A VINDICATION OF THE CHARACTER OF A Popish Successor IN A REPLY TO Two Pretended ANSVVERS to it By the Author of the CHARACTER LONDON Printed for R. Dew 1681. A VINDICATION OF THE CHARACTER OF A Popish Successor In a REPLY to two pretended ANSWERS c. A Reply to the first Answer printed by N. Thompson THERE has lately as the Author has most truly exprest a very slight Reply been made to a Pamphlet call'd A Character of a Popish Successor in which he arraigns the Pamphleteer as he calls him of contradictory discourse and reasoning but says his principles are not so To prove which he allows you to fancy a picture of the late Rebellion for like that it begins with fears and jealousies of Religion Liberty and Property and continues in murmur and revile at the Imperial Root and to stiffen the knees that would bow to a crowned head The last two parts of this Inditement has been so far from being justified by the Author that where he found them they were own'd as the evil effects of a worse cause but by advising us not to be subdued like less than English men not to submit our necks like slaves to the Roman yoke he does infer we must repel a King under the name of an Invader Truly when tho' by the permission or aid of any English King Popery Superstition Idolatry and Cruelty are entring our Gates and are ready to butcher our Protestant Ministers at their Divine Worship make Human Smithfield Sacrifice of us our Wives and Children we justly may resist the Invading Tyrannick Power of Rome In the next place our Answering Pamphleteer would have you believe notwithstanding your own sense and reason to the contrary there is no just fear of Popery nor any danger in any of their Plots but from his own wise suppositions drawn from 41 and 48. has found or made a Plot and as prudently laid it at the Presbyterians door a Plot so subtil that they have outdone the very Jesuits themselves in the contrivance and laid it with so much art and cunning that no heart could have imagined it nor no eye discerned it but his And now let us take notice who this honest Gentleman under the sinily of his Leviathans means that sport and take their pastimes in our troubled deep whose restless and uneasie rolling does not foretell but is it self the storm But I think with our wise Authors leave this had been better proved before so positively asserted considering 't is no less than three whole successive Parliaments his Leviathans that have been restless to find out a Plot and vigorous to prevent our ruin all which he has drawn in as the greatest nay only principals of our destruction and as his Text goes are themselves the storm or Plot he musters up a thundering accusation against them that they foment the people into rebellion distract them with dreadful apprehensions casting them into a raving frenzy and as the greatest plague of the wicked makes them afraid where no fear is And this honest well principled man is all this while a man of the Church of England And to prove the correspondence of this truth with that of his Pamphlet we may easily remember that all the Parliaments were not all Presbyters the first Parliament were all men chose at His Majesties blessed Restoration when there was not the least favour for that Party and those Loyal Wise and Honest Patriots of their Countrey gave the first blow to the Plot first Allarmed the people made Tests and removed the DUKE out of his places and seat in Parliament yet these are the men and this the storm which is ready to shatter our Royal Vessel the Brittish Kingdom into pieces But since he is a zealous Protestant they have no reason to be angry at his making bold with his own Party But why should we stand in fear of Popery Ay why indeed says he He has no fear at all they will not hurt him for his Religion then why should we fear But alas all are not such Protestants as he Heaven knows such Champions for their Cause and Interest and therefore we may have reason to fear notwithstanding all his brotherly advice to the contrary In the next place let us see what small difference he makes between the principles of the Church of Rome and those of the Church of England only a few disputable matters of faith and not very material Ceremonies of Divine Worship as what harm is it to pray to Saints to worship Images or what great matter to believe the Infallibility of the Pope or the Transubstantiation in the Sacrament or to allow the Doctrine of the Roman Church without error when it shall depose and murder Kings command Massacres make Plots Fire Cities Canonize the principal Actors of their Revenge and barbarous Cruelties and consecrate the Instruments of death Is it not hard says our honest Protestant that these frivolous divisions on a sudden should ruine and efface all those good characters of Magnanimity and Iustice of Generosity and Goodness in this our Popish Prince which even his greatest enemies nay the most detestable Character it self allows him Indeed Mr. Scribler I remember no such allowance but as your self remarkt suppose and suppose But if the encouraging of Plots and Popery holding correspondence with his Holiness and other Forreign Princes contrary to the Laws of this Nation be Virtues those and more perhaps of such a nature may be allowed him In the next place he takes a great deal of pains to let you know what the Virtues are which though the Characterizer does not understand he does especially when Cardinal and to shew you he is a man of truth and can keep his word sometimes he has there made so slight a Reply as I have not thought it worth the answering but will refer the ingenious Reader to compare that part of the Character with his Answer and now I will skip over this page as he has done several which he could not with all his stock of Impudence defend Well now says he since we have Laws to suppress Popery what remains then for a Popish King but to put those Laws in execution and for us but to sit down under the shadow of this Fence Yes I think a greater assurance that he will execute them than our Answerer can give His next Argument or rather Opinion is so far from thinking that the Reign of a Popish King can be any ways advantageous to the Iesuitical Instruments that he rather believes it will be their destruction and why because there is Laws of foree against them and the power of executing those Laws he himself has already given to the people and which he has concluded they will more vigorously do under such a King But hold this Sham wont pass we know the people may convict them but none can punish them but their Prince But if the people by the authority of our Scribler do what will he have
then granting the truth of this his opposers has more reason to dread his Power for 't is a known Maxim The greatest and truest friend the most implacable and revengeful Enemy But for those Acts of Parliament which we find ordering and disposing of the Succession they make says he very little for the purpose for which they were produced Yes they prove that the Succession has been given by Act of Parliament where the King and the Parliament thought fit and upon those reasons they afterwards thought more weighty the Gift has been recalled and they have placed a Right elsewhere and who shall dare to say these Acts or any made by King and Parliament are unjust Indeed the King without his People or the People without their King cannot alter the Succession but with a joynt consent Those Acts of Parliament declare it has and may be done again and certainly there never was a Cause that did require the changing of the Succession half so much as we have now But he is drawn to an end and I thought nothing could have been more audacious than his Answer is throughout in notorious Accusations of all our Great and Honourable Parliaments but the dedicating his Libel to those very men with the same hand he writ it of them is a boldness that certainly has no president but is an Original of Impudence A REPLY TO Roger L' Estranges PAMPHLET WELL but now for our Second Masquerade who Begins just like his Brother and carries on the Argument of Forty one throughout every Paragraph of his whole Pamphlet to answer all that can be said against Popery with that He tells us The Character of a Popish Successor were an excellent piece in the kind if it had not too much Sublimate in it The truth of it is says he the Author has made the figure of his Successor too frightful and too enormous and then he finishes his Master-piece with a paradox by the supposal of a most excellent Prince and yet making him the greater Devil for his Virtues I cannot suppose it any Paradox to say the intoxication of Romish Principles and that Religious frenzy in the brains of Majesty will pervert all his Natural Virtues and make him imagine he does his God and his people good service and think he improves his Talent sevenfold when he puts the severest Roman Laws in force against us which is no less than the forfeiture of our Estates next the loss of our Liberties and our Lives in a very short time after Nor are we to suffer any death more merciful than burning alive which is the Popes own Law in these words Decerminus ut viva in conspectu hominum Comberatum De Hereticis 7 Decretat sect in consutilem Nay his obeying his Superior Ecclesiastick Power in executing these Laws shall be so far from making him or any other Papist else think him the greater Devil as he says that on the other side the Pope and all of that Church will tell him he has improved all his Virtues to that height that he deserves to be a Saint has merited that Heaven which they will give him But before I go any further says he let me recommend to the Reader one Remark as a thing worthy his attention That he cuts all the way upon the Successor as presupposing him to be a Papist and consequently dangerous and insufferable by reason of that perswasion and very magisterially gives his own bare word for the dangers of that perswasion why does he not rather tell us in particular terms These and these are the principles and then make his inference from those principles to the dangers that attend them I thought both the Principles of the Roman Church and the dangers that attend them had been too well experienced in England as well as other places not to be known to the most Vulgar person in it for what was Q. Maries Tyranny but an impulse of Conscience derived from those Popish Principles that told her that all Hereticks are all notorious Traytors Traytors against God himself and therefore guilty of the highest High Treason which they call Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divina and therefore they deserve that worse penalties should be inflicted for that than other High Treason And it is besides enacted by a General Decree That whatsoever King Bishop or Nobleman shall believe that the Decrees of the Roman Bishops may be or shall suffer them to be violated in any thing be accursed and shall remain for ever guilty before God as a betrayer of the Catholick Faith Caus. 25. 91. cap. 11. and therefore considering all this we cannot with reason think that such barbarous Cruelty could be the delight of naturally soft and tender hearted woman or that Majesty could be so perjured so ungrateful and so dishonourable for little or no advantage but she was a servant of the Church and Pope and durst not incur his curse that was to open her the Gates of Paradice and 't is impossible for any Papist to have such a Soveraign Power as hers and not to be the same Tyrant that she was Now in Answer to a paragraph which his Brother the wiser of the two skipt over concerning the barbarity of the known Doctrine of the Roman Church that pronounces damnation to all that differ from it in any one matter of faith and to justifie his Masters and his Religion from such a terrible Accusation as tearing up his Fathers Sacred Monument branding his blessed memory with the name of Heretick and the compleating the horrid Anathema of most impiously execrating the very Majesty that gave him being He says the Characterizer lays down a false supposition and then raises out of it a most uncharitahle consequence for the very position That there is no salvation out of that Church is yet qualified with an exception In case of an invinsible perswasion I think that case was plain in that Royal Martyr who sealed the invinsible perswasion of the Protestant Faith with his blood And next he says If this be so lewd a principle in one Religion why is it not so in another Which being admitted involves every individual member of the Church of Rome in the same condemnation So that he says in asserting this Doctrine the Characterizer himself damns all the Papists as well as he makes them damn all the Protestants Now as I never thought the Protestants in a more likely state of damnation for the Papists saying or believing so so I always thought it was the proof of Crimes and not the accusation that must condemn all men before so just a Judg as God Almighty and there are such proofs of that Hellish Doctrine that it bears witness against it self for 't is not the Protestants knowing and judging their principles but their believing and following them damns the Papists but he is a Protestant that holds the Romish Tenents as good as those of the Church of England and is of whether for a peny so that 't is
tho' a Papist King cannot influence the Judiciary Officers of his own creation have already depraved the Bench and obstructed Justice as in the last line of his 8 th page where he says Iustice has been denied where it might give distast to the Representatives of the Nation Well but after much sensless quibling upon the Characterizer's being a Papist because he was of their minds so far as to believe their design of establishing Popery in England might have took effect he at last has not only granted the possibility of their belief but the introducing of Popery feasible Yet says he does it follow that because they thought so then that they think so still sure they have little reason to believe that that design which was in so hopeful a forwardness as never since Queen Maryes days could be boasted of carried on with all the art and contrivance all the secresie and cunning of a diligent and active party favoured by several the greatest persons in the kingdom and those most eminent for their Riches and Interest to support the Cause and the universal security of the Nation conspiring with all these and after all this brought to nought should ever at all or at least in this age be effected when all their measures are broken and all their wicked contrivances laid open and the whole scene of that Religious Villany displayed to publick view when the whole Nation is still awake with continual fears and fresh Alarms against them Yes Mr. Scribler 't was and might still be possible if the people of England be yet more sensless than in that security you spoke of and does yet leave them the hopes of a pernicious Popish King there will be then no need of Plots his Power will undoubtedly perform much more than all their Hell-born stratagems cou'd ere design It was indeed an over-hasty Roman zeal to mount him on the Throne before his time they were impatient of delays thought long till they arrived at their dear promised Land and wou'd have took delight to have waded through that Sea of blood that wou'd have brought them thither 't was that and Providence that it seemed had not designed we all should perish in our dreams made them so unhappy to themselves and fortunate to us Their fear that death might interpose betwixt them and all their hopes and snatch their darling Prince before his Brother's or their work was done their dread of this and eager thirst of blood made them plot on for what they might have had without and ruin all But to prove 't is possible in case of a Popish King 't is in the power of any English Prince to remit the punishments due to that party when convicted as has been experienced and I think none will doubt but a Popish King and an obedient Son of Holy Mother Church will extend his Negotiation a little further for them than an Heretick so far no doubt as to encourage his own Religion and suppress its enemies and give them leave to revenge their long sufferings Well admit this King and more certainly the impowering his party to all they can desire what will the cackling of all our Protestant Geese do then to the preserving our Capitol even as much good as our Scriblers Vindication has done his Master Next if it were possible that we shall ever suffer a Papist King in England and put the reins of Government into his hands whose Arbitrary Principles we so abhor when we do this we shall no doubt not only be content to let him have a standing Army but shall every man voluntarily contribute to the setting up and maintaining that Army we know before-hand is design'd to enslave us or cut our throats But I will hope and believe it impossible for the whole Nation to be mad at once and on that presumption agree with my Pamphleteer in that point That we shall have no standing Army no Arbitrary Government and indeed I fancy the Jesuits have just cause to say now Perditur haec inter miseros Lux. Well but he says again It were folly for a Papist King to attempt the bringing in of Popery for says he young as the Reformation was in Queen Maryes days it might indeed with some ease have been pluckt up ere it had taken root the Papist in those days equal at least if not exceeding the Protestants all longing for the restoration of their Religion but now when this Idolatrous Superstition has been so long worn off the minds of the people and the Reformation so deeply and so strongly rooted the Roman Church so detested both for the dangerous Innovations of its Doctrine and the Idolatry of its Ceremonies and so odious in the eyes of the people for its pernicious principles exprest in the Villanous practises of its professors in Massacres and Plots all detected All this indeed is very true and I confess he is so far much in the right But soft and fair how came this to pass how has the Papists disobliged you now that you are so briskly treating of their pernicious Principles the dangerous Innovations of their Doctrines Idolatry of their Ceremonies and their Villanous practices in Plots and Massacres How came the wind to be thus turn'd now Or has my good friend forgot himself since he writ the second page of his wise Answer where he was showing that the principles of a Papist and a Protestant so little differ 't is contrary to reason or common sense a Papist should be less an honest man for them as only differing in a few disputable matters of faith and not very material ceremonies of divine worship And is it possible that he who has so exclaimed against contradictory discourse and arguing and has so much endeavoured to find it out where it never was by leaving out or adding words of his own should at last be found so grosly guilty of the same fault Well but perhaps he may as justly as his Master say the case was alter'd so he could not help it for indeed his first business was to perswade us to believe what a happy condition we should be in under the reign of so virtuous and heroick a Popish King and to take off our dreadful apprehensions of his Religion therefore he tells us the small difference betwixt us and them as only a few disputable matters of faith c. but fearing that work with all his painful arguments may not be perfectly finisht therefore he now says we have no reason to think it can do us any harm because it can never be establisht in England for the dangerous Innovations of its Doctrines and the Idolatry of its Ceremonies and villanous practises of its professors in Plots and Massacres have rendred it so odious But this contradiction was a little unlucky in this place just where he is accusing the false Satyr of blowing hot and cold with the same breath but in that we may suppose he did forget himself which may be forgiven
this King to be the mean time asleep or with all his Cardinal Virtues an Atheist for if he is not a Papist he has no pretence to any Religion having himself renounc't all Churches else Certainly he must be the first of these two if this power be assumed in his Reign without his permission and the last if with it For no man can be or pretend to be a Son of the Church of Rome that will not be obedient to all her principles and commands and will not maintain on all occasions to their utmost power her Cause and Interest He shall no sooner refuse or neglect to do this but he shall be exploded as the basest Coward and excommunicated as the vilest Heretick Besides there will be more danger for him to permit their punishments than any other Prince whatever for as their hopes in him has given them almost assurances of their utmost wishes so will their hatred and malice be greater to him when they shall find themselves more than frustrate of all their ambitious expectations And if an Atheist a man that believes no God no punishment for Vice nor no reward for Virtue to pretend to be of a Religion by which he has banisht himself his native Countrey lost the hearts of three Kingdoms and thrust himself for ever from a Throne he must be the greatest mad man or the most a Fool in the Creation and I think it not fit for either of these to wear a Crown or a Papist our English Diadem And prudently considering all this that exclusive Bill in Parliament was like the wise Fathers advice to rash Phaeton as much for his own good as the Kingdoms safety for no doubt but if ever he should ascend this Throne and hurried on by the furious conduct of his Romish Counsellors till he had set his Nation in a flame he himself at last will most certainly perish in his own fires Now our Answerer bids us consider the weight of a Coronation Oath with a Prince of any sense of Honour or Religion and he has promis'd upon this account pray Heaven he keeps his word a very smart argument which he makes out thus He has a double tye of Nature and Religion Those tyes indeed ought to be very strong but how strong the tyes of Nature and Gratitude to the best of Kings and Brothers are in him has been sufficiently experienced and largely treated of in the Popish Character but for Religion that has no tye at all upon him that loosens all other tyes contrary to the pride and interest of the Romish Church And though our Answerer has to a miracle confest that there is such a Doctrine in the Church of Rome as dispencing with and absolving Papists from all Oaths to Hereticks yet says he 't is a Doctrine never universally received aud that even they that do believe it do not preach it to all and therefore these with him are poor shifts and evasions Why should we fear it should be made use of against us for says he that Prince that would lose all his Honourable preferments rather than tell a lye against his conscience ought certainly to be believed when he shall make so solemn a protestation as his Coronation Oath But that Oath we have by sad experience found to be such a Juglers knot and has so often plaid fast and loose that if he were a Mahumetan and should swear by Alha we should have much more reason to believe him as Turk or Infidel than as a Roman Catholick for we know the bands of Nature Morality and Honour have been sacred to Heathens but never to Papists And besides I must tell my smart Gentleman Tho' we very well know that Dispensations are frequent things from Rome yet it would have been no less than a mortal sin and never to have been forgiven to have presumed in that case to have told a lye without the Popes permission tho' truly as some Papists have declared his Holiness was to blame not to dispense both with the Dukes receiving the Sacrament in the Protestant Church and their taking the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance for some time since they would have been no less sons of his Church nor no less true to his power and considering he might so easily have done it which would have prevented all their misfortunes and for ever have secured their Interests And next says our Scribler What if the King of France contrary to his Oath upon the Sacrament has invaded Flanders he is but one president and must all Princes of that Religion violate their Oaths because he has done so But for Q. Mary of Eng. violation of her Oaths Covenants and her Honor with all her barbarous recorded Cruelties let her pass 't is not at all pertinent to his purpose to take the least notice of her Besides for his Coronation Oath 't is an Oath upon compulsion and he has greater and more ambitious motives to make him take it tho' against his conscience than the French King had to take his Oath upon the Sacrament and break it for that was only a little to enlarge his Empire but this of our Popish Successors is to mount him on a Throne And since it is a like ambitious cause in both we very well know that ambitio multus mortales falsos fieri coegit He tells us now his first design was only to be of the defensive part But if comparisons of these times with those of the late Rebellion if railing at and accusing three Parliaments of a horrid Plot a Plot to ruin Monarchy ferment us into Civil Wars and make us cut our own throats be more than defensive the second page of his Pamphlet must tell him to his face he lies But now he is at the same thing again he must say something Well tho' he denies the possibility of introducing Popery because a great many as good Protestants as the Characterizer do both say so and believe it too yet certainly he thinks the Party very powerful to protect his notorious impudence against the King the Parliament and all the Judiciary power of the Nation who has with great wisdom and by strong proofs found out a most Hellish and Dangerous Plot a Plot against the Life of his Sacred Majesty the Protestant Religion and Government and with reason and thankfulness have acknowledged 't was only the especial Providence of God that has delivered us But he says 't is not only impossible to introduce Popery but 't is impossible for the Papists themselves to believe it could be done that is to say there has been no Plot on that side But what has he made all the Three Estates of England to be but a pack of Rascals and Villains to pretend a Plot where there was none and to set their hands to the confirmation of such a Falshood and to the delusion of the undiscerning multitude Nay he has a further charge against that great and honourable Council of Parliament who