their Guardian and account it a very preposterous thing that since our Saviour refused to divide an Inheritance his pretended Vicar should do nothing else Moreover Holy Churches resuming all its Lands out of Lay hands would appear the more strange in England when we see as my Lord Primate Bramhal saith in his vindication of the Church of England p. 212 that the very Kings of Spain impose Pensions usually on Ecclesiastical preferments to the 4th part of the value and particularly one Pension on the Arch-Bishoprick of Sivile in favour of an Infant of Castile of greater value then all the Pensions there imposed by the Pope and when we know that the French King doth for the behoof of so great a number of Lay-men impose so many and great Pensions on the Abbeys without saying to the Abbots more then Car tel est nostre plaisir Sir Edwyn Sands in his Europae Speculum writ in the Year 1599 and in the time of Harry the 4 th of France speaking of that Kingdom saith That there the Church Prelacies and other Governments of Souls are made the Fees and Charges of meer Courtiers and Soldiers and our excellent Animadverter on Monsieur Sorbier reflecting on that Country Intimates in effect how there the chiefest spiritual dignities are entailed upon Families and possest by Children They who unjustly cry out of the Constitution of the Church of England for interrupting the Trade of the Kingdom would be loud enough in their Complaints of Omnia comesta à Belo under Popery He who knows not that the Revenue of the King now depends in a manner solely upon Trade and that Trade depends on populousness and that the encouragement of people to live under any Government is that great thing call'd Property in their Estates Religion and Laws and that therefore any thing that calls it self Religion that goes to exterminate above a hundred and fifty persons for every one it leaves for so the Proportion between Non-Papists and Papists by the Bishops survey made about the Year 1676 was return'd to be and to call them Hereticks and which makes their Goods and life ipso facto a forfeit of the Law will not ipso facto exterminate Trade is fitter for the Galleys or a Trading Voyage to the Anticyrae then for any discourse of Trade and Commerce Your Lordship hath in your Travels sufficiently seen it long since exemplified that the Protestant Countries for the quantity of Ground exceed the Popish in Trade and numbers of People and that thus the Protestant Hanse Towns have eclipsed their Roman Catholick Neighbours and Amsterdam Antwerp and the Vnited Provinces Flanders and that in Flanders where the Ecclesiasticks are Proprietors of seven parts of ten of the whole Country Levies of Men and Money for the defence thereof have been made with so much slowness and difficulty and been so inconsiderable as not to have secured themselves against Invaders Nor did the Ecclesiasticks there think it worth their while to strain themselves in Contributions to resist an Invader who is of their own Religion the which made the French Kings Victories there flie like Lightning more then our over-rich English Regulars did to oppose William the Conqueror when he came here under the Popes Banner And thus were they here and in Flanders are like Wenns in the Body which draw to themselves much nourishment and are of great trouble and no use and thus ridiculous is it that so over great a part of the property of the Land should be linked to persons who are no way linked to the interest of the Country more then professed Gamesters and Empyrics and Soldiers of Fortune and are no more damnified by Popish Invaders then Fishes of the Sea are by Earth-Quakes But on the other hand in the United-Provinces how easily and soon are vast Taxes raised when their All is at Stake to what a prodigious encrease of the numbers of their People have they attain'd since the Reformation insomuch that the Author of a Political discourse of the Interest of Holland Printed in Dutch in the Year 1669 and Licensed by Iohn de Witt and by Van Beaumont makes the People in the Province of Holland to be 2 Millions and 400 thousand and so likewise doth Pellerus in his Learned Notes on Klockius de Aerario p. 300. and there cites that Book of the interest of Holland when as Gerard Malynes in his Lex mercatoria makes the People in Flanders in the Year 1622 to have consisted of a hundred and forty thousand Families and he reckoning each of them one with an other at 5 persons makes the Total of the people in Flanders to have then amounted but to seven hundred thousand Souls And yet as that Author of the interest of Holland saith the Province of Holland can hardly make 400 thousand profitable Acres or Morgens of Land Down and Heath not put in and that the 8 th part of the Inhabitants of Holland cannot be nourished with what is growing there but tells us what prodigious Granaries they there have and that Amsterdam that in the Year 1571 was about 200 Morgens or Acres of Land was in the year 1650 enlarged to 600 Morgens or Acres of Land in Circumference and to have in it three hundred thousand Souls And the defence of the Zelanders Choice Printed in the Year 1673 mentions Aitsmas Liere to have reckon'd the publick Incomes of Holland alone in the Year 1643 to have amounted to 1100 thousand pound Sterling and the Author of the Interest of Holland saith that in one Year in a time of Peace viz. In the Year 1664 the Inhabitants of Holland did over and above the Customes and other Domains of the Earls or States of Holland pay towards the publick Charge as follows viz. To the States of Holland 11 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Maze 472 898 Gilders To the Admiralty of Amsterdam 2 Millions of Gilders To the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter 200 thousand Guilders Which comes to in all about 14 hundred 87 thousand Pounds Sterling How meanly do the Atchievements of Venice and their Efforts to aggrandize their Republick compared with Hollands shew in story for the quantity of years many times doubled since the Dutch threw off the Yoke of the Papacy History hath recorded the longevity of the Venetian Government as it has of Methusalem of whom we read not 〈◊〉 great thing he said or did or attempted but a few days of the short life of Alexander in the Ballance of same weighs down the 999 years of the other The very Religion of Popery makes the Venetians more narrow in their principles and even in their Rules of Traffick then are the Inhabitants of Protestant Countries The Popish Religion doth hamper its devout Professors as to Trading with Hereticks and holding Communication with such as are ipso jure ipso facto excommunicated and giving any Quarentine to men said to be infected with Heresie insomuch that we are told in D'
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will
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
Author's opinion that they can never recover the wounds given them by the publication of the les Provinciales c. ib. and that much less those given them by the Popes said Decree p. 50 51. Observations on that Notion of Moasieur Descartes and Mr. Hobbs That the faculties of the mind are equally dispensed and on the natural effects of that Notion p. 58. The Author remarks some Shamms and Calumnies used by some Protestants and their contending with Papists therein p. 59. An Antidote mentioned for Papists and Protestants to carry about with them in this Pestilential time of Shamms ib. A vile Shamm or Calumny used against Papists as if they intended to burn the Town of Stafford and other great Towns is referred to in one of Janeway's printed Intelligences p. 60. Animadversions on Parsons his Book of the Succession p. 60 61. 'T is for the honour of the Roman Catholick Religion observed that Harry the 4th of France after he turned Papist continued kind and just to his Protestant Subjects notwithstanding the Popes endeavours to the contrary p. 62. The Authors grand Assertion viz. That whatever alterations time can cause yet humanly speaking while the English Nation remains entire and defended from Foreign Conquest the Protestant Religion can never be exterminated out of this Kingdom p. 64. Mr. Hooker's Propliecy of the hazard of Religion and the service of God in England being an ill State after the Year 1677 p. 65. The defections of the ten Tribes from the time of David punished by a Succession of 10 ill Kings p. 66. The words in Hosea I gave thee a King in mine anger falsly made by Antimonarchical Scriblers to refer to Saul ib. Dr. Stillingfleet's Sermon cited about the uncertainty of what the fermentations among us may end in ib. Dr. Sprat's opinion cited That whatever vicissitude shall happen about Religion in our time will neither be to the advantage of Implicit Faith or Enthusiasm p. 67. Historical Oâ—servations relating to the Papacy from p. 67 to p. 77. The Papal Power formerly pernicious to the external Polity and Grandeur of England p. 77 78. Queen Elizabeth said by Townsend to have spent a Million of Money in her Wars with Spain and laid out 100000 l. to support the King of France and 150000 l. in defence of the Low Country and to have discharged a Debt of 4 Millions She found the Crown indebted in ib. How by her Alliances She laid the Foundation of the vast ensuing Trade of England whose over-balance brought in afterward so much Silver to be Coyn'd in the Tower of London p. 78. The Sums Coyn'd there from the 41 st year of her Reign to May 1657 ib. England alone till the Peace of Munster in the year 1648 enjoyed almost the whole Manufacture and best part of the Trade of Europe by virtue of her Alliances ib. The same Month of January in the year 48 produced the signing of that Peace and the Martyrdom of the best of Kings and the fatal diminution of our Trade ib. Queen Elizabeth had what praemium of Taxes from Parliaments She pleased ib. King James told the Parliament Anno 1620 that She had one year with another 100,000 l. in Subsidies and that he had in all his time but 4 Subsidies and 6 Fifteenths and that his Parliament had not given him any thing for 8 or 9 years ib. In Harry the 3 d's time the Pope's Revenue in England was greater than the Kings and in 3 years time the Pope extorted more Money from England than was left remaining in it ib. In Edward the 3 d's time the Taxes paâ—d to the Pope for Ecclesiastical Dignities amounted to five times as much as the People payed to the King p. 79. By a Balance of Trade then in the Exchecquer it appeared that the Sum of the over-plus of the Exports above the Imports amounted to 255214 l. 13 s. 8d ib. Wolsey's Revenue generally held equal to Harry the 8 th's ib. Why the Pope never sent Emissaries to Denmark and Sweden and some other Northern Countries for Money and why probably in no course of time that can happen he will send any to England on that Errand ib. and p. 80. In the 4 th year of Richard the 2 d the Clergy confessed they had a 3 d part of the Revenue of the Kingdom and therefore then consented to pay a 3 d of the Taxes ib. Bishop Sanderson mentions the Monastick Revenue to be half the Revenue of the Kingdom ib. The not providing for the augmentations of the poorer livings in England observed to be a Scandal to the Reformation p. 81. Of 8000 and odd Parish Churches in Queen Elizabeth's time but 600 were observed to afford a competent maintenance to a Minister and four thousand five hundred Livings then not worth above 10 l. a year in the Kings Books ib. During the late Vsurpation the Impropriate Tithes saved the other ib. A Million of Pounds Sterling commonly observed to accrue to the Popes per Annum from Indulgencies p. 87. An account of the Compact between some of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and the long Parliament by which the Parliament was obliged to settle on the Ministry all the Church Lands and those Divines engaged to promote the Parliaments Cause and of the result thereof p. 88. Observations on the Calculations of the Monastick Revenue made in the year 1527 by Mr. Simon Fish in his Book called The supplication of Beggars and which Calculations were much valued by Harry the 8 th p. 90 91. Not only none of our Monkish Historians but even of our polished and ingenious ones made any Estimates of the Numbers of the People in the times they writ of ib. A Calculation of the Number of Religious Persons or Regulars in England at the time of the Dissolution of Monasteries p. 92. A Calculation of the Numbers of Seculars as well as Regulars that then lived in Celebacy ib. The Author's Calculation of the Number of the Levites and of their Quota of the Profits of the Land p. 93. A Calculation of the Ebb of the Coynage of England from May 1657 to November 1675 p. 102. A particular Account of Cromwel the Vsurpers depressing the Trade of the European World p. 103. The Kings of Spain impose Pensions on Ecclesâ—astical Preferments to the 4th part of the value p. 104. The proportion of Papists and Non-Papists by the Bishops Survey in the Year 1676 is 150 Non-Papists for one Papist ib. The People in the Province of Holland reckoned to be 2 Millions 4 hundred thousand ib. The People in Flanders in the Year 1622 reckoned to be 700,000 p. 105. Amsterdam in the Year 1650 reckoned to have in it 300000 Souls ib. An Account of what the Inhabitants of Holland in the Year 1664 did over and above the Customs and other Demesnes of the Earls and States of Holland pay toward the publick Charge namely to the States of Holland to the Admiralty of the Maze to the Admiralty of
the English language that the Spaniards caus'd to be made by an English Iesuite call'd Parsons and 't was by the way of the low Country dispersed about England c. And further in the 7 th book p. 301. in the letter to Villeroy letter 133. what he saith of that book of Parsons may be thus made English and from that book of Father Parsons one might draw reasons in favour of his Majesty which would be more weighty then those he deduceth for the King of Spain and his Sister the said Father Parsons does contradict himself very often and very grosly as it happens to all persons in passion as able as they are who are not guided by truth and by reason but transported by Interest and by passion And in the last letter of the 8th book and to Villeroy from Rome the 30th of December 1602 he speaks of Father Parsons having made application to himself to desire that there might be a treaty prepared from Rome between the Pope the King of France and the King of Spain to agree among themselves of a Catholick that may Reign in England after the Queen be it the King of Scots if he will turn Catholick or be it some one else c. But there in p. 367 year 1603 letter 174. from Rome to Villeroy and on April 21st it appears that all the Machinations of the hot Iesuitical heads against King Iames his Succession were overturn'd by providence for he there saith that the Queen was no sooner dead then that the King of Scotland was in England peaceably received and the Controversie of King Iames his title evaporated and for the honour of our English understandings he there saith Les gens de cet Isle là ont bien Monstrè qu' ils scavoient faire leurs affaires entr ' eux tost seurement que ceux de dehors se sont fort mescontez en leurs desseins esperances i. e. the people of England have well shewn that they knew how to do their own business among themselves quickly and safely and that others abroad took very wrong Measures in their designs and hopes I have here said enough to entertain your Lordship with the View of their unreasonableness who would impose on us That Father Parsons wrote not that Impious and Treasonable Book and likewise with the more pleasant View of Gods Confuting it as I may say by the happy determination of his over-ruling Providence And Now because I would make it appear to your Lordship that I have not been unjustly severe to the Jesuitical Principles in rendring them such as are the sturdy extravagances of those offals of Mankind call'd Bullyes and Hectors I shall entertain you with one Instance of a Bravado of threatning from one English Iesuite to all Protestant Crown'd Heads a bravado that is like the High Water Mark to shew in words how high 't is possible for the foam of the raging Sea of Anger to reach and 't is in a Letter of Campian the Iesuite to Queen Elizabeths Privy Councellers printed afterwards at Triers 1583. as I find it Cited in that most learned Preface of my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's to the Book concerning the Gunpowder Treason in the Year 1679 and 't is thus in English viz. That all the Iesuits throughout the World have long since enter'd into a Covenant to kill heretical Kings any manner of way and as to our Society know That we Iesuites who are spread far and wide throughout the whole World have enter'd into an holy Covenant that we shall easily overcome all your machinations and that we shall never despair of it as long as any one of us remains in the World. Lo here a Drawcansir that will not only snub all Protestant Kings and take the bowles from their mouths and beat out their Brains with them himself but he saith there is a Society or Corporation of such brethren of the bladed Ecclesiastical who have enter'd into a Covenant or Association to murder all Protestant Kings and that every single Member of the Corporation should have that dead-doing talent of Valour that should awe and subjugate the Protestant World. And here then my Lord every Jesuite values himself on being a Mutius Scaevola and more than Three hundred of these new Romans or so many thousands of them I mean all of them according to Campian have Covenanted to destroy every Porsenna that lays siege to Rome but in that time of Queen Elizabeth there was an industrious Gentleman who fear'd not the terror of these Huffes but with his secrecy and silence did reduce these mad dogs into the Condition of neither barking nor biting in England I mean Sir Francis Walsingham of whom 't is said in Cotton's Posthuma That his bountifull hand made his intelligences so active that a Seminary could scarcely stir out of the Gates of Rome without his privity And no wonder then if Campian was soon brought to the end of a Traytor here in England by the Care of one of Queen Elizabeths Privy Councellers in the Year 1581. who did both defie and scorn that Rhodomantado address wherein the Iesuite did Goliah-like defie All Protestant Kings and their Armies and as if he would give their flesh to the Fowls of the ayr but the event shew'd his own flesh was so given as a Traytors to that use here in England It was a kind of a bravado in the great Archimedes to say Give me where to stand and I 'le shake the Earth He well knew no such place could be found The Iesuits it seems would have every one of their Order to be an Archimedes and able to shake the Earth as he pleas'd and the hypothesis of Popery they know offers them a place divided from the Civil and Imperial Government where to stand with their Engines namely the Ecclesiastical but things will not be ill administred and holy Church it self will sink into the Earth if its Foundation be not laid as God and Nature would have it and the Man who stands for the place to be an Archimedes and to Move the Earth will soon find his fate of being dissolv'd into his own little dust and that among the artificial lines he is making It seems that boasted association or Covenant of the Jesuites did help to occasion another among the Protestants in Queen Elizabeths time which was ratify'd by Act of Parliament in the 27 th of Eliz. which was about three years after the death of Campian who was Convicted of High Treason by vertue of the Statute made in the time of our Popish Ancestors namely in the 25 of Edward the Third and thereupon executed and yet by the Romish Church made a Martyr tho as I said convicted on that Statute But according to this thundring denuntiation of War against all heretical Kings by Campian as the Jesuites Herald and his boasting when he did put on his armour that every one of his Order should be like an Alexander an adequate match for at
the Earth and scandals to Heaven I mean all Religion-Traders whether Popish or Fanatical those vilest of Nominales who cheat in nomine Domini and such likewise who disquiet States by assuming the Trade of World-menders and everlasting Propounders that are like busie Insects flying in the Eys of Mankind and whom Sir E. Coke in the 85. Ch. of his Institutes which is entituled against Monopolists Propounders and Projectors deservedly brands and Atheists that would reform a Church Bankrupts in their particular Trades that would advance Trade in general Defiers of Justice who would amend the Law and wasting that time as Censors of the Manners of Kings for not paying their Debts which they should employ in acquiring Assets to pay their own In fine Undertakers to Cure Church and State as Confident as the Quack who said in his Bills He Cureth all Diseases both cureable and incureable All these sorts of men whose Trade is talking and whose talk is cheat will only come to be Bankrupt by being heaved out of all places by the Generations of Useful Traders multiplying there Nature that has been long laying its Siege to such Idlers in places of resort will then at last carry on its works so far as to leave them no Earth to play their Engines upon and such unprofitable people will be as naturally extruded out of our Towns as are Women and Children out of Places besieged nor can all the humming of their Propositions procure them more continuance in such places of business then the noyse of Drones entitle them to a residence in the Hive and it will as little quit Cost to have them planted in our Cities as for a Gardiner that pays a high Rent to have beds for weeds Of the Improvement of great quantities of Land by Gardening the Ilands of Iersey and Guernsey are examples and we have a Pleasant and Profitable Prospect of such Improvement near our Metropolis and other Great Cities and I doubt not but England may flourish so as to become the Garden of the World and do as little doubt of any Course of time bringing the Pope again to say as Matthew Paris tells us he did Verè hortus Noster deliciarum est Anglia as I do of that honest Monk's sleeping till the Resurrection or Mr. Coleman's having any more Dreams of a Paradise in the Gardens of Wooburn 'T is hard for a Visionaire not to fancy any thing possible but he who shall pronounce that England can from its present improvement and populousness be driven back ad primordia rerum and that the many cultivated understandings in it and who have reduced Knowledge ad firmam by calculation can be reduced to the Calculation only of Beads and be imposed on like the Indians to part with their Gold for Beads and that half the Land of England now inhabited by three Millions of People as all estimates make to be the least that half of it contains will be delivered up to 50000 Regulars and to persons that the Laws in being allow not so much as a Foot of Earth for Graves and that it is not of equal detriment to a Country to have half the Land made unprofitable and become Bog or the like as to be long in perpetuity to unprofitable people and that such as make property their God which they who over value the things of this Life do and are the Majority of any Country will idlely sacrifice it to those real Impropriators who make but a Property as I may say of God I mean those hypocritical Idlers who only by a Religion-Craft without any service useful to Mankind claim a great Quota of the Profits of others labours and that when we are going on so fast toward the exactest culture by Gardening which excludes all Weeds the old inimicus homo shall find six Millions asleep to give him an opportunity to sow Tares and to ask half the Land for his pains I say he who shall pronounce as aforesaid is one that looks but at few things and so de facili shoots his Bolt and is one that we may think to be a fool without being in danger of Hell Fire and Holy Churches great work of the Conversion of three Kingdoms to the end that it may Convert half the Land again to its use is likely to prove as fruitless as the Christian endeavours to recover the Holy Land. There is such a strong Rampart of living Earth against the assaults of Popery in this kind I mean the Number of our Protestants and particularly of those employ'd in Tilling the Land that Popery cannot dissolve and let it pipe never so plausibly we shall be like the deaf Adder stopping our Ears by laying them against the Earth we are possest of My Lord They who have observed the Intervals of your pleasure when you have had some breathing times for retirement from the fatigue of Affairs of State know that the contriving the improvement of your Ground by Tillage and Planting and Gardening hath been at once your care and your delight And I believe Cicero's Cato Major doth not describe the pleasure of old Age in the improvement of the Earth with greater hight then your Lordship is able to do and your example in this thing may Crown both that of Tully and the Aged Hero's by him there commemorated for delighting in Husbandry and indeed it may be supposed but natural for old Age being so near the Earth its Center to move with a quicker sort of delight toward it and especially among Christians to whom the dull Earth Aided by the acuteness of St. Paul I referr to his similitude of the Corn is so kind and greateful for their culture of it as to Court them with an Embleme of their Resurrection and to teach them a surer way then Galilaeus had found out to Transplant the Earth into Heaven But now methinks to one that has so curious and perfect a Sence of this solid and manly pleasure that the Culture of the Earth affords as your Lordship the very Idea of England's Degeneracy from its thriving State of Agriculture to poor solitary pasture how unpracticable soever the thing is must necessarily carry some horrour with it to be imagined and the very telling it to you that some vain Popish Projectors would rob us not only of the Culture of Learning but even of that of the very Earth must give your thoughts a Nausea instead of such a Noble Extacy as fill'd the whole Soul of Erasmus who in his old Age in a Letter to Budaeus speaking of Sir Thomas More 's and other mens Works that did then begin to beautifie the World with Learning cryes out Deum immortalem quod seculum video brevi futurum Vtinam contingat rejuvenescere And as I am sure you would not desire to Renew your Youth like the Eagle only to live in an Age of buzzards so you know too much of the course of nature to wish your Life a day shorter for fear of the
Millions of Souls But there scarce needs any other Medium whereby to evince that the Progress of the Reformation hath vastly encreased the value of our Land and proportion of our Commerce then that it hath so vastly encreased the number of our People a Fact that I have already proved and have shewn what Depopulaors or dispeoplers of the Kingdom the Monks were and have made some Calculations of the numbers of the Religious Persons living in Celibate and the effects thereof in restraining formerly the growth of the Numbers of the People but do find that I was extremely short in assigning the number of those whom Popery made to live in Celibate to be but 120000. I was glad to gain a rise for somewhat like an Estimate of the numbers of all the Religious persons in Monasteries by finding it in Weavers Monuments that the Religious Persons put out of the Religious Houses under the yearly value of 200 l. were above 10000 and that therein Weaver agrees with Sanders de Schismate c. but I made no Estimate of the numbers of Friers Mendicant the which were very great and I was too short on the accounting that there were perhaps no more Secular Priests then Benefices in England for thô the Rule of the Canon Law allows not Orders to be given to Men without a Title yet it admits an exception in the Case of Men who can live on their own patrimony and it still took the Title to be a Curate as current Coyn for one to a living and moreover the livelihoods that many unbeneficed Secular Priests acquired by saying particular Masses did pass for Titles and thus in France it being conceived that the Secular Priests unbeneficed are about 6 times as many as the beneficiaries we may thence guess what the proportions of their numbers were in England But yet further to discourse of the growth of the numbers of the people of England before and since the Reformation I shall acquaint your Lordship that you may easily find among the Records of the Exchequer what the number of the people of England was in the Year 1522 when Harry the 8 th as I cited it out of my Lord Herberts History p. 121 Caused Warrants to be Issued out Commanding the Certificates of the number of all above 16 years old to be returned and by an Index or Repertory of the Matters of State in the Exchequer that I have I can readily direct the finding it out there and moreover by the accounts of the Pole Acts in former times a considerable indication of the numbers of the people in those days may be had And if we may guess at the encrease of the people of England from that of London I can easily satisfie any person about the prodigious growth of that City in numbers of people and consequently in wealth since the abandoning of the Papacy I have by me an account of the proportions of the Shires of England City of London in a Tax of 50000 l. long since in Edward the 3 ds time and in which Surry bore the same proportion with London and in which London and Surry and Middlesex paid but about 1500 l. which was but about a 16 th part And in Harry the 8 ths times it hapned that Cardinal Pool excited divers Princes of Christendom to invade England a fit man he was who had been then a Traytor to come here and absolve Hereticks but Holling shead in his Chronicle of Harry the 8 th p. 947 tells us That the King having heard of the Treasonable practices of the Cardinal did Anno 1539 make a Survey of his Naval Strength and did ride to the Sea-Coasts and that Sir William Foreman Knight then Major of London was commanded to certifie the names of all the Men within the City and liberties thereof between the age of 16 and 60 whereupon the said Mayor and his Brethren each one in his Ward by the Oath of the Common-Council and Constable took the number of Men Arms and Weapons and after well considering of the matter by view of their Books they thought it not expedient to admit the whole number certified for apt and able men and therefore assembling themselves again they chose forth the most able persons and put by the residue especially such as had no Armour But when they were credibly advertised by Thomas Cromwel Lord Privy-Seal to whom the City was greatly beholden that the King himself would see the People of the City Muster in a convenient number and not to set forth all their power but to leave some at home to keep the City c. then he saith the number beside the Whifflers and other Waiters was 15000. But the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath in his last Observations on that Subject told us That there are in London about 6 hundred and 70000 Souls and thô I know that some Parishes are included within the Bills of Mortality for the said City that formerly were not yet the said Observator having told us that there are in London more Males then Females and it being true that there are as many above the Age of sixteen as are under it and that the Sexagenarii are but a 6 th part of Mankind and the Quota of the numbers resulting from the Parishes added being likewise shewn us by that Observator let any one judge how vast the number of able Men certifiable between 16 and 60 is grown to be since that year of Harry the 8 th before mentioned It must be acknowledged that the thanks of the Age are due to the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for those solid and rational Calculations he hath brought to light relating to the numbers of our people but such is the modesty of that excellent Author that I have often heard him wish that a thing of so great publick importance to be certainly known might be so by an actual numbring of them and the truth is it is much to be pittied that by the care of Magistrates an exact number of the people as well of London as of all other places in the Realm hath not with diligence been made and preserved the knowledge whereof is the Substratum of all political measures that can be taken as to a Nations strength or riches and the part thereof that is spareable for Colonies and the value of the branches of the publick Revenue and the equality in proportioning any Taxes or Levies by Act of Parliament and the satisfying the World about the value of our Alliances a thing one would think somewhat necessary when 't is published in Print that a Forraign Minister who hath spent much time here and is deservedly famous for being a Critical Judge in the Politicks and in many sorts of Learning makes the people of England to be but two Millions and when a late famous French Author of la Politique Francoise who sets up with his Goose-quill to be a Governor of the World reproacheth us
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
for the establishing to himself a firm Monarchy in the World and therefore ought to be guarded against and punished by the Magistrate not as errors in Religion but as destructive to the Government The Author of Omnia comesta à Belo as great a Calculator as he would go for was yet but a Blunderer in respect of the Author of this discourse in which there is so much smoothness of words and plausibleness of notion that if it were possible he would deceive some of the very Elect and that too of their Established Maintenance But whatever the Sentiments of that Author were I must affirm that as ample as the Revenue of the Church of England shews if compared with that of other Protestant Countries it is yet so far from excess in its proportion as to ward off all inconveniences from the State of mens getting by Religion The over ballance of Land here was so much on the Churches side in the times of Popery that it was then in our Provincial Constitutions sulminated as a Menace to the Layety that in case of some particular Contumacy none of their Children should be admitted into the Clerical Calling for three Generations But how Nugatory would such a threatning now be There are few or none of the inferiour Clergy but might have in inferiour Callings arrived at greater Incomes and with less charge of Education and the most envied of our dignified Clergy might in the other two of the great professions viz. in Law and Physick raised their Estates and Families on better and easier terms then they now can And that the Men of the most eminent natural parts would be losers by Religion I mean by the Clerical Profession but for the encouragement of these Dignities we have an indication from the quality of the Divines in the late times who were generally so unlearned that Learning it self then seemed to have retreated from our Vniversities to the Colledge of Physitians in London Notwithstanding the great Sums of Money by the Usurp'd Powers employ'd in the Augmentations of Livings one may well suppose that all of the 10000 Livings in England except 600 needed for that was the number of the Livings in England as beforesaid averr'd to have afforded a Competent maintenance for a Minister the dearth of Learning and Learned Men still continued insomuch that the teeming press then brought forth few Learned Discourses relating to the faculty of Theology but what was published by Dr. Hammond Dr. Taylor Dr. Sanderson and some other Divines born and bred in the Sunshine of the Church of England And I do believe that in Holland the Livelihoods for their Parochial Divines are better then those that our Livings at a Medium yield especially considering that the Dutch Ministers Widdows have 40 l. a year paid them during their Viduity but for want of such encouragement as our Dignities afford for the Educating their Natives in Learning they are constrained as Mr. Philip Nye observes in his Book called Beams of former light p. 152. To send to Forraign Parts to men to be their Professors in their Academies And I account that nothing less then the hopes of being Dignitaries could in the flourishing condition of the Church of England make so many of our Learned Divines take up with the poor generality of our Livings which are such that the Answer to the Abstract published by Authority in the Year 1588 mentions in p. 27 That surely if a Survey were taken of all Parish Churches and Parochial Chappels in England I dare affirm that it would fall out that there be double or treble as many more Livings allotted for Ministers under the true value of 30 l. a year ultra omnia onera reprisas as are above that Rate And that our Divines in the late Times look'd on such a yearly Sum as an uncomfortable pittance for a Minister we have an instance in the Story told in a History of the late Times in Print where a Patron desiring one to recommend to him a godly man for a Living of 50 l. a year he then had void was answered That a godly man could not be had to accept of a Living of so small a value It is moreover a lamentable thing to consider what an Excisum hath been put on the value even of our poor Livings by the Simoniacal Practices of Lay-Patrons and in their hands the greatest part of the Impropriations hath been computed to be Sir Benjamin Rudyard a Famous Parliament-man of the last Age in a Speech of his in behalf of the Clergy spoke in Parliament and Printed at Oxford Anno 1628 speaks there of the Scandalous Livings we have of 5 l. and 5 Mark a year and Cites Bishop Iewel for complaining in a Sermon before Queen Elizabeth That the Simony of our Lay-Patrons was general throughout England and that a Gentleman cannot keep his House unless he have a Parsonage or two in farm for his Provision And how generally a Simoniacal disposition hath continued to infect our Gentry appears by the vile Bonds that have been so much by Lay-Patrons imposed on the Ministers they presented viz. to resign their Livings again to them at pleasure and it is for the lasting Glory of the Lord Chancellor that he hath in Court declared that he will on occasion Null all Bonds of that sort and no doubt but the accidental encrease of the poverty of the Gentry which hath tempted them to sell the same Land twice and to sell the same Living once will tend to the encrease of Simony Moreover when it shall be considered that the Case of a Minister is such that tho Lay-men are secured by the Great Charter from being punished for Contempt of the King's Commands otherwise then with the saving of their Contenement and Free-hold yet that he holding Virtute Officii is lyable by the Kings Ecclesiastical Laws even for those things that in the Layety are no offences to be deprived of the Free-hold that the Law supposed him as Parson or Vicar to possess and that he by the Artifice of the said Bonds hath had the benefit of his Free-hold in effect during the Patrons leâ—eplacitum and further that every New Political Conjuncture threatens him with New Subscriptions from the Magistrate and New Nic-names from the Mobile and that on any change of Religion he is sure to be put in the forlorn hope and that he tho continually thinking of Divinity which is his profession hath not yet that freedom to speak all his Sentiments of the controverted part of it which a Lay-man enjoys and that he is still exposed by constant thinking to prey on the Membranes of his own Brain to find Notions for sensless people methinks after he has all his life before been constrain'd to take these bitter Pills as they are in themselves none should repine at their being gilded for him in his declining age and if among Ten thousand of these twenty six shall in their old Age have the Revenue of Bishops
as formerly I will not despair of many of our Dissenters improving hereafter in Principles of Loyalty as likewise of Conformity but hope they will really deserve to be thought as Loyal as they were so de facto by many greater Judges than my self at the time of the beginning of this Discourse and when so many in our Loyal Parliaments were so extravagant in their Charity to Dissenters as to think that St. Peters Ship was the only Fire-Ship and Non-Conformity a quiet trading Merchant-man and being hared with fears and jealousies of Popery were so eager to have the very Laws against Protestant Recusants Repealed But as I hinted the distinguishing between Popish and Protestant Mathematâ—cks to be absurd and as a gross Error about Proportion or Numbers would appear more ridiculous in Archimedes than in an ordinary Mathematician so true Protestants Non-sense or true Protestants Rebellion is to be no favourable Case and the Name of Protestants must not more than that of the Society of Iesus be allowed as a Charm to raise the Devil of Rebellion When Luther and those who of old deserved the Name of True Protestants abroad as great Co-workers with Nature in introducing the Reformation of Religion were almost deafen'd by their Papal Adversaries Out-cryes of the tunica inconsutulis and when particularly as Sleidan tells us in his Commentarys Granvill the Emperors Deputy in an harangue he made to the Citizens of Wormes did so passionately conjure them That they would not tear Christ's seamless Coat the Protestant Populace was so far from being aw'd out of their way by those words as that they gave their Adversaries the Name of Inconsutulistae or the seamless men and as little will any of our false and jesuited Rebellious Dissenters effect any thing but the abuse of the name and thing of Protestancy and the ridiculing themselves by their usurping on a pretence to be TRVE PROTESTANTS It comes here in my way to observe that some of our Dissenters and other Nominal Protestants who are so apt without sense or reason to call others Enemies to the King and Kingdom have really appeared such to both by their having so much encreased Divisions in our State as well as Church and by their having been the Aggressors in the dividing the Populace here by spightful calling of Names which yet I have not thought fit to mention in this Discourse and whereby the Loyal have been forced some way to retaliate not only out of a generous scorn but that they might speak intelligibly such Aggressors have likewise notoriously contributed to the Divisions in the Kingdom by their too much encouraging the Plot-Witnesses and particularly that Recorded Profligate who so desperately perjured himself in the Case of your Lordship and the Earl of Peterborough and a High-born Prince and by extreme acerbity and rancour relating to the Persons of Papists But their most fatal injury to their Country hath been their weakning its Reputation a thing which Kingdoms must necessarily subsist by as well as private Persons through their studied Artifice of making a Popish Plot to be thought so long lifed and when England's reputation for its strength or which is all one for its being united within it self was much more necessary for its well being than in any Conjuncture of time that perhaps ever happen'd Considering therefore that the present State of England doth and that the probable Future State of it will call so peremptorily on all his Majesty's Subjects to preserve their Country by the Exterminium of all Divisions as I think I have not brought any disreputation to my own Judgment by adventuring to predict the necessary growth of Lâ—yalty making all England to become in time one Sober Party so I am sure I have provided for the Reputation of my Country thereby as well as I could I am not so angry as to think that many of our Religionary Recusants will either on the account of the Divine Prayer of the holy Iesus for the uniting his Flock or of any Scripture-predictions of the more pacific temper that Christians shall at last be blest with be thus inclined to endeavour to shew themselves as I may say honest Inconsutulists and to forbear dividing our Realm as formerly but by their Interest so visibly and palpably concerned in the strengthening the Kingdom I suppose necessity of Nature may be instrumental in the accomplishment of such Scripture-predictions and just as the Interest and Concern of the Souldiers in the Gospel who hoped to have Christ's seamless Coat come to their share inclined them not to rend it and to cast Lots for the same and whereby the Scripture was fulfilled as is said in the Gospel I have mentioned it out of the Scripture that the Stork knoweth her appointed times and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming and I may thinking of a great Prince abroad add that the sight of a numberless Flock of Stares making somewhat like a Cloud in the Air and safely flying close together while there is a Falcon towering above them will direct the Populace of several parts of Christendom to Loyalty and to the natural Garranty of Vnion at home under their respective Governors whereby they will be effectually preserved As I have in this Discourse entertained your Lordship with somewhat like a short Historical Account of the accidental encrease and natural decrease of the Numbers of the Papists in several Conjunctures since the Reformation so I shall in my intended Review with the like of those of the Non-Conformists and impartially take notice of the respective Conjunctures of their petulant insolence and whereby I shall shew to what strange Principles of Out-raging our Municipal Laws they were gradually abandoned As a Specimen hereof I shall observe That Ames a Learned Dissenter of the former Age in the Preface of his Puritanismus Anglicanus printed in the year 1610 speaking of the sufferings of the Clerical Dissenters saith That the Crime they were adjudged guilty of in England was Quod obstinaverunt sese contra leges and then goeth on to ask Sed quae tandem illae quarum gratiâ vi tot fideles alià s inculpati Ministri sunt bonis omnibus sedibusque pulsi nam ex altari vivebant dignitatibus functionibus suis exuti faedati etiam existimatione Sunt autem ne nescias non fundamentales Regni leges non vetera Majorum scita aut consulta quorum summam brevem in Magnâ ut appellant Charta conscriptam habemus haec illi Religiosissime colunt horum fidem implorant sed Canones nescio qui in legum fraudem dolo malo confecti à Parliamentario senatu damnati vere sontici quos denique adversus ministros inviti non sine pudore in alios culpae trajectione exercent Authores ipsi c. But we may with horror ask what kind of Laws is it that those have Outraged since 41 and some of them since the year 60 and since a