shall receive any Sallary Fee or Wages by reason of any Patent or Grant from his Majesty or shall have command or place of Trust from and under his Majesty or from any of his Majesties Predecessors or by His or Their Authority or by Authority derived from Him or them within the Realm c. or in his Majesties Navy I slands c or shall be of the Houshold or in the Service or Imployment of his Majesty or of his Royal Highness the Duke of York c. shall personally in the Court of Chancery or Kings-Bench take the several Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and receive the Sacrament of the Lords Supper according to the usage of the Church of England and the like for all Officers to be admitted to any Office for the future within a time limitted The Neglecters or Refusers to be adjudged incapable of any other Office or to Sue use any Action Bill Plaint or Information in Courts of Law or prosecute any Suit in any Court of Equity or to be a Guardian to any Child or Executor or Administrator of any Person or be capable of any Legacy or Deed of Gist or to have any Office and shall forfeit 500 l. The persons obliged to take the Oaths shall at the same time make and subscribe the Declaration following under the same penalties and forfeitures as by the Act appointed The Declaration is in these words I A. B. do declare that I do believe that there is not any Transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper or in the Elements of Bread and Wine at or after the Consecration thereof by any person whatsoever There is a Provision that this Act shall not hurt or prejudice the Peerage of any Peer of this Realm either in time of Parliament or otherwise But this was in the next Act fully vacated The Second Act. 30. Car. 2. The second Act is Intiuled An Act for the more effectual preserving the Kings Person and Government by disabling Papists from sitting in either House and the Preamble adds That for as much as divers good Laws have been made for preventing the increase and danger of Popery in this Kingdom which have not had the desired effect by reason of the Liberty which of late some of the Recusants have had and taken to sit and vote in Parliament Therefore it was Enacted That no Peers of the Realm and Members of the House of Peers should Vote or make their Proxy in the House of Peers nor any sit there during any debate in the said House Nor should any Members of the House of Commons Vote or sit there during any debate after the Speaker was chosen until they respectively take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy and make and subscribe and audibly repeat the Declaration following I A. B. Do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God Profess Testifie and Declare That I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lords Supper there is not any Transubstantiation of the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the Consecration thereof by any person whatsoever and that the Invocation or Adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint and the Sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome are Superstitious and Idolatrous Likewise no Peer of England Scotland or Ireland being twenty years old nor any Convict Recusant that takes not the same Oaths and make and subscribes the Declaration may advisedly come into or remain in the presence of the King or Queens Majesty or come into the Court or House where They or any of Them reside Every Peer or Member thus offending shall be deemed and judged a Popish Recusant and suffer as such be disabled to hold or execute any Office or place of Profit or Trust Civil or Military in any of His Majesties Dominions c and shall not Sit or Vote in either House or make a proxy in the house of Peers or have any benefit of the Law as in the foregoing Act and shall forfeit 500 l. Also every sworn Servant of the King not having performed all things in the former Act required shall do what this Act enjoyns or shall be disabled to hold any place as sworn Servant to the King and suffer all the Pains and Penalties aforesaid The Proviso's are That Nine of the Queens Men-servants natural born-subjects of Portugal and as many Women-servants such as shall be nominated by the Queen under her Hand and Seal are exempt from the taking these Oaths c. Secondly That none be restrained from coming or residing in the King or Queens presence c. that shall first obtain warrant so to do under the Hands and Seals of six or more Privy Councillors by order from his Majesties Privy Council upon some urgent occasion therein to be expressed so that such Licence exceed not the space of ten days at one time nor thirty days in one year and such Licence to be recorded in the Petty-bag-Office Lastly That nothing in this Act shall extend to his Royal Highness the Duke of YORK Some Reflectione upon these Acts. Whoever peruseth these Acts in the circumstance we now are in will easily I think yield that whatever temporary uses there could be formerly of them yet they could never be put in practice by a Roman Catholick King or that he could suffer the execution of them as I shall more at large shew in the following Discourse In this place I shall only touch upon some few Heads As The Sererity First Concerning the severity in General upon those who could not renounce the Doctrine of Transubstantiation Invocation or Adoration of Saints these being purely Metaphysical Points of Religion setled by Pecrees of Councils in the Roman Catholic Church oblige those of that Communion to believe them under the penalty of an Anathema yet I think it is not easie to prove that these Doctrines have any Natural Tendency to induce the Believers and Practisers of them either to endanger the Person of the King or the Government which is declared to be the principal end why the Acts were made and as to the increase of Popery these very Doctrines are so far from working upon Protestants that they are the very chief impediments which hinder the people in General from embracing that Religion Therefore it must appear very severe that all persons who by a spiritual obligation cannot renounce these Doctrines and Practices should be obnoxious to those penalties which as convict Papists they are liable to and which however vexatious and chargeable to them redound mostly to the profit of Informers Bayliffs Clerks and such persons as bear no proportion of Merit or Interest in the Government to those suffering Roman Catholic Lords and Gentlemen and by such Payments Fines c. the Kings Revenue is very little encreased The Reasons why made Although some may think some of the branches were then necessary to prevent all Roman Catholics from enjoying publick
I think in that of the Popes Nuncio or chappels of Embassadours Those Protestants which have heard them can universally testifie That the Text mostly is out of the Epistle or Gospel of the day and the scope of the Discourse is generally incitements to the duty of Holy Living disswasives from all kind of sin and true motives to penitence for them When they commemorate any Saint in celebrating the Festival the application is to imitate their Sanctity and praise God for the Grace conferred on them and affording such Examples of Devotion and holy living Which Heads when they are most powerfully treated upon may be effectual to make a Man a good Christian but avails not much to make him a Roman Catholic It is well known to most that hear them that if it were not for the habit the Ave Maria the want of Notes the devision of the Discourse and some small difference in the way of delivery they could not distinguish their Sermons from those in Protestant Churches So that they gain only by that a little mitigation of peoples Censures who have had them represented either as ridiculous or absurd Since therefore the Preachers of both Churches agree in the points of Moral Piety and the Fundamental Doctrines of Christianity It may prevail with Lay Auditors to judge those are the necessary things knowable and that the skill in nice and subtil Controversies are nothing so needful to salvation as the decrying and shunning Vice and Debauchery When therefore we consider the advantage the Ministers of the Church of England have over the Fathers we surely must yield That they may much more easily keep their own Flock from straying than the other can win them over to the Romish Faith. For First the Ministers are infinitely more numerous and settled in their several Parishes as so many Shepherds to secure their charge Secondly They have willing and unprejudiced Auditors to hear them whereas most Protestants that go to hear the Fathers generally do it out of curiosity or to censure them Thirdly The Ministers of England have a good Art of Address to enforce their Doctrines and having been longer used to preaching than the Fathers and using a different method from them to which people have been more accustomed I see no reason to fear that they can so prevail as to commit a rape upon their Auditors Affections and Judgments whereby they should be converted by thousands as those were at S. Peters Sermons and without such Miracles I think by preaching the Protestants will not be changed As to their Writings 2 Nor by their Writings the scope of those seem to be primarily to explain those Articles of Faith wherein Protestants most differ from them in such a manner as may conciliate a better understanding between the two Churches and by a sweetening and favourable representation of the Catholic Doctrine endeavour to remove the Prejudices Protestants have entertained against it as irroconcileable to Scripture and the exposition of the Primitive Fathers This seems the most Christian and Charitable method they have or possibly can take to render their Religion intelligible to us or at least incline us to less censoriousness of theirs which province the Bishop of Meaux hath undertaken with greatest applause and it hath been followed by some of our Country Yet when we consider how little hither to hath been gained by this expedient we need neithe be waspish and angry or abandon our selves to such sinking sears as if the Church of England would be overset by so smooth a Sea. The Church of England hath in it many learned and dextrous men who have good Libraries and are well skilled in History and the Antient Fathers and are well pleased they have the opportunity of shewing their Talents and are confident they can manage their cause more advantagiously than the Catholics and think this way of their Adversaries Writings effects not what is aimed at but on the contrary confirms the people That they have been taught by their Pastors the more antient and true Doctrine as it was believed in the Ages nearest the Apostles times So when the Pope yielded to the Bohemians the use of the Wine in the Sacrament It being received by them as a confirmation That the Eucharist ought to be administred in both species and that it was as reasonable that other Points in difference should be allowed them the Pope recalled the Tolleration When we further consider That the dubious expressions of the Fathers afford subtil men on both sides sufficient matter for arguing pro and con and that the Writers in both Churches agree not upon a Judg betwixt them It is not easie to conceive how by this way a National Conversion can be effected For though the number of Writers were never so much multiplied Yet since the Arguments are the same and neither part can put the principal differences to Umpirage or fix upon an Umpire they may both write till Dooms-day 3 Nor by their freedom of conversation and endeavours to proselite the people ere they accord As to Conversation It must be owned that in this as well as the foregoing particulars the R. Catholick Church-Men have that advantage now that they never had since the Reformation both publickly to preach and publish their Books of Controversie and be as industrious as they please to prevail with people in their conversation which is like a single combate betwixt a Man skilled at his Weapon and a Novice It must be granted also That several persons may be reconciled to the Church of Rome especially such as are curious after Novelties and not well grounded in the Protestant Religion or such as fall into solicitous thoughts about the state of their Salvation and come to think the failures they have committed have been occasioned by their want of due Instruction Or once conceive that Salvation is not to be had out of the most Catholic Church or that a perfect absolution upon Confession and Contrition is to be had no where out of the Church of Rome and some may be won by an affectation of the modishness of being of the Religion of their Prince or in hopes of the more propitious royal Smiles and such in my judgment as change their Religion for this sole end neither deserve the countenance of their Prince nor of any worthy Man for such will vary with the next Wind and neither God nor Man will find stability in them But we experimentally find that the progress of these kinds of conversion is very slow and it must be a work of many Ages to effect any great matter this way where so thick-set prejudices and prepossessions of a different perswasion are so firmly retained that to change a Religion this way is but like the demolishing a Fabrick of immense firmness and size by picking out here and there a single Stone even while others are as diligent and industrious to secure it If lastly any be won over to the Church
the two Houses might find useful for the public good Lastly This Non-correspondence must gratifie and incourage all the Enemies to Monarchy and all those who were for the Bill of Seclusion this Discord being the only pleasing Harmony to them who never hug themselves with so full an Ohe of content and satisfaction as when they find the Crown in any straits or can foment if not conjure up a Spirit of Jealousie betwixt the King and his Parliament and when they have stolen the Peoples Hearts from the King they are upon the Tiptoes of hope that they may strike in for the prize If we have not a feeling sense of the miserable state that Sedition and Rebellion It's most savage Elder Brother will bring us all to let us consult our bloody Annals and our Ancestors deplorable experience and then ponder well whether it be Tanti to move Heaven and Earth harras our Country and embrue it with the blood of so many of our Country-men and nearest Relations and at last fight our selves into a much worse condition than we are ever like to be in by granting this Repeal which in this juncture is most reasonable if not for our Kings sake and the Roman Catholics yet at least for our own peace and tranquility and the establishing our hopes of his Majesties kindness to our Church The last Inconvenience The last Reason I shall urge is that the refusing to Vacate these Acts may necessitate the King to grant a Toleration which of all things the Church of England hath hitherto most dreadded and to which we may believe the King is well enough inclined out of a principle of clemency to his people in general as well as Indulgence to his Catholic Subjects which altho his Royal Brother after an essay at the earnest solicitation of his Parliament was Graciously pleased to recal to gratifie the Church of England yet we cannot expect that our King not having those motives and being courted by so many to grant it and finding the extension of his Supremacy will think it his Interest to revoke it if he once establish it The difference betwixt Roman Catholics and other Dissenters from the Church of England Here it will not be a miss to consider the great difference there is betwixt Roman Catholics and other Dissenters while the Laws are in force The Non-conformists may meet to the number of Five besides the Family and have their Pastor or Teacher with them and the disagreeableness betwixt them and the Church of England is not so great but that those who have Estates or desire to obtain Offices of honour or profit even to do the Crown a disservice as we found in those that were to capacitate themselves to be Sheriffs in the late times could readily Conform Whereas Roman Catholics are in extream peril from the very harbouring their Priests so that in this the Roman Catholics are in a sadder state than any Christians are For to exercise their Religion without Priests for performing the Office of Baptizing Administring the Blessed Sacrament burying the Dead c. Is in that Church and ought to be in all others impossible and to have them for celebrating these and other Divine Offices as the Laws now are renders them obnoxious to the punishments inflicted on Felons and Traytors and there is no possibility of the Roman Catholics as such conforming even so much as in going once a month to Church without putting themselves out of the Communion of their Church which with them is to be avoided more than the utmost sufferings When therefore we consider the Unchristianness of such severe Laws under our circumstances and reflect that tho the greatest part of the disquiets from the Tenth Year at least of Queen Elizabeth have arisen from the pretences of keeping out Popery and the Advantages the Long Parliament had against King Charles the First was from that source and the troubles of our late merciful King were bottomed on the same apprehensions and yet now that we see it 's actually practised we find no such dreadful events but that the Vizard was portraied much more terrible than now when it appears with open face and now when we see the publick exercise of the Roman Catholic Religion we only find it gazed at as a Novelty but no affrightments attending it and we find what we understand in Sermons and Catechizing is Christian and profitable and what we understand not in Ceremonies we see full of Pomp and Magnificence and further we see not I say when we consider all this and that it is in our choice whether we will allow the sanguinary and penal Laws to be abolished with a security in the exercising the Protestant Religion or on the contrary the Inconveniencies before recited and a Tolleration to boot methinks it should be no difficult matter to determine which were more advantagious Having thus shewn some of the disadvantages to Us and our Religion by the refusal of a Repeal I might propose the advantages which will accrue by yielding up those Laws the King hath such an obligation in Honour and Justice at least in his own Royal Apprehension to insist upon but that the removal of the one puts the other in their place SECT XVI The practicableness of Roman Catholics and Protestants living under one Secular Government THerefore I shall chuse rather to shew the practicableness of Roman Catholics and Protestants living in the full enjoyment of their respective Religions under Princes of either Religion And first shall observe that the Church of Rome and the Church of England are the two Churches in Europe at least that are the most conspicuous and of most renown Both plead for the Antiquity of their Doctrine The Roman Catholics are of one Communion and so is the Church of England but Protestantism at large takes in a greater variety of subdivisions and those separate from the Church of England as much as that doth from the Roman Secondly It hath been the endeavour of many learned and pious men to accommodate the points in difference betwixt Roman Catholics and Protestants But by reason of secular interests no expedient could be found to adjust them till at last in Germany from whence our Saxon Ancestors came after about twenty years war wherein the Country was the very Theatre on which the most Tragical Effusion of Blood and the most depopulating waste by Fire and Rapine were acted to the highest degree of humane cruelty and revenge and all this principally upon the account of the difference between Roman Catholies and Protestants upon account of their Religion and being at last throughly wearied with the unsuccessful attempts upon one another in the year 1624. they came to the following settlements which I believe they hitherto reap the fruit of being confirmed Anno 1648. at the Treaty of Munster whereby it was made an Imperial Law. The Duke of Newburgh is a strict Roman Catholic yet in his Country of Juliers even at Deuseldorp