now This very King I say with so small a Party of Protestants could nevertheless lay the very Corner Stone that the whole Reformation was afterwards built upon and that too by Act of Parliament And why on the other side shall it be so impossible for a popish Prince with Henry the Eight's Courage and Conduct withal after not a hundred and fifty years Reign of the protestant Religion to be likewise able to do the same Favour for Popery and lay the very Basis of it even by Parliaments and Law And a protestant Parliament now as a popish one then be so managed or Influenced as to give a main Lift to the Work Besides why should the Change of the Religion be so wondrous or difficult a Deed under a popish Monarch now when upon every Change of the Prince's Faith since the Conquest the Establish't Religion of the Kingdom has been changed with it For Instance after Henry's good Stroke towards it Did not an Infant Prince Edward the Sixth in poor seven years time Establish the protestant Religion by Law And did not Mary his popish Successour subvert it again by Law and by Law restore the very Pope's Supremacy And lastly Did not the protestant Queen Elizabeth after her trample both Pope and Popery under Feet and confirm that very Protestant Religion that Reigns at this Day And why shall a Popish Successour now with as much Zeal and Industry as his Predecessours miscarry in that very work in which not one of them fail'd before him There is nothing that possibly passes for a more Authentick Confirmation of all our popish Dangers than this One Assertion so universally received for Currant Sterling by being only taken at a Lump upon Trust unweighed and unexamined But when considerately and throughly inspected all rational Men must blush to be deceived by so light and so drossy a Popular Tradition For to begin with Henry the Eighth In the first place here neither is nor can be the least Motive for the present Protestant People or their Representatives to make the least Change whatever in the present Church of England in any kind answerable to the several Inducements that wrought those Changes in Henry the Eighth's Time For first as no small Encouragement for the Reformation the People had then contracted a general and just Odium of the whole Clergy strangely occasion'd by the Murder of Hunn a Merchant of London in Prison This Hunn being sued in the Legates Court for Non-payment of a Mortuary to his Parish-Priest in return sued the Parish Priest in the Temporal Court for a Premunire for bringing the King's Subjects before a Forreign and Illegal Court This incensed the Clergy so much that they threw him into Prison for Heresy where having several Articles exhibited against him upon Confession of part of them and begging Mercy he was only enjoyn'd Penance But not being prevail'd upon to let fall his Suite in the Temporal Court the Bishop's Chancellour a Doctor and other of his Officers inhumanely Murdered him in Prison by breaking his Neck with an Iron Chain and other Wounds given him upon the Belly and then hanged him up in his own Girdle to possess the World that he hanged himself And what was yet worse upon a full Detection of the Truth of this Murder the Bishops of Durham and Lincoln to palliate the Guilt proceeded to charge him with new Heresies after Death and having sound a Wickliffs Bible in his House they condemn'd him as an Heretick and burnt his Body All which Proceedings being now looked upon as the Act of the whole Clergy they lost the Affections of the People to that degree that they could never recover them and nothing more disposed the People to the embracing of the New Preachers than the Resentment of so infamous a Murder committed and patronized by the whole Clergy Hist of Ref. pag. 14 and 15. And then for the Changes made in Parliament The Suppression of Monasteries one of their Acts was no more than what was design'd and begun in some Measure by Cardinal Woolsey and the Pope himself and that long before the Breach betwixt the King and Him who granted a Bull to destroy several of them to convert into Bishopricks Ref. pag. 22. the scandalous and lewd Lives of too many of the Monks and Fryars being obnoxious even to Rome it self Though 't is true the King and Parliament proceeded to a total Suppression of them afterwards for the same Intent of erecting new Episcopal Sees though indeed the vast profits arising from their Sale through the Extravagant Profuseness of Henry the Eighth were not wholly converted to that Use notwithstanding part of his Promise was performed Viz. In his constituting six new Bishopricks and making Allowance for fourteen Deanaryes and Prebendariships to fourteen Bishop's Sees But to gain the Parliament to the King's Party in the Destruction of Monasteries there was that which Governs the World Interest in the Case which was no small Wheel in the Machine For the King selling of the Lands at easie Rates to the Nobility and Gentry by this Policy the Parliament Members as Purchasers by the Temptation of such good penny-worths were ingaged to assist the King in the Maintenance of the Changes made Ref. pag. 223. And for another part of Henry the 8 th's Reformation Viz. The censuring and condemning of Bulls Indulgenses Shrines Pilgrimages and Relicks with the pulling down of Images the scandalous Impostures of several of them by the fraud of the Priests being publickly discovered Ref. p. 242. created no little aversion in the People But besides all that here could never be a more pleasing Change to them than so beneficial a part of Reformation Viz. The freeing them from all those Ecclesiastick Romish Dreins that had so long swallow'd almost half the Wealth of the Kingdom in which too many of them had been too great Sufferers not only through their own but also the deluded Superstition of their Bigotted Ancestors and by which no less than whole Families had been Impoverish't and Undone through the pious Frauds and continual Suckings of those Church Horse-leeches And lastly for the Exclusion of the Papal Supremacy the above cited penalty of Premunire incurred both by the whole Clergy and Layty of England in submitting to the Pope's Legantine Power contrary to Law as against the Act of Provisoes contributed no little matter both to the Clergy and Commons Submission to the King in the point of that Supremacy Besides to facilitate the Assumption of it it was plainly proved by that Provisoe Act and other Substantial Records that the Pope's Encroachments in England were but Vsurpation and the Supremacy in reality ab origine de jure inherent in the Crown and therefore the Resumption of it by the King no more than a Challange and Reprizal of his own Invaded Prerogative As these were all the Changes made by Henry the Eighth the Popish Religion being so far from abolish't by him that he rather strook
to the Church of Rome are equally guilty of High Treason and to suffer as in Cases of Treason And a second Act of Henry the VIII In which the Refusal of the Oath of Henry's Supremacy in Renuntiation of the Pope was also made High Treason Now if every Papist in England without lifting a Hand uttering a Word or imagining the least disloyal Thought against his Lawful Soveraign his Crown and Dignity or against the Peace of the Nation where he 's a Subject yet nevertheless out of a point of Conscience and meer Matter of Faith cannot be induced to believe a Temporal Prince capable of being Head of a Church but is invincibly perswaded how erronious soever that the POPE is Peter's undoubted Successour and Christ's unquestioned Vicar upon Earth and cannot without hazard of his Soul so much as consent to acknowledge otherwise yet notwithstanding by the Protestant Laws of the Land this Invincible Perswasion without any other Crime is interpreted High-Treason and punish't as such Now I say in this Case what wondrous Difference is there between the Rigour of a Popish or a Protestant Constitution This that makes a Defection from Their Church-Establish't TREASON and the other from Theirs HERESY This that punishes an Apostate with Hanging and Quartering at Tiburn and the other with Burning at Smithfield 'T is true that Branch of Queen Elizabeth's Statute that concerns the Popish Layman's High-Treason was never yet put in Execution and I hope for the Glory of the Reformation Establish't by that Illustrious Princess as so extreamly Sanguinary was never intended to be being severe enough to give our Popish Enemies a Matter of Recrimination though Enacted but in Terrorem But here I beg the Reader to be assured that I urge not this Comparison in Disparagement of our Protestant Laws but only to satisfie the Mistaken Part of Mankind that all such Judicial Severities under the Government of both Religions have ever been introduced by the most Awful and Sacred Authority of the rightful Law-Makers of the Nations and consequently in the English Constitution not only the King 's but the Peoples Acts and Decrees and so to convince them of the unreasonableness of that senseless Surmise that upon the Admission of a Popish Successour all the forementioned Cruelties though without any such Induction of Law and consequently with all the Injustice Rapine and Cold-blooded Murder even to that formal Solemnity of Butchery that humane Imagination would tremble at must and shall be introduced For alas how ridiculously extravagant must those Fears be that can aâ—dlâ— Men's Senses into a Dread of that prodigious Stroke from Popery that was never given by it since the Creation What Magnifying Glasses therefore must the Popular Fears see through to behold such Stupendious Visions of Popery as that THAT shall be that NEVER was whil'st a Popish Crown'd Head in England must be the first nay only Royal Savage of a Papist that ever Reign'd However for once let us suppose the Devil and Pope as familiar together as ever they were painted at a Queen Elizabeth's Night and that this Gospel Propagation were really the Doctrine of his pretended Infallibility and this Bloody Mandate to a Popish Successour the special Edict of the whole CONSISTORY what would the Execution of that Mandate make towards the Growth or Advancement of Popery God knows so far from promoting the Romish Religion that possibly there wants but that One Attempt to shame it almost out of the World For in the first place 't is so far from a way or means to convert even one Soul in England that 't is the only Course to increase their Abhorrence and Execration of that Religion and bring the very THOVGHT of Popery even below Damnation 'T would no more make Converts to Rome than the old Heathen Caldrons and Gridirons to Paganisme For as the greatest Prejudice of Englishmen against Popery lyes in their Horrour of the Cruelties of it so consequently nothing can contribute to the Advancement of it but the Clemency and Mercy of its Professours to reconcile us even into meer Charity with them whil'st the Exercising of the formentioned unexampled Barbarities would make us fall from our present Ill Opinion of Popery as a Corrupted Church to believe it no Church at all but rather an Association of Monsters and a Den of Cannibals and Tygers and the greatest Operation such unprecedented Cruelty could meet were at best but to force the frighted People into a superficial counterfit Complyance and make them Temporize a little only to compound for their Lives yet that Temporizing under so Villanous a Persecution would be so far from a True Conversion or any thing like it that they 'd only play the Highest of Hypocrites come perhaps to Mass to mutter Curses instead of Ave-Mary's or be hunted into the Popish Fold only to pray for a favourable Opportunity of having a pull at the Throats of the Wolves that drive them thither And Secondly Besides the Impotent Effects 't is certain to find towards the Heretick Conversion the Pope's Command nay indeed Connivance at any such Arbitrary Tyrannick Stake-burning or Throat-cutting from a Popish Successour instead of advancing of Popery by so excentrick a Motion will be enough to stagger half the Popish Hearts in Christendom for as Implicit as the Faith of the Romish Zealots is and as intirely devoted as they are to their Peter's Chair and Mother-Church undoubtedly there are Thousands of them that notwithstanding they can disgest a Wafer for a GOD can never be wrought to believe the Transubstantiation of such visible Tyranny and Butchery into Righteousness and Christianity how Zealous soever they may be for the Conversion of so Heretical a Nation as England And that this would be the Infallible Consequence of all such Barbarous Popish Measures they that will but look back to the Annals of Queen Mary will find Historians telling us That nothing so much advanced the Reformation as the Mistaken Conduct of Queen Mary and her bloody Counsellors in that Point And Dr. Burnet expresly assures us That the whole Body of the Nation grew to dislike the Cruelty of Rome Abridg. Book the 3 d. Pag. 275. to that degree that the Popish Bishops for their Apology threw it off from Themselves and openly laid it on the King's and Queen's Commands insomuch that King Philip for his Excuse made his Confessour preach a Sermon at Court against the taking of Peoples Lives for their Opinions in Religion and inveighed against the Bishops for doing it By which means a stop was put to it for some time But nevertheless as the same Severity soon after return'd again he tells us all along That the Nations Dislike of it was Universal and the repeated Acclamations and universal Transports of Joy at the Proclaiming of Queen Elizabeth proceeded from the People's Hopes of better Days under Her Scepter than her Sister 's By which it appeared how weary the Nation was of the Cruel and weak Administration
Fires with the dragging of their Fathers their Wives their Children or their Kindred and possibly their own Turn next to a popish Stake will not equally if not more violently inflame them into as great or greater Outrages than the Gun-powder Plot could do But whether this certain Ruine should persue these Arbitrary popish Instruments either sooner or later and that it were really possible these or any other Illegal popish Measures might give us some Trouble and Disturbance during this popish Monarch's Reign How wretched a piece of Work must the Wisdom of the Pope and the whole Conclave undertake to make Popery and Arbitrary Power under a popish Successour those Feeble Serpents that shall but just bite our Heels to provoke our succeeding Vengeance to crush their Heads In the second year of Queen Mary after the Repeal of King Edward's Laws but before the Restoration of the Pope's Supremacy we are told in the History of the Reformation Abridg. B. 3. pag. 253. of a project proposed by the Spanish Ambassadour to the Queen of assuming the power of a Conquerour and ruling at pleasure by which she might restore both the Religion and the Abbey-Lands and be under no Restraint This she communicated to her Chancellour Gardiner and charged him to give her his Opinion of it sincerely as he would answer to God for it at the last day He read it carefully and told her it was a most pernicious Contrivance and begg'd her not to listen to such Platforms which might be brought her by base Sycophants Vpon that she burnt the Paper and charged the Ambassadour to bring her no more such proâ—ects This gave Gardiner great Apprehensions of the Mischiefs that Spanish Councils might bring upon the Nation and so he procured the Act to be made by which the Queen was bound by the Law as much as her Ancestors were Now if that Bloody popish Zealot Gardiner was so violently averse to the Thought of bringing Arbitrary power into England for what Service soever to the Romish Cause as in his Opinion so most pernicious when at the same time the Majority or Half of the Nation at least were of that perswasion And if popish Standing Armies could have done the Feat they were ten times easier to be rais'd for any Arbitrary popish purpose then especially too when the Queen lay in the Bosome of that potent Spanish Husband witness his Invincible Armada soon after against Queen Elizabeth that could have lent her a very considerable Helping Hand from Forreign Assistance to push on the project had her English Strength been Insufficient Now I say if nevertheless the Design was deem'd so pernicious then what popish State Councellours at this time of day will run their own and their Prince's Fingers so far in the Fire as to advise him to any such Arbitrary Projection now under so low a Wane of Popery that scarce the 200 th part of the Nation are of that Religion and therefore infinitely more pernicious than in Queen Mary's Case and consequently which nothing but the most abandon'd Lunacy can ever pretend to advise or attempt 'T is true indeed the popish Character lays down a most Expeditious Method of raising this dreadful Standing Army that are to accomplish the mighty Feat of Popery and Slavery under a Romish Successour which for the Reader 's Diversion take as follows To make the Pope Absolute there wants a Standing-Army and he shall have it For who shall hinder him Nay all his Commanders shall be qualify'd even by our present Protestant Test for the Employment He shall have enough Men of the Blade out of one half of the Gaming Houses in Town to Officer twice as many Forces as he shall want 'T is true they shall be Men of no Estates nor Principles But they shall fight as well as those that have Both. For people are ever as Valiant that have their Fortunes to raise as those that have them to defend Nay of the two they shall be the more Faithful For they have no Property to be concern'd for and will more zealously serve him by Reason their whole Interest and Estates lye in Him And that this Army may be more quietly raysed how many honourable Pretences may be found Perhaps the greatest and most important Preservation of his Kingdom shall call for it and then upon second Thoughts instead of defeating some Forreign Enemy they are opportunely ready to cut our Throats at Home c. This Projection I confess is the only passage through the whole Character that endeavours to make out the possibility of any part of the numerous popish Mischiefs denounced through the whole Pamphlet For all along it absolutely supposes the power of a popish Successour's doing whatever he pleases and after so fallacious a Petitio principii it leaps over all Mountains in the way and only labours to prove the Depravity of a popish Successour's Tyrannical Inclinations and give him the Will of putting that power into Execution But to examine the Depth of this Projection granting such a Set of Atheistick Officers could be found what then must their Army be Here 's a Forreign Invasion or some other Honourable Cause proposed and an Army raysed for that seeming Intent and Purpose an Army of papists they cannot be for there is not 40000 Men Women and Children of that perswasion in the whole Kingdom and consequently far short of 10000 Fighting Men amongst them all and possibly not one half of them neither such Foolhardy Desperadoes as to hazard their Lives so madly and so extravagantly in so unpromising a Cause so unaccomplishable a Design as Subjecting of England by the Hands of the papists So that an Army of Papists can be no part of a popish Successour's Thoughts And that the number of the papists in England is really no Greater The King's Indulgence formerly to those of that Religon in gratitude for their Loyal Endeavours at Worcester and indeed through all his Fathers Distresses has been so far from putting them to the Shifts of Disguises or Concealment of their Perswasions that before the late wakening of the Laws against them the papists were every where as visible and generally as distinguishable from the rest of Mankind as one Sex is from another insomuch that unless their Numbers have increased by Converts made since the popish Discovery and the Execution of the Statutes against them there 's scarce one papist in England that all his Neighbours round him cannot particularly point at And how thin sown those Papists are is notoriously manifest when in many and many a ten Parishes together in England there is not three Papists and the whole number computed through the Nation scarce the 200 th Man of that Perswasion Notwithstanding there have been many Fanatical Pretensions of wonderful popish Dispensations by vertue of which there are at least thirty or fourty thousand Church-papists as some old Oliverian Rebels shall tell you tolerated by the Pope to an Absolute Protestant Vniformity and ready
conjure up this Hideous Apparition to fright the deluded Multitude both out of their Wits and their Allegiance But not to insist much upon the Grosser Impostures of Fanatical Incendiaries such as the old most Impudent Cheat of turning both the Best of PROTESTANT-KINGS and a Protestant CHURCH it self into Popish and Antichristian hoping that the most Vulgar Eyes and Humblest Capacities have fully seen through so Diabolical a Delusion However as there still remains upon some weaker Understandings and unsatisfied Minds a Terrour yet unvanquish't the Business of this Treatise is to examine what National Operation or Influence a REAL Popish Crown'd Head can have over the Lives Liberties or Estates of Englishmen as now enjoy'd and the Religion of the Kingdom as at present Establish't and by confuting even the most Substantial of their Imagin'd Dangers dissipate those False Fears of Popery which no man possibly I mean in my humble Station has more unhappily rais'd than my self The wonderful State-Convulsions that Popery or rather the Sophistry of Scriblers upon that Theme seems to threaten are no where I confess more spightfully more venemously or indeed considering the weakness of the Cause more Artfully described than in that Libel called The Character of a Popish Successour But not to answer particularly to a Rapsody of Rhetorical Flourishes a Tautology of Gay Words and Big Sounds to little or no Signification which indeed is almost the whole Jargon of that Pamphlet being truly the Best Reason the Subject would bear I shall chiefly reply only to the Argumentative Part of it or at least that which was intended as such Therefore as this following Discourse will naturally fall under these two Heads Viz. If Popery be ever Introduced it can have only these two Doors for its Admission Presecution or Perswasion I shall accordingly examine First What Progress towards a National Conversion and the Establishment of Popery the CRUELTY and TYRANNY of it under a Popish Successour is able to make by an Assault on the Weak Side of Mankind their Cowardice And Secondly What Advance towards the aforesaid Conversion c. the SUBTILTY and ELOQUENCE of Popish Emissaryes and Jesuetical Seducers under the Vmbrage and Encouragement of a Popish Successour are likely to work by an Attacque on the Blind Side of Mankind their Ignorance To begin then with the First of the two as the more Horrible Horn of the Beast Persecution The Character is not a little prolix on that old Popular Arch-Devil Arbitrary Power whil'st POPERY and SLAVERY those always Twin Monsters those Never Seperable Feinds are so painted to the Life with all their Fire and Brimstone round them that it has little else from the Bâ—ginning to the End but the Ratling of Chains the Crackling of Flames the Blazing of Smith-Field Piles and in fine the universal Groans of Destruction and Desolation through the whole Land And for an unanswerable Demonstration of all those most certain Calamities from a Popish Successour The Character tells you that in the first Place the Romish Principles are such That they value neither their Word Promise Vows Oaths nor Sacraments but all their strongest Engagements are lighter than the very Breath that utters them Next That they so little consult either their Reputation or Glory that there is not the most Abject Thing that even Grown'd Heads themselves shall not undertake when Rome or Rome's Interest shall command And Lastly That the putting all this Barbarity into Execution is so highly meritorious in the Romish Church that the Pope will undoubtedly assign him no Common Diadem in Paradice for this Vndertaking But upon his Remissness or Tenderness in this Point bethunder him with so many Curses and Anathema's as an undutiful unactive Son of Holy Mother-Church a Scandal to her Glory a Traytor to her Interest a Deserter of her Cause One while accusing the Lukewarmness of his Religion another while the Pusillanimity of his Nature c. till in short To spare a Faggot in Smithfield he does little less than walk upon Burning Irons himself But how is it liâ—ely that Rome's continual Bâ—lls as the Character fancies shall bellow so loud against a Popish Successor for sparing a Faggot in Smithfield when under the Infamy and Execration of so Tyrannicâ—â—â— Murderer for what in Queen Mary's Days was the Sentence of Justice and the Legal Execution of the Law must now be the highest Subversion of Justice and Abrogation of Law he must expose himself to the whole World as a greater Monster than NERO so much a greater than He as Nero's Barbarities were committed under the Ignorance and Darkness of Infidelity and Paganism and this Man's Murders and Butcheries under the Light of the Gospel Nay the terrible Burning Broyling and Roasting denounced in the Character with the heating of Popish fiery Furnaces like Nebuchadnezar's seven times hotter than ordinary with all the rest of the Romantick Popish Throat-cutting will be ten times worse from a Popish Successour than the whole Ten Primitive Christian Persecutions For a Nero Caligula Domitian and the rest of them as they had the Law in their own Breath and a Sic volo sic jubeo was as much Authentick in old Heathen Rome as an Act of Parliament in little England and consequently how Barbarous soever the Christian Persecution was yet it had the Face of Law as being the Edict of the Absolute Prince and thereby the Ordinance of the very Government But such a Scheme of Cruelty here as being beyond the Reach of the Prerogative and notoriously contrary to the Establish't Constitution of the Kingdom would ipso facta be ten times more dreadfully flagitious as 't is the highest Violation of Law and Dissolution of Government And what ever Opinion the noysy Fools of Mankind may have imbibed of Jesuitisme Papisme and all the Chimerical Terrours from Rome how can that very Rome if it pretends but to Christianity that has Canoniz'd so many of those Suffering Primitive Martyrs at the same time likewise make Saints of really Worse Monsters amongst THEMSELVES than the very Heathen Butchers of those very Martyrs 'T is true Inquisition Houses and Lollards Towers and the Cruelty of Fire and Faggot we know have been frequent but all this while they were never erected by Standing ARMIES Arbitrary CUT-THROATS nor Military EXECUTION but Establish't by the Legislative Power of the Respective Governments that used them and consequently introduced with the solemn Institution of Law as a necessary Support of the Community neither has it been a Practice singular only to the Papists to secure the Establish't Religion and thereby the Peace of the Civil Government by Capital Punishments when the Protestant Government has done the like For Example Does not the Character instance two several Acts of Parliament one of Queen Elizabeth in which not only the Popish Priests that shall have taken Orders from Rome and afterwards return to England but likewise all Persons withdrawn by them from the Protestant Religion Establish't to a Reconciliation
of Affairs under the former Reign And the Ioy in this Change he says was so Great and Universal that but a Sad Look was thought Criminal So that to ballance Cases if the Severity of Burning of two hundred and sixty Protestants in Queen Mary's Five Years Reign under the Legal Sentence of the Then Law of the Land and in that Respect by the Hand of Justice begat such a Hatred of Popery and made so many Converts to the Reformation that possibly 't was one of the Greatest Lifts to the Downfall of the Romish Religion in England insomuch that 't is the Opinion of all wise Men that a Bonner and a Gardiner did more towards the Propagation of the Protestant Religion than a Cranmer and a Ridley How much infinitely more therefore must the Exercise of such Popish Cruelties from the Hand of the most Arbitrary Tyranny under the visible Monstrous Face of the most notorious Illegality and the blackest Injustice increase our Irreconcileable Detestation of Rome and by making more Apostates Proselytes to their Cause heap up but fuel for the Popish not Protestant Confusion and so at best this Arbitrary Bloody Tyranny can have no higher prospect than of committing Murders for meer Murders sake But to silence all Dangers of such stupendious papal Excursions This barbarous Model of Gospel Propagation is at this present Age of the World wholly unpractised in all the Popish Nations in Europe and excepting the Spanish Inquisition and that too seldom rigorous against any but the Open Seducers of the People from their Religion to prevent the Disturbance of the settled Peace of the Kingdom under so general and unanimous a Conformity of the Roman Religion in Spain There is now no Popish Government whatever that proceeds against Heresy with Fire and Faggot or any other Sanguinary Punishment whil'st on the contrary the Reformers are more or less Indulged or Tolerated through almost all the Popish Kingdoms in the World though 't is true that Indulgence or Toleration in the publick Exercise of their Religion is sometimes more enlarged and other times more curtil'd according to the more or less generous Temper of the Respective Kings that grant them which though magnifyed at a prodigious rate by the present Dreaders of Popery such as the Tender-hearted Condolers of the true Protestant Dissenter Count Tekely c. is no more than what is dayly done even by Protestant Princes in the same Nature whil'st the Immunities and Priviledges of all Dissenting Perswasions against the Establish't Religion of the Land as being but the Donation of the Governments Discretion and Curtesy are increased or diminished as the Favour of the Soveraign shall extend or the Policy of the Nation shall require However as all Sanguinary Persecutions of Heresy are now so universally left off and that too considering the Popes Influence over the Royal Sons of his own Church undoubtedly with his own Prâ—vity and Consent 't is certain that both He and his Crown'd Heads are by Experience convinced of the Fatallity of such Rigorous Ecclesiastick Extremities as wholly ineffectual to the Great Work Designed the Intended Propagation of Religion And consequently the Pope must be strangely out of his Right Senses to put a Popish Successour and that in England of all the Countreys of the Universe upon a Projection so long out of Fashion in all the World beside nay and to a more Monstrous height of Extravagance as being positively against any Law or Right whatever than was ever practised in the World before Nevertheless laying Policy Prudence nay Common Reason aside for once we 'll dispense with all manner of Incoherencies and Absurdities whatever and put the Supposition That the Pope should be stung with that strange Tarantula as to begin this Frantick Dance and a Popish Successour that Madman to follow him The next Question that arises will be How he shall set this Arbitrary Machine agoing And which way he shall find Hands Tools and Materials to build this Terrible COLOSSUS called Arbitrary Power 'T is true indeed the Character tells us the way of doing it as follows Let us but rightly consider how far the Foundations of Popery Viz. Arbitrary Power may be layed in England First then if a Papist Reign we very well understand that the Judges Sheriffs Justices of the Peace and all the Judiciary Officers are of the King's Creation And as such how far may the Influence of Preferment on Baser Constitutions culled out for his purpose are vail even to deprave the very Throne of Iustice her self and make our Judges use even our Protestant Laws themselves to open the First Gate to Slâ—very Alas the Laws in corrupted Judges Hands have been too often used as barbarously as the Guests of Procrustes who had a Bed for all Travellers but then he either cut them shorter or stretcht them longer to fit them to it And after all this the Character proceeds and tells you that to crown the Work and make the Pope Absolute this Popish Successour wants a STANDING-ARMY and he shall have it c. This True Blew Protestant Scheme of Introduction for Arbitrary Power by the way of distorting of our very Protestant Laws to bring it in the History of the Popish Plot only excepted is one of the most Comical Whimms that was ever invented I confess indeed some intricate Cases in Meum and Tuum may occur where the most Impartial Judges may be divided in their Opinions even in Matter of Law and the diversity of various and almost absolete Records and Statutes in several lesser Law-Matters may sometimes admit of Disputes diverse Interpretations and a corrupt Judge under such a Latitude may lean or turn as Inclination shall guide But that part of our English Law that concerns our Religion and Liberties the long and labour'd Work of so many Successive Parliaments nay and after the very Lopping of the Prerogative to secure the Subject by the Abolition of Oaths ex Officio Star-Chamber Courts Court of Wards and by the Benefit of Habeas Corpus Acts c. the continued Care and Industry of our Law-makers for a hundred years together stands so strongly fortifyed against all Romish or Arbitrary Invasions that there 's not the least Cranny in the Law left open for the Admission of the One or the Other However this part of the Character was very well timed for the Season 't was writ in For when the very Protestant Clergy and Bishops of the Land the whole Court nay and the KING himself not excepted were all helter skelter just upon being turn'd into downright Papists in Masquerade 't was not at all unseasonable to improve upon the Fiction and bring in the Protestant Laws too in the Crowd for Popish Masqueraders among their Fellows However notwithstanding this Pretended Dangerous Inlet to Arbitrary Power the Character by a certain Fault which I have read in a Treatise called Richard and Baxter a Figure of Speech much used by that Eloquent Divine and truly
many venturous and bold Champions amongst them in so Meritorious a Cause But alas every Heroe is not a Sampson There are no doubt those of them that would spare neither pains nor study to propagate their own Religion though never so indirectly those possibly that would have it in their Power if they could come handsomely by it to use their Heretick Adversaries with as little Mercy as HE did his Philistian Enemies but alas not with his Hardiness too as like Him to pull down that Roof upon their Heads to their own inevitable Destruction only to have the pleasure of crushing some of VS with them We read I confess that pro Aris Focis men will venture far Yes truly for their Religion and Estates together they will do so But in the Popish Case where the Founding of the One will be the Destruction of the Other where the Setting up of their Religion will be the Forfeiting not only their Estates but Heads too 't is more than a hundred to one betwixt these two so directly opposite Interests but that the keeping of their Skin and Bones warm on the one side may make their Zeal a little the cooler on the other For let me tell you where the Erecting of the Altar will at long run make the Builders the Sacrifice in all humane probability that Popish Temple will go but slowly up whose Stones are to be dug out of so fatal a Quarry 'T is very remarkable in Queen Mary's Reign when by the Majority of her Parliament the Protestant Religion then but in its Minority was abolish't and the Romish Government and Papal Supremacy Re-establish't and indeed the Grandure of Rome even to Haeretici comburendi maintain'd Yet that Parliament that had it absolutely in their power to gratifie the Pope's utmost Wishes refused the returning his Church-Lands again Nay the Parliament were so averse to the thought of such a Restitution that they had never been wrought up to the restoring of the very Supremacy it self and of making of all those favourable Acts towards the re-installing of Popery again but by much pains used as Burnet in his Abridgement pag. 268 says by the policy of Bishop Gardiner to ensure the Kingdom from the Fear of coming under such Tyranny from Rome as their Ancestors had groaned under and likewise from the Loss of the Abbey-Lands Insomuch that Gardiner promised them for Removal of all such Jealousie that all the old Laws against Provisions should continue in Force and to shew them that Legates should exercise no dangerous Authority in England he made Pool take out a License under the Great Seal for his Legantine Power and for the other Viz. the Abbey-Lands he promised both an Act of Parliament and Convocation confirming them and undertook that the Pope himself should ratifie the Alienation of the Church-Lands which History tells us was accordingly done Nevertheless as this Papal Dispensation came very unwillingly from Rome being only a Forced Compliance and Temporizing with the English Obstinacy in that point The Queen her self restored all the Church-Lands in her Possession and proceeded so far as to the Re-building of several Religious Houses declaring to her Treasurer and some of her other Officers that she thought her self bound in Conscience to restore all the Church-Lands as being unlawfully acquired and not to be held without a Sin as Baker in his Chronicle tells us Nay the Pope himself set out a Bull excommunicating all that kept any Lands belonging to Abbeys or Churches which gave such an Alarm to the Nation that Gardiner was forced to pacifie them by telling them that Bull was intended only to the people of Germany and not England However the Pope continued his high Resentments against the Undutifulness of England that he could not forbear telling the Queen's Ambassadours Abridg. pag. 221. That it was beyond his power to confirm Sacriledge and all were obliged under the pain of Damnation to restore to the last Farthing every thing that belong'd to the Church he said likewise that he would send over a Collectour to gather the Peter-pence for they could not expect that St. Peter would open Heaven to them so long as they denied him his Rights upon Earth Yet all this made so little Impression on the Commons of England that whatever Conscience might dictate their Priests insinuate their Popish Successour Solicite or their Pope himself endeavour so powerful was Interest above Conscience and all other Motives whatever that several of the Commons in Parliament lay'd their hands on their Swords and declared that they would not part with their Estates but defend them And every Motion that way was always carryed in the Negative Abridg. of the Reform B. 3. pag. 309 Now pray for once let us compare Cases If the Papists in her Reign with the highest Papal Dominion and Soveraignty in their own Hands under an Establish't Roman Church against both their Priests and their Prince nay a Prince too with her Hereticks under her Feet and her Religion in the very Saddle could refuse both their Pope and their popish Successour so Just and so Sacred a Right and so important to his Church's Interest and that too when with all Safety round them they might have confirm'd their Oblation even by the strongest Bonds of Law so on the other side how shall it be suppos'd that the more prodigal Papists in our Age in the quite contrary extream shall gratifie the unjust Demands of a more Impotent popish Successour under the lowest Ebb of Popery against all Law or Pretence of Law whatever by launching out into the most notorious .075 Violation of all the highest sanctions of Right and Justice and the most openfaced Tyranny and most impudent Barbarity in the world and all forsooth for the Establishing of Popery and all God wot too little for the Work and this too to the running themselves into unavoidable Iayls and Halters and not only to the ruining of their Estates but to the cutting off of the Lives of Themselves and even the very RACE of Papists under the next immediate Crown'd-Head that succeeds Besides as boldly as the Roman Zealots stand up for the Interest and Dignity of Mother-Church and the Grandure and Dominion of their Peter's Successour not only the Papists but the very Priests themselves are not so overcouragious in this Cause as the World suspects them For Instance in Henry the Eighth's Reign the whole Clergy of England by a State-surprize upon them were found guilty of a Premunire by submitting to Cardinal Woolsy's Legantine-power as derived only from the Pope's Authority and thereby expresly against the Statute of PROVISOES an old dormient Law made several King's Reigns before though rarely or never put in Force by reason of the Remissness of the Government and the Supiness of the Nation and Kings Submission to Rome and therefore unwarily transgrest by the Clergy now By vertue however of which they had forfeited their Goods and Chattels to the King and their
persons to be imprisoned Upon the King's Menace of executing which Law Reformat Book the 2 d. pag. 112. the Convocation of Canterbury in tenderness to their Skins and Estates brought a Petition to his Majesty acknowledging him in the Title Protectour and Supream Head of the Church and Clergy of England Which was agreed to by nine Bishops 82 Abbots and the majority of the Convocation in the Province of Canterbury praying him to accept of 100000 l. in leiu of the Punishments incurred And the Province of York soon afterwards consented to the same Submission with the Offer of 18840 l. for obtaining the same pardon Insomuch that we find the very popish Clergy themselves so servilely compounding for their Mammon and their Carcases not so much in the Voluntary Tribute of their Purses as with the Renunciation of the Pope's Ecclesiastical Supremacy the very brightest Iewel in the Tripple Diadem and consequently by this sordid Compliance even the Priesthood it self by their own Leading Act gave the fatal Original precedent to the succeeding Act of Parliament to confirm that Supremacy in the Crown and so struck the first main Blow towards the shaking of the Romish Prerogative in England and thereupon Conspired to the greatest part of the ensuing Fatalities to their Religion it self And therefore if the Ecclesiastical Sons of Rome could ward themselves from the Stroke of Law due to that less Capital Transgression THEN by denying their very Pope Why must the Sons of Rome be so prodigiously Fool-hardy NOW as to run themselves into a more Dangerous and more Mortal Noose of Law for his Vindication 'T is very easie preaching to Fools and Madmen as the popish Character has very Rhetorically done what miraculous Fire and Faggot Feats or other Arbitrary Extravagancies the wonderful Papists under a popish Successour shall do But as great a Deity as the Romanists make of their Keeper of the Keys of Heaven as the Devil speaking of Job makes answer to God Almighty put forth thine hand and touch him in all that he hath and he will curse thee to thy Face So let his Holiness put these Zealots upon that Hard Task where their Necks are sure to stretch in the Service and Obedience will be so little a part of the Sacrifice they 'l make his Divinityship in such a Command that all his Bell Book and Candle will be too little to conjure up half hands enough for so ungrateful and so cursed an Employment Whatever pleasure they may take in bringing Vs to Stakes and Gibbets they are not overfond of Martyrdom themselves And though Great is their DIANA of Ephesus whil'st Profit and Safety go along with her and upon Reasonable Terms much might be done to exalt her yet ther 's that Vniversal Charm in that thing call'd OVR ALL and that strange superseding Quality in those potent Operators Self and Self-preservation that it over-rules the highest Excursions even of the most daring Zeal and the very biggest Devils of Outrage and Tyranny are laid by no other Spell But perhaps it may be objected That to incourage the bold Labourers in this Harvest this popish King to prevent the Ruine both of his Cause and his Party will take Care in case of a protestant Heir to divert the Succession and continue the Crown upon some other popish Head and so by a longer Usurpation of this Arbitrary Supremacy and a more lasting Persecution of the Protestants provide as much as in him lyes that the propagation of the Romish Faith may be compleated in succeeding Ages upon so good a Foundation lay'd in his Own This foolish Supposition is so lewdly ridiculous that ther 's scarce a shadow for such a Feaâ— For alas there will be so little Hopes of a popish Vsurper's mounting the Throne after so notorious a Tyranny under a Lawful popish King before him as nothing can scarcely be more impossible 'T is possible indeed the Duty of our Christianity and the Bond of Passive Obedience as having the Lawful Power of no other Weapons but our Prayers and Tears against the Tyranny of our Lawful Prince may tye up our hands and keep us in the Bounds of Peace and Resignation during his Reign But the setting up of a popish Vsurper after him in wrong to the Imperial protestant Right Heir will undoubtedly ingage all the Protestant Hands and Hearts against so impudent an Invader and if Occasion require his Protestant Royal Neighbours in such a Cause whil'st the taking up Arms in such a Quarrel which had been Rebellion against his Predecessour before would be the work of their highest Duty and Allegiance now And as the Remembrance of their past Yoke to all true English Spiâ—its would certainly double Edge their very Swords so in so just a Cause 't would infallibly spur them to so perfect and so unanimous a Revenge as to cut off their popish Enemies even to the last Man Now what popish Vsurper shall venture to pass such an Ordeal to a Throne Or what hopes a popish King can have of such a Successour or of accomplishing his own popish Designs on such a Basis let common Reason judge And therefore the Pope must have a very little Paternal Care of his Royal Son of Rome and indeed of all his Catholick Sons in England as to imbark them in a Cause so apparently Derstructive whil'st by misleading them into such sanguinary illegal Cruelties against the Protestants and all for an impossible Conversion of a Nation he runs his own darling people Root and Branch into an inevitable Fate under the next Protestant Successor exposed not only to the highest popular Swords and Fury but even to Cords and Axes and the severest Stroke and Vengeance of Law it self But possibly their Fate shall not wait so long as the next King's Coronation but overtake them in the first Onset of their popish Barbarity For let ut but look back to the Gun-powder Treason a Plot where Faux's Powder-Barrels were neither like Otes his Teuxbury Mustard-Balls nor his Black Bills Invisible A Plot too where the Conspirators dyed not Tongue-tyed but confessed their Guilt without that wonder-working Dispensation of asserting a Counterfeit Innocence to the stretch o their Salvation and Renuntiation of their God on the very Brink of Eternity Let us look back I say to the Discovery of that Plot and History informs us that 't was as much as the King Court and Government could possibly do to restrain the peopl's Rage from Butchering all the Papists in England the Guilty and Innocent together in the Revenge of so barbarous a Machination though uneffected tho by Providence detected and frustrated And if the Genius of England was so highly exasperated and so furiously transported in Zeal for their Prince's and their Representativ's Danger though past and escaped What Security shall the Pope or his popish Successour promise themselves that the people's Zeal for their own Dangers Approaching will not be as much transported too And that the Eruption of Smithfield
Capacity of Tyrannizing either with Armyes or without them that he has no other Support both of Himself and his whole Party but by following the forementiond Measures of Richard the Third and either to in dear himself by making of Wholesome Laws for the people's Freedom and Tranquility or at least by keeping within the Bounds of those wholesome Ones they have already made for their Security Now with all these Numerous and undeniable Blocks in his way why must a popish Successour be Able or indeed possest with so Enthusiastick a Presumption for nothing less than Supernatural Inspirations will do it as to Think himself able to accomplish that very Thing in England which was never done by Monarch before Nay to make the Presumption a little more prodigious this very Successour who of all the Kings since the Creation has the worst Tools for such an Atchievement must be the first and only person that is for undertaking it For as a National Slavery is always the work of Time and can get footing at best but by slow and subtle Encroachments and likewise if at all 〈◊〉 a thousand times more Feasible from a Prince that is the People's Darling than one that is the â—â—â—version How unfit a Prince will a popish Successour be for so hazardous an Attempt when the continual and united Jealousies of his Subjects will prevent the first part of the Danger by forewatching even the least Surprize or Arbitrary Encroachment upon them and next will never furnish him with half hands enough to perfect the Vndertaking Well but notwithstanding all this there are a sort of People in the World that shall make Answer that Arbitrary Power in a Papist is not a thing so new nor so unpracticable when the Government of the now French King is so manifest a Testimony to the Contrary And truly there are but too many Incendiaries in this Age that distract the Brainless part of Mankind with almost no other Gorgon Viz. That the French King's Standing-Armyes are to be the Pattern of a popish Successour's Government and the Persecution of his Hugonots the very Fate of the Protestants in England whil'st under the Rose Popery and Slavery are to Copy from no other Original As this is one of the main Pretensions of the Whig-Fears and indeed the Top-Demonstration of Popery and Arbitrary Power so when truly examined you 'll find it just such an Apparition as Otes's bloody Pilgrims the more terrible the more ridiculous For as 't is the common Fate of all popular Arguments on that Subject so much the more Formidable still so much the more Ayry the Phantom For first not to insist much upon the General Mistake of Mankind when possibly the French Arbitrary Power is infinitely magnifyed above what really it is for excepting the French King's now and then fleecing an Over-rich Cheating Courtier a little Arbitrarily and thereby in truth making but a Reprizal of his own I could never yet learn by those that know the French Government that any man's Meum or Tuum was Illegally taken away or any Man's Life or Fortune stood or fell but by the Judicial Process of the Laws of the Land 'T is true indeed his Wars have been Expensive but then his Revenues have been large to support them and not only that but his Forreign Depredations have supplyed the greatest part of the Expence Nevertheless whatever Arbitrary Taxes he may have raysed to the Injury of any particular aggrieved Subject or whatever Tyranny he may have exercised over the distrest and persecuted Hugonots if either of the two can be properly Arbitrary or Tyrannick when past into a Law and made a Decree enacted by parliament as both the Taxes and the present Hugonot Persecution are the French King 's Arbitrary Incroachments in France are no precedent for a popish Successour's Imitation in England and that because the State and Constitution of the Two Kingdoms are so extreamly different that there is not the least Ground for such a Foundation here as there For first as to the Nature and Genius of the People In France the Peasants ab Origine have not enjoyed half the Priviledges and Immunityes of the Freeborn people of England And therefore under that sordid Education as knowing no better and being in a manner inured to Slavery 't is no such great wonder to see the French Commonalty submitting to such Oppression as indeed why should they otherwise when they submit but to Law And if the French King has any greater Ascendance over his Parliaments than the Kings of England over Theirs to perform all this why should that be any Rarity when in reality they are of so different a Constitution from those of England that they are rather the settled Magistrrcy of the Nation than any thing like Our Parliaments and as Ours are of the peopl's Election Theirs in a manner only the King 's every Member of the French Parliaments holding his Office not only for Life but even to his Heirs unless alienated by the Prince upon a Forfeiture or any personal Dislike that in short as being the Creatures of the King they are truly more like a Turkish DIVAN than an English House of Commons But in fine to make a Parallel of our Dangers between the State of the two Nations which in truth is bringing North and South together BECAVSE a popish French King with the Majority of the Kingdom of his own Religion the Religion Established by Law and Flourishing in Glory by help of such vaste Armies too intirely of that Religion and thereby principled for his own Service can squeeze some particular of his Subjects Purses a little Arbitrarily and oppress and persecute the poor forlorn Hugonots a Party infinitely the Minority disabled too from all power and at highest but suffered by the Indulgence of the State and that even with the most favourable Aspect of the Government under that pittance of Encouragment that for Example to the whole Body of the Reformers inhabiting in that vaste and populous City of Paris there is tolerated but One Hugonot Church and that standing like our Pancras only more Miles out of Town because I say the French King under these Circumstances can do all this THEREFORE pray mark it a popish English King with his Diminitive Romish Party the most inconsiderable Handful of the Nation under not only the Censure of the Law but the utter Abhorrence of the People with the help of an Army if he has any of a quite contrary Religion and thereby wholly unprincipled for the Service intended shall vanquish and subject the Protestant Establish't Religion in all its Lustre and Strength upheld by all the Fortifications of Law and by Numbers even to a more than hundredfold Majority whil'st the English Protestants are not only to feel the French Hugonots Smart but if either the Fanatical Suggestions or the popish Character speaks Truth to groan under a hundred times Oh! Monstrum Horrendum more dismal Persecution and Slavery the
present French Arbitrary Stretch being little more than a Fleabiting to our total Abolition of our Laws Libertyes and Religion But to make this French Goblin more monstrous still there are some People that go a Bowes Shoot farther yet and will tell you that by the aforesaid almost Omnipotent Things called Standing-Armyes a popish Successour shall not only crush our Protestant Laws and Liberties to pieces Himself but likewise hectour our very parliaments to that degree as to force them to the giving up our very Birthrights to him nay to the very passing of at once both Popery and Slavery into Law it self and then Lord have Mercy upon poor lost England For alas the same Absolute uncontroulable Soveraignty that the French King has over his Parliaments is they 'll tell you the intended Scheme of a popish Dominion in England And then where Oh where is our Religion and Liberties when that black Day once comes Now in the Name of Lucifer what Infernal Impudence reigns in the World when such Rank such Nonsensical Stuff as this can be asserted by Rogues and credited by Fools For besides the most infamous Calumny that this execrable Imputation throws upon the whole Body of the Nation Viz. That Englishmen shall be such tame such abject such despicable Wretches and Cowards as out of any personal Fear whatever to yield up their Laws Rights and Religion to the Ruine of themselves and their Posterity and thereby offer as it were even their own Throats to the Slaughter What Relation has the present Management in France to that of Popery in England or the French King 's Parliamentary Influence to that of a popish Successour's For whatever extraordinary Obedience or Subjection the French Parliaments may yield to their King in the grant of any Oppressive Impositions upon the Subject to advance their King 's Exorbitant Power and Greatness are the French King 's Arbitrary Endeavours to root up the Foundations of his popish Laws and the Establish't Religion of France which vice versa is the Case in England so that if a popish Successour can hector our English Parliaments to no farther a Complyance than the French King does His the Devil an Inch of Ground will Popery get in England for as I take it the French Parliaments are all popish and as such are in so little danger of their Religion that truly their Prince in the other Extream is in the highest Extravagance of Advancing it So that unless we state the Parrallel between the two Kings Thus Viz. Supposing the French King a Hugonot which is but turning our Tables that then both his popish Armies and popish Parliaments would nevertheless be awed and bullyed into that intire Submission to him as to abolish the Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom and thereby subject themselves and all their Brethren Papists to the self same Persecution and Slavery under the Hugonots that the Hugonots suffer under Them without which Supposition his Tyranny is wholly alien to our popish Successour's and nothing but the most Villanous Phanatical Sophistry dares cant at this wretched rate to pretend to make the French Tyranny a Model for English Popery to work by But put the Case there were a French Hugonot King and that had the forementioned purpose in Agitation either by Armies or Parliaments as plyable as the French Genius is supposed to be his Ill Success in such an Exploit might be soon guest by the Difficulties and Obstructions of their Hugonot Henry the 4 th in his way to the Throne under but a suspition of inclining that way And consequently what worse Success would attend the like popish Changes in England under the manifest disproportion of the English Papists to the French Hugonots is past dispute However if neither English Armies nor English Parliaments can do the popish Feat there 's one last Expedient yet to vanquish all Obstacles and that I assure you if no small Authors may be believed a most puissant one Viz. If the popish Hands in England are too weak to enslave us this popish Successour shall borrow the Assistance of popish Neighbours to help out and so what cannot be done by Domestick Forces shall be perform'd by a Forreign Army call'd over on purpose This Expedient I confess is so much the more remarkable as it has some little Affinity to Bedlow's St. Jago Expedition and truly has sometimes had the Honour to be harangued upon even in a House of Commons as no small Danger from Popery But notwithstanding the Authority and Veracity this Projection may seem to arrogate from its Admission into an Honourable House of Parliament upon due Examination I am half afraid 't will prove but one of the Observator's downright Twangers For if this popish Successour be for setting up Popery by pitch't Battles and plain Conquest and that too by Outlandish Ayde in the first place he must have far more than tenfold as many Forreign popish Hands as he has of his own to pretend at least to a strength able to subdue England nay and in truth here 's one unlucky Circumstance attending that is if he can borrow popish Neighbours 't is odds but the protestants may borrow protestant Neighbours too upon occasion for Princes have as often lent Armies to succour opprest Subjects as to assist Oppressing Tyrants But let that pass But supposing the best face of the thing that there were some Chance for him in this bold Cast and that after his setting of Honour Life Empire all at a Throw upon the hazard of War there were only an even Lay of Keeping or loosing them a Caesar aut nullus 't were a little more pardonable Venture But as the Devil would have it there 's not one syllable of this in the Matter For if overthrown he 's so irrevocably lost that possibly not only his own Ruine but that of all his Royal Family and of Monarchy it self goes together But admitting he Conquers the Question is whether the Caesarship on the other side be so secure or no For truly what if the aforesaid tenfold Majority of Forreign Conquerours should make bold to pass a Civil Complement upon this Successour Militant and the rest of his popish Remnant and fairly keep the Victory when they have got it For I assure him little England is a pritty Parcel of Terra firma and 't were no small Temptation to popish or no popish Fingers to be a little tenacious with so fortunate a Prize And when those Triumphant Forreigners have tasted the sweet Air of so delicate a Spot as England 't is fourty to one whether They or at least the Crown'd Head that lends them will be overhasty of resigning so inviting a Trophy as the English Diadem and truly cosidering the Blackness of the Cause they came over to ingage in if any Forreign Prince can lend an Army for so Dishhonourable a Quarrel which indeed all Nations and all Religions must cry Shame against with much less Dishonour may he wear the Lawrel he wins
and assume that vanquish't Kingdom to himself when he robs but a Robber and at most deposes a Cut-throat And therefore to make Instance in the Case what popish Successour will venture to call over suppose thirty or forty thousand French to enslave his people and thereby at one dash loose his People's Hearts beyond all Thoughts of a Recovery as thither indeed the Whig Fears seem to point upon a Confidence that the now French King's Generosity though possibly not the best Faith-keeper in Christendom after the Accomplishment of the Conquest will make so intire a Resignation of all Pretensions of Victory to Establish this Absolute Popish Sultan especially considering the insatiate Ambition of that aspiring Prince to Vniversal Monarchy and particularly to the Soveraignty of the Seas which though with all his present great Ships under the Maritime Weakness of France he cannot atchieve he might intirely possess by so opportune and so important an Addition to his Conquests as England Now they must have a wonderful Stock of Faith with no small mixture of Madness that can really believe any popish Crown'd Head in the World will ever play so cursed a Loosing Game and take that Path towards Popery with two such amnable Precipices both on the Right Hand and the Left that the very Masterpiece of the Projection is but in effect writing his own MENE TEKEL over his own Head So that all the forementioned Impotence and Impossibilities of popish and arbitrary Tyrannys Introduction into England being fully demonstrated I have only this to add There is no greater Mistake in the generality of Mankind than an Imbibed Opinion that the Papists think themselves obliged to endeavour the setting up of their Religion hap-hazard right or wrong hand over head without Consideration or Regard to the Issue or Success of the Undertaking and that in fine a popish Successour will certainly muster all Forces and all Engines to attempt the Storming of the whole Protestant Liberty and Religion though under a tenfold Odds of laying his very Bones at the Siege But the Grossness of this popular Errour will appear from the past Conduct of all the Papists in all Ages and all Countreys when they never attempted a Rebellion Massacre or any such Monstrous Design but where they had not only proper popish Instruments for the Service but also a popish Strength capable in all reasonable prospect of going Through-stitch with it Besides a Bigot in Religion is nevertheless a Statesman in the Establishing of that Religion and excepting such Bedlamite Enthusiasts as the old Fifth Monarchy Adventurers there 's Policy as well as Faith in all Churches and how far soever Faith may stretch Policy moves in the Bounds of Reason and he that can believe the greatest lying Miracle in a Romish Legend will never trust to Miracles in a Romish Battalia And were a popish Successour in his Nature ten times if possible a Bloodyer-minded Tyrant than the very Character has shaped him if he wants Humane Strength to enslave us let us not suspect his relying on Divine or Infernal Assistance the Ayd of Angels or Devils to help him And truly when a popish Successour shall seriously consider the Temper of the Head-strong English a people always impatient of Wrongs to that degree of Ill-nature in the Resentment and Prosecution of Ills above all Mankind beside that whereas all other Nations cry Run Rogue 't is observable the English Note is ever Stop Thief But above all a People so nicely Jealous of Liberty that the very Name of Oppression especially from the Crown-side without the Thing is enough to make them slip the Biâ—â— and run stark mad insomuch that a King of England is but too justly call'd a King of Devils when he considers all this I say a popish Successour a thousand to one will never venture the raising those mutinous English Devils without a Charm full strong enough to lay them again And whatever his Inclinations might be for the Heretick Slavery yet as Vana est sine viribus Ira. 'T is not the Thunder in a Popish Successour's Heart but his Hand that can hurt us and where the Arm 's too weak and the Belt too unweildy let us never trouble our Heads with fearing the Blow But that Point Viz. A popish Successours POWER of Enslaving Persecuting Burning c. being sufficiently discust let us next examine the Veracity of the Character in another Point that is granting he either had or fancy'd he had the Power of doing it Quaery whither it necessarily follows that he must have the Will to do it The Character 't is true as I said before makes him plunge headlong into the Breach of all Promises Vows Obligations Oaths and Sacraments all the Dictates even of Morality and Common Humanity and what not and renders it withall so inseperable an Impulse and Principle of a popish Conscience that in a manner that popish Prince that neglects so incumbent and meritorious a Duty is little less in the popish Ballance than a Judas or a Julian c. Though I confess for all this terrible Oathbreaking the two Instances recited in the Character to prove this universal popish Infidelity are possibly the Idlest that a Man could wish to meet with The First of them is Queen Mary's Breach of Promise of their Quiet Exercise of the Protestant Religion made to the Norfolk and Suffolk Inhabitants that mounted her to her Throne which I acknowledge was both ungratefully and in the highest degree dishonourably done yet when truly weighed is far from any thing of that damnable Law-breaking popish Perjury that the Character all along endeavours to blacken all Romish Princes with that on the contrary though 't is true she broke her Promise given to Capitulating Rebels for the Norfolk and Suffolk Inhabitants were indeed little better for as their utmost Endeavours of setting their Lawful Soveraign upon her Throne was their absolute indispensible Duty whatever her Requital might be yet the Chronicle tells us they refus'd the Queen any Assistance whatever till they had first condition'd with her and extorted that Promise from her And if nevertheless she broke that Promise afterwards with them here was no Tyrannick Cruelty exercised nor any Coronation Oath Violated when she only burnt them by Law and as her Coronation Oath obliged her to rule by Law 't was only her Misfortune to believe the Equity of that Sanguinary Law and accordingly to act by it and consequently their Misery to feel the Scourge of it The 2 d. Instance of a Certain Gentleman on the Other side the Water that once took the Sacrament never to invade Flanders which since he hath so notoriously broken and the Inference from thence that a popish Successour will much more break all Oaths for the meritorious Propagation of his Religion when a popish Prince has violated even Sacraments themselves for his irregular unjustifyable Ambition is so impertinently urged that nothing can be less to the Purpose For that Gentleman's
at the Court than Church of Rome witness the Act of the six Articles made by him defending the greatest and principlest Tenets of Rome by no less than Capital Punishments and a Parlimentary Reinforcement of the old Statute de Hereticis comburendis Ref. pag. 147. the Heretick Burning continuing through his whole Reign As these I say were all the Changes made by Henry the Eighth instrumental to the present Reformation and that too not without Obstructions witness several Rebellions occasioned by this Change the one of 20000 Strong in Lincolnshire another more formidable one in Yorkshire called by the Rebels The Pilgrimage of Grace attended with a general Insurrection in all the North. However as I said before here is no Motive or Inducement now for the like Parliamentary Compliance with a Popish Successour to make any the least Change Instrumental to the Romish Restoration For first supposing how notoriously false soever an equal Mutability or Disposition in the People now to return to Rome as then to depart from it Here 's no stigmatizing Brand of Murder or any other publick Perpetration or Avowing of any Villany whatever to taint the whole Protestant Clergy and thereby withdraw the People's Hearts from them Here 's no Holy-Cheats and Superstitious priest-Impostures practised to drein the People's Purses to gratifie a scandalous voracious Clergy Or any detected Abuses and Corruptions to disgust and exasperate the People against them Here 's no least Dormient Statute or Title whatever for a Popish Successour to lay hold of in favour of the Papacy's Return into England as there was for its Expulsion The Fence of our present Protestant Constitution being so strong against it and all Pretensions of Rome so utterly extinct and abolish't Neither is here any Premunire incurred by the whole Clergy and Nation to affright or dasterdize them into any sordid Condescencion or Grants in Diskindness to our Religion And lastly here 's no Fleeeing of an Overgrown Overrich Church in the Case The present Church Revenues under so many Impropriations being no more than will but just support its Dignity and Pastors but with Subsistence and Decency No Ecclesiastick Booty nor Prize to bribe or allure an Avaricious Parliament to weaken or impoverish their Church for the temptation of sharing the Spoyl But above all other Obstacles against Rome her 's an Absolute Impossibility of a Temporizing Clergy to favour Popery For supposing even the most barbarous Insinuation of their Fanatical Enemies True and that Mammon Interest Sycophantry how rascally soever that Infamous Suggestion were above Religion with them Yet nevertheless the utmost Influence of a Romish Prince could never warp them to any such Execrable Apostacy by reason the Indispensable Coelibacy of the Romish Clergy would totally exclude the present Members of the Church of England as being Marryed Men from any Share or Hopes under a Romish Government whil'st instead of Preferment or Interest nothing but Degradation and Beggery could attend them And for an unanswerable Dispurity between Henry the Eighth's Influence towards the present Protestant Religion and a Popish Successour's towards Popery The Protestant Religion with an inviting Face was in a State of Innocence untainted by any of its Corrupted Professours with any thing like Parisian Massacres Irish Rebellions or Gun-powder Treasons enough of themselves alone to open that uncloseable Chasme that never to be cemented Breach between Englishmen and Popery that Popery could not now gain three Proselites to a hundred gain'd in Henry the Eighth's Time to the Protestant Religion But here I cannot but take notice of one Gross Mistake that 's commonly receiv'd for Truth Viz. That Henry the Eighth hectored his Parliaments to what he listed Which is oftentimes made use of as an Argument that a Popish Successour with the same Courage may do the like with his when on the contrary they acted only by their own Inclinations and when any thing was proposed by the King that went against the Grain not all his Menaces could force them to a Submission For Example when a Bill had past the House of Lords for regulating a common Practice then in England of defrauding the King and several of the Lords of their Advantages made by Wards Marriages and Primier Seisin by Men's making such Settlements of their Estates by their last Wills and other Deeds to that purpose Yet notwithstanding the utmost pressure both of the King and Lords for redressing that Abuse the Commons rejected the Bill Ref. pag. 116. And as to the Reformation some part of it was of their own seeking For Example in his 22 d. Year the Commons complained to the King of the grievous and intolerable Severity of the Ecclesiasticks for calling Men before them ex Officio and laying Articles to their Charge without any Accuser and then admitting no Purgation but causing the Party accused either to abjure or burn Reform Pag. 116. And indeed in all the Reformation they rather drew with him than were driven by him And to shew the vast Difference betwixt the Operation of the Prince either by Edward or Mary towards the Change of the Religion and the working of a Change now In the first place besides the dayly Converts made to the Protestant Religion in Edward's Reign which added Strength and Vigour to the Reformation wrought by that Prince as the State of Religion then stood the Popish and Protestant Party were grown in a manner to be an Equal Division of the Nation and 't is not to be wondred that where the Weight's even the Soveraign Power added to the Ballance could turn the Scale as both in his and his Sister's Reign Either Party having an Easie Game to play whilst the Respective Monarch might with small Difficulty turn up his own Religion Trump when he had half the Cards in his hands Besides the Law had then so weakly provided for the true Settlement of either Religion that the greatest part of the Ecclesiastick Changes then lay almost wholly in the pleasure of the Prince For after the Parliament had fully invested Henry the Eighth with the Supremacy they impowered him as Head of the Church to dispose of all Episcopal Sees by Letters Patents during pleasure Abrid Ref. Book 2. pag. 4. and the Bishops by the same Authority had the like Jurisdiction over the Inferiour Clergy This unbounded Latitude of the Supremacy continuing through both the next Reigns a great part of the Changes was owing wholly to this Prerogative whil'st King Edward made choice of a Clergy of his own Perswasion and in like manner Queen Mary placed or displaced her Bishops and removed all the Inferiour Clergy ad Libitum turning out whom she pleas'd without any Form of Process or special Matter objected against them All which Abridg. B. 2. pag. 249. was done by virtue of the Queens being Head of the Church which though she condemned as a sinful and sacraledgious Power yet she now employ'd it against those Bishops whose Sees were quickly filled with Men for
for half a hundred years last past So far from any Increase that on the contrary they have from Generation to Generation apparently dwindled less and less till they are now scarce a handful in consideration of all England And if Popery and Jesuitisme with all their Learning and Insinuations under such Royal Indulgence have made such feeble progress in the Conversion of England that they have dayly lost ground not gain'd it shall the yet larger Indulgence of a popish Successour with the permission of their popish Prâ—ests barefaced the multiplying of their Numbers or the Influence of Regis ad Exemplum do the Work The quite contrary For suppose the popish Priests a hundred times more numerous and a hundred times bolder than now yet as the popish Seducers are increased so likewise under the dismal Apprehension of a visible popish Successour the popular Aversion will so much more increase too and thereby become the more impregnable whil'st the Vniversality of their Fear and Hate will make them so much the more Fortifyed against the utmost Assault Besides if the Jesuites have made so little Advances of Popery formerly in England that granting it true that 's said of them they have been put to the poor shifts of herding with Fanaticks and disguising into Conventicle Preachers what Encouragements Oh wonderful are they like to meet when they throw off the Vizor and walk by day in the open Propagation of a Religion so universally loathed that it wants the subtlest of Artifices and Disguises to obtrude even the least Tenet of it into the World at least our Part of the World But surely nothing in nature can be a more ridiculous Supposition at this time of day as that the Example or Favour of a King in Case of Popery shall contribute towards the People's Embracing it when undeniable Experience tells us that the very Aspersion of but popishly affected has lost our Kings so many Hearts nay One of Them with horrour be it spoken his very Crown and Head By consequence how many more Hearts shall Popery in earnest loose a true Popish King and what little hope of gaining Proselites or Friends to a real Romanist when the meer Imagination has rays'd such contagious Desertions and Enmity even to the best of Protestant Crown'd Heads And therefore how wretched a piece of Sophistry must that be that Imposes on the unreasoning World so impudent a piece of Falshood Viz. That Popery and a Popish Successour will find such favourable Stars in England when on the contrary the bare Notion of Popery and popish Councils have been attended with such Fatality However to answer a little nearer yet to the Danger of Popery's coming in through the Remissness and Neglect of executing the Laws against it and the Indulgence and Incouragement of the Prince to promote it I have only this Request to make to thee thou poor frighted half-witted Creature that fearest all this Danger for nothing of sense can fear it to lay thy hand upon thy Heart and answer me this Question Amongst those Proselites that the aforesaid Toleration and Encouragement of the popish Successour and the Witchcraft of the Pope and Jesuits are like to make Art thou thy self one of the number that is in that danger of turning Papist Now to answer for thee in thy own Dialect No! God forbid thou l't say what shall I turn to a Religion that has nothing in it but Superstition and Idolatry a Religion worse than Paganisme and Judaisme a Religion that consecrates Daggers and canonizes Murderers that makes nothing but stabbing of Kings Massacring whole Nations the only meritorious Act of Christianity and do you think that either the Insinuations of Priests or the Flattery of Kings themselves or any Earthly Reward shall make me turn such an Apostate from Truth as to damne my Soul and renounce my God no I have more Assurance in his good Grace than to imagine he 'll abandon me to such a Thought no no my Fear is not for my self But alas though I shall never turn Papist too many others will and when these Iesuites Priests and Villains have perverted the greatest part of the Nation to their Idolatry and thereby come to be able to set up the Romish Religion with all the old Fire and Faggots that belongs to it then shall such honest Protestants as my self be burnt at a Stake for not turning Devil too for Company with them And what a miserable Condition will the poor Protestants be in in that dreadful day Why thou fool canst thou thus make this confident Resolute Answer for thy self and art thou so secure for thy own part and only suspectest the Danger of a popish Conversion from the weakness of thy Neighbour If that be all trouble not thy self nor distract thy little Brains for nothing but for thy Comfort examine thy Neighbours Hearts as thou hast done thy own and of ever hundred amongst them thou wilt find almost every where at least ninety nine of them that have the same dreadful Opinion of Popery as thou hast and as utter an Abomination of it as thy self with the same Confident Assurance of themselves too nay and that have only thy very Reasons of fearing it How ridiculous therefore must thy Fear be when if thou art secure they are so too And if so where then are the Infinite Numbers of those Weak Brothers that the Pope's Emissaries shall subdue and that Majority of a perverted Nation that shall Establish and set up this Nebuchadnezar's Image and doom thee to Fiery Furnaces for not kneeling with them to Worship it If the Dint of Perswasion and Indulgence then be all the Introduction of Popery and this the highest Flight of a popish Successour as indeed it is all our Dangers are quite vanisht and the more the Nation abhors Popery the less Cause it has to fear it whil'st the Universality of the Detestation is the certain Security of keeping it out and none but Fools or Madmen can be frighted by the Apprehensions of it that way For the Blacker the Feind the less power he has over us and they that are above Temptation need not fear the Devil himself But beyond all these various Pretences for Popery's coming in there 's one more general Argument almost in all Mouths which we find dayly urged and that bears no little sway in Vulgar Apprehensions Viz. Why is it impossible that Popery should come in again and that too by Law Establish't Experience plainly tells us that Henry the Eighth lay'd the Foundation of the Protestant Religion nay and by a popish Parliament too For by a Romish Parliament was the Pope's Supremacy destroyed by a Romish Parliament the Monastery's and Abbey-Lands confiscated and that very Monarch after the Continuation of Popery by a Reign of more than half a thousand years in the very Infancy too of the Protestant Religion when possibly the Protestants then in England were a less handful than are the Papists in England