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and being hared with fears and jealousies of Popery were so eager to have the very Laws against Protestant Recusants Repealed But as I hinted the distinguishing between Popish and Protestant Mathematâ—cks to be absurd and as a gross Error about Proportion or Numbers would appear more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
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
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
his Iovian and that Preface he directed so many in the Obligation of their great Oaths I will so far prefer his Labours to all that writ before of the Succession as to say of him in those words of the Apostle He hath laboured more abundantly than they all That which I have writ thereof was finished some years before what the Doctor published about the same as several of my friends know to whom I gave Copies of the same and with an injunction of printing it in Case of my death and I have since added nothing to what I writ nor shall till I proceed to the Review of the Discourse but had otherwise for the honour of my judgment therein concurring with so learned a mans respectfully cited somewhat thereof in my Discussion No doubt but there were many loyal and judicious and learned men that in the late Conjuncture had the same sense with the Doctor concerning the Obligation of those Oaths tho they had not time to publish the same by the Press and I have in p. 269 referred to what a very learned and honourable Person urged from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy in his Speech against the Exclusion-Bill in the House of Commons and to which I have mentioned somewhat of a reply there made by Sir W. I. in that House and of the prodigious Applause that Reply found from many Persons there But in that Speech of Sir W. I. there was another thing said and which being spread about the Kingdom had the effect of Thunder from an Oracle and kept thousands from daring so much as to deliberate of the Obligations resulting from the Oath of Allegiance to oppose the Exclusion His words I refer to for this were to this purpose viz. It is urged also that we are sworn to the King his Heirs and lawful Successors It is true we are so but not obliged to any during the Kings life but to himself For it were Treason if it were otherwise It was in vain at that time for any Discourser to hope by fair and gentle Principles of Reason to open the Wards in the Locks of Mens Consciences and to let in there a true Sense of the Allegiance sworn to the Kings Heirs and Successors when so great a Pick-lock of the Law had made it Treason Yet never was I mortified with a greater Example of Humane Frailty than by the Sense of so great a number of knowing Persons in that Loyal Parliament being so suddenly infected with the Error of that Insinuation from a single Demagogue who had never been bred up to Logic which yet caught the understandings of the Majority of the Representatives of the Commons of England in the Trap of a little Sophism and when an ordinary Lease drawn by a Lawyer 's Clerk might shew one that the Lessee at the time of the perfecting it actually enters into a present Obligation both in Law Equity and Conscience to pay his Rent to the Lessor his Heirs and Assigns as it shall become due to each respectively and which when the Lessor dies or assigns his interest is to be paid to the Heir and Assign then and not till then But as Tully who had as great a Veneration for the Constitution of the Roman Government as I have for that of our English one said in his Oration pro L. Murena that Nihil est fallacius Ratione totâ Comitiorum the same thing may happen to our great Loyal Body of Men assembled while under a ferment of Passion and then every mans anger influencing another Fallacy it self may pass for Reason and as we see when many Workmen are at once altogether crying and pulling a great piece of Timber forward to them with a Rope if that doth not hold but break they all fall backwards together so when any Caetus or Body of Men are drawing with all their strength to bring any matter of weight in the Government to them if the Principle of Reason they use for that purpose will not hold but proves a poor weak Sophism they naturally fall down together I have in this Discourse usually mentioned those Parliaments with the prefixt name of Loyal wherein I yet thought so many Persons were so dreadfully mistaken in so great a point and for which Charity if extravagant no Iesuited Papists can blame me knowing how great an Exclusioner of old their infallible head hath been but which I was the rather inclined to do as any one may guess by the Current of the Discourse because I knew not but his Majesty's calling a New Parliament at such time as he should think convenient for the same might give many of the mistaken Persons such an advantage of recollected thoughts as would shew them the Errors of their former measures and render them afterwards averse from putting at once both their own Consciences and the very words of the Oath of Allegiance on the Rack and from such a squeezing of Blood out of that contrary to the Grammatical Sense that might occasion the flowing of blood through the Kingdom in after times and the sharpest expression I was naturally led to use whereupon fell from me without any Reproach of the Persons erring when I said in p. 209 viz. Thus just is it for Heaven sometimes to blind and confound good men in their Counsels when they abandon plain Principles and Dictates of Reason and when they will not do what they know to suffer them not to know what they do c. I have somewhere read of one who writing of the Constitution of and Rule for the Franciscans saith That for the firmer observance of that Rule Christ himself was heard in the Air saying to St. Francis This Rule is mine and not thine and I will have it observed Ad literam ad literam sine glossâ sine glossâ and let any men be attentive to the voice behind them viz. That of Conscience about the Rule of the observing of their Oaths they will hear God there speaking much to the same purpose Nor have I heard of the understandings of men of great Abilities made Spectacles of shame to the World through the Divine Dereliction in any particular point more than in that relating to their natural Allegiance and their Oath to confirm it Let any one consider somewhat in the Speech of Sir H. V. printed in the year 1662 As what he intended to speak on the Scaffold where having mentioned by what steps he became satisfied with the Parliaments Cause he was engaged in and did pursue the same and that the Parliaments Cause did first shew it self in the Remonstrance and Secondly in the Solemn League and Covenant he addeth That it shewed it self Thirdly in the more refined pursuit of it by the Commons House in their Actings single and saith afterward referring to my Lord of Arguile viz. That Noble Person whose Memory I honour was with my self at the beginning and making of the Solemn League and Covenant the matter of which and the holy
Amsterdam to the Admiralty of the Northern Quarter ib. The number of the Inhabitants of Venice in the year 1555 ib. An Account of the Political Energy of the Reformation in England p. 107. The Revenue of the Kingdom of England quintuple in the year 1660 to what it was at the time of the Reformation p. 108. A Calculation of the Revenue of the Church holding in the year 1660 the same proportion of encrease ib. The Customs of England when Queen Elizabeth came to the Crown made but 36000 l. per Annum and were since 1660 farmed at 400000 l. per Annum and have since then made about double that Sum p. 109. The yearly Revenue of the whole Kingdom of England computed ib. Queen Elizabeth wisely provided for the enlargement of the Trade and Customs of England ib. The Numbers of the People of Spain p. 111. The knowledge of the Numbers of People in a Kingdom is the Substratum of all Political measures ib. An Animadversion on the Author of la Politique Françoise ib. There were about 600,000 Souls in Paris shortly after the year 1660 p. 113. An Animadversion on the Calculation of Malynes in his Lex mercatoria ib. Animadversions on the Calculations of Campanella as to the numbers of the People of France p. 114. Lord Chief Iustice Hales his Observations of the gradual encrease of the People in Glocester shire corroborated by the Author p. 115. The Author believes the Total of the People of England to be very much greater than any cautious Calculators have made it p. 116. Observations on the Numbers of the People of England resulting from the returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey ib. and p. 117 118 119. An account of a Tax of Poll-Money in Holland in the year 1622 p. 117. Some illegal Proceedings in Queen Mary's Reign remarked p. 119 120. The Authors opinion that any Roman Catholick Prince that may come to inherit the Crown will use the Politics of Queen Mary as a Sea mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land-mark to go by p. 122. Eight hundred of the empty new built Houses of London have been filled with French Protestants ib. A high character given of Edward the 3 d a sharp Persecutor of the excesses of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and who saved the being of the Kingdoms Trade and Manufacture and patronized Wickliffe and the Authors opinion that any lawful Prince of the Roman Catholick Religion that can come here will uphold the falling Trade of the Kingdom as he did ib. Occasional Remarks on the Numbers of the People in the old Roman Empire p. 124. The vanity of the fear of any ones erecting another Universal Monarchy p. 125. Campanellas Courting Spain and afterwards France with that Monarchy remarked ib. Observations on the fate of the Spanish Armada in 88 and of the Numbers of its Ships and Seamen and likewise of the Numbers of the Ships and Seamen then in Queen Elizabeth's Fleet p. 127. She claimed no Empire of the Ocean either before 88 or afterward ib. The Shipping and Numbers of our Seamen in 12 years after 88 were decayed about a 3 d part p. 128. An account of the French Monarch's Receipts and Expences in the year 1673 ib. The Authors conjecture of the result of the Fermentation about the Regalia in France p. 129. The things predicted in the Apocalyps are with reference to exactness of number and measure p. 130. The Origine of the name Fanatick ib. The Author asserts this as a Fundamental Principle for the quiet of the World as well as of a mans own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the Municipal Laws of their Countries ib. The Author gives his Iudgment of the set time humanly speaking for the extermination of Presbytery here being come p. 133. Of the illegality of the Scotch Covenant p. 134. The Assembly of Divines here would have been Arbitrary in Excommunication ib. The first Paragraph of the Covenant introduced Implicit Faith p. 135. The Author of the Book called The true English Interest computes that 300,000 were slain in the late Civil War in England p. 138. Observations on his Majesty's and Royal Brothers Exile into Popish Countries caused by our Presbyterians and even out of Holland into France and out of France into Spain p. 138 139. Presbyterians are obliged of all men to speak softly of the danger of Popery p 139. An account of the present Numbers of the Papists in England and some Historical Glances about the gradual decrease thereof in this Realm in several Conjunctures since the Reformation from p. 139 to p. 154. The late Earl of Clarendon occasionally mentioned with honour p. 147. The Authors judgment that the growth of Popery and of the fears thereof will abate under any Conjuncture of time here that can come from p. 153 to p. 157. In December 1672 the Protestants in Paris mere but as one to 65 p. 157. Observations on the late Conversions in France ib. The Author explains what he means by the expression of Religion-Trade ib. The Author's Assertion that the World can never be quiet and orderly till its State be such that men can neither get nor lose by Religion from p. 158 to 160. Animadversions on a Pamphlet aiming at the overthrow of the Clerical Revenue of England and called The great Question to be considered c. p. 160 161. The Author asserts the present Clerical Revenue of England to be reasonable and necessary and very far from excess in its proportion from p. 161 to p. 167. The Author's reason why he doth usually in this Discourse call Popery an Hypothesis or Supposition and not it or our former Presbytery in gross by the name of Religion from p. 168 to p. 170 and after The Author's Assertion That Papists as well as others of Mankind have a Right and Title to the free and undisturbed worshipping of God and the Confession of the Principles of Religion purchased for them by the blood of Christ p. 170. The Author distinguisheth Principles of Papists Socinians and Presbyterians into Religionary and Non-religionary and shews to what Principles the name of Religion is absurdly applied from p. 168 to p. 172. The Author observes it in many Papists who have deserted the Church of England that the rational Religion they were first educated in hath had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholly over-power p. 174. An Observation of three of the Nobility that went off from the Church of England to that of Rome but receded not from the Candour of their tempers and that neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and that the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and make great Figures in the State ib. Turen after his being a Papist as kind to his Protestant Friends as
least one World of hereticks the author of the Compendium needed not by his Rhetorick to reflect on my Lord Bishop of Lincoln's Candour gentleness in saying yet if it be a breach of Christianity to crush the bruised reed and of generosity also to trample upon the oppressed I wish his Lordship may be found guilty of neither c. for behold any single Jesuite according to Campian tho but like a reed shaken with the wind is able to bruise all Protestant Scepters and any little toe of that Order can trample all Heretical crowned heads to dirt and the Number of the Papists in England if reduced to the least of Numbers is not according to Campian to be slighted if one of them be a Iesuite for that that one Jesuite will carry the advantage of odds against all Protestant Kings and Princes that one may say my Name is legion for we are many but as that legion-spirit could not without the Divine permission ruin a herd of Swine off from a Steep place so neither can all the legions of Iesuited evil Spirits in the World drive a King Kingdom from Precipices at their pleasure And Queen Elizabeth in spight of all the arts and power of Rome outlived eight Popes and lived to change all her Counsellors but one all her great officers twice or thrice some Bishops four times and died full of years and did see and leave peace upon Israel And now I shall Entertain your Lordship with a further Reason of my charging the present Popes declaration aforesaid about some opinions of the Casuists as carry with it a face of some thing like shamme and my reason is grounded on what was said in a publick Sermon before an honourable Audience namely that the propositions of the Casuists therein were not Condemned by the Pope in the Consistory which would have made the Censure more authoritative but by the Pope and Cardinals of the Court of the Inquisition upon which a remarkable thing follow'd the Iefuites in France who were much provoked at this Censure moved the Procureur de Roy or Attorney general at Paris to put in a Complaint against the publishing that Decree since it came from the Court of the Inquisition which not being acknowledg'd in France nothing Flowing from that authority could be received in that Kingdom upon which the decree was prohibited and suppress'd And may not the English Popish Priests say the same thing the Inquisition was never received in England and therefore that declaration of the Popes obligeth us not here and we will prohibit and suppress it as much as we can No doubt but the present Pope fearing that the Noysome and Infectious smell of those Opinions of the Casuists being more offensive to the minds of Men then any snuff of a Candle can be to their Nostrils they were ready to cry for the removing of the Candlestick of his Church out of its place went about to extinguish them in the most Summary Manner that he could and therefore attempted to do it by the Court of the Inquisition well knowing that in the Consistory of Cardinals all proceedings are so dilatory and the old magi there so used to do every thing pian piano that they would consume many pounds of new Candles in debating whether or no and how the old snuff should be removed and perhaps would have thought to have contented the World in the mean time with giving it some perfumes but the Pope being afraid of the Iesuites perhaps as sometimes the Grand Signior is of his Ianisaries doth not for fear himself should be extinguished by them so far as I may say follow the light within him as to throw away or tread out that snuff of those opinions as containing a malum in se or declare any of them to be ill as contrary to the principles of the law of nature in which case neither he nor God himself indeed could have dispens'd with them tho yet any honest and ingenious Heathen would on the least occasion given have declared them so As Cicero and Seneca and many others have done and which had the Pope done and the Iesuites or any Papists persevered in the making those principles the Rules of practice his Kingdom had thereby been ipso facto divided against it self and a diffinitive sentence had been thereby given by the Pope that all who had dy'd owning those principles and practices had been sunk for ever into the burning lake Therefore as I said before I hope this declaration of the Popes such as it is will give an alarm to our English Papists to deal seriously with their Souls and to consider as if it were for their eternities these and other Principles of their Religion and that if they will not be thereby perswaded to be almost Protestant Christians yet to be altogether Masters of as good Moral Principles as the Heathens I named and If any of them can but give us a Moral certainty of their Principles being but such I shall never repine at any favour that any new Law may afford to such of them If therefore any of our Lay Country men Papists not guilty of the late Plot shall desire to be heard and to say any thing toward this effect some of us have heard of these principles before mention'd as own'd by our Casuists and Priests and Confessors that are now thus condemned by the Pope and we did not believe that those our spiritual guides did own such Principles but now our Eye seeth by the condemnation thereof that they were before own'd and made rules of Practice Wherefore we hope that who ever do own them will abhor themselves and repent in dust and ashes and others of us did formerly think them Consistent with the Christian faith and the peace of Kingdoms and with humane Society but we now abhor those principles and repent in dust and ashes We are ready to let the King and Kingdom and the World have a moral certainty that we desire no power to change the Religion in England by Law establish'd and we are willing to receive Instruction from any that shall be appointed by publick Authority to give it to us concerning what other principles beside these Condemned by the Pope are inconsistent with Religion or the publick Peace and in case any shall offer to give us dispensations either for principles or practices contrary to those we renounce as inconsistent with the publick peace we shall be so far from accepting of such dispensation that we shall detect the offerer thereof before a Magistrate as much as we would an enemy to His Majesty We are ready to give active or passive obedience as to all the Laws in being We believe not the Bishop of Rome to have more power in His Majesties Realms by Gods word then any other forraign Bishop as was by Acts of Parliament and publick Recognitions declared in the Reign of Henry the 8 th We are willing to render the Kingdom as secure from
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
of Father Parsons about the Succession part 2 d where he weighs the several parties of England in the Ballance of State and saith It is well known that in the Realm of England at this day there are three different and opposite Bodies of Religion that are of most bulk and do carry most sway and power which three Bodies are commonly known by the Names of Protestant Puritants and Papists and afterward speaking of the Great Power of the Protestant Party for wealth and force He saith p. 140. A chief Member of the Protestant Body is the Clergy of England especially the Bishops and the other Men in Ecclesiastical Dignities which are like to be a great back to this Party at that day c. meaning the time after the death of Queen Elizabeth when her Successor should enter on the Stage and then having weighed the Puritan Party and its interest he saith The third Body of Religion which are those of the Roman who call themselves Catholicks which is the least in shew at this present by reason of the Laws and Tides of the time that run against them yet are they of no small consideration in this Affair to him that weighs things indifferently and this in respect as well of their Party at home as their friends abroad for at home they being of two sorts as the World knows the one more upâ—n that discover themselves which are the Recusants and the other more close and privy that accommodate themselves to all external preceedings of the time and State so as they cannot be known or at leastwise not much touch'd we may imagine that their Number is not small throughout the Realm c. The Vigour of the hopes that Popery had in that Conjuncture appears out of that great Historical Letter of D'Ossat to his King Anno 1601 where he makes such a judicious abstract of this goodly Book of Parsons for so he calls it Ce beau livre and Animadversions on it and saith 'T is about four years ago that the Pope did Create in England a certain Arciprestre to the end that all Ecclesiasticks and Catholicks of the Realm should have one to whom to go and have recourse about the things relating to the Catholick Religion and by means thereof to be united among themselves and to understand what shall be good to be done for their preservation and the re-establishment of the Catholick Religion and some have given his Holiness to understand that by that means he would make a great Party of the Catholicks in England for what he would effect and then acquaints the King That the Pope had sent three Briefs to his Nuntio in the Low-Countreys for him to keep till the death of Queen Elizabeth and after that to send them to England one to the Ecclesiasticks another to the Nobility and another to the third Estate by which the said three Estates are admonished and exhorted by his Holiness to remain united together to receive a Catholick King that his Holiness shall name and such a one who shall appear acceptable to them and honourable and all this for the Honour and Glory of God and for the restoring the Catholick Religion c. Here was it seems one Brief more sent to England then Mr. Marvel mentions in his Growth of Popery where he saith That the Pope sent two Briefs in order to exclude King James from the Succession to the Crown In fine Popery was in a Storm during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in it the Papists were sometimes carried up to the Skyes and then down again and in their Enterprizes with variety of success in some conjunctures their fortune was to reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and as in a Storm many hands are necessary so on the whole matter they found need of the numbers of more hands then they could command and their Numbers decreased in the ballance of the people here as much by the King of Spains Ambition as did the numbers of the Papists in the United Provinces thereby And as they look'd big on the account of their numbers in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign so they did in the beginning of King Iames's and as D'Ossat said in that Letter to Villeroy of April 2d 1603. You will find that the Spaniards who are most troubled about this Event meaning of the Succession will be the first to Congratulate the King of Scotland so it happen'd here with the Papists as appears by a Book in 4 to Printed for Ioseph Barnes at Oxford Anno 1604 called A Consideration of the Papists Reasons of State and Religion for toleration of Popery in England intimated in their supplication to the Kings Majesty and the States of the present Parliament where in their Supplication at large Printed they in the beginning thereof in a profession too as inauspicious as was possibly say that His Majesties direct Title to the Imperial Crown of the Realm both by Lineal Descent and Priority of Blood and your Highness most quiet access to the same do exceedingly possess and englad our hearts The Tide of the Succession against which they had striven was made by Fate to run smooth and clear and they were resolved to appear on the Surface of it with a nos poma natamus Gabriel Powel of St. Maryhall in Oxford the Publisher of that Book saith in his Animadversion on the said beginning of that supplication How can Papists without blushing acknowledge his Majesties Title to the Crown of England to be direct seeing they have heretofore most indirectly and most unjustly oppugned the same which Traiteâ—ous Parsons confesseth albeit for excuse he assureth himself that whatsoever hath been said writ or done by any Catholick against his Majesty which with some others might breed disgust hath been directed to this end to make his Majesty first a Catholick and then our King as if Treason and Treachery against his Highness could make him a Catholick and impugning of his direct and just Title tended to make him King. Rob. Parsons in his Treatise of three Conversions in the dedicat Addition to the Catholicks But tho they gave themselves as it were an Act of Oblivion as to the many Treasons of Parsons his Book of the Succession yet in this supplication they forgot not again in effect to use Parsons his division of the people of England into three parts and so to shape the Estimates of their Numbers and they say in their first reason of State the World knows that there are three Kinds of Subjects in the Realm the Protestant the Puritan and the Catholicks affected and by general report the subject Catholickly affected is not inferiour to the Protestant or Puritan either in number or alliance c. And saith Powel in his Notes on that Clause If by Catholickly affected you mean plainly Papists the World knows that in comparison of the Protestants they are but as it were a handful of Thieves among honest Subjects however
some Papists whose names the Age riseth up to for their great advancement of real Learning I mean Peiresk Descartes Gassendus Mersennus had as much tenderness for any differing in judgment from them as Protestants can have and that mighty hunter after knowledg Peiresk was so far from eagerness in pursuing the blood of Heretics that being one of the Judges for Capital Causes in France he would always come off the Bench when Sentence of death was to be given though against the most outragious Murderer and he always carried in his mind a charity large enough to embrace the whole World and maintain'd a constant Correspondence with Salmasius Causabon and other Protestants and did put Grotius on the writing his De jure belli pacis that hath taught more Civility to Nations than the Modern Papal Christianity hath done and who hath there so perfectly manumitted Secular Magistrates from being obliged implicitly to execute the Sentences of Ecclesiastic Judges that he hath there asserted it l. 2. c. 26. § 4. Quin probabile est etiam Carnifici qui damnatum occisurus est hoc tenus aut quaestioni actis inter fuerit aut ex rei confessione cognita esse debere causae merita ut satis ei constet mortem ab eo commeritam idque nonnullis in locis observatur nec aliud spectat lex Hebraea cum ad lapidandum eum qui damnatus est testes vult prodire populo Deut. 17. By the 7th Verse of that Chapter the hands of the Witnesses were to be first on him to put him to death which Law no doubt had the effect of a Caveat with men against their ambitus of the standing Office of Witnesses by tacking thereunto the standing Office of Executioners Moreover both common observation and Cursory looking into Books and indeed common sense will teach us that the Papal Principles do not oblige men at once to fence against Heretics lives and against impossibilities nor to endanger themselves by fighting with the Wind-mills in Heretics Brains That great Cardinal D' Ossat whom I have so often here cited and who was so renown'd for his probity as well as comprehensive knowledg of matters of State doth in the 86th Letter that is to Villeroy in the Year 1597. give him an account of his discourse with the Pope on the occasion of his Holyness angrily resenting Harry the 4ths observing the Edict of pacification and that D' Ossat thereupon said That it was necessary for the Peace of France that the Edict should be observ'd that for want of such an Edict France had not been quiet for 35 years That the Date of the Edict 1577. shewed 't was not the present King but the late King 12 years before his death that made it that the late King and King Charles his Predecessor and Brother did not make such Edicts of Pacification with their good liking and frankly but were constrain'd to it by necessity even for the good of the Catholic Religion and the Realm after having found that many Wars made by Heretics served for nothing but in many places to abolish the Catholick Religion and in a manner all Ecclesiastical Discipline Iustice and order c. And that besides that necessity hath no Law in whatever Subject and Matter it be Jesus Christ hath taught us in his Gospel to tolerate the Chaff in our Fields when there was danger of plucking up with it and spoyling the good Corn that other Catholick Princes used so to do whom none spoke ill of for it That the Duke of Savoy as great a Zealot as he makes himself for the Catholic Religion doth tolerate Heretics in their Religion in the three Valleys of Italy of which he is Lord. That the King of Poland did as much not only in the Kingdom of Sweden but of Poland that all the Princes of the House of Austria and who are Celebrated for being Pillars of the Catholic Church did as much not only in the Towns of the Empire but also in their own proper Estates as in Austria it self from whence they take their Name in Hungary Bohemia Moravia Silesia Lusatia Stiria Carinthia and Croatia That Charles the 5th Father of the King of Spain was he that taught the King of France and other Princes to yield to such a necessity by making the Interim that every one knows even after his having Conquered the Protestants of Germany That his Son the King of Spain at this day who is reputed to be Archi-Catholic and to uphold the Catholic Religion as Atlas doth the Heavens doth yet tolerate in his Kingdoms of Valencia and Granada the Moors with their Mahumetanisme and hath caused to be offered to the Heretics of Zealand and Holland and other Heretics in the Low-Countries the free exercise of their pretended Religion if they will for the future acknowledge and obey him c. And concludes his discourse to the Pope saying That the Kings ablest Counsellors were of opinion that if his Holyness saw things so near as the King did and that the Pope was to Command France in the State the Realm was at present his Holyness would not in this point do less than the King did To all which D' Ossat saith The Pope made no reply And I think it may with parity of reason be affirmed that if the Pope himself were to Command England in the State it is in at present he would be no hammer of Heretics so as to knock any one of them on the head I know that after the date of that Letter viz. Anno 1597. of D' Ossat's last mentioned the various Revolutions in Christendom made the Scene of the toleration of Heterodoxy in those Countries to be altered with a Vengeance for six years after the death of D' Ossat viz. in the Year 1610. King Phillip the 3d of Spain made an Edict for the exterminating the Moors with their Mahumetatisme out of his Realms and which was executed with great Cruelty and the Vnion of Vtrecht entered by the Provinces in 1579 and the blow given to the Spanish Monarchy by Queen Elizabeth in 1588 and the Patronage the United Provinces had from her and the kindness they found from Harry the 4th of France made his Conditional offers of favour to the Dutch Heretics not thank-worthy but even at this very day tho in the Low-Countries both of the United and Spanish Provinces there is a certain reciprocal liberty for the Papists in the Dominions of the States and for the Protestants in the Dominions of the Spaniard yet is the liberty not equal for in the United Provinces the States allow the Papists a certain number of Priests to officiate among them in sacris which is done by an express Concession But in the Spanish Dominions there is no such Concession and the Ministers who there privately officiate among Protestants do it at their peril And in the Year 1599. Ferdinand of Austria expelled the Lutherans out out of his Provinces and in Austria Bohemia
which in so short a space have broach'd or entertain'd above 160 Errors many of them damnable And therefore I do not wonder that in a Pamphlet called The exact Collection of the Debates in the House of Commons in the last Parliament one Member is there brought in observing in his Speech concerning the Dissenters that 't is not probable that ever they will have a King of their opinion nor yet a Parliament by the best discoveries they had made of their strength at the last Election For according to the best Calculations that I can make they could not bring in above 1. in 20. The present Gentlemanly Temper appearing in the People of England as to the not having Aversion or Resentments of Anger against any Mens persons or their Converse by reason of their asserting controvertible points that are capable of the name of Religion must naturally make any ashamed to vex their patience and disturb their security by asserting Principles that really are Irreligion If any one did rake in the dust of Libraries for Names of absolete Heresies to render the Papists or any else the fouler thereby he would in effect but needlessly foul his own fingers as for example if any one should say the Papists have borrowed their Practice of extreme Unction from the Valentinians and Heracleonites their Notion of the Orders and Quires of Angels from the Archonticks the use and worshipping of Images from the Carpocratians the praying to the Virgin-Mary from the Colliridians the Veneration of the Cross from the Armenians the Baptism by Women from Marcion the Baptizing in an unknown Tongue from the Marcosians and the voluntary Poverty and single Life of Priests from the Apostolici the using of small Bells in Celebrating the Mysteries of Religion from the Meletians Nor would any be much concern'd whether any old or new unheard of Hereticks communicated the Disease of these Notions to the weak minds of the erring since it doth not infect Humane Society And there are several Traditions mentioned in some of the Ancient Fathers as Apostolical which tho the Papists do not observe yet the World would not make any angry Exclamations against them if it heard they did as namely the mixture of Milk and Honey given to them that are newly Baptized the abstaining from washing a whole Week after Oblations for the Birth-day yearly not to fast or kneel in Prayer or worshipping of God on the the Lords Day nor between Easter and Whitsuntide all which are mentioned in Tertullian Nor would any be now angry with another that held either part of the Question viz. If the Hallelujah may be sung in Lent The great Controversy about Easter that heretofore put all the World in a Rattle and almost shook it to pieces what a Toy is it self now reputed insomuch that our latest Ascertainers here of the time of its Celebration seemed not to think it tanti to be awake when they were about it and tho our lately having in our Almanacks two Easters in one year easily awakened the Non-Conformists to take notice of it and to say that therefore they could not give their unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by the Book intituled the Book of Common Prayer c. And tho thereupon a person of the Royal Society very profoundly knowing in all the Mathematical Sciences and likewise in the knowledge of Theology and of the Canon Law and the Ecclesiastical Law of England hath published an infallible way of fixing Easter for ever and that it may be no longer a Fugitive from the Rule of its Practice as it often is at present nor dance away from it self as I may say in allusion to the vulgar error of the Suns dancing on Easter day and fixing it so as perhaps none else could have done nor possibly himself any other way yet hath this great right done to that great day been by the generality of people not so much regarded as would an Advice to a Painter or such like Composure have been Any one that would design to make another fermentation in the World by the terms of Homo-ousios and Homoi-ousios would no more effect it than by the Criticks Controversy in Boccaline whether Consumptum should be spelled with a p or no to which purpose I heard one cite it out of Luther that he said anima mea odit terminum istum Homo-ousion tho yet he knew Homo-ousios was the right opinion and Homoi-ousios the wrong And that one word Heresy that hath produced such furious Tempests in the World that have torn up States and Kingdoms by the Roots how is it now generally among men of ingenuity and wit here reduced to its quiet and primitive signification viz. the taking of an opinion or a private opinion without reference to truth or falshood and to import nothing more of affront then when used by Tully as Non sum in eadem tecum haeresi I am not of your opinion and the common Vogue of Heretics amounts to opiniátre and Heresy to opiniátrete and as a Whirl-wind may be supposed to have blown some one thing into its place as each other thing out of it so have the Whirl-winds Heresy hath disturbed the World by happened at last to blow its signification into its right and original State. Our Courts Christian which in order to the Salus animae might still prosecute Men for Heresy as well as Vsury have given no Heretics or Vsurers any Cause of Complaint for molestation tho yet in the Articles of Visitation this is one is there any person a known or reputed Heretick or Schismatick But as in the Diocesess in the Country and even in the Cities there the Church-wardens having not troubled themselves to know what Animal a Heretick is so neither is our Layety in our Metropolis in the humour to mind the Genus and Differentia in the definition of a Heretick Nor will they be ever likely to make any such Presentment as Mr. Nath. Bacon said in one of his printed Discourses he hath seen made formerly by some of St. Mary Overies Item we saine that John Stephens is a man we cannot well tell what to make of him and that he hath Books we know not what they are Our English Genius is so improved by the excellent temper and discourses of that breed of rational Divines our Church of England hath been blest with since the King's Restoration that it generally abhors the thoughts of punishing a Heretick as such with death as a severity that hath in it the turpitude of injustice and cruelty And since the very Fathers and Schoolmen could never agree about the point who are formally Hereticks and that the acutest among them make the formality of Heresy to consist in Pertinacy or Contumacy which are inward Acts of the Mind and which none but the Scrutator renum can know it may well seem shameful for any to agree in punishing it with death What a shameful narrowness of