But there are better ways of putting an end to the Popish Plot then by putting it in Execution for them That is to say by suppressing that contumacy that is grown so rife in the Dissenters against the Church of England by putting the Revilers of her Establishment and Order under the severest Penalties By the Church her condescentions and indulgences to those that are weak and scrupulous the peaceable Dissenters such condescentions will not abate but magnifie her Authority The Church of England will not be by this means lost but her Governance preserved especially if the Relaxation that shall be made proceeds from her ex mero motu and is not imposed upon her by any secular Authority Nay she will become by this means more ample and venerable What Glories will shine upon the Heads of the Bishops We shall all rise up call them blessed They will attain an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and receive divine Honors while they live Their Order will be recover'd into the highest Veneration and it will never be after a question in the English Church whither the Order of Bishops be Apostolical The Parliament will make all Laws yield and comply to such happy peaceable and gratious Intendments All the People will honor them as their common Saviors that shall thus snatch us from the very Brink of Ruine and render the Designs of the implacable Enemies of the Church ready to take effect to the destruction of our Religion and the Nation utterly defeated But what punishments can we think too severe upon any that shall be guilty of such insolent Iniquity as not to allow that liberty to the Church which they seek as a favor from her to themselves that will not let the Church escape their Censures when she gratiously exempts them from her Censures and pittys their Errors and Follies What Fines and Imprisonments Pillories and Scourgings do they deserve that persecute the Church with Revilings when they themselves are tolerated Their condemnation must be just what ever their doom be themselves being Juges They will suffer as Evil doers and disturbers of the peace not for their Religion but for a most extravagant and intolerable unrighteousness They who will not tolerate others are themselves for that reason most intolerable Against these our Laws are to be sharpen'd and their iniquities to be punished by a Judge But the Statute of 35 Eliz. which punisheth dissatisfactions and peaceable withdrawings from the publick worship with exile and death declares how odly the business of the Separation hath been managed and with what disadvantages to the Church as it doth also the impracticableness of Laws that make perhaps invincible prejudices and modest and peaceable dissatisfactions capitally criminal The execution of this Law is scarce possible It is by no means agreeable either to the Christian temper of our Church or His Majesties great Clemency of which he hath assured us in the general course of his Reign And especially for that that Law hath been very rarely proceeded upon A Gentleman that lay in Cambridge Goal under the Judgment of that Law was reprieved by His Majesty with a great dislike expressed by him against that and such like severities What ever extravagances of a few wild Fanaticks of that Age occasion'd that Law the State of the Separation and of the Nation being quite alter'd from what it was then the execution of this Law now would be something like a Sheriffs serving a Writ out of Date in another County which can have no effect but mischief to himself While our Dissenters are thus reasonably indulged and strictly obliged to their peaceable behavior they can give no apprehensions to the Government either in Church or State This is all that is designed and all that they ought to have and this certainly would be readily yielded them in this present juncture especially if the Evils of the late unhappy times did not stand upon their score But I perswade my self that this course if it had been heretofore taken would have prevented one great cause of our late Troubles so it will in such measure prevent them from returning as the separation can be accounted the cause of them As for the Sacriledge and Spoil which was then made upon our Church it could never have happen'd but upon the dissolution of the Government nor can it ever happen again That War would have been impossible if the Church-men had not maintained the doctrine that Monarchy was Jure Divino in such a sense that made the King absolute and they and the Church in consequence perished by it But God be thanked we see the Church again restored to her endowments grown wiser than to desire to hold that precariously and at pleasure she doth enjoy by an unmovable legal Right Of the three Estates of this Kingdom for to suspect any such thing of the King would be unpardonable blasphemy there can be no reasonable Suspition Though of the House of Commons it is be come now lawful to suspect and say any thing that is evil But no man but the Villains that design by dishonoring them to change the Government hath reason to entertain such a thought The Members of the Commons in our latest Parliaments were all upon the matter entirely conformable to the Church of England They were persons of the best Estates Reputation and Honor in their Countries And they or such as they are like to make our succeeding Parliaments I have leave to put them under the imprecation of the severest Curse if ever they do sacrilegiously impair the Church her Revenues And I desire it may be assisted with the hearty and passionate desires of all good Christians that so the curse I now pronounce may operate upon them who shall incur it He that designs contrives or consents to spoil the Church of any of her Endowments may a secret curse wast his substance Let his Children be Vagabonds and beg their bread in desolate places Besides I know it is meditated and design'd by many and the best Men that use to be sent to Parliaments to redeem in part that infamous Sacriledge that was committed in the times of H. 8. When the Appropriations of Rectories made to religious Houses which had the cure of the Parish and ought at the dissolution of the Monasteries to be presented to were vested in the Crown whereby not only the Church was rob'd but the People cheated of their Tythes which were theirs to give tho not to retain and their praemium for the Priests Ministrations which are now often most slenderly and sometimes scandalously performed As also to disencumber her Revenue of the Charges and impositions of First-fruits and Tythes which were imposed and exacted by the Pope upon his pretence of being the oecumenical Pastor and High Priest of the Christian Church and at that time confer'd upon the Crown and are as unreasonably continued as any thing can be that hath a Law for a pretext But for this a
recommend to all ingenious Gentlemen that would be rightly instructed and informed neither deceive others nor would be deceived themselves as they love truth and virtue wisdom and sober thoughts to dispise this sort of wit in others and repress it in themselves And never allow it to be used but in the hours of mirth in the Relaxations of their minds from serious Contemplations and matters grave and weighty where this prophane thing wit ought always to be shut out with care Enough hath been said for rectifying the mistakes of any true Protestant especially any Clergy-man of the Church of England which you have objected against them about Government or Parliament dissenters from the Church of England and Popery Especially when it is made apparent that these mistakes are made serviceable to the Popish Plot and the means which that party prosecute to compass and bring about the ruine of our Church But that nothing may be wanting that lyes in my poor power for pulling their Foot out of the Snare I shall more distinctly consider them First I shall desire them to consider what our Government is and where the true knowledge of it is to be found And where can it be found but in our Statute Books the Commentaries of our Law the Histories of our Government and of the Kingdom Search them if you be at leisure if you are not consult those that have read them and whose business and employment it is to understand them and you cannot fail to be informed That the King hath no power to make Laws that both Houses of Parliament must joyn with the King in making a Law It can with no more reason be concluded that the King hath the Legislative power because his Assent makes the Bills in Parliament Laws than it can because the third Unit added to two makes a Triad that the other two do not go to the making of that number when a matter 's moved from the King in Parliament to pass into a Law the Commons consent last The Letters Patents of Ed. Sir E. Cook 8 R. 3. for making the Eldest Son of a King in Succession Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall was confirmed as there must have been otherwise they would have been void by the House of Commons And yet we will not say that the House of Commons can make a Prince of Wales or Duke of Cornwall And yet upon no better reason than this some men will talk as if they believed themselves that the Legislative power is in the King when no King of England yet ever pretended to it but by their process of Law have punished such officious and mischievous Knaves They will tell you that the Laws are the measures of our Allegiance and the Kings Prerogative and declare the terms of Obedience and Government That a Legislative authority is necessary to every Government and therefore we ought not to want it and therefore Parliaments in which our Government hath placed the making of Laws cannot be long discontinued nor their Conventions rendred illusory and in vain which is all one as to want them That to Govern by Laws implieth that great fundamental Law that new Laws shall be made upon new emergencies and for avoiding unsufferable mischiefs to the State By the Statutes of 4 Ed. 3. c. 14.36 Ed. 3. c. 10. it is provided that Parliaments be holden once every year The Statute of this King required a Parliament every three years which being an affirmatory Law doth not derogate from those of Ed. the 3. But if the King doth not call a Parliament once in a year He neglects these Laws and if he delays calling a Parliament three years he neglects the other Law of his own time to And for that he is by the Law intrusted with the calling of Parliaments He is at liberty to call them within the times appointed And that Laws ought to be made for Redress of mischiefs that may ensue appears by the Statute of provisors 25. E. 3. cap. 23. In which we have these words Whereupon the Commons have prayed our said Soveraign Lord the King that sith the right of the Crown of England and the Law of the said Realm is such that upon the mischiefs Dammage which happeneth to this Realm he ought and is bound of the Accord of his said People in his Parliament thereof to make Remedy and Law in avoiding the mischief and dammage which whereof cometh which that King agreed to by his Royal Assent thereto given I dare be bold to say that never any Bill in Parliament was lost and wanted the Royal Assent that was promoted by the general desires of the people If Popery therefore which is the greatest mischief to us that ever threatned this Kingdom can be kept out by a Law we ought to have such a Law and nothing can hinder such a Law to be past for that purpose but want of an universal desire to have it I desire these Gentlemen to consider how they will answer it to their Saviour at the last day if they suffer his true Religion and the professors of it to be destroyed and persecuted when nothing but their desires of a thing lawful to be had and of right due was requisite to prevent it Their sufferings will be just and righteous from God if their sin occasioneth it and very uncomfortable to themselves The extent of the Legislative authority is no where to be understood but by our Acts of Parliament in which it hath been exercised and used and by such Acts that declare the extent of its power by the 13. Eliz. cap. 1. it is made Treason during that Queens Life and forfeiture of Goods and Chattels afterwards To hold maintain and affirm that the Queen by the Authority of the Parliament of England is not able to make Laws and Statutes of sufficient force and validity to limit and bind the Crown of this Realm and the descent limitation inheritance and Government thereof And this authority was exercised by Entailing the Crown in Parliaments in the times of Richard the 2d Henry the 4th Henry the 6th Edward the 4th Richard the 3d. Henry the 7th thrice in the time of Henry the 8th and upon the Marriage of Queen Mary to King Philip of Spain both the Crowns of England and Spain were Entailed whereby it was provided that of the several Children to be begotten upon the Queen one was to have the Crown of England another Spain another the Low-Countries The Articles of Marriage to this purpose were confirmed by Act of Parliament Those that are truly Loyal to our present Sovereign have reason to recognize with high satisfaction that such a power of altering and limiting the descent of the Crown is duly lodged in the King and States of the Realm For under the authority of an Act of Parliament of the Kingdom of Scotland we derive our selves to the happiness of his Government and and He his title to the Crown of Scotland which drew to
by which it became capital is not understood as he tells us in the place before cited I shall not trouble the Reader with unfolding the matter But why doth he trouble himself to make Kings Fathers of their Countries some cannot be so and some have no mind to be so and yet they ought to be Kings And some that have not been Kings have been so and so styled as the great M. Tully for defeating the Catiline Conspiracy He was by decree of the Senate call'd Pater Patriae Those are with reason truly called Patres patriae which either relieve their Country from miserable pressures which is the civil death of a Nation and for this reason our King hath the honor of being called Pater Patriae and we hope that he will wear that honorable Title upon a second deliverance of us from a most deplorable condition Or else such who bring the Nation to an exalted state of happiness so much beyond their old state of things that they seem to give the Nation a new civil Life Being and Birth For his etymological argument from the notation of the Word it is too putid to be insisted upon tho not more ridiculous than his Hypothesis But for that the reduction of our duty to our King to the fifth Commandment may seem to give some advantage to the Hypothesis with Fathers who know no bounds of their power over their Children It must be observed that the Decalogue is not a compleat Rule of Morality The decalogue comprised the Principal Laws of that common Wealth which God their Law giver by a most Solemn Act of his Legislation did more awfully oblige them to observe God that time was their King Rebellion was as Idolatry and the sin of Witchcraft and the Defection of one of their Cities to Idolatry was punished as a revolt and Rebellion Deut. 13. v. 15. He had provided for his honor and worship and their Allegiance in the first Table and did design by the 5th Commandment to lay the Foundation of all positive morality by providing for a Reciprocation of kindnesses by injoyning the gratitude and fitting returns of Children to their Parents and by putting Children under obligations to be taught and instructed by their Parents But our duty to Governors is more duly referred to all the other Commandments because Government secures the observation of those Laws to us by which we enjoy our selves and ours freed from the Violations of Lust Appetite Fraud and Violence We do not honor our King by relief in his fortune which is commanded to be done by our Parents in the precept of honoring them our subsidies and Aids are not to that purpose but contributions to the charges of the Government they are the just price of our immunity protection from fraud and violence for which cause pay we tribute But whosoever he be that hath more respect for this Knights works then I have may find him more gently treated by a very worthy Gentleman in a very candid and judicious book called Patriarcha non Monarcha But what is the meaning of these flattering Books they cannot but be nauseous to His Majesty who is a very wise Prince and knows how sensless such Books are and besides they make the People afraid and the Nation unquiet from the apprehensions they give that the Government will be changed Notwithstanding the King hath given such solemn assurance to the Nation by his late Declaration that we shall have frequent Parliaments and that he will govern by Law They would have had a better market for the Divinity they bestow upon Princes with Alexander after he had lost his Virtue and with those Vile Emperors whose Names are Regum opprobria for such the flatterers of antient times Deifyed those who had ceas'd to be men they made Gods and when they had left nothing about them that was tolerable they magnified their power which was already most intolerable If the Kings hereafter would but read the History of Kings under that conclusion that a wise observer of Humane Events made after a long observation and experience and would make experiments of the truth of it in their own reading Kings would be glorious and the Nations they govern happy and full of peace They would find therein so many effectual Documents to fear God and regard men and govern them righteously Si Vitam spectes hominum si denique Mores Artem vim fraudem cuncta putes agere Si propiùs spectes fortuna est arbitra Rerum Nescis quid dicis sed tamen esse putas At penitus si introspicias ultima primis Connectas solus rector in orbe Deus Alciat People can be no happyer than Government and Laws design to make them though they do not alwayes answer the good designments of the Government To what purpose then are these new Hypotheses fram'd and published Kings are exempted by their Office and the sacredness of their persons from all fears but the fears of Nature and these can never be discharg'd Those who do ill will fear ill Eternally tho their power were made little less than omnipotent for the frame of Humane Nature hath made it necessary to be so Besides God hath made one thing against another there is a Divine Nemesis interwoven in the Nature of things and God will always govern the World Omne sub regno duriore regnum The great Mogul at his inauguration swears that his People shall be at peace at home and victorious abroad afflicted neither with plague nor famine but enjoy Health and Plenty all his days This seems extraordinary Pompous and Arrogant but it means no more than this that he will govern them so vertuously that Gods Providence shall be always propitious to his People and is no more in plain English than what our Church offers up in her publick prayers for the King viz. That he may govern us in Wealth Peace and Godliness that he may live long and so govern us ought to be every honest mans Prayers But after all these vain Hypotheses contriv'd for making Kings absolute it will be more easie for Kings to make their reigns unquiet and turn their Kingdoms into Shambles But lastly to revive the Antient Zeal of the true members of the Church of England against Popery To rectify the mistakes of some Gentlemen of the Clergy about the Dissenters And of our late Parliaments and their proceedings in reference to them Let it be considered how unreasonable their apprehensions are of any danger to the Church of England from the desires of the House of Commons of some indulgence or toleration in favor of the Dissenters at this time especially when the Protestant Religion is so shrewdly beset she hath reason now sure to take all such for her friends that are heartily Enemies to Popery tho not so skillful as they should be to ward off its assaults Since the Papists presume to call them Fanaticks tho exactly conformable to the Church of England that
will not assist to bring on the Popish Plot by disbelieving it and put us in fear of the Fanaticks by taking all the courses imaginable to provoke and exasperate them and upon their discontents which they maliciously heighten and by falshood and forgeries misrepresent To graft thereupon a Pretens of a Protestant Plot for a pretext to extirpate Protestanism and introduce Popery which they impudently pretend to be of a more firm Allegiance to the Government than the Reformed Religion I pray let it be considered that that which is tolerated is put under disgrace even for that it is tolerated and that which tolerates even for that it tolerats hath the Governing Authority and in so much as it indulgeth it obligeth to modesty and reason and. if that indulgence should be abused it may and will be retracted It was never intended by the House of Commons that the Church of England should be altered or modelled to an agreeableness to any form or sect of the separation or prescrib'd to by any of the Dissenters or that she should be made subject to any of their rules or opinions or her Liturgy laid aside for directories or which is worse undervalued to the profane way of extemporizing For as generally used and exercised it deserves no milder a stile That the Church should always govern by her own Wisdom in her own Province and in those things that appertain to her can never be deny'd her No man hath reason to say tho he hath great cause to dislike the separation and to have a bad opinion of the Dissenters that he had rather submit to Popery than to any form of the Separation for he need do neither except he pleaseth No man that thus expresseth himself but will be suspected to seek an occasion and pretens to become a Papist and to make a defection from the Church of England But if these Gentlemen have such a displeasure against Schism and Separation which certainly is the worst disease any Church can labor under and at this time threatens the destruction as well of the Protestant Religion it self as it doth to the Professors of all denominations let this sharpen their zeal against Popery which by its unhallowed arts hath occasioned and exasperated our Schism and put them upon the use of all means to reconcile if possible the Schism that the Papists have already made and by all means endeavor to continue and take away if possible the occasion of it for the time to come And thus defeat the Arts of the Priests and Jesuits for supplanting our Church It is a most deplorable thing that our Church should be kept rent and divided in danger of being lost between Rituality and scrupulosity Though the Scruples of the Nonconformists which I always thought and do still think groundless and unreasonable have often moved me into some passion against them yet upon consideration I think this their Scrupulosity may be of God and that some Men are by him framed to it That he hath provided it as a bare and obstacle in the Natures and Complexions of some devout Men against any Innovations whatsoever that dangerous ones may not steal upon the Church for the better maintaining the simplicity and purity of the Christian Religion and Worship But in saying this I have said nothing that is apt to give them a conceit of themselves but rather to humble them For the best Men are not govern'd by their Temper and Constitution but correct them by their reason and determine themselves by a clear and firm Judgement What affrightment all this while either to Church or State from this weak and pittyable Scrupulosity Where lyes the Treason or Sacriledge nay or so much as contumacy against our Ecclesiastical Governors which is so much upbraided to them The Christian Religion may be prejudiced by addition to as well as substraction from her rule The Church of Rome by her additions hath almost evacuated the Christian faith Besides there may be a fineness in the outward mode of religious Worship in its self very justifiable which may be not congenial to men of a course make The Worship of God will always savor of the manners of the People Men of dull capacity can scarce admit of any Ceremonys without danger of falling into superstition or being vext with endless and incurable scruple until for ease of their minds they throw them off But the wisdom of the best Law-makers hath considered in giving Laws what the People would bare and not what is best to be enjoyned and many things have been tolerated by them which they did not approve ne majoribus mal is detur occasio aut etiam ne vilescant sine moribus leges There is nothing more exposeth the Authority of Government to contempt then a publick and an open neglect of its Injunctions But where obedience to Laws is exacted under severe penalties where it doth not greatly import the common good to have them observed that Government is unequal and useth its Authority unjustifiable Leges cupiunt ut jure regantur The consideration of the sad effects the Schism in our Church hath occasioned the contempt that it hath brought upon our Ecclesiastical Governors That Religion it self is thereby made the scorn of Atheists That the Papists are thereby furnished with matter of objection reproach and scandal to the Reformation That every Age since it begun hath heightned the malignity of the Schism that it seems now to despise the Cure of the greatest Cassanders These considerations make it infinitely desirable to have it utterly extinguished There seems to be now left but one way of accommodating our Divisions and that is that we do not hereafter make those things wherein we differ matter and reason of Division That the Children of the Light and Reformation be at length as wise in this matter as the Church of Rome which is at unity with itself under more and greater differences then those that have troubled the peace of our Church which is sufficiently known to all Learned men Had it not been happy that this Schism had been prevented by the use of the power of the Church in Ecclesiastical dispensations If no Law had been made touching the matters that gave the first occasion to the Schism it had been in the Power of the Church to have prevented it No good Bishop but would have relaxed the Canons that enjoyned these Ceremonies about whose lawfulness there hath been so much Zeal mispent and unwarrantable heat and contention raised for the sake of peace and preservation of the Unity of the Church to men peaceable and otherwise obedient to her injunctions So dangerous it is to make Laws in matters of Religion which takes the conduct of Religion in so much from the guides of the Church The beginning of contention is like the breaking out of waters saith the wise man and they are assoon as begun more easily ended Before the Contenders have exasperated one another with mutual severities