the honour of their Religion thereby attacqued yet I gave no Rule about the Merits of the matter in my private thoughts till I saw in the Prints the Copy of the Order of Council of November 2d 1679. reflecting on the Treasonable Papers thrown into a Gentleman's Chamber by which divers Noblemen and other Protestants were to be brought under a suspicion of carrying on a Plot against his Majesty and which Order was after a Person was sent to Newgate by the Council for forging of Letters importing High-Treason and fixing the same in a Gentlemans Chamber and oâ— which Forgery I yet thought none but some few of the faex Romuli who believed and practised the Jesuites Doctrine of Calumny could possibly be guilty But I presently accordâ—d in my thoughts with the many Loyal Protestants and Papists who judged another Effort that pretended to be of the same Nature with the former and referred to a Plot of Protestants to be a poor vile Artifice or Shamm projected by some Calumnious Anti-Papists a shamm too despicable to be here named and obvious enough to detection from the Trite saying That they who can hide can find But the many pitiful Shamms whose humming noise did a while please our Mobile and were below the notice of the Government have had their triduum insecti and are not to expect to live in Story or to be there Entombed like the Fly in Amber The powerful Effects of the Royal Declaration freeing our Land from the Plague of Fears and Jealousies and the Annoyance of the Swarms of these Flies as Moses his intercession prevailed to deliver a Realm from the Judgments of other ones will be a more adequate Subject to a great Writers thoughts and especially when he shall consider that in the Course of Nature and without Miracle those great Effects could not but rise from so great an Efficient and as to which any one will perhaps be of opinion with me who shall consider that the most terrible of terribles in so many mens apprehension of Popery is its arbitrariness and that therefore the publication of the Royal Resolution to govern according to the Laws would effectually secure us against all Arbitrary Power whatsoever Mr. Hobbs saith in his Behemoth I confess I know very few Controversies among Christians of Points necessary to Salvation They are the Questions of Authority and Power over the Church or of Profit or of Honour to Church-men that for the most part raise all the Controversy For what man is he that will trouble himself or fall out with his Neighbours for the saving of my Soul or the saving of the Soul of any other than himself And no doubt it is not barely any mens believing the Doctrines of Purgatory or Trasubstantiation or Merit or Works of Super-Errogation that hath made the past ferment among us but the Arbitrariness of the Papal Power and the Complication of the Tenet of the Plenitude of that Power with those Religionary Tenets and the making of it Penal not to receive those or other Tenets from Rome and the making men Tenants in capite to a Foreign Head for their Brains and Estates and an outlandish Bishop who lives a Thousand Miles off with new Non obstantes outraging their old Laws and whom they can never see blush after it But his Majesty having declared That he would use his Royal Endeavours both in and out of Parliaments to Extirpate Popery of which its Arbitrariness was its great dreaded part and in all things to Govern according to the Laws of the Realm the People knew that the Laws had sufficiently provided against Appeals to Rome as well as against Appeals from the Country to the City and that Declaration naturally fortified the minds of the People as a Praemunimentum guarding them before hand as I may say with allusion to our Statutes of Praemunire against the Arbitrary Power either of Rome or Geneva and did in effect set up an Ensurance Office in each of his Majestie 's Courts of Iustice to secure them against Arbitrary Power as such in whomsoever and that they might in in utramvis aurem dormire as to any danger from the same and 't is therefore no wonder that the Reflux of People from the Metropolis to the Country ensued thereupon as I have remarked out of the Bills of Mortality and from which Bills perhaps we may divert our selves with the sight of the Burial of that Plot which some feared and others hoped would have been immortal who would have had it Entailed too on their Heirs and Successors tho they would not allow the Crown to be so to the Royal Line The Political uses that the Bills of Mortality may be put to being more various than the profound Observator on them took the pains to mention as I have thence by a glancing view of the gradual Encrease of the People coming out of the Country for several years to dwell within the Compass of those Bills and likewise of the gradual decrease thence deduced given an account of what I thought might in some measure deserve the name of an Indication of the diminution of the popular fears resulting from the Burials after the great auspicious year of the Royal Declaration so I could in order to the lessening of the fears of the encrease of Dissentership within the Circuit of those Bills from the Total of the Christenings in the respective years since that of 81 give what I might without Vanity call more than Indicium and which perhaps would be by Critical Persons allowed for somewhat like a Demonstration of the Encrease of the Numbers there as I may say born into the Church of England and to what proportion and that very particularly and make it out thence that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the Year 81 there were Christened 1084 in the year 82 and that the disposition of People for baptizing their Children in the way of the Church of England did encrease near a 13th part in the year 82 and that above the proportion between the Burials and Christenings that was in the year 82 there were in the year 83 Christen'd 2146 which is near a 6th part that the Baptizing of Children in the way of the Church of England hath gained and Dissentership hath lost ground in that year Nor do I find cause to alter my opinion of such baptizing in the way of the Church of England having lost but rather on the contrary gained ground in this year 84 tho to what proportion I cannot positively judge by reason of what I before hinted namely of the extraordinary proportion of the Burials this year arising from the Accidents of the great Frost and which Physicians by comparing the encrease of the particular Diseases by which so many died this year more than in the former happening from those Accidents have judged to be considerably above 3000 and likewise by reason of the Births having this year been reverâ considerably
well come under the account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to those Opiners hath for the honour of the Church of England's Principles in his 8th Lecture and there de lege paenali well taught us in what Cases Penal Laws oblige in Conscience and shewed that they may so bind where the Legislator did intend to oblige the Subject Ad culpam etiam non solum ad paenam and in that Case saith he Certum est eos teneri ad observandum id quod lege praecipitur nec satisfacere officio si parati sint poenam lege constitutam subire and where he further saith That the mind and intention of the Legislator is chiefly seen in the Proeme of his Law in quo saith he there ut acceptior sit populo lex solet Legislator Consilii sui de eà lege ferendâ causas rationes expoâ—eâ—e quà m sit lex iusta quam fuerit tollendis incommodis abusibus necessaria quà m futura sit Reip. utilis There is a particular Principle of moment worthy of the Magistrates Survey that relates to the Gathered Churches and that is a Principle made a necessary ingredient in the Constitution of of those Churches by a Divine of the same Authority among them as Bishop Saâ—â—erson is in the Church of England and whom I occasionally beforementioned and that is Mr. Iohn Cotton B. D. who in a Pamphlet of his printed at London in the year 1642 Entâ—tuled The true Constitution of a particular visible Church proved by Scripture wherein is briefly demonstrated by Questions and Answers what Officers Worship and Government Christ hath ordained in his Church and in the Title-page whereof is this place of Scripture viz. Jer. 50. 5. They shall ask the way to Sion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual COVENANT that shall not be forgotten in p. 1st makes his first Question what is a Church And the Answer is The Church is a mystical Body whereof Christ is the head the Members and Saints called out of the World and united together in one Congregation by an holy COVENANT to Worship the Lord and to Edifie one another in all his holy Ordinances And in another Book of his printed at London in the year 1645 called The way of the Churches of Christ in New England his third Proposition is this viz. For the joyning of faithful Christians into the Fellowship and Estate of a Church we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entring of them all together as one man into an holy COVENANT with himself to take the Lord as the head of the Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People which implies their submitting of themselves to him and one to another in his fear and their walking in professed subjection to all his Ordinances their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness unto Mutual Edification He there partly props up the Obligation of this Church Covenant on the Iewish Oeconomy mentioned in the Book of Deuteronomy and other places of the Old Testament The reasonableness of Subjects not entring into Religionary Covenants without the Consent of the Pater patriae may be inferred from the old Testament where in Numbers c. 30 the Parent hath a power given for the controuling of the Childrens Vows not enter'd into by his consent but since these Principles of a new Church Covenant may seem to introduce a new Ecclesiastical Law without the King's privity and consent a thing that if our very Convocation should presume to do would bring them within a Praemunire and since the whole power of reforming and ordering of all matters Ecclesiastical is by the Laws in express words annexed to the Imperial Crown of this Realm and particularly by the 1st of Elizabeth and since that it hath been said that even without an Act of Parliament a new Oath or Covenant cannot be introduced among the King's Subjects and moreover since all the famous Religionary Confessions of the Protestant Churches abroad assert nothing of any such Church Covenant and since Covenants and Associations have lately heard so ill in the Kingdom I think the nature and terms of this Independent Covenant ought to be laid as plain before the Eye of the Government as was the Scotch Presbyterian one Those words of Mr. Cotton of the entring them all together as one man into an holy Covenant carry some thing like the same sound of one and all and tho their thus entring into it to take the Lord as the head of his Church for their God and to give up themselves to him to be his Church and People may be a plausible beginning of this new Church Covenant in nomine Domini yet the following words of submitting themselves to him and to one another in his fear and their cleaving one to another as fellow Members of the same Body in Brotherly Love and Holy Watchfulness are words that I think the Magistracy ought to watch and to see that Dissenters have a very sound form of words prescribed to them in this Case if it shall think fit to have the same continued I have found the Assertion of a Church Covenant as Essential to the Form of a true Independent Church in many other of their Books and do suppose that this Covenant being laid as Corner-stone in the building of their Churches by Divine Right it must last as long as Independency it self and of its lasting still I met with an Indication from a Loyal and Learned Official of the Court-Christian who told me that tho several of the Dissenters called Presbyterians have been easily perswaded to repair to the Divines of the Church of England that they were admonished to confer with and had upon Conference with them come to Church and took the Sacrament yet he thought that some of another Class of Dissenters were possessed with a Spirit of incurable Contumacy by reason of their Principles having tied them together to one another by a Covenant And if it shall therefore appear to the Magistrates that they are thus Conference-proof and as I may say Reason-proof by vertue of their Covenant it will then be found that no one Mâ—mber of a gathered Church can turn to ours without the whole Hyena-like turning and perhaps some of the Lords the Bishops may think it hereupon proper humbly to advise his Majesty to null by a Declaration the Obligation of this Covenant as his Royal Father did that of the Presbyterian Covenant In the mean time the Consideration of the Principles of Independecy thus seeming to have cramp'd the Consciences of its followers with a Covenant that is at least unnecessary and must naturally be a troublesom imposition to men of thought and generous Education who love to perform Moral Offices without entring into Covenant or giving Bond so to do may serve to
a flame of Zeal reflected in these words on the Queen her self Our posterities shall rue that ever such Fathers went before them and Chronicles shall report this Contempt of learning among the Plagues and Murrains and other Punishments of God they shall leave it written in what time and under whose reign this was done If the good Bishop had considered the vastness of Queen Elizabeth's Expences before mention'd in desending the Protestant Cause contra gentes he would have given her day to have built and endowed some Churches and to those expences before mention'd it comes into my memory here to add what I then forgot which is related in the Travels of Mr. Fines Moryson who was Secretary then to the Chief Governor of Ireland in her Reign viz. That she expended in 4 years time on that Kingdom a Million and one Hundred Ninety Eight Thousand Pound Sterling which Sum so laid out then on Ireland will seem the more considerable when by a late Report of the Counsel of Trade in that Kingdom drawn by Sir W. P. The currant Cash of that Kingdom is made to be but Three Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pound Sterling But this by the way and to resume my discourse of our Clergies neither getting nor losing by Religion I shall say that as the acceptable free restoration of the Church as well as the Crown to its Lands shewed that there was no fear of its injuring the Ballance of the Kingdom or hurting Religion by its weight so hath the following acquiescence of all dis-interested men in the same evinced that weight to be no gravamen In a Pamphlet called a Letter from a Person of Quality to his Friend in the Country Printed in the Year 1675 generally supposed to be writ by the Earl of Shaftsbury and which asserts the Justice of the Declaration of Indulgence the Author in p. 5. speaking of the Church of England becoming the head of the Protestants at home and abroad saith For that place is due to the Church of England being in favour and of nearest approach to the most powerful Prince of that Religion and so always had it in their hands to be the Intercessors and Procurers of the greatest good and protection that Party throughout all Christendom can receive And thus the Archbishop of Canterbury might become not only alterius orbis but alterius Religionis Papa and all this Addition of Honour and Power attain'd without the least loss or diminution of the Church it not being intended that one Dignity or Preferment should be given to any but those that were strictly conformable The natural inclination in all ingenious Men not to cast an evil Eye on the Church Revenue appears in Mr. Marvel 's Second Part of the Rehersal transpos'd p. 146. where he saith I am so far from thinking enviously of the Revenue of the Church of England c. That I think in my Conscience it is all but too little and wish with all my heart that there could be some way found out to augment it And our ingenious and great Lord Chancellor Bacon in his certain Considerations touching the pacification of the Church of England hath with great equity decreed our Parliaments to be in some sort indebted to the Church Moreover that Gentlemanly way of writing used by our great Divines in a late Conjuncture against Popery and so suitable to the refinement of Wit and Reason in the Age and wherein without the Pedantry of unnecessary Words or Quotations or raising a dust out of the Learned Rubbish of the Schoolmen they generally with a manly Style and clear reason and skill at that weapon got the Sword out of their Enemies hand by the Argumentum ad hominem and shewed us that Popery and Implicit Faith were not Calculated for the Meridian of this Age hath I think made all ingenious Men Conformists in this opinion that if their Genius had been cramp'd with the res angust a domi their thoughts had not in their Books appeared so great and therefore I hope that all the well writ works of their hands and seasonable discourses against Popery at that time when it was ready to curse us and to rise up against our Religion will make all thinking Protestants to say Amen to that Prayer of Moses Bless O Lord Levi 's substance accept the work of his hands smite through the Loyns of them that hate him that they rise not again It will I doubt not appear to rational and thinking men that our little interloping Churches or Congregations that set up with their precarious Power and small stock of Learning or Revenue will no more be able to break the great Compacted Body of the Papal Church that hath the Monopoly of the Religion-Trade in so many parts of the World then a few interloping Merchant-men to break the Opulent Dutch East-India Company who have engross'd so much of the Spices of the World that sometimes they cause several Ships loadings of them to be at once consumed as knowing what quantity and no more will be useful to the World. And somewhat like that thing too the Polity of the Anglican Church in Harry the 8 th's time perform'd while it drove a Religion-Trade with Rome and yet consumed a great quantity of its superfluous Merchandize and the same thing hath been done by our National Church as to remaining parts of the Romish Superstition in succeeding times and indeed Superstition which is a kind of Nimiety of Religion is so incident to Humane Nature and is so destructive to the Polity of Churches and the substantial Commerce of Nations that it is worthy the Power and Care of Nations to consume it And considering that the Church of Rome hath still valued it self for being terribilis sicut castrorum acies ordinata it is a vain thing to contend with such a Regular Church Militant without our having of general Officers and as exact a Conduct or to think to have such Officers without Honourable Maintenance from the Publick For none doth go a Warfare at any time at his own charge When I think how in the Primitive times while a Cloud of Persecution was always over the head of the Christians that yet they strain'd themselves so much in Contributions for the Pastorage of their Souls that all the Pastors then were so far from losing by Religion that some were tempted to that Office for filthy Lucre as we may see out of Peter Ep. 1. Ch 5. Vers. 2. tho yet too so little comparatively was to be gain'd by all thereby that others probably undertook that Office by constraint as the same place intimates and that therein the Apostolick Prudence was conspicuous in ordering it upon the whole matter that the generality of Pastors then should not get or lose by Religion I may reasonably conclude that we who live in the flourishing and prosperous State of Christianity ought to provide that the meanest Pastor of Souls in England may live competently and decently by that
an erroneous Proposition which he doth not know to be so and believes him he doth not sin but is bound to err because he is bound to believe him meretur volendo credere errorem And he who believes he shall merit by going out of his way I am sure deserves that I should not much trouble my self to go out of mine to put him in the right But this is not the temper of this Worthy Gentleman whom I have reason to esteem a lover of truth quatenus truth and for its own sake and one who doth not account falshood charming or rebelling against the Light meritorious and indeed I have observ'd it in some others as well as him that after they have deserted the Church of England their inquisitiveness in Religion has not been at its Journeys end but has still continued in its way and that so far that Holy Church and they have oft been apt secretly to be weary of one another The Rational Religion they were first educated in has had the allurements of the Natale solum that they could never wholy overpower I have known three Earls one whereof was of the Kingdom of Ireland and the other two of England and all of them were men of great Wit and Parts and such who being brought up in the Religion of the Church of England went off from it to the Church of Rome but receded not from the candour of their tempers nor from the Society of their old Friends nor from the frank readiness to discourse with them about the controverted Points of both Churches and neither of them perverted their Wives or Children to Popery and the eldest Sons of them all are eminent Sons of the Church of England and do make considerable figures in the State. One of those three Earls is yet living and in him lives the great example of an English Nobleman adorning Nobility by his intellectual and Moral Endowments and by a Majesty mixt with incomparable sweetness in his familiar Converse and by a consummate Loyalty to his Prince that Envy it self never spotted and by such an exact Observation of his Faith given to any of Mankind that he would no more violate it with an Heretick then with a Patriarch or Apostle and by having been never suspected from using any Iesuite-Confessors to learn how to evade from solid Honour by subtle distinctions or once to allow the least Chicanery in God's Great Court of Conscience And if we cast our thoughts on France we shall there find that the great and the brave Turen after he had so unfortunately thrown himself at the Popes Feet had there his Arms as ready to embrace his Protestant Friends as ever I have heard of two Crown'd Heads of the Church of Rome who were very unkind to their Protestant Subjects after stipulations to the contrary the one was Ferdinand of Bohemia who when Cardinal Cleselius Bishop of Vienna told him that if he made War on the Bohemians the destruction of that flourishing Kingdom would certainly follow answered We would rather have the Kingdom destroyed then damned the other was Queen Mary of England who as the Acts and Monuments tells us being intent on the Restoring the Abby-Lands and discoursing with Four of her Privy-Counsellors about the same said perhaps you may object to me again that the State of my Kingdom the Dignity thereof and my Crown Imperial cannot be honourably maintain'd without the Possessions aforesaid yet notwithstanding I set more by the Salvation of my Soul then by Ten Kingdoms and the Reign of each of these was besmear'd with Blood but had they been born and bred Lambs I believe that no Transmutation of the Blood of Tygres into them would have made them such The Famous Iulian of whom 't was said Nunc Apostolicus Nunc Vilis Apostata factus had learned too much Christianity when he was a Reader to be a raging Blood-sucker and if when Emperor he had had e're a Name-sake that collected the Madrigals or Hymns against him he would perhaps have done him no harm The low birth and the Poverty and Mercenary disposition of Iudas tempted him to betray his Master with a kiss but he was so far wrought on by the good Company he had kept that he afterwards kill'd none else but himself and they are such perverted Protestants generally that are of the same rate with Iudas for Birth and Poverty and paultry Avarice that I should desire to stand out of the way from and to avoid the Vermine of such Renegadoes and they are only such Popish Princes as Ferdinand and Mary that in their Education were never imbued with better Principles then the bloody ones of Popery that I should fear as Monsters and account any Kingdom but a Den if I lived therein with them and when ever I happen to dispute about that Notion in vogue that Vertue it self in a Popish Successor will be a Nusance and make him a bloody Bigot I answer with a distinction and grant it is likely to be so in one who passed from the Breast in Infancy to suck in Sanguinary Principles but where in any Successor the Tenets of Popery when he is on the Borders of old Age are Successors to Principles of a Noble and Rational Religion that he has grown up into youth and manhood with I shall account my fears very wild and irrational if my hopes do not grow up with them as to my promising my self that he will at least answer Bocalines Character of the best Reformer of the World namely one that leaves it as he finds it and do suppose the practicableness of what is Savage in Nature being reclaim'd in one Animal toward another it was educated with will be allowed from the frequent and trivial spectacle of the Lion and the Lamb that were bred up together and who without the help of Miracle and Prophecy were taught by Nature to lye down together and shall account the same persons injurious to the World who fishing in troubled waters of the State say the worse the better and of such a Prince educated in Protestancy and then perhaps turning Papist the better the worse and especially when the Laws have espous'd us to his Line for better for worse Our acute and profound Mr. Chillingworth in Mature years went over to the Church of Rome and in his course there made a short turn and the Natale solum of the Church of England charm'd him soon back again and he by the culture of his reason made the Soil a hundred fold amends for his temporary deserting it But Princes and Potentates are under higher temptations then his low Station placed him in not to be seen to retreat especially after their having once done it before and may suppose that other Princes will look on them as more slippery and unsafe to be dealt with if the same Principles once congeal'd or hardened in them and afterward dissolv'd should be congeal'd again just as the Earth is more slippery and unsafe
Papal World must be surfeited with it at last And indeed the experience Popish Polititians have had of their success by dividing us formerly as was said would tempt them to omit other courses and to persist still in that if it were not now generally seen through 'T is in viridi observantiâ how our Famous great Usurper Cromwel who founded his Dominion in pretended Grace or Religion and was afraid of Thunder from every Cloud of Enthusiasme he saw over his head and was awed likewise by the Serene and Rational Religion of the Church of England had no other Game to play in order to the dividing the several Religionary Parties but by in some manner tolerating all according to the Mode of Iulians Politics The Papists were the first who miscalled any of our English Princes by the name of Iulian and that they did in the Case of King Iames as appears in his Learned Apology for the Oath of Allegiance printed Anno 1609. where being much concerned for his being so termed and that too by no meaner a man then Bellarmine he doth with great strength there largely prove that that name was congruous as his words are in no point save one that is that Julian was an Emperor and I a King and indeed 't is a very impotent humour of Calumny in any Protestant to call any one an Apostate or especially the Apostate merely for the alteration of his Judgment in some controvertible points of Faith between Papists and Protestants and which are denominable by the name of Religion and 't is a great folly to cherish immoderate fears that any English Prince who possibly may happen in such Controvertible Points to change his perswasions in Religion will if a Papist attempt á la Iulian to plant Divisions among his Subjects by the Instrument of Religion for that their being kept undivided and all of a piece will be essential to the life of the Kingdom as the State of Christendom is likely to continue nor is it probable that any such Prince can ever think in the single course of his life to make this Nation all of a piece or united under the perswasion of Popery For if any one would suppose it possible that in the Reigns of three or four Successive Princes of that perswasion the nature of things might be so far forced as that Millions of men might by artifice be made to abandon a Rational Religion and one that is framed to support the Government for one that is not so such one Prince must be supposed to have acquired the gift of long life that Ante-diluvian Patriarchs had and to extend the Span of his life to that of three or four Princes It is a known Rule relating to Mathematics That there is no reconciling time and force and he who would have one man do as much as four must allow him to be as long a doing it as four one after another But the surviving Experts have seen too much of the effects of the shaking all Civil and Ecclesiastical Polity by a Protestant Usurper ever to wish for another in any Case and to have the ballance of Christendom again broken and the Kingdom be again divided to preserve his Families interest and to keep that entire which is notorious to have happen'd under the aforesaid Usurper both of Religion and the Kingdom and the name of Iulian is most properly applicable to him or any Protestant Usurper and who will be necessitated to follow him in his Track of Politics and the notion of which Ammianus Marcellinus lib. 22. set us right in where he shews that Iulian that he might weaken the Power of the Christian Religion which he feared knew no way so easie as to endeavour to do it by it self and therefore recall'd the Bishops banish'd by Constantius and gave them and the People leave to be Christians tho himself was a Heathen Nullas infestas hominibus bestias ut sunt sibi ferales plerique Christianorum expertus i. e. because he had never found Beasts so cruel to one another as he had most Christians and therefore as he travelled through Palaestine cryed out O Marcomanni O Quadi O Sarmatae tandem alios vobis inquietiores inveni Thus did the Usurper promote the Animosities among Religionary Parties and was enforced thereby to weaken the Kingdom to strengthen himself some indulgence he shewed to Congregations where Divines of the Church of England worship God in the way of its Church yet permitting none to have Benefices but such as were of the Presbyterian perswasion generally and among such and the Independants he distributed his Donatives of preferment in the Universities and he took care that no form of Church Discipline or particular Church might preponderate by his being a Member therein He made some Lay-men and some Divines differing in Judgment about Presbytery and Independency to be Tryers of Ministers fitness for Livings and Commissioned many ignorant Lay-men in the several Counties to be Judges of the sufficiency of Ministers for their continuing in Livings The press was open to all unlearned Wranglers about Religion Many of his Military Preferments he placed on Anabaptists and did suffer many of the Fifth-Monarthy Religionaries to disturb the Apocolypse and the World thereby gave freedom to Muggleton the Impostor to set up for a Prophet and one of the two Witnesses and was a particular Patron to Manasseth ben Israel and in treaty with him here to introduce the Iews and tolerated Biddels Congregated Church of Socinians further likewise so far giving an occasion to Mr. Marvels Writing a Book then of the Growth of Popery that Mr. Pryn in his Book called A true and perfect Narrative of what was done c. Printed in the Year 1659. saith in p. 57th That Sir Kenelm Digby was his particular Favourite and lodged by him at White-hall that Maurice Conry Provincial of the Franciscans in England and other Priests had his Protections under Hand and Seal and that he suspended Penal Laws and Executions against Popish Priests and Iesuites tho sometimes taken in their Pontificalibus at Mass and were soon after released and that he endeavoured to stop the Bill against Papists the very Morning he was to pass it by his White-hall Instruments who moved its suspension for a time as not suting with the then present Forraign Correspondencies against whom it was carried by 88 Votes that it should be sent up with the rest then passed and that he writ to Mazarine to excuse his passing that Bill as being carried on by a violent Presbyterian Party much against his Will and that yet it should not hurt them tho passed c. And I suppose an Author more profound in his Observations than Mr. Pryn doth in a Loyal Pamphlet Printed in the Year 1656. Called a Letter from a true and lawful Member of Parliament c and generally conceived to be writ by the late Lord Hollis there in p. 58. and the following ones charge Cromwel home for the
Happiness he tho differing from me in speculative points yet hath by his Practical Devotion proportioned his means to that end better than I have done Moreover because it is a dishonourable thing for any man to receive a Religion in gross and servilely to own all the Religionary Sentiments that the Major part of any Church seem to do I will not so much as in my secret thoughts charge such a Person with owning all the Religionary Tenets of the Church of Rome and much less with owning any one of the Tenets that is Irreligionary how justly soever chargeable either on the Papacy or any of its Adherents I who am a Son of the Church of England have considered how its Constitution hath been prop'd up in various ways and on different Hypotheses by several of the Fathers and great Writers in that Church before Arch-Bishop Laud's time and since and how some of them in some points receded from its Articles and that many of them did in several Doctrines of importance variously interpret its Articles My Conversation with several Divines of that Church who are equally Learned and Pious hath let me see that in many Theological speculative points they differ much from one another and yet retain perfect Charity for one another and their Notions as to which points they have in prudence not troubled the Populace with And yet even in our very Protestant Populace in this Conjuncture of Zeal against Popery I have observed so much Candour expressed to Protestant Writers who have asserted some speculative points that seemed to agree with the Doctrines of the Church ofâ— Rome that no one man hath either called them Papists or Protestants in Masquerade for so doing I have not heard of any who hath censured Mr. Baxter as a Papist or Popishly affected since Dr. Tully in his printed Letter to him p. 21. desiring him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see the very small odds between His Iustification and the Council of Trents addeth for to me neither of them turns the Scale upon the other There was likewise after the beginning of the Popular Out-cryes of the Danger of Popery a Learned Metrophysical Book of Dr. Glisson who was Professor of Physick in Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society Printed and Dedicated to the EARL of SHAFTSBVRY and in the 28th Chapter there viz. De substantiarum penetrabilitate mutatâ quantitate the Dr. saith That 't is better to admit Penetration than a Vacuum however we have been taught from our Child-hood to believe that there is no penetration of Bodies and Dimensions and doth Combat those old Notions of Philosophy with which Transubstantiation was opposed formerly and yet was never censured so much as Popishly affected for so writing nor have I observed any one to blame him for it or to have animadverted on his Book I have likewise observed that several Protestant Divines have not been in the least reproached or censured as maintainers of Purgatory when they have professed their Beliefs that the Souls of good Men after Death go to a good Hades and of bad Men to a bad one and are to stay in those common receptacles till the day of Judgment It is hence obvious that there are ingenious Protestants who do not take up their Religion in gross and that the fear of Popery or hatred of it is not generally so much founded on the Speculative Religionary Propositions maintained by Papists as partly on the Arbitrary Power claimed by the Pope to impose Creeds on men and by which Power he may if he pleaseth command them to believe that there are no Antipodes and excommunicate any who believe there are as one Pope long since did and partly on his claiming a Power to disturb the measures of their Loyalty to their Princes In such a Conjuncture therefore as this when 't is so much out of fashion to think any one the less a Christian or the less a Protestant for differing from others of the Church of England in such point as aforesaid it would be an aggravation of the immorality of our not acknowledging the honour due to any Person of the Roman-Catholick Communion because supposed to own Speculative Religionary Tenets of this Nature and which too have no influence no Mens Conversation with each other or on their Actions as they are Members of any Civil Society and as one saith would be still the same with all the Consequences of them tho there were no other Person besides one's self in the World. And therefore as I will rashly charge no Protestant with the servile resignation of his reason to any true Church nor look on him as one who doth More balantium antecedentem Ducem sequi so I will not without just ground and certain proof charge any Papist with the taking up his Religion in gross from the Papal Chair nor with the owning all the Religionary Tenets that many Romanists do and much less with any one of the Irreligionary Tenets imputable to any Order of the Church of Rome or to the Papacy To think any Papist the less a Christian for owning such Tenets which being held by some Protestants we think them not the less Christians for doth most notoriously come under the Sin of Acceptio personarum and is contrary to that Precept of St. Iames viz. My Brethren have not the faith of our Lord Iesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of Persons and by which accepting of some mens Persons the duty of honouring all men and valuing their real worth is manifestly outraged I will by no means therefore rashly charge any particular Papist with owning the Tenet that he is implicitly to obey the Commands of the Pope without weighing the Justice of them for I find the contrary Tenet own'd in print by the seven Divines of Venice as Ames mentions it in the Preface to his Puritanismus Anglicanus where he saith In Tractatu illo Iudiciosissimo à septem Theologis meaning those of Venice de interdicto Papae conscripto verbatim ponitur nervosè firmatur haec propositio viz. Christianus praecepto sibi facto etiam à Pontifice summo obedientiam praestare non debet nisi prius praeceptum examinaverit quantam materia subjecta requirit an sit conveniens legitimum obligatorium is qui siâ—e illo examine praecepti sibi injuncti caeco quodam impetu obedit peccat And do not many of the Church of Rome by their being picque'z d' honneur upon the being called Papists give some indication thereby of their being not obliged to pay an absolute blind Obedience to the Pope And tho Bellarmine and several of the Popes Parasites have called those Hereticks that believe not the Iure-Divinity of the Popes Monarchy over the World yet all the Gibelline Papists of old made it HERESY to say that the Emperor was not by Divine Right Lord of the World. Moreover tho some Papists have writ opprobriously of the Scripture and called
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
THE HAPPY Future State of England OR A DISCOURSE by way of LETTER to the late EARL of ANGLESEY Vindicating Him from the Reflections of an AFFIDAVIT Published by the HOUSE of COMMONS Ao 1680. by occasion whereof Observations are made concerning Infamous WITNESSES The said Discourse likewise contains various Political Remarks and CALCULATIONS referring to many Parts of Christendom with Observations of the Number of the People of ENGLAND and of its Growth in Populousness and Trade The Vanity of the late Fears and Iealousies being shewn the Author doth on Grounds of Nature Predict the Happy future State of the Realm At the End of the Discourse There is a Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation of the KING His Heirs and Successors wherein many of the Moral Offices of Absolute and Vnconditional Loyalty are Asserted Before the Discourse is A large PREFACE giving an Account of the whole WORK with an Index of the Principal Matters ALSO The Obligation resulting from the Oath of SUPREMACY to Assist and Defend the Preheminence or Prerogative OF THE Dispensative Power Belonging to the KING His Heirs and Successors In the Asserting of that Power various Historical Passages occurring in the Vsurpation after the Year 1641. are mentioned and an Account is given of the Progress of the Power of Dispensing as to Acts of Parliament about Religion since the Reformation and of diverse Judgments of Parliaments declaring their Approbation of the Exercise of such Power and particularly in what concerns Punishment by Disability or Incapacity LONDON Printed MDCLXXXVIII To the Right Honorable the Earl of Sunderland Lord President of His Majesty's most Honorable Privy-Council and Principal Secretary of State and Knight of the most Noble Order of the GARTER MY LORD FOR one who is sensible how little he knows of things past or present to Dedicate a Discourse of the future State of his Country to your Lordship who are by the Age allow'd to be as Critical a Iudge of Men and Things as any it affords may seem to have in it somewhat of Presumption But when your Lordship shall have had leisure to consider the plain Grounds of Nature on which my Prediction in the following Papers hath gone I will not so much hope that what I have attempted may appear to have been no Presuming as I will expect that your Censure will cast the Presumption on the other side namely on such who were Predictors with a continuando of the Unhappy State of their Country and especially on the account of the Religion of our most Gracious Prince And were I now to have my Iudgment tryed only by that of the Mobile who measure all things by the Events I account I should be out of the Gunshot of Censure since the course of Providence after my writing of the following Work having Conducted His Majesty to fill the Throne of his Ancestors with so many Royal Virtues it has been Conspicuous to them that the Glories of his Reign have transcended the highest flights of my mentioned Expectation And indeed as I remember to have long ago heard one of the Fathers cited for a Passage to this purpose namely that on a Supposal that God recounting to him the Perfections of the Creation should ask him what he could name wanting and that he could wish he would answer Unum Laudatorem Domine so it might till of late be said that in this new Creation or Restoration of England under His Majesty's Reign the only thing we had with anxiety to wish and desire from God next to the ennabling us to Praise his divine Goodness was one whose Talent of noble thoughts and words might be adequate to the celebrating the many Talents of our Prince and their successful Improvement both for the Honour and Security and Ease of his People But neither is such one Praiser now wanting for he who shall read the many late Loyal Addresses from all Parts of the Kingdom will find the People of England to be the Unus Laudator My Lord as I in the following Discourse almost wholly Printed long ago in the last Reign during the freedom of the Press adventured on Grounds of Nature to predict such a growth of Loyalty as would make all England become one sober Party of Mankind and that the more ingenious sort of Iesuits would by natural Instinct throw off those Principles condemned in this Pope's Decree and with Iustice then acknowledged a Sober Party in that order and have at large in p. 322. particularly shew'd my Abhorrence of charging the belief or practice of those Principles on all Persons in that Order So I have likewise in p. 238. given my Iudgment that all Seditious Principles own'd by any who call'd themselves Protestants must naturally decay and have at large in my Preface opposed my measures of futurity to those of a late Father of the Church of England concerning the two Plots that he thought the Papists and Dissenters would be ever carrying on and without his Lordships excepting the Loyal in those religionary Parties But having said this I must likewise say that these happy births of Fate having been but as it were the Births of a Day under the Powerful Influences of His Majesty's Government or as I may say a Nation 's being thus born in a Day are beyond what I did expect and I did little think that with the suddenness of the motion of Lightning when it melts the Sword and spares the Scabbard His Majesty's Declaration of Indulgence to Dissenters would at the same time melt so many hearts and all hostile Principles of the Doctrine of Resistance wrapp'd therein as it spared the Persons of the deluded Opiners I account that any indifferent Observer of the extraordinary sweetness of the way of painting their Loyalty in their Addresses and which resembleth the way of Corregio and is as excellent in its kind as that of the Sons of the Church of England after the way of the bolder touches of Titian in their former Addresses with the Style of LIVES AND FORTUNES was in its must be very hard-hearted if he likewise be not melted into a new kind of Compassion toward such his Brethren and into a noble sense of a great and good Prince having made his Subjects of all Religionary Perswasions Lachrymists for Joy and turned all their hearts to invoke Heaven in wishing for him according to that old Style a long Life a secure Kingdom a safe House valiant Armies a faithful Senate loyal Subjects the world at Peace c. The comparatively narrow Idea's of Charity and Beneficence that Subjects Minds are capable of toward one another do incline them to think chiefly of particular Toleration and such as we call Dispensation and that too with the nicety of Caution and upon Persons making the notification of their Principles and their particular disclaiming of all Disloyal ones previous to their Toleration and beyond this pitch the flights of my poor thoughts have not gone in the following Work. But His Majesty having
and Principles Religionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is Irreligionary and against Nature The words of exterminating and recalling are often used by Cicero as signifying the contrary and when Mr. Coleman's Letters shewed such an imperious design in him for the Revocation of Popery that had been driven away and banished or exterminated hence by so many Acts of Parliament and even for the Extermination of Heresie out of the North as occasioned such apprehensions in the Government of what was intended by other innocent and modest Papists that made the gentlest of Princes in a Speech in the Oxford Parliament say and if it be practicable the ridding our selves quite of all of that Party that have any considerable Authority c. none need wonder at the past warmth of Subjects expressed against the Recalling of the Exterminated Papal Power nor yet at the warmth of their Zeal against the Principles of the Iesuites propagating an Internal Power here when they had been exterminated from Rome it self and when the Lord Chancellors Speech to both Houses had mentioned the Proceedings against Protestants in Foreign Parts to look as if they were intended to make way for a general Extirpation They are poor Judges of things who think that Doctrines of Religion cannot be said to be exterminated out of Kingdoms and their Laws without the Banishment of the Persons professing them Who accounts not Protestancy sufficiently exterminated from being the State-Religion in Italy and yet Sandies his Europae speculum tells us That there were 40000 professed Protestants there Is not Iudaism sufficiently Exterminated from being the Religion at Rome tho thousands of professed Iews are there tolerated 'T is the publick approbation of Tenets or Doctrines and not any forbearance or indulgence to persons who prosess them that gives Doctrines a place within the Religion of a State for to make any State approve of a Doctrine contrary to what it hath Established is a Contradiction But the truth is the famous Nation of the Iews formerly Heavens peculiar People on Earth having not been more generally guilty of Idolatry during their prosperity than of Superstition during their Captivity and Oppression and Extermination from their Country hath taught the World this great truth that the readiest way to propagate Superstition and Error is by the Exterminium and Banishment of Persons Whatever Church any men call their Mother if the Magistrate finds them to own the Interest of their Country as their Mother and to honour their true Political Father they cannot wish their days more long in the Land than I shall do I remember under the Vsurpation there passed an Act of Parliament as 't was called for the banishment of that famous Boute-feu Iohn Lilburn and under the Penalty of the Vltimum supplicium and he shortly after returning to England and being tried in London where he was universally known and the only thing issuable before the Iurors being whether he was the same John Lilburn those good men and true thought him so much transubstantiated as to bring him in not guilty and when ever I find any Papist not only willing to change the Name Papist for Catholick but the thing Papistry for the Principles of the Church of Rome under its first good Bishops and before Popes beyond a Patriarchal Power aspired to be Universal Bishops and Universal Kings and that even a Iesuite instead of the Rule of Iesuita est omnis homo hath alter'd his Morals and Principles pursuant to the Pope's said Decree so far as truly to say Ego non sum ego I shall not intermeddle in awakening Penal Laws to touch either his life or liberty Nor can any Presbyterians with justice reflect on the Zeal of any for the Continuance of the Laws for the Extermination of Presbytery when they shall reflect on the Royal Family having been by their means as is set forth in this Discourse exterminated out of the Realm into Foreign Popish Countries and of which they might easily have seen the ill effects if their understandings had not been very scandalously dull But there is another happy Extermination that I have in this Discourse from Natural Causes predicted to my Country and that is of the fears and jealousies that have been so prevalent during our late fermentation concerning which the Reader will shortly find himself referred to in many Pages in this Discourse and to have directed him to all of that Nature would have made the Index a Book I have in this Discourse designing to eradicate the fears of Popery out of the Minds of timid Protestants by the most rational perswasions I could shewed somewhat of Complaisance in sometimes humouring their Suppositions of things never likely to come to pass I have accorded with them in the possibility of the Event of Arch-Bishop Vsher's Famous Prophecy tho I account the same as remote from likelihood as any one could with it and do believe that if that Great and Learned Man could have foreseen the mischief that Prophecy hath occasioned by making so many of the Kings good Subjects disquieted thereby and which by at once Chilling their Hearts and heating their Heads hath rendered them less qualified for a chearful and steady discharge of their respective Duties he would have consulted privately with many other Learned and Pious Divines about the intrinsick weight of the matter revealed to him before he had exposed it to the World for that in the days when God spake by the Prophets yet even then the Spirits of the Prophets were always subject to the Prophets and there is no Fire in the World so bad a Master as the Fire of Prophecy It is observable that there hath scarce since this Prophecy been a Conjuncture of time wherein men uneasie to themselves would make the Government so but this Prophecy hath been reprinted in it and cryed about and few Enthusiasts but are as perfect in it as a Sea-man in his Compass The substance of it was to foretel Persecution that should happen in England from the Papists in the way of a sudden Massacre and that the Pope should be the Contriver of it and that if the King were restored it might be a little longer deferred A person less learned than that Great Prelate could easily give an Account of the past Out-rages of Massacres that have been perpetrated by Papists and of the tendency of the Iesuites Principles to the very legitimating of Future ones but the most Pious and Learned Man in the World ought with the greatest Caution imaginable to pretend to Divine Revelation of Future Contingencies in a matter both so unlikely and so odious as this and which might probably occasion so much Odium to so many innocent Papists and so much needless trouble to so many timid Protestants That Pious and Great Prelate did not I believe foresee that at the time when his Prophecy should dart its most fearful influence St. Peter's Chair would be filled
same thing almost the same words used in a Prophecy of the times of the Gospel Zech. 13. 3. He saith indeed that by those words in Deut. the meaning is not that his Father or Mother should presently run a Knife into him but that they should be the means to bring him to condign punishment even the taking away his life Calvin likewise in giving his sense of that place of Zechary foresaw the Odium of having any killed without going to the Iudge and there saith Multò hoc durius est propriis manibus filium interficere quam si ad Iudicem deferrent But here Mr. Burroughs and Calvin have Categorically enough asserted what the Iudges duty is in the Case and I have said what Calvin effected by going to the Iudge about Servetus Gundissalvus doth not determine the lawfulness of burning an Heretical City without going to the Iudge and the lawfulness of Protestant Princes judging the Persons or Cities of Idolaters to be destroyed by the pretended Obligation of the Mosaic Law is chargeable on the Anti Papists I have mentioned and I believe there are few of our Presbyterian or Independent Enthusiasts but who think it as lawful to burn Rome as to roast an Egg. But the Church of England abhorreth this flammeum sulphureum evangelium and Dr. Hicks in the Preface to his Iovian taking notice of the Reasons which the Papists urge for putting Heretick and the scotising Presbyterians for putting Popish Princes to death saith thereupon I desire Mr. J. to tell me Whether he thinks in his Conscience the Bishops of the Church of England could argue so falsly upon the Principles of the Iewish Theocracy to the like proceedings in Christian States And saith if this way of arguing be true then the Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth was bound to burn many Popish Towns in her Kingdom and smite the Inhabitants with the Sword c. I have therefore thought it Essential to the advancement and preservation of Loyalty to endeavour to have the Papal and Presbyterian Error as to the Iewish Laws exterminated And the setling of this point is the more important to the Measures of Loyalty because the same Chapter in Deuteronomy viz. the 13 th that hath been the Popes Palladium for his power of firing Heretical Cities hath likewise been made use of by our deluded Excluders as theirs to recur to in a practice so scandalous to Loyalty and to the Protestant Religion and which hath too much appeared in the many Factious Pamphlets for the Exclusion and as I hinted that that Chapter of Deuteronomy was impiously applied in a former Conjuncture for putting the Queen of Scots to death so the pretended lawfulness of the Exclusion by arguing from the greater to the less was by the deluded generally inferred from that Chapter and the place I just now referred too in the Preface of Iovian mentions Mr. I's arguing from Deut. 13. 6. If thy Brother the Son of thy Mother c. in citing of which saith the Dr. it is evident on whom our Author did reflect The very exposing the absurdity of the Papal power of destroying Heretical Persons and Cities on the account of the Mosaic Law will I believe as by Consent of the sober of all Parties much help to exterminate the aforesaid Error which hath cost the Papacy so dear and naturally tempted so many Calvinists to own the same Error partly by way of retaliation and not altogether through defect of Judgment and I doubt not but if the Papacy were now to begin to claim the allowance of exercising the Jurisdiction over all Christians in the World as the High Priest did over all proselyted to the Iewish Religion and as appears by not only the Inhabitants of Palestine but others of the most remote Countries and particularly by the Aethiopian in the Acts of the Apostles owning subjection to the Iewish Priesthood it would stop at the Conquest of that Oecumenical Power and Tenths of the Levites thereby without demanding the Power to destroy Hereticks Towns and to exterminate the Persons of Hereticks by Crusado's as other dependencies on it But the Papacy hath long ago passed that bloody Rubicon of the Iudicial Law and cannot in Honour or Politicks go back nor will any Pope expressly renounce the Power of compelling Princes to exterminate their Heretical Subjects tho yet the Fashion of the exercise of this Power be thus as I have shewed tacitly passed away and as a thing necessarily impracticable in the more populous World. And no Iesuited Papist dares disclaim this Power in the Pope's behalf or impugn the same however it was a thing that the Pope could not but foreâ—ee that his quashing the Iesuites Power to kill men by retail would render the Iesuites averse from writing for his Power to kill Hereticks by whole-sale and by Crusado's or for the power to fire Heretical Cities if there were occasion to have any such power asserted in behalf of the Papacy as I believe there neither is nor ever will be But partly according to my Conjecture of the Result of the Fermentation about the Regale in France I suppose that tho the Papacy will no more be brought to disclaim its pretended Monarchy over other parts of the World in ordine ad spiritualia than the Dukes of Savoy will the Title of their being Kings of Cyprus yet it will be neither able or studious to prosecute its Claim of such power by disordering the World as formerly All the personal Vertue and Probity of any Popes will never incline them to pronounce against their Iurisdiction however they may thereby and by want of strength to execute it be kept from the old injurious ampliating it and on this slippery Precipice the Papacy still remains and from whence through the natural Jealousie of Crown'd Heads and States in the point of Power it will probably fall down to its tame principium unitatis and its Patriarchal Figure and in time to nothing But by many of the Anti-papal Sects and such as call themselves The only true Protestants still owning the Obligation of the Iewish forinsec Laws a Necessity is by God and Nature put on the Protestants of the Church of England to Combat such pretended Obligations by dint of Reason and thereby to support the Rights of their Princes without Condition and Reserve and which no Jesuited Papists or Protestants either can or will do Nor is it safe for other Papists to own Principles that touch the Pope's imaginary Monarchal Power For Power how fantastick soever would seem a serious thing and will endure no raillery and the honest Father Caron whom I have mentioned as citing 250 Popish Authors who denied the Pope's Power to depose Princes doth tell us that the Pope's Nuntio and 4 Popes condemned his Doctrine and the Inquisitors damned his Book and his Superiours his Soul I mean they very fairly excommunicated him for it There is another thing that may render the knowledge of this Papal Tenet worthy
Religion of the Church of England hath naturally pierced through the sides and roots of Protestant Recusancy ib. The numbers of the Non Conformists are daily decaying ib. There were in the Year 1593 judged to be in England 20000 Brownists ib. The Gross of the Numbers of Non-Conformists always consisting chiefly of Artisans and Retail-Traders in Corporations p. 281. They were very numerous there before the King's Restoration ib. A new way by which their Numbers and Potency may easily there be diminished ib. The Author judgeth the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants to be necessary p. 282. The Lord Keeper Puckerings Speech of the ill behaviour of the Puritans in 88 referred to ib. The prudence and justice of the King's Measures asserted as to the not repealing the Statutes against Protestant Recusants ib. The Peace of Munster observed to have removed the popular fears abroad in Case of the Successions of lawful Princes differing in Iudgment from the Religion Established p. 283. The Author of the Catholick Apology with a Reply cited for there not being one Priest one Mass one Conversion more in England in the year after the Declaration of Indulgence then in any year of trouble p. 284. The Author mentioneth the soft and gentle disposition of Bellarmine p. 284. The Authors reflecting on the Principles of the Iesuites with sharpness as the Pope and his Court of Inquisition have done ib. The Author disowneth all acerbity and rancour relating to the usage of any Papists ib. He observes that the putting Roman Catholick Priests here to death did propagate their Religion ib. The Author observes that an English Priest of the Church of Rome hath done him the honour to adopt as his own many passages of the Authors long since printed that were disswasive of the use of force in matters of Religion p. 284. Observed that if it be not lawful for every man to be guided by his private judgment in matters of Religion 't is hardly possible to acquit our separation from the Church of Rome of the guilt of Schism ib. The Author not inclined to be severe to any Papist for being in any Tenets that may properly be called Religion guided by his private judgment to receive the guidance of the Church of Rome ib. The Custom of Authors of large Discourses publishing together with them a REVIEW ib. He promiseth to the Earl of Anglesy a REVIEW of this Discoursâ— p. 285. The Author will in a short REVIEW explain some passages on occasion and add others ib. If he doubts of any thing or shall alter his opinion of any thing therein he will in the REVIEW acquaint his Lordship why he doth so ib. The Author thinks that as none but Cowards are cruel so none but Dunâ—es are positive ib. C2 R DIEV·ET·MON·DROIT HONI·SOIT·QVI·MAL·Y·PENSE Devon Jan. 27. 1680. My Lord AS to the Candour of the English Nation that was formerly so very extraordinary and the whiteness and sweetness of the temper of the People of England that did adde to the representing it a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and to the making it like the Galaxy to have one brightness from thousands of fixt Stars placed so high by Nature that they could not suffer the least Eclipse by the shaddow of the whole Earth we may well since the Publishing of the horrid Affidavit of the Infamous Person and so many valuing themselves as the best of Men upon their believing what was sworn by the worst lament the temporary decay of so great a part of the Glory of the English good Nature And they who knew your Lordship and consequently knew you to be a steadfast approver of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England have reason more particularly to be sensible of what concern'd you in that calumnious Affidavit because the wretch presumed therein to fasten on your Lordship the Sanbenito of a Court of Rome Papist and to represent you as a favourer of Popery or the Papal Usurpations that were in Harry the 8th's time hence exterminated and as an endeavorer to stifle the Evidence about the Plot notify'd by the Government for the recalling that kind of Popery Altho I know no Christian more tenderly inclined then your Lordship to shew all Christian Indulgence to the Persons of Popish and Protestant Recusants and have sometimes observed your Lordship while you were wishing that none of the New Articles of Faith in the Tridentine Creed were by any believed yet out of tenderness to the Persons of Devout and Loyal Papists with great reason to wish likewise that no Odium might come to such from the Name of POPERY for their Profession of such Tenets as are held by the Greek and other Churches who yearly Curse the Pope and are so Curs'd by him yet none need doubt but that your Lordship will as much as any man account it the opus diei by all due means to oppose all plotted Designs whatsoever to retrive the Papal Power of Usurping over the Crown or Conscience My Lord there are some among us who would usurp on and appropriate to themselves the Name and Thing of Protestancy and would be thought the only true Protestants and would be Monopolists of all the heat and light against Popery But as I shall make bold to come in for my share with them so I shall yet acquaint your Lordship that if I may in any part of this Letter to you seem with any excess of Passion to reflect on Popery I shall before I take leave of you afford you such a Patriotly and Gentlemanly reason of my warmth against it as I think hath not by others been given nor particularly by some Pedantick Anti-Papists who render their Conversation nauseous by their eternal talking of nothing but Popery and while they are neglectful of all the due means to prevent its growth These things being therefore premised I shall in despite of the Affidavit say that I will be the last man in England who shall believe that my Lord Privy Seal can be such a Court of Rome-Papist I think it was St. Augustine who meaning well in a pang of Zeal cry'd out on one occasion Credo quia impossibile est But I shall both as to the truth of any deposing or imposing Doctrine and of your Lordships believing it ground my disbelief on the impossibility of either When I hear men say they look upon it as an exerting of a miraculous Power Divine that the Globe of the Earth hangs in the Air without falling I interrupt not their thoughts of devotion but know that the Earth which is ballanced by its own weight cannot fall but it must fall into Heaven Coelum undique sursum And should any one tell me of your Lordships falling into any gross erroneous doctrinal opinions I who have long observed the constant tendency of your understanding toward the Center of truth cannot apprehend any danger of your falling from it So likewise when I hear men impute it
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
Ossat's Letters Part. 2d That the Republick of Venice would not suffer the Ambassador of Henry the 4 th to them thô a Catholick to be admitted to their Chappels with other Ambassadors because they did not know his Master to be reconciled to the See of Rome And Bodin de Rep. says That the number of the Inhabitants of Venice was taken Anno 1555 and was then in all but one hundred and eighty thousand and four hundred and forty Sir William Temple in the 5th Chapter of his Observations on the United Provinces makes one of the great Causes of the first Revolt in the Low-Countries to be the oppression of Mens Consciences or Persecution in their Liberties Estates and Lives on the pretence of Religion and it may be truly said that by their buying the truth at the Rate of such high Taxes as they now pay and not selling it either to France or Spain they have been no losers for many good Artists and wealthy Fugitives have brought their Persons and Families and Estates to them for shelter from the Storm of Papal Persecution and daily continue so to do insomuch that the Author of the Zelanders Choice in Sect. 3. Observes that of late years some of the Wise Men of the Reformed Religion in France being fearful of its being there utterly supplanted have required their Children by their last Wills and Testaments to leave France and settle themselves in the Vnited Provinces and in so doing they bestowed rich Legacies on Holland each head of any new comer being judged to add at a Medium 3 l. per year to the riches of the State. The late great late accession of Protestant strangers to Amsterdam hath caused many new houses to be there built and hath raised the Rents of the old ones a 5 th part whereas they are sunk a 4 th in Cheapside in London 'T is there that Men of every Nation under Heaven Parthians and Arabians Iews Papists Calvinists Lutherans and the Christians of the Subdivisions of all Sects do hear Men speak in their own Language and what they think most Musical to them the wonderful works of God. Nor are the Enemies to Monarchy to ascribe the flourshing State of Holland to its former throwing the Power of the State-holder and Captain General out of the Ballance of their Government Their breaking down the Banks of his Authority introduced the sudden inundation of the French Power among them that they had else been more secured against then the Assaults of the Ocean and not have so perfectly forgot the Art and Nature of Defensive War in their Frontiers and thô it may seem plausible that an Animal supposed to have most heads will have most brains and that Republicks are more apprehensive of their true interest then other Governments yet to the Reproach of such Politicks it appear'd that when the Regnant Faction in Holland were no more headed by a Captain General or State-holder and had thrown the poise of his Power out of the Scales they grew so vain as thô they had no Capital Ships yet to become aggressors in a Naval War against England that had Ships enow of that kind to affright the World and of which War the Result was the abolishing their great Navigation 〈◊〉 England from whence their forced frequenting of our Harbours still occasions their exporting more of our Commodities then we import of theirs But this by the way However so vast yet is their Navigation and the number of their Marriners that thô we need them not for our Carriers both Spain and France do and to which Kingdoms they have and probably will for some Ages to come have the honour and profit to be Carriers how much soever France is or seems to be fear'd by us and thus that Book of the Interest of Holland tells us viz. That the French have very few Ships and Marriners of their own so that almost all their Traffick for Holland some few English Ships of Trade excepted is driven by Dutch Ships and that when any Goods are transported from one French Haven to another they are laden on Board Dutch Vessels and that as to Spain that it hath so few Marriners and Ships that since the Peace between them and Holland they have used to hire Dutch Ships to sail to the Indies And therefore when I consider what that ingenious Author hath thus discoursed and that Sir W. P. in a Manuscript discourse in the Year 1671 2 hath Calculated the number of the Total of the Seamen who are Subjects of France to be 15000 and that a great and fatal diminution of the number of them since happen'd in the Year 1678 by so many of their then perishing under D' Estre in the West-Indies and that as the Author of Britannia languens saith The Dutch have at least 10 times as many Seamen as the English I shall venture to conclude that more then all the Millions of Mankind now living will be dissolved to Ashes before humanly speaking it will be possible for France to over-ballance either the Dutch or 〈◊〉 at Sea and whoever they are that pretend to fear the Contrary I think they do but pretend to fear it But at once to return to the consideration of the gain Holland hath from fresh Advenae and to take my leave of it all old Trades being there fully improved such new comers are forced to dig up a new Soile of Trade and Industry as I may call it for their subsistance and thus at the Charge of their Experiments the Country is enriched and many new Artists there bring with them their old experimented Arts and thus 't is known that an English-man from Yarmouth coming to be an Inhabitant among them taught them the rich Arcanum of the Fishing Trade and since they disused to pray to dead Saints in the way of Popery they have found living Saints praying to them to be admitted to live with them and have not only had the honour to entertain Saints but by being not forgetful to entertain Strangers they have unawares entertain'd Angels as the Scripture expression is and such who have proved tutelar ones to their Country and Religion No marvel therefore if the Learned Divine the Author of the Defence of the Zelanders Choice doth there so pathetically pronounce his opinion that if ever the Protestant Religion shall leave Holland that Country may be called Ichabod i. e. the Glory is departed from it And here I should be injurious to the Political Energy of the Reformation in England if I should not observe how vastly it has contributed to the encrease of the value of our Land and the number of the people and the extent of our Commerce and indeed of Commerce it self It was not long before the Reformation that the Kings and People of England maintained themselves chiefly by Sheperdry and the Kings and people of France by Tillage and their great improvement in Manufacture bears Date but from Harry the 4 ths time The great
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
subject that are equal to great Parishes c. Moreover the Grants from the Crown of Extraparochial Titles in several Counties may serve for an indication of great numbers of people that are not Inhabitant in Parishes and so likewise may the Multitudes of those people who live in Forrests and which places are generally accounted by the Law to be Extraparochial The Number of Parsonages and Vicarages in Edward the 1 sts valuation whereof there is a Manuscript Copy in the Bodleian Library was about 8900 and into that number the Chappels are not accounted but of the Chappels many since have grown up into Parsonages and this would likewise induce one to think the number of our Parishes at this time to be greater then the common Estimate especially when according to the Kings Books which respect the valuation in Harry the 8 ths time the number of them is considerably above 9000. But what may seem more strange is that some men of Thought and Learning have attempted even by Calculation to prove that the people of England have for a very long space of time decreased in their numbers and particularly the Author of a Book in Quarto called An account of the French Vsurpation on the Trade of England and the great damage the English yearly sustain by their Commerce Printed in the Year 1679 and Writ with excellence of Calculation in some parts thereof and yet that Author doth p. 16 say And I can easily believe that 1000 years since this Nation had a much greater stock of people then now it hath for the Rome-Scot or Peter-pence which was but one Penny a Chimney granted by Offa and Ina Saxon Kings to the Pope did amount to 50000 yearly and the Hearth-money which is two Shillings the Hearth and one Stack of Chimneys may have many Hearths doth not amount to 300,000l yearly whereas if the number of Chimneys charged with the Romescot had been two Shillings a Chimney it would have amounted to 1,200,000 l. yearly So that we may conclude there were then more Buildings and Chimneys and so by consequence more people But had that Author considered that the Romescot or denarius sancti Petri was only an annual Penny from every Family or Houshold and that it amounted to 300 Marks and a Noble yearly as Blunt says by that reckoning it would have appeared that there were not then in all England 50000 Families liable to that Duty whereas there are now above a Million of such Families so that now the people and Families of England are twenty times as many as they were then which agrees pretty well with my Lord Chief Iustice Hales's reckoning That great person in his Primitive Origination of Mankind yields that the people of England are at least 6 Millions and doth too in Page 205 say That he doth not know any thing rendred clearer to the view then the gradual encrease of Mankind by the curious and strict Observations on the Bills of Mortality and doth very elaborately make a comparison between the numbers of the people in Glocestershire and particularly some great Towns and Burroughs there as Thornbury and Tedbury as they were at the time of the making up of Domesday Book and as they now are and shews That there are very many more Vills and Hamlets now then there were then and few Villages or Towns or Parishes then which continue not to this day and that the number of Inhabitants now is above 20 times more through the general extent of the Country then at that time and afterward saith if we should institute a later Comparison viz. between the present time and the beginning of Queen Elizabeth which is not above 112 years since and compare the number of Trained Soldiers then and now the number of Subsidy men then and now they will easily give us an account of a very great encrease and multiplication of people within this Kingdom even to admiration It would be no difficult thing to fortifie the observation of the great gradual encrease of the people and particularly of those in the Parishes of Glocestershire by the shewing the encrease of their worth and riches in the several publick Valuations and their present real value from whence their growth in the numbers of their Inhabitants may be well inferr'd as for example in Edward the 1 sts Valuation Tedbury is valued Ecclesia de Tedbury 36. m. i. e. Marks and in Harry the 8ths Valuation is valued at 36l 13 s 2d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum Thornbury in Edward the 1 sts valuation is valued at 47 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 120 l. per Annum Berkley in Edward the 1 sts Valuation comes to 36 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum I have instanced in these places as referred to by Hales and shall here as to Gloster only further observe that there are more places in the Decanatus Glocestriae in Harry the 8 ths valuation then were in Edward the 1 sts as for instance Edward the 1 sts Valuation doth in the rural Deanry of Glocester comprize 6 Churches and a Chappel but Harry the 8 th doth in the Deanery contain above 20 Churches and a Chappel I shall here corroborate his Lordships remark of the encrease of Families in another Town in Glocestershire which he calls Dursilege and which is in Edward the 1 sts Valuation called Dursly and valued as a rectory there at 10 Marks per Annum and in Harry the 8 ths as a Rectory at 10 l. 14s 3d. and is now let for 72 l. yearly I have observ'd a suitable difference between the former valuations of other Livings in that County and their present real values His Lordship having before justly acknowledged that it was a laborious piece of work to make a Calculation of the number of Inhabitants at this day throughout England did however in a way very worthy of his great judgment adapt his Estimate to the extent of one entire County for had he gone less and restrained it to this or that Parish the gradual encrease of the People there might have fallen short by particular accidents and to this purpose we have it in Mr. Bentham's Christian Conflict p. 322. that 11 Mannors in Northamptonshire have been enclosed with depopulation and have vomited out their former desolate owners and their posterity Many ingenious persons have applyed their thoughts to several ways of Calculation whereby to discover the total of the number of the People in England and in the Investigation thereof some concern'd in the management of the Hearth-money have reckon'd that in England and Wales the number of Hearths of rich and poor is 2 Millions and 6 hundred thousand and that at a Medium there are between 4 and 5 persons to a Hearth and accounting but 4 persons to a Hearth they suppose that at that
rate the people of England and Wales will appear to be 10 Millions The slowness of believing great things which is incident to Humane Nature and my inclination to desire that any thing may be proved to me by ocular Demonstration where the Subject Matter will bear it do make me as to any of the greater forementioned Quotas of the People of England contended for by Calculators to reserve my Judgment till some such accurate Survey hath been made thereof as I have heard Sir W. P. that Mathematical Statâ—s-man wish for But this I will venture to affirm that by what may be observed out of the Returns on the late Pole-Bills and the Bishops Survey 't is very highly probable that the Total of the number of the people here will upon any actual view hereafter to be made by publick Authority appear very considerably greater then any cautious Calculators have made it Another account of the same great Quaesitum was sent me into the Country from a Gentleman of London who acquainted me that he received the same from a very knowing and ingenious person whom the late Lord Treasurer as great a Master of the Science of Numbers as perhaps ever any that Acted in that high Sphere of State employed to effect an Impartial Return of the number of the people in London and in Middlesex and every other County both in England and Wales and the Total resulting from them was as I cast up the same 8,272,062 But I judge that this account was not taken upon ocular View of the several Counties but by way of Estimate not absolutely perfect and by Calculation or comparing several former accounts together There is no doubt but the most satisfactory way that we can at present take for our Estimates and whereby we may Trace the Numbers of the people from somewhat that looks like matter of Record is as I hinted from the Returns on the Pole Bill and the Bishops Survey And as to the Poll-money of Anno 1666 2 hundred thirty seven thousand Pound was the gross Charge and if on the consideration of Counties whereof the Charge was not returned as Buckinghamshire Durham Northumberland Kent Oxon North Wales Brenoc Radnor Glamorgan Pembroke of which the proportions in numbers with the Counties return'd are not hard to be Calculated and of the omissions perhaps through partiality whereby great numbers of persons chargeable were not returned and withal on a supposal that there had been in the Act no qualifications and exceptions of many persons from being Charged and particularly of persons under the Age of Sixteen and of Paupers c. we may further venture to make the Total chargeable to be 600,000 l. and every one paying for his Head there would then apppear 20 times as many people i. e. 12 Millions I know that out of such a Sum as 600,000 l. supposed chargeable it will be obvious to consideration that what was paid by the Nobility and by Titlers and Officers must be substracted but when it shall be likewise considered that in that Poll-money that of the Peers paid into the Receipt came to but 5693 l. 6s 8d and that perhaps as much went beside the Nett of the Receipt under the notion of imaginary Paupers and by persons not return'd as came into it from the Officers and Titlers and that the persons excepted under the Age of 16 were about a Moiety of the people the supposition of 600,000 l. chargeable by way of Capitation will not seem so strange as at the first view The great difficulty of having the Total of the people chargeable by any Poll-Bill exactly and impartially return'd appears in the Case of a PollTax in Holland The Author of the Interest of Holland mentions that Anno 1622 The Tax of Poll-money was laid on all the Inhabitants of Holland and none excepted but Prisoners and Vagrants and those that were on the other side the Line and all strangers and that then there were found in South Holland no more then 481934 Souls though yet the Commissioners instructions were strict for the making true returns and the particular returns are thus Registred in the Chamber of Accounts viz. Dort with the Villages 40523. Harlem with the Villages 69648. Delft with the Villages 41744. Leyden and Rynland 94285. Amsterdam and the Villages 115022. Goud with the Villages 24662. Rotterdam with the Villages 28339. Gornichem with the Villages 7585. Schiedam with the Villages 10393. Schoonhoven with the Villages 10703. Briel with the Villages 20156. The Hague 17430. Heusden 1444. In all 481934. And supposing that West Friesland may yield the 4 th part of the Inhabitants of South Holland it would amount to 120483. In all 602417. The Author there delivers his opinion That many evaded the being return'd on that Poll and that the number return'd was very short and defective but adheres to the account of them being now as is before mentioned viz. 2 Millions 4 hundred thousand And this as it doth in some measure fortifie my foregoing notion of the prodigious growth of the people of Holland under the Reformation so it doth likewise afford an instance of the partiality used in the returns of the numbers chargeable in Poll-Money But that which doth chiefly induce me to believe the Total of our numbers may very much exceed the sentiments of Cautious Calculators in this point is the Result of the Bishops Survey which was made for the Province of Canterbury and wherein none under the age of Communicants or 16 were return'd and but very few Servants or Sons and Daughters or Lodgers or Inmates of the people of several perswasions of Religion and the thing endeavour'd was that the heads of Families or House-Keepers i. e. Man and Wife might be truly return'd and at that rate the Total at the foot of the account for the Province of Canterbury is 2,228,386 the which according to the forementioned currant Rule of Calculation to be necessarily about doubled on the account of the people under 16 makes the Total of the Souls in that Province to be 4 Millions 4 Hundred 56 thousand 7 hundred seventy two and the Province of York bearing a sixth part of the Taxes and having therefore the 6th part of the people that the Province of Canterbury hath which is 742,795 that being added to those of Canterbury makes 5 Millions a hundred ninety nine thousand five hundred sixty seven and since 't is apparent that not more persons were returned in that Survey then did really exist in Nature and live within the Province as return'd it will hereafter seem a very unnecessary thing and indeed absurd to question whether the people of England were not then at least 5,199,567 But since it appears by the inspection of that Survey that there was so vast a quantity of places that made no returns at all some of which presently occur'd to my view in the Cursory reading and taking some few Notes thereof and without my designing to make any Collection of all the
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
English are observ'd to be the least addicted either to fear or jealousie The Pencil of Nature hath in English minds on the dull and vile colour of fear the which is said to be aversion with the opinion of hurt from any object laid on that more noble and bright one which is said to be the hope of avoiding that hurt by resistance and is called Courage and this Age which is so inquisitive into the Causes of things will be naturally apt to abominate that fear that is causeless or without the apprehension of why or what and which from the Fables of Pan as Mr. Hobbs saith is called Panic-fear and methinks the very English genius doth now begin to rouze it self up and call on us to weigh our fear and if we find it just to prevent our being surprized by danger and if causeless to abandon it according to the words of the Orator against Catiline Si verus ne opprimar sin fallus ut tandem aliquando timere desinam and not to contribute to the encreasing the numbers of the Papists which has in all times most fatally happen'd and that too according to the course of Nature by the fearing them according to the Instance of the encrease of the number of the Iews mentioned in the Book of Esther where 't is said And many of the people of the Land became Jews for the fear of the Jews fâ—ll upon them On the account of our having most justly deserved the Visitation of Popery we may very reasonably apprehend the danger of it but the immoderate fear of the Plague is so far from being an Antidote against it that we use to say it comes with a fear And as we have justly deserved to be punished by the rage of Popery so have we likewise to be tormented with those Epidemic fears to which we are abandon'd a Judgment mention'd by the Royal Prophet where he says Put them in fear O Lord c. and likewise one Concomitant of our fear namely the shame we are exposed to for it from the Papists themselves An instance of it occurr'd to me in the Reading a Pamphlet call'd the seasonallâ— Address of the Church of England to both Houses of Parliament Printed in the Tear 1677 but writ by a Papist and in the way of Sarcasme where in p. 30. the Author saith And here I cannot omit to tell you that this partiality of our Rigor hath already given Protestants the consusion and Papists the comfort to imagine that our fears and jealousies of Popery which at present disturb and distract the Nation are but the self same sprights that haunted Caiphas his house lay under the Jews Council-Table and scared them with the Romans coming and overrunning their Countrey There have been men of so weak a judgment that they have dyed only with the fear of death and it is not without all ground that our Adversaries now hope that we shall at length turn Papists with the fear of Popery But that I am not heterodox in my Notion of Poperies not being now so formidable by the strength of its numbers as the timid Protestants make it is sufficiently manifest from the Conditional Vote of two Houses of Commons relating to the being revenged on the Papists Part of the entertainment I just now promised your Lordship I shall borrow from Dr. Glanvile and for it do refer you to his Zealous and Impartial Protestant p. 46 47. where he saith in the year 1676 Orders came from the Archbishop to the several Bishops and from them to the respective Ministers and Church-wardens in the Province of Canterbury to enquire carefully and to return an Account of the distinct Numbers of Conformists Nonconformists and Papists in their several Parishes viz. Of all such men and women that were of Age to Communicate c. The number of Papists there returned was but eleven thousand eight hundred and seventy Now tho in this Account Conformists and Nonconformists were not so distinctly could not so justly be reckon'd yet for the Papists they being so few in each Parish and so notoriously distinguished as generally they are the Ministers and Church-wardens could easily give account of them and there is no reason to suspect their partiality c. In St. Martins alone I have heard of twenty or thirty thousand but the Account was taken there and as exact a one as could be and I am assured by some that should know and had no reason to misinform me that the number return'd upon the most careful Scrutiny was about 600. I have found the like fallings short of the reputed Number in divers other noted places In one City talked of for Papists as if half the Inhabitants were such I am assured there are not twenty Men and Women In another large and popular one a Person of Quality living in it told me there were at least 600 but when the enquiry was made by the Ministers and Church-wardens in each Parish the Number was not found to be 60 and 't is very probable such a disproportion would be met between the reputed and real Numbers in all other places if Scrutiny were made In all the West and most Populous part of England they are very inconsiderable I hear frequently from Inhabitants of those places that in Bristol the second or third City of England there is but one and in the City of Glocester one or two at most in the other great Towns and Cities Westward scarce any and those that are in the Counties at large are extremely few thinly scatter'd here one and at the distance of many Miles it may be another c. We hear of the vast Numbers in the North and there are more no doubt in those parts then in the Western but I believe they are much fewer then we hear and no way able by their Numbers to make any kind of ballance for the exceeding disproportion in the West The truth is People are mightily given and generally so to multiply the Numbers of Papists and they do it in common talk at least ten-fold c. And after saith thereupon God forbid I should diminish the real force of our Enemies or endeavour to render us secure in dangers The Malignity and Principles of Papists their unwearied zeal and diligence to overthrow our Religion I very well know and thank God that the whole Kingdom is awakened to apprehend but I think we shall encourage them and dishearten our selves if we over magnifie their strength c. There came out in Print in London in the year 1680. a Sheet of Paper called a Catalogue of the Names of such Persons as are or are reputed to be of the Romish Religion not as yet Convicted being Inhabitants within the County of Middlesex Cities of London and Westminster and Weekly Bills of Mortality exactly as they are ordered to be inserted in the several Commissions appointed for the more speedy Convicting of such as shall be found of that Religion a Paper that was
not Published I think by a friend to the Papists for the Author there Names them and the respective Parishes they lived in and the total number of Men and Women there was 317 of which only one Man was there called Monsieur tho yet six others seem'd to me there to be of French Names and one there has a Dutch Name and only one person in there call'd an Italian so that notwithstanding the great Cry of Forraign Papists in and about London they did but little more then make a Number and the persons there reckoned for St. Martins in the Fields are but 22 and for Covent-Garden but 4 where yet the Bishops Survey makes 64 and for St. Margarets Westminster that Printed Paper makes but 4 of which the Number it seem'd in 41 proved so dreadful to Justice Howard St. Andrews Holborn has in that Paper but 6 which in the Bishops Survey has 13. St. Giles in the Fields has in that Paper but 23 which has in the Bishops Survey 126. The Savoy in that Paper has but 6 which in the Bishops Survey has just the same Number and St. Giles Cripplegate has there but 2 which in the Bishops Survey has 20. Of the care that was probably taken in those Parishes in London that made Returns in that Survey Covent-Garden-Parish and some others are Instances in one thing namely that there are near so many houses as Returns are made for or not many more Thus in Covent-Garden the Conformists return'd are 790 the Papists 64 the Nonconformists 6 and so Servants and Children and Lodgers being not return'd as Dr. Glanvile saith the persons of Men and their Wives return'd in all there are 860 which agrees pretty well with the number of houses there which are about 460. I suppose that Printed Paper by the Number of Inhabitants included only House-keepers as the Bishops Survey did and tho it is not to be doubted but that when that Survey was made there were in the respective Diocesses Deaneries and Parishes therein return'd at least the full Number of the Papists therein mention'd yet the Popish Plot about two years after occasioning the other Paper it may be supposed that what by many Popish Families removing out of the Realm and what by many of them coming to our Churches the Number of the Popish Recusants did there considerably decrease as it has from the beginning of the Reformation gradually done unless in some particular Intervals or Conjunctures and is likely so to do till the uncouthness and strangeness of their Principles and Scarcity of the persons that own them shall make them tolerable as Rarities I did before in this Letter thus far accord with Mr. Nye that Popery since the Reformation may have sometimes acquired a new vigour and that it hath not always since its first assaults against Popery gain'd ground of it proportionably but whatever the Fate of the Ejected Puritan Divines in Queen Elizabeth's days was and whether deserv'd or not and properly or not timed I enquire not tho yet in our days the plenty of Conformist Divines is such visibly that the supply of all our good Livings needs not crave Aid from Dissenters but do on all thoughts made persist in my opinion that Protestancy hath since its being first espous'd here as a Religion propagated it self by the great encrease of its followers except in some infectious Intervals of time as I may call them Thus tho the Obsarvator on the Bills of Mortality hath taught us as aforesaid that every Marriage with another produceth four Children yet in times of Pestilence we are told by him that the Christnings decrease and that a Disposition in the. Air toward the Plague doth also dispose Women to Abortion and considering this we may well infer when the Burials do much exceed the Births in any City reverà and not seemingly by the not Registring all the Births that tho the Bills of Mortality tell us that there dyed then none of the Plague and that there were then Parishes infected with the Plague none yet there is then a Pestilence there Reigning And thus is it a Pestilential time with a Church when more Apostatise from it then are born or as I may say regenerated into it or converted and therefore by such times we are not to estimate the encrease of the propagation of the Numbers of the Church of England There was a time in Queen Elizabeth's Reign that the Reformation was honour'd by all Englands populace being of a piece almost and worshiping God in the way prescribed with one heart and one mind and then as we are told by Sir Re. Cotton p. 42 and 43. Of his considerations for repressing the encrease of Papists till the 11th of her Reign a Recusants name was scarce known c. the name of a Papist smelt rank even in their own Nostrils and for pure shame to be accounted such they resorted duly to our Churches but when they saw their great Coriphaeus Sanders had slâ—ly pinn'd the Name of Puritans on the Sleeves of Protestants that encountred them with most courage and percâ—ived that the word was pleasing to some of our own side c. That saith he brought plenty of water to the Popes Mill and there will most Men grind where they see appearance to be well serv'd But the accidental encrease of their Numbers in any Conjuncture was carefully regarded by the State and to this purpose we are told it in Heywood Townsends Collections that Dr. Bennet acquainted the House of Commons that there were 1500 Râ—cusants in Yorkshire which he vouched upon his Credit were presented in the Ecclesiastical Court and before the Council at York Popery it seems then gain'd ground in the poor North having lest it in the warm South and to this day in the Northern parts of England where the Livings generally are poor the light of the Gospel hath not quite dissipated the Mists of Popery in somuch that if any one shall tell me that the Province of York which bears but a 6 th part of the Taxes and hath not in it much above a 6 th part of the people that the Province of Canterbury hath yet contains at least the half of the number of Papists that the Province of Canterbury doth I shall not contradict his Estimate It is the Observation of Dr. Fuller in his Church History of the part of England Trent North that 't is scarce a third of England in ground but almost the half thereof for the growth of Recusants therein And thus as the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath observed that Northern as well as Southern Countries are infected with great Plagues altho in the Southern Countries they are more vehement and do begin and end more suddenly it may be said that the infection of Popery doth yet continue in our Northern parts But that the Papists valued themselves on their numbers throughout England toward the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign appears out of that Pestilential Book
makes the remaining part of the Adherents to their former Religion to be really the more strong powerful and united The Wine that was at first in colder weather preserved by the Lees in it yet in the hotter season improves best by being rack'd off the Lee and thus it is with the Adherents to a Religion when in the heat of Persecution they are defecated from the viler part of its Numbers But yet on the other hand the Mercenary Religionists and Religion-traders do grow impoverished with their very Gifts and the vigour of their minds and natural disposition to industry is thereby emasculated I shall here once for all say that by the word Religion-Trade I intend no prophane reflection on Religion as 't is in the Scripture sense the calling of a Christian but 't is they that prophane it who by prostituting that high Calling as St. Paul styles it to low and vile ends do indeed miscall it and occasion others to do so too And indeed we are out of the Sacred Writ advertised of the Religion-Trade and Religion-Traders St. Peter gives the Alarm of False Teachers that shall through Covetousness with feigned words make Merchandise of them And one Chapter in the Apocalypse as generally interpreted by Protestants makes his pretended Successor to deal in the Merchandise of Gold and Silver and Precious Stones and Pearls c. and Slaves and Souls of Men. And as in Rome at present and long since the only considerable Trade that is driven is that of Religion there being scarce any Secular Merchants there but Iews and those too chiefly dealing in Frippery so is the great Trade thence forced upon the World from the Apostles See relating to the Souls of Men. 'T is there the great Bank of Souls is kept and the security of Rome is expos'd for that Bank as that of the whole City of Amsterdam for its Bank the which doth not more enrich the Merchants that deal with it by saving to them the expence of their time and preventing their receiving of bad Money then the other Bank of Souls doth impoverish its Merchants by defrauding some of their good Money and others of their pretious Souls by it and by the lavish wasting of the time of others and making them who embanked their Talents of good Natural Parts and Wit there but in effect to wrap them up in a Napkin and both by believing some of the Papal Tenets and by being paid so much and no more for the same and not providing for their Families as they might have better done by substantial and even Mechanical Trades to be worse then Infidels 'T is but Natural to Suppose that a Man of two Trades will neither to any high Degree improve them or his Estate by them suitably to him who minds wholly one Trade And the adventitious gain of a Man in any Profession who is a Religion-Trader doth but entice him to the idleness whose effects render him unfortunate in both and therefore I account that the See of Rome unless it could pretend to infinity of Treasure as well as Infallibility of Judgment and whereby it might plentifully by Pensions tye all its Devoti only to the Religion Trade loseth its Oyl and Labour in the largesses it affords Men of other Trades The prying People of England next to their Algebraing out as I may say the Authors of Murder have that Curiosity too to discover the ways by which any of their Neighbourhood do subsist and when they knew them to have no Paternal Estates nor to have acquired any by Marriages or by Skill and Industry and Success in their particular Professions yet see them live with Equipage and Splendor they often with Justice resolve the Cause of their Living so into the Contributions they receive from the Religion-Trade But yet 't is a Familiar thing to observe that other Artists in the same Secular Calling with them are therein more diligent and more dextrous and more thriving and too more frugal as having that only to depend on for their Maintenance then such Journey-men of Rome as are aided in their Expences by Contributions from Holy Church by which the births of their Fortunes are thus in a manner over-laid Of trading Persons and Companies being undone by Donatives and being diverted from necessity compelling them to an excellence therein by their being provided with Golden Bridges to retreat from want and hard labour by we have a remarkable instance in Stâ—w's Survey of London where he inserts the famous Will of Mr. Iohn Kendrick Citizen and Draper of London who dy'd in the year 1624 wherein he for the advancement of the Woollen Manufacture in certain Country Corporations that were then and before Eminent for and by that Manufacture bequeath'd great Sums of Mony to them as for Example to Redding 7500 l. and 4000 l. to Newbery and moreover ordered 500 l. to be lent gratis to the Clothiers of Newbery and Redding but under the weight of that Charity of his their Trade was in the event really depressed and many Merchants of London occasionally broke by that means And sutably to the Operation of the Religionary Trade and the other Secular one impoverishing several of our Iesuited and other Lay-Papists the late times gave us the Experience of several Tradesmen who being of a slothful disposition thought it for their ease to get some little Salaries from the State or voluntary Contributions from some of the Sectarian Populace to eek out their Maintenance and that particularly under that great Idol Oliver Cromwel who so fatally ruin'd the Trade of England and resembling the Pope in being a Cape Merchant of Souls was not undeservedly in the time of his Reign greeted in print by the Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a Reverend Divine of the Church of England the which was applyed to Oliver in the Title of the Book and he it was that begger'd the Nation and then taught it to Cant and then did that Pharoah otherwise then in a Dream make the lean Cattle of Canting Words and Phrases devour the Fat of the Land and much of solid improvement even in Mechanical Arts and Sciences and then it was that various Clanns or Corporations of Canters only by being such Monopolis'd the Preferments of Church and State and few were admitted to prattique there but such who had the Plague and were as idlers pests to the Kingdom and who had Embanked their Souls in that great Religionary Bank of his setting up And yet then those adherents of his that sold the Wind of inspiration were in comparison of the substantial other Traders who soly depended on excelling in their particular Trade as poor almost as the Lap-landers who sell other Winds But that which is much more Momentous than the impoverishing of all these Particular Religion-Traders and even the diminution of Trade in general ensuing the profusion of profit by donations on the account of Religion is that Religion it self is hereby impoverished and its
we are told it in townsend's Collections very great masterly skill was shewn in Debates as to the proportioning the Taxes and particularly by those great Masters Sir Walter Raleigh Secretary Cecil Mr. Francis Bacon and when Cecil accurately Calculated in the house how much a Levy came to wherein the Respective Quota's laid on Land and Goods were mentioned by him and more skill was really shewn in Proportions and Estimates of the Publick Money to be raised then has by some Parliaments in this Age been endeavoured after or perhaps so much as pretended to The long Parliament of 1640. seem to me in their Taxes in London and the Associated Counties to have provided only that their concern in the Kingdom might vivere in diem but hath occasioned the disproportionate and immoderate weight of the Taxes in some places of those Counties to be perpetual And the prodigious Taxes laid on the Inhabitants of London during the War after 41 did not end with it insomuch that Lilly the Astrologer in his vile Book of Monarchy or no Monarchy in England Printed in the Year 1651. saith in p. 92. My proportion in the Ship-money was 22 s. and no more but now my Annual Payments to the Souldiery are very near or more than 20 l my Estate being no way greater than formerly In the Parliament in Anno Domini 1605. and Anno Reg. Iac. 3. there was passed an Act for the granting 3 entire Subsidies and six fifteenths and tenths granted by the Temporalty to his Majesty with the Reasons why granted and the great advantages his Majesty hath been to the Kingdom And in the Act it is inter alia said A first and principal Reason is that late and monstrous Attemps of that cursed Crew of desperate Papists to have destroyed your Excellent Majesty the Queen and your Royal Progeny together with the Reverend Prelates Nobility and Commons of this Land assembled in Parliament to the great Confusion and Subversion of this Kingdom The barbarous Malice in some unnatural Subjects we have thought fit to check and encounter with the certain demonstration of the universal and undoubted love of your Loyal and Faithful Subjects not only for the present to breed in your Majesty a more confident assurance of our uttermost Aids in proceeding with a Princely Resolution to repress them and to furnish your Majesty against Hostile Attempts both by Sea and Land but also for the future times to give their Patrons and Partakers to understand that your Majesty can never want in this Kingdom means of defence of your Rights Revenge of your Wrongs and support of your Estate They had immediately before said We do further think fit to add and express these reasons special and extraordinary which have moved us hereunto lest the same our doing may be brought into precedent to the prejudice of the State of our Country and our Posterity As hidebound as King Iames found Parliaments afterward for as I said he in his Speech in Parliament Anno 1620 mentioned That in all his Reign he had but 4 Subsidies and six Fifteenths yet their Belief of that Popish Gun-powder Plot fired the Zeal of their Supplyes and as I may say too made their Money burn in their Pockets and pass with speed into the Exchequer and with a Salvo to the Caution about not drawing that Act into a President c. Had I been in the Parliament that sate after the Discovery of the last Popish Plot I should have moved that the belief of that Plot might have shewn it self by works of supply to the King especially considering that the Protestant Interest was then abroad inter sacrum saxum and do hope that the belief thereof will so shew it self in any Parliament his Majesty shall call that we shall that way Expostulate with the quare fremuerunt Gentes abroad against the Protestant Religion And such a golden Age do I expect for the Crown from future Parliaments that I believe that nothing of Prerogative that safeguards the Kingdom will be ask'd as the price of any Supplyes and that as I thought it very absurd in a Country Fellow when he called for a quantity of an Opiate Medicine his Doctor had prescribed to ask angrily shall I have no more for my Money when as if he had had more it would have poysoned him it will generally appear as absurd on any Supplies to swallow up so much of the executive part of the Regal Power as would prove in effect destructive to the Body Politick We shall have so much occasion to come for shelter under the Branches of Regal Power that we shall not be tempted by any leisure to lay its roots bare And considering that even in Republicks both Ancient and Modern there hath been a Parenthesis of Dictatorian or Monarchic Power in times of War and that all the times that all the living now in Christendom are to be fencing with all the way in their March to the Grave may perhaps be times of War I may well account that the Sir Politics will every where appear ridiculous who shall trouble the World with Models of Republicks Agrarian Laws and Rotations and spending time in the contrivance of Ballotting Boxes and raise a dust in mens eyes with the Ballance of Land at home when we shall be forced still to look out sharp to keep the ballance of Power exact in the whole World abroad and shall think time better imployed in notions of the building great Capital Ships to defend our Interest in and by the Ocean then in furnishing such little wooden ware for a Fantastick Oceana and shall essay from an Oceana or Vtopia to introduce an Establishment of one Assembly only to propose and another only to Enact such things as the other shall propose a thing that an English House of Commons would naturally as much loath as to be tyed from eating any meat but what a House of Lords should chew for them and yet is this divided or double-bottom Supream Power of the two Assemblies by our Airy Dreamers made essential for the preventing the Divulsion of their Government I lately mentioned the proponentibus legatis to be the thred of Controversie that ran through the whole Council of Trent and he who reads all Father Pauls History of it will find that question to animate the whole and to be there tota in toto and as it were all in every part of it The chiefest of the Cardinals were the Popes Legates in that Council and they were by their Interest tied sufficiently to propound nothing but what should promote the Papal Power but in Book 6th 't is said That the Pope had advice from his Nuntio in Spain that the most Catholick King was much displeased with the Style of Proponentibus legatis allowed in the first Session and that the Pope excused it as introduced without his privity but that however he would not quit it nor have it permitted that every turbulent person there might propound what
to believe it will ever suffer such real madness and real dangers as formerly from Suppositions and Fictions not of Law but of Injury and when some injurious Demagogues did often acquire both Popular Air and bread by their but seeming to suppose what they seduced the people really to do and to be really thereby impoverished When I think how some men by false Alarmes of suppositions would for the lengthening their Interests lengthen the fears of any persons and among Mortal men make the dangers of Plots immortal I call to mind that 't is not very long ago that a Forraigner who was Physician to King Charles the First I mean Sir Theodore Mayerne occasioned an Universal Out-cry of the Disease of the Spleen here and was observed in many Cases where the Disease proceeded from the fowlness of the Stomach or other Causes yet to attribute it to that part of the Body which tho all Animals have yet most if not all may live without I mean the Spleen but however he got his Living thereby and so plentifully that it may be said that he as it were made the Spleen and the Spleen made him And thus doth a Spleen of some Popish Sham-Plots and the continuance of the fears and danger from a true one make some persons perhaps who made the former and the continuance of the fear of the latter and such State Empyricks would be as much impoverished by the utter abolishing of the same as some of our great Merchants who Trade in Companies and with Convoys would be if there were no Argeer but as the swelling of the Spleen proves the emaciating of the other parts of the Body so hath the swoln Spleen of the Popish-Plot particularly not more enriched some Merchants that Traded therein than it hath impoverished the Kingdom in general and I do believe that a Tax of a Million of Money raised in England in the way before mentioned would not have been universally so heavy a burthen as the Popish-Plot in its Effects and Consequences hath been But what by the bravery of the English Genius to which as was said the continuance of any sort of fear is unnatural and despair which generally grows from Sloth and Cowardize appearing so dull a thing humane Nature being apt easier to descend into it than to ascend by presumption and what by Peoples being Convinced of the smallness of the Papists numbers here comparatively and of the ridiculousness of the rumour'd greatness thereof in particular places as for example of there being 60,000 Papists in St. Martins Parish where there dying ordinarily about 2000 in a Year there cannot be judged to live 60000 Souls of Men Women and Children according to the Rule of 1 in 30 dying each year and what by the late great divulsion of the double bottom of the Pope and the Iesuites appearing by his Decree of March the 2 d before mentioned which makes all thinking People as much to expect its Shipwrack as do the throngs of the Plebs resorting to the shore in Tempests expect the Ruine of Navigating Vessels and to look on Papisme as saying in effect to Iesutisme nec tecum nec sine te and what by the Notion so much in Vogue and so likely to be more that 't is as improper to call some of the Tenets of Popery by the Name of Religion as 't would be professedly to mis-call any thing obvious as for example to call Musick the Art of Rhetoric or Grammar Logic or to call Astronomy or Dyalling by Surveying or Gawging and that 't is only that that is Religion indeed that is to be honoured according to that expression in the Scripture honour Widows that are Widows indeed and what by the urging Fate of Christendom now so loudly as with the voice of Thunder repeating it to us that this Nation must either now be quiet or that the World abroad can never be so and that the hand of this Realm must be steady if ever it will keep the Ballance of Christendom so and what by the Nations having outlived all the Malignant Symptomes of the Plague of its Fears I think on the whole matter we may without any thing of the Fire of Prophecy and only from the Light of Reason presage that the excessive fear of Popery as well as its danger will here be exterminated I doubt not but the former as well as later experiences of the Papists here concerning the Inconveniences of their Artifice of making or increasing Dissensions in the Kingdom the dividing of which by them as well as other Religion-Traders hath prejudiced it more than the so much talk'd of Division of the Fleet will in the present Conjuncture of Affairs incline the sober Party of them to joyn with the Body of the People of England in being sharp Abhorrers of the Principles of the Iesuites for they can hardly go any where now in the Land without seeing a Cain's Mark set on those who cause divisions or still drive the old Trade that the Bohemian Nobleman Andreas ab Habering field in his Detection of the Popish Practices mentions that Sir Toby Mathews Maxwel and Reade those Jesuited Political Interlopers did in the Reign of the Royal Martyr namely to mis-represent the Court and the Puritans to one another and to endeavour to perswade male-contented People that that Pious Prince designed their Slavery a thing so false that he was Reverâ their Martyr as he with great Justice said of himself on the Scaffold and which great name he might challenge even on the account of Natural Justice if there had been nothing relating to reveal'd Religion in the case to entitle him to it for St. Iohn the Baptist was a Martyr and yet died for no Article of the Christian Faith. It may be justly said that our Monarch fell a Martyr for the People by not violating the lex terrae that he was by his Oath bound to maintain and by his therefore not owning the Jurisdiction of the Vile Court over him and moreover the Law of Nature obliging him indispensably to do nothing that by his exemplary abdicating any Right Inherent in the Crown would have incapacitated him and his Successors from protecting their Liege-People in their Inheritance of the Laws and it being a thing certain that the Law of Nature is as much the Law of God as is the Law positive or his written Word and indeed as Gataker saith well in his Book of Lots The Law of Nature written in Mans heart is the very same so far forth as 't is yet undefaced with the Law of God revealed in the Word it may be with reason averr'd that any Member of Mankind whether Prince or Subject who is put to death by any Court of Justice or Armed Force or by the hands of Russians or Bravos on the account of his discharging his Obligations to the Law of Nature may enter his just Claim to the Name of Martyrdom I have therefore supposing that Godfrey lost his life by vile
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
employed to feed perhaps about 20 pair of the hurtful Carnivorous Beasts nay which is more that Heaven should permit such great slaughters of its little Flock to feed the very vitiated fancies of the worst of men as was before insinuated But who can without shame for depraved Mankind and a heart inwardly bleeding think of the result of the Popes Gift of America to the King of Spain where so many Millions of the poor Natives having had no promulgation of the Law of Christianity and were accountable to God only for the violation of the Law of Nature were so unnaturally murthered by the Spaniards that it would seem incredible that God having made of one blood all Nations as 't is said in the Scripture and there being a natural Cognation between all Humane kind as the expression is in the Digests they should depopulate that part of the World of a greater number of Souls than is now living in the flourishing Kingdom of France if that Famous Spanish Bishop Bartholomaeus de las Casas hath made a true Estimate of the Spanish Cruelty in the West-Indies namely that in about 45 years the Spaniards by several monstrous Cruelties put to death 20 Millions of Indians At this rate of murderous Mankinds thus outraging one another the World would seem to be likely to end before it was as I may say to purpose begun I mean the purpose of God Almighty But the thought of the shame of being outwitted by our Neighbour Nations and the fear of being outdone by them in strength populousness and riches and our certain knowledge as was partly before hinted that toward the latter end of the World by the growing populousness of Mankind we must naturally and without any eye on prediction in Scripture more and more hear of Wars and rumours of Wars and the shame of our encouraging a few Traders in Contraband Religions to hope they can ever destroy the Peace and Trade of the Kingdom again must supposing Heretics to be men naturally make the former Mode of killing them appear not more barbarous then ridiculous Sir W. P. having in his excellent Manuscript called Verbum sapienti made excellent Computations of the wealth of the Kingdom and of the value of the People and of the several expences of the Kingdom and of its Revenues and in his last Chapter there considered how to employ the People and with what great industry doth like a Noble Philosopher conclude it with these two Queries and their Answers viz. But when should we rest from this great industry I answer when we have certainly more Money than any of our Neighbour States tho never so little both in Arithmetical and Geometrical Proportion i. e. when we have more years Provision aforehand and more present Effects What then should we busie our selves about I answer in ratiocinations upon the Works and Will of God to be supported not only by the indolency but also by the pleasure of the body and not only by the tranquility but serenity of the mind and this exercise is the natural end of man in this World and that which best disposeth him for his Spiritual Happiness in that other which is to come The motions of the mind being the quickest of all others afford most variety wherein is the very form and being of pleasure and by how much the more we have of this pleasure by so much the more we are capable of it ad infinitum And thanks be to Heaven we have no Isthmus in Nature to dig through which yet by our many hands might be done 'T is but the removal of the broken Fence and bowing Wall of a Religion-Trade which we can well look over and easily see through as now broken and bowing and which is the more loath'd for having so long and so much debarred us from real Trade and real Knowledge and too from real Religion and this flowry Coast will be as free to the feet of us Northern Heretics so called as 't is now to our Eyes and we through the effects of our populousness and being necessitated to industry be secured from any fear of sharing in a Prophetick Calculation that might be called The Burthen of the North made by a late Author of a Discourse of Trade That the French without the use of their Iron will command all the Silver of the North and sweep it away thence by the over-balance of Trade But after all the Souths raillery on the North they will find that the Northern half of the World hath more Earth more Men more Ships and Sea-men more Stars more day and more light of the Gospel and I may add more good nature and frankness more bodily strength and fewer Plagues and Earth-quakes then the Southern And where most people are 't is no Heresy nor Enthusiastic Prophecy to say that there will in time be most Trade which appeared by England's not being afraid to throw the Die of War against both France and Spain in the beginning of the Reign of the Royal Martyr As the over-balance of Trade is insensibly lost in any Country it is likewise so regained and in time will appear regain'd and like health in the body of a man of a strong Vitals after his being seized by and recovered from a Chronical Disease and of the time of the beginning and ending of which by unforeseen Accidents no shadow of a Dial or sound of a Clock could give the indication I shall assign an instance of this in our own Kingdom The Author of Britannia languens calculates 2,50000 l. per Annum to have been formerly at a Medium for 76 years brought into England by the balance of its whole Trade in the World. Committees of Parliament have worthily laboured in several Sessions to model and draw Bills for the making us wear our own Woollen Manufactures and many who have writ Books and Proposals about Trade have very honestly endeavoured to perswade us so to do But as the saying is accidit in puncto c. an Accident too low for our States-mens consideration hath for several years caused England to gain more then it did by the aforesaid Balance of Trade viz. the said 2,50000 l. at a Medium for 76 years and this Accident is the general fashion of Womens wearing Crape And because I have conversed with none who has observed the effect of this Accident and which tho seeming small is very momentous and appears as many things in Trade do like great Weights hanging sometimes on small Wires I shall divert your Lordship by Calculating en passant what England gains thereby in such a way as the Nature of the thing will bear and may passable serve to have it done in A pound of Wooll makes 15 yards of Crape Each Female one with another may be supposed to wear about 10 yards of Crape in her Apparel There are in London probably about 100,000 Females that wear Crape It may be supposed that in all England and Wales there being
most considerable The most sagacious sort of false Prophets whose chief business it was to be true to themselves as the falsest Dice of Gamesters are most true to the users did often choose to alarm the People with disastrous Events and thus the Witch of Endor chose to make the Shamm-Samuel entertain Saul with the prediction of his and his Sons death the next day But 't is time for us to follow that great admonition of Beware of false Prophets when we hear so many foretelling us as by inspiration of nothing but lamentation and weeping and great mourning in England for the continuance of the decay of Trade and unavoidable ruine of the Protestant Religion and when many such deluders and counterfeit Lachrymists cannot I fancy about our weeping on this account take their measures together without smiling according to that Say of Tully Potest augur augurem videre non ridere It is a very great saying of Tully's in his 2d Book de Divinatione Nam ut vere loquamur superstitio fusa per orbem oppressit omnium fere animos atque hominum occupavit imbecillitatem And as wise as Socrates was yet in Xenophon he disputes that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Oracles were necessary to the preservation of Common-wealths and Plutarch doth alledge experience in Confirmation thereof and the murmuring Iews thought themselves ill used by Providence when the age wanted a Prophet among them tho yet the Prophets were so frequent in denunciations of wo to them and like Seamen they liked weather that was somewhat like a storm rather than to lie in the World becalm'd 'T is said in Psalm 74. There is no more any Prophet we see not our signs And as much as Superstition had in Tully's words dasterded almost all mens spirits yet the Cheat of the Augury was so contrived and diversified as sometimes on occasion to heighten and enlarge them and in effect to enlarge the Empire it self Augusto augurio postquam inclyta condita Roma est But many of our Augurs endeavour only to enlarge our fears and jealousies and to intimidate our spirits and to render the Genius of the Nation less august and only to enlarge their own fortunes But the ill ominous Birds are flying away and the many Loyal Addresses with which the Land re-echoes and the avowed readiness of so many good men to serve the best of Princes with their Lives as well as Fortunes upon occasion import the best of Auguries to England and such an one as Homer mentions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Vnum augurium est praestantissimum pugnare pro patriâ— and to which Verse of Homer Tully probably intended a reference when in his de senectute he said Optimis auguriis ea geri quae pro Reip. Salute gerentur Your Lordship hath formerly among the great transactions of your life shewn your self a noble Adventurer for the honour and danger that this kind of Augury can import and particularly by your carrying at once your Law in your head and your life in your hand in the sight of a Party that had been so successful with their Swords and even to wind-ward of all others by inspiration and when the Conduct of your Politicks so highly advanced your Prince's Restoration and so much helped to effect the quashing of all the furious Prophecies of Monarchy ceasing in England Not without apologizing for my guilt of a solecism like his who discoursed of War before Hanibal by my having so largely addressed my Sentiments of the Future State of England to such an Oracle as your Lordship I must at last say Non ego sum Vates sed prisci conscius aevi c. and have only taken my measures from natural Causes and judging of things to come by what have been and by nature's most firm Constancy to it self and things not being ill administrable and at this rate can further very safely predict that according to Iuvenal Nunquam aliud natura aliud sapientia dicet And moreover I have in my predictions of the Future State of England interspersed many Remarks that may be directive and naturally tend to enrich the Land and advance its Trade and Industry and thus I do account that our Writers of Almanacks do some way compensate the loss of Peoples time employed in regarding how they turn the hand of the Lottery of Fate round the World and foretel various Revolutions and Events here at home and abroad by their likewise telling them in what Months to set Quick-sets and Fruit and Timber-Trees dig Gardens fell Timber uncover the Roots of Trees and to trim all sorts of Fruit-trees from Moss Canker and superfluous Branches when to transplant Trees and when to remove Grafts or young Trees and when to sow all manner of Garden Seeds and Herbs when to sow Wheat and to sow Hemp and Flax and by raising in them rational expectations of the Future State of the Earth meliorated by its Culture My Lord according to the common connexion of thoughts it here comes in my way to think that it is usual in the Scripture and in several Books to express the sense of placing Notions and Tenets and Doctrines in the World by the Terms of Seeds and Plants and the spreading of the same by the growth encrease and propagation of Plants and the ceasing of them by the Terms of decrease withering or extirpation Our Saviour's Parables of the Sower and some Seeds falling by the way side and being devoured by the Fowls and some falling upon stony places where they had not much Earth and forthwith springing up because they had no deepness of Earth and being scorched when the Sun was up and because they had not root withering away and his Indication of false Prophets by the similitude of Trees and knowing them by their Fruit and his reference to false Doctrines when he saith That every Plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up and his expression of false Religionary Notions by Tares in the Parable are known to all conversant with their English Bibles as is likewise his resembling himself to the Vine and his Father to the Husbandman and his saying that every Branch in me that beareth not Fruit he taketh away and St. Paul's calling the Church God's Husbandry and when he tells the Corinthians of his Planting and Apollos his watering And we have heard enough of a Collegium de propagandâ fide among the Romanists and their many laboured points De extirpandis haereticis and of the Exterminium Haereticorum and of their Arts to exâ—irpate whatsoever Religionary Notions they are pleased to call Heretical and of Nature in this Realm having extirpated those Arts and we know how naturally Protestancy did shoot up again in this our Soyle under Queen Elizabeth's Reign after its being cut down near the Ground in Queen Mary's Quippe solo natura subest and accordingly Iob regarding the Nature of the Soyle saith There is hope of a Tree if
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
words in the Oaths altho it is a common sure Rule That Verba ubi sunt expressa voluntatis supervacanea est quaestio yet I shall ex superabundanti choose to corroborate such my Assertion by laying down this as my 9th and last Conclusion that it is manifest that it was the Law-givers intention to bind the Takers of these Oaths not only to bear true Faith and Allegiance to his Majesty but to his Heirs and Successors in the Due and Legal Course of Descent as I have before expressed It need not be much dilated on that Relations are Minimae entitatis but Maximae efficaciae and that Liberi sunt quasi partes appendices parentum not only Fictione Iuris but Naturâ â—ei veritate and that in the framing of the Oath of Allegiance and the designing the Obligations to arise thence the King had a necessary regard to natural affection and to the preservation of the Hereditary Monarchy in the Line of his Heirs and Successors and suitably to what is expressed in the Preamble of the Statute of 25 H. 8. c. 22. viz. That since it is the natural inclination of every man gladly and willingly to provide for the surety of both his Title and Succession altho it touch his only private Cause we therefore reckon our selves much more bound to beseech and instant your Highness to foresee and provide for the PRESENT surety of both you and of your most lawful Succession and Heirs Nor need it be much insisted on that 't is natural for every Government to defend and preserve it self and to this purpose the Author of the Exercitation cites Alsted a Lutheran Divine and likewise Grotius and Dudley Fenner for maintaining the lawfulness of what the old Athenian famous Oath enjoyned for the preservation of its Polity namely of any private Person killing any Usurper or one who without a lawful Title forcibly invaded the Government The Athenians had several Oaths of a high nature by the Religion of which they tyed themselves to defend their Government and one was the Iusjurandum epheborum which they took when 20 years old and which is set down in Petitus his Noble Commentary on the Athenian Laws and part of which as rendered by him into Latin is Patriam liberis non relinquam in deteriore sed potius in meliore statu Navigabo ad terram eamque colam quantulacunque illa sit quae habenda mihi tradetur Parebo legibus quae obtinent c. quod si quis leges abrogare velit populo non sciscente minime feram Vindicabo autem sive solus sive cum aliis omnibus Patria sacra colam c. ad mortem usque pro nutriciâ terrâ dimicabo But this Oath tho famous enough was not THE famous one I referred to but 't is the other of which the formula is set down in Petitus there p. 232 233. and which beginneth with Occidam meâ ipsius manu si possim eum qui everterit Rempublicam Atheniensium aut eâ— eversâ Magistratum gesserit in posterum c. That Oath of so high and strange a nature was made shortly after the driving out the thirty Tyrants and the Law made that Si quis Atheniensium Rempublicam evertat aut eâ eversê Magistratum gerat Atheniensium hostis esto impunèque occiditor c. To secure their Government forever from future Usurpation was the intent of that terrible Oath and to secure the Government of the Hereditary Monarchy here was the intent of our gentle ones and sufficiently favouring of the Mansuetudo Evangelii and which Oaths however binding the Loyal to defend the Government with their lives do yet strictly bind to the defence of the Rights and Privileges of the Crown one of which is both by the 13th of the Romans and the Lex terrae to be a terror to the Evil and to bear the Sword. But Sir E. Coke having told us in his Commentaries That the true Scope and design of our Statute Laws are oftentimes not to be understood without the knowledge of the Histâ—ry of the Age when the particular Statute was made I shall looking back on the Conjuncture when the Act for the Oath of Allegiance was made take notice that by many particular matters then obvious to all mens thoughts it appeared worthy of the wisdom of the Government then to provide for the security both of his Majesty and of the Succession Any who shall read D' Ossat's Letters will find the various deep designs there opened that related to several Foreign Princes and Potentates Jealousies of the Power that England would have in the balance of the World by the uniting of the strength of Scotland to it upon the rightful Succession of King Iames to the Monarchy and perhaps rather out of a design to amuse them than out of an humour to put by the thoughts of Mortality Queen Elizabeth did shew so much unwillingness sometimes to hear and speak of her Successor And during the constrained Altum silentium of the Succession then here a Book of the Succession was writ by Father Parsons and which made noise enough in the World as those Letters mention and by which Book the Author intended that our Hereditary Monarchy should be Thunder struck especially with the help of the Papal Breves that came here to obstruct the Succession King Iames at the end of his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs printing a Catalogue of the Lyes of Tortus i. e. Bellarmin with a brief Confutation of them refers to one Lye of Tortus p. 47 viz. In which words of the Breves of Clement the 8th not only King James of Scotland was not EXCLVDED but included rather and the Confutation is thus viz. If the Breves of Clement did not exclude me from the Kingdom but rather did include me why did Garnet burn them Why would he not reserve them that I might have seen them that so he might have obtained more favour at my hands for him and his Catholicks And that King in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 29. refers to the two Breves which Clemens Octavus sent to England immediately before Queen Elizabeth's Death debarring him from the Crown or any other that either would profess or any ways tolerate the Professors of his Religion contrary to the Pope's Manifold Vows and Protestations Simul eodem tempore and as it were delivered uno eodem spiritu to divers of his Majesty's Ministers abroad professing such kindness and shewing such forwardness to advance his Majesty to the English Crown Any one who reads in D' Ossat the inclination of that Pope to Principles and Practices of this kind will not wonder at his Majesty 's thus exposing his Vn-holyness and the nature of the Breves is sufficiently there explained and proved to be according to his Majesty's measures published of them That Great King was sufficiently acquainted with the Principles and Practices of the Papacy that had been so injurious to
to belong to the Pope's Authority and their own School Doctors are at irreconcileable odds and jarrs about them He had then his Eye on the Lateran Council as appears by the other words there in the Margent viz. Touching the PRETENDED Council of LATERAN See Plat. in vitâ Innocen 3. and by which Council the King knew that all except two or three of those Conclusions were concluded and defined If therefore many of the poor petty School-Doctors were so searless of the Papal Thunder as in Cases when they were perhaps unconcerned to impeach the Papal Usurpation there was no cause of apprehension in that our wise Monarch that any of his High-born Heirs and Successors would ever favour the Usurpations of that Authority When Queen Elizabeth was so firmly satisfied concerning the Loyalty of the Roman Catholick Lords Temporal and of their great Quota in the balance of the Kingdom securing their abhorrence of all Papal Usurpations as not to impose the Oath of Supremacy on them tho yet She took care to have it imposed on the Popish Bishops can we imagine that the great Interest of an Heir of the Crown in the Hereditary Monarchy did not give a Plerophoâ—y of satisfaction to that Great Monarch that such an Heir would never permit any Usurpation to prejudice his Crown Imperial Moreover if in the Case of the device of an Inheritance by Will on the Condition of the Legatees not holding this or that Philosophical or Religionary Tenet the absurdity of such Condition would not frustrate the device but would be taken as Pro non adjectâ and that thus in that known Case in the Digest viz. Of an Heir made on an absurd Condition namely On Condition he should throw the Testators ashes into the Sea the Heir was rather to be commended than any way questioned who forbore to do so how can we think in the Inheritance of the Crown which is from God and by inherent Birth-right any such supposed absurd Condition of a Prince's not believing this or that Speculative Religionary Tenet and for his professing of which he hath a dear bought Liberty by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the New Testament of Iesus Christ should be intended to operate to his prejudice But that I may in a word perimere litem about that Kings never intending the least prejudice to the Succession by any of his Successors being Roman Catholicks I shall observe that that Kâ—ng who was so great and skillful an Agonist for the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England did yet in the Articles of the proposed Match with Spain and afterwards with that of France agree that the Children of such Marriage should no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience or Religion and that their Title to the Crown should not be prejudiced in Case it should please God they should prove Roman Catholicks and that the Laws against Catholicks should not in the least touch them And that the sense of the Government then was likewise to that effect avowedly declared is manifest from the Passages of those times and the needless quarrel therefore that our late Excluders would have exposed us to with France was a thing worthy their considering But enough of this Conclusion if not too much for where the Tide of the Words of any Oath runs strong and clear we need not to regard the Wind of any Law-givers intention however yet I have made it appear for the redundant satisfaction of the scrupulous that while they have embarqued their Consciences in thâ—se Oaths they have had such Wind and Tide both together on their side and that therefore any Storms which the Takers of these Oaths relating to the Lineal Succession of the Crown may have raised either in their Consciences or the State must be supposed to be very unnatural Having thus in the foregoing Conclusions asserted and proved the Obligation relating to the Kings Heirs and Successors as resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy I shall briefly answer such objections thereunto or rather Scruples for they deserve not the name of Objections as some noisy Nominal Protestants have troubled themselves and others with and so end this Casuistical Discussion The first Objection or Scruple then I shall take notice of that some have raised against the Obligation of these Oaths as above asserted is that they were made in relation to Papists only and were enjoyned to be taken for the discovery of those that were suspected to be so As to which it will be sufficient to say that it is most plain that all Persons who have taken these or any other lawful Oaths are bound by Deeds to fullfil what they have sworn in Words and it is an absurd thing to doubt whether the Law intended that those Persons should observe the Oaths whom it hath enjoyned to take them And to this purpose we are well taught by Bishop Sanderson in his 6th Lecture of Oaths That tho Papal Vsurpation was the cause of the Oath of Supremacy the arrogating to himself the exercise of Supreme Iurisdiction in spiritualibus throughout this Kingdom yet the Oath is Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude the reà son is that the intention of a Law is general to provide against all Future inconveniences of the like kind or nature c. I refer the Reader to him there at large By the Measures of that Bishop as to the Oath of Supremacy we likewise may direct our selves in the Oath of Allegiance being Obligatory according to the express words in the utmost Latitude tho that Oath was made by occasion of the Gun-powder Treason And as to the intent of the Oath of Supremacy King Iames tells us in his Apology for the Oath of Allegiance p. 108. That it was to prop up the Power of Christian Kings as Custodes utrâ—usque tabâ—ae by commanding Obedience to be given to the word of God and by reforming Religion according to his prescribed Will by assisting the spiritual Power with the Temporal Sword c. by procuring due Obedience to the Church by judging and cutting off all frivolous Questions and Schisms as Constantine did and finally by making Decorum to be observed in every thing and Estaâ—lishing Orders to be observed in all indifferent things c. whereby his Majesty doth clearly denote the intention of that Oath to have been to extend against any Non-Conformists continuing their Schism in the Church And as to the Oath of Allegiance being intended against Protestants as well as Papists making a Faction in the State the Book called God and the King compiled and printed by King Iames's Authority sufficiently shews throughout by the Notification of the particular Moral Offices required by the Oath of Allegiance and likewise by his Subjects natural Allegiance and which Moral Offices are there strengthened with passages out of the Scriptures and Fathers and the Doctrine of absolute Loyalty is there well Established and likewise the Doctrine of Resistance
of Enemies a name that the Impotent passion of Subjects makes them so familiarly vex one another with and thereby shews them not such fit depositaries of Heavens Artillary as Soveraigns are so is it extremely unbecoming the Glorious height to which the Doctrine of the Cross hath exalted humane Nature for men as I may say to deâ—cend from Heaven to Earth for Dirt and to Hell for Fire-brands to throw at one another and petulantly to call those that were sometime Aliens and Enemies in their mind c. always such after the Divine reconciliation or even to manage the most lawful and just War Sine quadam bene volentiâ as St. Austines words are or to think that they can justly assume the great Name first used at Antioch and yet retain a Constant and Stated enmity against any Person whatsoever For according to the Excellent saying of Tertullian Christianus nullius est hostis But the Bosome of that wise Princess was no resting place for Anger and all the Popes Thunder could not discompose her and as in all Games they who in their play retain a Constant Equabillity of mind are generally most Successful so was she in the great Political Game she play'd by being Semper eadem and the Papal Excommunications seem'd to her as despicable as the Curses of loosing Gamesters and I doubt not but by her Prudent and just Administration of the Government of Church and State she hath laid the Foundation of the English Nations being Semper eadem in the Royal Line and of the Protestant Religions being so too and that no delendam fore can Issue out against either humanly Speaking and that any Popish Successor that can come here will find it his interest to use the Politicks of Queen Mary as a Sea Mark to avoid and Queen Elizabeth's as a Land Mark to go by and it being clear accordingly as Sir W. P. in his Manuscript discourse called Verbum Sapienti demonstrates it Cap. 2. of the Value of the People that each Head of Man-kind is as certainly valuable as Land that the many Strangers who have Transplanted themselves hither need never fear that they will be so undervalued as in the Marian days The Families of French Protestants that have lately come here have filled 800. of the Empty New Built Houses of London and have given us too an occasion of entertaining Angels in those untenanted Houses whose Ruinous appearance before made them seem to the vulgar such as they call haunted but from which no Prince can ever think of exorcising the inhabitants without Conjuring away his own Revenue of which about one moity depends on that City and where the Rents tho fallen as I say would yet have been much lower but for the Tenancy of these Forreigners and the expectation of others There is a very great President in our English Story and that is of a Prince of the Popish perswasion and yet one who was a sharp persecuter of the Extravagances of the Power of the Pope and his Clergy and one who by the Introducing of Forreignors here to Manufacture our Wooll saved the Life or Being of the Nations Trade which his Predecessors had left in a Gasping Condition and one who by his Patronizing of Wiclif sufficiently shew'd that if those Forreigners had been Wiclifists he would yet have been a Fautor of those Hereticks and one who more disoblig'd the Pope by seizing on the Lands of the Alien Oâ—thodox Clerical Idlers then he could have done by the entertainment of many Heterodox lay Alien Manufacturers 'T is needless to say that I here mean our great Edward the third of whom and of Queen Elizabeth the prudence was as memorable as of any Princes that ever Sate on the English Throne And I will never despaire of any Heroick Prince here of the Roman Catholick perswasion with his Scepter upholding the trade of the Kingdom as those two great Names did and that too by the same methods if ever he shall come to find it in the tottering Conditon that they did and it may be well supposed that the experience the Kingdom hath since gained under King Iames and the Royal Martyr and His Present Majesty of the publick benefit that hath arisen from the reception of Forraign Artists who have been Heterodox in some ritual points about our Religion will make their expulsion seem a Solecisme And every Sagacious Person will I believe accord with me that the Spider hath done much more good to humane kind by furnishing it with the Invention of Weaving then harm by any thing of Poyson I shall be glad to know from your Lordship whether on your search among the Records of State either in the Exchequer or Paper-Office you can find Foot-steps of any thing like those returns of the Numbers of the People in London mentioned out of Howel and Cotton I am sure that the knowledge of the Numbers of our People ought by Statesmen to be accounted their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in this conjuncture as the opus diei and to pass no longer for a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that those of them who take their measures either of the publick Strength or Revenue without respect to this are but State-Eâ—thusiasts and such who in their reckonings do according to our Common Phrase reckon without their Host and do not govern their Politicks by the Arithmetick the Scripture suggests in the question of What King goeth to make War against another King sitteth not down first and Consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand Bodin in his de Republicâ speaking of the Numbering of the People saith That the benefit that redounds to the Publick thereby is infinite and that thereby Princes and States know what Souldiers they may have and what Numbers they may send abroad to Collonys I have been informed by a Person belonging to the Custom-house that near 10000. Persons have had their Names entred as gone out of the Ports of London and Bristol for our Plantations in a years time And no doubt but the Number was great that then went away thither from other Ports and likewise of such that went from London and the out-Ports whose Names were not entred But I was not a little surprised of late when I read it in a Book newly Printed called The Negros and Indians Advocate and Dedicated to the Lord Arch-Bishop of Canterbury where the Author pag. 171. Speaking of the Kidnappirs trade or mistery saith A Trade that t is thought Carrys off and Consumes not so little as 10000. out of this Kingdome yearly which might have been a Defence to their Mother Country c. 'T is certainly a sign that we are very rich in the number of our People when we can endure such a quantity of them to be yearly stolen without the pursuit of a Hue and Cry. Yet in this point Scotland is reported to be somewhat more unhappy then England for those who
go hence for our Plantations do Contribute some way to the Trade of the Kingdom and many of them return hither again But Mr. Roger Coke in his Book called Englands Improvements pag. 21. saith It s believed above 12000. of the Kings Scotish Subjects yearly go out of Scotland into Poland Sweden Germany France Holland and other places and never after return into Scotland And that Author having before in the same page mentioned That 5 l. given with an Apprentice to be instructed in the Woollen or any Manufacture by which means be afterward earns 30 l. per annum this in 20. years becomes 600 l. c. which is more valuable to the Nation then if 600 l. had been given it and the People not employed Thereupon he afterward Computes That the benefit which might accrue to the Nation by employing so many thousands of the Scottish Subjects there might in 20. years time be above 6 Millions And according to the opinion of that Worthy Gentleman we may further be inclined to think the Number of the Scots removing into Forraign parts to be very great when we find among Sir Iohn Denhams Poems one with this Inscription or Title On my Lord Crofts and my Iourney into Poland from whence we brought 10000 l. for his Majesty by the Decimation of his Scotish Subjects there But moreover the satisfying the Inquisite genius of our People concerning the greatness of their Numbers may be of some importance to them and the publick quiet in satisfying them of the Vanity of the former Moddellers of a Republick here a form of Government tho easily supposed Practicable in large Cities yet not so in great and populous Nations and likewise of the Vanity of all fears of a Vniversal Monarchy bridling the world again a thing which though it was of old feasable when Mankind made not so mighty a Mass is now far from being so 'T was easie to imagine it possible and indeed to effect it in the days when Aristotle taught men that no City ought to have above 10000. Citizens and when however the Number of Citizens was grown at Athens to 20000. and when in the Roman Empire the number of the Citizens was not so vast as is by many imagined and so accordingly the Excellent Discourser de Magnitudine Romanâ Lipsius lib. 1. cap. 7. then Speaking of the Multitudo Romanorum under Augustus saith Ipse de se in Lapide Ancyrano clare hoc dicit In consulatu suo Sexto lustrum condidisse quo lustro Censita sunt Civium Romanorum Capita quadragiens Centum millia Sexaginta tria i. e. four Millions and a hundred thousand And Lipsius afterward mentioning that the Number of the Romans encreased under Claudius cites Tacitus for making it then Sexagies movies centena Sexaginta quatuor Millia i. e. about seven Millions There is no doubt but the People of the Provinces did vastly exceed that Number but since according to the estimate of Bodin in his de Rep. 't is probable that the Roman Empire when at its greatest extent in Trajans time scarce contain'd the thirtieth part of the World and that the prolifit North stiled generally by Authors officina vagina gentium by the encrease of its populacy so humbled the Roman Sword that within about 154. years afterward some of the Roman Emperors became their Allies and Gallus submitted to pay Tribute to the Goths t is no wonder that the thirtieth part of the World was since reduced to cease from domineering over all the other parts of it And notwithstanding Maximines boast to the Senate in the fragment of his account to them of his German Successes cited by Iul. Capitolinus in his Life tantum Captivorum abduxi ut vix Sola Romana sufficiant his Resvery of the Immortality of the Roman Power on the Stage of the World was liable to Confutation from the same way of arguing as his Conceit of his own Immortality was which having been observed to have tainted his fancy on the occasion of his great and robust Body the same Capitolinus in his Life saies was corrected by a Players reciting these Lines on the Stage in his presence Qui ab uno non potest a multis occiditur Elephans grandis est occiditur Leo fortis est occiditur Tigris fortis est occiditur Cave multos si Singulos non times But what I find by Lipsius in the second Book third Chapter there cited out of Tertullian is much more applicable to the present State of the World then to that wherein t was Writ He saith there At Tertulliani locum non insuper habeo qui egregie asserit Copiam hominum cultumque orbis in suo i. e. Severi Saeculo De animâ Cap. 30. Certè quidem ipse orbis in promptu est cultior de die instructior pristino Omnia jam pervia omnia nota omnia negotiosa Solitudines famosas retrò fundi amaenissimi obliteraverunt Sylvas arva domuerunt feras pecora fugaverunt Arenae Seruntur Saxa panguntur Raludes eliquantur Tantae urbes quantae non casae quondam Iam nec Insulae horrent nec Scopuli terrent ubique domus ubique populus ubque Resp. ubique vita Summum testimonium frequentiae humanae onerosi sumus Mundo Vix nobis elementa sufficiunt necessitates arctiores querelae apud omnes dum jam nos Natura non sustinet Then adds Lipsius Nihil impressius dici potest de pleno frequentique orbe And that strong and populous Nations Conspired to break their Chains hath nothing of wonder in it and the truth is the freedom the World has gain'd since the decay of the Roman Empire and even by means thereof hath hung out such a Picture before all mens Eyes of Populous Mankind drawn to the bigness of the Life as has made the Notion of erecting another Vniversal Monarchy seem but a Portraiture of Imagination containing nothing but bold Strokes of Colour without regular Proportion and Design and the Copying only a Landskip of the Devil's Mountain and his shewing thence all the Kingdoms of the World. How is the World ashamed now of its having been in the last foregoing Age amused with the thoughts of the King of Spain's being its Catholick Monarch and of having tormented it self with Jealousies about such a great Nothing And which I believe was never modell'd in the fancy of that Prince and was only projected by Court-Sycophants and Mercenary Writers and that he himself never enter'd any express claim to it one would think who reads the Duke of Buckingham's answer to the Spanish Embassador's Informations c. Anno 1624. where the Duke having aggravated some State-Practices the Spanish Minister adds And is not this a Proclamation to all the World that they aspired to such an absolute Monarchy as so many Books Stories Discourses and the general Complaints of all Princes and States have long charged them with But for such Writers as I last mention'd to