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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A38667 The Established test in order to the security of His Majesties sacred person, and government, and the Protestant religion against the malitious attempts and treasonable machinations of Rome. 1679 (1679) Wing E3344; ESTC R229328 28,913 58

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come behind Nero since he can Command Authorize and Pardon the Murder of those who are the common Parents of our Country and more than that who wear the Sacred Character of the Eternal Majesty being Gods to Men though but Men to GOD. How God Almighty does and will resent this Affront and Indignity put upon him by this Usupation upon Heaven and Earth is in some measure visible already and 't is to be hoped will yet be more to the Shame and Confusion of such pretended Catholick Religion but real Atheism and most Diabolical Impiety and how far the rest of the Crowned Heads of Europe will by this example become sensible of their own danger and the common injury herein offered to all the Royal Masters of the Vniverse I cannot tell but Cum proximus Ardet Vtalegon When their Neighbors House is threatned to be fired over his Head it is time for them ●o look about them No Prince can live in security so long as there is Poison Pistol or Ponyard in the hands of such Desperadoes as not valuing their own are for the Interest of the Catholick Religion Masters of other Mens Lives so long as the Pope may for Heresie Arraign Condemn Excommunicate Depose and Deprive Soveraign Kings in the Consistory and Arm both their own and the Subjects of Foreign Nations against them gives his Benediction with Rewards and Promises both of Heaven and Earth to take away the lives of the Heirs that so he may seize upon the Inheritance and so long as he challenges to himself the boundless Prerogative of being the Sole and Supreme Judge of what is Heresie and by virtue of that ●ower may define whatsoever is contrary to his Grandeur and Interest to be that damnable and Capital Sin But this is not our Concern our Neighbors may do as they shall please themselves and Nurse this Mitre till it shall devour the Crown we have something nearer home to employ our thoughts considerations and most industrious endeavors upon and with that Charity which begins at home to take care how we may secure our selves That all Degrees Ranks and Conditions of Men are possessed with a real detestation and abhorrence of such a villanous design there can be no reason to make a doubt their own Interest will oblige them to it had the Net of this great Roman Fisherman been drawn up upon us all had been Fish that had come to the Net all would have been involved in the common Calamity for had the Mischief been formed into perfect Monster had it come to its growth and strength all Sorts and Degrees of Men without difference or distinction who would not have abandoned the Protestant Religion and submitted to the Roman Yoak must have fallen as Sacrifices if not to their Religion yet to that Policy which necessarily attends Cruelty and Usurpation the Deities which now the Romans worship Nor could these ambitious Zealots have ever believed their unjust Dominion sufficiently secured from the danger of future Relapses but by the intire destruction of all those whom they could not trust or might either suspect or fear by seizing their Estates to enable themselves with Force and Arbitrary Power and Tyranny to take away the Liberties and Opportunities of opposing them from such as they must permit to survive the general Massacre that so they might be out of fear from those whom they intended to make and treat like Slaves Had the Royal Oak fallen under their treacherous designs what favour or mercy could either the lofty Cedars or the humble Shrubs and Plebeians of the Wood have expected from their hands They who were grown so hardned in Mischief to attempt first upon the Scepter would never in their Consciences have scrupled at the Sheephook They who could not blush to shed the Blood of the Sovereign would never have disputed to let out whole Rivers of the Subjects If this had been the Project of a few Zealous Recluses or managed by the hot Brains of some Shaven Heads or had it been the undertaking of some few Discontented Laicks there might have been some colour of excuse for the Religion in general there being ill Men of all Religions and even among those who profess the Truest When there were but Twelve Apostles one of them was a Devil a Traitor and covetous Murderer But when He who stiles himself the Vicar of Christ the Successor of St. Peter and St. Paul the Infallible Head of the Catholique Church who cannot Err from the True Faith the Supreme Judge of Controversies the Keeper of the Keyes of Heaven and Earth Hell and Purgatory when he shall be the Principal Instigator Promoter and Encourager of Murder Vsurpation Treason and Rebellion sure no Man can believe but that either the Faith of Rome is not the Catholique Faith or that the Church of Rome if this be her Faith is no true part of the Catholique Church For if we may Judge of the Tree by the Fruits such horrid and infamous Practices seem to make the Pope appear the Successor of Iscariot who betray'd his Master to be Crucified rather then of St. Peter who was himself Crucified for Planting and Propagating the Faith of Christ by Rules of Meekness Tenderness Love to all Men and particular obedience to Kings as Supreme and to Magistrates as Gods Vicegerents and Ministers of Justice upon Earth and indeed whoever shall consider these Actions of the Pope and the Jesuits will think them to be expected only from the fierce Cannibals of the West Indies who have neither Morality Law nor Religion and not from those who stile themselves the Pillar and Ground of Truth the only Professors of the true Faith and Religion It is certainly therefore the interest of every Man who is not a Papist and I doubt not the wishes and desires of all Men to be secured from the attempts of such inhumane and cruel Men who would make no more difficulty to cut the Throat of a Heretique Protestant than to dash out the Brains of a Mad Dog and above all the rest of England it is the more particular concern of this great and populous City of London to be secured from them Her-present Glory may be a sad Testimony of their infamous Treachery and hellish Malice Her Beauty is raised upon those Ashes to which they had reduced her one of them confessed and died for it and in which we have reason to think they designed to bury her for ever the damp that he put upon her in her present Trade which is deservedly the general complaint is from their Practices and that insecurity in which we live to fall into the hands of these merciless Assassinates makes Mens lives uneasie their dayes unquiet and their nights tedious and both expensive beyond the proportion of their present Trade whil'st they are obliged by such strong and constant Guards to purchase their security at the expence of their Mony Time and Health That His Most Sacred Majesty and the
clear and evident than this That from the subtil Practices of the Jesuites those Diversities in Opinion and Differences in Practice among Protestants received their Encouragement if not their Rise and Original and while every new Sect pretended still to out-do others in the Purity of Reformation and a further escape from the Superstition of the Romish Babylon they were all made Instrumental to undo the Protestant Religion and a thorough Reformation became the Apple of Contention between the Prince and the People the King was accused of favouring Popery and designing to introduce it and with it Arbitrary Tyranny the Natural Child of that Religion because he would not comply with the Zealous Fury of some Popular Spirits to throw down the Hierarchy of the Church which is one of the Fundamental Pillars of our Government The other by their disobedience to the known and Establisht Laws of Church and State became guilty of Disloyalty and were not without just cause suspected of Dangerous and Treasonable Designs against the Royal Person and Government which they did endeavour to conceal under the specious pretences and taking shews of Zeal against Popery and eager forwardness to promote the pretended Reformation Thus did these subtile Foxes like Sampsons while their Heads lookt several ways carry those Firebrands between their Tails with which they set us all at last into a Flame continually fanning with their pestilent Breath those Jealousies and mutual Animosities between the Soveraign and his Subjects till they had reduced three of the most potent and flourishing Kingdoms in Europe into Ashes and had fill'd us with Blood and Confusion Thus far they had succeeded in their Enterprise that they had absolutely ruin'd the Monarchy and pull'd down the old Cathedral without Establishing or so much as ever intending so far as any body could conjecture any Church at all and while in Policy they tolerated all Religions they fairly opened a way for us to have none at all and which was the thing the Jesuites aimed at to work us from our own Divisions to destroy one another and at last either by Force or Policy to reduce us to the Vnity of the Roman Church And doubtless they were in hopes in a little time to have accomplished this great Design when unexpected Providence what by the Peoples general weariness of the Tyranny of those many Governments and by the Loyalty of the Remainders of the Church of England whom no Cruelty nor Oppression could remove from their firm Principles of Allegiance brought back with the general Joy of the People their long Desire our Banished Soveraign Restoring Him miraculously to a Peaceful Throne and with Him Restoring to these Languishing Nations their Antient Government and Laws their long-wanted Liberty and Religion Now were the Roman Conspirators at a loss again seeing their hopes defeated and their expectations gone and therefore encouraged by former Successes and Experience they begun to play their old Lessons over again and we had scarcely taken breath after our violent Revolutions when they began again to trouble our calm Waters that so they might fish with more advantage But by the Loy●lty of the Parliament and Vigilance of the Ministers of State that being like to prove a Work of too long time for Men of so much impatience and though they had made so great a progress as to raise some Disorders in Scotland for which two of them were under the disguise of Presbyterians executed there yet the generality of the English were too sensible of the goodness of their present Condition and sufficiently instructed in the Calamities of a late Civil War to enter into a second and above all this great City manifesting upon all occasions great Testimonies of their Loyalty and Fidelity to His Majesty and the Government they were forced upon new and more precipitate Counsels How they have managed their Affairs and with what cruelty they had laid their Designs is by the Goodness of God already in a great measure and it is to be hoped will be fully discovered it was in short a Design against His Majesties Sacred Person and the Government our Laws Lives Liberties and the Protestant Religion a Design as universally laid as it was to have been tragically executed The present Race of our Kings were either to have been wholly extirpated or become vile Tributaries to the Triple Mitre One would think it impossible that such barbarous and savage Actions should proceed from any of Human Race or that there would be found any who have so far lost the Native Generosity of Englishmen which in the Times of the Papal Monarchy durst bid defiance to his Encroachments as to prostitute the Imperial Crown of these Realms to Vassallage and Slavery A stolen smile will part from me to think how all this while these Purblind Conspirators could not see how short an Enjoyment they and their great Three Crown'd Master must have had of the bloody Spoils of England There is a certain great Neighbor of theirs who has told a Pope That he does not value his * Witness the Column erected at Rome in disgrace of the Pope for a Petty Aff●ont offered his Ambassador t●ere Holiness at a Farthing and who would certainly have made the Moral of old Aesop's Fable good upon them the Lion Fox and Bear had made a Hunting Match the Fox and Bear Subtilty and Cruelty took the Prey but the Lyon as most powerful challenged it wholly for himself and had it without a Murmur from his fellow Hunters who were glad at that rate to compound with his armed Paws for the security of their own Skins I canot believe but that the whole World will entertain this discovery with Horror and though the Jesuits will with the greatest Effrontery deny or mitigate it yet certainly their Religion will receive the Blow which they intended for ours for who that is not resolved to quit Hum●nity it self can believe that Religion to be true which is to be propagated with Treasons Murders of the most Purple-dye violation of all that is Sacred in Human Society Law Justice Equity the most Solemn Oaths Promises and Covenants Who can believe the Pope the Successor of St. Peter in Faith and Doctrine when he shall under his most Authentique Hand and Seal Absolve the Subjects of any Prince from their Natural Civil and Religious Allegeance to their Lawful Soveraign when he shall grant Pardons to whosoever shall Murder him and dispence with all the Oaths that have been or can be taken to secure the Royal Person or the Government by Law established Nero that Monster of Nature from whom he claims a Succession at least of Practice set Rome on fire slew his Friends made Cruelty his divertisement and became a Parricide out of Curiosity Ripping up his Mothers Belly that he might see the Nest that had brought that Viper into the World Flaming London is a witness that the second Rome can equal if not exceed the First and the Pope scorns to