King is like to be Honored by all this I leave to all these Preachers to Judge Secondly Preaching against the Kings Religion must then be inconsistent with the Loyalty as before described when it is so managed as to beget in Men those Jealousies Censures and Suspicions as shall in any wise alienate their Hearts and Affections from him and their service of him When I consider this well and call to mind what a kind of influence irresistable I have observed in such kind of Preaching where the Kings Religion or the Government is any wise concerned to have had on the minds of Men. I cannot but pray our Doctors to consider well with themselves what prejudice they may do the King before they are aware and perhaps repent when it is too late As those London Preachers did Anno. 1641. 1642. who then extravagantly Preacht against the Liturgy Bishops and their Injunctions as our Church-Men have lately done against the R. Catholicks and I pray what followed but that fatal War whose sad effects we all to this day deplore The prejudices raised in Persons upon the account of difference in Religion are hardly possible to be related let me instance in Protestants only where the distance is not so great even according to the Church of Englands own acknowledgments as it is between the R. Catholicks and the Protestants and yet how have they carryed it one towards another as they have gotten power successively into their hands where let the Church of England come in for as great an Example as any of the rest have not they thought so hardly of their Non-conforming Brethren in the Ministry that could not comply with them in things which themselves say are but indifferent as that those that refused to wear a Surplice must be kept so poor as not to be able to buy a Shirt Ay! I might go yet a great deal higher did not the prejudice of many and those some of them zealous enough for the Church of England influence them so far as to conceive that because his Majesty was of the R. Catholick Religion he was not fit to be their King Church-Men may think of these things as they please but I am sure our wisest sort of States Men were of another Opinion as appears pears by what was enacted in the Parliament Anno. 13. Car. 2d who sensible of the ill effects such prejudices may produce where the King is the object of them made a Law That whosoever should publish or affirm the King to be an Heritick or a Papist or that he endeavoured to introduce Popery they should be disinabled to hold any Office or promotion Ecclesiastical or Civil making equal provision against either Catholicks or Protestants that might offend this way And the reason of this may be collected from the words of the Act it self which was because they knew the representing of the Religion of a King in a way of odium to the People was a thing tending to excite them to the hatred or dislike of his Person and Government Among other things I hear of as to this Preaching there is one dislikes me Exceedingly as having in it the most potent influence of any thing I know tending to the setting of the People in opposition to the King and that is those Sermons especially that intimate to them as if a time of PERSECVTION were coming on and the Obligation that lies upon all Persons to suffer whatsoever Persecution they meet with rather than to renounce any part of their Religion A Doctrine of excellent goodness in it self but I suppose now much mistimed unless we fear that Millions of Jews will invade us and set up the Mosaical Sacrifices again for I know not from whence Persecution can otherwise come if his Majesties Declaration as he desires be turned into an establish'd Law which I conceive none but the Church of England will endeavour to hinder While some Considering Men think with themselves how little this of Doctrine they have heard Preacht upon for twenty years before and now to be taken up since the King is come to the Crown and made the Common Theam of the Pulpit they know not how to interpret it otherwise than that the Preachers would have the people believe that their Religion is like to be denyed them and if they will stand to it they must expect to Suffer which that they may the better do it is necessary that they learn before hand how to behave themselves under such Providences And here again it would make a Man Smile to see how the World turns round I well remember that when the Dissenting Ministers were first displaced at St. Bartholomews 1662. Divers of them took their leave of their People the Sunday before in some Farewel Sermons divers of which were Printed by a good token that some of my acquaintance were soundly Punished for Printing them In these Sermons such Texts were chosen as from a Moral Prognostication they then made from the Conventicle Act they thought fittest to induce the People of a Patient Bearing of what was coming upon them I shall name only that of Heb. 10.14 about taking joyfully the spoiling of their Goods which was pertinent to the manner of their Sufferings since by that Act all their Moveables lay liable to the informers distresses The same course is now taking by Divers Church of England Doctors they have their particular Texts also fitted to what their Opinions are of the Times One Preaches upon taking up the Cross as if a new Persecution were indeed coming on Another calls upon us by his Text to contend earnestly for the Faith once delivered to the Saints as if a new Creed were to be immediately introduced A third forewarns us of the Apostacy of which St. Paul speaks and this is applyed to the R. Catholick Religion I mention these but as Specimens by which we may judge of the rest but here they would do well to take notice what some Men say of themselves viz. that they do the same things which they before condemned in others and for which they caused them to be punished which is so much the worse in them than in the Dissenters for the latter had some shadow of reason to Preach as they did when they saw a sharp Law newly made against them but for the Doctors of the Church of England to Preach thus who have all the Laws on their side and the Kings Declaration to protect them for them to do this and no other ground to proceed upon but their Misbelieving the Kings Word what else is it but a Disingenious Disloyalty and that of the highest kind Or what would they have the People think under all these things And how can they do otherwise than produce most desperate Jealousies The fatal Consequences whereof and the Resentments that a Royal Breast cannot but have of such Treatment I shall refer to the Judgment of King Charles the First to be informed of who in his Meditations
The conclusion then is this not to believe him is to censure him and to censure him is to do evil against him and every evil thing done against him is against our Loyalty Now this consuring must be so much the worse in as much as while Men follow the consequences of their own Reasonings they can see no grounds to believe that the Protestant Religion can receive any prejudice by any thing that can arise by the Declaration without offering a kind of violence to their own reason There are some persons who have given very great Reasons against the likely-hood of the Catholicks Religion overthrowing or suppressing Protestantism none of which I shall repeat I shall only take notice of two other things which I perceive to be much overlookt which to me seem of very great force in giving Protestants a full assurance as to this Case The first is in that the Declaration indulgeth those of the Protestant Religion which are at the remotest distance from his Majesties own Way for so I must repute the Protestant Dissenters in England to be as using no kind of Liturgy or Ceremonies in their Worship nor so much as acknowledging the office of a Protestant Diocessan Bishop which is indeed the great Protestancy of Christendom whereas the Church of England rigidly imposing the one and stilly maintaining the other together with their Symbolizing in both these respects with the R. Catholick Church and Worship Yea and in many Doctrines too of late which the first Reformation opposed have been thought to have been so near them as the effecting of an union to the extirpation of the Dissenters was the only thing feared and this not without ground while those Dissenters saw the Church of England upon the Death of his late Majesty to renew their prosecutions somewhat sharper than before But these fears are now abundantly removed which truly I must say could hardly have been done by any other means than that which his Majesty hath taken by his Declaration which must be to all Men of understanding an evidence on his behalf that he can have no designs against the Protestant interest nevertheless the Church of England judging otherwise 2. The Admission of the French Protestants in such Multitudes as are come over hither doth also confirm me in the same belief They are a kind of Presbiterians who because they would not become Papists are fled hither where they have not only the Exercise of their Religion but also very large Relief raised for their Necessities and that too by his Majesties own order What greater Testimonies than these can be given of his readiness to support Protestanisme And that He Acts in the highest degree of Sincerity to that Principle upon which he Grounds his Declaration viz. that Conscience is not to be forced from which we that are Protestants cannot but repute our selves exceeding safe and may conclude the Exercise of our Religion to be constantly continued to us and that because the Protestant Interest from all these things is more and more strengthened and allowed to make its utmost advantage to maintain it self in his Majesties Kingdoms all which may be so pleaded against the Censoriousness I here condemn as to make it appear to be every whit as irrational as it is disloyalty The utmost that can be said as to the benefit designed to the Catholicks by the Declaration is only that his Majesty would have those of his own Religion enjoy the same Liberty of Worship he hath given to the Protestant Dissenters and that they may be capable of serving him in Publique Employments as Protestants do which as it is all that is allowed them so as far as I perceive it is as much as they desire To the First I would ask how can the King well do otherwise according to that Divine Principle upon which he proceeds and how can Protestants deny it that hold the same Principle with him which I find none of them oppose when the case is put home and they have been pinch'd upon the point for even our Church of England Divines themselves choose rather to plead the obligation men are under to obey the Laws of the Land whereby their Liturgy and Ceremonies are setled than to insist upon the denying this principle and most generally justifie all their compulsions and penal inflictions from the Authority of our humane Laws telling the people that the Dissenters were not punished for their disobeying the Law a fine way indeed to turn the odium of those things upon the Parliament which themselves are ashamed to own and yet procured and so much struggle to have continued To the Second I would ask also how we shall object against it when we consider that His Majesty must needs in Equity have the same right to the service of all his Subjects as any Parents have to the Service of all their Children or any men have to that which they call their Property Tell me I pray why we should insist upon holding our own property and deny the King His I would be glad to see our Doctors who lately preach'd up Morality so much in the Socinian way as if they would make the whole Institution of Christianity and of Christ's coming into the World to be only a subservient thing to the Establishment of the Primitive Moral Religion to shew upon what principles of Moral right a King shall be denied the choice of those that shall Serve him more than a Noble Man the choice of his Steward or the Master of a Family his own Servants As yet I would never understand that human Laws could supercede any Moral Right fixt in the Original Divine Constitution of things I am no States Man but judging naturally according to the ancient usages of the Kingdom the King is not to be imposed upon in this particular when a King dyeth all publick Commissions formerly granted to his respective Officers become void Nay which is more if a Parliament be then in being his Death dissolves them the reason whereof I could never hear to be Grounded upon any other bottom but that a King was not to be imposed upon or bound up as to his Publick Ministers and Officers by any Act of his Predecessors There is 〈◊〉 thing more I would take notice of at this time which I have not 〈◊〉 so much 〈…〉 to which I would say something here if I knew how to 〈◊〉 it in and this only what I observe from many of the Church of England who when they have little to 〈◊〉 against that excellent Principle his Majesty proceeds upon in granting 〈◊〉 for Gods free worship nor the Moral Justice we owe him in choosing his own Officers they would fain pick a Quarrel with his Power and 〈◊〉 these things should 〈◊〉 come to us in a Parliamentary way I must confess the Power of a King is a thing so sacred and so strongly Lodged and Seated in himself as I have not 〈…〉 the least to peep into it Only
Loyalty than to Write or Preach against Rebellion or cry up the Doctrine of a meer external Non-resistance always believing that Men may be guilty of high Disloyal Acts even to the introducing of a Rebellion while themselves declare they abhor it This I learn'd from the Writing of King Charles the First Vide Page 18.30 as you will meet with in its place If any think I have written more favourably of the Roman Catholick Religion than becomes a Protestant I must reply to him I have written nothing at all either for or against one way of Religion or other but rather Refer as I said just now to such matters of Fact relating to the Three perswasions of the R. Catholicks The Church of England and Protestant Dissenters as were necessary to carry on what I intended and if in doing so and in comparing some things or practices of the Church of England with the Church of Rome I find that the Church of England hath upon its Protestant Principles made Laws for the punishing her Protestant Dissenters producing as bad Effects as those of the Church of Rome and thereupon say that the Protestants Sufferings from the Church of the England were in their Extent harder upon them since the last Settlement of their Uniformity than they can be said to have been under Queen Mary it doth not follow from hence that I Write for her Religion but rather that I am one that desire to Write impartially Or if while I see the Church of England Ministers either in their Printed Books or Sermons exposing as they have done of late some Doctrines or Practices of the other Church more to a Popular Contempt than for an Edifying Information of the People as they formerly dealt by the Dissenters and take occasion from thence to shew them in some particulars how very many of their own Practices and Doctrines may be in the same manner exposed I hope I may not be the worst Protestant for so doing If I reverence that Divine Principle viz. That Conscience in the matter of Gods Worship is not o the forced I am not to be blamed until I be otherwise convinced no nor if I Write against those who oppose His Majesty in settling the Kingdom upon that Principle in a Freedom from those Distractions which the practices of many upon the contrary Principles have ever since the Reformation brought upon it The principle is such as I cannot but value and love with all my Heart because I know it to be so agreeable to the Sence of every Mans mind That no Man who knows what belongs to the Sincere worshipping of God dare allow himself to be unwilling in any part of his Life to live otherwise than under its Benefit when I am otherwise convinced I may recal much of what I have Written but until then I am like to go on in the same way I am in If my Stile or way of writing be offensive to you as any whit too sharp I must crave your remission of that if you judge it to be a fault and for my excuse must say I unhappily learn'd it from the Church of Englands chiefest Doctors He that shall Read their Controversal Books and Sermons as I have done written against the Roman Catholicks and Protestant Dissenters will tell you it is next to an impossibility not to imbibe the Faculty of their way of Writing Gentlemen I have no more to say here but wish your Citty all imaginable happiness and each of your Selves and Families the Blessings of this World and that which is to come Some necessary Disquisitions and Close EXPOSTULATIONS WITH THE Clergy and People OF THE Church of England c. HOW highly the Church of England hath valued Her Self both upon the account of Her Loyalty and the super excellency of Her Constitution and Administrations is so well known among us as no Man needs my telling him any thing about it This is that Her Preachers and Members have so much boasted of as if in the point of Loyalty they were the only choice Persons in all his Majesties Dominions and in the case of Church Excellency they were the best and purest of all Churches in the World If all this were true it is pity they should have ever done any thing that might in the least wise lose or darken the Glory of such Excellencies or to make any Persons think otherwise of them than they think of themselves But I am in great doubt that if the People of England were divided into four Parts more then three of the four would be found to be of another Mind not only as to the excelling goodness of their Church but from some things they have lately done as to their Loyalty too In the former it is apparent for why else have such a Multitude of intelligent and well disposed Persons as to Religion with-drawn themselves from Her choosing father to bear all sorts of Afflictions then to be held in its Communion Not only a great number of Catholicks for so we commonly in compliance with their own phrase call those who hold to the Religion of the Chruch of Rome but even among Protestants also far greater numbers are found Zealous Dissenters from Her which surely must be from something they both of them find to give them great Dissatisfaction And as to their Loyalty I could likewise with that they had given no occasion to considerate Men to find as much defect in that as the other being such as in many Mens Opinions hath drawn upon it so great a Blemish as will not easily be wiped off especially while they cannot but take notice of two things The one is for so many of Her Clergy Mens Vehement Preaching against the Kings Religion The other is of the Irreverent Speeches and Censures many of Her Members have been found to express against His late Declaration I must acknowledge they have had the Advantages heretofore of tendring their Loyalty very specious when as all the Kings after the Reformation were wholly of their Perswasion and yielded themselves very much to be led by them but now when we have a King from whose Religion they considerably differ their Loyalty seems to be like that of those Mens which they formerly Condemned I do not say they take up Arms but as some Men have ordered the matter they have done that themselves which heretofore did in others too much lead the way unto such bad practises When I first observed that strain of Preaching in which many of them run immediately upon his Majesties coming to his Throne I must confess my self amazed at it for I saw him no sooner proclaimed King but all on a sudden we had such ratling Sermons both in City and Country against his Religion as if the Preachers had seen in a Vision that the Religion of Rome had been to be set up here in the first Month of his Reign Their hearers also and among them some of the chiefest ranck as to external
to His Majesty as far as Honest and Dutiful Words can express assuring him of their Loyalty and Prayers for his long and prosperous Reign They humbly tell Him also that to his Three Kingdoms of England Scotland and Ireland he hath now established to himself a fourth Kingdom in the Hearts of those his formerly oppressed Subjects which as I believe to be true so was it modestly spoken inasmuch as the Dissenters are known to be far exceeding the quantity of a fourth part of the People of the three Kingdoms Several others testify their joy in that so good an opportunity is given them to express the truth of their Loyalty which the Church of England had hitherto presumed to have been entailed wholly on themselves A great many engage to Live and Die with him to the utmost of their lives and fortunes But passing by all others I would especially mark those who in the Capacity of a Grand Jury thank the King for his Declaration as it has prevented honest Neighbours from indicting one another in the things of Religion which to many Consciencious Men was a very great burthen and to the whole Kingdom a greater vexation then I can now stand to speak of begiting ill will and irreconsitable differences between one and the other of his Majesties Subjects which being by this means now taken away it is hoped their old Correspondency will be henceforth renewed in a true love of each Man to his Neighbour In the midst of this happy Union between His Majesty and his Dissenting Protestant Subjects the Church of England like the Churlish Elder Brother mentioned by our Saviour in the Parable of the Prodigal stand at a distance and Grumble They will neither thank their Princely Parent for the Favour He vouchsafeth to themselves nor will they come in to rejoyce with their Younger Brethren upon their Dutiful return and the Kings kind reception of them a thing so much the more culpable since none of the fatted Calfs I mean the Church Revenues are in the least killed for them but are as they were before wholly in the Church of Englands own Possession 'T is almost beyond rehearsals the dislike they shew of this Vnion as if they delighted to keep up the same or raise other and worse Confusions during his present Majesties Reign as they begot in the time of his four last Predecessors The bond of this Vnion which I may say is His Majesties Gracious Declaration many of them can scarce hear named but they are ready to fly back like Men that had trod on a Serpent One shakes the Head another bites the Lip a third Scouls and Frowns with as many other Evidences of their dislike as Bodily Gestures can shew And it would have been well could they have contented themselves within the Bounds of those tacite Intimations of their displeasure but this they could not do they must also break into Words and open Censures such as I have named before I do not charge all with this but I must say I daily find and meet with an abundance too many that are so doing insomuch as I think it highly necessary for every Man in his place to put a Stop as far as he can to the further progress of it For my self I know no better way that I can take then to mind them of the Inconsistency of such deportment with their boasted of Loyalty a thing of which they have seemed to be as tender as of the Aple of their Eye And if they are still so serious therein as they would be esteemed they should as I conceive judge themselves not a little concerned in a Question I have here to propose to them and the rather because I undertake to maintain the Negative The question is plainly this viz. Whether it be Consistent with that high degree of Loyalty so much boasted of by the Church of England for their Preachers in the manner they have done to Preach against their Kings Religion and both them and their Church Members to speak as they too frequently do against His Proceeding by his late Declaration This question is the bottom of all my following Expostulations wherein that I may proceed with the more perspecuity I shall do no more then make inquiry into two things First I shall examine wherein the highest degree of Loyalty according to the sence of the Scriptures may be said to consist Secondly I shall inquire how the present Behaviour of many of the Church of England both Clergy and Layety agrees with that Loyalty which I shall discribe In the first I am guided by two Texts of Scripture from whence I may argue as much as I shall need to my purpose the one is that of Rom. 13 1 2. Let every Soul be Subject to the higher Power where Subjection is required to be given for Conscience sake which makes it become a Religious Act. To give Subjection only because we cannot avoid it or because we are compelled is the Subjection of an Infidel or a Turk rather than a Christian The opposite to this is Resistance which is twofold First That which is by open Violence to the Person of him that is our Soveraign or to his Subordinate Ministers The second is when we Disobey or Speak against His Precepts Edicts or the Declaration of His Will which be sends forth in the Execution of His Government for not to Submit or to Speak against what he Directs is to resist So Luke 21.15 To gain-say and resist are made the same thing a Man may make resistance as well by his Tongue as his Sword from whence I infer that one part of the highest degree of Loyalty is a cheerful and willing compliance with the declared will of the King in all things without gain-saying not contrary to the Law of God The other Passage is that of St. Peter where we are bid to Honour the King This is a degree much higher than a bare forbaring of Resistance or disputing his Commands for a Man may give Obedience and be outwardly Silent towards Him who in his Heart he Slighteth To Honour the King contains in it many Acts both Internal and External our Internal Honouring Him lyeth chiefly in that reverential Esteem we have of His Person as he hath the stamp of Gods Authority on him the valuation we give to His Vertues The Faith we have in his Words and Promises the Acquiessence of out Minds in the Administrations of His Government and judging the Best of His Actions the contrary to these are Jealousies Prejudices all bad wishes and evil surmisings and judging of His Actions in the worst sence The External way of Honouring Him consists likewise of several parts as when we are in his Presence to use those bodily Gestures as may best and most decently express our inward reverence and sence of his Dignity the giving him his Honourable Titles To speak Reverently of him in the hearing and presence of others and prevent what we can all others
Chap. 15. Touching the jealousies raised against him who hath these Words The worst effects of an open Hostility come short of these designes this was the opinion he had of the Loyalty of such kind of dealing Thirdly much what of the same Nature and also to the Effect is that way of Preaching when Men exert the utmost of their skill to Wyer-draw out of Texts such thing againsts that Religion those Texts in their prime aspects and genuine sence to have little of any such things in them This can shew nothing else but a vement intention to the management of this opposition this an eminent Person who I care not to name hath lately done when Preaching upon Psalm 47.5 God is gone up with a Shout c. takes occasion on from thence to argue against the Popes Supremacy and the Roman Catholick notion of the real presence as an ingenuous Person who in Print animadverted on the Sermon hath observed whatsoever ground he may have for the first because the Text speaks of an Eminent Exaltation of God as he had shewn his Power and Glory to the Church in those daies and from whence those Believers might in some measure conclude the Supremacy of Christ in his spiritual Kingdom I will not dispute Though I believe our Doctors do not think this Supream Dignity of Christ exclusive to the Supremacy of Arch-Bishops or Bishops in England for then they would destroy their own Hierarchie only they would have no one that should be universal but keep the Principality to themselves I say whatever ground he had for the first the other was drawn out of it no other wise than by Head and Shoulders for there is not the least semblance of any such thing in the Text. Another I have met with and that is of a certain Person who finds Arguments from a Text before Noahs Flood against some Catholick Practices he Preacht upon those words And Enoch walked with God and because it was said of him that he begat Sons and Daughters the Dostor for that was the degree under which the Preacher stood applyed it to rebuke the R. Clergies abstinence from Marriage but I think it had been better spared because the R. Catholick Church Men if I understand them aright do not decline Marriage for that they hold it inconsistent with Purity and Piety but are guided rather by that Maxim of St. Paul 2 Tim. 2.4 No Man that Warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this Life and though we affect not their inforced abstinence that way yet certainly the freer any Man is from the care of providing for a Wife and Children the more he is at Liberty for the Ministerial Function That which I would say is that all such distorted Applications of Texts seem to me to be more of a kind of Peevishness than intended for Edification for it states not the Case fairly unless the R. Catholick Doctors had declared themselves in the same Manner so that I know not what all these odd Applications of things mean unless it be for fitting the People with matter for their tongues to talk of and filling their minds with fears and jealousies that something is coming upon them more than in their own reason they can any wise apprehend And what indeed as I said before is like to be a more natural issue of such Sermons then to draw the Peoples thoughts into a Multitude of Musings and fill their Mouthes with as much discourse to know what all these things Mean and where they will Center for to come to plain English either they must think these Preachers to Preach very Impertinently and as an exercise of Wit when they see them thus fetch things about and about that they may at every turn have a blow against the Catliolick Religion or they must think them under some profound Discoveries of the Catholicks doing or tending some strange things which no body else can find out or imagine For surely say the People among themselves our Ministers would never thus lay about them if something more than Ordinary were not in the Case Oh! saies one soon after such Sermons are ended how notably did our Doctor pay off the Papists to Day Ah! saies a second and is he not a Man of rare Parts that can find such matter against them out of such a Text which I never understood before Oh! saies a third they would not be so much upon this Subject but they fear we shall be over-run with Popery we little think adds he what Sad Times are a coming Thus and ten times degrees worse do the People Banter among themselves upon their hearing such kind of Sermons In the midst of all this talk let me I pray put in a word or two among the rest and ask according to the purport of my Question how these things consist with the Church of Englands Loyalty and the Passive Obedience they have formerly urged against the Dissenters and whether they believe the People by all this talk are like to Honor their King while they are suggested to believe that he is suffering such hard times to come upon them as they are hinting at 4. And which is as bad as bad can be and as much against true Loyalty if not Piety also as any course that can be used this is when they so order their expressions in these Preachings as to turn any of the parts of that Religion into Redicule or expose them in a way of contempt Those that know any thing very well know that this hath been a Common way taken up by the Church of England Divines wherein they have not only many Masters in the Art but very Famous Doctors also that study to make a Merriment of that way of Religion which hath been different from theirs Witness the beloved Books of our old Friendly Debates and Doctor Sherlocks knowledge of Christ wherein he so notably abuses and derides the Notion of our Primitive Reformers in the Doctrines of our Vnion with Christ Justification Perseverance c. which were afterwards generally held by the Church of England Bishops and Preachers until some few years before our last new Vniformity Act some of which together with the friendly debate it self as also the designs of such undertakings may possibly before another year go about be re-debated in a new Friendly Debate like his own But I must now proceed to my instance under this head as I have done before wherein I shall bring only two The first is from a Sermon Printed the other is from a Sermon Preacht and that in the City by a Lecturer there sometime the last Spring The Printed Sermon is that of Doctor Tennisons before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen c. at an Aniversary Meeting to Commemorate the Eminent Charity of the City Hospitals I confess the Sermon was Preacht before his present Majesty came to the Crown however I shall make use of it first because it is a Publick Testimony of the Strain and Vain of