to have had allowed unto them And that we may the more fully have an Idea of their unthankfulness we are to consider both the extent of that Liberty which Their Highnesses were contented to have had bestowed upon them and the obligations they would have come under for the rendring it hereafter inviolable And all this not only at a season when many of the Papists carry it so undutifully towards their Highnesses but at a time when they of the Reformed Religion are so unhumanely persecuted by several Popish Princes in other parts of the world It had not been an unreasonable desire that before the Papists had been so importunate to have all Penal Laws against them in Protestant Nations rescinded and taken away that they should have declared themselves and improved their interest for the Abrogation of all such Laws as are in force against those of the Reformed Religion in Popish Countries And if their Highnesses had insisted upon such a stipulation before They would have given their consent for the Repeal of the Penal Laws against Roman Catholicks in England it had been no more than what was agreeable to the Rules of Wisdom and Justice But their Highnesses not thinking it fit to suffer their own mercy to be restrained by reason of the want of Christian bowels in others took the first opportunity put into their hands of testifying their readiness to consent to the Repeal of all those Laws against Papists in England Scotland and Ireland by which they are made liable to fines or other punishments And that those which they can not agree to the rescinding of are only such by which the Reformed Religion is covered from the designs of the Roman Catholicks against it and by which they are restrained from getting into a condition to overturn it One would think that this should have been received as a most special favour and have obliged them to very hearty acknowledgments Especially when the Prince and Princess were willing to confirm both this and a Liberty for the private Exercise of their Religion with their Guaranty But in stead of any symptoms of gratitude there is nothing to be heard of from many of them or to be met with in our Answerer but what proclaims their dissatisfaction anger and revenge For besides all the ill returns we have already taken notice of in this wrathful and unthankful man he tells us that all which Their Highnesses declare themselves ready to consent unto amounts only to the abolishing some cruel Laws by which Romish Ecclesiasticks stood condemned to death for no other reason save their being Priests and in the vertue of which other persons were banished and deprived of their Estates meerly for being Roman Catholicks all which was a higher degree of barbarity than was ever practised among the most salvage Nations Now not to trouble my self about what kind of entertainment Romish Priests and Lay Papists have met with among those Nations which our Author stiles Barbarous tho it will be found infinitely more severe than any thing that was ever inflicted upon them in England Scotland or Ireland by reason of their Religion or upon the score of any Ecclesiastical Character I would only know of this modest and veracious Gentleman what he thinks of the barbarous and innumerable Cruelties that were perpetrated in all ages and places heretofore and which are at this day committed upon peaceable and sincere Christians for no other crime but that they could not and to this day cannot believe as the Church of Rome doth nor continue in Communion with so idolatrous and villanous a Society Whatsoever measure of severity hath been any where exercised towards Papists it was but according to the President themselves had set in their dealing with them whom they stile Hereticks and in which the Copy comes vastly below the Original But then that which wholly alters the case is that whereas the Papists persecute and destroy Christians meerly upon the account of Religion there were never any severe much less Sanguinary Laws enacted against them save by reason of their Crimes against the State and for being Enemies and Traitors to the Government Popery was never persecuted in England as it is a false and erroneous Belief but as it binds men to the owning of a forraign usurped and unlawful Jurisdiction 'T is neither for their believing Transubstantiation nor for their Worshipping Images that Papists are adjudged to penalties or death but because they adhere to a forreign Enemy and are treacherous to their Countrey Could they have been but good Subjects their being bad Christians would never have prejudiced them And indeed while they continue to hold that the Pope can depose Protestant Soveraigns and absolve Subjects from their Allegiance to them and that it is lawful to cut the Throats of all whom they stile Hereticks and that all Laws made for our security are null and void as being enacted by an incompetent and unlawful Authority it would seem according to the exact measures of wisdom and reason that all lenity and favour towards them were not only a supererogating in Mercy but an indiscretion in Policy But then to let such into the Government were plainly to betray the State and wilfully to abandon both it and our selves to be destroyed and ruined Nor is there so much danger in advancing Robbers and Newgate Fellons to Employments as there would be in preferring Papists especially if Jesuiced and Bigotted into Civil Offices in a Reformed Kingdom And therefore seeing they will not thankfully accept and quietly acquiesce in what is offered and that rather from an exurberancy of Generosity and Mercy than from Maxims of prudence and obligations arising from duty it is best to leave them to steer their own course and to pursue those Methods which will infallibly issue in their disadvantage to say no worse All ways of Gentleness and Moderation towards them do only encourage their making the bolder claims and the proceeding further in their usurpations The giving them an inch provokes them to take an ell and they grow enraged because we will not tamely suffer it If they act as they do while the Chain hangs still about their necks what are we to expect if it should be wholly taken off they left loose to exert the malignity which their Religion inspires them with For not being contented to invade and usurp all sorts of Employments and places of Trust in defiance of the Test Laws they have assumed that confidence as to make those very Laws which were intentionally enacted and designed to keep Papists out of Office and Power the ground and occasion of incapacitating and shutting out Protestants And whereas none are by Law to be admitted into Employments without making the Declarations contained in the Tests none are now to be continued save they who shall both refuse to take them and withal promise to give their votes for the Election of such persons into Parliament as shall be willing to Abrogate and
become void of all sense and understanding if they suffer themselves to be either wheedled or frighted into an opinion of their being subject to receive any dammage by the Tests it being so expresly contrary both to the Terms of those Laws and to their own experience Nor can they be so far abandoned of God nor prove so treacherous to the Nation Posterity and the whole Protestant Interest thro' Europe as to cooperate to the Repeal of them by destroying that great Fence about the Reformed Religion in England and to put the Papists into capacity both of subverting it there and every where else And setting aside a few mercenary fellows among them there is no ground to fear after we have had so many proofs of their zeal for the Protestant Religion and English Liberties in the worst of times and under the greatest Temptations that they should at this season when all others behave themselves with so much Integrity and Courage be accessory to so villanous a thing The ill success which the Court hath met with in the several Towns and City's since the late Regulation of the Corporations sufficiently shews that the Dissenters who were put into Magistracy in hopes by them to have compassed the packing of a Parliament are no less careful of preserving the Test Laws than they of the Church of England Communion were who were displaced to make way for them And to discover the grossness of the abuse which our Author without regard to Truth or Ingenuity endeavours to put upon them as if they were judged by their Highnesses to be incapable of Trusts and Employments or any ways concluded to stand under those restraints by the Test which the Roman Catholicks do there is not one word in Mijn Heer Fagel's Letter whereby they are said to be subject unto them or by which there is any ground administred of fancying they are put into the same rank with the Papists and whereby to fear that they may hereafter come to be treated accordingly But in stead of this they are expresly told that Their Highnesses do both allow and desire the abrogation of all the Penal Laws against Dissenters and the having them freed from the severity of them and that they do not only consent but heartily approve of their having an entire liberty granted them for the full exercise of their Religion without any trouble or hindrance or being left exposed to the least molestation or inconvenience upon that account And to testifie how far the Nonconformists are from being in the least menaced by those Laws it is again Declared that the only reason why their Highnesses refuse to consent to the having them repealed is because that they have no other tendency save to Secure the Reformed Religion from the Designs of the Papists by containing provisions in the vertue of which those only may be kept out of Office who can not testifie that they are of the Reformed and not of the Roman Catholick Religion Which as it is the highest evidence imaginable of their own stedfastness and integrity in the Reformed Religion and of the compassion and love which they equally bear to all who profess it and how careful they will at all times be to have it maintained and supported so it is the putting such a merit upon all Protestants that it should engage their prayers for their happy extation to the Throne and make them ambitious as well as willing and ready to hazard their lives and Fortunes for the securing the Succession unto them if any should be so wicked as to go about to preclude them But I must pay a further attendance upon our Author and accompany him to the fifth particular which I promised to consider namely that according to his own foolish and incoherent way of writing while he pretends to commend and justify the proceeding of His Majesty of Great Brittain he publisheth the villany of the Papal Church and proclaims the dishonour and injustice of diverse Eminent Monarchs and Princes of the Romish Communion His Panegyricks upon the King of England are so many just Satyr's upon the Church of Rome the Monarch of France and the Duke of Savoy c. For if it be becoming a Christian to be of a contrary judgment to those who are for persecuting such as differ from the publick and established Religion and if it be a sentiment worthy of a Royal mind that none ought to be oppressed for their Consciences in Divine Matters what characters of irreligion ignominy wickedness are due unto them who judge it to be meritorious to destroy sincere Christians for no other pretended Crime save that they cannot believe as the Pope and the Church of Rome do Surely our Author must either be extreamly ignorant of the Doctrine of his own Church and of the bloody and barbarous practices pursuant thereunto both at this day and for many ages past or else he must be the most unsincere miscreant that ever writ or at best be guilty of the inconsistency and folly as to continue in the Communion of a Church whose Articles of Faith he condemns as Antichristian and whose practices according to the Terms made necessary for Salvation he abhorreth both as unworthy of Royal Minds and contrary to Christian Piety But tho nothing can render a false man honest or a foolish Man wise yet seeing something may be done towards the curing a person's ignorance if he be teachable or at least to shew his obstinacy and that the fault is in his will not in his Understanding if he will not learn and be convinced I shall therefore both acquaint him a little with the Doctrine of that Church and briefly put him in remembrance how these of the Romish Fellowship have therefore persecuted Christians and still continue so to do only for differing from the publick and established Religion As to the first it is sufficiently known that according to the judgment of the Church of Rome we are Hereticks and that Heresie being Crimen laesae Majestatis Divinae we are therefore the worst of Traitors and liable to the Penalties of the greatest High Treason And thereupon we are not only declared to be infamous and sentenced to be deprived of all Honor and Dignity and to be incapable of all Offices and have our Estates confiscated and seised but we are condemned to be burnt and if that cannot conveniently be effected it is both made lawful and meritorious to extirpate us by War or Massacre as shall be best and most safe for the Church of Rome In order whereunto not only all Laws made for our Security are declared to be null and that no promises made unto us ought to be kept but all Princes that neglect to destroy and extirpate us are proclaimed to be deposed And sutable hereunto has their carriage been for many ages to such as differ from them in Articles of Faith and will not joyn in their Superstitions and Idolatries In proof whereof I neither need
to insist upon the infinite Murders committed by the Inquisition the most Devilish Engine of Cruelty that ever the World was acquainted with nor to reflect so far backward as the Parisian and Irish Massacres or the infinite Slaughters perpetrated heretofore in France Germany and the Low Countreys c. seeing we have such fresh and doleful evidences of the mercy and gentleness of the Papal Church in the ungrateful inhumane perjurious and salvage persecutions executed so lately in France and Piedmont If it be the effect of Royal and Paternal affection in the King of England to his Subjects that all he endeavoureth is to treat them as becomes a common Father without making any distinction between one and another as our Author is pleased to call it in his Testimony concerning him what cruel Parents must many Princes of the Roman Communion be who act with that difference towards their people that while they cherish and embrace some they tear out the Bowels and suck the blood of others And if no Society destitute of such tender and Christian affections can merit the name of a Church we hence learn where to fasten the character of being the Mother of Harlots In that we not only know whose Doctrine it is that whom She cannot convert She ought to destroy but that we have observed her to have been in all Ages drunk with the Blood of Saints All the commendations our Author bestows upon the King of England are not only either so many accusations of His Majesties insincerity in the Papal Faith or infallible indications that both the King pardon the expression and his Minister are Hypocritical Dissemblers but they are stabbing and twinging Satyr's against Mother Church and the Holy Father and against his Brittanick Majesties dear Brother and Ally the French King Nor can we be guilty either of Crime or Indecency in the worst we can say of the Church of Rome and the Most Christian King seeing we have in equivalent Terms a President for it both from so good a Catholick and so wise a Minister of a great Monarch as our honourable Author is And tho I begin to grow weary of conversing with so impertinent a man yet I am bound to wait upon him a little longer and while the Reader can reap no advantage by any thing he says to see whether it be not possible to lay hold of an occasion from his Ignorance and Folly to communicate things that may be more solid and instructive The sixth thing therefore whereof I accused him and for which I promised to call him to an account is his egregious ignorance in relation to Government Laws Customs and matters of Fact Mijn Heer Fagel tells us that the Test Laws being enacted by King and Parliament for the Security of the Reformed Religion and the Roman Catholicks receiving no prejudice by them but being meerly restrained from getting into a condition to subvert it therefore Their Highnesses could not consent to their Repeal And he further adds that there is no Kingdom Common-wealth or any constituted Body and Society in which there are not Laws made for the safety thereof which not only provide against all attempts that may disturb their peace but which prescribe such conditions as they judge necessary for the discerning who are qualified to bear Employments To which he again subjoins that there is a great difference between the conduct of these of the Reformed Religion towards Roman Catholicks which is moderate and only to prevent their getting into a capacity to do hurt and that of those of the Roman Catholick Religion towards the Reformed who not being satisfied to exclude them from places of Trust do both suppress the whole Exercise of their Religion and severely persecute all that profess it And he finally adds that both Reason and the Experience of the present as well as past Ages do shew that it is impossible for Roman Catholicks and those of the Reformed Religion when joyned together in places of Trust and publick Employment to maintain a good Correspondence live in mutual peace and to discharge their Offices quietly and to the publick Good Now from these several passages which carry their own evidence along with them our Author takes occasion both to vent his foolish and ridiculous Politicks and to proclaim his ignorance in History and of the most obvious matters of Fact However we shall have the patience to hearken to what he hath been pleased to say and shall examine it piece by piece as we go along And the first thing he does is to acquaint us with a mighty Mystery of State and which none but so great a Minister could have been able to have revealed namely that tho the King and Parliament upon the first Revolution with respect to Religion and the introducing and setting up the Reformed Religion thought fit to make those Laws which they judged necessary for its preservation yet that it does not follow that his present Majesty and a Parliament would be of the same mind but that they might enact Laws of a differing Nature from the former and re-establish Religion into the same State in which it was before the Reformed Doctrine and Worship was set up We are much obliged to our Author for this discovery though I must add that this it is to trust a Fool with secrets for he will be sure to be blabbing For tho he subjoin that he will not say that matters would be pushed so far yet he hath already told us enough to make us understand both what his own hopes are and what is designed by the Papal party if they could compass a Parliament of a Complexion and Temper to their mind But there are two fatal things which lye in their way One is that neither progressing nor closeting bribing nor threatning can prove effectual to give them the slenderest ground of confidence of their obtaining a Parliament of that mould and constitution And the second is that all the Members must take the Tests before they can be a Legal Parliament and then there is little probability that they who can make the Declaration required in these Laws will be inclinable to Repeal them especially at a season when their own safety as well as that of the Protestant Religion renders it so necessary to have them maintained Whatsoever any Body of men by what name soever they be called or within what walls soever they assemble shall attempt to do without first having taken the Tests is ipso facto null and void in Law and will serve to no Legal purpose but to make themselves obnoxious to the severest punishments which the Justice of a provoked and betrayed Nation can be able to inflict upon them So that we do not doubt what the King would do for the re-establishing Popery and banishing the Protestant Religion could he get a Parliament to his mind but our hope is that he will not and the better to prevent it we will endeavour to keep our Test