that have been since augmented Yet however I doubt not but that if it had been Gods will further to have lengthen'd the last reign the Course of Nature would then have operated as I have mention'd And if it shall appear that those natural Considerations I have urged shall have the success of such further Parliamentary Supplies to His gracious Majesty as may tend to the further greatning of his Character and that of the Kingdom I shall account my claim the more equitable to have the pardon of my fellow Subjects of what Religionary Sect soever for any thing in this Discourse that may disgust them And as an eminent Protestant Divine hath in a Printed Sermon thus said viz. that man is not worthy to breathe in so good a Land as England is who would not willingly lay down his life to cure the present divisions and distractions that are among us I shall say that any Subject deserves not to live here under the Indulgence of so good a Prince who for the helping him to money by all due means for the defence of this good Land would not wish himself as well as his Bigottry a Sacrifice and who would not as to any Extravagant dash of a Pen lighting on his Party and bringing Money to his Prince cry foelix peccatum rather then such Divisions and Distractions and Diffidences of the Government and stifling of Publick Supplies should still live as were formerly known in some Conjunctures and when the Art of Demagogues appear'd so spightful in endeavours to frustrate the Meetings of Parliaments But our Prince having freed all his dissenting Subjects from their uneasiness under Pecuniary Mulcts for Religion and the Members of the Church of England from the uneasiness of imposing such Soul-Money will I doubt not when he shall please to Call a Parliament find from them such necessary Supplies for the support of the Body of the Kingdom as may ease him under the weight of his great Desires for it and that it will then appear to all as absurd to Crown such a Head with Thorns as hath taken the Thorn out of every man's foot in England and that his pass'd Sufferings for his Conscience and others of his Communion having too suffer'd for his Conscience bespeaking us in those words of the Apostle Fulfil ye my joy that both his and theirs will be then Consummated and as the Ioy of those of the Church of England and of all nominal Churches in England hath been fulfill'd by him and that as Luther was pleas'd in a Christian-like transport of good Nature to Profess in his Epistle to Jeselius a Iew Me propter Unum Judaeum Crucifixum omnibus favere Judaeis we shall for the sake of one of the Roman-Catholick Communion who hath formerly suffer'd so much for his Conscience and since done so much for the freedom of ours shew all those of that Communion our favour to such a proportion as may compleat his and their Ioy. My Lord I am here obliged to acknowledge that tho while the several Parts of the following Work were written in the times the Government charged both Papists and Anti-Papists with Disloyalty and Plots I express'd my sense of the Non-advisableness to have the Penal Laws against them repeal'd pending such Charge and Plots I desire the Reader to look on me as very far from insisting on any thing of that nature in this Happy State of England now that the Corner Stone and that some of the Builders rejected hath thus successfully united the sides of the Fabrick of the Government in Loyalty My Lord It is near a year since I writ my Thoughts at large concerning the Subject of the Repealing those Laws and they are in the Fourth Part of my Work about The Dispensative Power of which the two first Parts conclude this Volume ready for the Press and reserving my poor Iudgment in this great Point till the Publication of the whole I think I shall then set forth my Opinion as founded on Medium's that have not appear'd in Print from other Writers and which I believe will not only not give offence to any Member of the Church of England but be of general use in allaying the ferment the Question hath occasion'd And if as they who were long fellow-Passengers in a Ship among violent Tempests and Hirricanes do usually from their being Participants together in the danger and horror take occasion to raise a friendly esteem and well-wishes for each other such of the Loyal whose belief I referr'd to as imbarqued with mine in that of the Plot during the late Stormy Conjuncture shall be the more favourable to what I write I shall be glad both for their sakes as well as mine but do further judge that what I have so largely in the following Discourse asserted and by Reasons taken from Nature concerning the Moral impossibility of the belief of the Tenets of the Church of Rome gaining ground here considerably on the belief of the Doctrine of the Church of England will tend to secure any one from fears of our losing our Religion by any loss of the Test that may happen a thing that none I think will fear who are of the Iudgment of the House of Commons in their Address to the late King on the 29 th of November 1680. that I have referr'd to in my Fourth Part and where they say that POPERY hath rather gain'd then lost Ground since the TEST ACT and make that Act to have had little effect I have in the following Discourse referr'd to that Act as represented to have had its rice in the year 1673. from the alledged petulant Insolence of Papists in that Conjuncture and I took notice of a learned Lord since deceas'd as vouching somewhat in Print of such temper among some of them And a Proclamation that year charging the Papists therewith I was implicitly guided thereby to take the thing for granted and as to the which considering since the publick Passages in that Conjuncture I have otherwise judged But as I think no loyal Roman-Catholick should in that Conjuncture have suffer'd any Prejudice for any ill Behaviour of any other of that Communion then much less ought any such thing be now and when there appears so noble and general a spirit of Emulation among all men of sense in the Diffusive Body of the People about who shall make the Head and all Members of that Body most easie and for the doing which we may well hope that the People representative and the other Estates of the Realm will come with all due Preparation of Mind when it shall please His Gracious Majesty to assemble them My Lord I have nothing further to add but my begging your Lordship's Pardon for this trouble and my owning the many Obligations I am under to be My Lord Your Lordship 's most Obedient Servant P. P. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Earl of Anglesy having shewed me an Affidavit and Information against him delivered at the Barr
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
to be walked on in a Frost after a Thaw We are told by the Conformist in the Friendly Debate in p. 112. That he has heard some of the Nonconformist Divines acknowledge that they did not scruple what the Conformists do but thought it unhandsome for them to do it c. And the meaning was in plain English that they were ashamed to confess their error But if some of those Divines whose low Education conducted them perhaps from being Servitors in the University to domineer in their Cures and who through the Track of their Lives might be traced by the slime of their Pedantry and whose Trade was or should have been the Study of Divinity the Precepts of which and their fragments collected out of Augustinus and Aquinas as well as the example of the former obliged them to retract those Errors publickly that they had so utter'd I say that if they were yet so Picquez d' Honneur that they would not let their fallibility appear in Villages and even the falsity of those Principles of theirs by which as many Hundreds of Thousands here were slain as were bare hundreds murder'd in the inglorious Reign of Queen Mary they have true Cause to think it dishonourable for them to restrain their Compassion from any high born Prince the brightness of whose great Martial Atchievements has dazel'd the Universe and will continue to do it when he is in the shades below and one who may say as the Pope did to the Iansenists that he had never studyed Divinity and they are very unfit to Cashiere him from the Church Militant if he doth not in the view of Mankind appear to make a Retreat at the Call of their Trumpet which has been known to give so uncertain a sound and such may be ashamed to dispair of his finding out any false Notions he may have received in Religion and to conclude that he hath not privately discovered them because he doth not openly recant them and to expect that after perhaps he hath erred in the Tenet of Confession he should yet presently make the World his Confessor about it and grant him nothing of the Guard of Honour in the Case but Monopolize the temptations from honour to their sinful obscure selves But as no man can take the measures of anothers Sins without taking those of his temptations so none but a Prince can know the temptations of a Prince Dic mihi si fueris tu Leo c. The like Pedantry therefore in the great St. Ierom was inexcusable as to that sharp saying of his Miror si aliquis Rex salvabitur and that Satyrical fancy of his hath since met with its Match by some that have sent St. Ierom to the Devil as fantastically for so I find it said in Dr. Donnes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 After so many Ages of a Devout and Religious Celebrating the Memory of St. Jerom Causaeus hath spoken so dangerously that Ratio 5. Campian says he pronounceth him to be as deep in Hell as the Devil Moreover I think it great injustice to any Prince who has changed his Religion of Protestancy for Popery that Protestants should at the same time be jealous of his retaining no tincture of his former Principles that the Bigotted and Jesuited Papists are jealous of his scarce retaining a tincture of his new ones and by jealousie too as cruel as the Grave as appeared by the fate of Harry the 4 th who because he did not and indeed could not devest himself of that humanity toward his Protestant Subjects that was riveted in his nature after he was absolv'd by the Chair of Infalibility and reconciled to the very Scorners Chair of the Iesuites yer merely because he had not a window to his breast through which every capricious Priest might look in at and might thereby put in what Principles he pleased they were resolved to cut one there and after Iohn Chastel had begun to practice his incision an execrable Apology for it was Published in which Apology Printed in Latin at Lyons Anno 1611. the Assertion or Head of Chapter 3d Part 2d is Chastel had no purpose to kill a King and of Chapter 4th there Henry of Burbon cannot be called a King by reason of his pretended Conversion and of Chapter 8th there Neither can he be King tho absolved by the Pope and of Chapter 9th Neither can he be called a King by the Right of Succession and of Chapter 11th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones are Juâ—e Divino Humano to be put to death and of Chapter 12th Hereticks and especially relapsed ones may be killed by private Persons if it cannot be done otherwise The Assassination of Harry the 3 d of France bears with it a Memento mori to any Roman Catholick Prince who will not be thorow paâ—ed in obeying the Precepts of Bigotted Priests against Hereticks and to this effect runs the Clamour of the Actions of such Bigots either you must go our pace to Heaven and Travel by our Mapp see with our Eyes and let us ride you when we will and make you ride over your Heretical Subjects or we will precipitate you to the Devil I mention'd it before out of D' Ossat that it was known at Rome that Queen Anne the Wife to King Iames had some inclination to the Roman Catholick Religion and no doubt but she was perverted to it in some measure by some of the Romish Priests who were then as since insolently over officious to tempt Princes to change their Faith and tho none of our Histories mentions any thing of her being a Papist or inclining to be so yet D' Ossat as I said relates how Villeroy supposed her to have turn'd Papist but our Historians unanimously mention one thing that she was designed as well as the King and Prince and others to be blown up by the Gun-Powder-Treason a thing that may give one who turns Son of the Church of Rome cause to say Mallem esse Herodis porcum quam filium No doubt but the mind of any Popish Prince coming out of the cool and sweet Air of a benign and rational Religion to that of such a torrid Zone and Shambles of mans flesh as the Doctrine of Popery presents will be oftener in his thoughts travelling back to that Religion then the prying World can know But the Gentleman my friend is not any way tempted in point of honour to delay his Return to the Church of England and he lately mentioning to me his wishes of the speedy Arrival of your Lordships Papers told me that possibly he and I should be both gainers thereby and that I should gain the Victory and he the Truth and that he would never account those Priests of Rome to be the Missionaries of Christ who if their Doctrine be refused shall instead of shaking off the dust of their feet in any house reduce it to Ashes and further affirmed that it were less absurd and extravagant to wish there were no Religion
appeared not able to contain above the Quantity of a Quart would easily have thence inferred had I heard him accused of being wont in his life-time to debauch by ingurgitating vast quantities of Liquor that there could be no such thing so shall I think it not possible that this sober Party of the Iesuites who are really devout can swallow such Irreligionary Principles as too many others of them have done We know that not many eminent Popish Writers but particularly Azorius the Iesuite hath writ against the Iesuites Doctrine of Equivocation and Mental Reservation and Crackanthorp and Ames and other Protestant Writers in their Writings impeaching that Doctrine of the Iesuites have quoted Azorius as on their side in that point I doubt not but many Pious Persons of that Order are glad of this Pope's having damned such Tenets which they never did or could believe and I will now upon the Popes having condemned them judge no particular Papist to believe them till I find cause so to do And notwithstanding the hard usage our Learned Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Book had from the Author of The Compendium saying That the Title of the Book confuted the whole because it mentioned the Principles approved by the Church of Rome pernicious when really believed and practised I shall still think the Pleonasm or exuberance of the Charity in so qualifying the danger of the Tenets he confutes to be worthy a Prelate of the Church of England and do think the like of the Charity of the Bishop of Winchester expressed in his printed Sermon of the 5th of November where having spoke of the Doctrines of Dissenters tending to Sedition and Rebellion that seem to be derived from the Church of Rome he saith if those Doctrines are believed and practised they must necessarily produce Confusion among us and do think that if the Papists could gain the point namely to be looked on by Protestants as not to believe several parts of the Tenets of Popery that are Irreligionary and particularly that about the Exterminium of Hereticks enjoyned by the Lateran Council to be not believed by them it would be a point very well gain'd and any one who could gain it for them would be a more useful friend to them than ever Bellarmin was To give a man the Lye is the greatest dishonour and therefore when any Papist shall tell me that he believes not the Lateran Council as obliging or other Tenets chargeable on the Papacy I shall not tell him that he doth but shall pass my judgment of Charity that he doth not believe the same and shall account him still a Roman Catholick tho perhaps erroneously denying that to be a General Council as I account Luther a Christian and Owner of the Authority of the Bible tho he erroneously denied the Divine Authority of the Epistle of St. Iames. The Learned Author of The Advocate of Conscience Liberty printed in the Year 1673. and said to be Mr. Brown a Franciscan in his 8th Chapter viz. Of Roman Catholicks being not guilty of Practices or Principles destructive to Government and reproaching the ENGLISH and Foreign Protestants with such Principles saith Was it from any of their Books meaning the Books of the Papists you have drawn those wild Maxims That the Authority of the Magistrate is of Humane Right That the People are above the King That the People can give Power to the Prince and take it away That if a King fail in performing his Oath at Coronation the People are loosened from their Allegiance That if Princes fall from the Grace of God the People are loosed from their Subjection Do not these Doctrines proceed from Wicliff Waldenses and other Sectaries And then mentioning Calvin for owning such Maxims saith That Calvin l. 4. c. 3. Instit. from his high Consistory giveth this Absolution to all Oaths of that Nature Quibuscunque Evangelâ—i hujus lux effulgeat ab omnibus laqueis juramentisque absolvitur But that Loyal Franciscan there happened to injure Calvin by a false quotation which I believe he had took up on the Credit of the Romanist Author of Monarcho-machia or Ierusalem and Babel who had cited the 4th Book of Calvin's Institutions for that purpose but very falsly for Calvin in all that Chapter hath not a word of such Oaths of Allegiance as Subjects take to their Sovereigns but treating only of Monastick Vows he saith Nunc postquam veritatis notitiâ sunt illuminati simul Christi gratiâ liberos esse dico c. i. e. from those Monkish unwarrantable Vows that they had made and out of Error and Ignorance held themselves obliged by But I doubt not if Parsons alià s Doleman and the Book of The Prelate and the Prince had been shewed to this Franciscan he would have answered to this effect viz. These men and many Roman Catholick Authors by them cited held those disloyal Trayterous Principles beforementioned but I fall will a Sacrifice rather than hold such I honour the spirit of Zeal against Disloyalty that runneth through his Book and in p. 204 205 206 207 208. he very learnedly endeavours to answer the objection about the Lateran Council and saith thereupon what the matter will bear and he and many other Roman Catholick Writers have disown'd the Authority of that Council as obligatory and therefore the judgment of Charity will incline any one to think that such Roman Catholicks would not disorder the World by it Moreover some Protestant Writers have judged that Council to be invalid and Dr. Donne who was very well studied in the Learning that relates to the Canon Law and General Councils doth particularly in his Pseudo-Martyr p. 377 378 379 380. take a great deal of pains to shew the invalidity of that Council and that it was never meant to oblige Sovereign Princes But the Author of The Prelate and the Prince doth in p. 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236. with much Learning statuminate the Authority of that Council and asserts it to have been a General one as the Cardinal Perron and the Bishop of Lincoln have done yet what I have mentioned of that Famous Cardinal 's not believing the Principle of the Church of Rome founded on that Council for Princes exterminating their Heretical Subjects as always Obligatory nor promoting the practice thereof in France where the Huguenots were then about a 7th part of the whole People hath justified the reasonableness of the Charity of our Bishops in qualifying the danger of some Papal Principles with the restriction of their being really believed and practised and the same Rule in my Notion of their danger shall always guide me that is to say when the Poyson of such Principles is really swallowed it must then be pernicious The poyson may lie in the Boxes of the Canon Law or a General Council and yet not poyson the minds of pious Catholicks nor foul their fingers I having found just cause so far to honour all the Roman Catholicks of my
not you after you have thrown off the Papal Power of Excluding Kings make your Reformation an empty Name if you at last reform your selves into Popery and after all your imagined Conversions from Popery we shall see your natural Conversion to it and as Natural as the Common Hieroglyphick of the year shews us and how in se convertitur annus The truth is that as to the Case of many of our Nominal Protestants and some real ones being thus deceived as aforesaid in the business of the Exclâ—sion there lyes a Pudet haec opprobriâ— nobis c. and a worse opprobrium than that of another common Latine saying Stulti dum vitant vitia c. for here they have run but from Popery to Popery from a Popery more genteely clad to a second-haâ—d Popery and even into a frippery of Antimonarchial notions and they have run into the Substance of the worst part of Popery and what I account worse then Transubstantiation while they have been pursuing the magni nominis umbria I mean the shadow of the Great Name of Protestant And I will still call it a great and noble name however abused by Schismaticks and tho not used in our Canons and Articles c. and wherein we soar above the dictates of Luther and Calvin and the distinctions of Names they occasioned and for which purpose our great-Souled Bramhall in the title page of his Iust Vindication of the Church of England hath the quotation of My Name is Christian my Sirname is Catholic by the one I am known from Infidels by the other from Hereticks and Schismaticks but yet doth often in that Book and his other writings use the word Protestants for such who have laudably opposed the Papal Usurpations and Impositions And in the mentioning of the Protestant Churches beyond Sea that word is justly and properly applicable Moreover our Great Chillingworâ—h's writing of The Religion of Protestants a safe way to Salvation hath endear'd that Name as well as his own to us thereby The adherents likewise of the Church of England are often put to it to use the distinction of Protestant Recusants to speak Intelligibly But 't is the Church of England-Protestant that the Orthodox and Loyal generally mean by that name when they speak of Protestants alone here according to the Rule of analogum per se positum c. It is for the honour of these Protestants who have not so learn'd Christ and Christianity as to be untaught their unnatural Allegiance and natural obligation of their Oaths that it may be observed of them that tho many within the pale of that Church have been tempted a while to extravagant thoughts and actings in the point of Exclusion yet they have through the Divine influences on their understandings soon come to themselves again and tho the Loyalty of some of these like Steel hath been bent yet it hath not like lead stood and continued bent And notwithstanding that being Transported a while with the Passion of Anger against Papists and Plots they said in their haste that Dominion was founded in Grace I observ'd so many of them by their second thoughts so averse from the second-hand Popery as I call'd it that they might merit an exemption from being censured by Papists as aforesaid and that by virtue of the Rule of Law viz. Quidquid calore iracundiae vel fit vel dicitur non prius ratum est quam si perseverantiâ apparuit judicium animi fuisse ideoque brevi reversa uxor nec divertisse videtur And here I am likewise to observe that tho many who have been members of the Church of England because it was by Law Established and have for fashion-sake gone to our Common-Prayer with no more concernment than the Monk went to Mass who said Eamus ad communem errorem yet such of this Church whose Devotion hath been deep rooted in their heads and hearts and who have seriously thought of those words in the Collect viz. So rule the Heart of THY Chosen Servant Charles our King and Governor c. did not long say Amen to any mens thoughts or motions of Choosing their King. Let Rome and the Conventicles thus like lead stand bent as I said but the Doctrine of the Church of England and its Prayers have sufficiently told us whose chosen Servant our King is I have here occasion to refer to an Illustrious Son of this Church and whose whole life hath been as perfect a Comment on the Oath and Moral Offices of Allegiance and of absolute and unconditional Loyalty as any could be and more useful to the World than any Written one I mean the Duke of Ormond and therefore it is but Iustice to him and the Subject I have been treating of for me here to cite him in what was published by the Loyal and Learned Father Walsh in Answer to what was by the Nuntio's Party pretended as a Scandal namely That one of a different Religion from those Irish Papists should be MADE CHOICE OF to Govern them and that that Party did fear the Scourges of War and Plague to have justly falâ— so heavy on them and some Evidence of God's Anger against them for putting God's Cause and the Churches under such a hand whereas the trust might have been managed in a Catholick hand under the Kings Authority but to which the Answer was thus with great Loyalty and Judgment viz. Now at length they are come plainly to shew the true ground of their Exception to us which they have endeavoured all the whole to disguise under the Personal Scandals they have endeavoured to cast upon us They are afraid of Scandal at Rome for MAKING CHOICE as they call it as if they might CHOOSE their Governor of one of a different Religion If this be allowed them why they might not next pretend to the same fear of Scandal for having a King of a different Religion and so the Power of CHOOSING one of their own Religion we know not and concludes with an Observation of that Party 's having infamously practised the Doctrine of Calumny in relation to the then Queen And all Papists therefore owning the Disloyal Principles of that Party have thereby the Pudet haec opprobria c. put on them Nor can it be by any Impartial Relaters of News either told at Gath or published in Ascalon that any Sons of the Church of England were actually 〈◊〉 in thinking they might choose their future King but it must likewise there be said how the Fathers and Divines of that Church did in that Conjuncture so universally and with such an Impetus of Reason and Scripture propagate the Doctrine of Passive Obedience and of the Loyalty that the 13th of the Romans and our Oaths require whereby the Popery of founding Dominion in Grace hath been so much Exterminated from that Church and the Realm that the very sense and reason and humor of the People of England is bent against it and is likely to be so
formerly observed to do upon the Worlds minding how much the Principles of the Iesuites had shook the Thrones of Kings and as particularly Father Caron in his Remonstrantia Hybernorum hath done and there citing 250 Popish Authors who deny the Pope's Power to depose Kings And no doubt but Dissenters late Omissions in this kind and Commissions in another will awaken the Magistracy to require from all Protestant Recusants such an exact Inventory of their Tenets as hath not yet been given it and the rather for that it is not by any Dissenters denied that the Sovereign is so far Custos utriusque tabulae as to be allowed to require all Religionary Parties to give him an account of their Principles and to live according to the Rule of them Thus in the Dutch States the Magistrates of every place where any Sect of the Heterodox is tolerated are religiously careful first to inform themselves exactly of all their Tenets and Principles and to see that they hold no opinion prejudicial to the Constitutions of their Government and none doubts but that the entire Body of the Tenets or Principles of the Dissenters to the Gallican Church is as conspicuous to that Church and State and indeed to the World as can be desired the present agreement of which with the Measures of Loyalty I have shewn in this Discourse Who hath there read the Hugonots Sayings published with any stain to their Loyalty or hath seen any of their Tenets branded for Sedition by an Vniversity or College in France But our Protestant Recusants having had here the liberty by Act of Parliament to enjoy their peculiar ways of Religious Worship in their own Families with the toleration of four others of the same perswasion to be present before all their Principles and Tenets have been notified to the Government is an instance of greater Indulgence shewn by the Government here to such Heterodox than I believe can be parallel'd in any Country whatsoever All dangers are naturally multiplied in the dark and it is a diminution of our dread of the very Iesuites Principles that they are generally known but if the Body of their Principles were as much unknown as are those of Protestant Recusants yet would the publick be more immediately concerned in having first an accurate account of those of the latter as being more numerous It may be well thought a Bankrupt Church whose Principles are latitant and any mens begging from the Magistrate Indulgence to a Principle of Sedition would be as shameful as the Insolence of a Beggar not only begging twenty Pound as our Comaedian said but begging a Leg or an Arm and not like a mans asking me who stands in my way as I am travelling on the Road that I would not ride over him but that he may mount into the Saddle whose Principles direct him to ride over me It was well observed by Lipsius in his Notes in Seneca That Naturae quodam Instinctu ea maleficia coercent homines puniunt quae societatem convellunt But as to any Out-rages from any Religionaries which are either prejudicial to the Bodies of particular Persons or even Convulsive of the Bodies of States and Kingdoms and to which the Actors might be inclined by their particular heats and not the general light of their avowed Principles I account that Complaints against such will soon evaporate into Air or be buried in Earth and with some allusion to the words of Let the dead bury the dead I may say let Plots bury Plots and Shams Shams and let any Seditious Protestants and Seditious Papists on the Compensation of their Crimes forbear troubling others by calling one another Criminals and the Figure of the Body of their Parties can no more be altered by the unevenness and exorbitance of the actings of particular Persons than is the rotundity of the Earth by the ruggedness of Rocks or protuberance of Mountains And that where one Papist goeth out of the World at the back door of Justice for the Treason of Clipping and Coyning twenty of the more numerous body of the Protestants do so is not to be wondered at but the id ipsum to be regarded in any reflections made on a Religion by occasion of its Criminals is its Principles and if it could be proved that any Caetus of men were allowed by the Church of England to assert the lawfulness of that Treason as both Papists and Presbyterians have the lawfulness of the Doctrine of Resistance that indeed would have the weight of a just Reflection on our CHVRCH Tho several dissolute and nominal Protestants may possibly have invented and forged as many Shams and Calumnious Accusations against other Protestants and Papists as if they had believed the Practice of Calumny to be lawful yet hath any of them published in Print the Tenet of the lawfulness of it or its being a poor Peccadillo Who knoweth not that some particular Divines of the Church of England by the turbulence of their several dispositions have enflamed differences and divisions in our Church and State But who can charge them from doing this by Communication of Councils with their Superiors and by instruction from them Were any of them charged by Proclamations for doing any thing of that nature as some Popish Recusants were by his Majesty 's of Ian. 16. 1673. for chiefly occasioning the intestine divisions among us and by his Majesty's Proclamation of December 2d 1680. for fomenting of differences among his Loyal Protestant Subjects But yet this Fact tho thus by the Government charged on some ill men of that Religionary perswasion would not have moved me to reflect with the leaâ—t heat on the Order of Iesuites in this Discourse by whom so many of our Roman Catholicks are conducted but for their own Proclamations of their Principles in their Books and particularly as to the point of Calumny the only Engine by which Divisions could be wrought among Protestants and but for their setting up that Doctrine heretofore without leave from the Pope's Canon Law and backing it with another to fright any Fools or Knaves from disparaging or even calumniating them and for their making use and application of these Doctrines since the Pope had damned them by a Proclamation I mean his Edict of March 79 and but for Father Parsons having so scandalously exposed the narrowness of his Soul and the poor Ideas he had of Humane Nature and even of the Character of a Gentleman by saying what I have in p. 61. cited out of his Book of The Succession viz. That many Iealousies Accusations and Calumniations must needs â—â—ght on the Party that is of different Religion from the State and Prince under whom he lives As there is very little in this Discourse that reflects on any Principles of the Romanists that may be called Religionary so neither have I troubled my self to attacque the Tenets of the Society of the Iesuites and of other Casuists condemned by this Pope that do not hominum societatem
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
of the entertaining our Curiosity tho we are past its danger and that is what occurs to me that I lately mentioned in a Discourse I had with an intelligent Person of the Church of England who saying to me that there was one part of the barbarous Out-rage of the Gun-powder Treason which was very scandalous to Humane Nature and which he thought could not be pretendedly legitimated by any Papal Principles namely that part of the Out-rage that related to the designed destruction of so many Magnificent Piles of Building and of the adjacent City of Westminster and the life 's of thousands of Men Women and Children with one Cruel Fatal Blow I gave him an account of the Tenet in the Canon Law grounded on the 13th of Deuteronomy so fairly and fully discussed in the following Discourse and whereby I satisfied him about the Principle that pretended to legitimate that part of the Out-rage and do assure any man that as arbitrary as the Papacy ever was it yet was so just as to inflict no kind of punishment on Persons or Communities that was not in its Sanctions intimated and for what Crimes I have in this Discourse render'd some of our late Fift-Monarchy men Principled for all Villany imaginable and justly Convicted and Executed for a design to fire our Metropolis and in which design they had subtilly contrived to have backed their Out-rage with the terror of Armed Forces nothing of which appeared in the Case of the two poor French Papists charged with the Odium of the Fact and beyond which least of numbers it is not in this Discourse extended and as to those two Persons there being then open War between the English and French it may be said that the Religion of Popery might be out of the Case of any thing done by such as were justi hostes as the Laws term them however I yet think that none concerned in the Government of that Nation would then be so barbarous as to design us such an Out-rage Moreover I have in this Discourse said that I will not charge the allowance of this Tenet on the generality of Papists either at home or abroad and that no un-jesuited Papist nor perhaps some sober Party in that Order would think the worse of me for calling the Decretum of the Popes Canon Law by reason of its empowring him thus to burn Cities horrendum Decretum And because my knowing of this Papal Tenet as founded on the Iudicial Law made me after the beginning of this Discourse to surmize that more Papists might possibly be concerned in this Out-rage than really were and so in my balancing the actings of some Loyal Protestant Recusants in Ireland with some Dis-loyal ones of some Popish Recusants there and here I mentioned the Out-rage on the Metropolis as done by Papists i. e. by Papists and not by Protestants and as Sir W. Raleigh mentioned that Harry the 4th was murdered by the Papists that is not by the Huguenots I yet thought my self bound in Christianity and Moral Justice to shew my self so far from being in the least misled by the scandalous and incoherent Narratives that reflected on a great body of the Papists as concerned in such a horrid Fact and particularly by that whose Author in a Plot with Booksellers had stole his Fire of London out of old printed Examination before a Committee of Parliament that I have shewn the ridiculousness of the palmare argumentum of the Populace and cryed up as so unanswerable to prove that very many Papists designedly fired the City and which Argument I have not met with exposed to contempt by any other Person and which had so far happened to work on the understanding of an ingenious man who employed himself in writing the History of England since the King's Restoration that he had been likely but for my shewing him the Childishness of his Error to have sent it to Posterity with a Crown instead of a Fools Cap on its head And tho I have rendred the same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Pope's Canon Law founded on Deuteronomy chargeable on our late Presbyterians I have exempted the Persons of such our Protestant Recusants from any guilt of an Out-rage against our Metropolis as Idolatrous for whatever their Principles are there is yet another sort of Idolatry prevalent among them as all Religionaries and which I have referred to namely Covetousness that would secure them from firing their own Nests But here while I am troubling my self to do right to Papists and Presbyterians I cannot without all the horror and detestation imaginable call to mind how a vile traiterous Subject of his Majesties who presumed to call himself the Protestant Ioyner was so far transported with Madness and Fury as to the scandal of Religion and Loyalty and common Sense with the guilt or that Fire to reproach his Prince whose Reign had so long signalized it self with such a Father-like tenderness for all his Subjects And yet in the TRYAL of that Monster of Calumny his slandering his Prince thus with so much desperate and ridiculous Molice was in proof And ridicuâ—ous it may well be called for what could be more remote from the least shadow of possibility than a Prince of such Eminent Wisdom and known great Abilities firing his own Chamber and destroying his Revenue and vastly impoverishing the People and thereby weakening himself in the Flagrancy of War between England and France and the States of Holland It is absolute dotage and Bedlam-madness to imagine that any one interested in the Government of England and its being a Kingdom could be in the least a well wisher to such an Out-rage The very Fift-Monarchy men who designed it were abject Paupers and the two French-men were no better But Justice found out that Shimei who thus outragiously slandered the Lord 's Annointed and may all such his incorrigible Enemies be cloathed with shame and let them see that tho Heaven doth not think fit always to hide Princes from the scourge of the Tongues of men of Belial yet at the same time it sheweth some tender regard of the honour of Crown'd heads by abandoning the dis-loyal to reproach them with impossibilities It was observed by the late Bishop of Winchester in his printed Sermon before the King on the 5th of November p. 18. That the Doctrines among the Dissenters that tend to Sedition and Rebellion seem to be derived and borrowed from the Church of Rome but his Lordship in the same Page having before spoke of those Doctrines said That if they are believed and practised they must necessarily produce Confusion among us Yet having a regard to the Piety and Peaceableness of some Dissenters and considering how long many of them had been trained up to Principles of Loyalty before they went off from the Church of England we may reasonably have the better hopes of their not being able to believe the Doctrine of Resistance and Principles convulsive of Civil Society But
settlement of the same proving Abortive in several Parliaments ib. The French King in the last War did forbid the Importation of Sail-Cloath to England ib. A presage of the future happy State of England and the Authors Idea thereof at large ib. and p. 252. An account of the Rough Hemp and Flax and Sail-cloth and all other Manufactures of Hemp and Flax yearly brought into England and from what Countries deduced out of the Custom-house Books p. 254. All the Hemp and Flax sown in England is observed to be bought up by the years end p. 257. Almost as much Hemp and Flax yearly brought into Amsterdam as into the whole Kingdom of England ib. The Authors judgment of the effects of the necessity that will drive us on to the Linen Manufacture ib. An Account of the fine Linen lately made by the French Protestants at Ipswich and of the Flax by them sown ib. The Author's Censure of the excessive Complaints of the danger of Popery ib. His belief that the future State of England will make men ashamed of their pass'd fears of Popery ib. The Vote of the House of Commons for the recalling the Declaration of Indulgence carried by the Party of the Nonconformists p. 258. Most of the Papists of England in the Year 1610 computed to be under the guidance of the Jesuites p. 260. Many Popish Writers have inveighed against Gratian the Compiler of the Decrets of the Canon Law ib. That Law never in gross received in England ib. Binds not English Papists in the Court of Conscience ib. A Tenet ridiculously and falsly in the Canon Law founded on Cyprian ib. Gratian's founding it on Cyprian gives it only the weight it could have in Cyprian's Works p. 261. Pere Veron's Book of the Rule of Catholick Faith cited for Gratian's Decrees and the gloss claiming nothing of Faith and Bellarmine's acknowledging errors therein ib. One definition in the Canon Law and gloss held by all Papists ridiculous ib. The Author thinks he has said as much to throw off the Obligation on any Papists to obey the Pope's Canon Law as they would wish said ib. He thinks himself morally obliged in any Theological Enquiry to say all that the matter will fairly bear on both sides ib. Heylin and Maimbourg cited about the firing of Heretical Villages in France p. 262. Parsons and Bellarmine cited by Donne for rendring some things obligatory that are said by Gratian p. 263. The Author expects that the growing populousness of England will have the effect of rendriâ—g men less censorious of any supposed Political Errors in the Ministers of our Princes p. 265. Mr. Fox cited for his Observation of many Excellent men falsly accused and judged in Parliament and his advice to Parliaments to be more circumspect ib. The Author minded by that passage out of Fox to reflect on the severity in a late Parliament in their Votes against the King's Ministers ib. The injustice of the Vote against the Earl of Hallifax p. 266. The Earl of Radnor occasionally mentioned with honour ib. The Constancy of the Earl of Anglesy to the Protestant Religion further asserted p. 267. Mention of his Lordships being injuriously reflected on in a Speech of Sir W. J. ib. The unreasonableness of the Reflections on the Lord Chief Justice North for advising and assisting in the drawing up and passing a Proclamation against Tumultuous Petitions ib. The great deserved Character of that Lord Chief Justice p. 268. throughout A reflection on the popularity of Sir W. J. and on the â—â—â—essive Applause he had from the House of Commons after his Speech for the Exclusion-Bill p. 269. Sir Leolin Jenkins mentioned with honour ib. The Cabal of Sir W. J. observed to be full of fears of the Exclusion-Bill passing and their not knowing what steps in Politicks to make next ib. The Earl of Peterborough at large mentioned with honour ib. and p. 270. A further Account of the Authors prediction of England's future happy State ib. and p. 271. The Author observes that the most remarkable late Seditious Writers have published it in Print That they feared the next Heir to the Crown only as Chief Favourite to his Prince and that they judged that the Laws would sufficiently secure them from fears of his power if he should come to the Crown p. 271. An Assertion of his never having advised his Prince to incommode any one illegally and of his not having used his own power to any such purpose ib. The Author judgeth such Persons to write but in jest who amuse the People about being Lachrymists by that Princes Succession ib. The Author reflects on our Counterfeit Lachrymists for not affecting as quick a prevention of any future growth of Popery as was 〈◊〉 care of in Scotland p. 272. He observes that few or none in Scotland fear that Popery can ever in any Course of time there gain much ground ib. The Papists in that Kingdom estimated to be but 1000 ib. The Author believes that the fears of Poperies growth will be daily abated in England and in time be extinguished ib. More Popish Ecclesiasticks observed to be in Holland then Ministers in France and that yet none in Holland pretend to fear the Papists ib. The Authors judgment of the Dissenters Sayings being usefully published ib. Some Notes on the Geneva Bible seditious ib. The same Tenet of firing Heretical Cities that is in the Popes Canon Law founded on the 13 th of Deuteronomy is chargeable on our late Presbyterians ib. The Assemblies Annotations cited to that purpose ib. The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine p. 274. Bishop Sanderson cited for that purpose ib. Calvin as to this point did blunder as shamefully as our Assembly-men p. 274. Several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines imbibed the error of Hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians ib. The Presbyterians here fired the Church and State with a Civil War ib. The Authors belief that there will never be any new Presbyterian Synod in England nor General Council beyond Sea ib. The Popes Pensions in the Council of Trent that sate for 18 years came to 750 l. Sterling per Month â—b The Author predicts the extermination of all Mercenary Loyalty in England ib. The reason of such his Prediction p. 275. The Lord Hyde first Commissioner of the Treasury mentioned with honour ib. What the new Heaven and the new Earth is that the Author expects in England ib. The reason that induced false Prophets to foretel evil rather than good to States and Kingdoms p. 276. at large The same applied to our Augurs who by enlarging our fears and jealousies and their own fortunes thereby rendred the Genius of England less august ib. The Authors measures of the future State of England are taken only from Natural Causes and Natures Constancy to it self p. 277. A short account of several great Religionary Doctrines having naturally pierced through the sides and roots of one another p. 279. The
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
man certainly apprehended no reason of an additional Commandment Thou shalt not fire thy Neighbours house and had he been convinced that the Pope in his decrepit Age had made a Commandment for the firing of it and whole Cities and had so pronounced è Cathedrâ would probably have imputed the lingua dolosa and the caâ—bones desolatorii to his Doctrine and the smoak from that fiery Doctrine would have had the effect of opening his Eyes But as for Mr. Cressy's Idea of the Massacring any Incendiaries tho they had been tooâ—â— in flagranti if he had staid in his old Church I mean that of England he would have found any such thing sufficiently stigmatised by its Doctrine which makes the King to bear the Sword and that not in vain and allows not the Rabble to be a Terror to Evil Doers nor Hell to break loose for the support of Heaven and which inculcates Obedience to the Law of the Land for Conscience sake and even that Law permits none to Assemble in Arms against a declared Enemy but by the Kings particular Commission and he must therefore go to China or to Rome that will have a Street or a Town or the Vniversitas or Community therein punish'd for the pretended or real faults of particular persons Moreover the English Genius hath not in Story that I know of been tainted with Infamy for penetrating any thing of that horrid Nature except in the old days of Popery in relation to the Iews and the Lay-Rabble was then put upon it by the Rabble of Fryars and Monks who owing Money to the Iews were that way willing to confute their Creditors And since the time that that Great and High Judg of Reason as well as Equity and to whom the Custody of the King's Conscience was Committed and who hath held the Scale of Equity with as steady an hand and tender heart and as discerning and watchful an Eye as any of his Predecessors did place the dreadful Guilt of the Firing of London where he did at the Condemnation of the Lord Stofford and probably had satisfied his Judgment for the doing of it by Observations or Examinations of Passages that occured elsewhere rather then at that Tryal for there the Evidence did not rise clear and high enough for the occasioning that part of his Sentence and since the time that the People of England by their Representatives threw the Guilt of that Fire on the Papists and the Magistrates of our Metropolis inscribed it on the Monument the populace have been as calm and temperate in their judging of it and as perfectly free from resentments of Revenge against all the Papists in general or any one Papist in particular as if none but that poor angry Antiquary Mr. Prynn had censured them for it and whose Thunder the World being so long used to did so much despise that his popularity could scarce have obtain'd an out-cry for the killing of a single Mad Dog. I must confess tho by the reiterated Confession and by the Execution of Hubert a Papist it appear'd that he did set Fire to the House in London from whence its rage began and tho his Confessing of Peidelow to be one of his Accomplices in the Fact exempts it from being doubted that Papists burn'd London and tho after I had heard of that judgment of the Lord Chancellor and of the House of Commons and of the Magistrates aforesaid and was shewn that Papal Tenet by your Lordship I doubted not of the Justice of attributing in my thâ—â—ghts one part of the Guilt of the Fire to some Jesuited Papists and that it might be said with the same propriety of Speech that London was Fired by the Papists as 't was by Sir Walter Raleigh that Harry the 4 th of France was kill'd by the Papists yet I never thought any considerable number of the Gentry among our Lay-Papists would have practised any thing of that kind tho the Pope himself should have Commanded it There was a Book containing Observations on our late Affairs of Church and State Printed in the Year 1680 called the Arts and Pernicious Designs of Rome wherein is shewed what are the Aims of the Iesuites and Fryars c. by a person of their own Communion who turn'd Romanist about thirty years since and throughout that Book as he in general fortifies my observation of a Protestant when turn'd Papist not being able to abandon all Candour his mind was first nourished in so he doth it particularly p. 25. where having in Proposition 4th spoke of the Mischiefs we havâ— received from some Popish Orders and particularly that of the Iesuites he saith as followeth in Proposition 41 viz. Amongst which the late sad disaster happening to the City of London not to mention divers others of like nature happening in divers other places since if it were a Practice of any Humane Contrivance and not a meer judgment of God from Heaven upon us cannot reasonably be thought to have been the Project or Practice of any other Men then these and to have come originally from Rome and the Consistory there who beside the bad Principles already mentioned which legitimate such doings at all times that they judge it convenient for their ends were without doubt willing to signalize that year 1666 with some remarkable mischief done to Protestants in check to the fancies of some in that Party who have had the confidence to affirm and as it were to predict that in this year Rome and their pretended Antichrist the Pope should be utterly destroyed That it appear'd a Practice of Humane Contrivance by the very Confession of the Incendiary is plain and that it was by the People in the City then suspected so I have said but so far were our plain English natures from charging it on any Lay English Papist that Mr. Marvel in his Growth of Popery Printed Anno 1677 having said That we may reckon the Reigns of our late English Princes by a Succession of the Popish Treasons against them adds And if under his Majesty we have yet seen no more visible effects of the same Spirit then the Firing of London acted by Hubert hired by Peidelow two French Men which remains a Controversie it is not to be attributed to the good Nature or better Principles of that Sect but to the wisdom of his Holyness who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special Mark of his Indignation I presume not to charge or discharge any sort of men about this Fact further then the Law hath done whether Papists or Priests or Fifth Monarchy-men for of a Conspiracy to Fire the City on the day it was fired on several of that latter Sect had been before Convicted and deservedly Executed for it as we must either Grant or Arraign the Justice of the Nation and therefore Mr. Cressy had reason to blame Mr. Prynn in some measure for concluding that the Papists were the only Incendiaries of the City
are somewhat disguised but are as well known as the Ecclesiasticks are in France and are not in the least assaulted c. There was one day in a Long-boat or Ship a Priest dressed in black Cloths who was not otherwise disguised than that his Coat was short who said his Breviary before a hundred persons with as much Liberty as he could have done in France And yet perhaps the number of those who in Holland fear them or who pretend to fear them is but the least of numbers I think too in this sharp sighted age where Art among the Inquisitive follows Nature as carefully as Equity doth Law one may safely predict that in the Dividend of our time little will come to the share of Metaphysicks or the considering how Metaphysica agit de iis quae sunt supra naturam and that the World being infinitely busie will not trouble it self with Arriagà s infinitum infinito infinitius and Christendom's being universally employed in preparing its defence against War and giving us time only for real Learning will divert us from either much opposing or defending the old point whether Vniversale be ens reale or whether Vniversalia are res extra singularia If by Metaphysicks we could find a real Answer to the Question what is truth or what is time of which it hath devoured so much or learn how to measure it by knowing what 's a Clock we might go on with its entitas which Mr. Hobs well englisheth the isseness of a thing but since it resolves not what things are as aforesaid but as Hudibrass saith only what is what I think as Filesac de authorit opiâ—c c. 1. mentions that the Council in France forbad Aristotle's Metaphysicks and punished with Excommunication the exscribing reading or having that Book our time will hold little Communion hereafter with Second Notions on those who Trade in them and that as it will seem very absurd to sacrifice much time to the enquiry if Vniversale is a real being and whether Vniversalia are res extra singularia and to sacrifice men for believing the contrary so it will likewise seem to enquire Whether there be one Catholick or Vniversal Apostolick Church existent apart from particular Churches which sense and reason tell us are and must be many tho the Catholick Church be but one and for the want of considering which so many People have been decoyed into the Church of Rome Many are the things that an ordinary Philosopher may predict concerning Rome and particularly varying from the Prophecy that it was to be destroyed by Fire may soretel Romam fore luce delendam and as Tully's words are in his Book de Naturâ Deorum Opinionem Commenta delebit dies veritatis judicia confirmabit And thus too it is easie to predict that the light of Reason and Experience will forever blot out here the Innovations that came from Geneva as well as those from Rome The Jewish Rabbins have from the words of the Sol Iustitiae arising with healing in his wings introduced a Proverb of The Sun ariseth the infirmity decreaseth meaning thereby that the Diseases that make Mortals groan and languish in the Night are somewhat abated by the rising Sun and thus the State of our Nation will be attended with greater health on the decay of Presbytery's Kingdom of Darkness The Walls of its Iericho are fallen down flat with the sound of the Trumpets of the Dissenters own Sayings so usefully published Tho I have said enough to speak my opinion of all Dissenters to the Discipline of our Church not owning such sanguinary Principles as are chargeable on some Papists yet the Dissenters Sayings have proved enough what some of their Principles were Nor can it be forgot that King Iames did very justly in the Conference at Hampton Court accuse the Notes in the Geneva Bible to be Seditious and to savour of Traiterous Conceits and that he instanced there in the Notes on Exodus 1. 19. Where they allow of disobedience to Sovereign Kings and Princes As absurd as that Tenet beforementioned in the Decrets and there founded on the 13th of Deuteronomy is I would wish no Presbyterian to insult over any Papists for it for it is visible in no meaner a Book than the Assemblies Annotations on Zechary 13. 3. where the Father and Mother of a false Prophet are commanded to say to him thou shalt not live and 't is said his Father and Mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he Prophesieth The Comment on the words Thou shalt not live affirms that the equity of the Law of Deut. 13. 6. 9. remains under the Gospel and with less danger is a Thief an Adulterer a Witch tolerated than such an Heretick and Seducer The present pleading for liberty of Conscience in Preaching and Practice is a thing extremely shameful dangerous and destructive and the Comment on the the words His Father c. is His Parents themselves shall not spare him preferring therein their Zeal and Piety towards God before the Affection and Love which naturally they bear toward their own Children See Deut. 13. 6. 9. No less Zeal is required under the Gospel than was under the Law. I pray God deliver all Mankind from the cruel rigour of the Equity as those Divines term it of that Iudicial Mosaic Law binding under the Gospel and from that kind of Zeal binding under the Gospel that did under the Law by virtue of the 6th and 9th Verses of that Chapter and from the 16th V. of which Chapter the Obligation for firing Heretical Cities was as well deduced by the Pope The Church of England illuminates us with better Doctrine and our Reverend Bishop Sanderson tells us in his 4th Lecture De obligatione conscientiae that no Law given by Moses doth directly and formally and per se â—ind the Conscience of a Christian i. e. as it was given by Moses for that every Mosaic Law as such was positive and did oblige those only it was put upon i. e. the Iews and shews that the Precepts of the Decalogue oblige not because Moses commanded them but because of their being consentaneous to nature and confirmed by the Gospel and so doth manumit the Christian World from the Yoke of the Iudicial Law that was made only for the stiff necks of Jews Calvin himself on that place of Zachary 13. 3. doth blunder as shamefully as did our Assembly men for he there makes the Penal Jewish Laws to bind under the Gospel His words there are these Sequitur ergo non modo legem illam fuisse Iudaeis positam quemadmodum nugantur fanatici homines sed extenditur etiam ad nos eadem lex and himself was in this point the Fanatick and not the contrary opinors and deniable it is not that several of the Calvinistick and Lutheran Divines beyond Sea did imbibe the error of hereticidium from the same mistaken Principle of Monk Gratians namely that the Penalâ—severe Jewish Laws were obligatory
and Honourable Actions of his numerous Ancestors being made by the hand of Heaven to point at him as the Centre and their being fixt so in his Memory that we cannot well think of his thinking of any thing but Honour that must make other Subjects pay the greater Veneration of his High Birth It is so hard a matter even for the flights of imagination with the exquisiteness of Art to produce thoughts of Kings and Princes any way proportionable to their real Figure that I have observed that our old famous Dramatists of the former Ages could hardly in any Scene give us the Character of a King done up to the height of a Monarchs Glory and as the Characters of Kings in those days were expressed it was but necessary that the Rule in Theaters should be that the Kings should enter there with loud Musick that so their Quality might that way be understood It is then no marvel if so many in the present Age who are not made è meliore luto and whose Education was low and whose Souls are narrow cannot comprehend the honour of the great part that God calls Kings to Act on the Stage of the World and are especially Strangers to the great thoughts that are to be supposed to Crown the Souls of Kings when they espouse a Religion But in that great particular Concern of Princes owning their Religion we are morally bound to think of them with all the honour we can nor to repine at that our Duty to them since in the Concern of Religion and as it is a Principle of the Divine Life we are to honour our Inferiours and cannot without profanation and usurping on Gods Right judge them rashly We are not to think that our honouring all men and the necessary parts of that duty are recommended to us by way of Council in order to a more perfect life and as not sub peccato obliging any but those who have by Vow bound themselves to the practice of the same but we are to esteem them Precepts and properly so called and universally binding and as necessary parts of that Holiness without which no man can see God. And therefore when I see any man after much labouring of his thoughts to have changed the Profession of his Belief of any Tenets controverted among Christians and particularly one who was in the Communion of the Church of England to own the belief of Transubstantiation Purgatory and the Doctrine of Iustification according to the Sense of the Council of Trent or other such points and shall find that most certainly that it neither was nor could be for Gain or respect to Temporal advantages that his judgment appeared thus altered nor yet out of levity and natural inconstancy and that his habitual constancy and steadiness in all measures relating to Persons and things long by me observed have assured me that no such change could thence proceed and shall further observe in such Person a greater tenderness in his regard to second Table Duties than before and that his inclinations of Beneficence to all Mankind and particularly to his former friends now differing in judgment from him have not been tinctured and discoloured by any alteration of his Notions I shall think my self under various Moral Obligations to honour such a Person tho perhaps erroneously opining I will honour him for his discharge of his Duty in trying all things and having spent time in examining the truth of Religionary Speculations and taking up a Religion not by chance as most Orthodox Religionaries do but by choice I will honour him for following that which Sanderson in his Lectures of Conscience calls the next and immediate tho not the adequate Rule of his Conscience the light of his mind for the time present a Light that I see so many Orthodox Religionaries playing with or endeavouring to extinguish I will honour him for the great Sacrifice I think that he honestly intends to truth and to offer which to it I see so many Persons who erred so reluctantly brought to its Altars I mean the Pride and Glory of the Humane understanding by a Recantation of its former Sentiments a Sacrifice that to him who consults with Flesh and Blood may seem as unpleasant as the offering up of Isaac did to Abraham And since to presage well of men is to honour them I will thus in the Case of such a Person who hath thus honoured God by taking up his â—ross and taking shame to himself believe that God will honour him and judge that tho he may in statu viatoris have mistaken Error for Truth in his way he will not mistake Hell for Heaven at his Journeys end Moreover since to speak rashly to or of any men is a dishonour to them I will not only not dishonour such a Person by determining that his Error is voluntary which whether it be so I can never know and which if it be not I do know it can be no Sin but will pay him the just honour of my judging it to be involuntary as knowing that neither he nor any one else can command his own understanding and that the nature of the understanding is such that it can no more apprehend things otherwise than they appear to it than the Eye see other Colours in the Rain-bow than it doth whether those Colours be really there or no. Moreover altho I know that no Law binds without a Promulgation and that that Promulgation of Divine positive Laws may by reason of mens diffent Abilities of understanding be sufficient for one man that is not for another and so that the erroneous opinion of one man may be a Crime and another mans holding the â—â—me opinion may be innocent yet I will not dishonour the understanding of any man for his not believing the Controverted points of Christian Religion that I observe other men of great intellectuals profess the Belief of and do consider that as the Wind bloweth where it lists so the influx of the Divine Spirit on men is not confined to the excellence of their understandings and that God doth not always reveal his mind to men according to the Proportion of their Gifts and Graces and that when the Book of the Law was found and read before Iosiah Hulda the Prophetess was sent to and consulted tho there were Prophets in the Land at that time and that that was Revealed sometime to Nathan that was not to David who was in all points his Superior I will according to what was cited out of Ames Interpret every thing of him in the better part that is doubtful And tho men do naturally think themselves equally wise I will according to the Morality enjoyned by that place in the Philippians Esteem him better than my self since a great part of Wisdom consists in the proportioning of the means to the end I will out of the knowledge of my own frequent Omissions in that kind account that we both having designed the same end of Eternal
Loyalty that any Christian who hath taken these Oaths shall think sufficient doth most certainly take the name of Loyalty and Protestancy and of Christianity and even of God in vain and as the Scripture implies that there is a Repentance to be repented of I shall say that such a mans Protestancy is to be protested against And when we consider that the Presbyterian Author of the EXERCITATION beforementioned hath in p. 41. with so much Loyalty and Reason told us in terms That Obedience is owing to Princes without condition of Religion or Iustice on their part performed and the Scripture is clear for an irrespective and in regard of the Rulers Demeanor absolute subjection Exod. 20. 12. 21. 25. Rom. 13. 1 2 c. Tit. 3. 1. 1 Pet. 2. 13. 1 Sam. 24. 6 7. 26. 9 10 11. Jer. 27. 12. 29. 7. Matth. 22. 21. and hath told us in p. 56. That our Oaths put no condition on the Prince but are all absolute and irrespective and run without ifs or ands in like manner as the Obligation of Subjects Allegiance to their Sovereign is irrespective according to Divine Institution methinks it should make any Son of the Church of England to start at the thought of his being out-done in Loyalty and sworn Allegiance by a Covenanting Presbyterian for such that Author was and at the thought of any ones having taken those Oaths relating to the King his Heirs and Successors and afterward interlining the interpretation of them with ifs and ands and at the thought of such an interlineation not appearing as ill in the Court of Conscience as any would do in a Court of Law. But the truth is the Church of England appearing in this late Religionary Fermentation to have so incorporated this Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty into its Constitution beyond any other Church in the World and likewise the Doctrine of Charity and Moderation toward all Christians whether Foreigners or Domesticks whether whole Churches or single Persons as Primate Bramhal's words are that the same doth now as I may say strike the Eyes of all indifferent men and enforce it self on the thoughts of any who do but for Curiosity walk about this Sion and go round about her and tell the Towers thereof I mean do consider its Prayers Homilies Articles Canons and Ecclesiastical Constitutions it hath hereby been necessarily made like the Eagle to renew its youth and to be invigorated as with a new Soul after its Enemies thought it dead or asleep and after Mr. Hooker's shrewd guessing that after the Year 1677. That what followed would be likely to be small joy to them who should behold it For the Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty being Essential to the Peace of Kingdoms and likely to be so more and more to the Worlds end and the Church of England appearing as by consent of Parties to be THE Church that overtowers all others in the Principles for THAT Sort of Loyalty as well as in the august Principles of Charity for all Christians according to the saying of Magnes amoris amor it must naturally attract the love of thoâ—e in other Churches and supposing that any Church or People love themselves and cannot be preserved but by Loyalty Nature will direct the World to a growing love for the Church of England and therefore I am no Visionaire in predicting from natural Causes That what shall follow to the Church of England will be great joy to those who shall behold it to the very end of time And nothing could possibly in my opinion have brought it to this firm State of its Glory but the disloyal Principles and Practices of some of its Competitors and particularly the just and dreadful apprehensions given to considerate men upon some Nominal Protestants and Nominal Property-men having founded Dominion in Grace and yet having reproached the Church of England and its Divines with Popery and invited the Protestant Mobile to make a Schism from it on such an account and printed many Seditious Pamphlets for the Establishing the IF or AND-Loyalty or indeed which is all one an absolute Disloyalty and in such a Conjuncture when it would have been not more pernicious to the particular Souls of the Disloyal than to the Body of the whole Nation and to the State of Christendom Thus through the Divine Omnipotence which can bring good out of evil hath our late Fermentation been made perfective to our Church as well as the Hereditary Monarchy and the Rule of God's governing the World by the Prayers of his Church and Lusts of his Enemies been here exemplified and as the Air that is the Steem of the dull Earth or the Textura halituum terrae as Gassendus calls it is made by nature to be the Vehicle of those Beams of the Sun that dazle our Eyes thus have the Fumes exhaled by such mens Lusts of Disloyalty and Malice that darken'd their own understandings and would have obscured the glory of the Church of England been made instrumental in dispersing its brightness through the World and even in the opening of the Eyes of many to behold it with amazement and that service hath been done our Church thereby which by all the Pens of its Iewel and Hooker and Sanderson could never be effected England that had so much the Carriage and the Trade of the World till the Munster Peace of 48 could bear the Civil War after 41 and breathe under it and flourish after it but as the State of the World abroad and at home now is and likely to be our ALL must depend upon the Principles and Practice of Loyalty and therefore this new Soul I spake of as now animating the Church of England must be immortal and it may well say to it self under any Prince that can come Soul take thy ease thou hast Loyalty and the Principles of it laid up for many years and England did not before 48 more excel other Realms in Trade than its Church doth now other Churches in absolute and irrespective Loyalty That great Iudge of Churches and their Principles Arch-Bishop Laud having in p. 36. of his famous Star-Chamber Speech remarked the dangerous Consequence of avowing That the Popish Religâ—ion is Rebellion saith That some Principles of theirs teach Rebellion is apparently true c. and I shall add that some Principles of our late Covenanting Dissenteâ—s have taught it is apparently true and for such of the latter who believed and practised these Principles to reproach any Papists with Disâ—oyalty is as apparently ridiculous as was Mr. Prynn's writing two Voluminous Tractates of The Disloyalty of Papists at the time when he was making so great a Figure in the late Rebellion But however suitably to the Moral Offices urged by Ames of not condemning whole Parties of men on the account of the guilt of some Persons I have under this Conclusion cited the loyal Principles of some Recusants of all sorts pertinent to my Scope and because the irrespective Loyalty
and a printed Devotional Office called The Office of the immaculate Conception of the most holy Virgin our Lady approved by the Sovereign Pontiff Paul the 5th had been much in vogue in the Papal World yet the Pope by his Decree of February the 17th 78. damned that Office and as I may say threw it over board And of this the Author of Iulian the Apostate might have took notice if he had pleased when in his Comparison of Popery and Paganism he instanced in the transprosing of part of the Psalms to the Virgin Mary after the mode of this Office that had been suppressed about 4 years before The old stubbornness of Popes against the making any Reformation of Abuses and Errors in their Church hath been commonly observed but I believe that considering the great Figure England makes in the World it may not be unlikely that the brisk Spirit of Opposition against Popery that had displayed it self in England for about 8 years before the Plot-Epoche and the sharp and learned Books that were in that Conjuncture printed here against the Abuses of the Church of Rome might much contribute to the laudable Proceedings of this Pope in those Decrees I have mentioned And therefore when Nature had thus enforced the Papal Chair in so great a Measure upon Recantation and a great deal of pretended infallibity was thrown over-board and that even relating to some Principles that might be called Religionary it may reasonably be thought that the same operation of Nature will produce among our little Protestant Recusants a tacit renuntiation of the Irreligionary part of those very Principles that both the World and themselves must needs see they have transcribed from Popery The Complication of the Principles of Irreligion that hath joyned the Iesuites Popery with that of our former Presbyterians Popery hath long been as visible as the great Isthmus I spake of that joyns the Mexican and the Peruan parts of the new World and as I being to explain as in a Dictionary what I meant by Popery I would not expose my self to the Critical Religionary Controvertists by nicely defining Popery the Observation being no less than a Rule in the Civil Law that omnis definitio in jure Civili periculosa est parum est enim ut non subverti possit but gave the Description of my sense of it as before in this Preface so if I were to give a Description of our Scotch Presbytery as Covenanted to be here introduced I would take the said Description of Popery and only mutatis mutandis say that by Presbytery I mean the power of our Presbyters in imposing Creeds and Doctrines and Rules of Divine Worship on men and the Presbyters jurisdiction interloping in that of our Princes and their Laws and the doing this by the Charter of Jus Divinum and as they are Christs pretended Vicars and do account that its intended Arbitrariness here in England justly appeared as terrible as that of Popery and that our Consciences being enslaved to a Foreign Bishop is not more inglorious than their being so to our fellow Subjects and that a blush being divided among ten thousand Ecclesiasticks after they had out-raged our Laws and our Consciences would have here been no more seen by us than one at Rome on occasion of any Popes there blushing after they had so done I have observed in this Discourse how that part of Presbytery that may tho erroneous be called Religionary as practised in some Foreign Churches hath here decayed and must so naturally more and more and was glad to hear That since the putting the Laws in Execution against Protestant Recusants those of them who were called Presbyterians have on recollection of thought and after Conference had with our Divines forborn their former Schismatical Separation from our Churches and that particularly in our Metropolis they have in all things been ameinable to the Doctrine and Discipline of our Church except as to the submitting to have their Children baptized with the use of the Sign of the Cross there and their Superstition in not complying with which will I hope not be long lifed The gradual encrease of the Christenings in some Parishes in the Country that I have seen Accounts of and in which places the Dissenters formerly were very numerous hath been to a far greater Proportion than the gradual Encrease by me remarked as to London and within the same years And a Learned Divine who is Minister of a Parish not far from London hath acquainted me That the number of Communicants being there about the beginning of those years but a 100 hath since arisen to 400 and I believe that generally the numbers of Conformists may have much encreased in the Country beyond the proportion of their Encrease in the City and may probably do so for some years Tho there are several Merchants and rich Traders in our Metropolis who are Dissenters yet I have observed that the gross of their numbers consists there of ordinary Retail-traders and as these have been naturally Sufferers there by the Cities so much removing Westward and by the Retail-trade being so much gone to the other end of the Town and are likely so to be more and more so it hath been and will be natural to them to be more and more querulous according to the saying of Omne invalidum est Querulum And in this Case it will be natural to them both to support their decaying Trade by Religionary Combinations and perhaps to fancy Religion it self breaking together with their Bankrupsy and both for the Consoling one another as Socii doloris and likewise relieving one another thereby to endeavour to keep Heterodox Religionary Societies as long and as much as they can But Necessity the known Mother of Industry must naturally in time cure them of their Poverty and Temptation to Heterodoxy thereby Our Quakers are by many thought to be a kind of a Roma subterranea but whether justly or no I enquire not nor shall I give my opinion in it till the Principles of their Light within shall be exposed to that without many of which Principles have hitherto been by them kept as hid from the World as were the Subterraneous Lights preserved in the Roman Monuments and as to which Principles they are perhaps conscious that when they shall be exposed to the Air and Light of the Sun they will be as naturally extinguished as those Monumental Lights were when occasionally brought into the open Air. But one of their known Tenets being the unlawfulness of Oaths I account they have an advantage thereby beyond the Presbyterians or Independents in their Claim to Indulgence by demanding it in a Doctrinal point wherein there is Dâ—gnus vindice nodus by reason of some words in the 5th of St. Matthew and 5th of St. Iames seeming primâ facie very emphatically and vehemently to forbid all manner of swearing as the Commentators generally observe And in this point they are entituled to a very true and
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
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
only as a Philosopher Considering that the Properties of humane Passions have as Necessary effects in Minds as gravity or lightness have in Bodies and that let men intend what male administration they will things will not be ill administred do think that the fermentation now in the Kingdome will not end but with Popery it self here ending And that I may not seem to stand alone in this my opinion I shall entertain your Lordship with that of An Excellent Philosopher and Divine the Author of the History of the Royal Society who there having said that experimental Philosophy will enable us to provide before-hand against any alteration in Religious affairs which this Age may produce he goes on thus If we Compare the changes to which Religion has been alwayes subject with the present face of things we may safely conclude that whatever Vicissitude shall happen about it in our time it will probably be neither to the advantage of implicit Faith nor of Enthusiasme but of Reason the fierceness of violent inspiration is in good Measure departed the Remains of it will be soon chaced out of the World by the Remembrance of its terrible footsteps it has every where left behind it And although the Church of Rome still preserves its Pomp yet the Real authority of that too is apparently decaying It first got by degrees to the Temporal Power by means of its Spiritual but now it upholds some shadow of the Spiritual by the strength of the Temporal dominion it has obtain'd This is the present state of Christendome It is impossible to spread the same Cloud over the World again The Vniversal disposition of this Age is bent upon a Rational Religion And therefore I Renew my affectionate request That the Church of England would Provide to have the chief share in its first adventure that it would persist as it has begun to encourage Experiments which will be to our Church as the Brittish Oake is to our Empire an Ornament and Defence to the Soil wherein 't is planted This Author therefore with such Vigour of Reason passing his sentence concerning any Vicissitudes here not happening that will probably Conduce to the advantage of Popery or Enthusiasme I hope your Lordship will acquit me both of Singularity and Enthusiasme as to the opinion I have given especially since I only profess it to be founded on Natural Reason and do only Consider the God of Nature when I think that a Religion that is of God will stand 'T is not unknown to Your Lordship that Columbus being in chace of the New World and Cast among some barbarous Ilanders that deny'd him the hospitality of their Port and freedom of Commerce he Knowing that they worshipt the Moon and that it would shortly be Eclips'd thô he was neither Prophet nor Prophet's Son aw'd them out of their inhumanity by foretelling that the Moons deity would be shortly obscur'd and when ever I acquaint any Roman Catholics with my Judgment of the Nearness of their Religion to an Eclipse I intend no more enthusiasme in my prediction then Columbus did in his and design nothing worse neither by mine then he by his namely the reconciling them to humanity and a fair entercourse with Mankind 'T was in the middle of the Worlds long night of barbarisme and ignorance that Popery was in its Meridian and for hundreds of years all the Learning that busy'd the World referr'd to Iudicial Astrology Rabinical Resveries School-Divinity Latine Rhimes in praise of the Saints Compiling of Legends to Monks Histories of Ecclesiastical affairs and the times they liv'd in but so partial and so full of ridiculous and incredible Stories that we have a better and truer account of the times when Alexander and Iulius Caesar liv'd then of the times of Constantine and Charlemain to gelding of the Fathers writings and purging away their Gold Regulating the Hoods and Hose and Shoo 's of Monks to inventing of Ceremonies and mystical vestments and fantastic geniculations to the making of the Popes brutish Canon Law and the Commenting thereon in barbarous Latine by Doctors of the Decrees and Decretals and to the Commenting on Aristotle by those that could not read his Text and the Commenting likewise on the New Testament by such as knew no Greek insomuch that 't was then a proverbial saying among those illiterate Writers Graecum est non potest legi to quiddity esseity entity and such titivilitium and to eus rationis that did as I may say destroy the being of Reason to the improvement of one sort of Mechanics Viz. by making Images in Churches with little engines and librations turn the eyes and move the lips like the forementioned Rood of Grace at Boxley in Kent and which was by Bishop Fisher exposed as a cheat at St. Pauls Cross at the time of its being there broke in pieces while their great Real Design was to make the Layety but the Churches automata as brute Animals may not improperly be said to be God Almighties to the Composing Paschal Epistles about the time of the Celebration of Easter a Controverâ—y as our great Mr. Hales saith that caused as great a Combustion as ever was in the Church and in which fantastical hurry all the World were Schismaâ—ics and about which Monk Austin was so quarrelsome with the Britains when the difference was not in doctrine but in Almanac Calculations and about which aâ—ter the infallibility of the General Councel of Nice had given a Rule in the Cause the World was yet so much in the dark that the Bishops of Rome from year to year were fain to address to the Church of Alexandrias's Mathematicians for directions as to the week Easter was to be kept in And during this long night Millions of mankind were brought into the World only to sleep out their span of time and to have day-dreams of Knowledge or rather a profound Docta Ignorantia and men were by dignities rewarded proportionably for their sleeping longest according to what the Chronicon Frideswidae mentions of Guimundus a Chaplain to our King Henry the First who in the Celebration of holy offices reading before the King that place of St. Iames non pluet super terram annos III menses VI thus ridiculously distinguished the Notes in his reading non pluet super terram annos unum unum unum menses quinque unâ—m and the King asking him afterward why he red so he answered quia vos in ita tantum legentes beneficia episcopatus Confertis No marvel then if during that long gross and palpable Darkness of the World the Pope travesty'd those words in Scripture about Gods making the two great lights to serve his turn against the Emperor thô yet the attempt to prove the Popes Supremacy out of the first Chapter of Genesis is as extravagant as his who would prove the Circulation of the blood out of the first Chapter of Litleton And as the Roman Breviary tell 's us of S. Thomas
very gravely that when once he was vehement in prayer before a Crucifix at Naples he heard this voice bene de me scripsisti Thoma none likewise in that age laught at the Pope for saying bene de me scripsisti Moses The world then brought no quo warranto against the Popes Charter derived thus in his Canon Law from Moses nor that gloss on it which says Since the Earth is seven times bigger then the Moon and the Sun eight times bigger then the Earth the Papal Power must Consequently be fifty seven times bigger then the Regal dignity Our English World will no more allow of the logical Consequence of that doughty argument of Bellarmine Lib. 1. de Pont. ca. 2. sect denique sect sed There is one King among Bees therefore there ought to be one Commander chief Teacher and visible Monarch in the Vniversal Church then they would allow that argument of the Bees to give our neighbour Monarch a right to an Vniversal Temporal Monarchy The Popes vociferating of that Text Behold two Swords and while their adherents held so many Thousands in their hands might then pass muster for as good an argument of his right to Spiritual and Civil power as the words that the Lillies spin not did for the Salic Law with the help of another Army then one of Commentators The Renewall of the Popes Charter by Pasce oves was not then disallowed either for the fleecing of many Millions of Christians or killing some hundreds of thousands in the German Empire according to what has been observed by the famous Erastus in his Theses p. 72. propter excommunicatos Imperatores Reges aliquot Centena millia hominum trucidata sunt in imperio Germanico And perhaps the Popes plea for making the World a great Slaughter-house might then be admitted by the authority of the Text Arise Peter kill and eat Conculcabis super aspidem basilicum then went for a claim of Divine Right to make the head of the World to be trampled on by the foot of a bald-pated Fryar But if the Papacy the light that was in the World then was darkness as the Scripture Expression is How great was that darkness And as the Popes continued art was then to Conceal Nature so 't was not then held tanti for art in others to be Curious in following Nature when an Opinion was imbibed that the Pope could change the very Nature of things according to that saying I have been shewn in the Canon Law glo in C. proposuit de Conc. praeb c. 5. de trans◠ep Papa mutare potest rerum substantialia de Iustitia injustitiam facere mutando Iura corrigendo adeóque quadrata aequare rotundis et rotundis quadrata And for my part I should not have repined at the Popes assuming to himself the honour of the light that rules by day if he could have illuminated the World with the demonstration of the quadrature of the Circle which that gloss pretends to a great Knowable thing as Aristotle said tho not known and which secret all the penetrating Mathematicians from Archimedes down to Mr. Hobbs have wooed with very great passion and could not enjoy But during the Egyptian plague of darkness that many Ages then lay under our famous Countreyman Wicliff alarm'd the Lethargic World and he assail'd several gross Errors of Popery with its own weapons of Metaphysics and School Divinity and by means of the noise his Two hundred Volumes made in the World he dispers'd a great terror in that dark Age and as one saith Sir Iohn Old-Castle Lord Cobham and the Lollards being awaken'd out of their first sleep were desirous to rise before it was day and before the appointed time was Come for the Reforming the abuses in the Church and between that time and morning most men fell asleep again as fast as ever but yet long before the dawn of the Reformation the doctrine of Wicliffe had made such a fermentation in our English World that in the Year of our Lord 1422 that great States-man Chichley Archbishop of Canterbury in a Letter to Pope Martine the Fifth Complain'd That there were then so many here in England infected with the heresies of Wicliff and Husse that without force of an Army they could not be supprest Whereupon the Pope sent two Cardinals to the Arch-Bishop to Cause a Tenth to be gather'd of all Spiritual and Religious men and the money to be Laid in the Chamber Apostolic and if that were not sufficient the residue to be made up of Chalices Candlestics and other implements of the Church as the Acts and Monuments Attest And it is not unknown that long before viz. in Harry the Fifth's time Chichley foreseeing that a Storm was coming from the Commons on Church-Lands diverted it by engaging England in its darling popular War with France and caus'd the Clergy to contribute very liberally to it But that fermentation that Chichley said could not in the Year 1422 be checkt in peoples Minds otherwise then as aforesaid soon out-grew the power of any Army to allay for in less than Thirty years afterward the Invention of Printing came into the World by which one man could transmit more notices of things in a Day then another could by writing in a Year and which did as much out-do the publication of notions by the Goosquill as the invention of Gun-powder did the killing Force of the gray-goose-wing and which did as it were revive the old Miracle of the Gift of Tongues and Cloven too I may Call them for their being divided from the Sentiments of the Papal Holy Church and made Learning begin to fly like lightning through the World to the Controuling and detecting of the Popes Excommunicating Thunder and which shew'd the World its true face in the stream of time and shew'd the greet Fisherman of Rome dancing in the Nett and which was the true speaking Trumpet whereby a single Author could preach to the diocess of the World. And that great birth of Fate the taking of Constantinople within three years after the Invention of Printing occasioning the World's acquiring the knowledge in the West that it lost in the East and dispersing the Learned Greeks Theodore Gaza Iohn Lascaris Manuel Chrysaloras and many others to teach the Greek Tongue where they went the Press was thereby furnished with Glad tidings for the Curious World and Erasmus and many learned Papists did soon imbibe the knowledge of that learned Language and he complained in a Letter to the Archbishop of Mentz That the Friars would fain have made it Heresy to speak Greek So pleasant was it then to consider that that barbarous Generation instead of knowing Heresy to be Greek voted Greek to be Heresy and that they who had murdered so many thousands for being Heretics knew not what the very word in its original language imported The Sagacity of Erasmus could not then but easily see through the Cobwebs of the School-Divines totam Theologiam a
the being of a Deity saith Nec sanè multum interest uâ—rum id neget an Deos omni procuratione atque actione privet mihi enim qui nihil agit esse omnino non videtur He there moreover acquaints us with the origine of the word Superstition saying that Non enim Philosophi verùm etiam Majores nostri superstitionem à Religione separaverunt nam qui totos Dies precabantur immolabant ut sui liberi sibi superstites essent superstitiosi sunt appellati quod nomen patuit posleà latiùs qui autem omnia quae ad Deorum Cultum pertinerent diligenter pertractarent tanquam relegerent sunt dicti Religiosi ex religendo c. But those things that those antient Heathens carefully discriminated many Modern Christians as carefully Confound namely Superstition and Religion and by the innate pride of Humane Nature leading men to worship the Gods that they make rather then the God that made them and which enslaved the ancient Jews almost with a Continuando to the Adoration of stocks and stones and to the neglect of the worshiping the God that delivered them from the House of Bondage degenerate Christians adore the Births of Religion in their own fancies and having there Model'd a Deity do Act over the old Superstition with Anxious wishes and Formal Prayers that those their monstrous Births may out-live them and do outgo all examples of the heathen World in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immolating Nations by War to those Children of their imagination and thus Popish Superstition within our Memory turn'd Ireland into one Akeldama and Enthusiastick Superstition converted England into another and as Lipsius tells us that the gladiatory Combats did in some one Month cost Europe 30000 mens lifes to divert the old Romans so fanatical have some that call themselves Protestants been as to afford sport and diversion to the new Romanists and even the very Iesuits by Superstition having made so many of us Gladiators against one another and as if we were Brute Animals we give them the recreation of seeing us like Cocks attacking each other with the keenest anger when they please and give the Arbitrary Power to the Iesuits to make our Land their Cock-Pit But the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of the superstition of Popery here being come and the worst thing in Popery being its Fanaticism and Holy Church being the great Asylum of that as our Learned Dr. Stilling fleet hath taught the World in his Book of the Fanaticism of the Church of Rome 't is in vain for Popery or Jesutisme to save-themselves from the blow of Fate by standing behind Presbytery The Conclusum est contra Manichaeos before mention'd that is now the Vox populi doth with its full cry pursue Presbytery as well as Popery for the making duo summa Principia in States and Kingdoms and claiming an Ecclesiastick Power immediately derived from Christ and not dependant on the Civil and 't is in vain for any Principle that an awaken'd World pursues as a Cheat to try to save it self by changing its name There is no observation more common then that Popery and Presbytery that seem as distant as the two Poles yet move on the same Axle-tree of a Church Supremacy immediately derived from Christ and Mr. Hobbs his Leviathan might have passed through the World with a general Applause if no Notion had been worse in it then in Chap. 44. The making his Kingdom of darkness to consist of Popery and Presbytery The measures that the Genius of our Nation inclines it to take of things from experiment will Naturally Perpetuate its aversion from Presbytery as well as Popery For tho the Divines of the Protestant Churches abroad that are fautors of the Presbyterian Form of Church Government own not the doctrine of Rebelling for Religion and tho thus on the occasion of a Iesuite's formerly Printing somewhat in defence of his Order and alledging that several Protestant Writers had allow'd the Rebelling of Subjects against their Princes and instanceth in Buchanan and Knox yet Rivet the Professor of Divinity at Leiden in his Answer to that Jesuite saith that all other Protestant Writers Condemn that doctrine and he ascribes the Rashness of Buchanan and Knox praefervido Scotorum ingenio ad audendum prompto and tho the persons who in Holland and France live under that Form of Church Government have pretended to no authority from Christ to resist Soveraign Powers and that the Loyalty of the French Protestants hath been so signal under all their Pressures that D'Ossat in his Letter to Villeroy from Rome Ianuary the 25 th 1595 having discoursed of the horrid attempt against the Life of Harry the 4 th acknowledgeth Concerning the Hugonots il's n'ont rien attenté de tel ny contre lui ny contre aucun de cinq Roys ses predecesseurs quelque boucherie que leurs Majestez ayent faite des dits Huguenots i. e. They have attempted nothing of this Kind either against him or against any of the five Kings his Predecessors notwithstanding the butchery or slaughter that their Majesties made of those Huguenots yet is it too notorious to be denyed that that sort of Church-Government having in Scotland in the time of our former Princes been accustomed continually to hold their Noses to Grind-stones which was a preparatory way to have brought their Heads to Blocks and that Nation invading us with a Covenant the very entring into which and the imposing it without leave from the King so to do and much more against his Command was a thing that perhaps to the Associators themselves seemed illegal and contrary to the Petition of Right which provides against the administring of any Oath not warrantable by the Laws and Statutes of this Realm there was by that means a Coalition between the Presbyterian Divines of our Nation and theirs in principles of Enthusiasme and Rebellion Principles that our Nonconformist Divines in King Iames's time here abhorr'd for in the Protestation of the Kings Supremacy made by those Ministers and Published Anno 1605 the conclusion of their 4th Tenet is That the Supremacy of Kings is not tyed to their Faith and Christianity but to their very Crown from which no Subject or Subjects have power to separate or disjoyn it and their 9th Tenet is We hold that though the King should command any thing contrary to the Word unto the Churches that yet they ought not to resist him therein but only peaceably to forbear Obedience and sue to him for Grace and Mercy and where that cannot be had meekly to submit themselves to the Punishment and their last Tenet is We hold it utterly unlawful for any Christian Churches whatsoever by any Armed Force or Power against the will of the Civil Magistrate and State under which they live to erect and set up in publick the true worship of God or to beat down or suppress any Superstition and Idolatry that shall be
countenanced and maintained by the same And I believe none will imagine that those Nonconforming Divines would take any Oath but in the imposers sence or Casuistically advise others so to do 'T is therefore no marvel if our later Presbytery being so unconformable to the Law of the Land and to the Tenets of the former Nonconformists soon grew weary of it self and did with its horrid Visage only face us and march off Your Lordship found that in another thing it resembled Popery namely in that it would be all or nothing and you helped it to the latter part of the Alternative Mr. Nye who made a great Figure in the Assembly of Divines hath in that Book of his forementioned p. 98 helped this Age to know how Arbitrary they would have been in delivering men to Satan for saith he there the exercise of Discipline in our Congregations was ordered by the Parliament but limited likewise to an enumeration of the Sins for which we might excommunicate exempting other Sinners that were as much under our charge This was looked on by the Assembly as a great Abridgment of their Ministerial Liberty and so great as they professed it could not with a good Conscience be submitted to as not being able to perform their trust which they receiv'd from Iesus Christ and must give an account of to him resolving to stand fast in the Liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free So ridiculous were those Divines that tho no Pope ever arrogated a power to Excommunicate one but for the Crimes nominated in his Canon-Law and tho our Church of England never claim'd a power of excommunicating but for a Crime express'd in the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws yet those froward Disciplinarians would have been allow'd to shoot their Thunderbolts of Excommunication upon a Capricio But not only the Parliament but the whole Nation in a manner pronounced them Contumacious the people saw how Arbitrarily they would have interdicted the whole Land from the use of the Cup and Bread too in the Sacrament and have rail'd in the Communion-Table with fantastick Qualifications and they soon judged those Clergy-men guilty of Irregularity and the rather for that they had engaged so far in Causâ sanguinis and the same Sun of Reason and Knowledge that with the strength of its Beams had here put out the Popes Kitching Fire of Purgatory did soon without noise and insensibly confound their Dominions in the Kingdom of Darkness and those Divines themselves found that their destroying Episcopacy here had in effect by the Parliaments being their Superintendants enthroned Erastianisme that which indeed their Principles led them to hate more then Episcopacy it self Mr. Baxter in the Preface to his second part of the Nonconformists Plea speaking of Presbytery saith I do not hear of many out of London and Lancashire that did ever set up this Government and I know not of one Congregation now in London of Englishmen that exerciseth the Presbyterian Government nor ever did since the King came home c. And saith they have no National Assembly no Classes no Coalition of many Churches to make a Presbytery and I hear of none unless perhaps some Independants that I know not that have so much as ruling Lay-Elders Alluding to some expressions before applyed to Papists and Popery I may say that the Cato's of Presbytery came here on the Stage tantum ut exirent and that Government soon had its period here per simplicem desinentiam 'T was obvious that Presbytery as well as Popery directed men where to stand in a place divided from the Civil Government and so to shake the Earth and it appear'd very inauspicious to the Model of the Covenant that in its first Paragraph it should stumble upon implicit Faith by swearing to a Government and Reformation that shall be and to the preservation of the Reformed Religion in the Church of Scotland in Doctrine Worship Discipline and Government the particulars whereof the Lay-Covenanters of England if not the Clerical also were far from understanding And tho in that Paragraph the Covenant binds its takers to endeavour to advance the Reformation of Religion according to the word of God a Clause that Sir Harry Vane declared to a very worthy Gentleman now living that he caus'd to be inserted into the Covenant after much debate about the same and opposition from the Scotch Commissioners with whom he was interested in the making of it and thereupon said That â—e was three days in getting the word of God into the Covenant yet that Covenant having almost extirpated Root and Branch those spiritual Guides from whom the people might expect a more Rational and Learned Interpretation of the Sense of the word of God then from the Presbyterian Divines they were soon sensible of their danger both as to the perverting of the Scripture and subverting of the Church from the new Correctors of Magnificat and found that such an Inundation of Vile Religionary Tenets was got into the Church that the Houses of Parliament ordered the 10 th of March 1646. To be set apart as a solemn day of humiliation to seek Gods Assistance for the suppressing and preventing of the growth and spreading of Errors Heresies and Blasphemies and that Mr. Vines on that day Preaching before the Commons p. the 4 th of his Sermon printed acknowledged That that day was the first that ever was in England on that sad occasion and p. 67 of that Sermon mentioned a most detestable thing then broach'd by the Press though yet in the way of Query namely what is meant by the word Scripture when it is asserted that the denying of the Scriptures to be the word of God should be holden worthy of death for saith the Author either the English Scriptures or Scriptures in English are meant by the word Scriptures or the Hebrew and Greek Copies or Originals the former cannot be meant with reason because God did not speak to his Prophets and Apostles in the English Tongue nor the latter for the greatest part of men in the Kingdom do not understand or know them Mr. Vines declared his just Abhorrence of that insinuation and saith If this dilemma be good what is become of the certain foundation of our hope or faith or comfort how can we search the Scriptures without going first to School to learn Hebrew and Greek And 't was obvious to every one to consider that if the English Scriptures are not the word of God there was an end not only of the Reformation according to it mentioned in the Covenant but the substantial one promoted by the Protestant Religion that help'd us to the Treasure of our English Bibles and that we should soon be stranded on the Shore of Implicit Faith. Nor could it long be hid from common observation that those Divines who exclaim'd so much against the Ceremonies of the Church of England as an oppressive Yoke would have imposed on us such a rigid observation of the Sabbath the great Scene
Chesible and other pretended holy Vestments and see him use Crossing Turning Ducking Lifting Whispering Gaping mingling of Wine and Water Lickings and other variety of Gestures and to hear Prayers in Latine and to the Saints and for the Dead and to have our Bells Baptised to have Vailes Holy-Water Holy-Ashes Palms c. Erasmus saith in his Epistles p. 108. Ep. 10. An hic sacrificulum illum malâ—unt imitari qui suum mumpsimus quo fuerat viginti usus annos mutaâ—e noluit admonitus à quopiam sumpsimus esse legendum The Verse of Scripture in which he read that word was Iosua 9. 12. En panes quando egressi sumus de Domibus nostris ut veniremus ad vos Calidos Mumpsimus nunc sicci facti sunt vetustate nimia Comminuti no other Verse appearing to me by the Concordance of the Vulgar Latine to have Sumpsimus in it And the folly of the Priest in so reading was so famous as to come to the knowledge of our Harry the Eighth and to occasion his saying as my Lord Herbert tells us Some of the Clergy are too stiff in their old Mumpsimus others too curious in their new Sumpsimus But that Verse in Iosua was as unlucky and as ill boding a one to Popery for a Priest thus to signalize en ridicule as any he could have found in Holy Writ and carries in it self a revenge for its barbarous usage For it naturally suggests to People that the Antiquity of the Doctrine of Popery is but a Gibeonitish or meer pretended one and that even its Transubstantiated Bread is not brought from so far a Country as is pretended and that it was no longer ago then Anno 1212 that Innocent the Third in the Lateran Council brought in Transubstantiation as an Article of Faith and Decreed those to be Exterminated who did not believe it And that Kings were to be compelled to Exterminate them and that the Pope had power to depose Kings an effectual way to put not only the nature of Things but Men on the Wrack and then make them say they believe any thing But we having been used to the New Sumpsimus these hundred years shall be so Curious in it as to make what is barbarous the object of our Mirth as much as Harry the Eighth and Erasmus did and the Novelty of Popery coming again here in the Masquerade of Antiquity would appear as nauseous as would the moudly Bread of the Gibeonites to the Men of Israel if they had come to treat them with it a Second time From what hath been in this Historical way glanced at concerning the gradual decreasing Popery here in the several past Conjunctures we may without the Amentia Prophetiae as Tertullian calls it say That in any Conjuncture that can hereafter come it will more and more decrease and that under any new Prince Protestancy will be the Rising Sun whose light will be then encreasing and Popery acquire no more lustre then the short one of a parelius Doleman alias Parsons in his Book Of the Succession publishing his thoughts how ponderous the Papists would be in the Ballance of State in the Conjuncture of time attending the next Successor speaks thus as if it were before him in Vision With these many others do joyn Et omnes qui amaro animo sunt cum illis se conjungunt as the Scripture saith of those that followed David ' s Retinue 1 Kings 12. pursued by Saul and his Forces which is to say that all that be offended grieved or any way discontented with the present time be they of what Religion they will do easily joyn with these Men. And when I consider how many there are qui amaro sunt animo by reason of their Condition being embitter'd by Poverty and that it hath pursued them like an Armed Man and is likely so to do when I consider that the Multitude of Free-Schools in the Kingdom diverting the Education of the poorer sort of our Youth from useful laborious Trades to the uselesly appearing Scholars and Gentlemen or according to the Dutch word Idlemen hath at last brought them but to fragments of knowledge and likewise of Bread and tho wearing better Habits then their Ancestors yet to be little better than Thiefs in a handsome disguise robbing the World of their Labour and its own quiet by their being Sollicitors Make-bates Informers proulers into the rights of other Mens Estates Tamperers with Witnesses Tales-men Promoters of Office Suers of others in the way of qui tam c. quam c. And when I consider what is so truly observ'd by the Author of Britannia languens That of all other employments we have the greatest questing after Offices that Men will almost give any thing say any thing do any thing for an Office so that some Offices that were thought hardly worth the medling with of late years will now yield near Ten years Purchase for one Life And when I every where behold the tâ—rn Limbs of the Estates of so great a Party among us as may be call'd the Luxuriants and who have sold the same Estates and Consciences three or four times over and do likewise recollect the Number of all such Idle men who have been observed of late years in Shoales so much to depopulate the Country to plant themselves about London insomuch that tho according to the Observator of the Bills of Mortality there usually did come out of the Country to live in London but 6000 yet there dying within those Bills 17249 in the Year 75 and 18732 in the Year 76 and 19064 in the Year 77 and 20678 in the Year 78 wherein the Popish Plot was discovered and 21730 in the Year 79 whence according to the Rule of one in 30 Yearly dying and there having dy'd gradualy above a 1000 a year since the year 75 to the year 80 altho all years of ordinary health so the remaining part in London did thence appear gradually encreased proportionably that is as a 1000 dy'd each year more than other so 29000 lived there each year more than in the other and that there lived in the year 79 in London 120000 more than did in the year 75 and that many of these People having broke in the Country through the Poverty that the Plot occasion'd came to London to hide themselves and their shame I say when I consider all these things I may well conclude that all these Indigents will be ready to hope for a Golden Age and call any thing a Religion that will bring it them And by a new shuffling of Religion will be indeed hoping for better Cards in this World. Some of those who have been Trumpeters to the Puppet-Shows of little Enthusiastick Religions and movers of the Wyres there would if ever the great one of Popery should come on the Stage be glad to be sharers or quarter sharers in it and to be either Actors or Ministerial to them and especially to be applauding Spectators
the World will never be quiet till its allay from the true Silver be separated by melting it down and it takes the name of Religion only when it deserves it What is more ordinary then for Clamour to raise this question Will you punish any man for his Religion and will you have any man lose by his Religion and I see no end in the disputes of the question but by this Answer and by this it must find a Period viz. I punish no man for his Religion for that Tenet that I quarrel with him about is not and indeed cannot be Religion It is pure and rank Sedition and Rebellion and if any Papist or Presbyterian shall write or speak to make the Kings Power a bubble blown up by the breath of the People and so dissolvable I shall esteem him fit to be proceeded against by the new Statute of the 13 th of this Kings Reign against Sedition and as a Subverter of the Fundamental Laws and do suppose 't will be ridiculous for any one to plead his Religion in bar of that Indictment and he doth moreover deserve to be punish'd as a Cheater for abusing the World and himself and Religion too by calling such a particular Tenet Religion or a Complication of many Tenets by that Name where the vertue of them all is not strong enough to correct the Poyson of one The Scripture doth punish those with a denunciation of a Wo who call evil good and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness and in this particular Point of the calling any of the Idolatries or Impostures of the Heathens or others by the name of Religion I remember not any instance in holy Writ tho yet in other Cases 't is not infrequent for the inspired Pen man to speak cum vulgo I observe that in the New Testament the name of Religion is several times applyed to the Iewish after the World was freed from the Obligation of it but one of the holy Pen-men speaking in one Chapter of false Apostles useth the Style of hating the Deeds of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrine of the Nicolaitans and of holding the Doctrines of Balam And another of the Amanuenses of the Holy-Ghost speaks of Doctrines of Devils If any man shall offer to my consideration a Scheme of Doctrines that relate to Theology and I find it is too subtle for my understanding to penetrate I shall yet be so evil as to allow the Propounder to call it a Religion and thus if Papists or Protestants would agree to call Dr. Gibbon's Scheme a Religion or demonstration of it I would not oppose theit calling it any such thing and the rather since it enjoyns not to me any thing that would break my own or the Worlds quiet but when Popery doth enjoyn so many Tenets to be believed that are incredible to a rational Man and some things that are clearly impossible to a Moral Man I will call Popery in the gross any thing rather then Religion just as Tully saith of those Law-givers who did perniciosa injusta a populis praescribere that they did quidvis potius ferre quam leges I find not that since the year 1605. Popery hath so discriminated it self by any alteration for the beter as to overthrow the weight of King Iames's saying then to both his Houses of Parliament viz. That as it is not impossible but many honest men seduced with some Eâ—rors in Popery may yet remain good and faithful Subjects so on the other hand none that know and believe the grounds and School conclusions of their Doctrine can ever prove good Christians or faithful Subjects There is one Tenet in the Doctrine of Popery that your Lordship shewed me once discust in Print by a Canonist and by whom I was directed to trace it both to the Gloss and Text in the Canon Law that I having discours'd of to a Pious and Learned Neighbour of mine who is a Roman Catholick he obliged me to write to your Lordship that you would please to let any of your Amanuenses transcribe and to send hither to me the Resolution of that Lawyer and determination of the Pope in his Law about it and hath declared to me that he will joyn issue with me in the Plea about Religion in that being a Tenet or Principle approved by the Church of Rome and your habitual inclination to afford any one tho a stranger to you lumen de lumine will I doubt not make it easie to you to gratifie my request in his behalf He grants to me that if that Tenet can be shewn to be one approved by the Church of Rome that he believes there will be no occasion for disputants any more to attaque the Roman Catholick Religion and that as an Independant Author in the late times writing a Pamphlet against Presbytery had this Title for it An end of one Controversy it might be supposed that a Sheet of Paper that without strain'd Inferences could fasten that Tenet on the Doctrine of Popery would with better success make an end of that Controversy My Lord this Point discussed in Print that I refer to is as I find it in the Notesâ— I took thereof in your Lordships Study in Gundissalvus his Tractatus de Haereticis Question 24. before which the Summarium is thus 1. Civitas in quâ aliqui insunt haeretici an tota possit igne exuri aut alias destrui 2. Civitas quando dicatur haeresim committere ut universa destrui possit 3. Vniversitate punitâ de haeresi an singuli quâ—que puniti videantur ita ut amplius puniri non possint The Gentleman being of a nice tenderness of Conscience and having a quick sense of any thing that looks like gross impiety was at the very nameing of the first and second Question surprized with a kind of trembling and was somewhat more discomposed when I told him that upon consideration of the whole matter it appear'd even from the most moderate of the Canonists that a whole City might lawfully be destroyed with Fire if the Majority of it were Hereticks and that there were the Judgment of the Church in the Case and like a Man of a large and candid Soul he said that he was sorry that Humane Nature could in any men so far degenerate as to deliberate about such their destroying a whole City by Fire but would reserve his judgment on the Point till he saw it before him in the Quotations out of the Canon-Law as well as Canonists What the Event of his Judgment will be I know not and I confess I have been very sparing of my time in discoursing with Roman Catholicks about any Point of the Doctrine of their Church since I read it in Cardinal Tolets Inst. sacerdotum lib. 4. cap. 3. and 7. p. 612. and in our Countryman Holcot a Famous Schoolman in lib. 1. Sententiarum Quest. 1. ad sextum principale in replica That if he hears his Prelate Preaching
with Oyl to strengthen themselves did then that they might the better lay hold on one another and might not slip out of each others hands Se mutuo pulvere sive arenâ aspergere ac propemodum faedare a thing too many among us have done outright and thereby shewed themselves not to be so much as almost Christians and a ridiculing humour of throwing dirt that the Colluctations about the Land on the Continent of Christendom will I believe ridicule out of our World at least and unteach us the turpitude of such Railery and make the Doctrines of speculative points of Religion to give us no more disturbance than doth or ever did the Doctrine of Lines and Figures And as the more ingenuous and true sober part of the people is now moved with pity to Nonconformists for being led away by the Nose from our Churches by the Iesuites a thing that Mr. Nye himself affirms in his Book called A Case of great and present use whether we may lawfully hear the now Conforming Ministers and printed Anno 1677 and the not thinking which lawful he makes a misperswasion and saith in p. 24 and 25 In most of the misperswasions of these latter times by which mens minds have been corrupted I find in whatsoever otherwise they differ one from another yet in this they agree that it is unlawful to hear in publick which I am perswaded is one constant design of Satan in the variety of ways of Religion he hath set on foot by Iesuites among us and doth the more pity them for that some well meaning persons among them who were blindfolded into some of their Nonconformity by Iesuitic Emissaries had not heretofore their Eyes opened to see that the same persons were often Sollicitors with Magistrates to do their duty and put the Laws in due Execution against them for their Nonconformity and that such Emissaries had thereby an occasion of saying to them according to the Style of the Chief Priests after they had blind-folded our Saviour and then smote him Prophecy who is he that smote thee and for that such well meaning persons have been observed at the same time to importune the Almighty That he would open the Eyes of Kings and Princes so hath it likewise general resentments of Scorn and Anger against the Principles of those bantring Popish Seducers who as they have some Emissaries here to kill Souls and others probably ready on occasion to kill bodies have distended the Doctrine of Popery abroad in the World to such an excess of Cruelty that no man can Calculate the number of Gods it hath made or of men it hath destroyed and I hope that such Iesuited Emissaries will in time generally appear not only hateful but ridiculous to our Papists themselves for who indeed can choose but laugh at the discussing or deliberating of the Question in p. 98. Of the Mystery of Iesuitisme viz. Whether the Iesuites may kill the Iansenists So very hateful are their Principles to some of our ingenuous English Papists that I have heard a Great and Noble Person mention it with Contentment that some of that Order of False Prophets were since the Popish Plot executed for it tho yet he doubted of the Veracity of the Witnesses against them I very much differ'd in my Judgment from that of that Noble Person and would have no man damnified in the least for the greatest Crime but by Witnesses greater than all exception and do account it easier to give Heaven an occount of Mercy than Justice but yet on the recollecting of my thoughts I have found it so incident to humane nature to delight by ill Witnesses to punish the avowers of false Religionary Principles that I have read it among some Rabbinical Observators of the Customs of the Iews that they anciently allowed of false Witnesses against false Prophets and of whose being such the Sanhedrim did cognosce and so they impiously reputing Christ to be such did barefaced bring forth false Witnesses against him and he could not be allow'd to except against their Persons but only against their sayings as discordant and to this purpose we find it in the Gospel of St. Mathew Ch. 26. Vers. 59 60. Now the Chief Priests and Elders and all the Council sought false Witnesses against Iesus to put him to death but found none yea tho many false Witnesses came yet found they none At the last came two false Witnesses and in St. Mark Ch. 14. V. 56. and 59. 't is declared how the Testimony of the False Witnesses agreed not together I have mentioned this as not in the least intending to reflect on the testimony of any one Witness ever produced in behalf of the Crown in any Criminal Cause in any age of time and do think that according to the saying that defensio non est deneganda Diabolo and that as a railing Accusation is not to be brought against the Devil so much less ought a false Testimony And I am moreover in any Point relating to the safety of Princes Lives and when there are exasperated Parties in a Kingdom criminating and recriminating each other about the same inclined to do what is fairly to be done to support the Credit of Witnesses considering as the Observation is that as he who is bound to the King his Bond is good for nothing to any one else so he that during such a Conjuncture is a Witness for the King is liable to so many Volleys of Dirt from some one of the inraged Parties and to have all the particular excesses and extravagances of his Life so display'd as to endanger his Testimonies usefulness in other cases But yet if any Magistrate finds the Testimony of Witnesses he would support to be insupportable and doth not believe them to be fide digni he is obliged Morally to avow such his Sentiment thereof when he is legally put upon it And here I cannot pretermit an occasion of mentioning your Lordships great Courage and Justice in an Affair that my Correspondent writ to me of namely that when some Witnesses had in the House of Lords been Examined about a Popish Plot in Ireland and that the Vote of every one in that House was given for the reallity of that Plot except your Lordships you entered your dissent as not believing any such Plot in Ireland as was by the Witnesses sworn which was certainly most worthy of your Lordship to do if you thought not the Witnesses worthy of your belief and your Caution in your so judging that the Papists in Ireland designed not such a Plot to be Executed in that Kingdom was the more remarkable in regard that 't was some time since published in a large Pamphlet of the Growth of Popery that the Irish Plot was a thing contrived only to divert and hound us away from the pursuit and Examination of the English one And yet the same Witnesses as I was inform'd obtain'd that belief from a Loyal and Honourable House of Commons concerning the Irish
hold that he still retaineth and ought to retain entirely and solidly all that aforesaid Supreme Power and Authority over the Churches of this Dominion in as ample a manner as if he were the most Christian Prince in the World. If therefore any shall think it reasonable to pronounce that the substantial Interest of Protestancy and of the Kingdom doth Stare moribus antiquis virisque I have pointed them to Arch-Bishop Abbot to Bishop Andrews the Antagonist to Bellarmine under the weight of whose Arguments Bellarmine fell in the Certamen and to others of our old Counsellors of State and particularly Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland your Lordships Noble God-Father in comparison of many of whom when we look on some of our great Politic and Protestant-would-be's of this Age and who would let none be Protestants but themselves we may well cry out In qualem paulatim fluximus urbem and have shewn how those great Confessors by their Overt Acts provided against the belief of the Doctrine of Popery without the barring any of the Royal Line from the inheriting the Crown And when I see some of our till of late unheard of Statists so eager to dispossess the Land of the Evil Spirit of Popery by illegal means and the use of the great Name of Protestancy as a Spell I fancy to my self that they may be call'd on by it as the Iewish Exorcits were in the Acts of the Apostles who taking on them to call over them which had evil Spirits the Name of the Lord Iesus saying we adjure you by Iesus whom Paul preacheth the evil Spirit answered and said Jesus I know and Paul I know but who are ye Thus to any who shall say that there is no way possible to secure English Mens continuing Protestants but by breaking in on the Succession in the Right Line may it be returned by Popery the old Protestants of the Church of England I know and the old Nonconformist Protestants and the old Covenanting Presbyterian Protestants I know who knew otherwise to secure Protestancy and likewise the French Protestants I know who never practised any Out-rage against the Great Harry the 4th of France's Government after he had left Protestancy but who are ye The truth is the Protestants in France so vastly numerous in his time which any one may imagine who considers that the most careful thinking men in that Realm make them now to be two Millions and that a judicious French Author hath writ that the Iesuites have lately computed them to be above a Million and a half have shewn the World a great example of their Protestant Loyalty in that they were ready as chearfully to obey their Prince when he was a Papist as when they served him in set Battles against the Power of the holy League and the majority of his Nobles and of his Metropolis and of the chief Cittadels in his Realm After they saw him go to Mass they never call'd him Iulian or Lampoon'd him in Hymns or demurred to his Beard or had any fears or jealousies of his touching a hair of their heads nor threatned him that the Galilean would foil him and no Language could have more truly expressed their Sentiments then that of the Famous Pierre du Moulin in his defence of the Faith Nous sommes prests d' exposer nos vies pour la defence de nos Rois contre qui que ce soit fust-il de nostre Religion Quiconque feroit autrement ne defendroit point la Religion mais serviroit son ambition attireroit un grand blame sur la verite de l' evangile i. e. We are ready to expose our lives for the defence of our Kings against whomsoever it be although of our own Religion And whosoever should do otherwise should not defend Religion but serve his own ambition and would draw a great reproach on the truth of the Gospel Considering the indeleble Character of Hary the 4 ths Protestant Good Nature his Subjects of that Religion did prepare their thoughts to be Lachrymists for him rather then themselves and knew that by his Coversion to Popery if in this life only he had hopes he was of all men most miserable and that his absolution left him only in the State of a Crown'd Victime I have before mentioned the Apology for that Scholar of the Jesuites Iohn Chastel which endeavours to prove that Harry the 4 th was by that Assassin not only wounded very fairly according to the Language of the Brothers of the Blade but in the Style of their Honour according to the Iesuites Morals very heroically and as the Contents of Cap. 1. Part. 3 d of the Apology expresses it Actus Castelli heroicus est in substantiâ suâ He moreover tells us in plain terms Part. 2. Cap. 7. that Excommunicatio quae â—b haeresim irrogatur remedium potius est ecclesiae quam excommunicato c. and that Excommunication for Heresie doth quite take away any Regal Right And in Cap. 8. before mentioned viz. Neque etiam à Papa absolutus Rex esse potest he asketh Quod si quaeratur quid ergo absolutio praestet si jus amissum non redeat And it followeth Quòd si absolutus impaenitens existat effectus alius non foret quam is de quo supra ita si quod Deus velit paenitentia foret vera certe effectus propterea non exigâ—us esset futurus utpote in spiritualibus remittendo illum in ecclesiae gremium regni Caelorum Capacem reddendo temporalium vero respectu quicquid illa operari posset foret ad reddendum eum compotem novi juris per electionem auferendo impedimentum in foro fori quo durante is ille esse non posset And then he saith The Pope cannot confer such new Right to the same Kingdom on him for that it depends not simply on the power of the Keys so to do and in fine makes the Right to the Crown irrevocably devolv'd on the next person capable who has a right to it quum saith he ratum sit inter jurisconsultos incapacem haberi ut mortuum non impedire sequentes In the 3d Chapter of the 2d Part namely That Henry of Bourbon cannot be called King by reason of his pretended Conversion the vile Apologist derides the Conversion of this Great King and labours to prove by fifteen Instances That after his Conversion he did favour the Cause of Heresy more then ever and particularly by his observance of his Leagues and Agreements with the Queen of England and other Hereticks ut experientia saith he per novas ejus actiones locupletissime testatur Etenim primò faederum pacta cum haereticis sarta tectaque servat quibus ut hactenus nondum renunciavit ita neque dum renunciare cogitat Secundò ipsi haeritici in Germaniâ Genevae alibi ejus actiones comprobant Tertio contemnit Catholicos promovet haereticos illos repudiat atque rejicit hos
the Relief of his Great Auditory for those poor Hugonots did characterize them as such of whom none was ever suspected to have machinated any thing against their King's Person or Government or to have attempted the burning of his Metropolis I have granted that the Puritan and the Popish Petitioners did both in the beginning of King Iames his Reign offend Contra bonos more 's but if any should ask me which Sect was the more peccant by such incivility I will say that in one regard the Puritans were so for that they were bred to the Knowledge of better things but that in another regard the Papists most certainly were so if Thuanus may be believ'd who in the place I last cited out of him relating to the Gun-powder Plot by which it appears that their Petitioning was but a stalking-horse or as I may say a Trojan Horse to hide and enclose armed Men further shews That the Iesuites in England employ'd one privately into Spain in the Name of the Catholics with Letters of Commendation to Creswell the Iesuite there residing to negotiate with the Government there to send an Army into England in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth ' s Reign and that afterward one Wright was sent into Spain upon the same Errand and that then likewise Guy Faux was by some of the Iesuites sent thither to Creswel to hasten the Design and that Faux was instructed to take Care that it should be signify'd to the King of Spain that the Condition of the Roman Catholics would be worse here under King James than it was under Queen Elizabeth and that it might be effected that Spinola should then Land an Army in Milford Haven And then saith the great Historian they not being able to effect that proceeded to the Plot of the Gun-powder Treason The Popish Petitioners then did essay how they might flectere superos and Acheronta movere at the same time But in truth as in Whale-fishing 't is customary for Marriners apprehending Danger to the Vessel from the greatness of the Whale to throw out an empty Barrel into the Sea for the Whale to toss about on the Waters and to receive some diversion from it that while he is so diverted they may the more securely wound him with their dead-doing Irons thus did the Papists throw out their empty Petitions to that King only to divert and amuse him that they might surprize him with the â—ate they intended him Yet now if any one should put the Interrogatory to me which Person I had the least Kindness for namely a Non-Conformist that favour'd the Doctrine of Resistance or a Papist that believ'd the Grounds and School-Conclusions of the Doctrine of Popery as King Iames's before mention'd Expression was and which whoever did he said could neither be a good Christian or a faithful Subject I shall by way of Answer crave aid from a Judgment given by Philip of Macedon who having heard the Merits of a Cause or Complaint that happen'd between two lewd Persons gave the Decree That one of them should presently fly out of Macedon and that the other should run after him as fast as he could But against any Seditious Protestant I would wish more severity exercised than against such a Papist for the former doth not only rebel against his Prince as the latter but doth according to Iob's Expression more rebel against the light and is guilty of the Simulata Sanctitas and so according to the Expression before mention'd out of the Apocalypse Reward her as she has rewarded you and double unto her double c. deserves to be doubly punish'd for his duplex iniquitas and shall magnifie the Justice of the King's Ministers done to their Prince and Country and to themselves when in any Conjuncture they shall find any call'd Protestants turning Gods and the King's grace into wantonness and Religion into Rebellion they shall level their most solicitous endeavors with all the sharpness of the Law against such nominal Protestants for then the salus populi will engage them as the Physicians say to mind the Vrgentius Symptoma and for which they have a Rule that Cum diversae repugnantesque inter se committuntur indicationes parendum est omnino fortioribus 'T is fit I should recompence the trouble I have given your Lordship by what I have said of this Question by diverting you with the News of another Question that among some Company was lately bandy'd in Discourse here between a Papist and a Non-Conformist and 't was a much more termagant Question than the former namely Whether Popery or Mahumetanism be the woâ—st I was sorry to find the Non-Conformist to give his Judgment as he did in a gross and undistinguishing manner that the Impostures of Mahomet were fitter to be embraced than several Tenets he named in Popery which tho erroneous yet are denominable as Tenets of Religion but did for a while forbear giving my Opinion in the Case or relieving the Papist with any notion of mine tho I found the Non-Conformist as somewhat the better Disputant pressing too hard on him gave me occasion to have done it than if I would I calling to mind how the Papists of old have so often decided it that Heretics are woâ—se than Turks or Infidels and that they have ranked our Religion of the Church of England with Atheism since I allow not of works of super-erogation would not super-erogate in being too hasty in moderating in the Dispute Thus Maldonaâ—e on St. Iohn saith Qui Catholici sunt Majore odio Calvinistas caeterosque omnes Haereticos prosequuntur quam Gentiles And thus Stapleton in his Oration or Speech against the Politicians saith That the Heretics are worse than Turks And Mason in his Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae Lib. 1. Cap. 1. p. 8. cites Gulielm Reinold in his Calv. Turcis l. 1. c. 7. and l. 4. c. 11. for saying Religionem nostram meaning that of the Church of England ipsâ Turcicâ esse deteriorem Mason further brings in Bristo saying Religionem nostram nullam esse ipsâ Experientiâ probâ—ri And cites another Popish Author for saying Protestantes nullam habent fidem nullam Spem nullam Charitatem nullam Poenitentiam nullam Iustificationem nullam Ecclesiam nullum Altare nullum Sacrificium nullum Sacerdotium nullam Religionem Christum nullum and quotes Cardinal Alan for saying Nostram liturgiam sacramenta Conciones istiusmodi esse quae fine dulio aeternum afferunt exitium The well meant pains of the Compilers of our Liturgy in inserting there some good Prayers out of the Mass to render it more agreeable to the Papists was it seems all lost and that perhaps occasion'd that angry Exclamation of Mr. Cartwright of old That in Ceremonies we ought to comply with the Turk rather then the Pope I acquainted the Discoursers that Mr. Fox in the Edition of the Acts and Monuments printed together in one Volume in London in the Year 1596 doth Combat this mighty Question
in p. 702 and in the following Pages viz. Whether the Turk or the Pope is the greater Antichrist and at last saith p. 710. In comparing the Turk with the Pope if a Question be asked whether of them is the truer or greater Antichrist it were easie to see and judge that the Turk is the more open and manifest Enemy against Christ and the Church But if it be asked whether of them two hath been the more bloody and pernicious Adversary to Christ and his Members or whether of them hath Consumed and Spilt more Christian Blood he with Sword or this with Fire and Sword together neitheer is it a light matter to discern neither is it my part here to discuss who do only write the History and Acts of them both And I then telling the Nonconformist that the Iews for many obvious reasons did prefer the Doctrine of Mahumetanisme to that of Popery some Papists beforemention'd had prefer'd it to Protestancy and as he the Nonconformist had preferred it to Popery he mention'd his fears that a sort of Enthusiasts among us called Seekers might hereby be in great danger of stumbling on the Religion of Mahumetanisme accordingly as of old when one went to demand of the Philosophers of the several Sects which was the best of them every one named his own Sect or Party in the first place but all of them in the second place granted Plato to be the most eminent that is the next best whereupon those Seekers preferred Plato because setting aside prejudicate Affection and Self-Love Plato's Philosophy had thus carried the Garland I then took occasion to tell the Company that I thought 't was extremely unjust to prefer Mahumetanisme with the many ridiculous and senseless things it comprehends to Christianity in Papists blended with many erroneous Tenets which yet are capable of the name of Religion and such as those great pious Papists beforementioned viz. Father Paul Thuanus D'Ossat Erasmus Peiresk perhaps own'd the belief of as many thousands of others may still likewise do but frankly interposed my opinion that I thought that Popery complicated with the real belief of the Iesuites Morals and their vile Casuistical Tenets branded by the present Pope was as unworthy of God and Humane Nature as any Hypothesis of Religion could be and I as frankly told the Nonconformist whom I looked on as one who would not outrage the Law of the Land to advance the Gospel that tho some erroneous points relating to Nonconformity might without absurdity assume the name of Religion yet among whomsoever those Tenets should be incorporated with the real belief and practice of the lawfulness of the Doctrine of Resistance and of any persons Reforming the World by Arms without Warrant from the Municipal Laws so to do yet such a Faith would be Faction and such a Nominal Religion would be a real Rebellion and much worse then Mahumetanisme I farther acquainted the Company that according to the discreet Motto of the House of Ormond Commâ— je trouve and the Mode of the Age to take the measures of knowledge by experiment the usage that the better sort of Christians have found under Turcisme hath been by very many degrees milder then under Popery Erasmus indeed was of a contrary opinion for in his Vtilissima Consultatio de â—ello Turcis inferendo printed in the Year 1530 he saith that Exaudiuntur interim 〈◊〉 voces abominandae qui jactant esse tolerabilius agere sub imperio Turcâ—â—orâ—â—â— quam sub Christianis Principibus ac sub Pontifice Romano and there he goes on at large to prove the inconvenience of living under the Turkish Government but the order of the Iesuites was not then invented and after a hundred years observation since Protestants have judged as they did in Erasmus his time And in a Popish Book called the Right of the Prelate and the Prince I find Luther de soecul potestat cited p. 55. for saying that the Turk is decies probior prudentiorque nostris principibus And I think it may seem greater wisdom in him to sell such Heterodox People for slaves that he takes by force than to burn them But in the Year before that Book of Erasmus was printed I find in Magerus his Advocatia Armata Laurent Surius in Comment rer in orbe gestar ad annum 1529 cited for the Hungarians throwing themselves on the protection of the Turk rather then they would be deprived of their Right to chuse their King and it seems under Popery in that Kingdom they had a greater kindness for the Turk then the Emperor of Germany And the great Observer Thuanus on the Year 1597 in his 3 d Tome discoursing how the Germans being under apprehensions of the Power of the Turk and of Spain at the same time were thoughtfully weighing their danger Et Comparatione Alchorani cum inquiâ—itione Hispaniensi factâ an potius cum Orientali quam occidentali Turco sibi rem esse velint thereupon saith si quidem res merito suo ac semoto omni affectu privato aestimetur haud dubium esse quin optione datâ— orientalem eligant quippe ut viribus praepollentem sic victis tolerabiliorem faturum c. Dr. Heylin likewise seems to favour that opinion for in his Geoghraphy in Folio he saith The Turks compel no man to abjure the faith in which he was born I have heard many say that 't is better for a man that would enjoy Liberty of Conscience to live in the Countries professing Mahumetanism than Papistry And I think I have read it in the Author of the Zealanders Choice that if he were to lay the Scene of his life any where with respect chiefly to the freedom of owning any Religious Sentiments it should be either in Amsterdam or Constantinople As I was reading the other day in an old Canonists Tractate of Heresy I found this Position asserted there that 't is unlawful for a Master of Requests to deliver a Petition for Mercy to be shown to a Heretic but then I occasionally thought of a more manly and god-like temper shining in part of the Alcoran as Mr. Gregory relates it in his Opusc. where he saith The Mahumetans have another Lords Prayer called by them the Prayer of Jesus the Son of Mary and that endeth thus And let not such an one bear rule over me that will have no mercy on me for thy mercies sake O thou most merciful He who separates Mercy from Justice is unjust to the very name of Justice and robbeth it of the better half of its signification leaving its Teeth and Claws and taking away its Heart and Bowels Iarchas the Indian and chief of the Brachmans in Philostratus is brought in finding fault with Apollonius Tyaneus and others of the Greeks for that they confined and applied the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to those only who do no wrong to one another and telling them that they were in an error for saith he among the chiefest Offices of Iustice 〈◊〉
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
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
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
Happiness he tho differing from me in speculative points yet hath by his Practical Devotion proportioned his means to that end better than I have done Moreover because it is a dishonourable thing for any man to receive a Religion in gross and servilely to own all the Religionary Sentiments that the Major part of any Church seem to do I will not so much as in my secret thoughts charge such a Person with owning all the Religionary Tenets of the Church of Rome and much less with owning any one of the Tenets that is Irreligionary how justly soever chargeable either on the Papacy or any of its Adherents I who am a Son of the Church of England have considered how its Constitution hath been prop'd up in various ways and on different Hypotheses by several of the Fathers and great Writers in that Church before Arch-Bishop Laud's time and since and how some of them in some points receded from its Articles and that many of them did in several Doctrines of importance variously interpret its Articles My Conversation with several Divines of that Church who are equally Learned and Pious hath let me see that in many Theological speculative points they differ much from one another and yet retain perfect Charity for one another and their Notions as to which points they have in prudence not troubled the Populace with And yet even in our very Protestant Populace in this Conjuncture of Zeal against Popery I have observed so much Candour expressed to Protestant Writers who have asserted some speculative points that seemed to agree with the Doctrines of the Church ofâ— Rome that no one man hath either called them Papists or Protestants in Masquerade for so doing I have not heard of any who hath censured Mr. Baxter as a Papist or Popishly affected since Dr. Tully in his printed Letter to him p. 21. desiring him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see the very small odds between His Iustification and the Council of Trents addeth for to me neither of them turns the Scale upon the other There was likewise after the beginning of the Popular Out-cryes of the Danger of Popery a Learned Metrophysical Book of Dr. Glisson who was Professor of Physick in Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society Printed and Dedicated to the EARL of SHAFTSBVRY and in the 28th Chapter there viz. De substantiarum penetrabilitate mutatâ quantitate the Dr. saith That 't is better to admit Penetration than a Vacuum however we have been taught from our Child-hood to believe that there is no penetration of Bodies and Dimensions and doth Combat those old Notions of Philosophy with which Transubstantiation was opposed formerly and yet was never censured so much as Popishly affected for so writing nor have I observed any one to blame him for it or to have animadverted on his Book I have likewise observed that several Protestant Divines have not been in the least reproached or censured as maintainers of Purgatory when they have professed their Beliefs that the Souls of good Men after Death go to a good Hades and of bad Men to a bad one and are to stay in those common receptacles till the day of Judgment It is hence obvious that there are ingenious Protestants who do not take up their Religion in gross and that the fear of Popery or hatred of it is not generally so much founded on the Speculative Religionary Propositions maintained by Papists as partly on the Arbitrary Power claimed by the Pope to impose Creeds on men and by which Power he may if he pleaseth command them to believe that there are no Antipodes and excommunicate any who believe there are as one Pope long since did and partly on his claiming a Power to disturb the measures of their Loyalty to their Princes In such a Conjuncture therefore as this when 't is so much out of fashion to think any one the less a Christian or the less a Protestant for differing from others of the Church of England in such point as aforesaid it would be an aggravation of the immorality of our not acknowledging the honour due to any Person of the Roman-Catholick Communion because supposed to own Speculative Religionary Tenets of this Nature and which too have no influence no Mens Conversation with each other or on their Actions as they are Members of any Civil Society and as one saith would be still the same with all the Consequences of them tho there were no other Person besides one's self in the World. And therefore as I will rashly charge no Protestant with the servile resignation of his reason to any true Church nor look on him as one who doth More balantium antecedentem Ducem sequi so I will not without just ground and certain proof charge any Papist with the taking up his Religion in gross from the Papal Chair nor with the owning all the Religionary Tenets that many Romanists do and much less with any one of the Irreligionary Tenets imputable to any Order of the Church of Rome or to the Papacy To think any Papist the less a Christian for owning such Tenets which being held by some Protestants we think them not the less Christians for doth most notoriously come under the Sin of Acceptio personarum and is contrary to that Precept of St. Iames viz. My Brethren have not the faith of our Lord Iesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of Persons and by which accepting of some mens Persons the duty of honouring all men and valuing their real worth is manifestly outraged I will by no means therefore rashly charge any particular Papist with owning the Tenet that he is implicitly to obey the Commands of the Pope without weighing the Justice of them for I find the contrary Tenet own'd in print by the seven Divines of Venice as Ames mentions it in the Preface to his Puritanismus Anglicanus where he saith In Tractatu illo Iudiciosissimo à septem Theologis meaning those of Venice de interdicto Papae conscripto verbatim ponitur nervosè firmatur haec propositio viz. Christianus praecepto sibi facto etiam à Pontifice summo obedientiam praestare non debet nisi prius praeceptum examinaverit quantam materia subjecta requirit an sit conveniens legitimum obligatorium is qui siâ—e illo examine praecepti sibi injuncti caeco quodam impetu obedit peccat And do not many of the Church of Rome by their being picque'z d' honneur upon the being called Papists give some indication thereby of their being not obliged to pay an absolute blind Obedience to the Pope And tho Bellarmine and several of the Popes Parasites have called those Hereticks that believe not the Iure-Divinity of the Popes Monarchy over the World yet all the Gibelline Papists of old made it HERESY to say that the Emperor was not by Divine Right Lord of the World. Moreover tho some Papists have writ opprobriously of the Scripture and called
it as well as made it a Nose of Wax yet is the reverence of others of that Church for those inspired Writings sufficiently known and as may appear by that great saying of Panormitâ—n so often cited by the Protestant Writers viz. Laico verum dicenti cum Evangelio magis credendum quam Concilio falsum dicenti contra Evangelium It is so easie a thing for every man of ordinary reading and observation to expatiate on the common place of the disagreements of the Writers of the Church of Rome in various important Religionary Doctrines that I need not here do it 'T is a common Observation that in Spain and Italy it is the common opinion that Latreia is due to the Cross which in France and Germany is not so and that at Rome no man may say that the Council is above the Pope nor at Paris that the Pope is above the Council and as to the great Doctrine of Iustification every one hath heard of Bellarmin's Tutissimum and of Stephen Gardners laying his dead grasp on Christ's Merits as he was sinking and as to some Papists not believing the School Conclusions in that Church there is a famous instance cited by Crackanthorp in his Logick concerning a great Roman Catholick Writer who said Sic dicerem in scholis sed tamen maneat inter nos diversum sentio Sic dicimus in scholis sed tamen maneat inter nos non potest probari ex sacris literis And therefore since as was said every man hath a right to his good name till he hath justly forfeited it I will honour such a Roman Catholick as before described with the reputation of his being a good Christian and shall think that I am Morally bound to esteem all Papists so qualified to be better Christians than any Orthodox Protestants that want those Moral Endowments and according to my Obligation to honour all men and love the Brotherhood and consequently to be readier to do good Caeteris paribus to Christians than to those who are strangers to Christianity will thus love such a Papist as a part of that Brotherhood and by our Saviours measures in those words of the same being his Brother Sister and Mother whosever shall do the will of God will take notice of and honour and love such a Roman Catholick as much as if the closest Iura sanguinis united me to him and with respect to not only the ONE Blood that all Nations were made of but the ONE Blood they were redeemed with and by virtue of those other words of our Saviour viz. That if any man will do his Will he shall know of the Doctrine c. will account that in points necessary and essential to such a mans salvation our blessed Lord hath been as ready to make his Doctrine known to him as effectually as he could be supposed to make it known to such near Relations They are expressions worthy of a Divine of the Church of England in an excellent Sermon that goeth under the name of Dr. Tillotson viz. I had rather perswade any one to be a good man than to be of any party or denomination of Christians whatsoever For I doubt not but the belief of the ancient Creed without the addition of any other Articles together with a good life will certainly save a man. And since Iustin Martyr when Trypho the Iew demanded his thoughts of the Salvation of the Iews then living and expected that he would pronounce them damned the Martyr answered That he hoped they might be saved if with their Ceremonials they did also observe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. The Eternal and Natural Rules of indispensable Holyness and since he notwithstanding the barbarous uncharitableness of the stiff-necked and narrow souled Iews who would not shew a Traveller the way that was not of their Religion did yet shew the invincible Charity of a Christian to them being ready as he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. To receive them friendly and to communicate all things to them as BRETHREN or affectionate friends it may well be esteemed an uncouth sight see some peevish Nominal Protestants who observe none of those Rules yet to exclude Papists out of the Christian Brotherhood and even to damn them who with the Ceremonies of the Church of Rome do most religiously observe those Great and Noble Rules And therefore tho the reconciling of Churches is by some good men hoped for and by all good men wished yet since it can by no rational men be supposed possible without a previous reconciliation of Persons first had and that this latter is no Project but a Moral Duty and Vital part of Christianity and that 't is an empty Project for any one to think to deserve the name of a Christian without being reconciled to the whole Creation of God and being first reconciled to his Brother as the Expression is in St. Matthew I shall with that this Duty of honouring all men and as inclusive of our internal affection and testifying before God the worth and excellence that is in any Roman Catholicks and of the interpreting all doubtful matters relating to them in the better part as was before explicated out of Ames may more and more be thought of by Protestants as Essential to their Christianity Any one who will consider that Canon of our Church viz. It was far from the purpose of the Church of England to forsake and reject the Churches of Italy France Spain and Germany or any such like Churches in all things that they held and practised c. that it only departed from them in those particular points wherein they were fallen both from themselves in their ancient integrity and from the Apostolical Churches which were their first Founders may see the great perfection of the Principles of the Church of England in honouring all men and loving the whole Brotherhood of Christianity and our Duty wherein as necessary to Salvation is very excellently inculcated by a great Father of that Church I mean My Lord Primate Bramhal in his just Vindication of the Church of England p. 15. where having said That the Communion of the Christian Church Catholick is partly internal partly external and made it part of this Internal Communion to â—udge charitably one of another to exclude none from the Catholick Communion either Eastern or Western Southern or Northern Christians c. to rejoyce at their well-doing to sorrow for their Sins to condole with them in their sufferings to pray for their constant perseverance in the true Christian Faith for their reduction from all their respective Errors and their re-union to the Church in Case they be divided from it c. and lastly to hold an actual external Communion with them in votis in our desires and to endeavour it by all those means that are in our Power he tells us in plain terms that this internal Communion is of absolute necessity among all Catholicks And in p. 26 th he declareth to the
same purpose That internal Communion is due always from all Christians to all Christians even to those with whom we cannot communicate externally in many things whether Opinions or Practices But external Communion may sometimes be suspended more or less c. and he doth afterward in p. 18 assert That Christian Communion implies not an Vnity in all Opinions and shews That the Roman and African Churches held good Communion one with another while they differ'd both in Iudgment and Practice about Rebaptisation As for any projected Universal Vnity of Opinions I look on it to be as impracticable as our levelling Republicans EQVAL Division of Lands in the late times by their wild Agrarian Laws for the Birth of the next Child would necessarily break that their Model and the same fate might be expected to happen the same way to this Model of Vnity of Opinions or perhaps by the birth of the next hour But this Internal Communion is a thing most possible and our Duty tho without hope of Unity in all Religionary Opinions to ensue thereby according to the Doctrine of this Great Primate If then we are Morally bound to have this Internal Communion with all Foreign Roman Catholick Princes and their Subjects as before described how can we without horror think of the excluding any Heir to the Crown for fear of his believing the same Religionary Notions that they do from the Catholick Communion and of excluding him from his Birth-right on such an account whom we must always have this Internal Communion with and rejoyce in his good successes and condole with him in his ill and to hold an external Communion with him and any Church he is of in votis in our desires and to endeavour it by all means that are in our Power Did any endeavour it who would by depriving him of his Birth-right on that account and holding the same Tenet with Papists of Dominium fundatur in gratiâ gave him such a just Cause of Scandal as without the Divine Spirit assisting him might endanger his withdrawing from the whole Christian Communion And tho the honest Heathen could tell us That Cavendum est ne poena major sit quam culpa and all Casuists agree That Poena non debet excedere delictum and tho Magna Charta tell us That Ex quantitate poenae cognoscitur quantitas delicti quia poena debet esse commensurabilis delicto yet attempted to punish him by the loss of his Birth-right of the Crown when it could not be certain to us that he had committed any fault at all and when by the judgment of Charity we were bound to believe that he had committed none To many of our Nominal Protestants whose thoughts and Ideas of Christian Communion are too narrow to extend not only to a National Church but to a Parochial one this Notion of the incomparable Primate for whose august Charity one Christian World of Religionary differences was not enough to overcome about internal Communion will I believe seem new Doctrine and Duras Sermo but if they would be true Christians instead of being called true Protestants this Duty of Internal Communion from all Christians to all Christians must be practised by them and if this Duty hath a Divine Right for it as to the Persons of Papists abroad it must be operative as to those here at home He who loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen I may ask how can he love either his God or his Brother that he hath not seen The sham-war among any Protestants and Papists must not only be lest off but they must honour the Persons of one another and Protestants are not only to forbear robbing Papists of their Goods on pretence of carrying away their Images and Pictures but are to honour the Image of God shining in the lives of or the Gifts of God dispensed to any Papists Mr. Burroughs in his Irenicum p. 38. saith We accounted it Tyranny and Persecution in the Bishops when they would not suffer such as could not conform to their Church Discipline and Ceremonies to teach Grammar or practise Physick and saith That there was no dependance between their Errors if you will call them so and these things To deny the Church and Commonwealth the benefit of the Gifts and Graces of Men on such a pretence that they will abuse their Liberty we thought it was hard dealing yea no less than a Persecution Suppose a man differs from his Brethren in point of Church Discipline must not this man have a place in an Army therefore Tho he sees not the reason of such a Discipline in the Church yet God hath endued him with a Spirit of Valour and he understands what Military Discipline means c. Ought not then Persons of his Principles to revere the Heroical Endowments of an Heir to the Crown which do much preponderate as to the continuance of the being and well-being of the Kingdom to supposed Orthodoxy in some Mysteries of the Gospel as was shewn out of Mr. Ny King Iames had great Talents in Polemical Divinity to prove by words that the Pope was Anti-Christ but will not these latter Endowments necessarily prevent the Pope's being Anti-Christ in Deeds if he were inclined to hurt us by shewing himself such Ames in his Puritanismus Anglicanus giveth this as the chief Reason why the Puritans hold the Bishop of Rome to be THE Anti-Christ viz. For that he being an Ecclesiastical Ruler doth arrogate and exercise the chief Power over Kings and Princes And doth any one fear that he can exercise such Power over a Prince of these Endowments And I may add have not many Factious and Republican Nominal Protestants here compleated that Figure of Anti-Christ How many Vertues must any indifferent man overlook in this Pope who thinks he would outrage our Civil Government and how many Vices must he wink at in such Persons who thinks they would not do it And by Virtue of our blessed Lords having decided it that he was the better Son who said he would not do the Will of his Father and did it may it not be said That those Papists who say they will not take these Oaths and yet perform their Natural Allegiance are more loyal than such Nominal Protestants who have took the Oaths and observe them not As much an Abhorrer as I am of the Principles of the Iesuites Condemned by this Pope I shall yet think my self bound by the Moral Offices beforementioned out of Ames not to charge the belief or practice of them on all Persons in that Order For when I consider the Devotional Books of some Iesuites writ with such strong and lively expressions of the Practick part of Religion as any Person of Candor will think to be founded on a real deep sense of all Moral Offices lying warm at their hearts I account it impossible for them to have believed some of those Tenets and as I once observing at the Anatomy of a poor Malefactor that his Stomach
more and more And it was natural for our Divines in this Conjuncture thus to do when so many factious counterfeit Protestants were by their outcries making Papists of them and publishing infamous Pamphlets that expressly shook the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and of the Church by Law Established and with an intent to shake the same in that time when the Exclusion was designed and as appeared particularly by the reprinting for that purpose the Pamphlet of the Rights of the Kingdom and in which the Author did endeavour to prove the Peoples Right to choose their Bishops The Clergy therefore seeing such Nominal Protestants by that real part of Popery of founding Dominion in Grace thus bent on the ruine of Church and State were concerned to bend all their forces of reason in permonishing People of their danger from that part of Popery Thus as when a Light-house is set up to warn Navigators of a Bank of Sand if yet by the force of the Sea and Wind such Bank happens to be removed the Light-house must be removed likewise the same thing was accordingly done by the Justice and Prudence of our Divines giving us a notification of the Sands of Popery having shifted their place The late Experience that our Church had of its usage under the Great Vsurper and of his putting it out of his Protection as knowing the born and sworn Allegiance of its Church-men and likewise its Doctrine must necessarily make them true Adherents to the King's Heirs and Successors hath necessarily taught them that they cannot externally flourish under any Vsurper whatsoever They know that the Oath that Cromwel's Parliament Enacted to be taken by him was a Canting Oath and to which he was sworn to the uttermost of his Power to uphold and maintain the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion in the Purity thereof as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to the uttermost of his Power and his understanding The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England was not to expect to be upheld and maintained by him nor can it be upheld or maintained by any Vsurper Dr. Gibbon the Author of the Theological SCHEME averred to me that Mr. Nye and he attending a Committee of Parliament in the times of the Vsurpation that Mr. Nye being desired by the Committee to give them a definition or description of a Minister of the Gospel then answered A Minister of the Gospel is one sent forth by the State to preach the Gospel receiving protection from them and maintenance under them and all others restrained and we know that he and others then treated the Church of England in words and things like an Ecclesia maligrantium and how they were then RESTRAINED ab Officio c. and just as the Faction and Schism of many Nominal Protestants began about 41 to call our Divines Names as I have observed so lately the Popish Plot was made the Vehicle of the Poyson of some Mens Calumny and neither Machiavel nor Iesuit did ever more sledfastly practise the Divide Impera than such men in that Conjuncture did that by weakening us with our Divisions they might at once destroy the Lineal Succession of our Hereditary Monarchs in the Realm and the Succession of Bishops in the Church and our Kings in their Coronation Oaths swearing to keep Peace and Agreement to the Holy Church the Clergy and People Factious and Schismatical Persons having broke their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy may be said to have endeavoured to break the King's Oath according to the old known form of the Indictment of some of our Iudges for Bribery in which it was said that our Kings being bound by their Oath to do Iustice to their People such Judges did Violare Sacramentum Domini Regis It hath pleased God by the fierce Zeal of several Non-Conformists for the Exclusion to open the Eyes of many Conscientious and Loyal People among them and to bring them thereby to the Bosom of the Holy Church of England for they seeing such Doubts and Objections as some had raised against the Obligations of our Oaths to be but Scruples and that considerate serious and devout Persons of the Church of England had soon thrown the Scruples away were naturally thereby induced to throw off other Scruples and it was likewise but natural to them to think that their very Doubts and Objections for their having separated from the Church of England were but Scruples And as to doubts tho the Rule is Quod dubitas ne feceris yet not only Sanderson but Ames hath told us that Scruples are not to be regarded for Ames in his Cases of Conscience l. 1. c. 16. viz. Of a scrupulous Conscience having said That a Scruple is a fear of the Mind about what one is to do which vexeth the Conscience as a little Stone in ones shooe troubles the foot he wisely concludes That Multi scrupuli cum non possint commodè tolli contrariâ ratione deponi debent quasi violentiâ quadam dum excluduntur ab omni consultatione and that Scrupulus est formido temeraria sine fundamento atque adeo non potest obligare He there mentions A man being said to be scrupulous in discussing his past Actions or in ordering his futuâ—e ones and I am confident that many of the Loyal late Non-Conformists when they consider their past Actings will now accord to say that many of the clamorous pretences they were tempted to urge for Liberty of Conscience ought to have been as Ames's words are laid aside with violence and I do likewise believe that many of the Pious Members of the Church of England who while the Formido temeraria and sine fundamento carried them to incline to think it lawful to shake the Foundation of the Hereditary Monarchy and the super-structures of their Oaths by new interpretations do with a pious horror think of the poor Vapours pent in their Imaginations that made such Temporary Earthquakes in their Moral Offices of Loyalty and might have made perpetual ones in the Kingdom And that because some of our English Princes long ago whose Titles were cloudy did de facto make use of the Legislative Power to render them clear to the People for any to think that therefore the Monarchy was not then de jure and jure Câ—ronae Hereditary and that therefore after the Liquid Oath of Allegiance made to statuminate the most clear Title of a Crown that can be supposed it could since be lawful for any Parliamentary Power to disturb the Succession and dispense with our Oaths can appear to the Considerate to be nothing but a Scruple unworthy their thoughts And moreover because some of our Princes heretofore desired their Parliaments to intermeddle in setling the Succession for any therefore after the Oaths to think it might be lawful to disturb their Prince with renewed importunities again and again to alter the Course of the Descent after his various Declarations
to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asseâ—ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Exâ—lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms â—I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatioâ— by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo adâ—ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti Sâ— ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wiâ—h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of theâ— true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to theâ—r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and
and dangers 'T is true some few others have written something Mr. Baxter and Mr. Pool have laboured worthily Dr. Owen hath said somewhat to Fiat lux and there are some Sermons of the Presbyterians extant Morning Lectures against Popery these are the most and the chief of their performances I ever heard of The Conjuncture of the few and evil days of Popery would occasion another good effect a thing that is always to be wished but considering the general present ferment in Mens minds and pass'd mutual exasperations never else to be hoped for and that is this the common Calamity would cause such an Union between Protestants of several perswasions in Religion as would put a Period to that dreadful state of dissension among them which has so much horrour in it that all those subtle miscreants who have been able to cause it here and make so many of them almost ready with the ferity of the canes sepulchrales to devour one another can never in words express Nor can my imagination paint out to me any thing of the kind like it in the past course of time without my recollecting the description of the fears of the Doctor of the Gentiles given by himself concerning the State of the Church of Corinth to which he applies the words of debates envyings wraths strifes backbitings whisperings swellings tumults and without my considering the fermentation in the City of Ierusalem when near its fatal destruction But there will be a finalis concordia among the now implacable Protestants if ever Popery should set up to be the State-Religion And then any one who will give advice to a Painter to draw The present state of the Protestant Church of England may make a good Copy from the great Original of that Prophesie in Scripture The Wolf and the Lamb shall feed together c. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy Mountain c. And perhaps without going so far for a Mountain that may represent to ones fancy that State of English Protestants he may find one in England to do the work one that several of our Historians speak of telling us that in the Year 1607 When by the Irruption of the Severn Sea the Country in Somerset shire was overflown almost Twenty Miles in length and Four Miles in breadth it was then observ'd that Creatures of contrary natures as Dogs and Hares Foxes and Conies yea Cats and Mice getting up to the tops of some Hills dispensed at that time with their antipathies remaining peaceably together without sign of fear and without any violence used toward one another Nor do Men in great Towns supposed qualified only as the Children of light but as the Children of this World and as wise in their Generations and as projecting their own wealth and the encreasing of their Trade and of the value of their Rents by eminent Oblations provide for such Divines planting there and 't is obvious to every thinking Man that the erecting of Free-Schools and encouraging excellent Divines to live in any particular Town turns sufficiently to Mens account in this World as to the ends aforesaid by attracting inhabitants For it will be natural to Christians there when they do not barely hear of a Christ Transubstantiated into a dull Wafer but see one as I may say Transfigured and shining as the Sun in the Preaching of the Gospel to say Lord it is good for us to be here and for them there to make Tabernacles and provide Oblations not for dead but living Saints and as a living Dog is more valuable then a dead Lyon so I beâ—lieve that in any times of Popery here that can come any one Corporation and a holy learned Divine of the Church of England will get more by one another then all Towns where Shrines and Images of dead Saints shall be set up will mutually gain thereby Then will the Clergy and People being benefactors to each other be naturally ready to pray for each other and the former being believed from their hearts to say O Lord save thy people will find both an Oral and Cordial Response from the latter And bless thy Clergy But while I am thus accompanied by the Guide of Natural reason travelling in the Region of future time the time that only is the object of humane sollicitude and from which anxious minds are too apt to fear that every days birth may be a Monster I have by considering the former Revenue accruing to the Church by Oblations took occasion to Corroborate my great affirmation of it s not being naturally possible for Popery to exterminate the Protestant Religion in England a Religion that Popery can never take by assault or making of its professors Martyrs nor yet by Siege in starving its Pastors 'T is true that such a great impost as Popery may occasion to Protestants by Oblations may in one sense seem to have the nature of a punishment namely because 't will not be a burden to which all Subjects or indeed all Protestants will be equally liable and it will chiefly light on the devouter sort of Protestants And in like manner it may be said that the gain that arose from Oblations in the times of Popery to the Parish Priests of great Towns was in effect an unequal impost on the Popish Laity as being a Tax only on the more Ignorant and Superstitious of them But any one who has in the least considered matters of State cannot but know that any great inequality of Taxes that lights on the Subject as a mischief doth prove to the Prince an inconvenience to whom the Subjects pressure makes him unable to afford that Subsidium he otherwise could and perhaps would cheerfully for the Publick safety Thus may the great supposed charge to be incumbent on the more devout Protestants by Oblations probably tempt them to use all the means the Law will permit to render the Government of a Popish Prince uneasie to him and certainly disable them from paying in that proportion toward the public Levys upon emergent occasions they else might do It may therefore here be affirm'd that the gain of Popes arising from Indulgences which was so vast that Popes would boast That they could never want 〈◊〉 while they could command Pen and Ink and which Klockius in his Book de Contributionibus observes did yield the Pope in Common Years a hundred Tuns of Gold i. e. a Million of pounds Sterling and which being an unequal Tax on Papists and not pressing the debauchees of that Religion but only falling heavy on the more Pious and devout sort made them the less able to supply the holy See with mony on extraordinary occasions or to pay their Taxes due to the Popish Princes they lived under and particularly those due to the Pope as a Temporal Prince has since in a manner dyed a natural death the light of Learning having no sooner come into the World then that poor Hermit Fryer Martin Luther scourged the Popes Buyers and Sellers