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
Law Established and having conducted the Reader through the former more melancholy and strait and unpleasant passages in the Fabrick of this Discourse have took care to lodge him in a more Airy and Cheerful appartment and whence he may recreate himself with looking out on the Future State of England and remain assured that no frightful Spectrums and Fantoms will disturb him there when he is either at his Rest or at his Devotions and which I have for his diversion furnished with some such fair Pictures of his Countries Future State as may perhaps not much either shame it or my self in regard that I think in the draught and design thereof my Art has been according to Nature how carelessly laid soever the Colours may have been and where he moreover will have the Prospect I before described and if his sight be clear will find the Sky so more and more tho so many Politick and Lachrymist would-be's have told him of the contrary I believe that since the Predictions of the deluge by Noah to the old World there were never so many angry Predicters and Predictions of a general inundation of misery to any Country under a Future Prince as within these late years we have been overwhelmed with and that to the discomposing of mens minds in their common converse and while they did eat and drink as in the days of Noah and were so ready to devour all their Countrymen who believed not the same inundation with them But during this great Deluge of our popular fears of one of Popery I have ventured in p. 297 and 258 of this Discourse to express my presension of the Future State of England making men ashamed of their past fears and their former deference to ill boding Prophets and that our Melancholy Prophets will appear to be toto Caelo mistaken in their Auguries as much as Gassendus tells us all the Astrologers were in France when by reason of the great Conjunction of watry signs in Piscis and Aquarius in the Year 1524 they said that there should be then in the Month of February a second Deluge that should overwhelm France and Germany and by reason whereof many People went with their Goods and Cattel from the low Lands to the hilly Country and yet after all the fâ—rmentation those Astrologers had made among the Populace in France that Month of February as Gassendus tells us tho naturally rainy proved the dryest Month that ever was known in those Countries I account that the deluge of the popular fears did sensibly decrease after the year 81 and that to the great dissatisfaction of those whose broken Fortunes made them no worse under it than the Fishes were in Noahs The more rational and sagacious sort of Protestants who had been so long Sea-sick with that deluge and did nauseate the fears and jealousies that had discomposed them began to see Land when his Majesty with so just a Caution advised them in his Speech to the Oxford Parliament That their just care of Religion should be so managed as that unnecessary fears should not be made a pretence for changing the Foundations of the Government and his Declaration of the Causes that induced him to dissolve that Parliament signifying his Royal Resolution both in and out of Parliament to use his utmost endeavours to extirpate Popery and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Kingdom was in effect like the Olive-branch brought by the Dove into the Ark an happy indication of peace and settlement to the minds of the people and of the Waters being abated and indeed a demonstration to them that the Dove had found ubi pedem figeret and that our Laws and Religion had done so too and on that great Vision of the Lex terrae that so many mists had so long kept us from seeing there ensued a general shout of Loyal Addressers throughout the Kingdom like that of Sea-mens at their first seeing of Land after a long stormy Voyage and when they thought they had lost their Course and the hearing of those shouts from the several Countries served as a Call of invitation to the many Timid and Loyal and likewise to many unfortunate persons to return thither after they had flocked from thence to the Metropolis as an Ark for their preservation on the rising of the deluge of fears in some preceeding years and it served to some clâ—an and to other unclean Beasts as a Call of Nature that they were to March out of the Ark. By the unclean Beasts I mean the sturdy Paupers that I have in this Discourse spoke of who were observed shortly after the Alarms of the Plot from so many Proclamations to flock from so many parts of the Country to London like the Rustical Plebs I have spoke of naturally thronging to the shore when they see a poor Vessel contending with a violent Tempest near it and the next Minute likely to Condemn it as a wrack and furnish them with Gods Goods I mean such as they call wrack'd ones and when to prevent the Owners of them from the benefit of some coming alive to the Shoar they are so ready to out rage those forlorn Marriners they see swimming to Land. Many such Atheistical Ruffians of all Religionary Sects and who had been desperate in the Country might being come to the Metropolis there probably feed themselves with vain hopes of mischief to be done to or by some particular persons and would probably have been ready enough to be Mercenary Bravo's to either any Iesuites or fifth-Monarchy men or the Jesuited Protestant Patrons of the Doctrine of Resistance But this Scum of the Country was afterward as naturally thrown off from the well governed City as are the Purgamenta Maris from the Shoar without making any Heads or Arms ake to remove them and not finding more welcome harbour in the City than they had in the Country were I believe litterally thrown upon the Sea to Convey them to the Asylum of the Malheureus that we may call our Foreign Plantations and of the great and extraordinary Glut of the Advenae from the Country ceasing in London after the year 1681 the yearly general Bills of Mortality gave a sufficient proof and did as I may say include too the Burial of the Plot or at least of the popular fears of danger from it The critical Observator on the Bills of Mortality having long since told us That there come about 6000 yearly out of the Country to live in London and which swells the Burials about 200 yearly and likewise taught us the Rule of 1 in 30 there yearly dying I have in p. 155 Calculated by the yearly great encrease of the Burials from the Year 1675 when the fears of the Growth of Popery were so much in fashion how very great the encrease of the number of the living there was to the Year 1679 inclusive and the extraordinariness of which encrease was so justly imputable to that of the
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
of which there is rarely any detection made but by participants in the Crime one who would be repell'd from being a Witness is welcome as an accuser and the barking of a dog is allowed to alarm us of thiefs and as we say against Pirates omnis homo miles est much more may every man be an accuser against Traitors Thus I have heard that in the case of heresie in the which as I said before the Canon Law orders the same proceedings and rules as in Treason a Lay-man is allowed to be a competent accuser of a Clergy man And as by all Laws any man is allow'd to be an accuser who prosecutes an injury done to himself or his Kindred so I am told that by the Canonists Haereticum accusans dicitur suam suorumque injuriam prosequi and in that case a notorious enemy is allowed to be an accuser for that a heretick is said to strike at the Foundation of all Lawes divine and humane Nay according to the Canonists the Pope who cannot be accused of any crime but heresie may be accused of that and even by a heretick and that with good reason according to their hypothesis for that the Pope being a Bankrupt in the Faith by heresie attempts to break all the innumerable Priests Monks Friers Nunnes c. that get their bread by that Religion No wonder therefore that the Canonists agree that heresie is to be cut off in the beginning and they cite out of Timothy that it doth eat as a Cancer and the eating of heresie even in the breast of a Pope must needs be troublesom to the whole body of Clerical and Monastical Papacy as a Cancer or Wolfe that would eat up all their bread and therefore in the single case of heresie the Pope himself according to his own law may be convicted by two Witnesses and be thereupon deposed But tho it may be supposed that as the Civil and Canon Laws do leave the credibility of witnesses very much to the Judges so our common Law does to Juries and that in many actrocious Criminal causes every man is not allowed to be an accuser of an illustrious person and that we ought to be very tender and reserved in the taking up an ill report against the meanest of any of our Neighbours of mankind yet it s otherwise as I said before in the case of Treason which is like a pestilence walking in the dark and seldom known before t is incurable and before 't is ploughing up the whole Land of a Country into graves We are not to quarrel with the birds of the Air who tell who in his Bed-Chamber curses the King because they are not Eagles We are to be glad of the happy Augury and to thank God and them for their saving the Imperial Eagle and to be well pleased with either Tame or Wild-geese that save our Capital If any Fleet comes to invade us we are not to be very nice in diffecting the Morals or outward estate of him who fired the Beacon Your Lordship hath heard how Owen o Conally an obscure person as Sir. Iohn Temple styles him in his History of the Irish Rebellion came to the Lord Iustice Parsons about nine of the Clock at Night before the intended seising of Dublin Castle that was to be on the following day and discovered the detestable Conspiracy to him with the names of the chief Conspirators when the disguise of wine had made him seem hardly intelligible or credible And when it falls out that a Country is faved by wholesale through a detection of Conspiracies presented by persons who cheated their Country-men formerly by retail that is by persons who had been vile and infamous it ought to be accounted as an instance of the divine benignity to some of the most wretched and sinful Members of Mankind who have been long industrious in tearing out of their hearts what reliques they could there find of the divine image and who had long acted only Devils parts on the Stage of the world in punishing and being punished then to invite them to an opportunity of changing the Name of Malefactors into that of being blessings to the World and not only of being their Countries benefactors but as it were founders and to gain good Consciences and good names and what rarely happens to others to have an after-game allowed them to play for Reputation and to have it said of such an one on the occasion of the shame of his past life stimulating him to bring both glory and safety to his Country si non errasset fecerat ille minus By the account that I had sent to me from London of Matters in some affidavits relating to your being called Papist your Lordship hath the greatest advantage that any man can desire who has any things sworn against him by persons how credible soever namely the incredibility of the things themselves For can it be thought that your Lordship would out of your own Mouth judge your self a Traitor that is one reconciled to the Church of Rome and forfeit your Life and Estate and attaint your blood in the presence of a young man you had never seen before and is it likely that the Irish Papists who as Sir Iohn Temple observes in his said history have such a kind of dull and deep reservedness as makes them with much silence and secresie to carry on their business and whereby the design of the last Rebellion which was so generally at the same time and at so many several places to be acted and therefore necessarily known to so many several persons was without any Noise brought to such maturity as to arrive at the very point of Execution without any notice or intimation given to any two of that huge Multitude of persons who were generally designed as most of them did to perish in it And the Irish Papists having been then as he saith tongue-tyed by an oath of Secresie I say is it likely that they now designing Mischief if they did hope by your Lordships help to promote it that they would trumpet forth your Lordships name in their publick Masses and use such speaking trumpets about your name and their enterprise as should be heard all over Ireland and England And who can believe it to have the shadow of Veri-similitude that your Lordship should give Commission to any to offer one of the Kings witnesses and particularly Mr. Dugdale your house as an Asylum to retreat to after they had for the turpitude of lucre retreated from their Principles their Consciences their Oathes I never see any man sworn as a Witness in a cause but I think of the saying of St. Austin upon those words of St. Iames Above all things my Brethren swear not Namely Falsa Iuratio exitiosa est vera Iuratio periculosa est Nulla Iuratio secura est and I have as it were a little cold shivering on me while I see a man about what he knoweth of the property of a tenement
of Ceremonies among the Iews as would have made it forgot that it was ever made for man. The thinking sort of men found that tho the Principles of those Divines did not like the Jesuits make Calumny no mortal Sin that yet as the Adherents to Presbytery did calumniate the Constitution of the Church of England for bordring on Popery and the Royal Martyr for being a Fautor to it so they did by their Censorious tempers transfuse such an acid humour among the people that very much loosned the Nerves of the English good nature and distorted the English hospitality and therefore 't is but by a natural instinct that that old Pharisaical Leven is now so nauseous that probably any one suspected of an inclination to replant the old Presbytery here and its Arbitrary Power to excommunicate would too be staked down to a narrower tedder in Conversation and be it as it were excommunicated from Gentlemens Company as much as Make-bates or common Informers upon Penal Statutes The people heretofore found out that as Popery endangers men by the Priests not intending to make the Sacrament of the Eucharist when he administers it So that these as I said intended it should not be at all administred but to their own Sect and that the gesture of sitting at the Communion that they invited men to and thereby to their being rescued from the Popish Posture of Kneeling was but a sort of Sham in its way for that kneeling was the gesture used in the ancient times of the Church and the first that was ever observ'd to sit then was the Pope to express his State. The observing sort of Men then judged that as Sibthorpe and Manwaring had been exploded for going beyond their Credentials from Heaven as God's Ambassadors in straining the Prerogative of Princes these deserv'd to be so too for scruing the Power of Parliaments above Law and for thrusting down the King into the Class of The Three Estates and that as Sibthorpe was exposed to severe Animadversions from the Age for his Sermon of Apostolic Obedience shewing the Duty of Subjects to pay Tribute and Taxes to their Princes c. And p. 21. of that Sermon applying the words of Curse ye Meroz yea curse them bitterly c. to the promoting his illegal purpose they deserved to be censur'd for going on too with the Alarm of Curse ye Meroz thousands of times over when the Subjects were slack in paying Tribute to one another to dethrone their Prince They saw that those Divines in trying to salve the Phaenomena of the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and the Covenant that they had taken were in the Course of their Theology continually put to it to deliberate of Rebellion and that their very deliberation of it was ipso facto one and a thing that included the horror of a mans deliberating to kill his Father and 't was but natural for the people representative and diffusive to fancy it lawful for them silently to resume the power given to those Church-men and abused by them who were always in the Pulpit and Press lowdly trumpeting forth the Iesuitical Notion of the lawfulness of the peoples resuming the Power given to Kings and as I shall never fear that the King of Spain will ever be able to take the World in a Ginne by Campanellas advise to him in Chap. 5. of the Spanish Monarchy to employ Divines to set up the Roar of unus Pastor and unum Ovile every where for the Pope so neither shall I that mens vociferating the Clause in the Covenant viz. That the Lord may be One and his Name One and in the three Kingdoms will ever again be able to embroyl them In short any one who shall consider that in Scotland Presbytery's former Kingdom of Darkness the people have been so of late illuminated as to find the way to be Latitudinarians need never have any fears and jealousies of that Governments jus Divinum again Marching hither In the first Session of the second Parliament of this King at Edenburgh November the 16th 1669. There passed an Act wherein 't was declared That his Majesty hath the Supreme Authority over all Persons and in all Causes Ecclesiastical within this his Kingdom and that by vertue thereof the ordering and disposal of the external Government and Policy of the Church doth properly belong to his Majesty and his Successors as an Inherent Right to the Crown and that his Majesty and his Successors may settle Enact and Emit such Constitutions Acts and Orders concerning the Administration of the External Government of the Church and the Persons employed in the same and concerning all Ecclesiastical meeting and matters to be proposed and determined therein as they in their Royal Wisdom shall think fit c. And his Majesty with Advise and Consent aforesaid doth rescind and annual all Laws Acts and Clauses thereof and all Customs and Constitutions Civil or Ecclesiastick which are contrary to or inconsistent with his Majesties Supremacy as it is here asserted and declares the same void and null in all times coming This Act of Parliament is the more observable for that it declared the extent of the Regal Power in Ecclesiasticks after that in the Year 1663 An Act passed there for a National Synod under the Government of Bishops and for that Presbytery which was before like Hame the only body in Nature that doth not content it self to take in any other body but would either overcome and turn another body into it self as by victory or it self to dye and go out was then grown so amenable to the Course of Nature in all other bodies of which one is a glue to another that not satisfied with its own former consistence it did as suddenly and easily and quietly receive in the body of Episcopacy as I may say as Air takes in light and as readily as Metals themselves receive in strong waters and then it was that Episcopacy which in the Forms of Church Government seems by its weight as Gold among Metals and indeed all bodies to be the most close and solid did there greedily drink in the Quicksilver of Presbytery But tho Presbytery then was and now is considerable in the Internal part of the Government of the Church of Scotland and is likely so to be till Christ's second coming humanly speaking with a non obstante to any thing that time can cause and will be preserved in perpetuity by the means of what my Lord Bacon calls the drowning of Metals namely when the baser Metal is incorporated with the more rich as Silver with Gold yet so willing were they in Scotland to give to Caesar the real Supremacy that was Caesars that knowing the Protestant Religion can be no more there destroyed under any external form of Church Polity then as I said Gold can be destroyed in Nature they thought it more prudent to trust the Crown with a Power of melting down that on emergent occasions and altering the Superscription of its
to be walked on in a Frost after a Thaw We are told by the Conformist in the Friendly Debate in p. 112. That he has heard some of the Nonconformist Divines acknowledge that they did not scruple what the Conformists do but thought it unhandsome for them to do it c. And the meaning was in plain English that they were ashamed to confess their error But if some of those Divines whose low Education conducted them perhaps from being Servitors in the University to domineer in their Cures and who through the Track of their Lives might be traced by the slime of their Pedantry and whose Trade was or should have been the Study of Divinity the Precepts of which and their fragments collected out of Augustinus and Aquinas as well as the example of the former obliged them to retract those Errors publickly that they had so utter'd I say that if they were yet so Picquez d' Honneur that they would not let their fallibility appear in Villages and even the falsity of those Principles of theirs by which as many Hundreds of Thousands here were slain as were bare hundreds murder'd in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary they have true Cause to think it dishonourable for them to restrain their Compassion from any high born Prince the brightness of whose great Martial Atchievements has dazel'd the Universe and will continue to do it when he is in the shades below and one who may say as the Pope did to the Iansenists that he had never studyed Divinity and they are very unfit to Cashiere him from the Church Militant if he doth not in the view of Mankind appear to make a Retreat at the Call of their Trumpet which has been known to give so uncertain a sound and such may be ashamed to dispair of his finding out any false Notions he may have received in Religion and to conclude that he hath not privately discovered them because he doth not openly recant them and to expect that after perhaps he hath erred in the Tenet of Confession he should yet presently make the World his Confessor about it and grant him nothing of the Guard of Honour in the Case but Monopolize the temptations from honour to their sinful obscure selves But as no man can take the measures of anothers Sins without taking those of his temptations so none but a Prince can know the temptations of a Prince Dic mihi si fueris tu Leo c. The like Pedantry therefore in the great St. Ierom was inexcusable as to that sharp saying of his Miror si aliquis Rex salvabitur and that Satyrical fancy of his hath since met with its Match by some that have sent St. Ierom to the Devil as fantastically for so I find it said in Dr. Donnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After so many Ages of a Devout and Religious Celebrating the Memory of St. Jerom Causaeus hath spoken so dangerously that Ratio 5. Campian says he pronounceth him to be as deep in Hell as the Devil Moreover I think it great injustice to any Prince who has changed his Religion of Protestancy for Popery that Protestants should at the same time be jealous of his retaining no tincture of his former Principles that the Bigotted and Jesuited Papists are jealous of his scarce retaining a tincture of his new ones and by jealousie too as cruel as the Grave as appeared by the fate of Harry the 4 th who because he did not and indeed could not devest himself of that humanity toward his Protestant Subjects that was riveted in his nature after he was absolv'd by the Chair of Infalibility and reconciled to the very Scorners Chair of the Iesuites yer merely because he had not a window to his breast through which every capricious Priest might look in at and might thereby put in what Principles he pleased they were resolved to cut one there and after Iohn Chastel had begun to practice his incision an execrable Apology for it was Published in which Apology Printed in Latin at Lyons Anno 1611. the Assertion or Head of Chapter 3d Part 2d is Chastel had no purpose to kill a King and of Chapter 4th there Henry of Burbon cannot be called a King by reason of his pretended Conversion and of Chapter 8th there Neither can he be King tho absolved by the Pope and of Chapter 9th Neither can he be called a King by the Right of Succession and of Chapter 11th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones are Juâ—e Divino Humano to be put to death and of Chapter 12th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones may be killed by private Persons if it cannot be done otherwise The Assassination of Harry the 3 d of France bears with it a Memento mori to any Roman Catholick Prince who will not be thorow paâ—ed in obeying the Precepts of Bigotted Priests against Hereticks and to this effect runs the Clamour of the Actions of such Bigots either you must go our pace to Heaven and Travel by our Mapp see with our Eyes and let us ride you when we will and make you ride over your Heretical Subjects or we will precipitate you to the Devil I mention'd it before out of D' Ossat that it was known at Rome that Queen Anne the Wife to King Iames had some inclination to the Roman Catholick Religion and no doubt but she was perverted to it in some measure by some of the Romish Priests who were then as since insolently over officious to tempt Princes to change their Faith and tho none of our Histories mentions any thing of her being a Papist or inclining to be so yet D' Ossat as I said relates how Villeroy supposed her to have turn'd Papist but our Historians unanimously mention one thing that she was designed as well as the King and Prince and others to be blown up by the Gun-Powder-Treason a thing that may give one who turns Son of the Church of Rome cause to say Mallem esse Herodis porcum quam filium No doubt but the mind of any Popish Prince coming out of the cool and sweet Air of a benign and rational Religion to that of such a torrid Zone and Shambles of mans flesh as the Doctrine of Popery presents will be oftener in his thoughts travelling back to that Religion then the prying World can know But the Gentleman my friend is not any way tempted in point of honour to delay his Return to the Church of England and he lately mentioning to me his wishes of the speedy Arrival of your Lordships Papers told me that possibly he and I should be both gainers thereby and that I should gain the Victory and he the Truth and that he would never account those Priests of Rome to be the Missionaries of Christ who if their Doctrine be refused shall instead of shaking off the dust of their feet in any house reduce it to Ashes and further affirmed that it were less absurd and extravagant to wish there were no Religion
like that of the Holy League in France was desigued to have assured the business afterward and it was but natural for the Parliament believing the same to enable their Prince with a Counter mine of Gold to blow up the Associated Purses of those Forraign Princes and no doubt but by the very Noise of that liberal Supply being heard abroad in the World that Association was Thunder-struck as any one else must be in a Conjuncture when the Nations abroad shall see our Prince provided with effects as King Iames was as aforesaid a Conjuncture I despair not of seeing nor of its influencing the World with Terror as did the very sound of the supplying the King by the last Pole-Act to enable him for a War with France and which was the Cause that the Panic Fear in some of our rustical Plebs of the French landing in the Isle of Purbec and when some of the poor adjacent Mobile in the air of their fancies heard the noise of adventare Gallos as Alexander ab Alexandro genialium dierum l. 3. c. 14. saith Gallis etiam Senonibus ad urbem properantibus in novâ viâ ubi alloquâ—tionis postea templum fuit vocem auditam quae Gallos adventare diceret inter exemplâ— relatum est was not more opprobrious then that fear of the French that marched off an Army and Royal Fleet so abruptly out of Scicily when they heard a voice of Adventare Anglos which evaporating of the French Forces from thence as it was a sufficient indication that there was no perfect love between our Kings great Minister of that time and the French Ministers for perfect love casts out fear and had there been any perfect good understanding between him and them the nois'd Adventare Anglos would not have exorcised them out of the body of that Kingdom so it perhaps proved an occasion of the perfect French Hatred against his Lordship that he so satisfactorily acquainted our English World with in one of his solid and sinnewy Printed Vindications and I do believe that the future Warlike State of Christendom will necessarily prompt all that affect to be Patriots instead of studying to make men unwilling to promote publick supplyes to bend their brains in the way of Calculation to shew what the Kingdom is able to contribute to its defence and how to do it with equality in Taxes and Levyes and that he will appear the most popular man who shall shew our Representatives how and in what proportion the Rateable parts of Mens Estates may be rated a thing that I hear Sir W. P. in his Manuscript called Verbum sapienti has essayed to do and given his Sentiment that supposing a Million should ever be raised in England there should be Levyed on the  m. ll  Lands 216 viz. 1 30 of the Rent Cattle 54 viz. 1 600 Personal Estate 60 viz. 1 60 Housing 45 viz. 12 d a Chimney in London 10 d without the Liberties 6d in Cities and Towns and 4 d elsewhere People 625 at 2s 1d per Head or rather a Poll of 6d and 19d Excise which is not full 1 38 part of the mean expence and he doth there Chap. 9. § 7. with great Judgment insinuate That the over-favourable taxing personal faculties and Estates makes Plebeians richer and surlier and that the effect of which may be feared as a tendency to Democracy How favourably such Estates were Taxed when Subsidies were in use I have shewed and how very little they came to in the Execution of the last Poll Bill is fresh in Memory and yet in the Dutch Republic when the States raise an extraordinary Tax sometimes of the 1000 dth sometimes of the 500 dth sometimes of the 200 th part of every Mans Estate richer or poorer and men are Taxed therein according to Common Fame and Report by their Magistrates of their several Cities and Towns and the Party grieved at his Assessment declaring on his Oath that his Estate is not worth so much will be always relieved it is very rarely seen that any man makes himself poorer then common Report speaks him by means whereof that Tax is very considerable and therefore for us to debase our Government by the making of that Tax so low when they advance theirs by chearfully making it so high will to the Loyal Lovers of our Monarchy naturally in time seem unâ—easonable I believe then that he will be the most Celebrated Parliament-man that can in any Mony-Bills direct the making the Levy generally proportionable according to that saying in pari jugo facilis est tractus and can in the Debate of any Book of Rates provide against the danger of a clogging of Trade which he who takes wrong measures in burthening doth as one saith put a pound Weight at the end of a Pole which is heavier then twenty times so much placed at the hand and doth thereby work down Land Revenues more then the Sums actually paid c. and can demonstrate what burden the People can well bear and that Parliamentary Imposts may be put on them in the way that men use to lade the Camel when he lies down so as he may cheerfully rise up with his burden and how that which is the second Principal Conclusion in Sir W. P' s Political Arithmetick viz. That some kind of Taxes and publick Levies may rather encrease then diminish the Common-wealth may be render'd applicable to us and in his explicating which Conclusion he doth not as a Propounder but as one having Authority namely that of Reason Instance in three various Taxes for England Scotland and Ireland that would encrease the wealth of the same and how to provide for Equality in Taxes Mens Estates may be as accurately weighed as they were of old by the Roman Prudence which for that purpose instituted the Office of Censors and when in the Censes the Civil Law ordered the Censors Estimates to be registred and both the bona Mobilia and Immobilia to be registred and even the Sums of Money at Interest to be registred and the names of the Debtors and this upon Oath and in the registration of Lands their true value was set down and how they were fertile or barren and every Tax was Collected where the Estimate was made and that the Quota of Taxes might not be sunk by Peoples being return'd as real or feign'd Paupers the whole City was ratably Taxed to make up the Capitation or Pole-money for Paupers and that the People might be exactly numbered and all this to be done every five years the time when new Censors entered into their Office and to which the word lustration refers and how to Copy out the Politics of the House of Commons in Queen Elizabeth's time when the securing the Protestant Interest at home and abroad made them so inclinable to look on the giving her Mony to be the great quid agendum and on which they thought depended both the Law and the Prophets in the English Tongue and when as
he pleased And there in Book 7th 't is said That the Pope on further application from the Ambassadors of Princes that that Clause might be damned as contrary to the liberty of Ambassadors and Bishops in propounding what they thought profitable those for their States and these for their Churches the Pope gave them good words about it but did nothing and Book 10th The Spanish Ambassador desiring the Retractation of that Clause and that otherwise the Council could not be called free and that its freedom was to be dated only from the time of such Retractation and that the Emperor insisted on its abrogation and that by reason of that Clause no German had yet come to that Council yet nothing was effected for its revoking and still the Proponentibus legatis stood as a Rock and all their Addresses dash'd themselves in pieces producing nothing but the froath of excusatory words from the Pope about it and in fine all that could be gained was in the end of the Council after that Clause had had its full effect and done all its Execution against the freedom of the Council and particularly of the Ambassadors and Bishops there and was like a Post-horse ridd to his Stage and had brought all the Cloak-bags with the Holy Ghost from Rome to turn it to grass with a Formal Declaration or Protestation contrary to Fact that the meaning of the Synod was not by that Clause to change in any part the usual manner of handling matters in general Councils c. A crying Con licensa to the Bishops and Ambassadors after the cutting of the Throats of their Liberties And now can any Opiniatre yet further think that a Representative of English Commoners will ever think those Republican Projectors of liberty who do bare faced cut them off from the freedom of their share in Enacting any thing but what another House shall propound and that nothing shall have the Sanction of Law but what enters the Stage with a proponentibus Patriciis or by the Proposition of any other House the Style of one of Cromwels two Houses and who do set up for Inventors in Politics by reviving the exploded Constitution of the Athenians among whom Anacharsis observed Wise men did consult and Fools determine But the days are pass'd and gone that gave People of subtle and uneasie Brains the leisure of digging in Politics further than the Center which whoever doth digs not downward but upwards and that Center I account the ancient lex terrae to be and he who hath got beyond that doth digging upwards destroy the real Foundations of Churches and States while he is laying imaginary ones But since according to the saying in hieme nil movendum men of Sense who love to be tampering with Physick in other seasons will in that be averse from stirring the humours and trying Conclusions on themselves and in the churlish State of the World abroad that is in prospect all State Empirics that would any where advise a change of Fundamental Governments will find an unruly Patient of the World and all our sober Political Virtuosi will be necessarily inclined to study how to maintain and support our old Government instead of projecting any new one And in order to the support of our old one I dare say that there will be no more suspension of Royal Aids on the account of the Arminian Controversie or the freedom of our Wills while we are busied in preparing to defend the freedom of our Estates and Bodies from Forraigners and securing both Prince and Peoples not being predestinated to ruine by them The Extinguishing the maintenance of the Clergy will not pass for a new Evangelical Light but the exactest provision for the Enabling Crown'd Heads to support their Civil Government and their Clergy and with the observance of equality and proportion in the same respecting the State of their Kingdoms will be worthy the thoughts of the most illuminated Doctors for as among the Divines it is on all hands agreed that from the 40th Chap. of the Prophecy of Ezekiel to the end of that Book the thing chiefly designed in the Portraiture of the great Vision of the Prophet is to represent the figure of Church and State under the Gospel so there is great proportion kept in the same and not only the curious colouring but the exactness of draught and design required in a great Historical Painting and no wonder if the same appeared so express'd on the Table of the Prophets imagination when God himself was pleas'd there to paint it partly after the exactness and proportion of the Iewish Oeconomy and with many Additions of Curiosity and to which tho a litteral interpretation is not applicable and on which tho no expectance of the Erection of another material Temple at Ierusalem or in Iudea is to be founded or of 12000 Reeds of Land for the Temple and Priests yet may it thence be naturally inferred that the preserving of orderly proportion in the Revenue of the Prince and Priest and with respect to number Weight and Measure in the Future times of the Gospel was then the care and design of Providence The 45th Chapter that doth so nicely assign the Portion for the Prince and Priest ordains or rather predicts a Royal Patrimony for the Prince in the way of a ballance of Land as 't is said in the 8th Verse In the Land shall be his Possession in Israel and my Princes shall no more oppress my People and the rest of the Land shall they give to the House of Israel according to their Tribes The consideration of this may probably reforme the men of curious imagination who are still making the Metal of Government more fine than the Standard and thinking to leave out there the necessary Mixture of the baser allay that the frail State of humanity requires to make it currant and without which it would be too brittle for use and projecting how to make the Government of Church and State with ease to live upon nothing or on Taxes in a confused and blundering manner laid when the thought of an inspired Prophet in this Vision relating to the time of the Gospel the which is called by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews the time of Reformation applied all the exactness of Mathematics to the supporting both the Crown and use of the Keys by an ample and certain Revenue And as the great Tax of Augustus on the Roman World or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of Capitation or Pole near the time of our Saviors Birth served to confirm the Christian Religion in the accomplishment of the Prediction of Christs being born in Bethlem and to cause Ioseph and Mary's going thither a resembling effect in the Confirmation of the most rational kind of the Christian Religion I mean the Protestant do I expect from our Future Legal and Equal Taxes and as I mentioned my Lord Bacon's saying of the Parliaments being yet in debt to the Church since
to believe it will ever suffer such real madness and real dangers as formerly from Suppositions and Fictions not of Law but of Injury and when some injurious Demagogues did often acquire both Popular Air and bread by their but seeming to suppose what they seduced the people really to do and to be really thereby impoverished When I think how some men by false Alarmes of suppositions would for the lengthening their Interests lengthen the fears of any persons and among Mortal men make the dangers of Plots immortal I call to mind that 't is not very long ago that a Forraigner who was Physician to King Charles the First I mean Sir Theodore Mayerne occasioned an Universal Out-cry of the Disease of the Spleen here and was observed in many Cases where the Disease proceeded from the fowlness of the Stomach or other Causes yet to attribute it to that part of the Body which tho all Animals have yet most if not all may live without I mean the Spleen but however he got his Living thereby and so plentifully that it may be said that he as it were made the Spleen and the Spleen made him And thus doth a Spleen of some Popish Sham-Plots and the continuance of the fears and danger from a true one make some persons perhaps who made the former and the continuance of the fear of the latter and such State Empyricks would be as much impoverished by the utter abolishing of the same as some of our great Merchants who Trade in Companies and with Convoys would be if there were no Argeer but as the swelling of the Spleen proves the emaciating of the other parts of the Body so hath the swoln Spleen of the Popish-Plot particularly not more enriched some Merchants that Traded therein than it hath impoverished the Kingdom in general and I do believe that a Tax of a Million of Money raised in England in the way before mentioned would not have been universally so heavy a burthen as the Popish-Plot in its Effects and Consequences hath been But what by the bravery of the English Genius to which as was said the continuance of any sort of fear is unnatural and despair which generally grows from Sloth and Cowardize appearing so dull a thing humane Nature being apt easier to descend into it than to ascend by presumption and what by Peoples being Convinced of the smallness of the Papists numbers here comparatively and of the ridiculousness of the rumour'd greatness thereof in particular places as for example of there being 60,000 Papists in St. Martins Parish where there dying ordinarily about 2000 in a Year there cannot be judged to live 60000 Souls of Men Women and Children according to the Rule of 1 in 30 dying each year and what by the late great divulsion of the double bottom of the Pope and the Iesuites appearing by his Decree of March the 2 d before mentioned which makes all thinking People as much to expect its Shipwrack as do the throngs of the Plebs resorting to the shore in Tempests expect the Ruine of Navigating Vessels and to look on Papisme as saying in effect to Iesutisme nec tecum nec sine te and what by the Notion so much in Vogue and so likely to be more that 't is as improper to call some of the Tenets of Popery by the Name of Religion as 't would be professedly to mis-call any thing obvious as for example to call Musick the Art of Rhetoric or Grammar Logic or to call Astronomy or Dyalling by Surveying or Gawging and that 't is only that that is Religion indeed that is to be honoured according to that expression in the Scripture honour Widows that are Widows indeed and what by the urging Fate of Christendom now so loudly as with the voice of Thunder repeating it to us that this Nation must either now be quiet or that the World abroad can never be so and that the hand of this Realm must be steady if ever it will keep the Ballance of Christendom so and what by the Nations having outlived all the Malignant Symptomes of the Plague of its Fears I think on the whole matter we may without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only from the Light of Reason presage that the excessive fear of Popery as well as its danger will here be exterminated I doubt not but the former as well as later experiences of the Papists here concerning the Inconveniences of their Artifice of making or increasing Dissensions in the Kingdom the dividing of which by them as well as other Religion-Traders hath prejudiced it more than the so much talk'd of Division of the Fleet will in the present Conjuncture of Affairs incline the sober Party of them to joyn with the Body of the People of England in being sharp Abhorrers of the Principles of the Iesuites for they can hardly go any where now in the Land without seeing a Cain's Mark set on those who cause divisions or still drive the old Trade that the Bohemian Nobleman Andreas ab Habering field in his Detection of the Popish Practices mentions that Sir Toby Mathews Maxwel and Reade those Jesuited Political Interlopers did in the Reign of the Royal Martyr namely to mis-represent the Court and the Puritans to one another and to endeavour to perswade male-contented People that that Pious Prince designed their Slavery a thing so false that he was Reverâ their Martyr as he with great Justice said of himself on the Scaffold and which great name he might challenge even on the account of Natural Justice if there had been nothing relating to reveal'd Religion in the case to entitle him to it for St. Iohn the Baptist was a Martyr and yet died for no Article of the Christian Faith. It may be justly said that our Monarch fell a Martyr for the People by not violating the lex terrae that he was by his Oath bound to maintain and by his therefore not owning the Jurisdiction of the Vile Court over him and moreover the Law of Nature obliging him indispensably to do nothing that by his exemplary abdicating any Right Inherent in the Crown would have incapacitated him and his Successors from protecting their Liege-People in their Inheritance of the Laws and it being a thing certain that the Law of Nature is as much the Law of God as is the Law positive or his written Word and indeed as Gataker saith well in his Book of Lots The Law of Nature written in Mans heart is the very same so far forth as 't is yet undefaced with the Law of God revealed in the Word it may be with reason averr'd that any Member of Mankind whether Prince or Subject who is put to death by any Court of Justice or Armed Force or by the hands of Russians or Bravos on the account of his discharging his Obligations to the Law of Nature may enter his just Claim to the Name of Martyrdom I have therefore supposing that Godfrey lost his life by vile
water and the Sea and like that they are apt to be eating towards the Roots of the Powers of Soveraigns but while the Mountains of their Power are bottom'd on Natural Justice all the preying of the Sea of the People there makes but the promontory more surely guarded and appear more majestic as well as be more inaccessible And of this Sea of the Peoples as I would wish every Prince in the just observance of the Municipal Laws of his Country to espouse the Interest as much as the Duke of Venice doth his Adriatic yet should I see one for fear of Popular Envy or Obloquy forbearing to administer Iustice and to follow the real last Dictates of his practical understanding rightly informed and servily giving up himself to obey any mens pretended ones I should think it to be as extravagant a Madness as Hydrophoby or fear of water on the biting of a Mad Dog and while a Sovereign observes the immutable Principles of Justice he may acquiesce in the results of Providence and expect that the troubling of the waters may be like that of the Angel before the time of healing or a Conjuncture of the Peoples being possessed of healing Principles and in fine a King when he finds the Waters of Popular Discontent more tumultuous by Religionary Parties as two Seas meeting as for example Papists and Presbyterians he may depend on his being near Land that being always near where two Seas meet and let every Prince be assured that 't is not only Popery but Atheisme in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion I know that it hath been incident to some good men to strain pretences beyond the nature of things for justice Causes of War abroad in the World to advance the Protestant Religion And thus in the last Age the Crown and Populace of England being clutter'd with the Affair of the Palatinate the Prince Palatine had here many well-wishers to his Title for the Bohemian Crown and Rushworth tells us in his 1st Vol. Ann. 1619. That he being Elected King of Bohemia craved Advice of his Father in Law the King of Great Brittain touching the acceptation of that Royal Dignity and that when this Affair was debated in the Kings Council Arch-Bishop Abbot whose infirmity would not suffer him to be present at the Consultation wrote his mind to Sir R. Nauton the Kings Secretary viz. That God had set up this Prince his Majesties Son in Law as a Mark of Honour throughout all Christendome to propagate the Gospel and protect the Oppressed That for his own part he dares not but give advice to follow where God leads apprehending the work of God in this and that of Hungary that by the Pâ—ece and Peece the Kings of the Earth that gave their power to the Beast shall leave the Whore and make her desolate that he was satisfied in Conscience that the Bohemians had just Cause to reject that Proud and Bloody Man who had taken a Course to make that Kingdom not Elective in taking it by Donation of another c. And concludes Let all our Spirits be gathered up to animate this Business that the World may take notice that we are awake when God calls Rushworth saith that King Iames disavowed the Act of his accepting that Crown and would never grace his Son in Law with the Style of his new Dignity And in King Charles the Firsts time in the Common-Prayer relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runs for Frederick Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife yet in the Assemblies Directory afterward as to the Prayer for the Royal Family that Lady Elizabeth is Styled Queen of Bohemia But our Princes not being satisfied it seems that the Palatine of the Rhine had a just Title to the Bohemian Crown thought it not just for them to assert it However that Arch-Bishop Abbot the Achilles of the Protestants here in his Generation thought that the English Crown ought to descend in its true Line of Succession whatever profession of Religion any Member thereof should own appears out of Mr. Pryns Introduction to the History of the Arch Bishop of Canterburies Tryal where having in p. 3. mentioned the Articles sent by King Iames to his Embassador in Spain in order to the Match with the Infanta and that one was That the Children of this Marriage shall no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience of Religion wherefore there is no doubt that their Title shall be prejudiced in case it should please God that they should prove Catholicks and in p. 6. Cited the same in Latin out of the French Mercury Tom. 9. as offered from England Quod liberi ex hoc matrimonio oriundi non cogentur neque compellentur in causâ religionis vel conscientiae neque leges contra Catholicos attingent illos in casu siquis eorum fuerit Catholicus non ob hoc perdet jus successionis in Regna Dominia Magnae Britanniae and afterward in p. 7. mentioned it as an Additional Article offer'd from England That the King of Great Brittain and Prince of Wales should bind themselves by Oath for the observance of the Articles and that the Privy Council should Sign the same under their hands c. He in p. 43. mentions Arch-Bishop Abbots among other Privy-Counsellers accordingly Signing those Articles and further in p. 46. mentions the Oath of the Privy-Council for the observance of those Articles as far as lay in them and had before given an account not only of Arch-Bishop Abbots but of other magna nomina of the Clergy and Layety in the Council that Signed the same and particularly of John Bishop of Lincoln Keeper of the Great Seal Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lord High Treasurer of England Henry Viscount Mandevile Lord President of the Council Edward Earl of Worcester Lord Privy-Seal Lewis Duke of Richmond and Lennox Lord High Steward of the Houshold James Marquess of Hamilton James Earl of Carlile Lancelot Bishop of Winchester Oliver Viscount Grandison Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland Sir Thomas Edmonds Kt. Treasurer of the Houshold Sir John Suckling Comptroller of the Houshold Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway Principal Secretaries of State Sir Richard Weston Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Julius Caesar Master of the Rolls who had done the same Mr. Pryn afterward in p. 69. having mentioned the Dissolution of the Spanish Match gives an account of the bringing on the Marriage with France and saith It was concluded in the life of King James the Articles concerning Religion being the same almost Verbatim with those formerly agreed on in the Spanish Treaty and so easily condescended to without much Debate and referreth there to the Rot. tractationis ratificationis matrimonii inter Dom. Carolum Regem Dom. Henrettam Mariam sororem Regis Franc. 1 Car. in the Rolls The Demagogues of the old long Parliament who made such loud Out-cries of the danger of Popery
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
hold that he still retaineth and ought to retain entirely and solidly all that aforesaid Supreme Power and Authority over the Churches of this Dominion in as ample a manner as if he were the most Christian Prince in the World. If therefore any shall think it reasonable to pronounce that the substantial Interest of Protestancy and of the Kingdom doth Stare moribus antiquis virisque I have pointed them to Arch-Bishop Abbot to Bishop Andrews the Antagonist to Bellarmine under the weight of whose Arguments Bellarmine fell in the Certamen and to others of our old Counsellors of State and particularly Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland your Lordships Noble God-Father in comparison of many of whom when we look on some of our great Politic and Protestant-would-be's of this Age and who would let none be Protestants but themselves we may well cry out In qualem paulatim fluximus urbem and have shewn how those great Confessors by their Overt Acts provided against the belief of the Doctrine of Popery without the barring any of the Royal Line from the inheriting the Crown And when I see some of our till of late unheard of Statists so eager to dispossess the Land of the Evil Spirit of Popery by illegal means and the use of the great Name of Protestancy as a Spell I fancy to my self that they may be call'd on by it as the Iewish Exorcits were in the Acts of the Apostles who taking on them to call over them which had evil Spirits the Name of the Lord Iesus saying we adjure you by Iesus whom Paul preacheth the evil Spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are ye Thus to any who shall say that there is no way possible to secure English Mens continuing Protestants but by breaking in on the Succession in the Right Line may it be returned by Popery the old Protestants of the Church of England I know and the old Nonconformist Protestants and the old Covenanting Presbyterian Protestants I know who knew otherwise to secure Protestancy and likewise the French Protestants I know who never practised any Out-rage against the Great Harry the 4th of France's Government after he had left Protestancy but who are ye The truth is the Protestants in France so vastly numerous in his time which any one may imagine who considers that the most careful thinking men in that Realm make them now to be two Millions and that a judicious French Author hath writ that the Iesuites have lately computed them to be above a Million and a half have shewn the World a great example of their Protestant Loyalty in that they were ready as chearfully to obey their Prince when he was a Papist as when they served him in set Battles against the Power of the holy League and the majority of his Nobles and of his Metropolis and of the chief Cittadels in his Realm After they saw him go to Mass they never call'd him Iulian or Lampoon'd him in Hymns or demurred to his Beard or had any fears or jealousies of his touching a hair of their heads nor threatned him that the Galilean would foil him and no Language could have more truly expressed their Sentiments then that of the Famous Pierre du Moulin in his defence of the Faith Nous sommes prests d' exposer nos vies pour la defence de nos Rois contre qui que ce soit fust-il de nostre Religion Quiconque feroit autrement ne defendroit point la Religion mais serviroit son ambition attireroit un grand blame sur la verite de l' evangile i. e. We are ready to expose our lives for the defence of our Kings against whomsoever it be although of our own Religion And whosoever should do otherwise should not defend Religion but serve his own ambition and would draw a great reproach on the truth of the Gospel Considering the indeleble Character of Hary the 4 ths Protestant Good Nature his Subjects of that Religion did prepare their thoughts to be Lachrymists for him rather then themselves and knew that by his Coversion to Popery if in this life only he had hopes he was of all men most miserable and that his absolution left him only in the State of a Crown'd Victime I have before mentioned the Apology for that Scholar of the Jesuites Iohn Chastel which endeavours to prove that Harry the 4 th was by that Assassin not only wounded very fairly according to the Language of the Brothers of the Blade but in the Style of their Honour according to the Iesuites Morals very heroically and as the Contents of Cap. 1. Part. 3 d of the Apology expresses it Actus Castelli heroicus est in substantiâ suâ He moreover tells us in plain terms Part. 2. Cap. 7. that Excommunicatio quae â—b haeresim irrogatur remedium potius est ecclesiae quam excommunicato c. and that Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right And in Cap. 8. before mentioned viz. Neque etiam à Papa absolutus Rex esse potest he asketh Quod si quaeratur quid ergo absolutio praestet si jus amissum non redeat And it followeth Quòd si absolutus impaenitens existat effectus alius non foret quam is de quo supra ita si quod Deus velit paenitentia foret vera certe effectus propterea non exigâ—us esset futurus utpote in spiritualibus remittendo illum in ecclesiae gremium regni Caelorum Capacem reddendo temporalium vero respectu quicquid illa operari posset foret ad reddendum eum compotem novi juris per electionem auferendo impedimentum in foro fori quo durante is ille esse non posset And then he saith The Pope cannot confer such new Right to the same Kingdom on him for that it depends not simply on the power of the Keys so to do and in fine makes the Right to the Crown irrevocably devolv'd on the next person capable who has a right to it quum saith he ratum sit inter jurisconsultos incapacem haberi ut mortuum non impedire sequentes In the 3d Chapter of the 2d Part namely That Henry of Bourbon cannot be called King by reason of his pretended Conversion the vile Apologist derides the Conversion of this Great King and labours to prove by fifteen Instances That after his Conversion he did favour the Cause of Heresy more then ever and particularly by his observance of his Leagues and Agreements with the Queen of England and other Hereticks ut experientia saith he per novas ejus actiones locupletissime testatur Etenim primò faederum pacta cum haereticis sarta tectaque servat quibus ut hactenus nondum renunciavit ita neque dum renunciare cogitat Secundò ipsi haeritici in Germaniâ Genevae alibi ejus actiones comprobant Tertio contemnit Catholicos promovet haereticos illos repudiat atque rejicit hos
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
the Relief of his Great Auditory for those poor Hugonots did characterize them as such of whom none was ever suspected to have machinated any thing against their King's Person or Government or to have attempted the burning of his Metropolis I have granted that the Puritan and the Popish Petitioners did both in the beginning of King Iames his Reign offend Contra bonos more 's but if any should ask me which Sect was the more peccant by such incivility I will say that in one regard the Puritans were so for that they were bred to the Knowledge of better things but that in another regard the Papists most certainly were so if Thuanus may be believ'd who in the place I last cited out of him relating to the Gun-powder Plot by which it appears that their Petitioning was but a stalking-horse or as I may say a Trojan Horse to hide and enclose armed Men further shews That the Iesuites in England employ'd one privately into Spain in the Name of the Catholics with Letters of Commendation to Creswell the Iesuite there residing to negotiate with the Government there to send an Army into England in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth ' s Reign and that afterward one Wright was sent into Spain upon the same Errand and that then likewise Guy Faux was by some of the Iesuites sent thither to Creswel to hasten the Design and that Faux was instructed to take Care that it should be signify'd to the King of Spain that the Condition of the Roman Catholics would be worse here under King James than it was under Queen Elizabeth and that it might be effected that Spinola should then Land an Army in Milford Haven And then saith the great Historian they not being able to effect that proceeded to the Plot of the Gun-powder Treason The Popish Petitioners then did essay how they might flectere superos and Acheronta movere at the same time But in truth as in Whale-fishing 't is customary for Marriners apprehending Danger to the Vessel from the greatness of the Whale to throw out an empty Barrel into the Sea for the Whale to toss about on the Waters and to receive some diversion from it that while he is so diverted they may the more securely wound him with their dead-doing Irons thus did the Papists throw out their empty Petitions to that King only to divert and amuse him that they might surprize him with the â—ate they intended him Yet now if any one should put the Interrogatory to me which Person I had the least Kindness for namely a Non-Conformist that favour'd the Doctrine of Resistance or a Papist that believ'd the Grounds and School-Conclusions of the Doctrine of Popery as King Iames's before mention'd Expression was and which whoever did he said could neither be a good Christian or a faithful Subject I shall by way of Answer crave aid from a Judgment given by Philip of Macedon who having heard the Merits of a Cause or Complaint that happen'd between two lewd Persons gave the Decree That one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and that the other should run after him as fast as he could But against any Seditious Protestant I would wish more severity exercised than against such a Papist for the former doth not only rebel against his Prince as the latter but doth according to Iob's Expression more rebel against the light and is guilty of the Simulata Sanctitas and so according to the Expression before mention'd out of the Apocalypse Reward her as she has rewarded you and double unto her double c. deserves to be doubly punish'd for his duplex iniquitas and shall magnifie the Justice of the King's Ministers done to their Prince and Country and to themselves when in any Conjuncture they shall find any call'd Protestants turning Gods and the King's grace into wantonness and Religion into Rebellion they shall level their most solicitous endeavors with all the sharpness of the Law against such nominal Protestants for then the salus populi will engage them as the Physicians say to mind the Vrgentius Symptoma and for which they have a Rule that Cum diversae repugnantesque inter se committuntur indicationes parendum est omnino fortioribus 'T is fit I should recompence the trouble I have given your Lordship by what I have said of this Question by diverting you with the News of another Question that among some Company was lately bandy'd in Discourse here between a Papist and a Non-Conformist and 't was a much more termagant Question than the former namely Whether Popery or Mahumetanism be the woâ—st I was sorry to find the Non-Conformist to give his Judgment as he did in a gross and undistinguishing manner that the Impostures of Mahomet were fitter to be embraced than several Tenets he named in Popery which tho erroneous yet are denominable as Tenets of Religion but did for a while forbear giving my Opinion in the Case or relieving the Papist with any notion of mine tho I found the Non-Conformist as somewhat the better Disputant pressing too hard on him gave me occasion to have done it than if I would I calling to mind how the Papists of old have so often decided it that Heretics are woâ—se than Turks or Infidels and that they have ranked our Religion of the Church of England with Atheism since I allow not of works of super-erogation would not super-erogate in being too hasty in moderating in the Dispute Thus Maldonaâ—e on St. Iohn saith Qui Catholici sunt Majore odio Calvinistas caeterosque omnes Haereticos prosequuntur quam Gentiles And thus Stapleton in his Oration or Speech against the Politicians saith That the Heretics are worse than Turks And Mason in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae Lib. 1. Cap. 1. p. 8. cites Gulielm Reinold in his Calv. Turcis l. 1. c. 7. and l. 4. c. 11. for saying Religionem nostram meaning that of the Church of England ipsâ Turcicâ esse deteriorem Mason further brings in Bristo saying Religionem nostram nullam esse ipsâ Experientiâ probâ—ri And cites another Popish Author for saying Protestantes nullam habent fidem nullam Spem nullam Charitatem nullam Poenitentiam nullam Iustificationem nullam Ecclesiam nullum Altare nullum Sacrificium nullum Sacerdotium nullam Religionem Christum nullum and quotes Cardinal Alan for saying Nostram liturgiam sacramenta Conciones istiusmodi esse quae fine dulio aeternum afferunt exitium The well meant pains of the Compilers of our Liturgy in inserting there some good Prayers out of the Mass to render it more agreeable to the Papists was it seems all lost and that perhaps occasion'd that angry Exclamation of Mr. Cartwright of old That in Ceremonies we ought to comply with the Turk rather then the Pope I acquainted the Discoursers that Mr. Fox in the Edition of the Acts and Monuments printed together in one Volume in London in the Year 1596 doth Combat this mighty Question
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
it saith Concessimus Deo hac praesenti charta confirmavimus pro nobis HAEREDIBVS nostris in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia jura sua integra libertates suas illaesas and whereby the British Churches are secured under a Prince of any Religion from Foreign Arbitrary impositions But indeed the Style current in Magna Charta is that our Kings for themselves and their Heirs forever did grant the Customs and Liberties contained in that Charter to our Ancestors and their Heirs for ever Our Ancestors had no occasion to spend time in seeking Knots in a Bull-rush or hidden Sense in the words HEIRS and the King's HEIRS when so anciently as by the Oath of Fealty which every Person above fourteen years old and every Tythingman was obliged to take publickly at the Court-Leet within which he lived they were sworn to the King and his HEIRS and that Oath was taken a fresh every year by all the Subjects under Edward the Confessor and William the first and is thus set down by Pryn in his Concordia Discors viz. I A. B. do swear that FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS I will be Faithful and Loyal to our Lord the King AND HIS HEIRS c. The instances are innumerable of Allegiance anciently Sworn to our Kings and their Heirs and this one for example occureth to me as Sworn in the time of Edward the 4th viz. Sovereign Lord I Henry Percy become your Subject and Leige-man and promit to God and you that hereafter I Faith and Troth shall bear to you as to my Sovereign Leige-Lord and to your Heirs Kings of England of Life and Limb and of Earthly Worship to Live and Die against all Earthly People and to you and to your Commandments I shall be Obeysant as God me help and his Holy Evangâ—lists 27. Oct. 9. Ed. 4. Claus. 9. Ed. 4. m. 13. in dorso Mr. Pryn likewise in that Book of his beforemention'd saith that there was an ancient Oath of Fealty and Allegiance both by the Subjects of England and Kings Bishops Nobles and Subjects of Scotland made to the Kings of England and Their Heirs as Supreme Lords of Scotland in these words viz. Ero fidelis legalis fidemque legalitatem servabo Henrico Regi Angliae haeredibus suis de vitâ membris terreno honore contra omnes qui possunt vivere mori nunquam pro aliquo portabo arma nec ero in consilio vel auxilio contra eum vel Haeredes suos c. which Oath he saith William King of Scots and all his Nobles Swore to King Henry the second haeredibus suis sicut ligio Domino suo and John Balliol John Comyn with all the Nobles of Scotland to King Edward the first and his Heirs He there likewise gives an account how the Nobles of England Swore Fealty to Richard King of England and to his Heirs against all men and how the Citizens of London Swore the like Oath and That if King Richard should die without Issue they would receive Earl John his Brother for their King and Lord juraverunt ei fidelitatem Contra omnes homines salva fidelitate Richardi Regis fratris sui as Hoveden relates And he moreover cites the Record of the Writ issued to all the Sheriffs of England soon after the Birth of Edward the 1 st Son and Heir to King Henry the 3 d. To Summon all Persons above 12 years old to Swear Fealty to him as Heir to the King and to submit themselves faithfully to him as their Liege Lord after his Death This form of the Oath in the Writ is there mention'd to that effect viz. Quod ipsi salvo homagio fidelitate nostrâ quâ nobis tenentur cui in vitâ nostrâ nullo modo renunciare volumus fideles eritis Edwardo filio nostro primogenito ita quod si de nobis humanitus Contigerit eidem tanquam Haeredi nostro domino suo ligio erunt fideliter intendentes eum pro domino suo ligio habentes And he there shews how they were Summon'd and Sworn accordingly and further how in the Parliament of H. 4. The Lords Spiritual and Tempâ—ral and Commons were Sworn to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King to the Prince and his Issue and to every one of his Sons severally succeeding to the Crown of England And he there mentions more Oaths taken to our Kings and their Heirs of the like Nature The Consideration hereof would make any one wonder at the Confidence of a late Learned Lawyer and positive pretender to Omniscience in our English Antiquities and Records who in his Detestable Book called The Rights of the Kingdom and which contains a farrago of Impious Anti-monarchical Principles and Printed in London 1649. and there to the Scandal of the English and Protestant Name lately Re-printed by some Factious Anti-Papists hath averred That our Allegiance was of old tyed to the Kings Person not unto his Heirs and for the Kings Heirs saith he there I find them not in our Allegiance And he mentions the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as enjoyn'd in Queen Elizabeth's and King Iames's time respectively to be the first that were made to the Kings Person and his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS But to return to the Cause in hand 'T is sufficient for the Obligation I press that HEIRS and SUCCESORS are so clearly expressed in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And tho the Statute of 1 â— Elizabethae in the Clause of the Annexing Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to the Crown useth the style of Your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm shall have full Power c. as the Statue of the Supremacy 26o. Henry 8th runs in the Style of our Sovereign Lord his Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realms shall be taken accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head and tho the Oath in the 35 th H. the 8 th Cap. 1. that relates to the bearing Faith Truth and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty and to his Heirs and Successors c. be further thus expressed viz. And that I shall accept repute and take the Kings Majesty his Heirs and Successors when they or any of them shall enjoy his place to be the only Supreme Head c. and tho' the old Oath of the Mayor of London and other Cities and Towns throughout England and of Bayliffs or other chief Officers where there are no Mayors runs in the style of Swearing That they shall well and Loyally Serve the King in the Office of Mayor in the City of L. and the same City shall keep surely and safely to the use of our Lord the King of England and of his Heirs Kings of England might give occasion for that great empty and big-sounding Sophism of Sir W. I. in his famous Speech wherein he said That we are Sworn to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors but not Obliged to any during
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
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