a truth that it is plainly ratified by the unanimous consent of all mankind Nay when a man has demonstrated its certainty from that unavoidable influence that Religion alwayes has upon the peace of Kingdomes and the interests of Government and from those intolerable mischiefs that must follow upon its exemption from the Civil Power from the natural tendency of Enthusiasm and Superstition to publick disturbance from the boldness and insolence of Fanatique Zeal from the nature and original of Government from the practice and prescription of all Ages and from all the topicks of Reason and Experience and when he has stated and confined its exercise within easie and discernable bounds and has prevented all cavils and pretences of dislike unless only such as dash as fiercely upon the very foundations of all Civil as well as Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction After all this pains is it not a sad thing to see all blown up with meer confidence and presumption and if a bold man will but say Tush 't is false without any proof or reason for his dislike away it all flys in fumo I have insisted the longer upon this because as it is the Grand Thesis of my Books so it is the first Essay of your courage that by this first Specimen of your Wit the World may take a true scantling of your parts and abilities But having thus nimbly dispatch'd this general Thesis you proceed to your particular Exceptions where you summ up your Charge in Six Heads which you sometimes entitle Playes sometimes Hypotheses sometimes Aphorisms and why not Plots and Scenes and Walks and under-walks c The first is the Unlimited Magistrate or as you eloquently express it pag. 246. his unhoopable Jurisdiction A Metaphor taken from a Tub I suppose because you find Power in your Book of Apothegms compared to liquor for a certain Reason known to every body though no body has exprest it so happily as your self viz. because if it be infinitely diffused or extended it becomes impotency even as a streight line continued grows a circle I will leave it to the Mathematicians to consider how it is possible for a streight line to become a circle by being infinitely streight But however for this reason it is necessary to hoop up the Authority of Princes lest they too soon weaken themselves by too great a leakage of their Power so that methinks according to your notion there is nothing so patly emblematical of Soveraign Princes as Dufoy in his Tub or a Pig under a washbole and if you would define them suitably to the conceit they are nothing else but so many vessels of Authority some Kinderkins some Hogsheads and some Tuns according to the circuit or hoop of their Government Though as you and your Puritan Coopers or as Mar-prelate words it Tub-trimmers have been pleased to contract their Power all the Empire in the world might easily be contained in a pipkin or a quart pot and he would pay dear for it that should purchase the Kings Supremacy at the price of a jug of Ale For when you have once exempted Conscience out of the circle of humane Laws the greatest and most absolute Monarchs upon earth will be reduced to as scant a measure of Authority as your Mock-kings of Brentford in that there is nothing in humane nature directly liable to their Obligation but only Conscience and therefore if that must be let loose from the commands of Superiours nothing else can bind them So wretchedly are such bunglers as you wont to talk that only suck in and then pour out your phrases by rote and at random and because some of the Ancients have sometimes discoursed of Conscience in Metaphorical and loose expressions as they do of all things else calling it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Domestick God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Guardian Angel c. you must by all means take them in the literal sense and discourse of Conscience as if it were some little Spirit or Puppet Intelligence within you distinct from your selves so that though you are His Majesties most humble and loyal Subjects yet as for your dear and tender Consciences you must have them excused by the Laws of Hospitality that is to say you owe him Obedience in all things excepting only those in which he does or can require it for wherever the man is bound to obey his Conscience and only that is bound to obey it being the only principle in him that is capable of Obligation and therefore if that be absolved from all engagements of Allegiance and all tyes of Duty the case is plain the whole man is at perfect Liberty And all Subjects may huff and rant it to their Princes teeth as well as your proud Almanzor Obey'd as Soveraign by thy Subjects be But know that I alone am King of me You see then there is no remedy but Conscience you must submit to the Jurisdiction of your Prince if you will submit your selves Yes but you would not have it unlimited and unhoopable as I have stated it But Sir give me leave to tell you that though it should be unlimited it does not at all follow that it would be unhoopable because it would be as you inform us like a streight line continued into a circle Now I will maintain it against all the Mathematicians in Europe Asia and Africa and the Terra Incognita of Geneva too you must bear with me for in some cases I cannot avoid this confidence that all circles as well as all other figures how big soever are hoopable things But for all my jesting my own words are upon Record where I have vested every Supreme Magistrate with an universal and unlimited Power and uncontroulable in the Government of Religion that is to say say you over mens Consciences and that is to say say I that some mens Consciences are concern'd in nothing but matters of Religion Well seeing you are content to give Macedo for a finisht and burnisht piece of modesty now then welfare J. O. for a modest thing for he had the Grace to load me with this Calumny before you but then he had the Grace to take his Answer too And it is possible though it is scarce credible that he might stumble into such an horrid mistake through haste and inadvertency for you know he alwayes writes post But what a Coloss of Brass are you that after I have given him such humbling and convictive rebuke for it persist so obstinately in the very same tract of forgery and falsification The Answer I gave him was easie enough for your understanding as meek as it is viz. That in that Paragraph where I asserted the Supreme Government of every Common-wealth to be Universal Absolute and Uncontroulable in all affairs whatsoever that concern the Interests of mankind and the ends of Government it was only in opposition to the pretences of a distinct Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction here on earth For having first asserted the
of the minds of men from the Jurisdiction of Humane Power and so to confine their Government to the Empire of mere Conscience Now from this assertion that our secret thoughts are subject to Conscience only to infer that Conscience has no Power but only over our secret thoughts is a conclusion too absurd for you to make either in good earnest or through mere mistake This is your Answer if you are not satisfied with it you know my mind and my weapon Your last and lowdest hoop and hola is at my Censure of the Clause in the Act of Parliament quinto Eliz. and you make every where an horrid noise about it and I am consident you have in more than twenty places of your Book rended your throat against this presumption But be that as it will the aspersion you would fasten upon me from it is so silly that I am not at all concern'd to wipe it off however I have discoursed enough already to satisfie nay almost to surfeit any reasonable man and if that will not suffice you I am resolved I will not be impertinent to gratifie your Clownishness I will only challenge you and all your party of mankind to maintain That whoever enacts a Law with this Proviso that it shall not bind in Conscience enacts no Law For if it does not oblige that it obliges nothing Whether therefore the Clause were added by Cecil or by the Parliament I am not concern'd and though you should throw in the Queen and Convocation and all I care not I must and will declare they were all miserably out in their Divinity And as for what you intimate that I have endeavour'd to prove a whole Parliament Coxcombs that is Language rough enough for your Mouth For I express'd my self modestly enough and though I observed how manifestly through this mistake they abated the obligation of the whole Law yet I hope it is no Crime against the Privilege of any Protestant Parliament to suppose it fallible in any speculation of Divinity I know their meaning was that they did not intend to enjoyn that Fast upon a Religious Account but that was their Mistake in that all Laws Civil as well as Ecclesiastical equally oblige the Conscience so that no Law-giver can make a Law with an intention not to oblige that and though he do it is in vain in that his Laws are bound upon it by virtue of the Divine Command and not his own But they were then so amused and confounded by the Clamours of the Papists on one hand that Conscience was only subject to the Church and by the Puritans on the other that it is only subject to God that they durst scarce own the proper Obligation of their own Laws and so through mere Modesty clapt in this blind Proviso And now as for all these goodly slanders when they were first vented by J. O. they were little more than an unkindness to my single self and though it argued a fair deal of Considence in that precious man to load me so briskly with so many so great and so ungrounded Calumnies yet it was a sign that he had some little sense of humanity left that he could desist when his forgeries were so laid open as to leave the Rat no Craney of excuse or evasion But after such an ample discovery of his wretched Cheats and Leasings for you to stand in them with such a Brazen Brow is a palpable Affront both to the understanding and ingenuity of Mankind What soft and changeling sots must you suppose the people of England to be imposed upon and born down by such wrank and bold faced Impostures Did they all walk with their Legs scambling in and their hands dangling down you could not have more presumed upon their silliness than you have by going about to abuse their Credulity with such shameless and unpalliable Lyes The Title of your next Comedy is the Publick Conscience I suppose in imitation of the Publick Faith And here all your Plot too is borrowed from J. O. and the great subtilty of it lies no deeper than only in representing what I have determined in the Case of a doubting scrupulous and unsatisfied Conscience as if I had intended it of Conscience in general in all matters and as to all events This is pretty well for Legerdemain and cleaverly enough performed and the People have swallowed it with a glib and round Assurance that I have exhorted them to disgorge their Consciences instead of their Scruples and to renounce all Obligations of Vertue and Religion but what are tied upon them by the Laws of the Common-wealth and to know no other Rule or Measure of their Duty but the will and Pleasure of their Prince and when once the outcry is taken 't is to no purpose for me to plead that this is the very Divinity of the Leviathan that I have labour'd to oppose with greater Zeal and Vehemence than I have modern Orthodoxy and Fanaticism it self so as to prove and that I am confident past all Contradiction that those men who profess to own no obligations of Conscience but what are laid upon them by the Commands of their Governours own none at all and that without a sense of Duty to God it is impossible to bring any subject under a sense of Loyalty to his Prince But whoop and hola what is that to them if I contradict my self Now what should a modest man do in this case should I betake my self to your refuge of Dulness that when you have nothing else to reply appeal to the day of Judgment That indeed is a Trial I hope hereafter to stand by and it is comfort enough to support an upright man that then at least his integrity shall be for ever clear'd but alas I have too tender a sense of my present Reputation among good men to be willing that so great a Blot were there any way to wipe it off should lye so long upon my Innocence And therefore Sir you must pardon me for once if I dispense with a point of friendship and leave your credit at pawn to redeem my own For after you have given in this heinous Charge against me it is not in my power to salve both our Reputations If I am guilty I do confess it I am a very Secret one if I am not I will be so civil as to give you the Choice of your own Title The case then is plainly this that next to the Paganism of Symbolical and the Popery of Latine Ceremonies the two grand Pretences or rather excuses of Non-conformity are Scandal and an unsatisfied Conscience The first is the shelter of their Leaders who being at length ashamed of those Scruples and little Principles that scare the People though they themselves at first set them up to fray them away from the Communion of the Church of England pretend now to comply with them only out of good Nature and Condescension For they would not by any means be thought
Accession from the Publique So that had you this or any other honest way of livelihood it might stop your mouth from bawling perpetually for the seisure of Church Revenues only in hopes of creeping into some small Office at the division of the Prey for I am apt to believe though all that know you know so ill of you that they will take it for a very strein of Candour and Courtship that all your rudeness to the Church does not proceed from meer malice to that and revenge upon the Dignitary Want will put any man that delights in Gaming out of humour but of all discontents there is nothing so peevish and so clamorous as when pride and poverty meet together in the same Gamester But that which seems to strike the greatest damp upon your mind and of which you make the oftenest complaints is that I talk so much of Pillories Whipping-posts Galleys Rods and Axes that is to say the Podâ—strabae the Tilethrae the Otagrae the Rhinolabides and the Cheilostrophia these are villainous Engines indeed but take heart Numps here is not a word of the Stocks and you since the Act of Indemnity is past and sure need never stand in awe of any more honourable Correction however suppose the worst you have read Seneca and Epictetus And what though your worth should sometime or other prefer you to the Pillory and that is not impossible yet it is no very painful Engine and Philosophers can endure any thing but smart it is only intended to make men look a little simply and put them out of countenance awhile but for confidence let you alone And now having thus far followed your dance it is time I hope to advance to serious Counsels You cry out of persecution So did Hugh Peters and so did Venner and so might all Malefactors when brought to Justice but that most of them are more modest than the most of you This is but seizing upon words and forcing them to sound or signifie any thing to your own purpose But unless all execution of Laws upon offenders deserve this hard name it is not enough for you to complain you are persecuted when you are only punish'd It is the cause that makes the only difference and you ought first to make out the iniquity of the Laws and to make good your obligation to disobedience before you can set up this out cry But to this you reply that you suffer for Conscience for Conscience what is that but that you would take advantage of it and report that I affirm there is no such thing as Conscience I would say it is for nothing For Conscience it self is an indeterminate thing and has no more certain signification than the clinking of a Bell and that is as every man fancies And though you are wont to discourse of it as though it were an infallible Oracle in your breasts or a Pope in your bellies yet had you but skill enough to anatomize your selves you would find nothing there beside Lights and Liver and Stomach and Guts and perhaps a deceitful heart for in the heart the Jews seated it of old though the Cartesian Philosophy has of late pearch'd it up into the Glandula Pinealis But wherever it resides it is not any principle of action distinct from the man himself being the very same individual thing with the mind soul and understanding so that there is no other real difference between a man and his Conscience than between a man and his mind or rather between a man and himself And therefore when you make such an heavy ditty about your being persecuted for your Conscience sake the result of it is that you are persecuted for your mind sake or suffer only because you have a mind to suffer For whatever Conscience is this is certain that it is neither the rule nor the reason of its own Actions but it is bound to guide and govern it self and all its determinations by the measures and prescriptions of its duty and that only can warrant either the wisdome or the innocence of its proccedings And therefore in any case to plead only Conscience for any action without specifying some particular Principle upon which it grounds it self and its dictate is in effect to plead any thing or rather nothing For without some certain direction distinct from it self it may signifie any thing what you please or if you please nothing And it may as well be call'd Pride Ignorance Passion Humour Peevishness Melancholy Rudeness Frenzy and Superstition as Conscience for whenever a mans mind is possest or abused with any of these unhappy Passions that to him is his Conscience And therefore if ever you intend to make out the justice of your Cause or the equity of your Grievances you must give over this hovering and uncertain pretence of Conscience in general and betake your selves to some more distinct and particular pleas and that is to appeal to the adequate rule and measure of humane actions and that is to all divine and humane Laws and if from either of these you can plead any express warrant to excuse your disobedience to the Constitutions of the Church in Gods Name plead it and then but not till then it will appear that you indeed suffer for the Cause of a good Conscience But if you have none then the case is plain that you suffer for nothing And yet it is as plain that you have not any other imaginable ground or pretext of reason to justisie your peevishness to the Ecclesiastical Laws beside the indisputable pleasure of your own proud and imperious minds for you are run off of all your old Cavils and know not what you would have beyond the satisfaction of crossing the Commands of Royal Authority For as for all your general clamours against the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction of Princes that they invade Gods Royalty lay waste the Consciences of men usurp upon their Christian Liberties first they signifie no more than the general plea of Conscience that whenever Superiours impose any Commands upon Subjects that they have no mind or stomach to obey they then entrench upon Gods Supremacy as the only Lord of Conscience and then it subverts all Government and cancels all Humane Laws in that they neither do nor can pass any Obligation upon any Subjects but only as they are bound upon their Consciences and lastly they will never stand to this themselves when they are urged with those horrid mischiefs that must perpetually overtake the Government if the plea be once admitted in general terms and without exception This then being quitted the Magistrate may and sometimes must restrain men in their pretences or perswasion of Religion without seating himself in Gods Throne or invading their Subjects Consciences or offering violence to their Christian Liberties And then have they nothing to pretend in their own excuse but the unlawfulness of the particular Commands themselves and this brings them to a sweet pass when they are kept to it
all my Writings to name but one good Quality that you possess that I have not granted you or one bad one that you disclaim and I have unjustly charged upon you and I will be content to suffer all the Engines of Clergy mens Cruelty the Pillorie the Whipping posts the Galleys the Rods the Axes and the Rhinolabides nay what is a more desperate Penance than all this I have stipulated to write a Panegyrick in praise of the Good Nature of the Presbyterians and the Sincerity of the Independants and I think it would puzzle the Wit of Mankind to invent a severer Penalty unless it were to write another in Commendation of your Wit and Learning But whilst you continue this out-cry against me only in general Terms without being able to produce particular Articles to vouch and justifie it you prove nothing but your want of breeding and better Arguments and the Calumny when you cannot drive it home recoils upon your own Heads He that charges another of an uncivil Crime when he cannot make it good indites himself And yet perhaps in spite of my Integrity I may have been too zealous for my King and Countrey Plain-dealing is too rough a Vertue for this false and self-designing Age. But be that as it will and as for the decency of the manner of my treating you when I have said all I can and I have said too much already I must leave it to the Judgment of the World I am now only concern'd to vindicate the matter of my discourses against you and here I have laid open your jugling so plainly that 't is a Reproach to Mankind that you should still persevere so immodestly in the same Impostures This is no bragging no man that had any consisistency in his Skull could have perform'd less in so plain and palpable a Case For what can be more notorious than that 1. When you exempt your Consciences from the jurisdiction of your Prince you exempt your selves both in that a man and his Conscience are one and the same thing and in that he is not capable of any obligation of Laws but purely by vertue of his Conscience 2. When you exempt matters of Religion from the same Power you in effect exempt all things there being nothing of any considerable weight or concernment in humane affairs that is not matter of Religion and much more so than those things that you contend about and this dashes in pieces all your general pleas But then 3. As for your particular pleas of Scandal and an unsatisfied Conscience and unscriptural Ceremonies c. what can be more evident than 1. That they are precarious and depend purely upon your own humours 2. That they are unavoidable in all Churches and all Constitutions in the world 3. That they are so unreasonable as that they may be adapted or applyed to subvert all Government in the Church as well as ours even your own And if after all this you will not learn to be quiet and peaceable you will first or last thank your selves for something that must follow and then your being big with conscience will not serve to reprieve you You are ferreted out of all your subterfuges and they are laid open to the view and scorn of all men And you have now nothing left to shelter your selves but only by slandering your Adversaries and perswading the people for you presume strangely upon their ignorance and stupidity that whilst we assert His Majesties Ecclesiastical Supremacy we invest him with an unhoopable Jurisdiction which being so bold and rank a forgery it is to all intelligent men i. e. all such as can either read or understand an ample demonstration of a desperate and baffled Cause But by the way how is this consistent with what you as often suggest that my design was to write against the Power of the King and to animate the People against the exercise of his Ecclesiastical Supremacy Are you not sufficiently furnished with informations against any man that can in the same indictment charge him for plotting and attempting at the same time to assert the unlimited Power of Kings and yet to allow them none at all certainly between two such wide extremes a man can never want for materials to make out an impeachment But how have I animated the People against the exercise of His Majesties Supremacy How have I not written expresly against his Indulgence to tender Consciences Not one syllable you know well enough I have only beat down and witnessed against your demands of Indulgence when you challenge it from the King by vertue of your Natural and Religious Rights and charge him as a Tyrant towards his Subjects and a Rebel against God if he presume to claim or pretend to any Jurisdiction over your Consciences or Religious Pretences the insolence of this kind of talk was not to be endured and therefore it was that I set my self to clear and defend His Majesties Supremacy against such plain and yet to the Rout plausible Principles of Anarchy and Confusion But I was no where so presumptuous as to censure or condemn the measures he has taken of his Government pardon me Sir for that we of the Bran of the Church of England have modesty enough to submit to the wisdome of our Superiours when ever they are pleased to declare their will and pleasure And whatever may be my own private Opinion neither I nor any other good Subject shall ever go about to confront it to the publique Declarations of the State so that as long as the Government shall think good to grant you Indulgence assure your self whatever you simply surmise I shall never trouble them with Remonstrances They understand the turns and junctures of their own affairs and are the most competent Judges what methods are fittest to procure both their own and our quiet And though they should at any time mistake yet if there were no other tye of duty it is more eligible they should be complyed with than that their Government should be affronted and the Common-wealth disturbed by every man that thinks himself wiser than his Governours But Sir though we are so dutiful to His Majesty as to submit to his granting Indulgence if he apprehends it seasonable for his present Affairs and as for his power of dispensing with Laws by vertue of his Prerogative we have nothing to do with it by vertue of our Office it is a matter forreign to our Judicature and therefore it is not only manners but duty in us to leave it to our Governours to adjust such disputes among themselves But yet though we are so entirely submissive to our Prince yet assure your selves we shall never be so civil to you as to suffer you to challenge a right to it in spite of his Power and to extort it from him as he would not stand charged before God of Tyranny and Usurpation You see now the vast difference between opposing the Kings Power to give Indulgence
only shelter but abett their pride and insolence Those vices that meer moral Philosophy would banish humane conversation take shelter under the protection of zeal and those heats that bare reason would quench in humane nature are kindled at the Altars of Religion and they usually nourish this glowing coal in their bosoms till it burn out all their bowels of natural pity and compassion This is enough but yet it is not all for as their zeal is implacably fierce and bitter against all that oppose them so is it salvagely rude and censorious against all that are not as extravagantly mad raving as themselves aspersing men of a silent and composed piety with the odious names of hypocrites and Luke-warm Formalists and abhorring nothing more than the vertues of Christian meekness and discretion But if this be Religion then farewel all principles of humanity and good nature farewel that glory of Christianity an universal love and tenderness to mankind let us bid adieu to all the practices of charity let us renounce all pretences to the meekness and innocence of a Christian Spirit Let our B. Saviour be branded as the greatest Incendiary in the world let his Laws be cancell'd as arts and precepts of Sedition let us banish Religion humane converse as the mother of all rudeness and incivility and let us at last go to the school of Atheism and Impiety to learn good manners And yet all this is the unavoidable event of fixing peoples care and zeal upon this imaginary godliness call'd Grace as distinguish'd from all morality or the obligations of natural Religion in that whilest their minds are busied and satisfied with this phantastick nothing it appeases their Consciences in the neglect of their useful and material duties and prevents all endeavours of possessing them with serious and effectual Resolutions of vertue and true goodness I must beg your pardon if I have discoursed too warmly and copiously upon this Theme it is you see of very weighty Consequence both to the welfare of mankind here and their eternal salvation hereafter and upon this mistake meerly are founded all Abuses and Impostures of Religion whatsoever viz. when men fancy it to be some secret they know not what and therefore I here declare that I still adhere to my opinion with the seriousness of a dying man and that I shall be content to stand or fall for ever by my integrity in this belief But what can we think of you must you not be deeply concern'd in a matter of such sad and serious importance to whiff it all away with so childish a conceit as this that this is first to turn Grace into a meer fable and then to give the moral of it At least must we not suppose you profoundly learned to be so very fond of such a poor crawling fancy that were it not ridiculous for its sence would be unpardonable for its wit and yet you are so highly opinion'd of it that you have reserved it for the disert of your book and serve it in for the last jest to give a farewel to the whole entertainment One pregnant conceit I had almost overpass'd in hast give me but leave to record it and I have done viz. that I have made the passage to Heaven so easie that one may fly thither without Grace as Gonzales to the Moon only by the help of his Ganzas Now I would fain know what likeness there is between flying without Grace and with Ganzas do but make me out the wit of the similitude and I will cast you in the sence of the argument into the bargain The Plot or Hypothesis of the fourth Play is debauchery tolerated That is to say I have in some of my Books represented his Majesty this Declaration to issue out to all his Loving Subjects for the toleration of debauchery in opposition to that of the fifteenth of March for the indulgence of tender consciences Whereas ever since our happy Restauration we have out of our special zeal and care for the interest and security of the Church of England executed with all severity all penal Laws against whatsoever sort of Non-conformists and Recusants but yet finding by the sad experience of 12 years how ineffectual all forcible courses are either to reduce or restrain dissenters We think our self obliged to make use of that unhoopable Power that is naturally inherent in us not granted by Christ but belonging to us and our Predecessors under the broad Seal of Nature next and immediately before him By vertue whereof we have and claim an absolute dominion not only over the consciences of all our subjects but over all the Laws of God and man so as to repeal or dispense with their obligation as shall from time to time seem good to our Royal Will and Pleasure And therefore that we may obviate and prevent those mischiefs that are likely to befal our Kingdom from the sobriety and demureness of the Non-conformists our Will and Pleasure is to give a free and uncontroulable Licence to all manner of vice and debauchery and of our Princely Grace and Favour we release to all our Loving Subjects the obligation of the ten Commandments and all Laws of God and Statutes of this Realm whatsoever contrary to the contents of this our Declaration And we require of all Judges Justices and other Officers whatsoever that the execution of all manner of penalties annexed to the Laws aforesaid whether by Pillories Whipping-posts Gallies rods or axes c. be immediately suspended and they are hereby suspended From whence we hope by the Blessing of God to give some check and allay to the insolence of fanatick Spirits and by debauching our good people out of all tenderness of Conscience to free our Kingdoms from those great and grievous annoyances wherewith they perpetually disturb our Government and at last bring back all the advantages of peace and good-fellowship both to our Self and all our loving Subjects c. Such a Declaration as this had been a stabbing proof against me and home to your purpose But when you have exhibited so foul a charge without so much as referring to any passage of mine to make it good you prove nothing at all but that you have a bold face and a foul mouth For we all know you are not so unskilful at improving the smallest and most inconsiderable advantages that had you been furnish'd with any shadow of proof you would have smother'd it and therefore when you have produced none your Readers easily conclude that the only reason is because you know none Yes but however I have said as much as amounts to the same reckoning But what have you to do with my reckonings mind your own accounts and take care to ballance your expences with your incoms Assure your self I shall never trust you to be any of my Auditors for I find you are as ignorant in Computation as in Logick But yet that which amounts to this summ is this that it
great promises of Assistance and Supply and these being still diverted by endless Disputes about Liberties and Priviledges and bold demands to abate the Powers of the Crown he saw plainly as himself declares That they only made use of the necessities grown upon him by that War to inforce him to yield to Conditions incompatible with Monarchy So that despairing of any good from the Seditious Spirits of that Parliament he dissolves them And in the interval his necessities growing upon him by a new and sad disaster that had befallen his Unkle the King of Denmark He commands his Council to Advise by what means and wayes he might fitly and speedily be furnish'd with Monies suitable to the importance of the undertaking Hereupon after a Consultation of divers dayes together they came to this Resolution that the urgency of Affairs not admitting the way of Parliament the most speedy equal and convenient means were by a general Loan from the Subject according as every man was Assessed in the Rolls of the last Subsidy Upon this Result the King issues out his Declaration accordingly but assuring the People that this way to which he was forced by the urgency of his Occasions should not be made a Precedent for the time to come to charge Them or their Posterity to the prejudice of their Just and Ancient Liberties enjoyed under his most Noble Progenitors And promising them in the word of a Prince first to repay all such summs of Money as should be lent without fee or charge so soon as he shall be any wayes enabled thereunto And secondly that not one Penny so borrowed should be bestowed or expended but upon those publique and general Services wherein every of Them and the body of the Kingdom their Wives Children and Posterity have their personal and common Interest When the King and his Council had Voted the Loan they commanded Laud then Bishop of Bath and Wells to draw up certain Instructions to be communicated to the Arch-bishops Bishops and the rest of the Clergy of the Realm to stir up and exhort the People to express their Zeal to the true Religion their Duty to the King and their Love to their Countrey by a chearful complyance with his Majesties Commissions And in this was represented the Afflicted Condition of the Princes and States of the Reformed Religion in all parts of Christendom some being over-run some diverted and some disabled to give assistance The distress of his Unkle the King of Denmark the great danger of losing the Sound and thereby the Eastland and the Hamborough Trade the Confederacy of the Pope the House of Austria and the French King to root out the Protestant Religion the great Fleets both of France and Spain at that Instant endeavouring to block up Rochel together with their Land-forces on the Coast of Brittain ready to invade us And what more important Motives could have been press'd to perswade thePeople to a ready and chearful Contribution What more powerful and plausible Arguments could have been put into the mouths of the Clergy to win their Auditories to a dutiful Compliance both with his Majesties Desires and Necessities And this among other things brought forth Sibthorp's Sermon and the man did well and as became his Function to perswade the People that they ought in point of Conscience and Religion chearfully to submit to all such Taxes as were imposed upon them by Royal Authority without murmurs and disputes But if he intermedled as it is said he did with the Kings Absolute Power of imposing Taxes without Consent of Parliament according to the Laws and Constitutions of this Kingdom he went both beyond his own Commission and against the Kings Declaration For what had he to do in the Pulpit with the Rights of Sovereignty and the Priviledges of Parliament It was none of his business to adjust the disputes of his Superiours and he had no Authority either from God or the King to interpose in Affairs of State his Office was to recommend the Piety and the Necessity of their Contributions and though possibly they were not under any enforcements of Complyance by the Constitutions of this Realm yet to urge it upon their Consciences from the Common Principles and Obligations both of Nature and Christianity that could not but effectually enforce their complyance with so good a King in so pious and necessary a work But if he exceeded his Commission by taking upon him to teach the Laws of the Land and determine the Rights of the Prerogative though he cannot be justified yet he ought as circumstances then stood to be in a great measure excused because he did it at a time when the King could not in the usual Parliamentary method obtain sufficient supplyes to preserve his Honour and Safety but by Concessions shamefully contrary to both and that might provoke a warm man to lavish out beyond the bounds of prudence and discretion And as for Manwarings Case I need say little to it in that it was the very same with Sibthorps only it is observable that his Prosecution was carried on with all eagerness by such Members as Pym and Rous men that took advantage of such imprudences only to give countenance to their own clamours and confirm the jealousies they had blown into the People against the King by the indiscretion of a Countrey Vicar though if there were at that time any designs of absolute Government it was to be imputed to their Impudence for when they assaulted the Royal Power with their bold and unreasonable demands they forced it to stand upon its own guard and then it was none of the Kings fault if he were necessitated to act sometimes by vertue of his meer Prerogative because there was no other way left to preserve himself or his Government in that they had brought things to that pass that nothing must be done unless he would either grant away all his Power to them or keep it all to himself for they would not share the Sovereignty with a single Person and under pretence of priviledges of Parliament assumed the Royal Supremacy and as soon as they had Power and opportunity it is well known how confidently they put in practice the very same courses which they resisted as Acts of Arbitrary Government in the King so that if He were at any time to have recourse to extraparliamently proceedings it was not from his own choice or inclinations but purely from the rudeness and insolence of their demands which were so insufferable that the case was plain that he must sometimes govern without them or not govern at all And what is to be done in that case the Law of self-preservation determines I know this may be pretended where there is no such necessity but that I cannot help if men will abuse a just pretence to authorize unjust actions It is enough to my purpose that it is plain in the case of the last King that he never made use of his Prerogative till the
so weak and unlearned in their Conceptions of things as seriously to fancy that there is any Idolatry or Immorality in our Ceremonial Constitutions But yet because there are some simple and well-meaning Professors that are not sufficiently assured of their Lawfulness and by Consequence are apt enough to be scandalized at their Use they think themselves out of pure tenderness and compassion to these weak ones obliged altogether to forbear their Practice A goodly pretence this to weigh against the Commands of Authority that because some of the common People forsooth of weak heads and strong necks are afraid of something though they know not what nor why that therefore Government must tack about and strike sail to their folly and ignorance But the triflingness and petulancy of this Scruple I have represented upon its own proper Principles 't is enough at present that it resolves it self into the pretence of a scrupulous and unsatisfied Conscience i. e. though as yet they know no harm or danger by the things they boggle at yet they are suspicious and jealous lest they should not be altogether so harmless as they appear to be and therefore desire to be for a while excused their Obedience till they can give themselves and their Consciences some better and more assured satisfaction of their Innocence Now would not any prudent and sober man think it enough to advise them in this perplexity that this Scruple has long since out-worn and out-lived it self for though it might be allowed of in the days of Queen Elizabeth when at first it was started yet after so long time and so much enquiry it is intolerable for if with all their search and examination they have not been able to descry the Evils they suspected that is a sufficient Principle of presumption that their jealousies are ungrounded So that if they are now able to object any certain crime against them then this plea of a doubtful Conscience ceases and the certainty is to be pleaded instead of the doubt If they are not an hundred and fifty Years is one would think a sufficient time either to satisfie or to cancel Scruples A man cannot if he would always doubt whether if he handle a Frog it will sting him or if he touch the tail of a Glow-worm it will burn his Fingers And if after all this men will be scrupulous and afraid of nothing or they know not what it is because they will be old Boys and resolve when they have once blown a soap-bubble to pursue and keep it up as long as they have breath to follow it So that it is infinitely unbecoming Authority to submit its Laws to such an exception as this that can proceed from nothing else but invincible Peevishness and Impertinency But if this will not prevail what can be more effectual upon ingenuous and upright minds than to represent that this weakness and tenderness of Conscience is so far from being any allowable Reason of disobedience that it lays upon all them that pretend to it peculiar obligations to obey Not only because if they are what they pretend to be it is of a modest a yielding and a plyable temper as arising from diffidence and distrust of it self but also because doubts and scruples are rarely employed unless upon trifling and inconsiderable matters In that the material parts of duty are too plain and easie to be almost at all lyable to so much uncertainty and therefore obedience to Authority being withal one of the greatest and most indispensable dutys of mankind in that it is in it self so absolutely necessary to their well-being and injoin'd upon them by the most positive Precepts and severest penalties of the Gospel that alone is more than enough to outweigh all scruples and determine all doubts of Conscience But more especially in doubtful Cases of a publick Concern it is not fit that men should be suffered to talk too peremptorily of their own private perswasions because they are incompetent Judges of the publick good and therefore they are to be determin'd and overruled by the Judgment of those to whose care the management of publick affairs is intrusted and this to prevail universally and without exception unless in case of certain and unquestionable disobedience to the Divine Law for we are no other way free from the supreme Authority on earth but as we are subject to a Superiour in Heaven so that unless where our duty to God manifestly interferes there is no other plea of exemption against the Commands of Government So vain a thing is it for doubts and scruples fears and jealousies to be put in barr against them when the result of all that can amount to no more than this that they refuse obedience because they dare not obey and they dare not because they dare not for as yet they have no reason to produce and only desire to be born with till they can find one and when after so long a search there is none to be found still and still they crave leave to be satisfied till they can i. e. for ever This is the plain account of all that I discoursed of the publick Conscience And now to represent what I have determin'd concerning the submission of private Conscience to its guidance in doubtful and difficult cases of a publick concernment as if I had affirmed it of conscience in general in all cases and to all purposes is such a strein of kindness and ingenuity That face of thine is of so good proof and so true metal that were it upon my shoulders I would not exchange it for any crown'd head in Christendom I would stare with the great Turk for all his dominions and though the great Cham boasts himself the Lamp of the world and son of the everlasting Son I would look him out of all his Conquests of China But here you thicken your plot upon us and under this scene of publick conscience you bring Christian Liberty upon the stage and are all upon the sudden so civil as to make your Leg and con me thanks for this new and important discovery that the great Priviledge of Christian Liberty is that Thought is free This I know you intended only for wit but that is your want of Judgment for I will assure you it is a very serious truth and a very important discovery and you had been a very ungrateful Wretch had you not acknowledged it all the misfortune is that it is neither new nor mine Pay your acknowledgments to its right Authors and be not so partial to your friend as to entitle him to the honour of other-mens inventions That such a master of Systems and Syntagms that one so well acquainted with Germany and Geneva should ever suppose me the first inventor of so old a discovery Alas poor wretch it is the known and received doctrine of all Divines whether ancient or orthodox the first that taught it as I remember were S. Paul and S. Peter and your great
but they are slain every mothers son of them But it is you that are Sir Solomon or the dead-doing Scanderbag that have laid them all a gasping and not left such a Creature as a Non-conformist in Nature Was ever Cause thus defended or men thus abused to be marked out for a succession of incurable dunces for spending so much zeal and logique in so absurd a Cause But poor J. O. what an unfortunate wretch art thou that thou art an old Cob-nut in Controversie conquerour of Scores upon scores in comparison of whose Eristical prowess both Sir Solomon and his Sword were but wooden tools that when thou wert so unfortunately and so unexpectedly dasht to pieces that then thou shouldst be so strangely unhappy or unadvised as to hire such an empty and unkernel'd shell as this to avenge thy ruine a thing so soft and harmless that a pellet of dow or soft clay would have done as much execution and yet so silly and ignorant too that he knows not on which side to play his stroaks and as lamentably bruised as thou art has discharged all his little strength upon thine own head He has drol'd upon you as far as his wit would give him leave in as many capacities as you have past through Providential Revolutions he sometimes abuses you as tall J the Consonant and sometimes as little I the Vowel sometimes he makes sport with you as in Conjunction with O sometimes as at opposite points sometimes you are a Talisman i. e. as much as you detest it an Idolatrous Image and sometimes an He-cow i. e. either a Bull or an Oxe and at last a very man with an hot head a wide mouth a rude tongue rotten teeth and long nails with abundance more of such small tap-lash and blew John that he has wantonly squirted upon your venerable and immortal Name And then after all this has recorded you for a dull and senseless tool upon supposition that you could be so simple and weak-headed as to assert what he could not but know you have given under your own hand in legible black and white And now have you not all reason to joyn throats to rail down that villainous Engine the Press and the drunken Dutchman that would not be content with the Wine-Press not for contriving as you accuse him those innumerable Syntagms of Alphabets that have ever since pester'd the world for there is not one Alphabet now extant that was not reduced into the Syntagm of a Cris-cross row some ages before the Dutch-man was born except only the Universal Character and that was invented some Ages since I had almost forgot J. O's Primer that would never suffer the Letters to be ranged under the Conduct of a Cris-cross For having of his own head disbanded the Lords Prayer he was Commission'd by Authority of Parliament to casheir or at least new model the Cris-cross-row and what reformation he wrought in the several squadrons of vowels mutes semivowels c. I shall not here relate but as for the poor Cross that was without any mercy turn'd out of all service not because it kept alwayes so close to the Loyal or malignant party but because it was a mere symbolical Ceremony set there on purpose to transform a plain english Alphabet into a Popish Cris-cros-row A great and pious work worthy the pains of so great a Divine and the Wisdome of so long a Parliament But to return has not your beloved Press after all your fondness sold you a sweet bargain and more than turn'd her tayl upon you With what zeal and courage have you asserted its Liberty from the bondage of Imprimaturs and the Inquisition of Prelates What stiff and stubborn Homilies have you made to make it good that the suppression of a good Libel is no less than Martyrdom and if it extend to the whole Impression a kind of Massacre whereof the Execution ends not in the slaying of an Elemental Life but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence the breath of Reason it self slays an Immortality rather than a Life Such fustian bumbast as this past for stately wit and sence in that Age of politeness and reformation Have you suffer'd Banishment and Persecution together has the Engine been content to wander with so mean a fellow as Newman the Cobler through almost all Counties of the Kingdome for the sake of publishing seditious and abusive Pamphlets has it drawn your selves and your un-cris-cross'd Letters into seditious words and meetings and then vilain as it is does it turn informer and when you had thought you had confidence enough to outbrazen all accusations by word of mouth to forswear your own most avowed Principles and most notorious practices what a surprising trepan is this that this perfidious and apostate Engine should betray all and produce your own Writings and Records against your selves What think you now of a publick Tooth-drawer to wrench out its old ugly rotten teeth there is no outfacing this printed black and white and nothing could be more rashly and indiscreetly done than for you to attempt it You had been a prudent man indeed had you applyed your self to J. O. and the rest of your good masters that set you on work and pay'd you your wages and told them plainly Gentlemen you engage at such mighty disadvantage on that side of the question that you have hitherto undertaken that it is not possible for humane confidence to defend your cause Burn therefore all your old Puritan books wheel about to the opinion of the Church of England and force them to wheel about to yours and then if you your selves will but stand stoutly to it for face and conscience let Crop alone But now when you have done this of your own head and without any of their Commission you have as it falls out only betrayed their cause and your own ignorance to cross thus awkerdly with their great and master-principle And this as it happens proves at last the most pleasant scene of all your folly though you have blunder'd so shamefully in every thing you have offer'd at for as if you had long owed your self a shame and were now resolved to pay off all Arrears with Interest in the very same unhappy Paragraph where you deny it with so much resentment and indignation in the name of all the Nonconformists in the known and habitable parts of the Earth that to institute new signs in the worship of God is to institute new Sacraments you are so unhappy are you wonderfully enamoured of that pertinent passage directly to the contrary cited out of St. Austins ten Volumes by J. O. Signa cum ad res divinas pertinent sunt sacramenta so his M S. reads it though in your own and all other printed Copies it is read Sacramenta appellantur Now by this J. O. without doubt intended to prove as he immediately subjoyns that these things are real Sacraments or pretend to be so fully and effectually to all
is only in order to shew how it was misapplyed by the Fanaticks though I remember no such Allegation you might have done that too and yet preserved the dignity and reverence of those Sacred Writings which you have not done but on the contrary you have in what is properly your own taken the most of all your Ornaments and Embellishments thence in a scurrilous and sacrilegious stile admirable sense insomuch that were it honest I will undertake out of you to make a better that is a more ridiculous and prophaner Book than all the Friendly Debates bound up together I cannot but make use of this admirable way like fat Sir John Falstaffs singular dexterity in sinking of answering whole Books or Discourses how pithy and knotty soever in a line or two nay sometimes in a word And as the Friendly Debate is ridiculous and prophane so I observe that all the Argument of your Books too is but very frivolous and trivial you bring nothing sound or solid For the excellency of your Logique Philosophy and Christianity in all your Books is either as in Conscience to take away the subject of the Question or as in the Magistrate having gotten one Absurdity to raise a thousand more from it In all your writings you do so confound terms leap cross have more doubles nay triples and quadruples than any Hare so that you think your self secure of the Hunters You endeavour so to muddle your self in Ink that there shall be no catching nor finding you You so confound the Question with differing terms and contradictory expressions that you may upon occasion affirm whatsoever you deny or deny whatsoever you affirm You have face enough to say or unsay any thing and 't is your priviledge what the School-Divines deny to be within the power of the Almighty to make contradictions true You neither know or care how to behave your self to God or Man and having never seen the receptacle of Grace or Conscience at an Anatomical dissection you conclude therefore that there is no such matter or no such obligation among Christians you persecute the Scripture it self unless it will conform to your interpretation you strive to put the world into blood and animate Princes to be the executioners of their own subjects for well-doing I looked further into what you say in defence of the Magistrates assuming the Priesthood what for your scheme of Moral Grace what to palliate your irreverent expressions concerning our blessed Saviour and the holy Spirit what of all other matters objected to you and if you will believe me but I had much rather the Reader would take the pains to examine all himself there is scarce any thing but slender trifling unworthy of a Logician and beastly railing unbecoming any man much more a Divine You distribute all the territories of Conscience into the Princes Province that is to divide a thing into one part and make the Hierarchy to be but Bishops of the Air and talk at such an extravagant rate in things of higher concernment than either Conscience or Government of Church and State that the Reader will avow that in the whole discourse you had not one lucid Interval Had you no friends to have given you good counsel before your understanding was quite unsetled Really I cannot but pity you and look upon you as under some great disturbance and despondency of mind and in as ill a case as Tiberius was in his distracted Letter to the Senate There wants nothing of it but the Dii Deaeque me perdant wishing let the Gods and Goddesses confound him worse than he finds himself to be every day confounded So all that rationally can be gather'd from what you say is that you are mad You incite Princes to persecution and tyranny degrade Grace to Morality debauch Conscience against its own Principles distort and mis-interpret the Scripture fill the world with Blood Execution and Massacre And as for Subjects no Pimp did ever enter into seriouser disputation to vitiate an innocent Virgin than you do to debauch their Consciences And to harden their unpracticed modesty embolden them by your own example shewing them the experiment upon your own Conscience first Nay you threaten you rail you jear them if it were possible out of all their Consciences and Honesty Really I think you have done the Atheists so much service in your Books by your ill handling and while you personate i. e. Personam induere one Party making all Religion ridiculous I mean the serious part of it that they will never be able to requite you but in the same manner It is true you sometimes for fashion-sake speak of Religion and a Deity but your Principles do necessarily if not in terms make the Princes power paramount to both these and if he may by his uncontroulable and unlimited Universal Authority introduce what Religion he may of consequence what Deity also he pleases This is a faithfull account of the summ and intention of all your undertaking for which I confess you were as pickt a man as could have been employed or found out in a whole Kingdom And I have herein endeavour'd the utmost ingenuity towards you for you have laid your self open but to too many disadvantages already so that I need not I would not press you beyond measure but to my best understanding and if I fail I even ask your pardon I do you right And so you are a dangerous Fellow Bayes you are an Hypocrite Bayes you are a mad Priest Bayes you are a Buffoon Bayes you are an Opprobrium Academiae Bayes you are a Pestis Ecclesiae Bayes Hola Bayes whoop Bayes whoop and hola Bayes Bayes Bayes ay and all that Bayes Quod erat demonstrandum You and I Sir have hitherto been good Friends and if you had but told me all this in private you had done a friendly office and upon your advice and admonition I might have reformed all miscarriages but whether to blazon them abroad thus publiquely without proof or instance and before you had made any tryal upon my ingenuity whether I say it were either civilly or discreetly done because you are a wise man and I have a great opinion of your Integrity I shall refer it altogether to your own judgement However if you or any friend of yours can really think that such Demonstration as this needs any other Answer beside being pitied and laughed at do but signifie your minds to me by the next Post provided you will superscribe Franck and I will promise to do you reason and give you satisfaction This is but a taste of what I might have transcribed in that the greatest part of your Pamphlet is manifestly rather Censure than Confutation But the main and most serviceable topick of impertinency is to picqueer at single words in Introductions and Transitions and animadvert upon them with the Similitude the Aphorism the Rithm the