more than a Royal Bill without Doors informing the Kingdom of his Majesties mind and preparing both Houses to make it the Subject of their next Session And I don't think I shall ever see a Parliament in England break with a King of his Justice and Valour upon so reasonable and popular a Point But to be free it looks ill in any of the Sons of the Church of England to Scandal this ease with the irregularity of the way of it when nothing is more evident than that they cannot do it without flying in the face of that Loyalty which made that Church so famous in 41. For as then the Distinction of the Natural and Political capacity of the King was the great Doctrine of the Parliament against several Acts of State which in part gave rise to the misunderstandings and Wars that followed So 't is certain that the Generality of the Church of England opposed it as a pernitious Principle to the Monarchy and rather than suffer so Plebean a notion to take place in the Government drew their Swords for the Soveraignty of the Crown and we all know what endeavours have been used and by whom since the late Kings Restoration to Damn that distinction as the very seed of Rebellion This Reflection makes me beseech the dissatisfied Sons of the Church to Consider how much wiser it were to approach the King with all possible Candour and Decency and by assuring him that their concern looks no further than such a Legal and uncoercive security for themselves as at the same time that others are safe from them by the repeal of the Penal Laws the Church may be secure that no one of those interests shall invade her Rights and Possessions he may be induced to imbrace the Mediums that in such an occasion it were the easiest thing in the World to find as well as that they might be the most agreeable and honorable in themselves for all our happinesses Let her then betake her self to think of some happy expedients and rebuke those Members of her Communion that run up and down with the falsest as well as angriest aggravations that we may all yet meet in some general and national Principle to adjust our several Interests upon For can she take it ill of the King that he receives the Dissenters as near him for his interest as 't is plain she would take them to her for her security the Objection she makes against their former Disloyalty vanisheth with their present Adherence and her Dissent for it both shows they are for the Government when that is for them and that even she her self is for it no longer nay it will be said by some nor so long for she is say they not satisfied to be safe nor yet to keep the Chair nor will she thank the King for that unless others may be confounded that cannot offer at her Altar who as bad as they are for this Gracious Reprieve think him not only worthy of their thanks but of their Estates and Lives when he wants them on so glorious an occasion And it is not the foolishest thought that may come in her head that having once lost the King to the side against which she could not maintain his Father her case must be desperate upon the Contest which God forbid I confess when I consider the Idea we have been taught to have of a Popish King and what Persecuting Massacring Murdering work was necessarily to attend his Raign I cannot but say I think the Church of England securer in this Raign upon the Kings Declaration than any other worldly support she can flatter her self with and not to thank him for an assurance she desir'd and that is so generously given for a King of his circumstances from whom we were told worse things would have followed and then too when too many of her Children would indiscreetly have provok'd other resolutions shows her less Christian and civil then I believe she desires to be thought and I hope upon the main she deserves But you tell me that this liberty is by divers persons rendered dangerous to the Monarchy in that it strengthens the hands of those People that have always been for a Common-wealth This looks very kind and dutiful to the Royal Family But tho no body more affectionately wishes the preservation and just succession of it than my self I can't forbear to charge the Objection wit extream weakness for it is remov'd with a word the King has an Army Is that the way to set it up And what he leaves his Children will finde Is the love of Power first objected and then a design to make a Common-Wealth with it But they will say tho it ben't his design it is consequent upon his measures But I must tell them no story shows us that ever any Government was changed making the People of it easie but often t'other way Nor is it to be thought that folks will Plot to loose what they might be driven to Plot to get Let the Church think as hardly of Dissenters as she will they cannot be any longer in pain when they are made easie Besides what have they further to seek or which way can they possibly agree it While their Conscience and Property are safe they have no more to ask and no body was ever against that which is for them nor any Government indanger'd by the People it seeks to preserve The King has begun to show his inclinations to make us all easie safe and it will be her fault if we are not so quickly and intirely This is the way to prevent the mischiefs she fears and what she would have done in their case to have prov'd her self a better Christian or a better Subject I can't tell But 't is certain that the Church by the power of the Monarchy endeavour'd their ruin That they fell in with that side that favoured their releif is as true Were it not better that 't were out of the power of both to do the same thing over again one to engage the Crown and t'other to oppose it for t'other Worlds matters Doubtless it were and this Liberty must be the way Those times I am sure have a double instruction to the present Church of England One that she be not too stiff against a reasonable Accomodation the Other that to support her self in it she falls not into the inconveniencies she has objected against the Dissenters whilest under far less provocation if any at all Let her remember 't was her cause that first engaged the Kings Father and by consequence banisht his Brother and nothing else but this Kings tenderness least he should be too early with her in Declaring for Liberty of Conscience when he came to the Crown gave opportunity for the late Western Rebellion For as he hath well observed in his Speech to the Council how much the want of it went to promote our civil Wars so 't is certain that had he declared for Liberty
A Third LETTER From a Gentleman in the COUNTRY To his Friends in LONDON Upon the Subject of the Penal Laws and Tests Licensed May the 16th 1687. LONDON Printed for J. H. and T. S. and to be had of most Booksellers in London and Westminster 1687. My Honoured Friends SInce my last Letter was so happy as to please more of the Party than my first Offended and that even those are somewhat softened by it I prevail'd with my self once more to give you my thoughts upon the same Subject And though I think the Objections you have sent me are come too far for an Answer yet I will give you mine with all the plainness brevity and temper I can for they that seek the publick good are not to be nice in their endeavours for it and such who go upon Principles have the advantage of being secured by their Sincerity even where their mistakes cannot be defended But as I think I am not in the wrong so I sincerely profess if I knew I were no temporal consideration should engage me against my Opinion for though I am for the Liberty of persuing ones own Judgment I abhor the Latitude of Dissembling it But to the point before us You tell me that the generality of the Soberest and Wisest of those that would be esteemed Members of the Church of England of your Acquaintance do declare They have no Aversion for Liberty of Conscience and that they always liked an Indulgence to Dissenters but they are angry at the present manner of it and with the Addresses of Thanks the Dissenters have made to the King for It. To say nothing then of who they were that made the Penal Laws or by whom they were Executed or upon what Motives and less what Prejudices thereby have followed to the Persons and Estates of Thousands of the Kings Subjects because that History might look harsh and I resolve to be as healing as I can Let me ask why these Gentlemen should be offended at the way of the Ease the King has graciously given 'T is certain that some of them reproach'd the severe Conduct he has chang'd and thought it ill in the Government to expose so many useful Men in their Persons and Estates to a pack of lewd Informers that yet now quarrel the stop he has given to those severities They will I hope pardon me if I say Christ's Answer to the Pharisees about the breach of the Sabboth came in my mind upon reading their Objection What man among you that should have a Sheep fall into a Pit on the Sabboth day will not lay hold on it and lift it out He excused David and the Priests in a Case of the like nature and thought a good deed was to be done at any time when he healed the poor man. This was he that preferred Mercy before Sacrifice and exalted the good Nature of the Samaritan above the strict Priest and Levite that with all their Reverence to the Law left the Rifled and Wounded unregarded But to turn the stile of the Discourse Why should any of the Church of England be offended when it is a less Power than has been publickly maintained by the most venerable of their own Clergy in all times since the Reformation You will find Arch-Bishop Whitgift in his Letter to Q. Elizabeth asserting her Power in Ecclesiastical Matters to rest wholly and absolutely in the Queen that he advises her by no means to allow the Parliament to have the fingering of those things and that what Cannons were made by the Clergy in Convocation by her Majesties Authority might be OBSERVED or ALTERED at HER PLEASURE And in another Letter to the Lords of the Council he tells them that the Queen her own self had in express Words immediately committed Causes Ecclesiastical to him as to one who was to make Answer to God and her Majesty in that behalf and not to their Lordships wherein as he supposed he had no Judge but her self Arch-Bishop Laud and Bishop Sanderson Dr Heylin Dr Hicks and several other dignified Divines of the Church of England all grave and learned Authors follow the same Sentiments touching Regal Power in a more extended manner as you may shortly see by an Ingenious hand who hath exactly Transcribed their own Writings in this great Point But in general it is resolved by Dr Starky in his Assise Sermon at St Edmonds-Bury concerning the divine obgation of human Ordinances Printed by John Field Printer to the University of Cambridge 1668. That Constitutions as they had their Original and Establishment from the Reason of the supream Magistrate consulting for the conveniency and good of the Society so the condition of things and State altering upon their Burthen and Inconvenience may by the Authority that established them be altered suspended abrogated and taken quite away Thus a Divine of the Church of England but to proceed on that Lesson argumentum ad hominem For what greater Injury saith he canst thou put upon thy careful Governour then when his Contrivances and Determinations are published for publick good that his Directions should be Contemned and by thy Rebellion that thou shouldst suggest to others what our disorderly nature is too ready to suspect that their Rules are the Results of erronious and corrupt men which ought to be lookt upon as the determinations of sacred Authority derived from a most wise and just God. But if this were not so is it the same thing to dispence with a Temporary as a fundamental Law With that which says thou shalt not go to a Conventicle as with that which says thou shalt not Kill or Steal are there not some Laws that are of that moral and enduring nature no time or accident of State can Dispense with and such Laws as are so specially accommodated that the reason of them may not live three Years to an end The Penal Laws about Religion were made for fear that divers Opinions in one Country might endanger the Government time shows us that nothing hazards it more then their execution T is plain it puts us in a state of force and that therefore People fly the Kingdom and Trade dwindles to nothing And since all Countrys are greater by their People and forraign Commerce than by their Soyle and Domestick Labour and Consumption whatever lessens them impoverishes and weakens the Kingdom Who will Trade where his gettings are none of his own or live where he is not sure of his Principle Which is the Case of Dissenters in a Country using coertion for Religion And when all this is said the King is pleased to refer the matter to the concurrence of a Parliament and such Power for the good of the Publick was never denied by any man of sence any where to the wisdom and necessity of Government and It must ever rest with that part of it which is by the Constitution always in the way which we all know our Parliaments are not This Declaration seems to me no
of Conscience when he told us of his Religion there had been no Rebellion in the West But the mis-guided Duke of Monmouth might have had his share at Buda and the unhappy People of his train been alive at their Vocations And if this delay was not for want of an Opinion that Liberty of Conscience was a just necessary and popular thing but his regard to the Church of England that had serv'd him well and might not presently take it the right way or be prepared to fall in with him upon that interest 't is certainly the highest proof how greatly he valued her concurrance and desir'd to rely upon her Duty Service and Friendship and consequently how much she is obliged to his goodness and those of her Sons are in the wrong that carry a present distance and coldness to his Administration And when all is done the King in this very point has but persued the sense of a Parliament very freely chosen for in that last Westminster Parliament when the House of Commons apprehended their Dissolution and that the black Rod was near the door to that purpose they came to several Dying Votes as a Legacy of their Aversion to the Court and their Court to the King dom among which this was not the least Resolv'd That it is the Opinion of this House that the Prosecution of Protestant Dissenters upon the Penal Laws is at this time grievous to the Subject a weaking of the Protestant Interest an Encouragement to Popery and dangerous to the Peace of the Kingdom If the heat of those times could have left those two angry words out it had carried the general Liberty now desired and nothing would have hindred it in a time like this with such a Parliament as that For in the Raign of a King of a Popish Religion that we laboured so much to Disappoint to desire no more at our hands after our fears of so much more than a meer Liberty of Conscience indifferently fixed to all Dissenters is such a Cure of our Fears and an Assurance of all we can wish that we must be wanting to our selves in Wit as well as to the King in Gratitude if we reject the motion Let her therefore be confident nothing excluded the Papists then but our Apprehentions that they strove for all at our Cost and if we are offer'd to be secur'd against such Jealousies a Parliament so Chosen would naturally comprise them But you tell me that two things stick yet with Divers persons of that Church One That it is not reasonable the Dissenters should expect that they should pluck the Thorn out of their foot to put it in their own The other That in case the Penal Laws and Tests were removed by this Church-Parliament another might be packt that might turn both Laws and Test upon thâ— present Church In the first place t is granted then that the Laws are a Thorn in the Foot of the Dissenters Is it not as just to think it ought to be pluck't out and if the Church of England will do nothing towards it are they not excusable that endeavour it themselves Tho when one enquires first who put the Thorn in and next that there is no necessity that she must put it into her own Foot because she plucks it out of theirs it should not be so hard to perswade her to pluck it out and in my Opinion it should be as easie to fling it away that it may trouble no body else for the future But that perhaps she thinks is not possible to be done and that impossibility is given for the reason why she chuses to leave it where it is which naturally introduces my Answer to the second Objection viz. That if the Penal Laws and Tests were remov'd by this Church Parliament another might be packt which might turn both Laws and Tests upon the present Church In my last Letter said something that ought in my Opinion to satisfie the most jealous in this particular For first all agree it is impossible to Repeal the Laws and Tests without a Parliament Secondly 't is not to be thought that the present Parliament will do it without such a Provision as will secure us in the Point feared To say there is none is ridiculous for who can tell what they may think upon or from other heads what may occur to them If they won't Repeal them let us suppose an other Parliament as freely Chosen at least can we imagin that such a Representative will be less careful to secure us against our fears tho they were more inclinable to abolish those Laws If then both are like to go together be it by the present or another Parliament I see no insecurity that is like to follow either to the Church of England or her Protestant Dissenters who in that respect are equally concerned with her self And for packing of a Parliament if that were the business and Design at last why is it not attempted at first Certainly it is so easie to be done that if the King did not seek a more agreeable and lasting security to his Friends to wit a National one there are men enough of no Religion to be packt to morrow that would first conform to the Laws and Tests and then mercenarily take them away I know there are silly People of all Parties for whom no body can answer but t is astonishing that such a jealousie should have so much room with men of any share of sense that if this Parliament should Repeal the Laws and Tests the Papists in the next would come into Parliament and then make their Religion National at our charges For First it supposes no other expedient which is easie to be found and obtain'd or let the other remain Secondly it supposes that Roman Catholicks will be chosen or return'd tho they are not chosen The one 't is certain we don't fear and methinks they only should be afraid of the other for since they cannot be their own security and this they declare by seeking a National one If the first would do why don't they begin upon it and pack a Parliament presently and Repeal the Laws and Tests without any more to do And if they don't do this not because they can't think upon it but because they don't think it worth trying why should they attempt by such a way an harder thing for no body would take it so ill of them to Repeal the Laws that vex them by an Indirect way as they would if they went about to make their Religion National by it and if they think it not assuring enough for the lesser can they be tempted to imbrace it for effecting of the greater point Some of them have read the Histories of their own Country and can't but remember that in times even of their own Religion Parliaments ill Chosen came to ill Ends. That the twenty first of Richard the second Repeal'd the Acts of the Parliament of the eleven of the same King and