Loyalty that any Christian who hath taken these Oaths shall think sufficient doth most certainly take the name of Loyalty and Protestancy and of Christianity and even of God in vain and as the Scripture implies that there is a Repentance to be repented of I shall say that such a mans Protestancy is to be protested against And when we consider that the Presbyterian Author of the EXERCITATION beforementioned hath in p. 41. with so much Loyalty and Reason told us in terms That Obedience is owing to Princes without condition of Religion or Iustice on their part performed and the Scripture is clear for an irrespective and in regard of the Rulers Demeanor absolute subjection Exod. 20. 12. 21. 25. Rom. 13. 1 2 c. Tit. 3. 1. 1 Pet. 2. 13. 1 Sam. 24. 6 7. 26. 9 10 11. Jer. 27. 12. 29. 7. Matth. 22. 21. and hath told us in p. 56. That our Oaths put no condition on the Prince but are all absolute and irrespective and run without ifs or ands in like manner as the Obligation of Subjects Allegiance to their Sovereign is irrespective according to Divine Institution methinks it should make any Son of the Church of England to start at the thought of his being out-done in Loyalty and sworn Allegiance by a Covenanting Presbyterian for such that Author was and at the thought of any ones having taken those Oaths relating to the King his Heirs and Successors and afterward interlining the interpretation of them with ifs and ands and at the thought of such an interlineation not appearing as ill in the Court of Conscience as any would do in a Court of Law. But the truth is the Church of England appearing in this late Religionary Fermentation to have so incorporated this Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty into its Constitution beyond any other Church in the World and likewise the Doctrine of Charity and Moderation toward all Christians whether Foreigners or Domesticks whether whole Churches or single Persons as Primate Bramhal's words are that the same doth now as I may say strike the Eyes of all indifferent men and enforce it self on the thoughts of any who do but for Curiosity walk about this Sion and go round about her and tell the Towers thereof I mean do consider its Prayers Homilies Articles Canons and Ecclesiastical Constitutions it hath hereby been necessarily made like the Eagle to renew its youth and to be invigorated as with a new Soul after its Enemies thought it dead or asleep and after Mr. Hooker's shrewd guessing that after the Year 1677. That what followed would be likely to be small joy to them who should behold it For the Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty being Essential to the Peace of Kingdoms and likely to be so more and more to the Worlds end and the Church of England appearing as by consent of Parties to be THE Church that overtowers all others in the Principles for THAT Sort of Loyalty as well as in the august Principles of Charity for all Christians according to the saying of Magnes amoris amor it must naturally attract the love of thoâ—e in other Churches and supposing that any Church or People love themselves and cannot be preserved but by Loyalty Nature will direct the World to a growing love for the Church of England and therefore I am no Visionaire in predicting from natural Causes That what shall follow to the Church of England will be great joy to those who shall behold it to the very end of time And nothing could possibly in my opinion have brought it to this firm State of its Glory but the disloyal Principles and Practices of some of its Competitors and particularly the just and dreadful apprehensions given to considerate men upon some Nominal Protestants and Nominal Property-men having founded Dominion in Grace and yet having reproached the Church of England and its Divines with Popery and invited the Protestant Mobile to make a Schism from it on such an account and printed many Seditious Pamphlets for the Establishing the IF or AND-Loyalty or indeed which is all one an absolute Disloyalty and in such a Conjuncture when it would have been not more pernicious to the particular Souls of the Disloyal than to the Body of the whole Nation and to the State of Christendom Thus through the Divine Omnipotence which can bring good out of evil hath our late Fermentation been made perfective to our Church as well as the Hereditary Monarchy and the Rule of God's governing the World by the Prayers of his Church and Lusts of his Enemies been here exemplified and as the Air that is the Steem of the dull Earth or the Textura halituum terrae as Gassendus calls it is made by nature to be the Vehicle of those Beams of the Sun that dazle our Eyes thus have the Fumes exhaled by such mens Lusts of Disloyalty and Malice that darken'd their own understandings and would have obscured the glory of the Church of England been made instrumental in dispersing its brightness through the World and even in the opening of the Eyes of many to behold it with amazement and that service hath been done our Church thereby which by all the Pens of its Iewel and Hooker and Sanderson could never be effected England that had so much the Carriage and the Trade of the World till the Munster Peace of 48 could bear the Civil War after 41 and breathe under it and flourish after it but as the State of the World abroad and at home now is and likely to be our ALL must depend upon the Principles and Practice of Loyalty and therefore this new Soul I spake of as now animating the Church of England must be immortal and it may well say to it self under any Prince that can come Soul take thy ease thou hast Loyalty and the Principles of it laid up for many years and England did not before 48 more excel other Realms in Trade than its Church doth now other Churches in absolute and irrespective Loyalty That great Iudge of Churches and their Principles Arch-Bishop Laud having in p. 36. of his famous Star-Chamber Speech remarked the dangerous Consequence of avowing That the Popish Religâ—ion is Rebellion saith That some Principles of theirs teach Rebellion is apparently true c. and I shall add that some Principles of our late Covenanting Dissenteâ—s have taught it is apparently true and for such of the latter who believed and practised these Principles to reproach any Papists with Disâ—oyalty is as apparently ridiculous as was Mr. Prynn's writing two Voluminous Tractates of The Disloyalty of Papists at the time when he was making so great a Figure in the late Rebellion But however suitably to the Moral Offices urged by Ames of not condemning whole Parties of men on the account of the guilt of some Persons I have under this Conclusion cited the loyal Principles of some Recusants of all sorts pertinent to my Scope and because the irrespective Loyalty
in our Mâ—tropolis and that beyond the wildness of any mad Bacchanal may well be an instance of Caution against many of a Party whose Principles are not known being trusted together with themselves Yet after all this as once in a little Nominal Parliament we had in the the time of the Vsurpation it was ordained That all Persons that could speak should speak the enjoyned words of Matrimony and that all that had hands should there joyn hands so I believe that in any future Conjuncture particular Persons who by the Loyalty of their Principles and Practices and by their being ready to attend our Divines for instruction can make it appear that they have Consciences will have no cause to complain of their being not free But by an Accident of Moment that hath offered it self to the consideration of our Protestant Recusants since the Epoche of Plots and Rumours of Plots I doubt not but they will find an imminent necessity to make it demonstrable to the World that they own no Principles destructive of it and that particularly the easie access that Witnesses have found to Credibility on their swearing Plots against Iesuitick Popish Recusants by the Precipice of the Principles on which they stood being so conspicuous to the World and from whence the very breath of their Adversaries of how mean and despicable parts and fortunes soever hath served to throw them down headlong into ruine so easily will be an effectual Document to all Recusants who would prevent the danger from Plot-Witnesses that the very next thing to be done by them is their bearing their Testimony against Principles of Dis-loyalty The late Bishop of Winchester to the Character of whose Loyalty and Learning Christendom is no stranger having his thoughts on the Wing and ready to take their Flight to that Region of Bliss where none are admitted but Souls that part hence with a noble disposition to Charity for all Humane kind thought fit in his Prospect of that World and in the great Interval of his Preparation for it to send to the Press his Book called His Vindication c. printed in 1683 and in the Conclusion of it to transmit his opinion to the Age and Posterity that ever since the Reformation there have been two Plots carried on by Papists and Dissenters and that the same would long continue He had there mentioned Mr. Baxters justifying the late War and quoted him for saying that as he durst not repent of what he had done in the aforesaid War so he could not forbear the doing of the same if it were to do again in the same state of things 'T is true indeed saith the Bishop he tells us in the same place That if he were convinced he had sinned in what he had done he would as willingly make a publick Recantation as he would eat and drink when he is hungry and thirsty But neither he nor any of the Non-Conformists that I have heard of hath as yet made any such publick Recantation and therefore we may rationally and charitably enough conclude That they are still of the same Iudgment they were then and consequently that their Practice will be the same it was then when any opportunity invites them to it c. And then proceeds to say For mine own part I must confess as I always have been so I am still of opiniâ—n that ever since the Reformation there have been and are two Plots carrying on sometimes more covertly and sometimes more secretly the one by those that call themselves the only true Catholicks the other by those that call themselves the only true Protestants and both of them against the Government as it is Established by Law both in Church and State and as there always hath been so there will be Plotting by both those Parties until both of them be utterly suppressed for as for making of Peace with either of them I take it by reason of the perverseness of the one and peevishness of the other and the Pride of both a thing not to be hoped for How much my poor Measures of Futurity do differ from his Lordships in the Case of our Popish and Protestant Recusants the Current of my Discourse shews and am sorry that he having used this harsh sounding word of Plots described not his Idea of the particulars thereof relating to the time to come and that he innodated in this his Censure as it were the Body of the two Religionary Parties without any exception of the Loyal in both But I have observed it in a printed Letter of this Reverend Prelate to the Earl of Anglesy of the Date of Iuly the 4th 1672. where having spoke of the keeping out of Popery now it seems to be flowing in upon us as his words are that he saith You know what I was for in the late Sessions of Parliament I mean not a Comprehension but a Coalition or Incorporation of the Presbyterian Party into the Church as it is by Law Established and I am still of the same opinion that it is the one only effectual expedient to hinder the Growth of Popery and to secure both Parties and I am very confident that there are no Presbyterians in the World the Scotch only excepted that would not conform to all that is required by our Church especially in such a Conjuncture of time as this is My Scope by quoting this Letter is to shew that about 10 years ago the Bishop was not of opinion that Nature had condemned the Presbyterians to eternal Plotting against the State but that a Coalition between that Party here and our Church would then naturally happen and as to which I have shewn how far he was fortunate in that his Conjecture by the late great advance of those called Presbyterians toward Conformity and that therefore his Opinion varying in 83 from what it was in 72 as to the Presbyterians it might had he lived longer to have writ again vary perhaps as to the Papists being Plotters with a Continuando and he might have recanted that opinion as much as he would have had Mr. Baxter recanted his And I would from that his Letter shew that we have the less reason to be mortified with the fear of the continuance of these 2 Plots or to be tempted to uncharitable thoughts of the whole Body of the Papists upon this Bishops opinion as delivered in what I have cited out of his Vindication because one expression of it includes so much of Humane Frailty and Error viz. his Lordships saying That he was ALWAYS of opinion that since the Reformation these two Plots were and would be till both the Parties were utterly disabled and suppressed for when he writ the said Letter his Opinion appeared otherwise And there is another use I would make of this Pious and Learned Prelates having given such an Alarm to the World concerning the Plots of these Heterodox Religionaries in future time and of his having made them as to Disloyalty to be in a manner
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
only attacked and whereby you have that fastness where one-a-brest can keep down a Multitude is power Your affability and good Nature that endear you to so many is power and makes the hearts of men to be your Pyramids And all these sorts of power in you which make every party wish you to be theirs make up so bright a beauty in your mind as may well cause jealousie in that party that by loving you think they have Right to be again beloved by you I mean the English Protestants who court you and to whom you have so long engaged your self and especially when they shall find their Rivals boast of the kindness you have for them and that too at such a time as this when the Protestants seem to have the concern of one that is playing his last stake and which only can make him fetch back all he has lost a time when any one who pretends to a cold harmless neutrality doth really intend an exulcerated hatred a time wherein he that is not with us is against us however it may have hapned that in some lazy conjunctures when Papists and Protestants were half asleep both here and in the Neighbouring Continent that then he that was not against us was with us a time cum non de terminis sed de totâ possessione agitur A time wherein as in that of the tempest that happen'd to the Ship that carried Iona among the heathen Mariners we see almost all namely the Papists calling on their God and the Church of England likewise and the dissenters in the several persuasions on theirs with this difference that no man is now asleep but all in it are waking some at work to save the Ship and others to bore holes in it as if they were concerned to have it cast away as being not owners in it and as if they had secured their own merchandize in it which they purchased by the money they took up at Bottomry from Rome or its agents and knew how to secure themselves in the Cock-boat We have had dull and lazy conjunctures of timeâ—heretofore insomuch that many years ago a Divine seemed to begin a Sermon on the Gun-powder Treason day before a great Academick audience as it were yawning and in his sleep with these words Conspiracies if not prevented are rather dangerous then otherwise And thus the ingenious Comedy tells us of a Hero that as he was in the height of his passion with the greatest zeal making Love instantly dropt down into a deep sleep but 't is no time for yawning when the Earth begins to yawn under us And tho times have been heretofore influencing the Protestant cause like the Sun in March that could only raise the vapors of Popery in the body of the Nation and not dissipate them 't is now supposed to be otherwise and as I have heard that the Earl of Hallifax in his Speech in the house of Lords having spoken of his hatred to Popery excellently well added somewhat to this effect And we may now exterminate it if we will. And therefore with that now I think the ecce nunc tempus acceptabile festina salvare may be applyed to the Kingdom And if as the School-men tell us Angels may dance upon the point of a Needle we may imagine many both good and bad ones dancing on this point of time 't is on this moment the Nations eternity depends Every one now is as good a Conjurer as Friar Bacon and can make a Brazen head say time is by which words I believe the learned Roger Bacon meant only that in the vessel of Brass wherein the exquisite chymical preparations for the birth of gold were laboured the nick of opportunity was to be watched under pain of the loss of all the fire and Materials and art and labour according to that of Petrus Bongus Ibi est operis perfectio aut annihilatio quoniam ipsa die immò horâ oriuntur elementa simplicia depurata quae egent statim compositione antequam volent abigne as I find him cited by Brown for it in his vulgar errors where he further saith Now letting slip this critical opportunity he missed the intended Treasure which had he obtained he might have made out the tradition of making a brazen wall about England that is the most powerful defence and strongest fortification which Gold could have effected My Lord my opinion was askt in a letter from a very honest Gentleman and much your Lordships Servant Whether you should not do your self and your Religion a greatdeal of Right by printing in this juncture some of the excellent and large discourses you have formerly writ against Popery and the substance of the answer I gave him was to this effect That tho I would not diswade your Lordships now publishing any thing relating to the tenets of that pretended Religion that might import Protestants to understand more cleerly then they did in which way they have been advantaged by the Bishop of Lincoln's Book against Popery yet that I thought the great bulk of Popery could no more be destroyed by notions and arguments then a capital Ship could be sunk with bullets for that supposing they did all light between wind and water the Papists have thousands of Plugs ready to be clapt in there and thousands of men in that great vessel ready to apply them and tho I thought there was a time for writing of Books it was when there was a time for reading them that is when people had time to read them but that now the most curious works of Whiteakers and Iewels and Rainoldses would be no more regarded then attempts of shewing the longitude would be to Navigators while under the attack of a Fire-ship as I said or while they were making their way through the body of an Enemies Fleet. I know that 't is said to be an old Sybilline Prophecy that Antichrist shall be destroyed by paper viz. Antichristum lino periturum but alas that way is now as insignificant in the case as to think that the dominion of the Sea can be built up by Seldens Mare Clausum or destroyed by Grotius his Mare Liberum or any way but by thundring Legions in powerful fleers Indeed our paper pellets that the press since its licence hath shot against Popery I mean the innumerable little sheet-pamphlets that have come out against it may find time to be read and to give us diversion but the Papists looking on their Church as a great First-Rate Mann'd with Popes and Emperors and Princes and Fathers and Councels and innumerable Souls there embarqued in the Sea of time for the great Voyage of Eternity do account our little Protestant honest Sheet-authors firing at them daily to be only like the Yacht-Fan Fan's attacking De Ruyter But my Lord there is another Reason why a person of your Lordships great Power and Abilities should not at this time embarrase your self with writing No not those defences of your
giving decent burial to any of their undecent Plotts and for the exasperating any Protestants by despising them and endeavouring to impose on their Understandings as some did on a raw young Country Gentleman whom one day treating at a Puppet-shew they persuaded that the Puppets were living Creatures and after he had found out his gross ridiculous misconceit therein they on the following day attending him to the Theatre engaged him to believe that the Actors were Puppets I mean their endeavoring to make us believe that Sham-Plots were real ones and that a real one was Shamme I shall never wonder at the encrease of the passion of anger incident to humane Nature even in great and generous Souls on the occasion of gross Calumnies invented against them about a matter of weight when I consider the Example of the Great Royal Prophet a Person of a great Understanding and of so great Courage that he was not afraid of Ten thousands of men who set themselves against him round about and tho an Host should encamp ogainst him his heart would not fear and a Man that had in his Nature and temper the Gentleness of a Lamb mixt with the stoutness of a Lyon and one to whom the Divine Promise had ensured a Kingdom and yet was he by the Sycophancies and little Shammes rais'd against him by Saul's great Courtiers wrought to so high a pitch of anger that he did with exquisite forms of imprecation and such as perhaps are not to be found in any other Story frequently devote those Calumniators to the most dire Miseries his fancy could lead him to express But the Cause of his being so highly provoked by those that would turn his glory into shame and did seek after leasing and whose deceitful tongues used all-devouring words as he saith to Doeg the Edomite in one of his Psalms and whose tongue he there sayes did devise mischiefs like a sharp razor working deceitfully may be ascribed to the Shammes of his Enemies wounding him in the most sensible Part namely the Reputation of his Loyalty to his Prince whose Life he spared when 't was in his power to destroy him and who was so far from the use of Shammes against him that he doom'd the Amalekite to dy that shamm'd himself the author of Saul's death And therefore No marvel if the Calumnies of Jesuited Papists attaquing Protestants in that Case too of their Fidelity to their King render the passion of anger in them against those Shams so intense and vehement And tho the English Courage or a very little Philosophy would help them to bestow only a generous neglect on other Calumnies they can never forget those that strike at the heart of their allegiance and consequently of their Religion that so strictly enjoyns it Nor if according to the Example of that great man after Gods heart who said Away from me all ye that work vanity and who would have No lyer tarry in his sight is it to be admired if every true English Protestant shall say too odi Ecclesiam malignantium and shall feclude all dictators of Calumny from his company and banish them home to their own And tho the abuse of Excommunication by the Papal Church and Presbyterian hath been so horrid that the primitive use of it is in a manner lost and grown obsolete yet will that which includes somewhat of the Nature of it be still kept alive in the World by private persons who practice the Christian Religion they profess and to whom tho the Precepts of the New Testament have not given that hateful thing to humane Nature in charge namely to be Informers or Promoters or judicial accusers of any of Mankind accordingly as under the Mosaic oeconomy 't was said Tu non eris criminator yet have they obliged them to withdraw themselves from men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth and not to eat with any one who is call'd a Brother and is a railer and to turn away from men that are truce-breakers and to mark those who cause divisions and to avoid them and to reject a Heretic who is subverted and self-condemned and by men of Cultivated educations and tempers who value themselves on the Company they keep and on it are valued by the World and will therefore abandon or excommunicate from their Conversation such Monsters of men who have renounced the obligations of humane society and who are guilty of Notorious Contumacy in matters that concern the very Salvation of Souls and the Safety of Kingdoms The being staked down therefore to a Narrower Tedder in Conversation or being Civilly Excommunicated from Protestants Company must by necessity of Nature in my opinion be the fate of our Jesuited make-bates and criminators of Protestants that have been so unweary'd in raising Jealousies between the King and his People and between Protestant and Protestant and all such that go to part whom God and Nature and Interest have joyn'd will probably come at last to be the derelicts of humane Society when they shall Come to be understood and especially when there shall be that good understanding between Protestants here of several persuasions that may be expected to arise from their having found out the authors of their divisions and seen how ridiculous Protestants have been in the view of the World while they have appear'd like the Cat to draw one another through the Pool and the Jesuits and their Pensioners stood behind undiscern'd and pull'd the Rope My Lord I know we may justly fear that Popery may during some turbid intervals gain ground in England and as the Renowned Historian of our Reformation hath in a public Sermon Judiciously observed that Sure none believed themselves when they say we are not in danger of Popery and none can think it but they who desire it But without presuming to make my self one of Heavens Privy Councellors and without pretending to a spirit of Prophecy I shall on the basis of the Course of Nature ground this affirmation That whatever alterations Time can Cause yet while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Forraign Conquest the Protestant Religion Can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom nor the public profession of it suffer any long interruption therein I will grant it possible that hereafter under a Prince of the Popish Religion Popery may like the vibration of a pendulum among Certain persons have the greater extent in the return of it as Becket's Image was by Gardiner set up in London 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with much pomp in Queen Mary's time after its being pull'd down in Harry the Eighth's and himself unsainted and some people may undertake devout Pilgrimages hereafter to some such Images and Reliques as my Lord Herbert saith were in Harry the Eighth's time exploded and we may again hear of our Lady's Girdle shewn in eleven several places and her Milk in eight the Bell of St. Guthlac and the Felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster both Remedies for
only as a Philosopher Considering that the Properties of humane Passions have as Necessary effects in Minds as gravity or lightness have in Bodies and that let men intend what male administration they will things will not be ill administred do think that the fermentation now in the Kingdome will not end but with Popery it self here ending And that I may not seem to stand alone in this my opinion I shall entertain your Lordship with that of An Excellent Philosopher and Divine the Author of the History of the Royal Society who there having said that experimental Philosophy will enable us to provide before-hand against any alteration in Religious affairs which this Age may produce he goes on thus If we Compare the changes to which Religion has been alwayes subject with the present face of things we may safely conclude that whatever Vicissitude shall happen about it in our time it will probably be neither to the advantage of implicit Faith nor of Enthusiasme but of Reason the fierceness of violent inspiration is in good Measure departed the Remains of it will be soon chaced out of the World by the Remembrance of its terrible footsteps it has every where left behind it And although the Church of Rome still preserves its Pomp yet the Real authority of that too is apparently decaying It first got by degrees to the Temporal Power by means of its Spiritual but now it upholds some shadow of the Spiritual by the strength of the Temporal dominion it has obtain'd This is the present state of Christendome It is impossible to spread the same Cloud over the World again The Vniversal disposition of this Age is bent upon a Rational Religion And therefore I Renew my affectionate request That the Church of England would Provide to have the chief share in its first adventure that it would persist as it has begun to encourage Experiments which will be to our Church as the Brittish Oake is to our Empire an Ornament and Defence to the Soil wherein 't is planted This Author therefore with such Vigour of Reason passing his sentence concerning any Vicissitudes here not happening that will probably Conduce to the advantage of Popery or Enthusiasme I hope your Lordship will acquit me both of Singularity and Enthusiasme as to the opinion I have given especially since I only profess it to be founded on Natural Reason and do only Consider the God of Nature when I think that a Religion that is of God will stand 'T is not unknown to Your Lordship that Columbus being in chace of the New World and Cast among some barbarous Ilanders that deny'd him the hospitality of their Port and freedom of Commerce he Knowing that they worshipt the Moon and that it would shortly be Eclips'd thô he was neither Prophet nor Prophet's Son aw'd them out of their inhumanity by foretelling that the Moons deity would be shortly obscur'd and when ever I acquaint any Roman Catholics with my Judgment of the Nearness of their Religion to an Eclipse I intend no more enthusiasme in my prediction then Columbus did in his and design nothing worse neither by mine then he by his namely the reconciling them to humanity and a fair entercourse with Mankind 'T was in the middle of the Worlds long night of barbarisme and ignorance that Popery was in its Meridian and for hundreds of years all the Learning that busy'd the World referr'd to Iudicial Astrology Rabinical Resveries School-Divinity Latine Rhimes in praise of the Saints Compiling of Legends to Monks Histories of Ecclesiastical affairs and the times they liv'd in but so partial and so full of ridiculous and incredible Stories that we have a better and truer account of the times when Alexander and Iulius Caesar liv'd then of the times of Constantine and Charlemain to gelding of the Fathers writings and purging away their Gold Regulating the Hoods and Hose and Shoo 's of Monks to inventing of Ceremonies and mystical vestments and fantastic geniculations to the making of the Popes brutish Canon Law and the Commenting thereon in barbarous Latine by Doctors of the Decrees and Decretals and to the Commenting on Aristotle by those that could not read his Text and the Commenting likewise on the New Testament by such as knew no Greek insomuch that 't was then a proverbial saying among those illiterate Writers Graecum est non potest legi to quiddity esseity entity and such titivilitium and to eus rationis that did as I may say destroy the being of Reason to the improvement of one sort of Mechanics Viz. by making Images in Churches with little engines and librations turn the eyes and move the lips like the forementioned Rood of Grace at Boxley in Kent and which was by Bishop Fisher exposed as a cheat at St. Pauls Cross at the time of its being there broke in pieces while their great Real Design was to make the Layety but the Churches automata as brute Animals may not improperly be said to be God Almighties to the Composing Paschal Epistles about the time of the Celebration of Easter a Controverâ—y as our great Mr. Hales saith that caused as great a Combustion as ever was in the Church and in which fantastical hurry all the World were Schismaâ—ics and about which Monk Austin was so quarrelsome with the Britains when the difference was not in doctrine but in Almanac Calculations and about which aâ—ter the infallibility of the General Councel of Nice had given a Rule in the Cause the World was yet so much in the dark that the Bishops of Rome from year to year were fain to address to the Church of Alexandrias's Mathematicians for directions as to the week Easter was to be kept in And during this long night Millions of mankind were brought into the World only to sleep out their span of time and to have day-dreams of Knowledge or rather a profound Docta Ignorantia and men were by dignities rewarded proportionably for their sleeping longest according to what the Chronicon Frideswidae mentions of Guimundus a Chaplain to our King Henry the First who in the Celebration of holy offices reading before the King that place of St. Iames non pluet super terram annos III menses VI thus ridiculously distinguished the Notes in his reading non pluet super terram annos unum unum unum menses quinque unâ—m and the King asking him afterward why he red so he answered quia vos in ita tantum legentes beneficia episcopatus Confertis No marvel then if during that long gross and palpable Darkness of the World the Pope travesty'd those words in Scripture about Gods making the two great lights to serve his turn against the Emperor thô yet the attempt to prove the Popes Supremacy out of the first Chapter of Genesis is as extravagant as his who would prove the Circulation of the blood out of the first Chapter of Litleton And as the Roman Breviary tell 's us of S. Thomas
and Mr. Fox saith That after that day there never was one that suffered in Smithfield for the Testimony of the Gospel And the Prophetic Impetus of George Sophocard a Scotch Minister was very remarkable as Buchanan in his 15th Book of his History relates it and when the Cardinal in Scotland and his Train of Priests were Spectators of the Tragedy of the Martyr he fixed his eye on the Cardinal and said That the Cardinal who there gazeth on me with so much Pomp and Pride within a few days shall fall there with more Ignominy then he now sits with State and so it fell out that the Cardinals Carcase was shortly dragged with infamy by that very place It is somewhat natural for dying men and perhaps for all unfortunate men to offer at Prophecy They who have good Cards dealt them in one Game trouble not themselves to Prophecy that they shall have either good or bad ones in the next and few who have sound minds in sound bodies and with sound Estates can tune their thoughts to Divination But as I would not rashly embrace so neither would I trample on the Predictions of Pious men in their last Agonies and particularly of what they who are Gods Witnesses or Martyrs Predict about the Cause of Religion for it is the Lot of Witnesses in any Cause to be frequently entrusted with the Secrets of it But however the most raised Intenseness of Humane Nature near its period in any men may tempt them to believe that the things they wish to the World will have their certain Birth in it yet whether God doth then inspire them with the knowledg of Futurity I know not but know that the very Prediction of Future things from dying men of valued Fame is according to natural Causes an Engin in the hand of Fate to bring the things predicted to an accomplishment For it being sound that Sagacious men on the Confines of Eternity have foretold any alterations in the World such as wish the same will think them first possible and then by degrees likely and then by the next thought certain to come to pass and that therefore they are safe by Heavens Office of Ensurance that their Embarquing in Designs to bring those things into practice will be prosperous However when we see those Martyrs both living in Story and their Predictions in Nature and when our Martyrology hath represented to us with what an Heroick Bravery their Souls flew up to Heaven from the Flames like the Eagles cut loose and Towring aloft from the Funeral Piles of the Roman Emperors as they were going to be made Divi can we be dispirited by dull fears and suppositions of Protestancy and our Laws loosing their Vigour and be Proditors of the honour of out dying Martyrs I do rather both hope and believe that as dead mens Sculls do serve to strengthen the heads and feet of the Epileptick living that the ashes of those Marian Martyrs will confirm the faltring paces of our weaker Protestants from staggering into an excess of the fears of Popery And as in the Hospitals of the mad it is often seen that an Hypochondriac Person whom irrational fears and fancied dangers brought thither is by a real danger imminent on his Family or Estate frightning him into his Senses led out from thence such a Restoration of People to their Wits do I expect from the present and probable Future State of Christendom and that it will necessarily rescue us from unnecessary fears as likewise from all Curiosities that would imply our ingratitude to Heaven while we would illegally mend our own Country after the example of other parts of the World that is almost the only quiet part in it and Propounders will I believe every day grow more out of request who would make Earthquakes by telling us of the danger of falling Skies It may perhaps be rationally estimated that the greatest part of mad men becomes such by extravagant Suppositions and that the Quid si Coelum ruat is the Foundation of most Bedlams and likewise the subversion of most States by Intestine War making them appear as much the Ludibrium of Fortune as was the Story'd Fate of the two Brothers killing one another on occasion tho not of falling Skies yet of their imaginations travelling thither and ones Supposition of his having Pasture Ground as spacious as the Firmament and the others of his having as many Sheep as there were Stars there and his demanding their being pastured there and fatally resenting its being denyed him What a grave piece of madness is it in the common Writers of Politics to make it a kind of Proverbial saying as I find it used by Reinkingh in his Tractatus de Regimine seculari ecclesiastico as well as by other dull Learned Writers of Politics namely that a Prince may be resisted Si navem Reip. in quâ ipse cum subditis navigat perforare velit 'T is a degree of madness to suppose it and the like I thought of a Supposition in a Pamphlet printed not long after our 41 Commotion and called Observations on some of his Majesties late Answers and Expresses where in p. 4. 't is gravely said That if a Generalissimo should turn his Cannons upon his own Soldiers they might disobey him c. or thus supposing with Gerson That if the Pope goes to strike and box any one or with Alacius de Privileg l. 1. c. 8. that if the Emperor doth so that it is lawful in such Case to lay violent hands on either of them and thence gravely to conclude that the Party so uncivilly and outragiously treated becomes thereby the Deputy and Lieutenant to nature which is a common and equal Soveraign to them all as one Persons words of inference in this Case are from those Authors Bodin doth therefore very wisely in his De Rep. check the affected wisdom in a Venetian Edict against two Banditi who were Father and Son and offering the Son his Liberty and Estate if he would bring in his Fathers head and being angry with the supposition of such a things being done faith That 't were better that the whole City of Venice had been swallowed up by the Sea then that it should have rewarded so detestable a Villany But it is a madness for any to trouble the World by putting wanton impossible Cases and extending the Gold of Reason to such a thinness that will make it lose its weight and value To an over subtle Case put that blundering Answer of a Lawyer was good enough Non est ejusmodi casus dabilis Mr. Hobs in his Behemoth doth to the Question What if my Prince should command me with my own hands to execute my Father in case he should be condemned by the Law answer well enough this is a Case that need not be put We never have read or heard of any King or Tyrant so inhumane as to command it But I will suppose better things of the Future State of England then
some Papists whose names the Age riseth up to for their great advancement of real Learning I mean Peiresk Descartes Gassendus Mersennus had as much tenderness for any differing in judgment from them as Protestants can have and that mighty hunter after knowledg Peiresk was so far from eagerness in pursuing the blood of Heretics that being one of the Judges for Capital Causes in France he would always come off the Bench when Sentence of death was to be given though against the most outragious Murderer and he always carried in his mind a charity large enough to embrace the whole World and maintain'd a constant Correspondence with Salmasius Causabon and other Protestants and did put Grotius on the writing his De jure belli pacis that hath taught more Civility to Nations than the Modern Papal Christianity hath done and who hath there so perfectly manumitted Secular Magistrates from being obliged implicitly to execute the Sentences of Ecclesiastic Judges that he hath there asserted it l. 2. c. 26. § 4. Quin probabile est etiam Carnifici qui damnatum occisurus est hoc tenus aut quaestioni actis inter fuerit aut ex rei confessione cognita esse debere causae merita ut satis ei constet mortem ab eo commeritam idque nonnullis in locis observatur nec aliud spectat lex Hebraea cum ad lapidandum eum qui damnatus est testes vult prodire populo Deut. 17. By the 7th Verse of that Chapter the hands of the Witnesses were to be first on him to put him to death which Law no doubt had the effect of a Caveat with men against their ambitus of the standing Office of Witnesses by tacking thereunto the standing Office of Executioners Moreover both common observation and Cursory looking into Books and indeed common sense will teach us that the Papal Principles do not oblige men at once to fence against Heretics lives and against impossibilities nor to endanger themselves by fighting with the Wind-mills in Heretics Brains That great Cardinal D' Ossat whom I have so often here cited and who was so renown'd for his probity as well as comprehensive knowledg of matters of State doth in the 86th Letter that is to Villeroy in the Year 1597. give him an account of his discourse with the Pope on the occasion of his Holyness angrily resenting Harry the 4ths observing the Edict of pacification and that D' Ossat thereupon said That it was necessary for the Peace of France that the Edict should be observ'd that for want of such an Edict France had not been quiet for 35 years That the Date of the Edict 1577. shewed 't was not the present King but the late King 12 years before his death that made it that the late King and King Charles his Predecessor and Brother did not make such Edicts of Pacification with their good liking and frankly but were constrain'd to it by necessity even for the good of the Catholic Religion and the Realm after having found that many Wars made by Heretics served for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and order c. And that besides that necessity hath no Law in whatever Subject and Matter it be Jesus Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn that other Catholick Princes used so to do whom none spoke ill of for it That the Duke of Savoy as great a Zealot as he makes himself for the Catholic Religion doth tolerate Heretics in their Religion in the three Valleys of Italy of which he is Lord. That the King of Poland did as much not only in the Kingdom of Sweden but of Poland that all the Princes of the House of Austria and who are Celebrated for being Pillars of the Catholic Church did as much not only in the Towns of the Empire but also in their own proper Estates as in Austria it self from whence they take their Name in Hungary Bohemia Moravia Silesia Lusatia Stiria Carinthia and Croatia That Charles the 5th Father of the King of Spain was he that taught the King of France and other Princes to yield to such a necessity by making the Interim that every one knows even after his having Conquered the Protestants of Germany That his Son the King of Spain at this day who is reputed to be Archi-Catholic and to uphold the Catholic Religion as Atlas doth the Heavens doth yet tolerate in his Kingdoms of Valencia and Granada the Moors with their Mahumetanisme and hath caused to be offered to the Heretics of Zealand and Holland and other Heretics in the Low-Countries the free exercise of their pretended Religion if they will for the future acknowledge and obey him c. And concludes his discourse to the Pope saying That the Kings ablest Counsellors were of opinion that if his Holyness saw things so near as the King did and that the Pope was to Command France in the State the Realm was at present his Holyness would not in this point do less than the King did To all which D' Ossat saith The Pope made no reply And I think it may with parity of reason be affirmed that if the Pope himself were to Command England in the State it is in at present he would be no hammer of Heretics so as to knock any one of them on the head I know that after the date of that Letter viz. Anno 1597. of D' Ossat's last mentioned the various Revolutions in Christendom made the Scene of the toleration of Heterodoxy in those Countries to be altered with a Vengeance for six years after the death of D' Ossat viz. in the Year 1610. King Phillip the 3d of Spain made an Edict for the exterminating the Moors with their Mahumetatisme out of his Realms and which was executed with great Cruelty and the Vnion of Vtrecht entered by the Provinces in 1579 and the blow given to the Spanish Monarchy by Queen Elizabeth in 1588 and the Patronage the United Provinces had from her and the kindness they found from Harry the 4th of France made his Conditional offers of favour to the Dutch Heretics not thank-worthy but even at this very day tho in the Low-Countries both of the United and Spanish Provinces there is a certain reciprocal liberty for the Papists in the Dominions of the States and for the Protestants in the Dominions of the Spaniard yet is the liberty not equal for in the United Provinces the States allow the Papists a certain number of Priests to officiate among them in sacris which is done by an express Concession But in the Spanish Dominions there is no such Concession and the Ministers who there privately officiate among Protestants do it at their peril And in the Year 1599. Ferdinand of Austria expelled the Lutherans out out of his Provinces and in Austria Bohemia
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