edentula and quite dispirited with the Thunder of the Doctrine of Luther and the lightning of Learning and Knowledg then flying through the World and that that Order of the Iesuits was as it were a Court erected to begin with execution and to confute gainsayers by cutting their Throats No Iesuits were permitted to officiate among those transplanted Papists and considering that the Priests Natives of Ireland were the known fomenters of that Rebellion that both English and Irish might rather consent to some Secular Priests bred in Holland or France being employed in the New Irish Colony and who had no knowledg of the Intrigues of the several Interests in that Country and would not by kindred or relation to any of the great Families there perhaps be tempted into Factions I have heard from that Gentleman of Mr. Peter Walsh a Fryar in Ireland and of his endeavours in the Art of Cicuration of some of the Romish Clergy Layety who there were Wolfes and that without Sheeps cloathing and reclaiming them to Principles and Practices consistent with civil society and what proficiency his Disciples have made therein I being a stranger to that Kingdom know not but according to that saying bonus est quem Nero odit have the better opinion of him for those endeavours of his having been Crown'd with the Popes Excommunications It was a noble saying I have heard of one of the House of Peers this last Parliament I hate not the persons of any Papists but I am an enemy to Popery In like manner I should be glad that all the Mercy were shewn them that were not Cruelty to the Public but they are to excuse any one that will not forget that when they begun the last outragious Rebellion in Ireland which no words need or can aggravate they enjoy'd there equal Priviledges with the English if not greater the Lawyers were Irish most of the Judges Irish and the Major part of the Parliament Irish and in all disputes between English and Irish the Irish were sure of the Favour and any one would be inexcusable to this Kingdom who forgot that King Iames's unparalel'd kindness to his Popish Subjects in suspending the execution of Penal Laws against them in sparing their purses in remitting the arrears of what they owed Queen Elizabeth for pecuniary penalties nay giving into their hands what money of theirs as his due was in the Exchequer was but the â—rologue to their intended Tragedy on the Fifth of November And what provocations they had to be ill wishers to the Life and Crown of the last King as appeared by the detection forementioned presented to His Majesty by Arch-Bishop Laud and a Charge given against them in Print by the Reverend Dr. Peter Du Moulin which he offer'd to make good and ad quod non fuit responsum let any one Judg who further does look on the Parliaments Addresses in Rushworths Collections And unless some of them had loved ingratitude for ingratitudes sake they would never have enter'd into that Conspiracy against his now Majesty whose Life is the delight of all Mankind but theirs And yet since according to that expression that God is not the God of the Iews only but also of the Gentiles so it being true that the King is King of the Papists as well as Protestants King of
here and of their strenuous endeavours to free the Kingdom from it had nothing in their Famous 19 Propositions to bar the right of any Heir to the Crown for the being a Papist The exact Collections afford many instances of their declaring That they would provide for the greatness of his Majesty and his Royal Posterity in future times and in which there was no Proviso respecting any Religionary Tenets they should profess It appears in Mr. Pryns memorable Speech in that House of Commons on Monday the 4th of December 1648. touching the Kings answers to the Propositions of both Houses whether they were satisfactory or not in the Isle of Wight Treaty that that Parliament that was concern'd for the saving of their own Credit as well as the Souls of the People to make that Treaty to end with the extermination of Popery from England did not in the application of the most proper means for that purpose judge the debarring any Popish Prince here from his Inheritance of the Crown any proper or necessary one For in p. 58. of that Speech ' t is said As to any danger to our Church from Religion there is as good Security and Provision granted us by the King as we did or could desire even in our own terms First He hath fully consented to pass an Act for the more effectual disabling of Iesuites Papists and Popish Recusants from disturbing the State and deluding the Laws and for the prescribing of a new Oath for the more speedy discovery and Conviction of Recusants Secondly To an Act of Parliament for the Education of the Children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant Religion Thirdly To an Act for the due Levying the Penalties against Recusants and disposing of them as both Houses shall appoint Fourthly To an Act whereby the practices of the Papists against the State may be prevented the Laws against them duely executed and a stricter Course taken to prevent the saying or hearing of Mass in the Court or any other part of the Kingdom whereby it is made Treason for any Priests to say Mass in the Court or Queens own Chappel Fifthly To an Act for abolishing all Innovations Popish Superstitions Ceremonies Altars Rayles Crucifixes Images Pictures Copes Crosses Surplices Vestments bowings at the name of Jesus or toward the Altar c. By all which Acts added to our former Laws against Recusants I dare affirm we have far better Provision and Security against Papists Iesuites Popish Recusants c for our Churches and Religions Safety and States too then any Protestant Church State and Kingdom whatsoever so as we need not fear any future danger from Papists or Popery if we be careful to see those Concessions duely put in Execution when turned into Acts and our former Laws And afterward in that Speech p. 110. he shews how dear the Kings consenting to pass five such Acts cost him for saith he The Iesuites understanding that the King beyond and contrary to their expectation hath granted all or most of our propositions in the Isle of Wight and fully condescended to five new Bills for the Extirpation of Mass Popery and Popish Innovations â—ut of his Dominions and putting all Laws in Execution against them and for a speedier Discovery and Conviction of them then formerly c are so inraged with the King and so inexorably incensed against him as I am credibly informed that now they are mad against him and thirst for nothing but his Blood. Mr. Pryn had mentioned in that Speech before that some Jesuites and Jesuited Agitators had engaged the Army to dissolve that Treaty with the King and 't is no wonder if that prying Order who knew the Kings Aversion to Popery as well as the most stupid of his Enemies did when they saw him consenting to pass five such Bills was the more brisk in executing its Designs against him and that as Mr. Pryn saith in his perfect Narrative a Priest present at the Kings death flourished his Sword with an exclamation That now the greatest Enemy we had in the World was gone But this by the way I had not mentioned how dear the consenting to those Bills that would have been so fatal to Popery and have prevented the Phrase of its growth from being used at this time of day but that some persons not vers'd in the passages of those evil days seem to think that there was nothing of Religion to support that Kings Title to Martyrdom but what concern'd his Adhesion to Episcopacy and its Revenue In the very solemn League and Covenant its takers declared they had before their Eyes the honour and happiness of the Kings Majesty and his Posterity And I have seen a printed paper of the Presbyterian Divines of one of the Associations in the late times wherein they do expresly affirm and argue it that any of the Royal Posterity here ought not to be debarr'd from their Hereditary Right to the Crown by being either Papists or Idolaters If we look so far back as the great Conjuncture in the beginning of King Iames ' s Reign namely in the year 1605. we shall find that there was then a Paper before mentioned published in Print called a Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by the Nonconforming Ministers which were suspended or deprived that year and that the first Paragraph or Tenet in that Protestation is this We hold and maintain the same Authority and Supremacy in all Causes and over all Persons Civil and Ecclesiastical granted by Statute to Queen Elizabeth and expressed and declared in the Book of Advertisements and Injunctions and in Master Bilson against the Iesuites to be due in full and ample manner without any limitation or qualification to the King and his Heirs and Successors for ever c. And the 4 th Paragraph in that Protestation part whereof I have before recited is viz. We hold that though the Kings of this Realm were no Members of the Church but very Infidels yea and Persecutors of the Truth that yet those Churches that shall be gathered together within these Dominions ought to acknowledge and yield the same Supremacy to them And that the same is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it And in the 18 th Paragraph they say That if the King subjecting himself to Spiritual Guides and Governors shall afterward refuse to be governed and guided by them according to the Word of God and living in notorious sin without repentance shall willfully contemn and despise all their Holy and Religious Censures that then these Governors are to refuse to Administer the Holy Things of God to him and to leave him to himself ond to the secret Iudgment of God and wholy to resign and give over that spiritual Charge and Tuition over him which by calling from God and the King they did undertake And more then this they may not do And after all this we
verò muneribus honorat amplissimis augustissimis in toto regno alibi tum bello tum pace c. Quartò consilium suum è puris putis haereticis stabilit c. So that after he had with St. Peter denied his Lord the followers of St. Peter's pretended Successor call'd him in effect a Galilean and said that the Speech of his Actions bewrayed him and after his absolution he continued in effect what the Pope styled him in his Bull of Excommunication filius â—rae and after as a Prodigal having fed among heretical Swine he returned to his Romish Ghostly Fathers house and had cryed peccavi and abjured and his Father had compassion on him he experimented the contrary to for this my Son was dead and is alive again and himself was the fatted Calf that was slain and so much wantonness was shewed by the contrivers of his dire fate that Gassendus in his life of Peiresk Book 2 d shews how in the beginning of the Year 1610. An Almanack or yearly Prognostication was brought out of Spain in which the Accidents of Harry the 4ths death were foretold and that it was sent to his Majesty to read who slighted it as Gassandus did likewise all judicial Astrology but yet supposed that the figure-flinger might possibly be acquainted with the Plot against that Kings Life and saith sure I am it could not be perfectly conceal'd either in Spain or Italy for even the Kings Ambassadors and particularly the most excellent Johannes Bochartus Lord of Champigny then Agent at Venice had already preadvertised his Majesty thereof and it was sufficiently proved that all the Sea-faring Men of Marseilles who for two Months before came from Spain brought word that there was a report spread abroad in Spain that the King of France was already or should be killed by a Sword or Knife Poor Harry the 4 th He who while a Protestant had Dominion over his own Stars and his Enemies Stars too for they were his Enemies who made him first be call'd Great and their designing to ruine him by embroiling France in Civil Wars tended to the advancement of his Interest and his Glory and the Artifices by which they thought to have chased him out of Guyen brought him into the heart of France and their former by unjustifiable practices urging the King his Predecessor to have prosecuted him with more violence then he had done were the causes of his being reconciled to that King and who then in the most dark and stormy night of his Affairs never wanted that Illumination from above which was like a Star to him and not only a sign of fairer weather but a mark of direction in the foul and which would have furnished his Portraiture in Story with another guess Star than that usually engraved on Coesars Image and which by its blazing seven days ore the Games consercrated to Coesar by Augustus did make him inter Divos and did awe the World as being thought his Soul which vouchsafed from Heaven to visit it with its lustre this Harry the 4 th was at last grown the ludibrium of Star-gazers And if any one shall say that Franciscus de Verona Constantinus the Author of the Apology for Chastel was not a Voucher good enough for the spreading the Belief of the Doctrine that Heretical Princes by their absolution from the Pope are not restored to their Regal Rights let him consult the Great Thuanus and he will find that in his Book 135 and on the Year 1605 where he gives an account of the Gun-powder Treason here he saith that the Conspirators therein Ante omnia conscientiam instruunt eâque instructâ ad facinus audendum obfirmant animum sic autem à Theologis suis disserebatur That Hereticks are yearly excommunicated by the Pope in the bulla coenae and are ipso facto fallen into the punishment of the Law and that thence it followeth that Christian Kings if they fall into Heresy may be deposed and their Subjects released immediately from their Princes Dominion nec jus illud recuperare posse etiamsi ecclesiae reconcilentur Ecclesiam communem omnium parentem cum nemini ad eam redeunti claudere gremium cum dicitur adhibitâ distinctione interpretandum esse modo non it ad damnum periculum ecclesiae Nam id verum esse quoad animam non quoad Regnum Nec solum ad Principes hac labe infectos paenam extendi sed etiam ad eorum filios qui à Regni successione ob vitium paternum pelluntur haeresim quippe lepram morbum haereditarium esse atque ut disertius res exprimatur Regnum amittere qui Romanam Religionem deserit diris illum devoveri nec unquam ipsum aut illius posteros in Regnum restitui quoad animam à solo Pontifice posse absolvi His se rationibus cum satis tutos intus existimarent munimenta externa conjurationi quaerere coeperunt c. ita ad facinus non solum licitum laudabile verum etiam meritorium à Theologis suis auctorati accesserunt They thought it seems that by the Authority of the Doctrines of those Divines they might blow up the King and three Estates with Gun-powder very fairly It is a thing that cannot have escaped your Lordships curious Observation that both the Nonconformists and Papists were sturdy Petitioners to King Iames in the beginning of his Reign that he would be a Fautor to them and their Hypotheses In April in the Year 1603 a Petition was presented to him call'd the humble Petition of the Ministers of the Church of England desiring reformation of certain Ceremonies and Abuses of the Church and there they particularly desire that Ministers may not be urged to subscribe but according to the Law to the Articles of Religion and the Kings Supremacy only and that none migat be excommunicated without the consent of his Pastor and therein they complain of Ministers being suspended silenced disgraced imprisoned for Mens traditions This Petition was commonly called the Millenary Petition the Petitioners averring themselves to be more then a thousand and an animadverting Answer was made to the same by the Vice-Chancellor and Doctors and Proctors and Heads of Houses in the Vniversity of Oxford and printed in the Year 1604. Methinks a Humble Petition with a thousand hands is a kind of Contradictio in adjecto But the Vniversity in their Animadversions on the Petition do observe that the two contrary Factions of Papists and Puritans did shew themselves by their Petitions discontented with the present State and Ecclesiastical Government They mention particulars as parallels wherein their Petitions agreed and resemble them to Samsons Foxes c. I had occasion before to mention to your Lordship the Supplication of the Papists to King James that was Contemporary with that of the Puritans and printed too in the same year and tho I remember not any of our Historians to have given the World an account of that memorable
Petition yet the Impartial Thuanus doth it and in Book 135. and on the Year 1605. going to relate the History of the Gun-powder Treason he saith Ad libellum supplicem pro libertate Conscientiarum à Majorum Religioni addictis i. e. the Papists in proximis Comitiis oblatum à Rege rejectum fama erat alium his proximis quae jam aliquoties dilata erant porrectum iri qui non repulsae ut prior periculum sed concessionis vel ab invito extâ—rquendae necessitatem adjunctam haberet Itaque qui regni negotia sub principe generoso ac minime suspicioso procurabant nihil pejus veriti in eo laborabant ut petitiones iis adjunctam necessitatem eluderent Verum non de gratiâ de quâ desperabatur decimò obtinendâ sed de repulsâ illà vel cum regni exitio quod minime rebantur illi inter conjuratos agebatur And as to the Puritans Petition to King Iames The Resolution of the Lords and likewise of the Iudges assembled in Star-Chamber shortly after doth I think refer to it in the 3d § viz. Whether it was an offence punishable and what punishment they deserved who framed Petitions and Collected a Multitude of Hands thereto to prefer to the King in a publick Cause as the Puritans had done with an intimation to the King that if he denied the Suit many thousands of his Subjects would be discontented where to all the Iustices answered that it was an offence finable at discretion and very near Treason and Felony in the punishment for they tended to the raising of Sedition and Rebellion and discontent among the People to which resolution all the Lords declared that some of the Puritans had raised a false rumour of the King how he intended to grant a toleration to Papists c. And the Lords severally declared how the King was discontented with the said false rumour and had made but the day before a Protestation to them that he never intended and would spend the last drop of Blood before he would do it I remember not in the Millenary Petition any such expression as the insolent intimation that thousands would be discontented if it were not granted but do on the occasion of this ruffianly way of petitioning by Papists and Puritans remember what Alexander ab Alexandro speaks of the Persians who worshipped Fire that they did once in their supplicating their God threaten him that if he would not grant their Request they would throw him into the water I was therefore no imprudent Act of the Nonconforming Divines who had been deprived of their Livings to publish voluntarily such a Protestation of their Tenets as aforesaid after the detection of the Papists Gun powder Treason Plot and by which Act the Government was diverted from putting such a Cautionary Test on their Party as was on the Papists by the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy Certain it is that both the Parties appeared very rude in the manner of their Petitioning In the Decrets where the Text saith that a thing is done Contra fidem Catholicam the gloss explains it to be Contra bonos more 's and so it may be said that both the Petitioners for the Roman Catholick Faith and for the others alledged Catholick Faith were injurious to each by their unmannerly Petitionings as well as to their Prince and their being both such frequent Aggressors against his quiet gave occasion for the Question to vex his Reign viz. Which were the worse of the two or whether they were not equally bad and so many may carelessly render them according to the saying Rustici res secant per medium What Bishop Elmore the Bishop of London thought in such a Case I have said and yet that Bishop as Fuller tells us in the Church History was a Learned Man and a strict and stout Champion for Disciplinâ— and on which account was more mock'd by Mar-Prelate and hated by the Nonconformists then any one And a great Son of the Church and Minister of the State hath judiciously in a publick Speech inculcated the different regard to be had to those who stray from the Flock and those who would destroy it Moreover a great Iustitiary of the Realm in the Tryal of one of the Popish Plotteâ—s took occasion to observe That Popery was ten times worse then the Heathen Idolatry And Dr. Burnet in a printed Sermon having said That in many places Lutherans are no less and in some tbey are more fierce against the Calvinists then against Papists adds like a strange sort of People among our selves that are not ashamed to own a greater aversion to any sort of Dissenters then to the Church of Rome I hope the Authority of that great Divine and excellent Person will in the point of this Comparison help to allay such a mistaken Aversion to some mistaken Dissenters I care not who knows the great deference I have to the judgment of that great Historian of our Reformation and whose History of which as the House of Commons has done right to by one of their Votes so likewise hath the highest Judicatory in England I mean the House of Lords by a late Order of theirs by which the Thanks of that House are given him for the great service done by him to this Kingdom and to the Protestant Religion in writing the History of the Reformation of the Church of England so truly and exactly and that he be desired to proceed to the perfecting what he further intends therein with all convenient speed c. As the words in the Iournal are My reading lately ten small printed Controversial Discourses between two Baronets of Cheshire near of kin to each other in which are many references to Historical Antiquities concerning the Illegitimacy of one Amicia Daughter to one of the Earls of Chester and my observing that one of those Authors blames the other for not better learning the duty to his deceased Grand-mother as his words are then by divulging the shame of her Illigitimacy and saith there is no Precedent in Scripture of any man that did divulge the shame of any person out of whose loyns he did descend except the wicked Ham and that the other Author thinks himself on the account of truth and for its sake to assert her Illegitimacy those many Tracts passed about that Controversy from the Year 1673 to 1676 occasioned my thinking that thus have some Writers that would take it ill perhaps not to be thought legitimate and true Sons of the Church of England took too much pains to prove the Birth of its Reformation to be illegitimate to the great Applause of the Papists and that our Reverend Historian of it did seasonably come in to Aid his Mother Church by publishing the very Records that would secure her from a blush on that account and leave that Mauvaise honte as the French call it to be Enemies and hath appear'd by his very laborious and judicious Writings to be a
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
41 I shall answer him that its weight hath in this present Conjuncture of 81 afforded Loyalty so great a Compensation by that late Act of Parliament there acknowledging and asserting the Right of the Succession c. and which begins thus viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereunto according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood c. that as Historians tell us how in the dark barbarous times many hundreds of years since men repaired from all Countries to Ireland to learn the Liberal Arts and Sciences I shall say that they may now profitably go to Scotland to learn Loyalty and I doubt not but that Kingdom which is so notorious for its mortal or immortal hatred of Popery call it which you will and even of that very part of it which I call the Religionary one of it having thus by the Exterminium of that irreligionary part of it viz. That Dominion is founded in Grace taught us Loyalty in the establishing the Hereditary Lineal Succession may be as instrumental in giving Loyalty in the Body of the People here its temperamentum ad pondus as it was formerly in oppressing us with its weight as a gravamen and be an occasion of blessing our Land with such a joyful Conjuncture of time as ensued after King Iames's Succession as I have before mentioned and to the Consideration of which I shall return England that had formerly by reason of the uncertainty of the Succession being like the Erratica Delos a floating Island and that too in Seas of Blood and did then appear like it afterward fixed and blessed with a Pacifick and Oracular King and as strong a Foundation for the Hereditary Monarchy as could be wished was shortly after in danger of being again unfixed by the Outrage of the Gun-Powder Treason and the Principles that legitimated that practice being really believed and practised and an account of the practice of which Treason we have in the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 2. as likewise of the fiery Principles that animated the Actors to it in Thuanus and in King Iames his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 10. a general reference is made to the violent bloody Maxims that the Powder-Traytors maintained and by occasion whereof after the designed outrage against the Lineal Succession of the Prince and the Hereditary Monarchy being in danger while such bloody Principles and Maxims were not exterminated it was in ordinary prudence requisite to apply the extraordinary Remedy of the Oath of Allegiance to rivet that Fundamental Maxim of the Crown the stronger in Nature viz. That the King never dies And the Addition of those words in the Promissory Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. HIS or THEIR Persons THEIR Crown and Dignity and which words were not in the Oath of Supremacy was a plain indication of the intention of the Law-givers to tye Mens Souls to the Hereditary Monarchy in the Due and Legal Course of Descent And moreover with a prospect to mens having a conscientious regard to the King's Heirs and Successors the Fathers of our Church then probably in the Preface of the Collect in the Common-prayer for the Prince and the King's Children as overjoyed with the sight of King James 's being enriched with a most Royal Progeny as the words in the Act of the Recognition are did cause these words to be inserted Who art the Father of thine Elect and of their SEED The Preface to the Act requiring the Oath of Allegiance hath in it the expression of Loyalty and Allegiance unto the King's Majesty and the CROWN of England and mentions the design of the Gun-powder Treason as tending to the subversion of the whole State and therefore if in the ancient times of Popery and when the Pope was generally revered here as a 13th Apostle upon any emergent Papal Usurpations which gave just cause of apprehending future ones intended and particularly in the Case of the Pope's Mandates or Bulls which were called Gratiae expectativae or provisiones and pretendedly issued out of the Pope's pious care to see a Church provided of a Successor before it needed our Kings did think themselves obliged to provide Statutes against Provisors whereby the Ius patronatus was secured to them and their Subjects and by Statutes of Praemunire did as it were build Forts before the Enemies coming the Premuniment of the Hereditary Monarchy by the Oath of Allegiance was most necessary to prevent any Papal Gratiae expectativae of the Crown and the Popes impious care to provide a Successor to its Hereditary Rights The Premuniment of some Laws by others is no new thing nor yet a new word however some idle Criticks have accounted the word praemunire in our Statutes to be barbarous for Grotius in his De jure belli c. l. 2. c. 5. § 14. speaking of some Laws of the Iews saith In quarum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Hebraei loqâ—untur praemunimentum additae sunt leges caeterae and according to the sense of some taking praemunire for praemonere the constant premonition of Heavens great Monitor called Conscience and which is the pulse of the Soul and like the Pulse is Fidelis nuncius vitae aut mortis to warn men by this Oath to defend the Lineal Succession of the Crown was no less necessary and King Iames's setling the Premonition in the minds of his own Subjects was but naturally previous to his Premonition sent abroad to Foreign Princes and States And how far Harry the 7th's Statute by which no Person who should serve the King for the time being c. should therefore be attainted or impeached might induce the Government to secure the undoubted Rights of Succession by the Oath of Allegiance being framed as it was and rooting our Loyalty thereby the deeper into our Consciences and by the fear of our being justly impeached in the Court of Conscience in omnem eventum if we defended not those Rights of Succession is obvious to Consideration As I have thus in this Conclusion shewed that it was the Law-givers intention particularly in the Oath of Allegiance to oblige us to pay our Allegiance not only to the King but to his Heirs and Successors in the Legal Course of Descent so I might here further Ex superabundanti dilate on such intention being to secure the same without any respect to the Religion of such Heirs and Successors A Prince of such profound Learning and Observation as King Iames could not be ignorant of what hath been since by the Loyal Writers of the Succession so clearly and strongly asserted viz. That the Succession to the Crown is inseparably annext to the Proximity of Blood by the Laws of GOD and NATVRE and That Statute-Laws contrariant to those are null and void and That the Hereditary Monarchy was indisputably founded on inherent Birth-right according to the Style of the Act of Recognition
overthrown and the Scope of the Book is to plant Loyalty throughout the Kingdom and to make the Oath of Allegiance be re vâ—râ a Premuniment in all mens Consciences against Faction and Rebellion The Sect of King Iames's old Enemies in Scotland the Puritans and whom he said he found there more dishonest than the Highlanders and Border Thieves is not named in that Book and he having cleared them from being participants in the Gun-powder Treason did with Justice as well as perhaps with hopes of their emendation after the Tenets of Loyalty that had been then lately published by the English Non-Conformists order that Sect not to be in that Book marked Nigro carbone But he could not but know their former Principles as well as Practices here as exactly as any one and in his Canons here published a Year before the Gun-powder Treason The impugners of the Rites and Ceremonies in the Church of England were variously censured the Authors of Schism in the Church of England were censured by the 9th Canon and the maintainers of Schismaticks by the 10th and by the 27th Schismaticks were not to be admitted to the Communion The maintainers of Conventicles were censured by the 11th and the maintainers of Constitutions made in Câ—nventicles censured by the 12th and it refers to the wicked and Anabaptistical Errors of some who outraged the King's Supremacy and Regal Rights and who did meet and make Rules and Orders in Causes Ecclesiastical without the King's Authority and therefore as the King knew that such Persons who had made Schisms in the Church had thereby made Factions in the State and would make more the Church being necessarily included in the State and would be as dry Tiâ—der ready to take the Fire of Rebellion from such Republican Tenets as were in Parson's Book of the Succession and the Writings of Bellarmine and other Romanists and being justly apprehensive that such Antimonarchical Principles as had infected the Scotch Puritans might in time infect the English ones as well as that the Principles of the Powder-Traitors might infect other Loyal Papists he applied the Oath of Allegiance as a general necessary Antidote to the Consciences of his Subjects to prevent such infection In p. 109. of his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance he cited Bellarmine for the Tenets That Kings have not their Authority nor Office immediately from God and that Kings may be deposed by their People for divers respects and when such Writers did so spitefully with the Papal Power endeavour likewise to bring in the Sea of the People to overwhelm Kings it was time to raise the Bank of that Oath the higher against the same and for the Takers of that Oath to be obliged to bear Faith and True Allegiance to his Majesty his Heirs c. and him and them to defend c. against all Conspiracies c. which shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity by reason or colour of any such Sentence or Declaration or OTHERWISE and to declare that neither the Pope NOR ANY PERSON WHATSOEVER hath Power to absolve them of this Oath When therefore I see any serious man disloyal who hath took the Oath of Allegiance and whom Necessity as we say doth not draw to Turpitude I still attribute much of his disloyalty to his not with intense and recollected thought dwelling on the view of his Moral Obligations in the clear Mirror of that Oath but to his cursory viewing them and as St. Iames's words are like a man beholding his natural face in a Glass but beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straitway forgetteth what manner of man he was How many outragious Acts of Disloyalty after 41 had been avoided if the Law of the Oath had been writ in the hearts of the Takers of it as it ought to have been As for Example since to Prorogue or Dissolve Parliaments was ever a known Right and Privilege belonging to the Crown could any Person who had sworn to defend its Rights and Privileges endeavour to retrench that particular one by the Act for the perpetuating the Parliament of 40 How easie would Princes find their Reigns and Subjects their Consciences if these would think of all the Royal Rights they have sworn to defend and how they are to defend them I have mentioned the great Law of Athens against any ones bearing Office under an Usurpt Power and the terrible Oath for the confirmation of that Law and I have likewise mentioned the Author of the EXERCITATION and Mr. Prynn as asserting the unlawfulness of bearing Office under our late usurp'd Powers by reason of the Oath of Allegiance having before obliged them to the King his Heirs and Successors The Author of the Exercitation doth very appositely to strengthen that his Loyal Assertion cite an excellent passage out of Tully's Epistles ad Atticum viz. of his doubting the lawfulness of his bearing the Office of a Councellor of State in such a Case Ec magnum sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veniendumne sit in Consilium Tyranni si is aliquâ— de re bonâ deliberaturus sit Quare si quid ejusmodi evenerit ut accersamur quid censeas mihi faciendum utique scribito Nihil enim mihi adhuc accidit quod majoris Consilii est And the truth is the great thing that inclineth so many to desire Changes in Governments being the hopes of the Acquest of Offices it was but natural for the Athenian Wisdom to fence with sharp precaution against the lusciousness of Authority under an Usurper and to let every man know as I may say in terrorem that in the day of his eating the forbidden fruit he would die the death by the hand of every man and for the wisdom of the Government in King Iames's time by the effect and necessary Consequences of the Clauses in the Oath of Allegiance to tye mens Consciences from supporting any Vsurpation by bearing Office under it That Law and Oath of Athens were no doubt as almost all other matters of Learning known to King Iames and could he have foreseen how the guest after Offices occasioned the Demagogues to promote the â—ebellion of 41 for 't is known they were then mighty Nimrods after mighty Offices in the State and after what particular ones and how the several Vsurpations supported themselves here afterward through mens supporting themselves by Offices under them and how in this present Fermentation men have been tempted to Faction by hopes of Offices and in pursuit of which men were never generally so wary as iâ— this Conjuncture I am apt to think that in uberâ—orem cautelam for Loyalty and the making men appear perjured even to all of the grossest understandings who should bear Office under any Vsurper and consequently deterring them from projecting to altâ—r the Hereditary Government he would have inserted into the Oath a particular express Clause of not bearing Office here under any other But further to illustrate the intent of the Government
in King Iames's time for making the Oath of Allegiance a Praemuniment in our Consciences against Popular as well as Papal Usurpations I shall here call in Testimonium adversarii I mean the publisher of Cardinal Perron's long Oration made in the Chamber of the 3d Estate or Commonalty of France upon the Oath of Allegiance exhibited in the General Assembly of the three Estates of that Kingdom and in his long Preface to which he calls our Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance detestable but saith That the greater number of the Deputies of the 3d Chamber did frame the form of an Oath which they wished might be ministred in that Kingdom as that which bears the name of ALLEGIANCE in ours whereby the same principal Article is abjured namely That no French King can be deposed for any Cause whatsoever and that the contrary Opinion is Heretical and repugnant to the Doctrine of the Scriptures But this difference is found between the two Oaths that whereas the English one in one of the Clauses seems to exclude not only the Authority of the CHVRCH over Kings but even of the COMMON-WEALTH also yea tho it should be accompanied even with that of the Church that of France shoots only at the abnegation of the Churches Authority The Author however in that Preface and which was Permissâ— superiorum contrary to the Loyal Sentiments of the Majority of that 3d Chamber inserts very impiously and disloyally That Kingly Authority cannot come immediately from God to any man but by Miracle and that all the Kings whom we know do either rule by force of Conquest and in that Case the Authority of the Common-wealth if it be Vsurped may be resumed or by Donation Election Marriage or Succession of Blood in which Cases Kings forfeit by not performing the Conditions under which either they or their first Ancestors did enter whether they were expressed or necessarily implyed But neither that Author nor any other Roman Catholick Writer hath writ with greater Contempt of and Spight against the Power of Kings than some Nominal Protestant Authors have to the scandal of Christianity done and that I may shew how necessary it was that the Oath of Allegiance should be levelled at the outragious Principles of Disloyalty in Protestants as well as Papists I shall conclude my Answer to this Objection with a reference to a Book of some vile Nominal Protestants who having according to the Bishop of Winchester's Expression aforesaid derived Doctrines of Sedition and Rebellion from the Church of Rome 's Writers were I may add grown therein perhaps more learned than their Masters It was printed in 8 o beyond Sea in the Year 1556. and called A short Treatise of Politick Power and of the true Obedience which Subjects owe to Kings and other Civil Governors with an Exhortation to all true English men Compiled by D. I. P. B. R. W. Who the Authors of it were I know not nor the meaning of those initial Letters of Names but do judge it to be in Principles of Sedition and Treason as bad as Doleman of the Succession or Mariana and to have startled King Philip and Queen Mary as much as the Book of Killing no Murder did Cromwel I never in the Course of my viewing Books saw but one of them and the Reader will quickly see why no Library durst in the Reign of those Princes harbor it 'T is there asserted That the Body of every State may redress and correct the Vices of their Governors and ought so to do And the Book endeavours to prove the lawfulness of killing Tyrants by the Law of Nature and prophaneth the Book of God by citing for a desperate use some extraordinary Acts of private Persons there recorded and indeed a loyal man cannot read the Book without horror and especially when he shall consider what were the effects of this detestable Book It helped to provoke the fury of Philip and Mary to flie out into the Arbitrary Proclamation several Months before her death for the declaring of any one a Rebel and being without delay executed by Martial Law with whom that and other Books of that Nature printed beyond Sea should here be found And another effect of the publication of that and those other Books was to irritate the Government against those poor Innocents who were here martyr'd and who sufficiently abhorred such Treasonable Books for this Book was published beyond Sea and probably imported here about two years before her death But for the honour of our English Exiles then I judge that none of them had a hand therein I having observed many Words and Idioms and Phrases there to have been Scotish It is probable that King Iames and his Ministers had heard of this execrable Book wherein some Nominal Protestants trumpetted out their Principles of real Rebellion and no wonder then if the Oath of Allegiance was therefore framed with Clauses to secure the Government from all irreligionary Principles of Protestants as well as Papists It hath been objected in the second place against our being become bound to the Kings Heirs and Successors by Virtue of those Oaths that it is by all Casuists agreed that among the Tacit Conditions that are presumed to be in all Oaths and which are to be regarded as much as if they were express'd Rebus sic stantibus is one and that that therefore as none of the King's Heirs was then excluded from the Privilege or Right of his Lineal Succession by the Legislative Power so if things thus stood with him at the time of the Descent of the Crown that is at the time of the Kings decease the Oath obliged to the payment of absolute and irrespective Loyalty to him then and that thus when the King's Heirs and Successors were Kings and Queens of this Realm according to the Style of some old Oaths they would be Entitled to our Allegiance and not otherwise In Answer to this Objection I shall say first that if we should admit that which is not true that the Rebus sic stantibus were so to be applied in this Case yet it is most clear that the Takers of these Oaths who were any Members of the Three Estates in Parliament were thereby ipso facto and actually bound as I have said in the 7tâ— Conclusion not to do any Act there to exclude the Succession according to proximity of Blood and moreover any of the People who took these Oaths were thereby Morally bound not to choose any to represent them in Parliament from whom they might fear their endeavouring of such Exclusion Secondly Premising that there was somewhat of irreverence in supposing that the Legislative Power would ever afterward make a Solutio contiâ—ui as I called it in the Hereditary Monarchy yet it must be said that any supposed Act of that kind would be Null and Void as the Loyal and Learned late Writers of the Succession have shewed and to whose Writers of that Subject I refer and therefore our Obligations to
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will