without bitter pangs of Repentance will be persecuted by the God of Peace himself to a sad and endless eternity As for the Bill of Comprehension it begun to be talked of before I left my Country and I have often discours'd it with many of the Projectors but could never understand from them how it was practicable to unite so many Incompossible Sects which agree in nothing but their opposition to the Church However if the altering or taking away of a Ceremony or two could effectually unite the Protestant Partys as you are pleased to assert I think it would be worth the while to do it and that the doing of it for so sure an end would reflect no dishonour upon the Church of England which acknowledgeth the few innocent and decent Ceremonies which she hath ordained to be indifferent and alterable according to the Exigency of times Neither if this were done could the Romish Church have the least apparent reason to reproach us for such a slight alteration seeing her own Missals and Breviaries have been so diverse and different in several times and places and have undergone so many Emendations or rather Corruptions before they were established in the present Form by the Authority of Pius V. and the Decree of the Council of Trent But unless this Alteration would surely and infallibly produce this effect it had far better be let alone and in the mean time I would have all good Christians wait in Peace and Complyance with the Established Religion till Authority shall think to make this Alteration in it that so a poor English Traveller would not be tauntingly asked by every impertinent Priest here Whether he were a true Son of the Church or Presbyterian or Independant or Anabaptist or Quaker And I assure you when they meet with a man that owns himself a true Son of the Church of England they will seem with great Formality to pity him more than any other but yet they will never attempt to convert him But when they meet with one that will own himself of any other sort they will be pleased smile in their Sleeves and set upon him as a Person not far from their Kingdom of God Ana I am perswaded had you seen or heard as much of their Idolatries Blasphemies and Superstitions as I have done in one Christmas one Line and one Easter you would be so far from doing the Church of England any ill Office that you would rather like St. Paul after his Conversion preach against your own Partizans and thank God that you lived in a Church reformed from Romish Idolatry and Superstition And I cannot but freely confess that I am since my Travels become ten Times a greater Lover of our own Church and as many times a greater Hater and Detester of the Romish Church than I was before And therefore I cannot here dissemble the hearty Grief I have conceived for the great hopes you have that the Licenses as you express it will be once more authorized by his Majesty or the Declaration revived For as it is that which at first was hammered out by a Popish Lord who was the Patron and Idol of the Presbyterians so 't is that which the Roman Catholicks here especially the Priests do hope and wish for as well as you They desire nothing more than such a Toleration as that was knowing that it must needs tend to the Ruine of the Church of England which is the principal Butt of all their Envy and Malice as being the main support and credit of the Reformed Religion every where and the only hedg against Popery it self in our unfortunate British Isles We meet with not a few Priests of several Orders that have the confidence in our most familiar conferences to tell us that by the just Judgment of God upon our Church the time of Her Ruin is at Hand the Nation it self being over-spread with Schism and Atheism and the Hearts of the Faithful being disposed by the Spirit Providence of God to re-embrace the Holy Catholick Truth And therefore they freely Confess that this time of Distraction is their Harvest and withal express their Intentions and Zeal to Transport themselves into England at the Critical time of Toleration that they may be Fellow-laborers with your selves in the Harvest They seem to lament as much and complain as fast of the prodigious increase of Schism and Atheism among us as you are wont to do of the daily growth of Atheism and Popery And whilst you both complain alike and in the formality of your complaints both alike reflect upon the Church of England It is she only that is the sufferer and she only that truly laments the growth and at the same time sets up Banks to hinder the perfect Inundation of all the three among us As for Schism among Protestants you were the first Fathers and continue the chief Fautors thereof all the inferior Sects having sprung from you and dividing both from you and one another under pretence of the same Reasons for which you profess to divide from the Church And 't is from you that even the Quakering Sect it self the dregs of Schism have learned to talk of Illumination and the Spirit and the rest of the Sectaries in what number soever they be differ no more from you than the second third or fourth c. from the first Book of Euâ—lid Not that by this comparison I intend that you have any such Principles or Data among your selves as there are among Mathematicians for I am very well assued that take but any four of the Presbyterian Demagogues and they can scarce agree amongst themselves in any four Particulars wherein they differ from the Church of England And therefore if you be not Schismaticks then the Church of England from which you separate and out of which you have gathered Congregations and preach and administer the Sacraments unto them I say if you be not Schismaticks then our Church must be the Schismatick in the Controversie between us and be justly chargable with the same Indictment which she hath drawn upagainst the Church of Rome An Assertion Consin which I never knew any other Person except one or two besides your self have the confidence to aver and an Assertion which no Protestant here in France could hear us yet relate without Horror Impatience and Disdain And therefore if the Reformed Church of England from which you wilfully divide and to which by your Divisions you cause so much Scandal abroad and Evil at home be not a Schismatical Church that is a Church which requires some sinful conditions of Communion in what a woful condition will your unpeaceable seditious Spirits appear before the God of Peace And how will you answer that at the Tribunal of his Wisdom and Justice which neither your Fathers nor you could never yet answer to those Instruments of his Glory Judicious Hooker and the Venerable Sanderson But whether you are Schismas ticks or whether you are not the
A LETTER FROM A Person of Quality To an EMINENT DISSENTER To rectifie his MISTAKES concerning the SUCCESSION The Nature of PERSECUTION AND A COMPREHENSION LONDON Printed by T. B. for Randolph Taylor near Stationers-hall MDCLXXXV A LETTER sent from beyond the Seas to a Noted Dissenter Dear Cousin I Was very glad to receive your Letters but very sorry to find by them that you are still so extreamly desirous of Innovations in a Government so well Established as that is under which you live I perceive you are more zealous then it becomes a good Subject or a good Christian to be for carrying on a Project of the Earl of Shaftsbury as Unreasonable as New viz. That of Disabling a Papist to Inherit the Crown For doubtless that proposal was first made and afterwards promoted by him the last Sessions of Parliament not out of true Love to the Reformed Religion but out of Spite and Revenge to the D. of Y Who were he not only Papist but Heathen or Mahumetan which I think is not much worse would certainly have as good a Title to his Crown and all his Temporal Rights as if he were the most Orthodox and Holy Christian in the World And I am perswaded that my zealous Lord Chose would not be willing that the King and Parliament should make a particular Act to disable his own Posterity to Inherit the great Estate he hath got if they should turn Papists or Atheists as others have done before them We all know what mischief in the World that Damnable Doctrine has made That Temporal Rights and Inheritances depend upon Saintship and Grace And if it be clear from Scripture as nothing is more clear that a King ought not to lose his Crown for not being a Christian or for renouncing the Christian Religion as Julian did then it is plain that neither the Duke nor any other Prince ought to be debarred from the Crown which is the greatest and most sacred of Temporal Rights for not being Protestants or which is more for renouncing the Christian Religion And I am heartily glad that God gave the Fathers of the English Church the Grace and Courage to defend her Doctrine in opposing that Unreasonable and truly Romish Proposal of my Lord Chose which if they had approved and defended after it was proposed they had truly acted in that like Prelats Popishly affected and really shewed themselves to be what their Adversaries would fain perswade the World they are For 't is the Romish Church and her Doctors which maintain That Kings Excommunicated or Heretick Kings or which is all one that Kings that renounce the Apostolick Faith ought to be Deprived and Deposed But 't is the Church of England that maintains the contradiction of that Unscriptural Unevangelical Principle and thinks her self as much obliged to submit her self to a Heathen Atheistical Heretical or Popish Prince where she can as to an Orthodox King and where she cannot she thinks her self obliged to suffer as her Saviour like a Lamb brought to the slaughter and dares pretend to take up to Arms but those of the Primitive Christians Whose true Copy she is Tears Arguments and Prayers I say it is the Church of England that is of this Judgment and neither the Church of Rome nor the Kirk of Scotland both of which have actually Excommunicated and Dâ—posed Lawful and Rightful Princes under the Notion of being Hereticks and Enemies to Christs Kingdom forgetting both alike the Prâ—cepts and Examples of our Saviour and his Apostles on which the Church of England hath grounded the contrary Doctrine as well as on right reason Our Saviour though God rendred unto the Heathen Caesar the things that were Caesar's he owned his right to the Empire both by word and deed although he were but the adopted Successor of the greatest Usurper that ever was in the World Nay furthermore he owned and submitted to the procuratory Power of Pilate who acted but by Commission from the Emperour Tiberius who if there be any truth in the Character of Tacitus was one of the greatest Tyrants and most wicked men that ever the World saw And as for St. Paul there is no Article of our Religion not even that that Jesus Christ is the Son of God more clear in his Epistles than that Every Soul should be subject to the Higher Powers that we should Obey not only for Wrath but Conscience sake that whosoever resisieth receiveth to himself Damnation and lastly that all the Powers and when he wrote there were none but Heathen Powers were ordained of God I might here insist upon the Practice of the Apostles as it is represented in their Acts and the constant Submission and Sufferings of the Primitive Christians as they are reported by the Ecclesiastcal Fathers and Historiaens but the Scripture it self is sufficient to demonstrate the truth of this Argument which the Church of England has not only established in her Doctrine but her Fathers and Sons of late maintained in their Practices and which the Kirk of of Scotland agreeing in this and many other Points with that of Rome did ever oppose both in Word and Deed. And since that Kirk and Nation have been of this Opinion we need not wonder that the English Disciples of their Buchanan and Knox have practised those rebellious Principles which have so debauched and corrupted the Subjects of the Kings of England as to make them be proverbially called The Kings of Devils And which the Anababtists in Germany improved into this Maxim That Saintship was the Foundation of Soveraignty and that the Righteous ought to Inherit the Earth And furthermore if Crowns ought to descend upon Protestants only then it is but just that the Estates of all Subjects whatsoever should be so Entailed â—nd if for example the D of Y must be cut off from his Right for being a Roman Catholick then let the rest of the Papists lose theirs they are all alike Idolaters and let them all alike suffer And to bring the Case to your own House can you imagine that you your self ought to lose your Right to the Estate you have or may have hereafter upon that supposition that you should turn Papist which men as firmly resoved against it as you have certainly done These Practises and Proposals are such that they have left a blot on the memories of some men that seem more zealous than their Brethren And I am glad at present that the Religious Lord Chose is the Chief Patron and Promoter of such and Unreasonable and Romish Design It is unreasonable to exclude a Popish Heir from a Crown to which he derives his right from Popish Ancestors and I have more than ordinary reason to call it Romish because I have heard it maintained here among all the Priests I converse with It is a Doctrine dearly beloved by the Romanists And put but the Name of Heretick to a Prince here and it is just the same case as when you call a Prince a Papist
from the Church of Rome that you are some I believe unawares come thither again as is unanswerably proved by Lysimachus Nicenor lately reprinted at Oxford in his Letter of Congratulation to the Kirk But Secondly the Parallel fails in this too That his Royal Highness is not a declared Papist as the King of Navarre was a declared Protestant nor has yet openly renounced the Communion of the Church of England for which his blessed Father died a Martyr And therefore of the two our English Guisards are much more to blame in representing his Roual Highness as a Papist which is so difficult to imagine him Strictly to be But furthermore upon supposition he were a declared Papist the Proposal of my Lord Chose was very ridiculous since it did suppose a possibility of prevailing with his Majesty to Disinherit his Royal Brother who must needs be so much dearer to him than the King of Navarre was to Henry III as he is nearer in Blood And for may own part I cannot but imagine at this distance that his Majesty who is a Prince incomparably wiser and juster then was Henry III. of France must needs disdain and abhor such a Proposal which were it Enacted it would enervate the Laws of Succession by which He and His Ancestors have hitherto Reigned and give a greater Blow to the English Monarchy than that which cut off His Royal Fathers Head I have here forborn to give you an Account of the Tragical End of the Duke of Guise which is a Lesson well worth your Learning and may teach all Persons so disposed as he was how unsafe it is to provoke Soveraign Authority since the goodness of the best of Kings like the infinite Goodness of God himself whose Ministers they are may at length be so injured and affronted as to be forced to sharpen it self into Sovereign Vengeance and Justice And therefore Cousin let me advise you if not for Conscience yet for Wraths sake to have nothing to do in Blowing up the Flames of Sedition Nor let your Soul enter into the secret of my Lord though his Interest among the Senators as you write be so very considerable and strong You likewise forget your self in miscalling the Execution of the late Laws by the odious name of Persecution which if you can prove to be such according to the Scriptural notion of Persecution viz. Infliction of Evil for Righteousness sake then will I become your Proselyte and forsake the Church of England as much as I have this Idolatrous Church of Rome For no man is persecuted but either for immediate matters of Divine Worship which concern the First Table or with respect to matters of Morality or a Good Life which concern the Second With respect to the First a man is persecuted either on a negative account for not worshiping a False God as the three Children in Daniel or for not worshipping the True in a False way as St. Paul and the other Apostles were persecuted by the Pharisees for not worshipping the True God according to the Jewish manner after it was abrogated Or as our Fore fathers in England For not worshiping God and our Saviour after the Romish Rites Or Secondly on a positive account For worshipping the true God in a way that is true or to express it yet more clearly and absolutely in your own terms For serving of God as Daniel was cast into the Lyons Den for praying to God against the King's Decree With respect to the Second A man is also persecuted on a negative account For not doing something which is in its own nature or by God positive command morally evil as the good Midwives were afraid to be persecuted by Pharaoh for not murthering the Hebrew Infants Or else on a positive account for doing some good moral action which ought in such and such circumstances to be done and thus was our blessed Saviour persecuted for opening the eyes of the blind man and for healing on the Sabbath-day Now these distinctions being premised tell me in which of these cases you are Persecuted or which is all one for what you are Confessors and Martyrs For no man is persecuted but as he is persecuted he is a Confessor or Martyr and by his sufferings bears witness to the Truth With respect to the Second head you cannot say that you are persecuted and therefore let me see whether you are so with respect to the first And First 't is plain that you do not suffer for not worshiping a false God and 't is likewise as plain that you do not suffer for not worshipping the true God in a false way For first the Laws whose Execution you mis-call Persecution do not punish you for not worshiping God after our way or if they did to prove their Execution to be Persecution you must First prove that the Church of England whose Doctrine is down right against Idolatry and Superstition does worship God in an Idolatrous and Superstitious manner which good Cousin you know can never be proved There remains nothing then but to assert That you are punished for serving God or for Worshipping God in a way which you are sure is true That you worship God in a true way I verily believe and could heartily joyn with you in other circumstances But then you are not punished for worshipping God in that manner for the same Laws you complain of allow you to worship God in what fashion you please and not only you but your Family be it as great as it will and lastly not only your Family but Five Persons more Which allowance were you the only Christians in the World and the Magistrates Heathens or which your Friends are more likely to suggest were they Papists or Atheists is so far from being Persecution that were you of the temper of the Primitive Christians you would esteem it as a great priviledg and instead of reviling thank the kind Magistrate for the same But then if on the contrary hand you be considered and many good English men and good Christians cannot but consider you as a sort of men that have formerly raised a most Unnatural Rebellion and now make Schism in the Church and Broyles in the State the punishments you suffer and complain so loudly off will be so far from seeming Persecution of you as Christians that they will rather seem your just Desert as Factious and Turbulent Subjects And I assure you that your Brethren in France whom you falsly so call and for whom you pretend so great respect are so far from Judging you persecuted that they will not excuse you but wonder at your non-submission to the Church and pity your mistakes that make you stand out against the Laws They that have seen and examined our English Liturgy which is Printed at Geneva in French cannot understand your Notion of Persecution And Ministre Claude the most famous of them all for Piety and Learning told me in the presence of many others after a Discourse wherein