and Modesty there would be no great danger of many Divisions but this is the great Secret of the providence of God that men are still men and both Pastors and People mix their Passions and Interests so with matters of Religion that as there is a great deal of Sin and Vice still in the World so that appears in the Matters of Religion as well as in other things but the ill Consequences of this tho' they are bad enough yet are not equal Effects that ignorant Superstition and Obedient Zeal have produced in the World Witness the Rebellions and Wars for establishing the Worship of Images the Croissades against the Saracens in which many Millions were lost those against Hereticks and Princes deposed by Popes which lasted for some Ages and the Massacre of Paris with the Butcheries of the Duke of Alva in the last Age and that of Ireland in this which are I suppose far greater Mischiefs than any that can be imagined to arise out of a small Diversion of Opinions and the present State of this Church notwithstanding all those unhappy Rents that are in it is a much more desirable thing than the gross Ignorance and blind Superstition that reigns in Italy and Spain at this day IX All these reasonings concerning the Infallibility of the Church signifie nothing unless we can certainly know whither we must go for this Decision for while one Party shews us that it must be in the Pope or is no where and another Party says it cannot be in the Pope because as many Popes have erred so this is a Doctrine that was not known in the Church for a thousand Years and that has been disputed ever since it was first asserted we are in the right to believe both sides first that if it is not in the Pope it is no where and than that certainly it is not in the Pope and it is very Incongruous to say that there is an Infallible Authority in the Church and that yet it is not certain where one must seek for it for the one ought to be as clear as the other and it is also plain that what Primacy soever St. Peter may be supposed to have had the Scripture says not one word of his Successors at Rome so at least this is not so clear as a matter of this Consequence must have been if Christ had intended to have lodged such an Authority in that See X. It is no less Incongruous to say that this Infallibility is in a General Council for it must be somewhere else otherwise it will return only to the Church by some starts and other long intervals and as it was not in the Church for the first Three Hundred and Twenty years so it has not been in the Church these last 120 years It is plain also that there is no Regulation given in the Scriptures concerning this great Assembly who have a right to come and Vote and what forfeits this right and what numbers must concur in a Decision to assure us of the Infallibility of the Judgment It is certain there was never a General Council of all the Pastors of the Church for those of which we have the Acts were only the Council of the Roman Empire but for those Churches that were in the South of Africk or the Eastern parts of Asia beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire as they could not be summoned by the Emperours Authority so it is certain none of them were present unless one or two of Persia at Nice which perhaps was a Corner of Persia belonging to the Empire and unless it can be proved that the Pope has an Absolute Authority to cut off whole Churches from their right of coming to Councils there has been no General Council these last 700 years in the World ever since the Bishops of Rome have Excommunicated all the Greek Churches upon such trifling Reasons that their own Writers are now ashamed of them and I will ask no more of a Man of a Competent Understanding to satisfie him that the Council of Trent was no General Council acting in that Freedom that became Bishops than that he will be at the pains to read Card. Pallavicin's History of that Council XI If it is said that this Infallibility is to be fought for in the Tradition of the Doctrine in all Ages and that every particular Person must examine this here is a Sea before him and instead of examining the small Book of the New Testament he is involved in a study that must cost a Man an Age to go thro' it and many of the Ages thro' which he carries this Enquiry are so dark and have produced so few Writers at least so few are preserved to our days that it is not possible to find out their Belief We find also Traditions have varied so much that it is hard to say that there is much weight to be laid on this way of Conveyance A Tradition concerning Matters of Fact that all People see is less apt to fail than a Tradition of Points of Speculation and yet we see very near the Age of the Apostles contrary Traditions touching the Observation of Easter from which we must conclude that either the Matter of Fact of one side or the other as it was handed down was not true or at least that it was not rightly understood A Tradition concerning the Use of the Sacraments being a visible thing is the more likely to be exact than a Speculation concerning their Nature and yet we find a Tradition of giving Infants the Communion grounded on the indispensible necessity of the Sacrament continued 1000 years in the Church A Tradition on which the Christians founded their Joy and Hope is less like to be changed than a more remote Speculation and yet the first Writers of the Christian Religion had a Tradition handed down to them by those who saw the Apostles of the Reign of Christ for a Thousand Years upon Earth and if those who had Matters at second hand from the Apostles could be thus mistaken it is more reasonable to apprehend greater Errors at such a distance A Tradition concerning the Book of the Scriptures is more like to be exact than the Expositions of some passages in it and yet we find the Church did unanimously believe the Translation of the 70 Interpreters to have been the effect of a miraculous Inspiration till St. Jerome examined this matter better and made a New Translation from the Hebrew Copies But which is more than all the rest it seems plain that the Fathers before the Council of Nice believed the Divinity of the Son of God to be in some sort inferiour to that of the Father and for some Ages after the Council of Nice they believed them indeed both equal but they considered these as two different Beings and only one in Essence as three men have the same Humane Nature in common among them and that as one Candle lights another so the one flowed from another and
that detain Church-Lands especially since the Papists themselves â—ehâ—mently accuse King Henry the eighth for sacrilegiously robbing of Religious Houses and seising of their Lands a great pâ—â—t of which Lands are to this very day possess'd by Papists Now though there may be some Plea for the Popes Authority in the interim of a general Council and in such things wherein they have made no determination yet in this matter there is no colour for any pretences since the Council of Trent was actually assembled within sew years after these Alienations and expresly condemned the possessors of Abby Lands and after all this was all consirm'd and ratified by the Pope himself in his Bulla Super conf gen Concil Trid. A. D. 1564. And tho' we have here the Judgment of the infallible See as to this matter in the Consirmation of the Trent Council yet because there be some that magnifie the Popes extravagant and unlimited power over the Church and pretend that he confirm'd the Abby-Lands in England to the Lay-possessors of them I shall shew Secondly That the Pope neither hath nor pretends to any such Power nor did ever make use of it in this matter under debate only I shall premise that whereas some part of the Canon Law seems to allow of such particular alienations as are made by the Clerks and Members of the Church with the consent of the Bishop yet such free consent was never obtained in England and as to what was done by force fraud and violence is of so little moment as to giving a legal Title that even the alienations that were made by Charles Martell who is among the Papists themselves as infamous for Sacriledge as King Henry the Eighth yet even his Acts are said to be done by a Council of Bishops as is acknowledg'd by Dr. Johnston in his assurance of Abby Lands p. 27. I shall proceed to shew First That the Pope hath no such power as to confirm these Alienations and this is expresly determined by the infallible Pope Damasus in the Canon-Law Caus 12.9.2 c. 20. The Pope cannot alienate Lands belonging to the Church in any manner or for any necessity whatsoever both the buyer and the seller lie under an Anathema till they be restored so that any Church-man may oppese any such Alienations and again require the Lands and Profits so Alienated So that here we have a full and express Determination of the infallible See And tho in Answer to this it is urg'd by Dr. Johnston that this Canon is with small difference published by Binius in the Councils and so as to confine it to the suburbicacy Diocess of Rome yet that this Answer is wholly trivial will appear First Because if the Bishop of Rome hath no Authority to confirm such alienations in his own peculiar Diocess where he hath most power much less can he do it in the Provinces where his power is less Secondly That in all Ecclesiastical Courts of the Church of Rome it is not Binius's Edition of the Councils but Gratian's Collection of Canons that is of Authority in which Book these words are as here quoted Thirdly Since this Book of the Popes Decree hath been frequently reprinted by the Authority and Command of several Popes and constantly used in their Courts this is not to be look'd upon as a Decree of Pope Damasus only but of all the succeeding Popes and in the opinion of F. Ellis Sermon before the King Decem. 5. 1686. p. 21. what is inserted in the Canon Law is become the whole Judgment of the whole-Church Fourthly It 's absolutely forbid by Pope Gregory the Thirteenth in his Bull presixed before the Canon-Law A. D. 1580. for any one to add or invert any thing in that Book So that according to this express Determination in the Popes own Law the Bishops of Rome have no power to confirm any such Alienations as have been made in England and agreeable to all this Pope Julius the Fourth the very person that is pretended to have confirm'd these Alienations declar'd to our English Ambassadors that were sent upon that Errand That if he had Power to grant it he would do it most readily but his Authority was not so large F. Paul's H. of Council of Trent Lond. A. D. 1629. And therefore all Confirmations from the Bishop of Rome are already prejudg'd to be invallid and of no force at all Secondly No Bishop of Rome did ever confirm them The Breve of Pope Julius the Third which gave Cardinal Pool the largest powers towards the effecting this had this express limitation Salvo tamen in his quibus propttr renem magnitudinem gravitatem haec Sancta sedes merito tibi videtur consulenda nostro prefatae sedis beneplacito confirmatione i. e. Saving to us in these matters in which by reason of their weight and greatness this Holy See may justly seem to you that of right it ought to be consulted the good pleasure and confirmation of us and of the holy See which is the true English to that Latin and that this whole Kingdom did then so understand these words is evident from the Ambassadors that were sent to Rome the next Spring Viz. Viscount Moitecute Bishop of Ely and Sir Edward Carn These being one to represent every state of the Kingdom to obtain of him a Confirmation of all those Graces which Cardinal Pool had granted Burnet's H. Ref p. 2. f. 300. So that in the esteem of the whole Nation what the Cardinal had done was not valid without the Confirmation of the Pope himself Now this Pope Julius and the next Marcellus both died before there is any pretence of any Confirmation from Rome but this was at length done by Pope Paul the Fourth is pretended and for proof of it three things are alledged First The Journals of the House of Commons where are these words After which was read a Bill from the Popes Holiness confirming the doing of my Lord Cardinal touching the assurance of Abby Lands c. Secondly a Bull of the same Pope to Sir Will Peters Thirdly The Decrees of Cardinal Peol and his Life by Dudithius To all which I answer First That it s confess'd on all hands that there is no such Bull or Confirmation by Pope Paul the Fourth to be any where found in the whole World not any Copy or Transcript of it not in all the Bullaria nor our own Rolls and Records tho' it be a matter of so great moment to the Roman Catholicks of England and what cannot be produced may easily be denied Nor can it be imagined that a Journal of Lay-persons that were parties concerned or a private Bull to Sir Will Peters or some hints in the Decrees and Life of the Cardinal will be of any moment in a Court at Rome whensoever a matter of that vast consequence as all the Abby Lands in England shall come to be disputed especially if it be observed that this very Journal of the House of Commonâ— is
The Pope published a Bull in print against the restoring of Abby-Lands which Dr. Burnet affirms also Ap. Fol. 403. It is notoriously false they both asserting the contrary Dr. Burnet's Words in that very place are these The Pope in plain terms refused to ratifie what the Cardinal had done and soon after set out a severe Bull cursing and condemning all that held any Church Lands Seventhly and lastly The succeeding Popes have been clearly of this opinion Pope Pius the Fourth who immediately succeeded this Paul confirm'd the Counoil of Trent and therein damned all the detainers of Church-Lands and tho he was much importuned to confirm some Alienations made by the King of France to pay the debts of the Crown yet he absolutely refused it F. Pauls H. C. Trent 713. Pope Innocent the Tenth first protested against the Alienations of Church Lands in Germany that were made at the great Treaty of Munster and Osnaburg A. D. 1648. and when that would not do by his Bull Nov. 26. in the very same Year damns all those that should dare to retain the Church-Lands and declares the Treaty void Infirmnentum pacis c. Innocentii 10 me declaratio nullitatis Artic. c. and all their late Popes in the Bulla caenae do very solemnly Damn and Excommunicate all who usurp any Jurisdiction Fruits Revenues and Emoluments belonging to any Ecclesiastical person upon account of any Churches Monasteries or other Ecclesiastical Benefices or who upon any occasion or cause Sequester the said Revenues without the Express leave of the Bishop of Rome or others having lawful power to do it c. And tho upon Geod-Friday there is published a general Absolution yet out of that are expresly excluded all those who possess any Church Lands or Goods who are still left under the sentence of Excommunication Toleti Instr Sacerd. and his Explicatio casuum in Bulla caenae Dni reserva From which consideration it 's evident that it never was the design of the Pope to confirm the English Church Lands to the Lay-possessors but that he always urg'd the necessity of restoring of them to religious uses in order to which the papists prevailed to have the statute of Mortmain repealed for 20 Years In Queen Elizabeth's Reign the factious party that was manag'd wholy by Romish â—missaries demanded to have Abbtes and such Religious Houses restored for their Vse and A. D. 1585. in their petition to the Faâ—hament they set it down as a 〈◊〉 Doctrine that things once dedicated to Sacred Vses ought so to remain by the Word of God for ever and ought not to be converted to any private Vse Bishop Bancrofts Sermon at p. c. A. D. 1588. p. 25. And that the Church of Rome is still gaping after these Lands is evident from many of their late Books as the Religion of M. Luther lately printed at Oxford p. 15. The Monks wrote Anathema upon the Registers and Donations belonging to Monasteries the weight and essect of which curses are both felt and dreaded to this day To this End the Monastiâ—â—â— Anglicanum is so diligently preserved in the Vatican and other Libraries in the popish Countries and especially this appears from the obstinate refusal of this present Pope to confirm these Alienations tho it be a matter so much controverted and which would be of that vast Use towards promoting their Religion in this Kingdom If therefore the Bishops of Rome did never confirm these Alienations of Church-Lands but earnestly and strictly required their Restitution if they have declared in their Authentick Canons that they have no power to do it and both they and the last general Council pronounce an heavy Curse and Anathema against all such as detain them Then let every one that possesseth these Lands and yet own either of these Foreign Jurisdictions consider that here is nothing left to excuse him from Sacriledge and therefore with his Estate he must derive a curse to his posterity There is scarcely any Papist but that is forward to accuse King Henry the 8th of Sacriledge and yet never reflects upon himself who quietly possesseth the Fruits of it without Restitution either let them not accuse him or else restore themselves Now whatever opinions the papists may have of these things in the time of health yet I must desire to remember what the Jesuits proposed to Cardinal Pool in Doctor Pary's Days Viz. That if he would encourage them in England they did not doubt but that by dealing with the Consciences of those who were dying they should soon recover the greatest part of the Goods of the Church Dr. Burnet's Hist Vol. 2. p. 328. Not to mention that whensoever the Regulars shall grow numerous in England and by consequence burthensome to the few Nobility and Gentry of that perswasion they will find it necessary for them to consent to a Restitution of their Lands that they may share the burthen among others For so vast are the Burthens and Payments that that Religion brings with it that it will be found at length an advantagious Bargain to part with all the Church Lands to indemnifie the rest And I am confident that the Gentry of England that are Papists have found greater Burthens and Payments since their Religion hath been allow'd than ever they did for the many years it was forbid and this charge must daily encrease so long as their Clergy daily grows more numerous and their few Converts are most of them of the meanest Rank and such as want to be provided for And that 's no easie matter to force Converts may appear from that Excellent Observation of the great Emperour Charles the Fifth who told Queen Mary That by endeavouring to compel others to his own Relegion he had tired and spent himself in vain and purchas'd nothing by it but his own dishonour Card. Pool in Heylin's Hist Ref. p. 217. And to conclude this Discourse had the Act of Pope Julius the Third by his Legate Cardinal Pool in confirming of the Alienation of Church Lands in England been as valid as is by some pretended yet what shall secure us from an Act of Resumption That very Pope after that pretended Grant to Cardinal Pool published a Bull in which he Excommunicated all that kept Abby-Lands or Church Lands Burnet's Hist Vol. 2. p. 3â—9 by which all former Grants had there been any were cancell'd His Successor Pope Paul the Fourth retrieved all the Goods and Ecclesiastical Revenues that had been alienated from the Church since the time of Julius the Second and the chief Reasons that are given why the Popes may not still proceed to an Act of Resumption of these Lands in England amount only to this That they may stay for a fair opportunity when it may be done without disturbing the peace of the Kingdom From all which it 's evident that the detaining of Abby-Lands and other Church-Lands from the Monks and Friars is altogether inconsistent with the Doctrine and Principles of the Romish Religion The King's
there being sincere Christians and true Englishmen among those of all Judgments and Societies of Protestants and among none more than those of the Communion of the Church of England It were the height of Wickedness as well as the most prodigious Folly to imagine that the Conformists have abandoned all Fidelity to God and cast off all care of themselves and their Country upon a mistaken Judgment of being Loyal and Obedient to the King The contrary is plain enough they knew as well as any that the giving to Caesar the Things that are Caesar's lay them under no Obligation of surrendring unto him the Things that are God's nor of sacrificing unto the Will of the Sovereign the Priviledges reserved unto the People by the Fundamental Rules of the Constitution and by the Statutes of the Realm And they understand as well as others that the Laws of the Land are the only measures of the Prince's Authority and of the Subjects Fealty and where they give him no Right to Command they lay them under no tye to Obey And though here and there a Dissenter has written against Popery with good Success yet they have been mostly Conformable Divines who have triumphed over it in elaborate Discourses and who have beaten the Romish Scriblers off the Stage Nor can it be thought that they who have so accurately related and vindicated the History and asserted and defended the Doctrine of the Reformation should either tamely relinquish or be wanting in all due and legal Ways to uphold and maintain it And though some few of the Nonconformists have with sufficient strength and applause used their Pens against Arbitrariness in detecting the Designs of the Royal Brothers yet they who have generally and with greatest Honour appeared for our Laws and Legal Government against the Invasions and Usurpations of the Court have been Theologues and Gentlemen of the Church of England Nor in case of further Attempts for altering the Constitution and enslaving the Nation will they shew themselves unworthy the having descended from Ancestors whose Motto in the high Places of the Field was nolumus Leges Angliae mutari They who have so often justified the Arms of the Vnited Netherlands against their Rightful Princes the Kings of Spain and so unanswerably vindicated their casting off Obedience to those Monarchs when they had invaded their Priviledges and attempted to establish the Inquisition over them cannot be ignorant what their own Right and Duty is in behalf of the Protestant Religion and English Liberties for the Security whereof we have not only so many Laws but the Coronation Oaths and Stipulations of our Kings And those Gentlemen of the Church of England who appeared so vigorously in three Parliaments for excluding the Duke of York from the Succession to the Crown by reason of a Jealousy of what through being a Papist he would attempt against our Religion and Priviledges in case he were suffered to ascend the Throne cannot be now to seek what becomes them towards him having seen and felt what before they only apprehended and feared For if the Law that entaileth the Succession upon the next of Kin and obligeth the Subjects to admit and receive him not only may but ought to be dispensed with in case the Heir thro' having imbib'd Principles which threaten the Safety and are inconsistent with the Happiness of the People hath made himself incapable to inherit we know by a short Ratiocination how far we stand bound to a Prince on the Throne who by Transgressing against the Laws of the Constitution hath abdicated himself from the Government and stands virtually Deposed For whosoever shall offer to Rule Arbitrarily does immediately cease to be King de jure seeing by the Fundamental Common and Statute Laws of the Realm we know none for Supream Magistrate and Governor but a limited Prince and one who stands circumscribed and bounded in his Power and Prerogative And should the Dissenters entertain a belief that the Conformists are less concerned and zealous than themselves for the Protestant Religion and Laws of the Kingdom they would not only Sin and offend against the Rules of Charity but against the Measures of Justice and daily Evidences from Matters of Fact For neither they nor we owe our Conversion to God and our practical Holiness to the Opinions about Discipline Forms of Worship and Ceremonies wherein we differ but the Doctrines of Faith and Christian Obedience wherein we agree 'T is not their being for a Liturgy a Surpliss or a Bishop that hath heretofore influenced them to subserve the Court in Designs tending to Absoluteness but they were seduced unto it upon Motives whereof they are now ashamed and the ridiculousness and folly of which they have at last discever'd Nor is the multitude of profligate and scandalous persons with which the Church of England is crowded any just impeachment of the Purity of her Doctrine in the Vitals and Essentials of Religion or of the Vertue and Piety of many of her Members For as it is her being the only Society established by Law that attracts those Vermin to her Bosom so it is her being restrained by Law from debarring them that keeps them there to her reproach and to the grief of many of her Ecclesiasticks Neither is it the fault of the Church of England that the Agents and Factors for Popery and Arbitrary Power have chosen to pass under the name of her Sons but it proceeds partly from their Malice as hoping by that means to disgrace her with all true English-men as well as with Dissenters and partly from their Craft in order thereby the better to conceal their Design and to shrowd themselves from the Censure and Punishment which had it not been for that Mask they would have been exposed unto and have undergone And I dare affirm that besides the Obligations from Religion which the Conformists are equally under with Dissenters for hindring the introduction of Popery there are several Inducements from interest which sway them to prevent its establishment wherein the Dissenters are but little concerned For though Popery would be alike afflictive to the Consciences of Protestants of all Persuasions yet they are Gentlemen and Ministers of the Church of England whole Livings Revenues and Estates have been threatned in case it had come to be established Nor would the most Loyal and obsequious Levites provided they resolve to continue Protestants be willing that their Personages and Incumbencies to which they have have no less Right by Law than the King hath to the Excise and Customs should be taken from them and bestowed upon Romish Priests by an Act of Despotical Power and of unlimited Prerogative And for the Gentlemen as I think few of them would hold themselves obliged to part with their purses to High-way-Padders though such should have a pattent from the King to rob whomsoever they met upon the Road so there will not be many inclined to suffer their Mannours and Abbey-Lands to which they have so
STATE TRACTS Being a Farther COLLECTION OF Several Choice Treatises Relating to the GOVERNMENT From the YEAR 1660. to 1689. Now Published in a Body to shew the Necessity and clear the Legality of the Late REVOLUTION and Our present Happy SETTLEMENT under the Auspicious Reign of Their MAJESTIES King William and Queen Mary LONDON Printed and are to be Sold by RICHARD BALDWIN near the Oxford-Arms in Warwick-Lane MDCXCII PREFACE to the READER THE Main and Principal Design of making this following Collection was to preserve entire in this Second Volume some other Excellent Tracts of equal esteem and value with the former which made that Book so much obtain among the Learned and Curious as that the whole Impression of it is already near sold And as it cannot but be very entertaining to Vs in the reading of them who do yet so sensibly remember what we then felt and looked for worse to fall on us every day than other so it will certainly be of great Benefit and Advantage to our Posterities in future who may considerably profit themselves by our Misfortunes This is a Collection that in the general will set forth the true and Legal Constitution of our Ancient Famous English Government which of all the Countries in Europe Memoirs of Philip de Comines Kt. lib. 5. cap. 18. p. 334. in Octavo Printed 1674. where I was ever acquainted says the Noble Lord of Argenton is no-where so well managed the People no-where less obnoxious to Violence nor their Houses less liable to the Desolations of War than in England for there the Calamities fall only upon the Authors 'T was a true Observation that this Great Man made of the Justice of our Gallant Ancestors in his days how miserable the Successive Generations have deviated from the vertue of their steps how much the strict Piety of their Manners and the noble Bravery of their Spirits Tempers and Complexions have been enervated and dissolved by the later looseness supine carelesness and degeneracy the present Age hath great reason to bewail and 't is hoped that those to come will be hereby cautioned to grow wiser and better by those past Follies and Miscarriages In particular Here will be seen the dangerous Consequences of keeping up a standing Army within these Kingdoms in a time of Peace without consent of Parliament The Trust Power and Duty of Grand Juries and the great Security of English-mens Lives in their faithful discharge thereof The Right of the Subject to Petition their King for Redress of their Wrongs and Oppressions and that Access to the Sovereign ought not to be shut up in case of any Distresses of his People The Spring of all our late private Mischievous Councils and Cabals and the Special Tools that were thought fittest for Preferment to be imployed under a colour of Authority to put all those concerted Designs in motion and execution The Parliament's Care in appointing a Committee to examine the Proceedings of the Forward and Active Judges upon several Cases that were brought before them of grand importance to the Common-weal Peace and Safety of the Nation ☞ and the Resolution of the House of Commons upon their Report That the Judges said Proceedings were Arbitrary and Illegal destructive to Publick Justice a high and manifest Violation of their Oaths a Scandal to the Reformation an usurpation of the Legislative Power to themselves and a means to subvert the Fundamental Laws of this Kingdom And the several Grievances that this Nation hath long been labouring under for the Advancement of Popery Arbitrary Dominion and the unmeasurable Growth and Power of France There are likewise interspersed in this Volume several Matters of Fact relating to the Male-Admininistration of Affairs in Scotland under Duke Lauderdale and his Favourites as also a Large and Faithful Account of the late Earl of Argyle's Tryal Escape and Sentence with divers other things for the better clearing of his Case In a word This Collection will discover to us the Mysteries of the Monarchy in the two Late Reigns and the Abused Trust of Government in those Princes by a Dispencing Power both in Ecclesiastical and Civil Matters to Tyrannize over their Subjects who in the mean while were taught by sâ—me Passive-Obedience and Non-Resistance Doctrine-holders That all their Duty was tamely to submit to and patiently sigh under their daily Sufferings and Oppressions and I think we bore them so long till we were within one throw more of loosing all our good old Laws and Constitutions and even the Government it self Our Miseries were lately so great and many as you will find here that it is impossible for any one better and more fully to express them than in the words of a very Learned and Judicious Author who hath thus given us a just and lively Representation of them Our Laws says he were trampled under foot and upon the matter abolished to set up Will and Pleasure in their room under the Cant and Pretence of Dispencing Power Our Constitution was overthrown by the Trick of New Charters and by closetting and corrupting Members of Parliament Men were required under pain of the highest Displeasure to consent Some Considerations about the most proper way of raising Money in the present Conjuncture Printed Octob. 1691. and concur to the sacrificing their Religion and the Liberty of their Countrey The worthiest honestest and bravest Men in England had been barbarously murthered and to aggravate the Injustice which was done them all bad been varnished over with a Colour of Law and the Formality of Tryals not unlike the Case of Naboth and Ahab Those whom the Law declared Traytors were in defiance of the National Authority introduced into our Councils and the Conduct of Affairs put into their hands Our Vniversities were invaded by open Force those who were in the lawful possession of the Government of Colledges turned out and Papists sent thither in their room And if that Attempt had throughly prospered the Churches and Pulpits would soon have followed It were vain to go about to enumerate Particulars In a word the Nation was undone All was lost The Judges were suborned or threatned to declare that the King was Master of all the Laws and the Bishops were required to publish this New-created Prerogative in all the Churches of England by the Mouths of the Clergy which when some of them refused to do representing to the King with the utmost submission and modesty that neither Conscience nor Justice permitted them to do what he desired they were prosecuted at Law as if they had been guilty of some great Crime Letters were written and intercepted by which it appeared evidently that the change of our Religion was determined and that Popery was to be brought in with all speed least the opportunity should be lost And for the better compassing this pious design our Civil and Parliamentary Rights were to be taken away in Ordine ad Spiritualia And when the Nation and those who were concerned
that I disown and renounce all such Principles Doctrins or Practices whether Popish or Fanatical which are contrary unto and inconsistent with the said Protestant Religion and Confession of Faith And for testification of my obedience to my most gracious Soveraign Charles the II. I do affirm and swear by this my solemn Oath that the Kings Majesty is the only Supreme Governour of this Realm over all Persons and in all Causes as well Ecclesiastical as Civil And that no Foreign Prince Person Pope Prelate State or Potentate hath or ought to have any Jurisdiction Power Superiority Preheminency or Authority Ecclesiastical or Civil within this Realm And therefore I do utterly renounce and forsake all Foreign Jurisdictions Powers Superiorities and Authorities And do promise that from henceforth I shall bear Faith and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty his Heirs and lawful Successors and to my power shall assist and defend all Rights Jurisdictions Prerogatives Priviledges Preferments and Authorities belonging to the Kings Majesty his Heirs and lawful Successors And I further affirm and swear by this my solemn Oath That I judge it unlawful for Subjects upon pretence of Reformation or any other pretence whatsoever to enter into Covenants or Leagues or to Gonvocate Conveen or Assemble in any Councils Conventions or Assemblies to Treat Consult or Determine in any matter of State Civil or Ecclesiastick without His Majesties special Command or Express License had thereto or to take up Arms against the King or these Commissionate by him And that I shall never so rise in Arms or enter into such Covenants or Assemblies And that there lies no obligation on me from the National Covenant or the Solemn Leagâ—e and Covenant commonly so called or any other manner of way whatsoever to endeavour any Change or Alteration in the Government either in Church or State as it is now established by the Laws of this Kingdome And I Promise and Swear That I shall with my utmost power Defend Assist and Maintain His Majesties Jurisdiction foresaid against all deadly And I shall never decline His Majesties Power and Jurisdiction as I shall answer to God And finally I affirm and swear That this my solemn Oath is given in the plain genuine sense and meaning of the words without any equivocation mental reservation or any manner of evasion whatsoever and that I shall not accept or use any dispensation from any creature whatsoever So help ne God The Bishop of Aberdeen and the Synods Explanation of the Test WE do not hereby swear to all the particular Assertions and Expressions of the Confession of Faith mentioned in the Test but only to the uniform Doctrine of the Reformed Churches contained therein II. We do not hereby prejudge the Churches Right to and Power of making any alteration in the said Confession as to the ambiguity and obscure expressions thereof or of making a more unexceptionable frame III. When we swear That the King is Supreme Governour over all Persons and in all Causes as well Ecclesiastick as Civil and when we swear to assert and defend all His Majesties Rights and Prerogatives this is reserving always the intrinsick unalterable power of the Church immediately derived from Jesus Christ to wit the power of the Keys consisting in the preaching of the Word administration of the Sacraments ordaining of Pastors exercise of Discipline and the holding of such Assemblies as are necessary for preservation of Peace and Vnity Truth and Purity in the Church and withal we do hereby think that the King has a power to alter the Government of the Church at his pleasure IV. When we swear That it is unlawful for Subjects to meet or convene to treat or consult c. about matters of State Civil and Ecclesiastick this is excepting meetings for Ordination publick Worship and Discipline and such meetings as are necessary for the conservation of the Church and true Protestant Religion V. When we swear There lies no obligation on us c. to endeavour any change or alteration in Government either in Church or State we mean by Arms or any seditious way VI. When we swear That we take the Test in the plain and genuine sense of the words c. we understand it only in so far as it does not contradict these Exceptions The Explanation of the Test by the Synod and Clergy of Perth BEcause our Consciences require the publishing and declaring of that express meaning we have in taking the Test that we be not mis-interpreted to swear it in these glosses which men uncharitable to it and enemies to us are apt to put upon it and because some men ill affected to the Government who are daily broachers of odious and calumnious Slanders against our Persons and Ministry are apt to deduce inferences and conclusions from the alledged ambiguity of some Propositions of the Test that we charitably and firmly do believe were never intended by the Imposers nor received by the Takers Therefore to satisfie our Consciences and to save our Credit from these unjust imputations we expressly declare That we swear the Test in this following meaning I. By taking the Test we do not swear to every Proposition and Clause contained in the Confession of Faith but only to the true Protestant Religion founded upon the Word of God contained in that Confession as it is opposed to Popery and Fanaticism II. By swearing the Ecclesiastick Supremacy we swear it as we have done formerly without any reference to the assertory Act. We also reserve intire unto the Church it s own intrinsick and unalterable power of the Keys as it was exercised by the Apostles and the pure primitive Church for the first three Centuries III. By swearing That it is unlawful to Convocate convene or assemble in any Council Conventions or Assemblies to treat consult c. in any matter of State Civil or Ecclesiastick as we do not evacuate our natural Liberty whereby we are in freedom innocently without reflection upon or derogating to Authority or persons intrusted with it to discourse in any occasional meeting of these things so we exclude not those other meetings which are necessary for the well-being and Discipline of the Church IV. By our swearing it unlawful to endeavour any change or alteration in the Government either of Church or State we mean that it is unlawful for us to endeavour the alteration of the specifick Government of Monarchy in the true and lineal Descent and Episcopacy V. When we swear in the genuine and literal sense c. we understand it so far as it is not opposite or contradictory to the foresaid exceptions They were allowed to insert after the Oath before their Subscriptions these words or to this purpose We under-written do take this Oath according to the Explanation made by the Council approved by His Majesties Letter and we declare we are no further bound by this Oath EDINBVRGH The sederunt of the Council Sederunt vigesimo secundo Die Septembris 1681. His Royal
they that make Leasings to his Grace of his Lords Barons and Leiges Act 134. Par. 8. James 6. May 22. 1584. Anent Slanderers of the King his Progenitors Estate and Realm FOrasmuch as it is understood to our Soveraign Lord and his three Estates assembled in this present Parliament what great harm and inconveniency has fallen in this Realm chiefly since the beginning of the Civil troubles occurred in the time of his Highness minority through the wicked and licentious publick and private speeches and untrue calumnies of divers of his Subjects to the disdain contempt and reproach of His Majesty his Council and proceedings and to the dishonour and prejudice of his Highness his Parents Progenitors and Estate stirring up his Highness's Subjects thereby to misliking sedition unquietness and to cast off their due obedience to His Majesty to their evident peril tinsil and destruction his Highness continuing always in love and clemency toward all his good Subjects and most willing to seek the safety and preservation of them all which wilfully needlessly and upon plain malice after his Highness's mercy and pardon oft times afore granted has procured themselves by their treasonable deeds to be cut off as corrupt Members of this Commonwealth Therefore it is statute and ordained by our Soveraign Lord and his three Estates in this present Parliament that none of his Subjects of whatsoever Function Degree or Quality in time coming shall presume or take upon hand privately or publickly in Sermons Declanations and familiar Conferences to utter any false slanderous or untrue Speeches to the disdain reproach and contempt of His Majesty his Council and proceedings or to the dishonour hurt or prejudice of his Highness his Parents and Progenitors or to meddle in the Affairs of his Highness and his Estate present by-gone and in time coming under the pains contained in the Acts of Parliament anent makers and tellers of Leasings certifying them that shall be tryed contraveeners thereof or that hear such slanderous Speeches and reports not the same with diligence the said pain shall be executed against them with all rigour in example of others Act 205. Par. 14 King James 6. June 8. 1594. Anent Leasing-makers and Authors of Slanders OUR Soveraign Lord with advice of his Estates in this present Parliament ratifies approves and for his Highness and Successors perpetually confirms the Act made by his Noble Progenitors King James the First of Worthy Memory against Leasing-makers the Act made by King James the Second entituled Against Leasing-makers and tellers of them the Act made by King James the Fifth entituled Of Leasing-makers and the Act made by his Highness's self with advice of his Estates in Parliament upon the 22d day of May 1584. entituled For the punishment of the Authors of Slanders and untrue Calumnies against the Kings Majesty his Council and proceedings to the dishonour and prejudice of his Highness his Parents Progenitors Crown and Estate as also the Act made in his Highness's Parliament holden at Linlithgow upon the 10th of December 1585. entituled Against the Authors of slanderous Speeches or Writs and statutes and ordains all the said Acts to be published of new and to be put in execution in time coming with this addition That whoever hears the said Leasings Calumnies or slanderous Speeches or Writs to be made and apprehends not the Authors thereof if it lies in his power and reveals not the same to his Highness or one of his Privy Council or to the Sheriff Steward or Bayliff of the Shire Stewards in Regality or Royalty or to the Provost or any of the Bayliffs within Burgh by whom the same may come to the knowledge of his Highness or his said Privy-Council where through the said Leasing makers and Authors of slanderous Speeches may be called tryed and punished according to the said Acts The hearer and not apprehender if it lye in his power and concealer and not revealer of the said Leasing makers and Authors of the said slanderous Specches or Writs shall incur the like pain and punishment as the principal Offender Act 107. Par. 7. King James 1. March 1. 1427. That none interpret the Kings Statutes wrongously ITem the King by deliverance of Council by manner of Statute forbids That no man interpret his Statutes otherwise than the Statutes bear and to the intent and effect that they were made for and as the maker of them understood and who so does in the contrary shall be punished at the Kings will Act 10. Par. 10. King James 6. Dec. 10. 1585. Authors of slanderous Speeches or Writs should be punished to the Death IT is statuted and ordained by our Soveraign Lord and three Estates that all his Highness's Subjects content themselves in quietness and dutiful obedience to his Highness and his Authority and that none of them presume or take upon hand publickly to declaim or privately to speak or write any purpose of reproach or slander of His Majesties Person Estate or Government or to deprave his Laws and Acts of Parliament or misconstrue his proceedings whereby any misliking may be moved betwixt his Highness and his Nobility and loving Subjects in time coming under the pain of Death certifying them that do in the contrary they shall be reputed as seditious and wicked Instruments enemies to his Highness and the Commonwealth of this Realm and the said pain of Death shall be executed upon them with all rigour in example of others Act for preservation of His Majesties Person Authority and Government May 1662. And further it is by His Majesty and Estates of Parliament declared statuted and enacted That if any person or persons shall by writing printing praying preaching libelling remonstrating or by any malicious or advised speaking express publish or declare any words or sentences to stir up the people to the hatred or dislike of His Majesties Royal Prerogative and Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical or of the Government of the Church by Archbishops and Bishops as it is now settled by Law That every such person or persons so offending and being legally Convicted thereof are hereby declared incapable to enjoy or exercise any place or employment Civil Ecclesiastick or Military within this Church and Kingdom and shall be liable to such further pains as are due by the Law in such Cases Act 130. Par. 8. James 6. May 22. 1584. Anent the Authority of the three Estates of Parliament THE Kings Majesty considering the Honour and the Authority of his Supreme Court of Parliament continued past all memory of man unto their days as constitute upon the free Votes of the three Estates of this ancient Kingdom by whom the same under God has ever been upholden Rebellious and Traiterous Subjects punished the Good and Faithful preserved and maintained and the Laws and Acts of Parliament by which all men are governed made and established And finding the Power Dignity and Authority of the said Court of Parliament of late years called in some doubt at least some curiously travelling
Earl unless they had his Royal Highness's and their Lordships special License and Warrant to that effect which is usual in the like Cases And by the said Petition humbly supplicated that his Highness and the Council would give special Order and Command to the said Sir George Lockhart the said Earls ordinary Advocate to consult and plead for him in the foresaid Criminal Process without incurring any hazard upon that account His Royal Highness and Lords of the said Privy Council did refuse the desire of the said Petition but allowed any Lawyers the Petitioner should employ to consult and plead for him in the Process of Treason and other Crimes to be pursued against him at the instance of His Majesties Advocate And also the said Alexander Dunbar having and holding in his hands another Act of the said Lords of Privy Council of the date the 24th of the said month relative to and narrating the said first Act and proceeding upon another supplication given in by the said Earl to the said Lords craving That his Royal Highness and the said Lords would interpose their Authority by giving a positive and special Order and Warrant to the said Sir George Lockhart to consult and plead with him in the foresaid Criminal Process conform to the tenor of the Acts of Parliament mentioned and particularized in the said Petition and frequent and known practice in the like cases which was never refused to any Subjects of the meanest quality His Royal Highness and Lords of Privy Council having considered the foresaid Petition did by the said Act adhere to their former Order allowing Advocates to appear for the said Earl in the Process foresaid as the said Acts bear and produced the said Acts and Procuratory foresaid to the said Sir George Lockhart who took the same in his hands and read them over successive and after reading thereof the said Alexander Dunbar Procurator and in name and behalf foresaid solemnly required the said Sir George Lockhart as the said Noble Earls ordinary Advocate and as a Lawyer and Advocate upon the said Earls reasonable expence to consult and advise the said Earls said Process at any time and place the said Sir George should appoint to meet thereupon conform to the foresaid two Acts of Council and Acts of Parliament therein mentioned appointing Advocates to consult in such matters which the said Sir George Lockhart altogether refused Whereupon the said Alexander Dunbar as Procurator and in Name foresaid asked and took Instruments one or more in the hands of me Notary publick undersubscribed And these things were done within the said Sir George Lockhart's Lodging on the South side of the Street of Edinburgh in the Lane-Mercat within the Dining-room of the said Lodging betwixt Four and Five hours in the Afternoon Day Month Year Place and of His Majesties Reign respective foresaid before Robert Dicksone and John Lesly Servitors to John Camphell Writer to His Majesties Signet and Dowgall Mac. Alester Messenger in Edinburgh with divers others called and required to the Premisses Ita esse Ego Johannes Broun Notarius publicus in Premissis requisitus Attestor Testantibus his meis signo subscriptione manualibus solitis consuetis Broun Witnesses Robert Dicksone Dowgall Mac. Alester John Lesly Decemb. 5. 1682. The Opinion of divers Lawyers concerning the Case of the Earl of Argyle WE have considered the Criminal Letters raised at the instance of His Majesties Advocate against the Earl of Argyle with the Acts of Parliament contained and narrated in the same Criminal Letters and have compared the same with a Paper or Explication which is libelled to have been given in by the Earl to the Lords of His Majesties Privy-Council and owned by him as the sense and explication in which he did take the Oath imposed by the late Act of Parliament Which Paper is of this tenor I have considered the Test and am very desirous to give chedience as far as I can c. And having likewise considered that the Earl after he had taken the Oath with the explication and sense then put upon it it was acquiesced to by the Lords of Privy-Council and he allowed to take his place and to sit and Vote And that before the Earls taking of the Oath there were several papers spread abroad containing objections and alledging inconsistencies and contradictions in the Oath and some thereof were presented by Synods and Presbyteries of the Orthodox Clergy to some of the Bishops of the Church It is our humble Opinion that seeing the Earls design and meaning in offering the said Explication was allenarly for the clearing of his own Conscience and upon no facrious or seditious design and that the matter and import of the said paper is no contradiction of the Laws and Acts of Parliament it doth not at all import any of the Crimes libelled against him viz. Treason Leasing making depraving of His Majesties Laws or the Crime of Perjury but that the glosses and inferences put by the Libel upon the said paper are altogether strained and unwarrantable and inconsistent with the Earls true design and the sincerity of his meaning and intention in making of the said Explication Wednesday the 12th of December the day of compearance assigned to the Earl being now come he was brought by a guard of Souldiers from the Castle to the place appointed for the Trial and the Justice Court being met and fenced the Earl now Marquess of Queensberry then Justice-General the Lords Nairn Collingtoun Forret Newtoun and Hirkhouse the Lords of Justitiary sitting in Judgment and the other formalities also performed the Indictment above set down Num. 24. was read and the Earl spoke as follows The Earl of Argyle's Speech to the Lord Justice General and the Lords of the Justitiary after he had been arraigned and his Indictment read My Lord Justice General c. I Look upon it as the undeniable priviledge of the meanest Subject to explain his own words in the most benign sense and even when persons are under an ill Character the misconstruction of words in themselves not ill can only reach a presumption or aggravation but not any more But it is strange to alledge as well as I hope impossible to make any that know me believe that I could intend any thing but what was honest and honourable suitable to the Principles of my Religion and Loyalty tho I did not explain my self at all My Lord I pray you be not offended that I take up a little of your time to tell you I have from my Youth made it my business to serve His Majesty faithfully and have constantly to my power appeared in his Service especially in all times of difficulty and have never joined nor complied with any Interest or Party contrary to His Majesties Authority and have all along served him in his own way without a frown from His Majesty these thirty years As soon as I passed the Schools and Colledges I went to travel to France and Italy and
the Pannel before he was called and required by the Lords of His Majesties Privy-Council to take Oath did ever by word or practice use any reproachful speeches of the said Act of Parliament or of His Majesties Government But being required to take the Oath he did humbly with all submission declare what he apprehended to be the sense of the Act of the Parliament enjoyning the Test and in what sense he had freedom to take the same 3. The Act of Parliament enjoyning the Test does not enjoyn the same to be taken by all persons whatsoever but only prescribes it as a qualification without which persons could not assume or continue to act in publick Trust Which being an Oath to be taken by so solemn an invocation of the Name of Almighty God it is not only allowable by the Laws and customs of all Nations and the Opinion of all Divines and Casuists Popish or Protestant but also commended that where a Party has any scrupulosity or unclearness in his conscience as to the matter of the Oath that he should exhibit and declare the sense and meaning in which he is willing and able to take the Oath And it is not at all material whether the scruples of a mans conscience in the matter of an Oath be in themselves just or groundless it being a certain maxim both in Law and Divinity that Conscientia etiam erronea ligat And therefore tho the Pannel had thought fit for the clearing and exoneration of his own conscience in a matter of the highest concern as to his peace and repose to have exprest and declared the express sense in which he could take the Oath whether the said sense was consistent with the Act of Parliament or not yet it does not in the least import any matter of reproach or reflection upon the justice or prudence of the Parliament in imposing the said Oath but alenarly does evince the weakness and scrupulosity of a mans conscience who neither did nor ought to have taken the Oath but with an explanation that would have saved his conscience to his apprehension Otherwise he had grosly sinned before God even tho it was Conscientia errans And this is allowed and prescribed by all Protestant Divines as indispensibly necessary and was never thought to import any crime and is also commended even by Popish Casuists themselves who tho they allow in some cases of mental reservations and equivocations yet the express declaration of the sense of the party is allowed and commended as much more ingenious and tutius Remedium Conscientiae ne illaqueeter as appears by Bellarmine de Juramento and _____ upon the same Title de Interpretatione Juramenti and Lessius that famous Casuist de Justitia Jure Dubitatione 8 9. utrum si quis salvo animo aliquid Juramento promittat obligetur quale peccatum hoc sit And which is the general opinion of all Casuists and all Divines as may appear by Amesius in his Treatise de Conscientia Sanderson de Juramento Praelectione secunda And such an express Declaration of the sense and meaning of any party when required to take an Oath for no other end but for the clearing and exoneration of his own Conscience was never in the opinion of any Lawyer or any Divine construed to be the Crime of Leasing-making or of defamatory Libels or depraving of publick Laws or reproaching or misconstruing of the Government but on the contrary by the universal suffrage of all Protestant Divines there is expresly required in Cases of a scrupulous Conscience an abhorrence and detestation of all reserved senses and of all Amphibologies and Equivocations which are in themselves unlawful and reprobate upon that unanswerable Reason that Juramentum being the highest Act of Devotion and Religion in eo requiritur maxima simplicitas and that a party is obliged who has any scruples of Conscience publickly and openly to clear and declare the same 4. Albeit it is not controverted but that a Legislator imposing an Oath or any publick Authority before whom the Oath is taken may after hearing of the Sense and Explication which a person is willing to put upon it either reject or accept of the same if it be conceived not to be consistent with the genuine sense of the Oath Yet tho it were rejected it was never heard of or pretended that the offering of a sense does import a Crime but that notwithstanding thereof Habetur pro Recusante and as if he had not taken the Oath and to be liable to the certification of Law as if he had been a Refuser 5. The Pannel having publickly and openly declared the sense in which he was free to take the Oath it is offered to be proved that he was allowed and did accordingly proceed to the taking of the Oath and did thereafter take his place and sit and Vote during that Sederunt of Privy Council So as the pretended Sense and Explication which he did then emit and give can import no Crime against him 6. It is also offered to be proved that before the Pannel was required to take the Oath or did appear before his Royal Highness and Lords of Privy-Council to take the same there were a great many Papers spread abroad from persons and Ministers of the Orthodox Clergy and as the Pannel is informed some thereof presented to the Bishops of the Church in the name of Synods and Presbyteries which did in downright terms charge the Test and Oath with alledged contradictions and inconsistencies And for satisfaction whereof some of the Learned and Reverend Bishops of the Church did write a learned and satisfying Answer called A Vindication of the Test for clearing the Scruples Difficulties and Mistakes that were objected against it And which Vindication and Answer was exhibited and read before the Lords of His Majesties Privy Council and allowed to be printed and from which the Pannel argues 1. That it neither is nor can be pretended in this Libel that the alledged Explication wherein he did take the Oath does propose the scruples of his Conscience in these terms which were proposed by the Authors of these Objections which do flatly and positively assert that the Oath and Test do contain matters of inconsistency and contradiction whereas all that is pretended in this Libel with the most absolute violence can be put upon the words is arguing Implications and Inferences which neither the words are capable to bear nor the sincerity of the Earls intention and design nor the course of his by-past life can possibly admit of And yet none of the persons who were the Authors of such papers were ever judged or reputed Criminal or Guilty and to be prosecuted for the odious and infamous Crimes libelled of Treason Leasing-making Perjury and the like 2. The Pannel does also argue from the said matter of Fact that the alledged Explication libelled can neither in his intention and design nor in the words infer or import any Crime against him because
had received from Christ they were the Judges even of the Scripture it self many years after the Apostles which Books were Canonical and which were not And if they had this power then I desire to know how they came to lose it and by what Authority men separate themselves from that Church The only pretence I ever heard of was because the Church has fail'd in wresting and interpreting the Scripture contrary to the true sence and meaning of it and that they have imposed Articles of Faith upon us which are not to be warranted by God's word I do desire to know who is to be Judge of that whether the whole Church the Succession whereof has continued to this day without interruption or particular men who have raised Schims for their own advantage This is a true Copy of a Paper I found in the late King my Brothers Strong Box written in his own Hand JAMES R. The Second Paper IT is a sad thing to consider what a world of Heresies are crept into this Nation Every man thinks himself as competent a Judge of the Scriptures as the very Apostles themselves and 't is no wonder that it should be so since that part of the Nation which looks most like a Church dares not bring the true Arguments against the other Sects for fear they should be turned against themselves and confuted by their own Arguments The Church of England as 't is call'd would fain have it thought that they are the Judges in matters Spiritual and yet dare not say positively that there is no Appeal from them for either they must say that they are Infallible which they cannot pretend to or confess that what they decide in matters of Conscience is no further to be followed then it agrees with every mans private Judgment If Christ did leave a Church here upon Earth and we were all once of that Church how and by what Authority did we separate from that Church If the power of Interpreting of Scripture be in every mans brain what need have we of a Church or Church-men To what purpose then did our Saviour after he had given his Apostles power to Bind and Loose in Heaven and Earth add to it that he would be with them even to the end of the World These words were not spoken Parabolically or by way of Figure Christ was then ascending into his Glory and left his Power with his Church even to the End of the World We have had these hundred years past the sad effects of denying to the Church that Power in matters Spiritual without an Appeal What Country can subsist in peace or quiet where there is not a Supream Judge from whence there can be no Appeal Can there be any Justice done where the Offenders are their own Judges and equal Interpreters of the Law with those that are appointed to administer Justice This is our Case here in England in matters Spiritual for the Protestants are not of the Church of England as 't is the true Church from whence there can be no Appeal but because the Discipline of that Church is conformable at that present to their fancies which as soon as it shall contradict or vary from they are ready to embrace or joyn with the next Congregation of People whose Discipline and Worship agrees with their Opinion at that time so that according to this Doctrine there is no other Church nor Interpreter of Scripture but that which lies in every mans giddy brain I desire to know therefore of every serious Considerer of these things whether the great work of our Salvation ought to depend upon such a Sandy Foundation as this Did Christ ever say to the Civil Magistrate much less to the People that he would be with them to the end of the World Or did he give them the Power to forgive Sins St. Paul tells the Corinthians Ye are Gods Husbandry ye are Gods Building we are Labourers with God This shews who are the Labourers and who are the Husbandry and Building And in this whole Chapter and in the preceeding one St. Paul takes great pains to set forth that they the Clergy have the Spirit of God without which no man searcheth the deep things of God and he concludeth the Chapter with this Verse For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him But we have the mind of Christ Now if we do but consider in humane probability and reason the powers Christ leaves to his Church in the Gospel and St. Paul explains so distinctly afterwards we cannot think that our Saviour said all these things to no purpose And pray consider on the other side that those who resist the truth and will not submit to his Church draw their Arguments from Implications and far fetch'd Interpretations at the same time that they deny plain and positive words which is so great a Disingenuity that 't is not almost to be thought that they can believe themselves Is there any other foundation of the Protestant Church but that if the Civil Magistrate please he may call such of the Clergy as he thinks fit for his turn at that time and turn the Church either to Presbytery Independency or indeed what he pleases This was the way of our pretended Reformation here in England and by the same Rule and Authority it may be altered into as many more Shapes and Forms as there are Fancies in mens Heads This is a true Copy of a Paper written by the late King my Brother in his own Hand which I found in his Closet JAMES R. A LETTER Containing some Remarks on the Two Papers writ by His late Majesty King CHARLES the Second Concerning Religion SIR I Thank you for the two Royal Papers that you have sent me I had heard of them before but now we have them so well attested that there is no hazard of being deceived by a false Copy you expect that in return I should let you know what impression they have made upon me I pay all the reverence that is due to a Crowned Head even in Ashes to which I will never be wanting far less am I capable of suspecting the Royal Attestation that accompanies them of the truth of which I take it for granted no man doubts but I must crave leave to tell you that I am confident the late King only copied them and that they are not of his Composing for as they have nothing of that free Air with which he expressed himself so there is a Contexture in them that does not look like a Prince and the beginning of the first shews it was the effect of a Conversation and was to be communicated to another so that I am apt to think they were Composed by another and were so well relished by the late King that he thought fit to keep them in order to his examining them more particularly and that he was prevailed with to Copy them lest a Paper of that nature might have been made a
after the Fifth Century the Doctrine of one Individual Essence was received If you will be farther informed concerning this Father Petau will satisfie you as to the first Period before the Council of Nice and the leared Dr. Cudworth as to the second In all which particulars it appears how variable a thing Tradition is And upon the whole matter the examining Tradition thus is still a searching among Books and here is no living Judge XII If then the Authority that must decide Controversies lies in the Body of the Pastors scattered over the World which is the last retrenchment here as many and as great Scruples will arise as we found in any of the former Heads Two difficulties appear at first view the one is How can we be assured that the present Pastors of the Church are derived in a just Succession from the Apostles there are no Registers extant that prove this So that we have nothing for it but some Histories that are so carelesly writ that we find many mistakes in them in other Matters and they are so different in the very first links of that Chain that immediately succeeded the Apostles that the utmost can be made of this is that here is an Historical Relation somewhat doubtful but here is nothing to found our Faith on so that if a Succession from the Apostles times is necessary to the Constitution of that Church to which we must submit our selves we know not where to find it besides that the Doctrine of the necessity of the Intention of the Minister to the Validity of a Sacrament throws us into inextricable difficulties I know they generally say that by the Intention they do not mean the inward Acts of the Minister of the Sacrament but only that it must appear by his outward deportment that he is in earnest going about a Sacrament and not doing a thing in jest and this appeared so reasonable to me that I was sorry to find our Divines urge it too much till turning over the Rubricks that are at the beginning of the Missal I found upon the head of the Intention of the Minister that if a Priest has a number of Hosties before him to be consecrated and intends to Consecrate them all except one in that case that Vagrant Exception falls upon them all it not being affixed to any one and it is defined that he Consecrates none at all Here it is plain that the secret Acts of a Priest can defeat the Sacrament so this overthrows all certainty concerning a Succession But besides all this we are sure that the Greek Churches have a much more uncontested Succession than the Latines So that a Succession cannot direct us And if it is necessary to seek out the Doctrines that are universally received this is not possible for a private man to know So that in ignorant Countries where there is little Study the people have no other certainty concerning their Religion but what they take from their Curate and Confessor since they cannot examine what is generally received So that it must be confessed that all the Arguments that are brought for the necessity of a constant infallible Judge turn against all those of the Church of Rome that do not acknowledge the Infallibility of the Pope for if he is not infallible they have no other Judge that can pretend to it It were also easie to shew that some Doctrines have been as Universally received in some Ages as they have been rejected in others which shews that the Doctrine of the present Church is not always a sure measure For five Ages together the Doctrine of the Pope's Power to depose Heretical Princes was received without the least Opposition and this cannot be doubted by any that knows what has been the State of the Church since the end of the Eleventh Century and yet I believe few Princes would allow this notwithstanding all the concurring Authority of so many Ages to fortisie it I could carry this into a great many other Instances but I single out this because it is a point in which Princes are naturally extream sensible Upon the whole matter it can never enter into my mind that God who has made Man a Creature that naturally enquires and reasons and that feels as sensible a pleasure when he can give himself a good account of his Actions as one that sees does perceive in comparison to a blind man that is led about and that this God that has also made Religion on design to perfect this Humane Nature and to raise it to the utmost height to which it can arrive has contrived it to be dark and to be so much beyond the penetration of our Faculties that we cannot find out his mind in those things that are necessary for our Salvation and that the Scriptures that were writ by plain men in a very familiar Stile and addrest without any Discrimination to the Vulgar should become such an unintelligible Book in these Ages that we must have an infallible Judge to expound it and when I see not only Popes but even some Bodies that pass for General Councils have so expounded many passages of it and have wrested them so visibly that none of the Modern Writers of that Church pretend to excuse it I say I must freely own to you that when I find that I need a Commentary on dark passages these will be the last persons to whom I will address my self for it Thus you see how fully I have opened my mind to you in this matter I have gone over a great deal of ground in as few words as is possible because hints I know are enough for you I thank God these Considerations do fully satisfie me and I will be infinitely joyed if they have the same effect on you I am yours THis Letter came to London with the return of the first Post after his late Majesties Papers were sent into the Country some that saw it liked it well and wished to have it publick and the rather because the Writer did not so entirely confine himself to the Reasons that were in those Papers but took the whole Controversie to task in a little compass and yet with a great variety of Reflections And this way of examining the whole matter without following those Papers word for word or the finding more fault than the common concern of this Cause required seemed more agreeing to the respect that is due to the Dead and more particularly to the Memory of so great a Prince but other considerations made it not so easie nor so adviseable to procure a License for the Printing this Letter it has been kept in private hands till now those who have boasted much of the Shortness of the late King's Papers and of the length of the Answers that have been made to them will not find so great a disproportion between them and this Answer to them A Brief Account of particulars occurring at the happy Death of our late Soveraign Lord King Charles
Protestant Religion in the Churches And that We will and hereby promise on Our Royal Word to maintain the possessors of Church Lands formerly belonging to Abbeys or other Churches of the Catholick Religion in their full and free possession and right according to Our Laws and Acts of Parliament in that behalf in all time coming And We will imploy indifferently all our Subjects of all Perswasions so as none shall meet with any Discouragement on the account of his Religion but be advanced and esteemed by Us according to their several Capacities and Qualifications so long as We find Charity and Unity maintained And if any Animosities shall arise as We hope in God there will not We will shew the severest Effects of Our Royal Displeasure against the Beginners or Fomenters thereof seeing thereby Our Subjects may de deprived of this general Ease and Satisfaction We intend to all of them whose Happiness Prosperity Wealth and Safety is so much Our Royal Care that We will leave nothing undone which may procure these Blessings for them And lastly to the End all our good Subjects may have Notice of this Our Royal Will and Pleasure We do hereby command Our Lyon King at Arms and his Brethren Heraulds Macers Pursevants and Messengers at Arms to make timous Proclamation thereof at the Marcat-Cross of Edinburgh And besides the printing and Publishing of this Our Royal Proclamation it is Our express Will and Pleasure that the same be past under the great Seal of that Our Kingdom per saltum * without passing any other Seal or Register In Order whereunto this shall be to the Directors of Our Chancelary and their Deputies for writing the same and to Our Chancellor for causing our Great Seal aforesaid to be appended thereunto a sufficient Warrand Given at Our Court at Whitehall the twelfth day of Febr. 1686. and of Our Reign the Third Year By His Majesties Command MELFORT God save the King His Majesties Gracious DECLARATION to all His Loving Subjects for Liberty of Conscience JAMES R. IT having pleased Almighty God not only to bring Us to the Imperial Crown of these Kingdoms through the greatest difficulties but to preserve Us by a more than ordinary Providence upon the Throne of Our Royal Ancestors there is nothing now that we so earnestly desire as to Establish our Government on such a Foundation as may make Our Subjects happy and unite them to Us by Inclination as well as by Duty Which We think can be done by no Means so effectually as by granting to them the free Exercise of their Religion for the time to come and add that to the perfect Enjoyment of their Property which has never been in any case Invaded by Us since Our coming to the Crown Which being the two things Men value most shall ever be preserved in these Kingdoms during Our Reign over them as the truest Methods of their Peace and Our Glory We cannot but heartily wish as it will easily be believed That all the People of Our Dominions were Members of the Catholick Church yet We humbly thank Almighty God it is and hath of long time been Our constant Sense and Opinion which upon diverse Occasions We have Declared That Conscience ought not to be constrained nor People forced in Matters of meer Religion It has ever been directly contrary to Our Inclination as We think it is to the Interest of Government which it destroys by Spoiling Trade Depopulating Countries and Discouraging Strangers and finally that it never obtained the End for which it was employed And in this We are the more confirmed by the Reflections We have made upon the Conduct of the Four last Reigns For after all the frequent and pressing Endeavours that were used in each of them to reduce this Kingdom to an exact Conformity in Religion it is visible the Success has not answered the Design and that the Difficulty is invincible We therefore out of Our Princely Care and Affection unto all Our Loving Subjects that they may live at Ease and Quiet and for the increase of Trade and encouragement of Strangers have thought fit by virtue of Our Royal Prerogative to Issue forth this Our Royal Declaration of Indulgence making no doubt of the Concurrence of Our Two Houses of Parliament when We shall think it convenient for them to Meet In the first place We do Declare That We will Protect and Maintain Our arch-Arch-Bishops Bishops and Clergy and all other our Subjects of the Church of England in the free Exercise of their Religion as by Law Established and in the quiet and full Enjoyment of all their Possessions without any Molestation or Disturbance whatsoever We do likewise Declare That it is Our Royal Will and Pleasure That from henceforth the Execution of all and all manner of Penal Laws in Matters Ecclesiastical for not coming to Church or not Receiving the Sacrament or for any other Non-conformity to the Religion Established or for or by reason of the Exercise of Religion in any manner whatsoever be immediately Suspended And the further Execution of the said Penal Laws and every of them is hereby Suspended And to the end that by the Liberty hereby Granted the Peace and Security of Our Government in the Practice thereof may not be endangered We have thought fit and do hereby straitly Charge and Command all Our Loving Subjects That as We do freely give them Leave to Meet and Serve God after their own Way and Manner be it in private Houses or Places purposely Hired or Built for that use So that they take especial care that nothing be Preached or Taught amongst them which may any ways tend to Alienate the Hearts of Our people from Us or Our Government and that their Meetings and Assemblies be peaceably openly and publickly held and all Persons freely admitted to them And that they do signifie and make known to some one or more of the next Justices of the Peace what place or places they set apart for those uses And that all Our Subjects may enjoy such their Religious Assemblies with greater Assurance and Protection We have thought it Requisite and do hereby Command That no Disturbance of any kind be made or given unto them under pain of our Displeasure and to be further proceeded against with the uttermost Severity And forasmuch as We are desirous to have the Benefit of the Service of all Our Loving Subjects which by the Law of Nature is inseparably annexed to and inherent in Our Royal Person And that none of Our Subjects may for the future be under any Discouragement or Disability who are otherwise well inclined and fit to serve Us by reason of some Oaths or Tests that have been usually Administred on such Occasions We do hereby further Declare That it is Our Royal Will and Pleasure That the Oaths commonly called The Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and also the several Tests and Declarations mentioned in the Acts of Parliament made in the 25th and 30th Years of
England would not break their Oaths and obey a Mandate that plainly contradicted them we see to what a pitch this is like to be caried I will not anticipate upon this illegal Court to tell what Judgments are coming but without carrying our Jealousies too far one may safely conclude that they will never depart so far from their first Institution as to have any regard either to our Religion or our Laws or Liberties in any thing they do If all this were acted by avowed Papists as we are sure it is projected by such there were nothing extraordinary in it but that which carries our Indignation a little too far to be easily governed is to see some pretended Protestants and a few Bishops among those that are the fatal Instruments of pulling down the Church of England and that those Mercenaries Sacrifice their Religion and their Church to their Ambition and Interests this has such peculiar Characters of Misfortune upon it that it seems it is not enough if we perish without pity since we fall by that hand that we have so much supported and fortified but we must become the Scorn of all the World since we have produced such an unnatural Brood that even while they are pretending to be the Sons of the Church of England are cutting their Mothers Throat and not content with Judas's Crime of saying Hail Master and kissing him while they are betraying him into the hands of others these carry their Wickedness farther and say Hail Mother and then they themselves murther her If after all this we are called to bear this as Christians and to suffer it as Subjects if we were required in Patience to possess our own Souls and to be in Charity with our Enemies and which is more to forgive our False Brethren who add Treachery to their Hatred the Exhortation were seasonable and indeed a little necessary for Humane Nature cannot easily take down things of such a hard digestion but to tell us that we must make Addresses and offer Thanks for all this is to insult a little too much upon us in our Sufferings and he that can believe that a dry and cautiously worded Promise of maintaining the Church of England will be religiously observed after all that we have seen and is upon that carried so far out of his Wits as to Address and give Thanks and will believe still such a man has nothing to excuse him from believing Transubstantiation it self for it is plain that he can bring himself to believe even when the thing is contrary to the clearest Evidence that his Senses can give him Si populus hic vult decipi decipiatur POSTSCRIPT THese Reflections were writ soon after the Declaration came to my hands but the Matter of them was so tender and the Conveyance of them to the Press was so uneasie that they appear now too late to have one effect that was Designed by them which was the diverting men from making Addresses upon it yet if what is here proposed makes men become so far wise as to be ashamed of what they have done and carrying is a means to keep them from their Courtship further than good words this Paper will not come too late A LETTER TO A DISSENTER Upon occasion of His MAJESTIES Late Gracious DECLARATION of INDVLGENCE SIR SInce Addresses are in fashion give me leave to make one to you This is neither the Effect of Fear Interest or Resentment therefore you may be sure it is sincere and for that reason it may expect to be kindly received Whether it will have power enough to Convince dependeth upon the Reasons of which you are to judge and upon your preparation of Mind to be perswaded by Truth whenever it appeareth to you It ought not to be the less welcome for coming from a friendly hand one whose kindness to you is not lessened by difference of Opinion and who will not let his thoughts for the Publick be so tyed or confined to this or that Subdivision of Protestants as to stifle the Charity which besides all other Arguments is at this time become necessary to preserve us I am neither surprized nor provoked to see that in the Condition you were put into by the Laws and the ill Circumstances you lay under by having the Exclusion and Rebellion laid to your Charge you were desirous to make your serves less uneasie and obnoxious to Authority Men who are fore run to the nearest Remedy with too much haste to consider all the Consequences Grains of allowance are to be given where Nature giveth such strong Influences When to Men under Sufferings it offereth Ease the present Pain will hardly allow time to examine the Remedies and the strongest Reasons can hardly gain a fair Audience from our Mind whilst so possessed till the smart is a little allayed I do not know whether the Warmth that naturally belongeth to new Friendships may not make it a harder Task for me to perswade you It is like telling Lovers in the beginning of their Joys that they will in a little time have an end Such an unwelcome Style doth not easily find Credit but I will suppose you are not so far gone in your new Passion but that you will hear still and therefore I am under the less Discouragement when I offer to your Consideration two things The first is the Cause you have to suspect your new Friends The second the Duty incumbent upon you in Christianity and Prudence not to hazard the Publick Safety neither by desire of Ease nor of Revenge To the First Consider that notwithstanding the smooth Language which is now put on to engage you these new Friends did not make you their Choice but their Refuge They have ever made their first Courtships to the Church of England and when they were rejected there they made their Application to you in the second Place The Instances of this might be given in all times I do not repeat them because whatsoever is unnecessary must be tedious the Truth of this Assertion being so plain as not to admit a Dispute You cannot therefore reasonably flatter your selves that there is any Inclination to you They never pretended to allow you any Quarter but to usher in Liberty for themselves under that Shelter I refer you to Mr. Coleman's Letters and to the Journals of Parliament where you may be convinced if you can be so mistaken as to doubt nay at this very Hour they can hardly forbear in the height of their Courtship to let fall hard Words of you So little is Nature to be restrained it will start out sometimes disdaining to submit to the Usurpation of Art and Interest This Alliance between Liberty and Infallibility is bringing together the Two most contrary Things that are in the World The Church of Rome doth not only dislike the allowing Liberty but by its Principles it cannot do it Wine is not more expresly forbidden to the Mahometans than giving Hereticks Liberty is to Papists They are
the Face to turn them again upon you after they have made all this Noise for Liberty And the Church of England you may be assured will not any more trouble you but when a Protestand Prince shall come will joyn in the Healing of all our Breaches by removing all things out of the way which have long hindred that blessed Work They cannot meet together in a Body to give you this Assurance how should they without the Kings Authority so to do but every particular Person that I have discoursed withal which are not a few and you your selves would do well to ask them when you meet them profess that they see an absolute Necessity of making an end of these Differences that have almost undone us and will no longer contend to bring all Men to one Vniformity but promote an Vniform Liberty Do not imagine I intend to give meer Words I meâ—n honestly such a regular Liberty as will be the Beauty and Honour not the Blot and Discredit of our Religion To such a Temper the Archbishop of Canterbury with several other Bishops of his Province and their Clergy have openly declared they are willing to come And the Bishops and Clergy of the Church of England have never been know to act deceitfully Our Religion will not at any time allow them to equivecate nor to give good VVords without a Meaning much less at such a time as this when our Religion is in great danger and we have nothing to trust unto but Gods Protection of sincere Persons Let Integrity and Vprightness preserve us is their constant Prayer They can hope for no Help from Heaven if they should prevaricate with Men. God they know would desert them if they should go about to delude their Brethren And they are not so void of common Sense as to adventure to incur his most high Displeasure when they have nothing to rely upon but his Favour In short Trust to those who own you for their Brethren as you do them for though they have been angry Brethren yet there is hope of Reconciliation between such near Relations But put no Confidence in those who not only utterly disown any such Relation to you but have ever treated you with an implacable Hatred as their most mortal Enemies unto whom it is impossible they should be reconciled Prov. 12.19 20. The Lips of Truth shall be established for ever but a lying tongue is but for a mâ—ment Lying Lips are an Abomination to the Lord but they that deal truly are his Delight Abby and other Church-Lands not yet assured to such Possessors as are Roman Catholicks Dedicated to the Nobility and Gentry of that Religion SInce it is universally agreed on that so great a Matter as the total Alienation of all the Abby-Lands c. in England can never be made legal and valid and such as will satisfie the reasonable Doubts and Scruples of a religious and conscientions Person except it be confirm'd by the Supreme Authority in this Church t is evident that the Protestants who assert the Church of England to be Autokephalos and such as allows of no Foreign Jurisdiction or Appeals having had these Lands confirmed to them by the King as Head of the Chuech the Convocation as the Church Representative and by the King and Parliament as the Supreme Legislative Power in this Realm have these Alienations made as valid to them as any Power on Earth can make them but the Members of the Church of Rome who maintain a Foreign and Supreme Jurisdiction either in a General Council or in the Bishop of Rome or both together cannot have these Alienations confirm'd to them without the Consent of one or both of these Superior Jurisdictions If therefore I shall make it appear that these Alienations in England were never confirm'd by either I do not see how any Roman Catholick in England can without Sacriledge retain them and his Religion together As to the first of these since there hath been no Council from the first Alienation of Abby-Lands in England to this Day that pretends to be general but that of Trent we need only look into that for the Satisfaction of such Roman Catholicke as esteem a General Council above the Bishop of Rome And I am sure that that Council is so far from confirming these Abby-Lands to the present Possessors that it expresly denounceth them accursed that detain them Sess 22. Decret de Ref. Cap. 11. Si quem c. If Covetousness the Root of all Evil shall so far possess any Person whatsoever whether of the Clergy or Laity though he be an Emperor or a King as that by Force Fear or Fraud or any Art or Colour whatsoever he presume to convert to his own Use and usurp the Jurisdiction Goods Estates Fruits Profits or Emoluments whatever of any Church or any Benefice Secular or Regular Hospital or Religious House or shall hinder that the Profits of the said Houses be not received by those to whom they do of right belong let him lie under an Anathema till the said Jurisdiction Goods Estates Rents and Prosits which he hath possessed and invaded or which have come to him any manner of way be restored to the Church and after that have Absolution from the Bishop of Rome So great a Terror did this strike into the English Papists that were Possessors of Church-Lands against whom this Anathema seems particularly directed that many of the zealous Papists began to think of Restitution and Sir William Peters notwithstanding his private Bull of Absolution from Pope Juâ—â—us the Fourth was so much startled at it as that the very next Year he endowed eight new Fellowships in Exeter-Colledge in Oxford Again the same Council Sess 25. Decret de Râ—f c. 2 â— Cupiens Sancta Synodus c. Decreeth and commandeth that all the Holy Ca 〈◊〉 and General Councils and Apostolick Sanctions in Favour of Ecclesiastical Persons and the Liberties of the Church and against those that violate them be exactly observed by eveâ—y 〈◊〉 and doth farther admonish the Emperor Kings Princes and all Persons of what Estate soever that they would observe the Rights of the Church as the Commands of God and defend them by their particular Patronage nor suffer them to be invaded by any Lords or Gâ—ntlemen whaâ—soever but severely punish all those who hinder the Liâ—â—wâ—â—ies Immâ—â—ities and Jurildictions of the Church and that they would imitate those excellent Princes who by their Authority and Bounty encreased the Revenues of the Church so far were they from suffering them to be invadâ—â— and in this let every one sedulously perform his part c. And now after so full and express Declaration of the Council of Trent I do not â—â—e how any of those Râ—man Catholicks who esteem a general Council to be the Supreme Authority in the Church and receive the Trent Council as such can any way excuse themselves in point of Conscience from these heavy Curses that are there denounc'd against all those
who had lived and died a cordial and zealous Protestant and whosoever had muttered any thing to the contrary would have been branded for a Villain and an execrable person But with what a scent and odor must it recommend his Memory to them to consider his having not onely lived and died in the Communion of the Church of Rome in contradiction to all his publick Speeches solemn Declarations and highest Asseverations to his People in Parliament but his participating from time to time of the Sacrament as Administred in the Church of England while in the interim he had Abjured our Religion stood reconciled to the Church of Rome and had obliged himself by most sacred Vows and was endeavouring by all the Frauds and Arts imaginable to subvert the established Doctrin and Worship and set up Heresy and Idolatry in their room And it must needs give them an abhorrent Idea and Character of Popery and a loathsom representation of those trusted with the Conduct and Guidance of the Consciences of Men in the Roman Communion that they should not onely dispense with and indulge such Crimes and Villanies but proclaim them Sanctified and Meritorious from the end which they are calculated for and levelled at And for his dear Brother and renowned Successor who possessed the Throne after him I suppose his most partial Admirers who took him for a Prince not onely merciful in his Temper and imbued with all gracious Inclinations to our Laws and the Rights of the Subject but for one Orthodox in his Religion and who would prove a zealous Defender of the Doctrine Worship and Discipline of the Church established by Law are before this time both undeceived and filled with Resentments for his having abused their Credulity deceived their Expectations and reproached all their Gloryings and Boastings of him For as it would have been the greatest Affront they could have put upon the King to question his being of the Roman Communion or to detract from his Zeal for the introduction of Popery notwithstanding his own antecedent Protestations as well as the many Statutes in force for the preservation of the Reformed Religion so I must take the liberty to tell them that his Apostacy is not of so late Date as the World is made commonly to believe For though it was many Years concealed and the contrary pretended and dissembled yet it is most certain that he Abjured the Protestant Religion soon after the Exilement of the Royal Family and was reconciled to the Romish Church at St. Germains in France Nor were several of the then suffering Bishops and Clergy ignorant of this though they had neither the Integrity nor Courage to give the Nation and Church warning of it And within these five Years there was in the custody of a very worthy and honest Gentleman a Letter written to the late Bishop of D. by a Doctor of Divinity then attending upon the Royal Brothers wherein the Apostacy of the then Duke of York to the See of Rome is particularly related and an Account given how much the Dutchess of Tremoville though without being her self observed had heard the Queen Mother glorying of it bewailed it as a dishonour unto the Royal Family and as that which might prove of pernicious consequence to the Protestant Interest But though the old Queen privately rejoyced and triumphed in it yet she knew too well what disadvantage it might be both to her Son and to the Papal Cause in Great Brittain to have it at that Season communicated and divulged Thereupon it remained a Secret for many Years and by virtue of a Dispensation he sometimes joined in all Ordinances with those of the Protestant Communion But for all the Art Hypocrisy and Sacrilege by which it was endeavoured to be concealed it might have been easily discerned as manifesting it self in the whole Course of his Actions And at last his own Zeal the Importunity of the Priests and the Cunning of the late King prevailing over Reasons of State he withdrew from all Acts of Fellowship with the Church of England But neither that nor his refusing the Test enjoyned by Law for distinguishing Papists from Protestants though thereupon he was forced both to resign his Office of Lord High Admiral c. nor his declining the Oath which the Laws of Scotland for the securing a Protestant Governour enjoyn to be taken by the High Commissioner nor yet so many Parliaments having endeavoured to get him Excluded from Succession to the Crown upon the account of having revolted to the See of Rome and thereby become dangerous to the Established Religion could make impression upon a wilfully deluded and obstinate sort of Protestants but in defiance of all means of Conviction they would perswade themselves that he was still a Zealot for our Religion and a grand Patriot of the Church of England Nor could any thing undeceive them till upon his Brother's Death he had openly declared himself a Roman Catholick and afterwards in the fumes and raptures of his Victory over the late Duke of Monmouth had discovered and proclaimed his Intentions of overthrowing both our Religion and Laws Yea so closely had some sealed up their Eyes against all beams of Light and hardned themselves against all Evidences from Reason and Fact that had it pleased the Almighty God to have prospered the Duke of Monmouth's Arms in the Summer 85. the present King would have gone off the Stage with the Reputation among them of a Prince tender of the Laws of the Kingdom and who notwithstanding his own being a Papist would have preserved the Reformed Religion and have maintained the Church of England in all her Grandure and Rights And though his whole Life had been but one continued Conspiracy against our Civil Liberties and Priviledges he had left the Throne with the Character and under the Esteem of a Gentleman that in the whole course of his Government would have regulated himself by the Rules of the Constitution and the Statutes of the Realm Now among all the Methods fallen upon by the Royal Brothers for the undermining and subverting our Religion and Laws there is none that they have pursued with more Ardor and wherein they have been more successful to the compassing of their Designs than in their dividing Protestants and alienating their Affections and embittering their Minds from and against one another And had not this lain under their prospect and the means of effecting it appeared easie they might have been Papists themselves while in the mean time they had been dispensed with to protest and swear their being of the Reformed Religion and they might have envied our Liberties and bewailed their Restriction from Arbitrary and Despotical Power but they never durst have entertained a Thought of subverting the Established Religion or of altering the Civil Government nor would they ever have had the boldness to have attempted the introducing and erecting Popery and Tyranny in their room And whosoever should have put them upon reducing the Nation
him and that 't is no wonder he should exact an Obedience without reserve from his Subjects in Scotland seeing he himself yields an Obedience without reserve to the Jesuits 'T is known how that by the Rules of their Institution no Jesuit is capable of the Mitre and that if the Ambition of any of them should tempt him to seek or accept the Dignity of a Prelate he must for being capacitated thereunto renounce his Membership in the Order Yet so great is His Majesties Passion for the Honor and Grandeur of the Society and such is their Domination and absolute Power over him that no less will serve him neither would they allow him to insist upon less than that the Pope should dispense with Father Peters being made a Bishop without his ceasing to be a Jesuit or the being transplanted into another Order And this the old Gentleman at Rome hath been forced at last to comply with and to grant a Dispensation whereby Father Peters shall be capable of the Prelature notwithstanding his remaining in the Ignatian Order the Jesuits through their Authority over the King not suffering him to recede from his Demand and His Majesty's Zeal for the Society not permitting him to comply either with the Prayers or the Conscience and Honor of the Supreme Pontiff Not only the King's Unthankfulness unto but his illegal Proceedings against and his Arbitrary invading the Rights of those who stood by him in all his Dangers and Difficulties and who were the Instruments of preventing his Exclusion from the Crown and the chief means both of his Advancement to the Throne and his being kept in it are so many new Evidences of the ill will he bears to all Protestants and what they are to dread from him as Occasions are Administred of Injuring and Oppressing them and may serve to convince all impartial and thinking People that his Popish Malice to our Religion is too strong for all Principles of Honor and Gratitude and able to cancel the Obligations which Friendship for his Person and Service to his Interest may be supposed to have laid him under to any heretofore Had it not been for many of the Church of England who stood up with a Zeal and Vigor for preserving the Succession in the right Line beyond what Religion Conscience Reason or Interest could conduct them unto he had never been able to have out-wrestled the Endeavors of Three Parliaments for ex-excluding him from the Imperial Crown of England And had it not been for their Abetting and standing by him with their Swords in their Hands upon the Duke of Monmouth's Descent into the Kingdom Anno 1685 he could not have avoided the being driven from the Throne and the having the Scepter wrested out of his Hand Whosoever had the Advantage of knowing the Temper and Genius of the late King and how afraid he was of embarking into any thing that might import a visible Hazard to the Peace of his Government and draw after it a general Disgust of his Person will be soon satisfied that if all his Protestant Subjects had united in their Desires and concurred in their Endeavors to have had the Duke of York debarred from the Crown that his late Majesty would not have once scrupled the complying with it and that his Love to his Dear Brother would have given way to the Apprehension and Fear of forfeiting a Love for himself in the Hearts of his People especially when what was required of him was not an Invasion upon the Fundamentals of the Constitution of the English Monarchy nor dissonant from the Practice of the Nation in many repeated Instances Nor can there be a greater Evidence of the present King 's ill Nature Romish Bigottry and prodigious Ingratitude as well as of the Design he is carrying on against our Religion and Laws than his Carriage and Behavior towards the Church of England tho I cannot but acknowledge it a righteous Judgment upon them from God and a just Punishment for their being not only so unconcerned for the Preservation of our Religion and Liberties in avoiding to close with the only Methods that were adapted thereunto but for being so Passionate and Industrious to hasten the Loss of them through putting the Government into ones hands who as they might have foreseen would be sure to make a Sacrifice of them to his beloved Popery and to his inordinate Lust after despotical and Arbitrary Power And as the only Example bearing any Affinity to it is that of Louis XIV who in recompence to his Protestant Subjects for maintaining him on the Throne when the late Prince of Conde assisted by Papists would have wrested the Crown from him hath treated them with a Barbarity whereof that of Antiochus towards the Jews and that of Diocletian and Maximian towards the Primitive Christians were but scanty and imperfect Draughts so there wants nothing for compleating the Parallel between England and France but a little more time and a fortunate Opportunity and then the deluded Church-men will find that Father Peters is no less skillful at Whitehall for transforming their Acts of Loyalty and Merit towards the King into Crimes and Motives of their Ruin than Pere de la Chaise hath shewn himself at Versailles where by an Art peculiar to the Jesuits he hath improved the Loyalty and Zeal of the Reformed in France for the House of Bourbon into a reason of alienating that Monarch from them and into a ground of his destroying that dutiful and obedient People It will not be amiss to call over some of his Majesty's Proceedings towards the Church of England that from what hath been already seen and felt both they and all English Protestants may the better know what they are to expect and look for hereafter Tho it be a Method very unbecoming a Prince yet it shews a great deal of Spleen to turn the former Persecution of Dissenters so maliciously upon the Prelatical and Conforming Clergy as his Majesty doth in his Letter to Mr. Alsop in stiling them a Party of Protestants who think the only way to advance their Church is by undoing those Churches of Christians that differ from them in smaller Matters Whereas the Severity that the Fanaticks met with had much of its Original at Court where it was formed and designed upon Motives of Popery and Arbitrariness and the Resentment and revengeful Humor of some of the old Prelates and other Church-men that had suffered in the late times was only laid hold of the better to justifie and improve it And tho it be too true that many of the dignified Rank as well as of the little Levites were both extremely fond of it and contentiously pleaded for it yet it is as true that most of them did it not upon Principles of Judgment and Conscience but upon Inducements of Retaliation for conceived Injuries and upon a belief of its being the most compendious Method to the next Preferment and Benefice and the fairest way of standing
recommended to the Favor of the two Royal Brothers Nor is it unworthy of Observation that some of the most virulent Writers against Liberty of Conscience and others of the most fierce Instigators to the persecuting Dissenters among whom we may reckon Parker Bishop of Oxford and Cartwright Bishop of Chester are since Addressing for the Declaration of Indulgence became the means of being graciously look'd upon at Whitehall turned forward Promoters of it tho their Success in their Diocesses with their Clergy hath not answered their Expectations and Endeavors For as these two Mytred Gentlemen will fall in with and justifie whatsoever the King hath a mind to do if they may but keep their Seas and enjoy their Revenues which I dare say that rather than lose they will subscribe not only to the Tridentine Faith but to the Alcoran so it is most certain that they two as well as the Bishop of Durham have promised to turn Roman Catholicks and that as Crew hath been several times seen assisting at the Celebration of the Mass and that as Cartwright paid a particular respect to the Nuncie at his solemn Entrance at Windsor which some Temporal Lords had so much Conscience and Honor as to scorn to do so the Author of the Liege Letter tells us that Parker not only extremely favors Popery but that he brands in a manner all such for Atheists who continue to plead for the Protestant Religion 'T is an Act of the same Candor and good Nature in the King with the former and another Royal Effect of his Princely Breeding as well as of his Gratitude when he Endeavors to cast a farther Odium upon the Church of England and to exasperate the Dissenters against her by saying in the forementioned Letter to Mr. Alsop That the reason why the Dissenters enjoyed not Liberty sooner is wholly owing to the Sollicitation of the Conforming Clergy whereas many of the learned and sober Men of the Church of England could have been contented that the Non-conforming Protestants should have had Liberty long ago provided it had been granted in a legal way and the chief Executioners of Severity upon them were such of all Ranks Orders and Stations as the Court both set on and rewarded for it 'T is not their Brethrens having Liberty that displeaseth modest and good Men of the Church of England but 't is the having it in the virtue of an Usurped Prerogative over the Laws of the Land and to the shaking all the legal Foundations of the Protestant Religion it self in the Kingdom And had the Declaration of Indulgence imported only an Exemption of Dissenters and Papists from Rigors and Penalties I know very few that would have been displeased at it but the extending it to the removing all the Fences about the Reformed Doctrine and Worship and laying us open both to the tyranny of Papists and the being overflowed with a deluge of their Superstitions and Idolatries as well as the designing it for a means to overthrow the established Church is that which no wise Dissenter no more than a conformable man knows how to digest For I am not of Sir R. L'Estrange's mind who after he hath been writing for many years against Dissenters with all the venom and malice imaginable and to disprove the wisdom justice and convenience of granting them liberty hath now the impudence to publish that whatsoever he formerly wrote bears an exact conformity to the present Resolutions of State Pref. to his Hist of the Times p. 8. in that the liberty now vouchsafed is an Act of Grace issuing from the supreme Magistrate and not a claim of Right in the people And as to recited expressions of the King they are only a papal trick whereby to keep up heats and animosities among Protestants when both the inward heats of men are much allay'd and the external provocations to them are wholly removed and they are merely Jesuitick methods by which our hatred of one another may be maintain'd tho the Laws enabling one party to persecute the other which was the chief spring of all our mutual rancor and bitterness be suspended It would be the sport and glory of the Ignatian Order to be able to make the disabling of penal Laws as effectual to the supporting differences among Protestants as the enacting and rigorous execution of them was to the first raising and the continuing them afterwards for many years And if the foregoing Topicks can furnish the King arguments whereby to reproach the Ch. of England when he thinks it seasonable and for the interest of Rome to be angry with them I dare affirm he will never want pretences of being discontented with and of aspersing Fanaticks when he finds the doing so to be for the service of the papal cause And if the forementioned instances of his Majesty's behaviour to the Ch. of England to which he stands so superlatively obliged be neither testimonies of his Ingenuity evidences of his Gratitude nor effects of common much less royal Justice yet what remains to be intimated does carry more visible marks of his malice and design both against the legally established Church and our Religion For not being satisfied with the suspension of all those Laws by which Protestants and they of the national Communion might seem to be injurious to Papists in their Persons and Estates such as the Laws which make those who shall be found to have taken Orders in the Ch. of Rome obnoxious to death or those other Statutes by which the King hath Power and Authority for levying two thirds of their Estates that shall be convicted of Recusancy but by an usurped Prerogative and an absolute Power he is pleased to suspend all the Laws by which they were only disabled from hurting us thro standing precluded from places of Power and Trust in the Government So that the whole security we have in time to come for our Religion depends upon the temperate disposition and good nature of those Roman Catholicks that shall be advanced to Offices and Employments and does no longer bear upon the protection and support of the Law and I think we have not had that experience of grace and favour from Papists as may give us just confidence of fair and candid treatment from them for the future Now that we may be the better convinced how little security we have from his Majesty's promise in his Declaration of his protecting the Archbishops Bishops and Clergy and all other his Subjects of the Church of England in the free exercise of their Religion as by Law established and in the quiet and full enjoyment of their poffessions without any molestation or disturbance whatsoever which is all the Tenour that is left us 't is not unworthy of observation how that beside the suspending the Bishop of London ab Officio and the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge both ab Officio and Beneficio and this not only for Actions which the Laws of God and the Kingdom make their duty but
Fear or Courtship have enrolled themselves into the List of Addressers and under pretence of giving thanks to the King for his promise of protecting the Archbishops Bishops and Clergy and all other of the Church of England in the free exercise of their Religion as by Law established have cut the throat of their Mother at whose breasts they have suck'd till they are grown fat both by acknowledging the usurped Prerogative upon which the King assumes the Right and Authority of emitting the Declaration and by exchanging the legal standing and security of their Church into that precarious one of the Royal Word which they fly unto as the bottom of her Subsistence and trust to as the wall of her defence And as most of the Members of the Separate Societies are free from all accession to Addressing and the few that concurred were merely drawn in by the wheedle and importunity of their Preachers so they who are of the chiefest Character and greatest reputation for Wisdom and Learning among the Ministers have preserved themselves from all folly and treachery of that kind The Apostle tells us that not many wise not many noble are called which as it is verified in many of the Dissenting Addressers so it may serve for some kind of Apology for their low and sneaking as well as for their indiscreet and imprudent behaviour in this matter And it is the more venial in some of them as being not only a means of ingratiating themselves as they fansie with the King who heretofore had no very good opinion of them but as being both an easie and compendious method of Attoning for Offences against the Crown of which they were strongly suspected and a cheap and expenceless way of purchasing the pardon of their Relations that had stood actually accused of High Treason Nor is it to be doubted but that as the King will retain very little favour and mercy for Fanaticks when once he has served his Ends upon them so they will preserve as little kindness for the Papists if they can but obtain relief in a legal way And as there is not a People in the Kingdom that will be more loyal to Princes while they continue so to govern as that Fealty by the Laws of God or Man remains due to them so there are none of what Principles or Communion soever upon whom the Kingdom in its whole interest come to lye at stake may more assuredly and with greater confidence depend than upon the generality of Dissenting Protestants and especially upon those that are not of the Pastoral Order The severities that the Dissenters lay under before and their deliverance from Oppression and Disturbance now seconded with the Kings expectation and demands of thanksgiving Addresses were strong Temptations upon men void of generosity and greatness of spirit and who are withal of no great political Wisdom nor of prospect into the Consequences of Councils and Tricks of State to act as illegally in their thanks as his Majesty had done in his bounty So that whatsoever Animadversion they may deserve should they be proceeded against according to their demerit yet it is to be hoped that both they and the Addressers of the former stamp may all find room in an Act of Indemnity and that the Mercy of the Nation towards them will triumph over and get the better of its Justice As it would argue a strange and judicial infatuation should they proceed to farther excesses and think to escape the Punishment due to one Crime by committing and taking sanctuary in another thro improving their Complements into actions of Treachery so all their hope of Pardon as well as of Lenity and Moderation from a true Protestant and rightly constituted Authority depends upon their conduct and behaviour henceforward and their not suffering themselves to be hurried and deluded into a cooperation with the Court for the obtaining of a Popish Parliament All their endeavours of that kind would but more clearly detect and manifest their treachery to Religion and the Kingdom it not being in their power to out-vote the honest English part of the People so as to help the King to such a House of Commons as he desires and were it possible that thro their assistance in conjunction with violence and tricks used in Elections and Returns by the Court such a House of Commons might be obtained as would be serviceable to Arbitrary and Papal Ends yet neither the King nor they would be the nearer the compassing what is aim'd at it being demonstrable that the majority of the House of Lords are never to be wrought over to justifie this illegal Declaration or to grant the King a Power of Suspending Laws at his pleasure nor to give their Assent to a Bill for Repealing the Test Acts and the Statutes that enjoyn and require the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And if they should be so far left of God and betray'd by those among themselves whom the Court hath gained as to become guilty of so enormous an act of folly and villany and should the Election of the next Parliament be the happy juncture they wait for and the improving their interest as well as the giving their own Votes for the Choice of Papists into the House of Commons be what they mean by an essential proof of their Loyalty and of the sincerity of their humble Addresses See Mr. Alsop's Speech to the King and that whereby they intend to demonstrate that the greatest thing they have promised is the least thing they will perform for his Majesties service and satisfaction as in that case they will deserve to forfeit all hopes of being forgiven so it would be an infidelity to God and Men and a cruelty to our selves and our Posterity not to abandon them as betrayers of Religion expunge them out of the Roll of Protestants strip them of all that wherein free Subjects have a Legal Right and not to condemn them to the utmost punishments which the Laws of the Kingdom adjudge the worst of Traitors and Malefactors unto There are some who thro hating of them do wish their miscarrying and offending to so unpardonable a degree that they may hereafter be furnished with an advantage both of ruining them and the whole Dissenting Party for their sakes But as the love that I bear unto them and the perswasion and belief I have of the truth of their Religious Principles do make me exceeding sollicitous to have them kept and prevented from being hurried and transported into so fatal and criminal a behaviour so I desire to make no other excuse for my plain dealing towards them but that of Solomon who tells us that faithful are the wounds of a friend while the kisses of an Enemy are deceitful and that he who rebukes a man shall find more favour afterwards than he who flattereth with the tongue POSTSCRIPT SInce the foregoing Sheets went to the Press and while they were Printing off there is come to my hands a new
by Hundreds of Thousands at once 4. Because the Dragooners have made more Converts than all the Bishops and Clergy of France 5. The Parliament ought to establish one standing Army at the least because indeed there will be need of Two that one of them may defend the People from the other 6. Because it is a thousand pities that a brave Popish Army should be a Riot 7. Unless it be Established by Act of Parliament The Justices of Peace will be forced to suppress it in their own Defence for they will be loth to forfeit an hundred Pounds every day they rise out of Complement to a Popish Rout. 13 H. 4. c. 7. 2 H. 5. c. 8. 8. Because a Popish Army is a Nullity For all Papists are utterly disabled and punishable besides from bearing any Office in Camp Troop Band or Company of Soldiers and are so far disarmed by Law that they cannot wear a Sword so much as in their Defence without the allowance of four Justices of the Peace of the County And then upon a March they will be perfectly Inchanted for they are not able to stir above five Miles from their own Dwelling-house 3. Jac. 5. Sect. 8.27 28 29.35 Eliz. 2.3 Jac. 5. Sect. 7. 9. Because Persons utterly disabled by Law are utterly Unauthorized and therefore the void Commissions of Killing and Slaying in the Hands of Papists can only enable them to Massacre and Murder To the King 's Most Excellent Majesty The Humble Petition of William Arch-Bishop of Canterbury and divers of the Suffragan Bishops of that Province now present with him in behalf of themselves and others of their absent Brethren and of the Clergy of their respective Diocesses Humbly sheweth THAT the great averseness they find in themselves to the distributing and publishing in all their Churches your Majesty's late Declaration for Liberty of Conscience proceeds neither from any want of Duty and Obedience to your Majesty our Holy Mother the Church of England being both in her Principles and in her constant Practice unquestionably Loyal and having to her great Honour been more than once publickly acknowledg'd to be so by your Gracious Majesty Nor yet from any want of due tenderness to Dissenters in relation to whom they are willing to come to such a Temper as shall be thought fit when that Matter shall be considered and settled in Parliament and Convocation But among many other Considerations from this especially because that Declaration is founded upon such a Dispensing Power as has been often declared Illegal in Parliament and particularly in the years 1662 and 1672. and in the beginning of your Majesty's Reign and is a matter of so great Moment and Consequence to the whole Nation both in Church and State that your Petitioners cannot in Prudence Honour or Conscience so far make themselves Parties to it as the distribution of it all over the Nation and the solemn Publication of it once and again even in God's House and in the Time of his Divine Service must amount to in common and reasonable Construction Your Petitioners therefore most Humbly and Earnestly beseech your Majesty that you will be ciously pleased not to insist upon their Distributing and Reading your Majesty's said Declaration And Your Petitioners as in Duty bound shall ever Pray Will. Cant. Will. Asaph Fr Ely Jo. Cicestr Tho. Bathon Wellen. Tho. Peterburgen Jonath Bristol His Majesties Answer was to this effect I Have heard of this before but did not believe it I did not expect this from the Church of England especially from some of you If I change my Mind you shall hear from me if not I expect my Command shall be obeyed The PETITION of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal for the Calling of a Free Parliament Together with his Majesty's Gracious Answer to their Lordships To the KING 's most Excellent Majesty The Humble Petition of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal whose Names are subscribed May it please your Majesty WE your Majesty's most loyal Subjects in a deep sense of the Miseries of a War now breaking forth in the Bowels of this your Kingdom and of the Danger to which your Majesty's Sacred Person is thereby like to be exposed and also of the Distractions of your People by reason of their present Grievances do think our selves bound in Conscience of the duty we owe to God and our holy Religion to your Majesty and our Country most humbly offer to your Majesty That in our Opinion the only visible Way to preserve your Majesty and this your Kingdom would be the Calling of a Parliament Regular and Free in all its Circumstances We therefore do most earnestly beseech your Majesty That you would be graciously pleased with all speed to call such a Parliament wherein we shall be most ready to promote such Counsels and Resolutions of Peace and Settlement in Church and State as may conduce to your Majesty's Honour and Safety and to the quieting the Minds of your People We do likewise humbly beseech your Majesty in the mean time to use such means for the preventing the Effusion of Christian Blood as to your Majesty shall seem most meet And your Petitioners shall ever pray c. W. Cant. Grafton Ormond Dorset Clare Clarendon Burlington Anglesey Rochester Newport Nom. Ebor. W. Asaph Fran. Ely Tho. Roffen Tho. Petriburg Tho. Oxon. Paget Chandois Osulston Presented by the Arch-Bishop of Canterbury the Arch-Bishop of York Elect the Bishop of Ely and the Bishop of Rochester the 17th of November 1688. His Majesty's most Gracious Answer My LORDS What You ask of Me I most passionately desire And I promise You upon the Faith of a King That I will have a Parliament and such an One as You ask for as soon as ever the Prince of Orange has quitted this Realm For How is it possible a Parliament should be Free in all its Circumstances as You Petition for whil'st an Enemy is in the Kingdom and can make a Return of near an Hundred Voices The Lords Petition with the King's Answer may be printed Novemb. 29. 1688. The P. O.'s Letter to the English Army Gentlemen and Friends WE have given you so full and so true an Account of Our Intentions in this Expedition in Our Declaration that as We can add nothing to it so We are sure you can desire nothing more of us We are come to preserve your Religion and to restore and establish your Liberties and Properties and therefore We cannot suffer Our selves to doubt but that all true English men will come and concur with Us in Our desire to secure these Nations from POPERY and SLAVERY You must all plainly see that you are only made use of as Instruments to enslave the Nation and ruin the Protestant Religion and when that is done you may judge what ye your selves ought to expect both from the cashiering of all the Protestant and English Officers and Soldiers in Ireland and by the Irish Soldiers being brought over to be put in your places
read to their Majesties the King returned to the Commissioners the following Answer WHen I engaged in this Vndertaking I had particular Regard and Consideration for Scotland and therefore I did emit a Declaration in relation to That as well as to this Kingdom which I intend to make good and effectual to them I take it very kindly that Scotland hath expressed so much Confidence in and Affection to Me They shall find Me willing to assist them in every thing that concerns the Weal and Interest of that Kingdom by making what Laws shall be necessary for the Security of their Religion Property and Liberty and to ease them of what may be justly grievous to them After which the Coronation-Oath was tendred to Their Majesties which the Earl of Argyle spoke word by word directly and the King and Queen repeated it after him holding Their Right Hands up after the manner of taking Oaths in Scotland The Meeting of the Estates of Scotland did Authorize their Commissioners to represent to His Majesty That that Clause in the Oath in relation to the rooting out of Hereticks did not import the destroying of Hereticks And that by the Law of Scotland no Man was to be persecuted for his private Opinion And even Obstinate and Convicted Hereticks were only to be denounced Rebels or Outlawed whereby their Moveable Estates are Confiscated His Majesty at the repeating that Clause in the Oath Did declare that He did not mean by these words That He was under any Obligation to become a Persecutor To which the Commissioners made Answer That neither the meaning of the Oath or the Law of Scotland did import it Then the King replyed That He took the Oath in that Sense and called for Witnesses the Commissioners and others present And then both Their Majesties Signed the said Coronation-Oath After which the Commissioners and several of the Scotish Nobility kissed Their Majesties Hands The Coronation OATH of England The Arch-bishop or Bishop shall say WIll You solemnly Promise and Swear to govern the People of this Kingdom of England and the Dominions thereto belonging according to the Statues in Parliament agreed on and the Laws and Customs of the same The King and Queen shall say I solemnly Promise so to do Arch-bishop or Bishop Will You to Your Power cause Law and Justice in Mercy to be Executed in all Your Judgments King and Queen I Will. Arch-bishop or Bishop Will You to the utmost of Your Power Maintain the Laws of God the true Profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion Established by Law And will You Preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of this Realm and to the Churches committed to their Charge all such Rights and Priviledges as by Law do or shall appertain unto them or any of them King and Queen All this I Promise to do After this the King and Qeen laying His and Her Hand upon the Holy Gospels shall say King and Queen The Things which I have here before Promised I will Perform and Keep So help me God Then the King and Queen shall kiss the Book The Coronation OATH of Scotland WE William and Mary King and Queen of Scotland faithfully Promise and Swear by this Our solemn Oath in presence of the Eternal God that during the whole course of Our Life we will serve the same Eternal God to the uttermost of Our Power according as he has required in his most holy Word reveal'd and contain'd in the New and Old Testament and according to the same Word shall maintain the True Religion of Christ Jesus the Preaching of his holy Word and the due and right Ministration of the Sacraments now Received and Preached within the Realm of Scotland and shall abolish and gainstand all false Religion contrary to the same and shall Rule the People committed to our Charge according to the Will and Command of God revealed in his aforesaid Word and according to the laudable Laws and Constitutions received in this Realm no ways repugnant to the said Word of the Eternal God and shall procure to the utmost of Our Power to the Kirk of God and whole Christian People true and perfect Peace in all time coming That we shall preserve and keep inviolated the Rights and Rents with all just Privileges of the Crown of Scotland neither shall we transfer nor alienate the same That we shall forbid and repress in all Estates and Degrees Reif Oppression and all kind of wrong And we shall Command and Procure that Justice and Equity in all Judgments be keeped to all persons without exception as the Lord and Father of all Mercies shall be merciful to us And we shall be careful to root out all Hereticks and Enemies to the true Worship of God that shall be Convicted by the true Kirk of God of the aforesaid Crimes out of Our Lands and Empire of Scotland And we faithfully affirm the things above written by Our Solemn Oath God save King WILLIAM and Queen MARY Proposals humbly offered to the Lords and Commons in the present Convention for settling of the Government c. My Lords and Gentlemen YOV are Assembled upon Matters of the highest Importance to England and all Christendom and the result of your Thoughts in this Convention will make a numerous Posterity Happy or Miserable If therefore I have met with any Thing that I think worthy of your Consideration I should think my self wanting in that duty which I owe to my Country and Mankind if I should not lay it before You. If there be as some say certain Lineaments in the Face of Truth with which one cannot be deceiv'd because they are not to be counterfeited I hope the Considerations which I presume to offer You will meet with your Approbation That bringing back our Constitution to its first and purest Original refining it from some gross Abuses and supplying its Defects You may be the Joy of the present Age and the Glory of Posterity FIrst 'T is necessary to distinguish between Power it self the Designation of the Persons Governing and the Form of Government For 1. All Power is from God as the Fountain and Original 2. The Designation of the Persons and the Form of Government is either First immediately from God as in the Case of Saul and David and the Government of the Jews or Secondly from the Community chusing some Form of Government and subjecting themselves to it But it must be noted that though Saul and David had a Divine Designation yet the People assembled and in a General Assembly by their Votes freely chose them Which proves that there can be no orderly or lasting Government without Consent of the People Tacit or Express'd and God himself would not put Men under a Government without their Consent And in case of a Conquest the People may be called Prisoners or Slaves which is a state contrary to the Nature of Man but they cannot be properly Subjects till their Wills be brought to submit to the Government
and then dissolved and that several Acts passed this is the plain Judgment of another Parliament 1. Because it says they were continued which shews they had a real being capable of being continued for a Confirmation of a void Grant has no effect and Confirmation shews a Grant only voidable so the continuance there shewed it at most but voidable and when the King came and confirm'd it all was good 2. The dissolving it then shews they had a being for as ex nihilo nihil fit so super nihil nil operatur as out of nothing nothing can be made so upon nothing nothing can operate Again the King Lords and Commons make the great Corporation or Body of the Kingdom and the Commons are legally taken for the Free-holders Inst 4. p. 2. Now the Lords and Commons having Proclaimed the King the defect of this great Corporation is cured and all the Essential parts of this great Body Politique united and made compleat as plainly as when the Mayor of a Corporation dies and another is chosen the Corporation is again perfect and to say that which perfects the great Body Politique should in the same instant destroy it I mean the Parliament is to make contradictions true simul semel the perfection and destruction of this great Body at one instant and by the same Act. Then if necessity of Affairs was a forcible Argument in 1660 a time of great peace not only in England but throughout Europe and almost in all the World certainly 't is of a greater force now when England is scarce delivered from Popery and Slavery when Ireland has a mighty Army of Papists and that Kingdom in hazard of final destruction if not speedily prevented and when France has destroyed most of the Protestants there and threatens the ruine of the Low-Countries from whence God has sent the wonderful Assistance of our Gracious and therefore most Glorious King and England cannot promise safety from that Foreign Power when forty days delay which is the least can be for a new Parliament and considering we can never hope to have one more freely chosen because first it was so free from Court-influence or likelihood of all design that the Letters of Summons issued by him whom the great God in infinite Mercy raised to save us to the hazard of his Life and this done to protect the Protestant Religion and at a time when the people were all concerned for one Common interest of Religion and Liberty it would be vain when we have the best King and Queen the World affords a full house of Lords the most solemnly chosen Commons that ever were in the remembrance of any Man Living to spend Money and lose time I had almost said to despise Providence and take great pains to destroy our selves If any object Acts of Parliament mentioning Writs and Summons c. I answer the Prededent in 1660 is after all those Acts. In private cases as much as has been done in point of necessity a Bishop Provincial dies and sede vacant a Clerk is presented to a Benefice the Presentation to the Dean and Chapter is good in this case of Necessity and if in a Vacancy by the Death of a Bishop a Presentation shall be good to the Dean and Chapter rather than a prejudice should happen by the Church lying void Surely a fortiori Vacancy of the Throne may be supplied without the formality of a Writ and the great Convention turn'd to a Real Parliament A Summons in all points is of the same real force as a Writ for a Summons and a Writ differ no more than in name the thing is the same in all Substantial parts the Writ is Recorded in Chancery so are His Highnesses Letters the proper Officer Endorses the Return so he does here for the Coroner in defect of the Sheriff is the proper Officer the People Choose by Virtue of the Letters c. quae re concordant parum differunt they agree in Reality and then what difference is there between the one and the other Object A Writ must be in Actions at Common Law else all Pleading after will not make it good but Judgment given may be Reversed by a Writ of Error Answ The case differs first because Actions between party and party are Adversary Actions but Summons to Parliament are not so but are Mediums only to have â—n Election 2. In Actions at Law the Defendant may plead to the Writ but there is no plea to a Writ for electing Members to serve in Parliament and for this I have Littleton's Argument there never was such a Plea therefore none lies Object That they have not taken the Test Answ They may take the Test yet and then all which they do will be good for the Test being the distinguishing Mark of a Protestant from a Papist when that is taken the end of the Law is performed Object That the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy ought to be taken and that the new ones are not legal Answ The Convention being the Supream Power have abolish'd the old Oaths and have made new ones and as to the making new Oaths the like was done in Alfreds time when they chose him King vide Mirror of Justice Chap. 1. for the Heptarchy being turn'd to a Monarchy the precedent Oaths of the seven Kings could not be the same King Alfred swore Many Precedents may be cited where Laws have been made in Parliament without the King 's Writ to summon them which for brevity's sake I forbear to mention For a farewel the Objections quarrel at our Happiness fight against our Safety and aim at that which may indanger Destruction The Present Convention a Parliament I. THat the formality of the Kings Writ of Summons is not so essential to an English Parliament but that the Peers of the Realm and the Commons by their Representatives duly Elected may legally act as the great Council and representative Body of the Nation though not summoned by the King especially when the circumstances of the time are such that such Summons cannot be had will I hope appear by these following Observations First The Saxon Government was transplanted hither out of Germany where the meeting of the Saxons in such Assemblies was at certain fixed times viz. at the New and Full Moon But after their Transmigration hither Religion changing other things changed with it and the times for their publick Assemblies in conformity to the great Solemnities celebrated by Christians came to be changed to the Feasts of Easter Pentecost and the Nativity The lower we come down in Story the seldomer we find these General Assemblies to have been held and sometimes even very anciently when upon extraordinary occasions they met out of course a Precept an Edict or Sanction is mentioned to have Issued from the King But the Times and the very place of their ordinary Meeting having been certain and determined in the very first and eldest times that we meet with any mention of
Good and Faithful Subjects to Us and our Royal Predecessors by hazarding and many of them actually losing their Lives and Fortunes in their Defence though of another Religion and the Maintenance of their Authority against the Violences and Treasons of the most violent Abettors of these Laws Do therefore with Advice and Consent of Our Privy Council by Our Soveraign Authority Prerogative Royal and Absolute Power aforesaid Suspend Stop and disable all Laws or Acts of Parliament Customs or Constitutions made or executed against any of our Roman Catholick Subjects in any time past to all intents and purposes making void all Prohibitions therein mentioned pains or penalties therein ordain'd to be Inflicted so that they shall in all things be as free in all Respects whatsoever not only to Exercise their Religion but to enjoy all Offices Benefices and others which We shall think fit to bestow upon them in all time coming Nevertheless it is our Will and Pleasure and we do hereby command all Catholicks at their highest Pains only to Exercise their Religious Worship in Houses or Chappels and that they presume not to Preach in the open Fields or to invade the Protestant Churches by force under the pains aforesaid to be inflicted upon the Offenders respectively nor shall they presume to make Publick Processions in the High-Streets of any of Our Royal Burghs under the Pains above mentioned And whereas the Obedience and Service of our good Subjects is due to Us by their Allegiance and Our Soveraignty and that no Law Custom or Constitution Difference in Religion or other Impediment whatsoever can exempt or discharge the Subjects from their Native Obligations and Duty to the Crown or hinder us from Protecting and Employing them according to their several Capacities and Our Royal Pleasure nor Restrain Us from Conferring Heretable Rights and Priviledges upon them or vacate or annul these Rights Heretable when they are made or conferred And likewise considering that some Oaths are capable of being wrested by men of sinistrous Intentions a practice in that Kingdom fatal to Religion as it was to Loyalty Do therefore with Advice and Consent aforesaid Cass Annul and Discharge all Oaths whatsoever by which any of Our Subjects are incapacitated or disabled from holding Places or Offices in our said Kingdom or enjoy their Hereditary Right and Priviledges discharging the same to be taken or given in any time coming without Our special Warrant and Consent under the pains due to the Contempt of Our Royal Commands and Authority And to this effect We do by Our Royal Authority aforesaid Stop Disable and Dispense with all Laws enjoyning the said Oaths Tests or any of them particularly the first Act of the first Session of the first Parliament of King Charles the Second the Eleventh Act of the foresaid Session of the foresaid Parliament the sixth Act of the third Parliament of the said King Charles the twenty first and twenty fifth Acts of that Parliament and the thirteenth Act of the first Session of * Our late Parliament in so far allanerly as concerns the taking the Oaths or Tests therein prescrib'd and all others as well not mentioned as mentioned and that in place of them all our good Subjects or such of them as We or our Privy Council shall require so to do shall take and swear the following Oath allanerly I A. B. do acknowledge testifie and declare that JAMES the Seventh by the Grace of God King of Scotland England France and Ireland Defender of the Faith c. is rightful King and Supream Governour of these Realms and over all persons therein and that it is unlawful for Subjects on any pretence or for any cause whatsoever to rise in Arms against Him or any Commissionated by Him and that I shall never so rise in Arms nor assist any who shall so do and that I shall never resist His Power or Authority nor ever oppose His Authority to His Person as I shall answer to God but shall to the utmost of my power Assist Defend and Maintain Him His Heirs and Lawful Successors in the Exercise of their Absolute Power and Authority against all Deadly So help me God And seeing many of Our good Subjects have before Our pleasure in these Matters was made publick incurred the Guilt appointed by the Acts of Parliament above-mentioned or others We by Our Authority and Absolute Power and Prerogative Royal above-mentioned of Our certain Knowledge and innate Mercy give Our ample and full Indemnity to all those of the Roman Catholick or Popish Religion for all things by them done contrary to Our Laws or Acts of Parliament made in any time past relating to their Religion the Worship and Exercise thereof or for being Papists Jesuits or Traffickers for hearing or saying of Mass concealing of Priests or Jesuits breeding their Children Catholicks at home or abroad or any other thing Rite or Doctrine said performed or maintained by them or any of them And likewise for holding or taking of Places Employments or Offices contrary to any Law or Constitution Advices given to Us or our Council Actions done or generally any thing perform'd or said against the known Laws of that Our Ancient Kingdom Excepting always from this Our Royal Indemnity all Murthers Assassinations Thefts and such like other Crimes which never used to be comprehended in Our General Acts of Indemnity And We command and require all Our Judges or others concerned to explain this in the most ample Sense and Meaning Acts of Indemnity at any time have contained Declaring this shall be as good to every one concerned as if they had Our Royal Pardon and Remission under Our Great Seal of that Kingdom And likewise indemnifying Our Protestant Subjects from all pains and penalties due for hearing or preaching in Houses providing there be no Treasonable Speeches uttered in the said Conventicles by them in which case the Law is only to take place against the Guilty and none other present providing also that they Reveal to any of Our Council the Guilt so committed As also excepting all Fines or Effects of Sentences already given And likewise Indemnifying fully and freely all Quakers for their Meetings and Worship in all time past preceeding the publication of these presents And we doubt not but Our Protestant Subjects will give their Assistance and Concourse hereunto on all Occasions in their Respective Capacities In consideration whereof and the ease those of Our Religion and others may have hereby and for the Encouragement of Our Protestant Bishops and the Regular Clergy and such as have hitherto lived orderly We think fit to declare that it never was Our Principle nor will We ever suffer Violence to be offered to any Man's Conscience nor will We use Force or Invincible Necessity against any Man on the account of his Perswasion nor the Protestant Religion but will protect Our Bishops and other Minsters in their Functions Rights and Properties and all Our Protestant Subjects in the free Exercise of their