know that neither the Decrets nor Decretals were ever as such received as Law in England yet the Pope and Jesuites saying that they ought so to have been and that they were and are obligatory upon us it will follow that by reason of an unlucky Proverb of Ben Syrah Quantulus ignis quantam materiam accendit and which is used by the Apostle St. Iames saying Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth and for that there are some little People ready to apply that little fire when the Pope or Jesuites would have them the Majority of the Papists here being Jesuited as was observed and that part of them not being of the Gentry would not be byassed by generous education and temper against the Commands of the mercenary Pope or Jesuites and for that even in the Jesuited Gentry here there were Bigots found to plot and to prepare to execute the Gun-powder Treason it is apparent that the Pope may if he will be very troublesome to our Cities with his Writ de Civitate comburendâ and that he or the Jesuites can command numbers of instruments to execute that his Writ as I may call it who will think that therein that they do as lawful an Act as if the four first General Councils had expresly warranted the same He said that the Popes Decrets and Decretals are in several Popish Countries so much regarded that to encourage men to study the same Academick Degrees are conferred namely of Doctores decretorum and Doctores decretalium That in France where the Canon Law was never in gross received as Minier the President of the Council of Aix did set fire on the Heretical Villages as such so he hath heard that Boerius an eminent Lawyer of France and President of a Parliament there and who has published a Volume of Decisions hath in Tractatu de seditiosis asserted this Tenet of the Pope's power to burn Heretical Cities That the Christians of old when they groaned under the heaviest weight of the Pagan Persecution abhorred this revenge against their idolatrous Enemies as appeared by Tertullian's Apology and their sense of the ease with which this revenge might have been executed Quando vel una nox pauculis faculis largitatem ultionis posset operari si malum malo dispungi penes nos liceret sed absit ut aut igni humano vindicetur Divina secta i. e. One night with a few Fire-brands would yield us sufficient Revenge if it were lawful for us to discount evil with evil but God forbid that the followers of the Divine Religion should either revenge themselves with Humane Fire c. That the very Heathens of old accounted there was turpitude in promoting not only their own profit but that of their Country in firing the Fleet of proclaimed Enemies as appeared in Athens when Themistocles by order from the Senate had privately Communicated to Aristides how he could destroy the Lacedemonians by privately burning their Fleet and Aristides had reported to the Senate that the project of Themistocles communicated to him was profitable for the State but was not honest they unanimously resolved against hearing it as Tully tells us in his Offices and much less would they have deliberated of its turpitude That the Athenians in the time of open War with King Philip and when their Priests offering their most solemn religious Sacrifices to the Gods for the prosperity of their Country did Philippum liberos terrestres navalésque copias atque omnem Macedoniam exitiali carmine diris imprecationibus detestari yet intercepting some Letters writ by him they returned them to him unopen'd That the Pope and his Trent Council having never disown'd this power nor branded this Canon nor yet by any index expurgatorius damned the Writings of Gratian or Gundissalvus or the Famous Canonists by him cited for this opinion it was plain that they might therefore be said to approve of the same that Qui non prohibet cum potest jubet That the Trent Council had gone far in the Confirmation of the Canon Law and that the saying used by the Fathers in that Council was here applicable viz. Omnia nostra facimus quibus authoritatem nostram impertimur In fine he saying that every one ought to withdraw from a Church while it in effect approved Doctrines in the Faith erroneous and in practice impious and asking me if some of the Great Writers of the Church of England as namely Bishop Iewel Bishop Andrews Arch-Bishop Laâ—d Bishop Sanderson or any of them had industriously published it in Print that we might lawfully employ Emissaries to burn Rome or any City where all or the Majority were Papists and that such Writing of theirs was never censured by Authority and impugned by any of our Divines tho yet by occasion thereof no Anti-Papists had ever been the Incendiaries of Popish Cities I would not however withdraw from the Communion of the Church of England till I saw such Tenet of those Divines publickly branded and till such Writing had received the usage that the Canon Law had from Luther when he cast it into the Flames I plainly told him that I would and the like he said he was inclined to as to Communion with the Church of Rome if he found that the Fact of that fiery Tenet against Heretical Cities was chargeable on the Pope in his Law and in the Writers thereupon as aforesaid And as little Credit as I wish all Mushroom Prophets and Prophecies may find I am of opinion if ever any clear discovery should happen in time to be made of that Fires having proceeded from the Councils of great numbers of Iesuites Friars or other Papists a thing I never Expect that Popery would thereby be loaded with such a lasting general Odium here and in Forraign Countries both Popish and Protestant as it would hardly breath under the weight of and the Prophets of the effects of the Year 1666 would cry that their predictions did hit right and boldly say to us their upbraiders that 66 in its effects is not yet past just like the Sooth-sayer who being rallied by Caesar going to the Senate-House and saying the Ides of March were come replied to him that they were not passed There is another happy effect I expect from the grown and growing numbers of our populous Nation and all mens errors being necessarily the more visible to each other by their close Vicinage namely that men will be ashamed to aggravate the supposed Political Errors of the Ministers of our Princes as formerly and much more not to take it patiently when their Princes pardon them How shameful a thing was it that the Kings Pardon was not allowed as good by the Lords and Commons to Arch-Bishop Laud when nothing but that could save them from the danger of the Laws for taking away any mans life by Ordinance of Parliament But so sharp and perfect a haâ—er is your Lordship of all Cruel and Arbitrary Practices that I think I have
same thing almost the same words used in a Prophecy of the times of the Gospel Zech. 13. 3. He saith indeed that by those words in Deut. the meaning is not that his Father or Mother should presently run a Knife into him but that they should be the means to bring him to condign punishment even the taking away his life Calvin likewise in giving his sense of that place of Zechary foresaw the Odium of having any killed without going to the Iudge and there saith Multò hoc durius est propriis manibus filium interficere quam si ad Iudicem deferrent But here Mr. Burroughs and Calvin have Categorically enough asserted what the Iudges duty is in the Case and I have said what Calvin effected by going to the Iudge about Servetus Gundissalvus doth not determine the lawfulness of burning an Heretical City without going to the Iudge and the lawfulness of Protestant Princes judging the Persons or Cities of Idolaters to be destroyed by the pretended Obligation of the Mosaic Law is chargeable on the Anti Papists I have mentioned and I believe there are few of our Presbyterian or Independent Enthusiasts but who think it as lawful to burn Rome as to roast an Egg. But the Church of England abhorreth this flammeum sulphureum evangelium and Dr. Hicks in the Preface to his Iovian taking notice of the Reasons which the Papists urge for putting Heretick and the scotising Presbyterians for putting Popish Princes to death saith thereupon I desire Mr. J. to tell me Whether he thinks in his Conscience the Bishops of the Church of England could argue so falsly upon the Principles of the Iewish Theocracy to the like proceedings in Christian States And saith if this way of arguing be true then the Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth was bound to burn many Popish Towns in her Kingdom and smite the Inhabitants with the Sword c. I have therefore thought it Essential to the advancement and preservation of Loyalty to endeavour to have the Papal and Presbyterian Error as to the Iewish Laws exterminated And the setling of this point is the more important to the Measures of Loyalty because the same Chapter in Deuteronomy viz. the 13 th that hath been the Popes Palladium for his power of firing Heretical Cities hath likewise been made use of by our deluded Excluders as theirs to recur to in a practice so scandalous to Loyalty and to the Protestant Religion and which hath too much appeared in the many Factious Pamphlets for the Exclusion and as I hinted that that Chapter of Deuteronomy was impiously applied in a former Conjuncture for putting the Queen of Scots to death so the pretended lawfulness of the Exclusion by arguing from the greater to the less was by the deluded generally inferred from that Chapter and the place I just now referred too in the Preface of Iovian mentions Mr. I's arguing from Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. in citing of which saith the Dr. it is evident on whom our Author did reflect The very exposing the absurdity of the Papal power of destroying Heretical Persons and Cities on the account of the Mosaic Law will I believe as by Consent of the sober of all Parties much help to exterminate the aforesaid Error which hath cost the Papacy so dear and naturally tempted so many Calvinists to own the same Error partly by way of retaliation and not altogether through defect of Judgment and I doubt not but if the Papacy were now to begin to claim the allowance of exercising the Jurisdiction over all Christians in the World as the High Priest did over all proselyted to the Iewish Religion and as appears by not only the Inhabitants of Palestine but others of the most remote Countries and particularly by the Aethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles owning subjection to the Iewish Priesthood it would stop at the Conquest of that Oecumenical Power and Tenths of the Levites thereby without demanding the Power to destroy Hereticks Towns and to exterminate the Persons of Hereticks by Crusado's as other dependencies on it But the Papacy hath long ago passed that bloody Rubicon of the Iudicial Law and cannot in Honour or Politicks go back nor will any Pope expressly renounce the Power of compelling Princes to exterminate their Heretical Subjects tho yet the Fashion of the exercise of this Power be thus as I have shewed tacitly passed away and as a thing necessarily impracticable in the more populous World. And no Iesuited Papist dares disclaim this Power in the Pope's behalf or impugn the same however it was a thing that the Pope could not but foreâ—ee that his quashing the Iesuites Power to kill men by retail would render the Iesuites averse from writing for his Power to kill Hereticks by whole-sale and by Crusado's or for the power to fire Heretical Cities if there were occasion to have any such power asserted in behalf of the Papacy as I believe there neither is nor ever will be But partly according to my Conjecture of the Result of the Fermentation about the Regale in France I suppose that tho the Papacy will no more be brought to disclaim its pretended Monarchy over other parts of the World in ordine ad spiritualia than the Dukes of Savoy will the Title of their being Kings of Cyprus yet it will be neither able or studious to prosecute its Claim of such power by disordering the World as formerly All the personal Vertue and Probity of any Popes will never incline them to pronounce against their Iurisdiction however they may thereby and by want of strength to execute it be kept from the old injurious ampliating it and on this slippery Precipice the Papacy still remains and from whence through the natural Jealousie of Crown'd Heads and States in the point of Power it will probably fall down to its tame principium unitatis and its Patriarchal Figure and in time to nothing But by many of the Anti-papal Sects and such as call themselves The only true Protestants still owning the Obligation of the Iewish forinsec Laws a Necessity is by God and Nature put on the Protestants of the Church of England to Combat such pretended Obligations by dint of Reason and thereby to support the Rights of their Princes without Condition and Reserve and which no Jesuited Papists or Protestants either can or will do Nor is it safe for other Papists to own Principles that touch the Pope's imaginary Monarchal Power For Power how fantastick soever would seem a serious thing and will endure no raillery and the honest Father Caron whom I have mentioned as citing 250 Popish Authors who denied the Pope's Power to depose Princes doth tell us that the Pope's Nuntio and 4 Popes condemned his Doctrine and the Inquisitors damned his Book and his Superiours his Soul I mean they very fairly excommunicated him for it There is another thing that may render the knowledge of this Papal Tenet worthy
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
into the Field of Time have yet grown up and how many even of the higher Class of understandings have been tempted to believe the predictions of the illiterate and that such could read the Book of Fate who yet could read no other as appeared by Sir Thomas Moore and Bishop Fisher being tainted with some belief of the holy Maid of Kent's Sayings or at least seeming so to be and that the prediction of things as I partly before hinted may help as a Natural Cause to give them Birth I wishing so well to my Country and its Religion by Law Established have however adventured from Natural Causes to give my judgment for the future State thereof as I have done not despairing of its influences on some present Despairers And moreover the Class of Magna nomina who have faulter'd in their measures of Prophecy is so great that an obscure mistaken person may well hope to hide himself among them Father Parsons aliâ—s Doleman in his Book of the Succession doth p. 258. give his final Conjecture of the great future Event of the Succession after the death of Queen Elizabeth saying My opinion is that this Affair cannot possibly be ended by any possibility moral without some War at leastwise for sometime at the beginning and gives his reasons for that his opinion And how all our hot Apocalyptick Men and Teazers of Anti-Christ have erred in the times of the great Changes they have predicted in the World is obvious and therefore the most sagacious of that sort of Expositers have made the things they have foretold to be far distant in time and before which they knew they should long be in the number of Non entes doctores as one calls the Schoolmen and thus likewise the ingenious Author of the Treatise of Taxes and Contributions printed in London 1667 doth p. 23. say that Before five hundred years we may be all transplanted from hence into America these Countries being over-run with Turks and made wast as the Seats of the famous Eastern Empires at this day Mr. Herbert our pious Vates made Religion standing a tiptoe to take its flight thither many years ago And the ingenious Author of the Zelanders Choice hath therein told us that the French would never part with Vtrecht and that our King's Declaration of Indulgence would never be recalled but the contrary happened in both Cases and the Vote of the House of Commons in order to his Majesties recalling the latter was carried by the Party there favouring the Nonconformists and could not have been without them which that Author did not foresee and that those Nonconformists would be well neither full nor fasting and therefore their reflections on the King's Ministers for denying Indulgence to them since ought to be very gentle Mr. Fox in his Martyrology in one Volume p. 694. gives us this conjectural prediction that the Turk will seize Rome and founds one of his reasons for it on the 18 Ch. of the Rev. and that he shall consume it with fire and Ribera the Iesuite in Chap. 14th of the Rev. saith Romam igitur non tantum propter priora peccata conflagratarum esse magno incendio sed etiam propter illa quae extremis illis temporibus commissura est ex hujus Apocalypsis verbis adeo perspicue cognoscimus ut ne stulâ—issimus quidem negare possit Neither Mr. Fox nor the Iesuite name any particular time when Rome shall be consumed with Fire but many whose Enthusiastic fancies have played with the fire of Rome adventured to lay the Scene of its ruine in the Year 1666 and to assert this a Latin Book was professedly writ and called Romae ruina finalis Anno Dom. 1666. and printed in London in the Year 1663. in the Title whereof 't is said that Rome shall be incendio delenda in the Year 1666. And no doubt our many Prophetic Writers that read that Sentence as from Gods Tribunal that Rome shall be destroyed that year angered the Conclave there and they might well think that to such hot heads there belonged incendiary hands and accordingly as it was before cited out of the Pampâ—let called The Arts and pernicious designs of Rome wherein is shewn what are the Aims of the Iesuites c. the Author makes the Conflagration of London in case it were a practice of Humane Contrivance to have been caused by Rome and the Consistory there and the Iesuites as being willing to signalize that year of 666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some that predicted Romes utter destruction then 't is possible that they might grant against our City the reprisal of performances for our Prophecies against theirs which if they did was a Revenge very disproportionate for according to that rule of the Pharisees revenge namely an Eye for an Eye and a Tooth for a Tooth they should only have equipped Airy Prophecies against us and not Fire-ships and by a little obvious Art have hounded the number of the Beast 666 upon us And though I am sufficiently convinced by the Quotations out of the Canon Law and the Canonists referred to in Gundissalvus that the Tenet of burning whole Cities if the Majority thereof are Hereticks is chargeable on the Church of Rome as approved by it and tho the Lord Chancellor and two Houses of Commons and the Magistrates of London have given their judgment of the Causers of that Fire as aforesaid and tho one of our great Divines and whose Name all Protestants in our Land must mention with great honour Dr. William Lloyd Dean of Bangir hath in his Funeral Sermon of Sir Edmund Godfrey p. 38. speaking of the incredible patience found in the Citizens of London at the time of its Conflagration as an effect of the Protestant Religion further said Tho so many believed and very few much doubted whence it came that it was from the same hands which we justly suspect for this wickedness meaning the Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey yet was there no Tumult rose upon it no violence done that extended to the life of any Person yet shall I never without the knowledge of convincing proofs of such a Fact projected or modelled by some in Authority in the Church of Rome and the Spiritual Guides of our Lay-Papists charge the Odium of the Fact on more of them than make the least of numbers nor yet the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists here at home or abroad in the World and would say that as infallible as the Pope was he knew not what spirit he was of when he thus in his Law called for fire on Heretical Cities I allude to our Saviour's words to the Disciples that importun'd him to call for Fire from Heaven to burn the Samaritans I know the Roman Catholick Author of the forementioned Pamphlet called the Arts of Rome c. in the Epistle of it saith of the Jesuites and Fryars that what they hold lawful to be done
they may be justly presumed to do whensoever opportunity serves and that they see it conducible to their Interest to do it Thus likewise Iudges of Ecclesiastical Courts when the consideration of the Nullity of a Marriage by reason of fear resulting from threatnings is before them do carefully regard this point concerning the Menacer an solitus est minas exequi a thing the Iesuites have not been wanting to do when Power and Opportunity have not been wanting and there is no doubt but the Iesuites by reason of their 4th Vow to the Pope over and above the Implicit Obedience they have sworn to their Superiors are to execute whatever he shall command nor is it doubtable but that when it is said by the Canonists that the Pope hath power to burn Heretical Cities he will reduce that Power into Act when he sees convenient and as Dr. Donne in his Pseudo Martyr well notes the Lawyers teach us that the word potest doth often signifie actum for which he quotes Bartolus on the Digests I believe the truth of his Computation where he saith in p. 228 of that Book That the Iesuites are in possâ—ssion of most of the Papists hearts in England but I likewise believe his other Computation in that Book where in p. 127. he saith quoting Rebadenira that in the Year 1608. the whole number of the Society of the Iesuites were 10581. and that tho their number is much encreased since there are not so many in England as were when the Book was printed viz Anno 1610. and the Dr. whose Style was as the Oxford Antiquities say of Mr. Foxes in Romanenses satis acerbus tho I think neither of their Styles was so a jot too much doth in Chap. 10th of that Book very learnedly and largely shew that many Eminent and Popish Writers have bitterly inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decretum of the Canon Law. No doubt that Law was never in gross received in England in the times of our Popish Ancestors and so neither did nor doth bind English Papists in the Court of Conscience more than the Council of Trent doth in some Popish Countries where it never was received and I find Bellarmine cited by the Dr. for saying that there are many things in the Decretal Epistles which do not make a matter to be de fide but only do declare what the opinions of the Popes were in such cases I believe that no un-jesuited Papist nor perhaps some sober Party in that Order will think the worse of me for calling the Decretum of the Popes Canon Law by reason of its empowering him thus to burn Cities hâ—rrendum Decretum and it may perhaps appear ridiculous as well as horrid in the Pope in that Law to rake in the Ashes of sweet St. Cyprian for fire to burn Heretical Towns and to make him who was in a manner Excommunicated by the Pope for rebaptizing such as were baptized by Hereticks to be the Founder of that wild Tenet of converting guiltless Lime and Brick and Timber to rubbish because they had afforded dwelling places to People that differed in judgment from Rome and to make him who in the Year 258. was a Martyr for not being an Idolater to be the Author of burning Cities that would not adore the Host. But moreover it may be said that in the Decrets made by the Pope to Ape the Pandects and to consist chiefly of Canons of Councils sayings of Fathers and Constitutions of Popes as the Pandects do of the responsa prudentum c. Gratian's founding a Tenet on Cyprian or any places out of other Authors giveth it only the weight that Cyprian and they had in their proper works and the Stream of Authority from their Writings in Gratian is not to be supposed able to rise higher than the Spring and thus the Canonists agree on this as a Rule that the things quoted in Gratian Vim legis habent quatenus reperiuntur illic unde depâ—ompta sunt and they tell us that if any things that are said to be impia hiulca barbara sine ratione falsa fideique Historicae adversa are found there they are to be passed by as Gratian Dreams ut nec confirmatio Pontificum generalis ad ea sese extendere possit And on this Account his Glâ—ssographer Andreas himself doth often turn his gloss into an Animadversion on his Master for that name he bestows on Gratian and saith sometimes Magister hic non tenetur meaning Observatur and sometimes Superficialis est magistri argumentatio and elsewhere with a strain of Ruffianism fateor te plane mentitum Gratiane And if any one will read Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith Dedicated to the Lords of the Assembly general of the Clergy sitting at Paris in the Year 1645. he will find he saith as for Gratian 's Decrees and the Gloss they can claim nothing of Faith the Author being a particular Doctor and Subject to many mistakes even in the Citation of Authors nor doth he pretend to any such thing much less weight hath the Gloss than the Decrees where many silly and ridiculous passages are discovered As for the Papal Decrees contained in the body of the Canon Law or published since none of them do constitute an Article of Faith c. Bellarmine makes no difficulty to acknowledge Errors in several of them as for example where the Canon out of Gratian is objected quod proposuisti extracted out of Gregory the 3d where 't is said that if a Woman should be sick and by that means unable to render her duty to her Husband the Husband if he have not the gift of continency may take another Wife he replys thus that the Pope failed through ignorance which we do not deny may happen to Popes when they do not properly define but only declare their opinions as Gregory seems here to have done And no doubt but every Papist laughs at the definition of a Whore in the Decrets i. e. Quae multorum libidini patet and at the gloss there making by multorum to be meant 23000. My Lord I discoursed frankly of all these last mentioned matters to my Roman Catholick Friend who I said would joyn Issue in the Plea about Religion if the Pope's Power of firing Heretical Cities were a Tenet chargeable on the Church of Rome and have perhaps said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope or his Canon Law in the infliction of such dire Vengeance on whole Cities as they would wish said and do think my self indispensably obliged when I discourse with any of Mankind about any Quaesitum relating to natural truth and much more to Theological with all possible candour to say what the matter will fairly bear on both sides as accounting any mans Judgment given ex parte to be of little or no value and esteeming him a falsarius who conceals any thing of truth But this Gentleman being a close pursuer of truth
told me he knew well enough that the Canon Law did not as such bind all Papists in foro conscientiae but he would stay in no Church that he should find to be built in any Akeldama or Field of Blood that is a Church that approved of Tenets destructive of Civil Societies or condemned not Tenets that where any other Religion than the Popes was would Condemn men like Nebuchadnezor to grasing and to solitude or if they would live in Towns or Cities make them live there in Houses under Ground as Dr. Browne in his Travels saith He saw some Towns in the Turkish Dominions where Christians so lived like the Troglodytes and subterraneous Nations about Egypt and which might be occasioned by many Armies marching that way and burning of Towns en passant and that till the Pope disclaimed this power and damned such Tenet in his Canon Law that hung up there a Light conspicuous to the World for the lawful kindling of the Torches that should set fire to Heretical Cities such Cities as he called Heretical would be in fear of their being incendio delendae and that in the mean time the Iesuites who assert the plenitude of his power would implicitly obey his Commands and their Emissaries execute theirs without considering whether Gratian as a Fool or a Knave misapplied Cyprian and he granted that if as an Universal Censor morum the Pope did Command the Iesuites or others to inflict spiritual Censures in Cases of Sin or Non-belief of any Religionary Notion and those Censures were not to operate beyond the Soul that Civil Societies might yet be maintained but to give the Pope power to issue out Orders to burn the Cities and Towns where the Roman Catholick Religion is not professed is said he to give him Arbitrary Power over a great part of the World and to leave it to his Arbitrage whether there shall be any Political Government and Commerce in the States and Kingdoms of Hereticks and the World might suffer Confusion by the Papacy's having this power de facto as much as if it had it de jure and that several places have been burned as Heretical and when certainly they had a right not to be so served and particularly the Heretical Villages at the Massacre of Merindol of which Dr. Heylin in his Geoghraphy in Folio makes mention saying that in the Year 1560. there were above 1250 Churches of the Hugonots in France which cannot in such a long time but be wonderfully augmented tho scarce any of them have scaped some Massacre or other Of these Massacres two are most memorable viz. that of Merindol and Chabiers as being the first and that of Paris as being the greatest That of Merindol happened in the Year 1545. the instrument of it being Minier the President of the Council of Aix for having Condemned those poor people of Heresy he mustered a small Army and set fire on the Villages He directed me further for the proof of that Fact to Maimbourg's History of Calvinism Book 2d where he mentions the Decree of the Parliament of Aix to which Heylin refers and saith Maimbourg of it Par le quel il Condamn ' par Contumace dix neuf de Ces Heretiques à estre brasléz c. ordonne que toutes les Maisons de Merindol qui sont toutes remplies de Ces Heretiques soient entierement démolies renverses de fond en comble c. He further said that there was another guess Fire projected by the Jesuites as was before mentioned out of Thuanus and which was abetted by the Pope which shewed there was another Pope beside Eugenius that thought the burning of Heretical Cities lawful and meritorious and he referred it to the Consideration of the Criticks in Gun-powder how far so great a quantity of it lodged in a strait Vault might have tended to the demolishing of the Heretical Cities of Westminster and even of London if the experiment of the Gun-powder Treason had took effect for said he the utmost power of Gun-powder was never yet tryed He told me that Osborn in his King Iames having spoke of the Gun-powder Treason saith I never met two of the like conceit concerning any effect or extent this Powder might have reached had it not failed of success some men confining it to the Circle it lay in and no farther whereas the judgment of others no less experienced delivered at least the whole Isle to the fury of it and then he quotes it as the more probable Conjecture then that it could not but work dire effects on the City it self He further discoursed that in this Case of securing Protestant Cities from Fire at the Popes pleasure Pere Veron's artifice in making the Church of Rome chargeable with nothing to be believed but what is proposed by the Catholick Church in her general Councils or by her Vniversal Practice to be believed as an Article or Doctrine of Catholick Faith or any Papists in this Case joyning with Protestants to decry the Canon Law is but trifling away time as to any giving light to our understandings or keeping Fire from our Cities for if each Pope believes he hath this power and the Jesuites too believe it the Notion of a things not being de fide will not be sufficient to save our Cities when the Incendiaries even by the Doctrine of probability may save their Souls and when they shall have such Doctors as the Pope and Gratian and as they may think Cyprian for the opinion of burning the Nests of Heretical Hornets He moreover mentioned how Bellarmine as to the Tenet of all Christian Monarchies owing subjection to the Pope said the contrary to it is Heretical tho he well knew that no definition of the Church ever made it Heresy and might as well have called the denial of this Incendiary Power of the Pope against Heretical Cities to be Heresy Moreover he told me he had read Bellarmine cited in that Book of Donne p. 277. for writing against a Doctor who had defended the Venetian Cause against the Popes Censures and reprimanding that Doctor in these words viz. It is a grievous rashness not to be left unpunished that he should say the Canons as being but Humane Laws cannot have equal Authority with divine for this is a Contempt of the Canons as tho they were not made by the direction of the Holy Ghost and yet saith Donne citing that Doctor that impugned the Canons those Canons that he referred to were but two and cited but by Gratian. And that Donne further in that Page observed that when Parsons is to make his advantage of any Sentence in Gratian he uses to dignify it thus that it is translated by the Popes into the Corps of the Canon Law and so not only allowed and admitted and approved but commended and commanded canonized and determined for Canonical Law and authorized and set forth for Sacred and Authentical by all Popes whatsoever Treat of Mitag ca. 7. ◠42. That moreover tho we
the honour of their Religion thereby attacqued yet I gave no Rule about the Merits of the matter in my private thoughts till I saw in the Prints the Copy of the Order of Council of November 2d 1679. reflecting on the Treasonable Papers thrown into a Gentleman's Chamber by which divers Noblemen and other Protestants were to be brought under a suspicion of carrying on a Plot against his Majesty and which Order was after a Person was sent to Newgate by the Council for forging of Letters importing High-Treason and fixing the same in a Gentlemans Chamber and oâ— which Forgery I yet thought none but some few of the faex Romuli who believed and practised the Jesuites Doctrine of Calumny could possibly be guilty But I presently accordâ—d in my thoughts with the many Loyal Protestants and Papists who judged another Effort that pretended to be of the same Nature with the former and referred to a Plot of Protestants to be a poor vile Artifice or Shamm projected by some Calumnious Anti-Papists a shamm too despicable to be here named and obvious enough to detection from the Trite saying That they who can hide can find But the many pitiful Shamms whose humming noise did a while please our Mobile and were below the notice of the Government have had their triduum insecti and are not to expect to live in Story or to be there Entombed like the Fly in Amber The powerful Effects of the Royal Declaration freeing our Land from the Plague of Fears and Jealousies and the Annoyance of the Swarms of these Flies as Moses his intercession prevailed to deliver a Realm from the Judgments of other ones will be a more adequate Subject to a great Writers thoughts and especially when he shall consider that in the Course of Nature and without Miracle those great Effects could not but rise from so great an Efficient and as to which any one will perhaps be of opinion with me who shall consider that the most terrible of terribles in so many mens apprehension of Popery is its arbitrariness and that therefore the publication of the Royal Resolution to govern according to the Laws would effectually secure us against all Arbitrary Power whatsoever Mr. Hobbs saith in his Behemoth I confess I know very few Controversies among Christians of Points necessary to Salvation They are the Questions of Authority and Power over the Church or of Profit or of Honour to Church-men that for the most part raise all the Controversy For what man is he that will trouble himself or fall out with his Neighbours for the saving of my Soul or the saving of the Soul of any other than himself And no doubt it is not barely any mens believing the Doctrines of Purgatory or Trasubstantiation or Merit or Works of Super-Errogation that hath made the past ferment among us but the Arbitrariness of the Papal Power and the Complication of the Tenet of the Plenitude of that Power with those Religionary Tenets and the making of it Penal not to receive those or other Tenets from Rome and the making men Tenants in capite to a Foreign Head for their Brains and Estates and an outlandish Bishop who lives a Thousand Miles off with new Non obstantes outraging their old Laws and whom they can never see blush after it But his Majesty having declared That he would use his Royal Endeavours both in and out of Parliaments to Extirpate Popery of which its Arbitrariness was its great dreaded part and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Realm the People knew that the Laws had sufficiently provided against Appeals to Rome as well as against Appeals from the Country to the City and that Declaration naturally fortified the minds of the People as a Praemunimentum guarding them before hand as I may say with allusion to our Statutes of Praemunire against the Arbitrary Power either of Rome or Geneva and did in effect set up an Ensurance Office in each of his Majestie 's Courts of Iustice to secure them against Arbitrary Power as such in whomsoever and that they might in in utramvis aurem dormire as to any danger from the same and 't is therefore no wonder that the Reflux of People from the Metropolis to the Country ensued thereupon as I have remarked out of the Bills of Mortality and from which Bills perhaps we may divert our selves with the sight of the Burial of that Plot which some feared and others hoped would have been immortal who would have had it Entailed too on their Heirs and Successors tho they would not allow the Crown to be so to the Royal Line The Political uses that the Bills of Mortality may be put to being more various than the profound Observator on them took the pains to mention as I have thence by a glancing view of the gradual Encrease of the People coming out of the Country for several years to dwell within the Compass of those Bills and likewise of the gradual decrease thence deduced given an account of what I thought might in some measure deserve the name of an Indication of the diminution of the popular fears resulting from the Burials after the great auspicious year of the Royal Declaration so I could in order to the lessening of the fears of the encrease of Dissentership within the Circuit of those Bills from the Total of the Christenings in the respective years since that of 81 give what I might without Vanity call more than Indicium and which perhaps would be by Critical Persons allowed for somewhat like a Demonstration of the Encrease of the Numbers there as I may say born into the Church of England and to what proportion and that very particularly and make it out thence that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the Year 81 there were Christened 1084 in the year 82 and that the disposition of People for baptizing their Children in the way of the Church of England did encrease near a 13th part in the year 82 and that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the year 82 there were in the year 83 Christen'd 2146 which is near a 6th part that the Baptizing of Children in the way of the Church of England hath gained and Dissentership hath lost ground in that year Nor do I find cause to alter my opinion of such baptizing in the way of the Church of England having lost but rather on the contrary gained ground in this year 84 tho to what proportion I cannot positively judge by reason of what I before hinted namely of the extraordinary proportion of the Burials this year arising from the Accidents of the great Frost and which Physicians by comparing the encrease of the particular Diseases by which so many died this year more than in the former happening from those Accidents have judged to be considerably above 3000 and likewise by reason of the Births having this year been reverâ considerably
by them without paying the expected Civility and the Shot from which is not valued by Capital Ships that pass by them with a strong Gale of Wind and which perhaps think it not tanti to fire again upon the Fort nor doth that perhaps throw away more shot on them And thus stood this Munster Peace wrought as it were by the consent of the Crowned Heads and States of Christendom and thus it stands and any who will look into the Empire will find those Pacta conventa as to the part of the Emperor and Princes of the Empire outbraving the chances of time to this year how much soever the Emperor may be supposed to have been steer'd by Iesuites Councils and likely still so to do whereby the various Rights and Religions of Princes and their Subjects have been secured and whereby we may see how unstudied those men are in the great Book of the World who think that Popish Princes will not go on in the Course of their Politicks tho the Pope should seem in earnest or in jest to stop them and that they cannot tacitly reject the Papal Declarations of Nullity and yet continue Civil to the Pope and his Church The firm continuance of the Munster Peace to the year 1680 is mentioned by the Author of an ingenious Book called The Interest of Princes and States that year published and which goeth under the name of Mr. Bethel and where 't is moreover observed in p. 155. That among the Lutheran Princes the Prince of Hannover was lately turned Papist and likewise one of the House of the Landgrave of Hessen Darmestat and another of Mecklenburg lately turned Papist but their Countries do all continue Lutherans and among the Calvinist Princes he mentions the Elector of Brandenburg but saith his Dominions are most Lutherans and where in p. 156. 't is his Observation that of four Popish Princes of the Empire all their Countries are Lutherans and saith the Princes in this Country meaning Germany have no great influence on their Subjects in point of Religion and saith That in several Countries belonging to Popish Bishops and Abbots many Lutherans and some Calvinists have not only a Right but do also actually enjoy the publick exercise of their several Religions without disturbance and much more without Persecution and further instanceth in other places in Germany where the Proprietors are mixt of several Princes Earls Free Cities and Romish Ecclesiasticks which causeth in each of them the like Variety in Religion and some there being Lutherans and Papists and others being Calvinists Lutherans and Papists And thus we see instead of the Popes having nulled the Munster Peace cum effectu the Nulla fides servanda cum haereticis hath been nulled in Germany by Popish Princes and which if they had not done Luthers aforesaid nulli estis had been their doom and the Empire it self had scarce been more than a substantial Nullity as I may say alluding to what Vantius in his Book De Nullitatibus makes such In plain terms the Germans had not else been now a Nation nor would the Emperor again have been saluted by the Grand Signior as I have in some of the Comminatory Letters from the Port observed him called viz. Lord of few Regions and this any one I think will grant who shall consider that all the relaxation he hath had either of intestine troubles or Foreign between the years 1648 and 1680 hath made his Circumstances as to Power and Riches appear but just proportionable for holding his own with the help of his Neighbours against the Turk I have observed great right done to the Emperors Politicks in that Peace by a printed Panegyrical Oration made by Henricus Schmid a Famous Professor of Divinity in Tubing for the Celebration of the Munster Peace and wherein he saith That the Emperor preserved thereby at least the lives of eleven times a hundred and ninety two thousand Myriades of men that is of 21 thousand 1 hundred and 20 millions of men and whereupon the Panegyrist pronounceth That the World was blest by a new AEra from that Peace and some of the Expressions in that Oration for that purpose being very memorable I shall here set down viz. Ferdinande Caesar Auguste pie faelix triumphator salve Faelicior Iulio Caâ—sare qui gloriabundus fatebatur undecies centena nonaginta duo millia hominum praeliis à se occisa atque ita ut non veniat in hanc rationem stragem Civilium bellorum Tua Imperator quâ major esse non potest gloria claritudo erit totidem Myriadas aut plures non mactasse sed servasse Macte animo isto tuo imperator c. Tuis auspiciis novum Calendarium Iuliano longe melius ac emendatius orbi Christiano exhibetur quod pacis aera insignitur c. The Panegyrical Orator did in his Calculation of the Lives saved by the Emperor use more than Poetical Licence as any one will probably think who shall read what Sir W. P. in a printed Discourse hath mention'd of Critical Persons having judged that there are but 320 Millions of Souls now in the World and according to some ingenious mens Calculations I have seen in print concerning how much at a Medium each head may be supposed to add to the Riches of a State per year and thence making each to be therefore valuable at 80 l. Sterling the Panegyrick may be said to have made the Emperor preserve for the World by that Peace 1 Hundred 68 Thousand 9 Hundred and 60 Millions of Pounds Sterling But leaving so exorbitant a Sum for the disposition and Assets of Dego's Will and raillery apart accounting the lives of the hundreds of thousands slain in Germany on the Score of the Excommunication of Princes and Emperors as I have in p. 68 mentioned out of Erastus and suitably enough to Historical truth to have been valuable to the Empire at but half of 80 l. each it may well be supposed that it was a very vast Treasure that Germany hath lost by its Wars and preserved by its said Peace Yet is there one way assignable from which it may be deduced that the value of what the Emperor preserved was as much really too short as from the Panegyrists account it appeared extravagant and that is this viz. The Emperor by that Peace having kept so many from afterward destroying their own Souls by destroying others Bodies may be truly said to have preserved what was invaluable we know who having judged it that there is no proportion between the wealth of the whole World and one Soul. And now having by the deduction of the great Fact proved the Practicableness of the happy continuance of the luscious blessings of Peace and Unity of affections among Princes and their Subjects of different Religions I shall here in the Close of the Consideration of the same entertain the Reader with this last pleasant agreeable Scene of it which Scene will represent to him the fair Church
Government admitted only to probation for three years and were no more hindered of the freedom of a Gentlemans Conversation thereby then by the Government of the foremention'd Presbyter Iohn in the East and England was then not only free from the charge of Peter-pence Legatine levys oblations contributions for the Holy Land and both charge and trouble from all the Papal Courts and Masses Anniversaries obits requiems dirges placebos Trentals lamps but from all contumacy fees in spiritual Courts and from those Courts themselves of which yet the yoke is very easie compared with either that of the Papists or Scotch Presbyters and our condition as to ecclesiastical discipline was like that time or conjuncture of liberty that Father Paul in the History of the Councel of Trent refers to speaking of the time when a certain custome prevailed saith il che come e un uso molto proprio diove si governa in liberta quale era all hora quando il mondo era senza Papa That it was a custome very proper where they governed with liberry which was when the world was without a Pope I never heard of any man that was gored with the horn of our Presbyters excommunication nor of any dissenter from them that was tyed up for them out of their horn of plenty of Church power to force a drench of Doctrine down his throat and much less of any dealt with in that way mentioned by Spotswood in his Observation that the Devil would not be feared but for his horn referring to the horning in Scotland that is the seisure of all a mans goods when the horn blew after he was excommunicated by the Presbytery There is no doubt but that some of the Divines of that persuasion were brib'd to it by an expectation of power to oppress when that the great Revenues of the Church were denied them And thus the Pope keeps his Guards in Rome only with the pay of priviledges but instead of their riding the People the Parliament rid them and with that caution as they of old did who rid on Elephants in battel which great animal being observed to be then unruely sometimes and to endanger both the riders and their camp and it being known that their receiving a Conâ—usion in one part about their head would presently dispatch them their riders had alwaies a hammer with them ready for that use on occasion He therefore that saith he loves popery better then the Government of Presbytery as it was de facto setled or rather permitted in England and when they that would have its maypole for them to dance about had it and those that would have none had none saith that he loves a fiery and tormenting furious Church-Government that would make Mount Sion to be still belching out fire like Aetna better then none at all that he loves a Hirricane better then being a while becalm'd that he loves the Church government that was like coloquintida in the pot rather then that of the Presbyter which was here but like Herb Iohn and that he fears a Mastiff who was not only hambled and whose jus divinum was lawd and whose spleen was cut out by the State Chirurgeons more then an incensed hungry Lion of Rome that he likes a Government better that at best is like a Peacock that is all Gaudery and damned Noise and nothing else except pede latro that is all Ceremony and devouring all with ceremony then a Government that with its looks can neither allure nor fright and which we could pinion as we pleased and play with till we could get a better in its Room Whether a Papist was to be loved better then a Puritan was a vex'd question in the time of Queen Elizabeth and 't was resolved then in the affirmative only by the Pensioners of Rome and their dependants The Learned Author of the Book called Certain considerations tending to promote Peace and good will among Protestants doth in p. 13. quote our famous Gataker for relating that Dr. Elmor Lord Bishop of London in Queen Elizabeths time when one in a Sermon at St. Pauls Cross inveighing against Puritans rendred them worse then Papists sharply contradicted that censure saying that the Preacher said not right therein for that the Puritans if they had me among them would only cut my rochet but the Papists would cut my throat and that his Successor Dr. Vaughan Lord Bishop of London when another in the same Pulpit too shew'd the same eagerness in representing the Puritans worse then Papists expressed the same sense with his predecessor concerning it and wished that he had had the Preachers Tongue that day in his Pocket It was it seems then the good fortune of London to be blest with Bishops renown'd for their great zeal for the Protestant Religion and with such a one it is at this time enriched and dignified I will not say Bishop of it only by divine permission but miseratione divinâ the Style I have seen of Bishops in some antient Instruments 't is out of the Divine Compassion that such an eminent Protestant City has such a Prelate Nor do I intend by the just praise paid to this great and good man to lessen the worth of others of the Fathers of our Church of which number I have the honour to be acquainted with others who endeavour the extermination of Popery with as couragious a zeal as can be wisht and no doubt but the text of Scripture in the Title of my Lord Bishop of Lincolns book namely Come out of her my People lest ye be partakers of her Sins and Plagues is by the whole Church of England lookt on as a seasonable alarm and no doubt many of this our Church who have writ with so much various learning and strong Reason against Popery know that if that ever be de facto and by law paramount the Church of England will be ipso facto crusht thereby out of all its visibility The thought of this brings that Scripture to my mind viz. Matthew 21 v. 44. and who soever shall fall on this Stone shall be broken but on whom soever it shall fall it will grind him to powder And if the Church of England by only falling super hanc Petram I mean heretofore by the Empty Project of some for the Uniting Rome to us was broken and disjointed therefore if ever it shall come under the Stone of the Roman Catholick Religion and it be thereby made possible for the Stone to fall on it the Church of Rome will then grind it to powder It s former falling on the Rock could only break it into the pieces of Presbyterian and Independent and other seperate Churches but that Rocks falling on it will not break it into pieces but grind it to powder as was said and perhaps Papists then from this place of Scripture would form as good a title by divine right to crush our Church as they did from the super hanc Petram in the 16 th of
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
been likely to have done being disappointed as to their gratiae expectativae of the Lands of the Bishops had they been let loose to have depended on maintenance by Oblations in such Towns and Cities and where they would have probably tryed with a diversified Curse ye Meros to fly in the faces of Masters who would not feed them I have before said how the Parliament sweetned them into obedience by the luscious power of oppressing their fellow Subjects But neither by any Revenue adequate to those Impropriate Tithes nor by any such power of oppressing that prerogative of Devils to torment can it be imagined that a Popish Successor will ever be able to ensure the obedience of his Clergy to himself His Bishops and Dignitaries will be like the Popes Trent Titulars without a Title I mean one to a Dignity or Benefice and the burden of the Clerical Papists maintenance lying still on the laity will make Popery soon visibly grow weary oâ— it self I shall here take occasion to observe that Tithes were first called Impropriate by the sarcasm of the dislodged Monks who thought that the Tithes Appropriated for that was the Antient Law-term for them were improperly placed on Lay-men but both the present possessors and all that know that 't is necessary for England's being a Kingdom and no Province that its Riches accruing by the number of its Inhabitants and by improvement of its Soil should keep its weight in the Balance of Christendom especially considering the growth of France will for ever think it very improper that so much of its Land and Wealth and Populousness should be sacrificed to Religious Idlers and that according to Bishop Sanderson's account almost half of the Land should be turn'd into Franks for Boares or as I may say Sties for such as are Epicuri de grege Porci or such as were call'd Barnevelts Hoggs he having called the Monkish Herd by that name of whom if any angers one they all rise against him and if he pleaseth them all there is nothing to be got but Bristles That Herd was not a little molested as Mr. Fox tells us by a private Gentleman one Mr. Simon Fish in the Year 1527. who writ a little Book called The supplication of Beggars addrest to the King and it had the honour to reach his Eyes and to be lodged in his Bosom three or four days and to bring its Author to be embraced by the King and to have long discourse with him as Mr. Fox affirms who Prints that Book wherein the Author with much laboured curiosity attaques the Revenue of the Monks with Arithmetick a Science necessary for the strengthening of Political no less Military Discipline He saith there in the beginning That the multitude of Lepers and other sick People and Poor was so encreased that all the Alms of the Realm sufficed not to keep them from dying for hunger And that this happened from counterfeit holy Beggers and Vagabonds being so much encreased These saith he are not the Herds but Wolfes c. Who have got into their hands more then the third part of your Realm The goodliest Lordships and Mannors are theirs Beside this he sets forth that They have Tithes Oblations Mortuaries c. And he therein saith That there being in England 52000 Parishes and Ten Housholds in every Parish and five hundred and twenty Thousand Housholds in all and every of the five Orders of Fryers receiving a peny a quarter that is Twenty Pence in all yearly from every one of these Housholds the Total Sum was 430333 l. 6 s. 8 d. Sterling He further sets forth That the Fryars being not the four hundredth Person of the Realm had yet half its profits There were in that little Book many things so pungent and so confirm'd by Calculation that the Clergy put no meaner a Person then Sir Thomas More on the answering it in Print and it occasion'd the Bishop of London's publishing an Edict to call in that little Book and the English New Testament and many Books writ against the excesses of the Priests Well therefore might Sir Thomas More be favour'd with a License to read Heretical Books when he was to be at the fatigue of answering them Sir Thomas in his Answer to it makes a just exception to Mr. Fish's estimate of the number of Parishes in the Realm But admitting there were then Ten Thousand Parishes in England and about Forty Houses in one Parish with another in the Country beside what were in great Towns and Cities he might modestly Calculate 520000 Housholds in all Nor is it to be much wondered at That a private Gentleman should err in the excess of the number of the Parishes when we are told in Cotton's Collections That in the 45 of E. 3. The Lords and Commons in Parliament granting the King a Subsidy of 50000 l. at the rate of 22 s. 4 d. for each Parish they estimated the Parishes then near that number but were afterward inform'd by the Lord Chancellour that by returns made into the Chancery on Commissions of Enquiry it was found there were not so many Parishes in the Realm It had been very acceptable to those who in this Age take their Political measures of the power and growth of Kingdoms from Numbers if either Mr. Fish or Sir Thomas More who answered his Golden little Book as I may call it for his endeavours therein to fix matters relating to the Oeconomy of the Kingdom by Calculation and for his being a Columbus to discover rich Mines without going to America nor yet further then home or if any of our Monkish Historians or even our Polish'd and Ingenious ones and particularly My Lord Bacon and my Lord Herbert had given the World Rational estimates of the Numbers of the people of England in the times they writ of or particularly of the Numbers of the Males then between the Years of 16 and 60 for if they had done that as on the publick Musters made by occasion of Warlike preparations they might perhaps well have performed we might now easily by the help we have had from the Observator on the Bills of Mortality conclude what the entire Number of the People then was and might likewise have better agreed on a stated Rule of the Period of Nations doubling a Curiosity in knowledge not unworthy the Genius of an Inquisitive or Philosophical States-man and which presents to his View as in a Glass the Anatocisme of the faetus populi resembling the Interest upon Interest of Money as for Example when we see that one pound in Seventy years the Age of a Man is at 10 per cent encreased to a Thousand But it is our misfortune that through the aforesaid omission of our Historians we are not so much illuminated about the encrease of the English Nation as we are about the gradual multiplication of the People of Rome so many hundred years ago And indeed by the help of the Writers of other European Countries we are
Oxford Antiquities said to be Dr. Bate the late Eminent Physitian in p. 49 estimates That the Revenues of King Queen Bishops Deans and Chapters and Delinquents in the hands of those Vsurpers were almost one Moiety of the Kingdom besides many rich Offices c and as to the multiplicity of Offices then a very ingenious Pamphlet written in those days call'd the City Alarum with a Treatise of the Excise mentions in p. 33. That 't was easie to demonstrate that more then 200,000 l. per Annum was then consumed by superfluous Officers which by the way sufficiently shews the ill Managery of the publick Treasure in those days and tho I have put the rate of the Heirs of such above that of common Inexperts yet I am not without hopes that possibly some what like a sort of Experience that many of those Heirs have from the latest Histories and Traditional Accounts had of the breath of the People having blown away that mighty Ballance of Land out of the hands of the unjust Possâ—ssors and all their Models of Government built thereon and of many of their Ancestors who had by their Swords acquired ample shares of the Spoyles of the Crown and Church and Cavaliers Estates growing ashamed of their unjust Victories and the Yoke they have brought upon themselves and the Kingdom and affraid of their Estates and Liberties not being ensureable under a fluctuating Military Oligarchy thought it the best of their Game to aspire with their All to the feet of their Lawful Soveraign and to be his Restorers without Capitulation may incline a considerable part of such and who are not desperate in their Fortunes and have perhaps inherited the Blessiing of their Ancestors penitence by their Peaceable Morals to make such an exception in this case as may confirm the Rule and make them according to the expression before used become sound parts of the State. Another momentous thing cannot but be obvious to the thoughts of the Considerate among them and all Orders or Parties of men here that if the devesting the unjust Proprietors of about half the Land of England by the necessary Course of the Law at the Kings Restoration did in making so many persons and their dependants Paupers and useless in the improvement of the Land and many to be Nusances in it as troublesome Sollicitors and Barrettors and many likewise to withdraw to our Forraign Plantations and to our insula Sanctorum call'd Ireland unavoidably make the price of our Land sink to the proportion it hath since done that if any Sons of Belial and disloyal persons should be ever able by a new Commotion to introduce the old Confusions among us and dispossess the Proprietors of about half our Land as formerly that England it self would turn Ireland and our Land perhaps be valuable but at ten years purchase And tho the Experts now in being among us are comparatively few yet is the work of the Loyal part of them so easie to demonstrate to their Vicinage every where the dreadful inconvenience of essaying to mend the World by War that one Harvy could not more easily among the judicious propagate a general Notion of the Circulation of the Blood then may a thousand of these shew to Millions of others the impious folly of Blood guiltiness again incircling our Land and especially when all our Blood and our Treasure is necessary to be preserved for the Defence of the Realm in a Conjuncture that hath put Christendom in procinctu and therefore 't is but according to the Course of Nature that in such a season the generality of Peoples minds here should manifest such an Abhorrence of both the Irish and English in 41 and that the Religion-Trade which had us at its feet being now at ours if it should again struggle to get uppermost as formerly is to expect from so many to find the salute of the rising blow And as I love to think of these things without asperity or offering the least Violence to the Sacredness of the great Established Amnesty so do I observe the same inclination to be very prevalent among the weightier persons of the several Parties The smalness of the Number of Persons now living that wanted that Amnesty makes men generally concur in not esteeming it taâ—ti to wish it broken but tho most of our former Empirical State-Physicians are covered with Earth their Errors are not and People seem generally sensible that both the present and in likelyhood the future State of England will not allow of Political Physicians trying more Experiments on us and particularly the former churlish ones that succeeded ill and especially in a Conjuncture when nature is by necessity leading us to a Convalescence As in Boccalines Politick Touch-stone Where the Monarchy of Spain is represented throwing her Physician out of the Window and Apollo desiring to know the Cause of it she told him how about 40 years ago she asking Counsel of her Physician he prescribed her a tedious and chargeable Purge of divers Oyls of Holy Leagues of Insurrections of People of Rebellions of Cauteries and other very painful Medicines that had wasted and weakened her spirits and that he prescribing just such another Purge as before was therefore thrown out at Window so would such Purges and such Purgers as we were troubled with forty years ago be here deservedly dealt with now How ridiculous will any Demagogue now appear that should in an English Parliament harangue it against supplying the King in such a manner as Sir Iohn Elliot and Mr. Pym did 4 to Caroli who then as Rushworth's Collections tells us moved in the House of Commons not to yield the King Tunnage and Poundage till they had first settled Religion touching the Points of Ariminianism They might as well have moved that the King might have no Money till they had found out the Longitude and likewise discovered the Quadrature of the Circle and they by that motion would have ensured to him the name of Pochi-Dinari that my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th says was given to Maximilian the Emperor for his famed want of Money But that wantonness of Popularity did shew the worse in those two great Demagogues of their Age for the ingratitude it carried with it they moving so in the House of Commons as they did so soon after the great Royal Concessions as to the Petition of Right and might well excuse the Great Earl of Strafford's then quitting their Company But I shall here observe to your Lordship that after the discovery of the Gun-powder Treason viz. 3 Iacobi the Parliament gave him three Subsidies and six Fifteenths and Tenths of the Layety and four Subsidies of the Clergy all which by estimation amounted to 453000 l. and it was but just in them then so to supply the Crown after the detection of that Conspiracy because it appeared by several Examinations That if it had taken effect an Association of Forraign Roman Catholick Princes by a Solemn Oath
ten times as many Females as in London that one half of this proportion of the London Crape-wearers may wear Crape in the Country viz. half a Million in all It may be supposed therefore that the Crape-wearers one with another wearing ten yards a piece that five Millions of Yards of Crape may be yearly worn in England and Wales and that one pound of Wooll making fifteen yards of Crape will occasion the Consumption of a third part of a Million of Pounds weight of Wooll per Annum viz. 333000 and 333 pounds weight of Wooll which accounting fine Wooll such as makes Crape to be worth one Shilling per Pound amounts to 16000 l. Sterling The labour of the People in Manufacturing the same amounts to about thirty times as much as the Wooll viz. half a Million of Pounds Sterling and this yearly gain England cannot miss of while the Women of the Court continue the fashion of wearing Crape whom the Women of the City and Country will imitate in their garb If any shall think that the allowance of 10 yards to be yearly worn by each Female Crape-wearer may seem too much he may consider that some Crape used by men about their Apparel and the great quantity thereof employed in shrouding the Dead pursuant to the late Act and which but for the invention and use of the Manufacture of Crape perhaps would not have been effectually put in Execution may probably incline him to be of an opinion that England gains more vastly by this new Manufacture of Crape then I have supposed The ridiculing humour of so many in the Age may perhaps move them to think observations of this kind to be unimportant But if any shall take a Prospect of the substantial and great wisdom of our Ancestors in our Statute-Book he may find there 11 Acts of Parliament about Thrums and Yarn and many about Fustians and 26 about Worsted and Worsted-Weavers and another Statute of Pouledavis but there is that of moment in my Account relating to England's Gain from Crape that after 145 Statutes made to advance our Wooll and Drapery and Dyers and our Woollen Manufactures so much decayed in spight of them all this seeming poor little thing hath without any Act of Parliament enriched us And many are the Foundations of Manufactures laid in our Country Cities and daily growing since the time that Dr. Williams Arch-Bishop of York in his Speech in the Parliament of 1640. in defence of the Bishops Votes observed that Tapsters Brewers Inn-keepers Taylors and Shoo-makers do integrate and make up the body of our Country Cities and Incorporations And tho the Northern Heretics are crasso sub aere nati yet have they as was said compensative Advantages from nature and as if nature meant them more then others for Lords of the Sea and Navigation the Pole of the Magnet which seateth it self North hath been observed to be always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes and the Magnetical Virtue impressed on the Earth is there more strong likewise I mean on the Church Land seized on from the Papal Idlers and Burthens of that Earth to support the necessary defence of the State and therefore will necessarily attract mens Iron and their understandings with Justice to keep it Dr. Heylin in his Geography in Folio tells us that 't is not so much the Authority of Calvin or the Malignant Zeal of Beza or the impetuous Clamors of their Disciples which made the Episcopal Order to grow out of Credit as the Avarice of some great Persons in Court and State who greedily gaped after the poor Remnant of their Possessions But tho nothing like an over-Balance of the Clergy in the wealth of the Kingdom ought to have sunk that Order and its Revenue in England where perhaps ten times as much is spent either on the Law or on Physick as is on the Clergy it need not be wondered at that in those Countries of the North where they are continually standing to their Arms at least of defence and Calculating their Provision for War that the Lutheran Princes as Heylin saith have divided the Episcopal Function from its Revenue assuming to themselves much of the latter and sometime giving part thereof to their Nobility with the Title of Administrators of such a Bishoprick and of super-intendent to those who have there the Pastoral Solicitude and with some proportion of the Revenue for their maintenance not much exceeding what is usually received by Calvinist Ministers And if my Lord Primate Bramhal may pass for a good Casuistical Judge of the Law of God who in p. 39. of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of an excessive Revenue of the Clergy and their over-balancing the Layety saith And if the excess be so exorbitant that it is absolutely and evidently destructive to the Constitution of the Common-wealth it is lawful upon some Conditions and Cautions not necessary to be here inserted to prune the superfluous Branches and to reduce them to a right temper and aequilibrium for the preservation and well being of the whole Body Politick and if any Credit ought to be given to the Account of Cardinal Pool shewed to me within these few hours relating to the over-Balance of the old Ecclesiastick Revenue here after he had used all his own diligence and that of others to prepare a Calculation of the same for the Pope and had sent 3 Reams of Paper of this to the Pope that are now in his Archives and had acquainted the Pope therein That it was visible that had not the Church here fallen into the Shipwrack of its Revenues the Ecclesiasticks had here in a short time insensibly rendred themselves Lords of the whole Kingdom and that there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England than in France which exceeds England by two thirds both in Lands and Numbers of People we may very well conclude that had any accidental force in Queen Mary's time renversed the alienation of the Church Lands that force would not have long continued and should any as wild Imaginers may suppose happen for the future here or perhaps in other Kingdoms of the North those Lands would soon appear to all to have such a Magnetical Vertue as is in the Globe of the Earth whereby as to its natural points it disposeth it self to the Poles being so framed and ordered to those points that those parts which are now at the Poles would not naturally abide under the Aequator nor Green-land remain in the place of Magellanica and thus it may be said that if the whole Earth were violently removed it would not forsake its Primitive Points nor pitch in the East or West but very soon return to its Polary position again and resemblingly in any new forced over-balance of those Church Lands the very dull Earth's Animus revertendi to the just libration of States and Kingdoms would soon be apparent and neither the Popes moving the Earth or even