and Principles Religionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is Irreligionary and against Nature The words of exterminating and recalling are often used by Cicero as signifying the contrary and when Mr. Coleman's Letters shewed such an imperious design in him for the Revocation of Popery that had been driven away and banished or exterminated hence by so many Acts of Parliament and even for the Extermination of Heresie out of the North as occasioned such apprehensions in the Government of what was intended by other innocent and modest Papists that made the gentlest of Princes in a Speech in the Oxford Parliament say and if it be practicable the ridding our selves quite of all of that Party that have any considerable Authority c. none need wonder at the past warmth of Subjects expressed against the Recalling of the Exterminated Papal Power nor yet at the warmth of their Zeal against the Principles of the Iesuites propagating an Internal Power here when they had been exterminated from Rome it self and when the Lord Chancellors Speech to both Houses had mentioned the Proceedings against Protestants in Foreign Parts to look as if they were intended to make way for a general Extirpation They are poor Judges of things who think that Doctrines of Religion cannot be said to be exterminated out of Kingdoms and their Laws without the Banishment of the Persons professing them Who accounts not Protestancy sufficiently exterminated from being the State-Religion in Italy and yet Sandies his Europae speculum tells us That there were 40000 professed Protestants there Is not Iudaism sufficiently Exterminated from being the Religion at Rome tho thousands of professed Iews are there tolerated 'T is the publick approbation of Tenets or Doctrines and not any forbearance or indulgence to persons who prosess them that gives Doctrines a place within the Religion of a State for to make any State approve of a Doctrine contrary to what it hath Established is a Contradiction But the truth is the famous Nation of the Iews formerly Heavens peculiar People on Earth having not been more generally guilty of Idolatry during their prosperity than of Superstition during their Captivity and Oppression and Extermination from their Country hath taught the World this great truth that the readiest way to propagate Superstition and Error is by the Exterminium and Banishment of Persons Whatever Church any men call their Mother if the Magistrate finds them to own the Interest of their Country as their Mother and to honour their true Political Father they cannot wish their days more long in the Land than I shall do I remember under the Vsurpation there passed an Act of Parliament as 't was called for the banishment of that famous Boute-feu Iohn Lilburn and under the Penalty of the Vltimum supplicium and he shortly after returning to England and being tried in London where he was universally known and the only thing issuable before the Iurors being whether he was the same John Lilburn those good men and true thought him so much transubstantiated as to bring him in not guilty and when ever I find any Papist not only willing to change the Name Papist for Catholick but the thing Papistry for the Principles of the Church of Rome under its first good Bishops and before Popes beyond a Patriarchal Power aspired to be Universal Bishops and Universal Kings and that even a Iesuite instead of the Rule of Iesuita est omnis homo hath alter'd his Morals and Principles pursuant to the Pope's said Decree so far as truly to say Ego non sum ego I shall not intermeddle in awakening Penal Laws to touch either his life or liberty Nor can any Presbyterians with justice reflect on the Zeal of any for the Continuance of the Laws for the Extermination of Presbytery when they shall reflect on the Royal Family having been by their means as is set forth in this Discourse exterminated out of the Realm into Foreign Popish Countries and of which they might easily have seen the ill effects if their understandings had not been very scandalously dull But there is another happy Extermination that I have in this Discourse from Natural Causes predicted to my Country and that is of the fears and jealousies that have been so prevalent during our late fermentation concerning which the Reader will shortly find himself referred to in many Pages in this Discourse and to have directed him to all of that Nature would have made the Index a Book I have in this Discourse designing to eradicate the fears of Popery out of the Minds of timid Protestants by the most rational perswasions I could shewed somewhat of Complaisance in sometimes humouring their Suppositions of things never likely to come to pass I have accorded with them in the possibility of the Event of Arch-Bishop Vsher's Famous Prophecy tho I account the same as remote from likelihood as any one could with it and do believe that if that Great and Learned Man could have foreseen the mischief that Prophecy hath occasioned by making so many of the Kings good Subjects disquieted thereby and which by at once Chilling their Hearts and heating their Heads hath rendered them less qualified for a chearful and steady discharge of their respective Duties he would have consulted privately with many other Learned and Pious Divines about the intrinsick weight of the matter revealed to him before he had exposed it to the World for that in the days when God spake by the Prophets yet even then the Spirits of the Prophets were always subject to the Prophets and there is no Fire in the World so bad a Master as the Fire of Prophecy It is observable that there hath scarce since this Prophecy been a Conjuncture of time wherein men uneasie to themselves would make the Government so but this Prophecy hath been reprinted in it and cryed about and few Enthusiasts but are as perfect in it as a Sea-man in his Compass The substance of it was to foretel Persecution that should happen in England from the Papists in the way of a sudden Massacre and that the Pope should be the Contriver of it and that if the King were restored it might be a little longer deferred A person less learned than that Great Prelate could easily give an Account of the past Out-rages of Massacres that have been perpetrated by Papists and of the tendency of the Iesuites Principles to the very legitimating of Future ones but the most Pious and Learned Man in the World ought with the greatest Caution imaginable to pretend to Divine Revelation of Future Contingencies in a matter both so unlikely and so odious as this and which might probably occasion so much Odium to so many innocent Papists and so much needless trouble to so many timid Protestants That Pious and Great Prelate did not I believe foresee that at the time when his Prophecy should dart its most fearful influence St. Peter's Chair would be filled
heard your Lordship reproacht for having any interest contrary to that of your Country or indeed to the repose of Christendom And as in Nature we see all heavy bodies tend by their own Center to the Center of the Universe so have I still thought that your Lordship alwaies endeavoured by the pursuing your own good to pursue that of the Kingdom and that your endeavours of promoting the good of your own Country have tended to the good of the World And that in every Scheme of your Politicks whether Civil or Ecclesiastical pollicy you have took your Model from the Great Architect of Nature doing things fortiter and suaviter and with regard to his works of which 't is said in the 8 th of Wisdom Mightily and Sweetly doth she order all things And he that builds so is a Workman that need not be ashamed either of himself or of his work that is both strong and fair such a Councellor need not be aâ—hamed of his Councel 'T is one of the worst sort of Reproaches to which a Councellor at Law can be exposed to be called a crafty Counsel that is one who secretly gives advice for the perverting of Justice and the law and to do that vile thing is more odious in a Counsellor of State And of this subject when I formerly discoursed to your Lordship I remember you were pleased to say it of your self to me That you had a great aversion from giving whispering Councel to your Royal Master and that it hath been your humble motion to him to command his Councel to give him their advice in writing Your Lordship is by one particular accident a necessary subject for the Worlds compassion namely by your having out-lived most of the eye witnesses of the many memorable things you have done for the World. If the people of England your Contemporaries were six Millions at the time of your birth five of those Millions are now lodged in graves persons above the Age of Sixty making but a sixth part of Mankind I reading lately in Tully de Senectute was pleased with what he saith of old men both de facto de jure praising themselves he saith there videtisne ut apud Homerum saepissimè Nestor de virtutibns suis praedicet Tertiam enim jam aetatem hominum vixerat he had lived almost 300 years when he went with the other Grecians to the Trojan War and where he gave such weighty advice that Agamemnon said he should make quick work of the taking of Troy if he had ten such Councellors as Nestor was Quod si acciderit non dubitat quin brevi Troja sit peritura He never wish'd saith Tully to have ten Ajaxes It seems the General thought that an old Commander would be weighed down with a tenth part of an old wise Councellor But Nestor had bury'd all those thrice over who were born with him and he lived to see his Country-men doubled once and a half 200 years being the space judged for a Nations doubling and if he would have his Atchievments in his first Century Celebrated and witnessed he must be his own Herald and witness in his own cause I will not apply Nestors case to your Lordships as to your doing right to your self by praise for you have no more occasion to do that then Tully had who saith there Nihil necesse est mihi de meipso dicere quanquam est id quidem senile aetatique nostrae Conceditur But do think that any Protestant Prince who can say he hath ten such Councellors and resembling your Lordship in the experience of near fifty years spent in the affairs of State in critical times and with success and equal to you in all â—orts of Learning and in the knowledge of the Law and publick Records and in Eloquence and Courage as well as in the hatred of Popery he may add Quòd non dubitat quin brevi Roma sit peritura i. e. without such dilatory Troy Sieges as have been formerly laid to it He saith elsewhere Apex senectutis est autoritas Quanta fuit in L. Caecilio Metelio quanta in Attilio Calatino in quem illud elogium unicum Vno ore plurimae consentiunt Gentes populi primarium fuisse virum And this Authority or Reverence of old age is so weighty that it seems reasonable that in the criminating one that hath this badge of Nature there should be what Tully calls authoritas testimonii and any single witness had need to have an allowance se primarium fuisse virum that would convict such a man for diamonds are not to be cut but with the dust of diamonds 'T is not for nothing that the Scripture cautions the not receiving an accusation against an Elder but by two or three witnesses and I am told that the Canon-Law requires seventy two Witnesses to convict a Cardinal who is a Bishop accused of any crime but heresie and forty four in the conviction of a Cardinal Presbyter and twenty six to convict a Cardinal Deacon and seven to convict any Clerk. And therefore I think that it was a commendable tenderness and worthy of English Judges in a Trial at the Kings-Bench to acquaint the Jury that they are to weigh and consider the credibility of witnesses pardon'd for perjury and both the Judges of the Kings-Bench and Common-Pleas resolved it That the credit of such a person was left to the breast of a Jury The Bishop of Rome who claims that Monarchiall power which is potestas restituendi in integrum Sententiam passos quandoque absolvendi paenam non infamiam quandoque poenam infaniam abolendi and who as Aquinas saith 2. 2 ae q. 68. ar 4. potest infamiam Ecclesiasticam remittere yet allows the School-men to apply distinctions to that priviledge of his and to interpret it of infamia Iuris not Facti for labem illam quae turpi facto annexa est nemo delere potest as Soto concludes De Iustit Iure l. 5. q. 5. ar 4. No man who ever he be can wash out that stain of infamy which by Nature is inherent in a foul wicked Act because saith he ad praeteritum non est potentia when the infamy is inherent by the Nature of the fact and not positive by Law. But still our merciful Laws of England allow a person after a pardon for the infamy of perjury to be a witness reserving his credibility to the Jury and who may after the former crime obtain to be belived by them when they shall have found that he hath acquired an habit of virtue by the series of many actions in his following Life no man being supposed able in a desultory way to leap out of a rooted habit of Vice into an heroical habit of Vertue and so è contra for that nature doth not pass from one extreme to another but per medium 'T is true indeed in case of Treason where the life of both the King and Kingdom is struck at and
out of the Temple with as much ease almost as our Saviour did the Iewish Any one who shall consider the burden of Oblations that the devouteâ— Roman Catholicks in England lye under as to their Priests which we may suppose to be very heavy according to Mr. Iohn Gees account in his Book called The foot out of the Snare p. 76 where he saith That the Popish Pastors ordinarily had a fifth of the Estates of the Laity allowed them and that he knew that in a great shire in England there was not a Papist of 40 l. per annum but did at his own charge keep a Priest in his house some poor neighbours perhaps contributing some small matter toward it may well think our Laity will bid as high for English Prayers and for Wares they understand and see and weigh as the Popish Laity doth for Latine ones and Merchandize they are not allowed to examine and he who considers that the Priests of that Religion though thus pamper'd with Oblations yet knowing them burthensom to the Laity do feed themselves and them with hopes of the Restitution of Tithes to holy Church and even of that sort of Tithes alien'd from it in the times of Popery may reasonably conclude that our Divines whenever forced to fly to the asylum of Oblations will be restless in being both Heaven's and Earth's Remembrancers of their claim of Tithes appropriated to the Protestant Religion by the Laws in being and that a violent Religion and illegal Gospel will be but a Temporary barr against the collecting of Tithes from a Land only during an Earth-quake I shall here acquaint your Lordship with a passage in the late times relating to the Clerical Revenue in England worthy not only your knowledge but posterities and that is this A Person of great understanding and of great regard of the truth of the matters of fact he affirmed and one who made a great figure in the Law then and in the Long Parliament from the beginning to the end of it related to me occasionally in discourse That himself and some few others after the War was begun between the King and Parliament were employed by the Governing party of that Parliament to negotiate with some few of the most eminent Presbyterian Divines and such whose Counsels ruled the rest of that Clergy and to assure them that the Parliament had resolved if they should succeed in that War to settle all the Lands Issues and Profits belonging to the Bishops and other dignitaries upon the Ministry in England as a perpetual and unalienable maintenance and to tell them that the Parliament on that encouragement expected that they should incline the Clergy of their perswasion by their Preaching and all ways within the Sphere of their Calling to promote the Parliaments Cause and that thereupon those Divines accordingly undertook to do so And that after the end of the War he being minded by some of those Divines of the effect of the Parliaments promise by him notified did shortly after signifie to them the answer of that party who had employed him in that Negotiation to this effect viz. That the Parliament formerly did fully intend to do what he had signified to them as aforesaid and that the publick debts occasion'd by the War disabled them from setling the Bishops Lands on the Church But that however he was authorized at that time to 〈◊〉 them that if it would satisfie them to have the Deans and Chapters Lands so settled that would be done And that then those Divines in anger reply'd They would have setled on the Ministry all or none representing it as Sacrilege to divert the Revenues of the Bishops to Secular uses and that thereupon they missed both the Deans and Chapters Lands being sold. Those Divines it seems had a presension that the prosperous Condition of their Church would diminish the Charity of Oblations and therefore did not impoliticly try to provide for the duration of their Model by dividing both the Bishops Power and Lâ—nds among their Clergy And no doubt but in the way of a fac simile after this Presbyterian Copy the Popish Priests will in concert with the Pope even under a Popish Successor as well as now combine to lessen the King's power and advance the Pope's on promises from the Holy See that they shall have the Church Lands restored to them And I doubt not but a Popish Successor will support a Popish Clergy with what maintenance he can having a reference to the Law of the Land and likewise to the Law of Nature that binds him first to support himself and perhaps by keeping vacant Bishopricks long so a thing that by Law he may do he may have their Temporal ties to bestow on whom he shall please and perhaps by issuing out new Commissions about the valuation of the Clerical Revenue a larger share of First-fruits and Tenths legally accruing to him may enable him to gratifie such Ecclesiasticks as he shall favour But as I likewise doubt not that ever any accident of time will leave the disposal of such a great proportion of the Church Revenue at his Arbitrage as the Usurpers had at theirs so neither do I of his affairs ever permitting him to allow so large a share of that Revenue to his Clergy as the Usurpers did to theirs whom as those Powers durst not wholly disoblige and therefore unask'd settled on them toward the augmentation of their Livings the Impropriate Tithes belonging to the Crown and to the Bishops and Deans and Chapters though yet nothing of their Terra firma so neither durst those Presbyterian Divines who followed them for the Loaves and who once in a sullen humour resolved not to have half a Loaf rather then no Bread reject the Impropriate Tithes given them because they saw a new Race of Divines called Independent ready to take from those Powers what they would give and who were prepared by their Religion to support the State-government and some of whom had already acquired Church-Livings and others of whom in the great Controversie among all those Parties which was not generalrally so much de fide propagandâ as de pane lucrando would with the favour of the times easily have then worsted the Presbyterian Clergy in the scramble for that thing aforesaid that though Moreau in his learned Notes on Schola Salerni saith no Book was ever writ of yet I think few have been writ but for namely Bread. But herein on the whole matter the Vsurpers Policy was so successful as that ordering the great Revenues of the Church as they did and Appropriating the Bishops and Deans and Chapters Lands to the use of the State they by the augmentations arising from the Fond of the Impropriate Tithes to their Clergy and especially to those of them they planted in great Towns and Cities ty'd them to their Authority as I may say by the Teeth and kept them from barking against it or biting them which else they would have
ten times as many Females as in London that one half of this proportion of the London Crape-wearers may wear Crape in the Country viz. half a Million in all It may be supposed therefore that the Crape-wearers one with another wearing ten yards a piece that five Millions of Yards of Crape may be yearly worn in England and Wales and that one pound of Wooll making fifteen yards of Crape will occasion the Consumption of a third part of a Million of Pounds weight of Wooll per Annum viz. 333000 and 333 pounds weight of Wooll which accounting fine Wooll such as makes Crape to be worth one Shilling per Pound amounts to 16000 l. Sterling The labour of the People in Manufacturing the same amounts to about thirty times as much as the Wooll viz. half a Million of Pounds Sterling and this yearly gain England cannot miss of while the Women of the Court continue the fashion of wearing Crape whom the Women of the City and Country will imitate in their garb If any shall think that the allowance of 10 yards to be yearly worn by each Female Crape-wearer may seem too much he may consider that some Crape used by men about their Apparel and the great quantity thereof employed in shrouding the Dead pursuant to the late Act and which but for the invention and use of the Manufacture of Crape perhaps would not have been effectually put in Execution may probably incline him to be of an opinion that England gains more vastly by this new Manufacture of Crape then I have supposed The ridiculing humour of so many in the Age may perhaps move them to think observations of this kind to be unimportant But if any shall take a Prospect of the substantial and great wisdom of our Ancestors in our Statute-Book he may find there 11 Acts of Parliament about Thrums and Yarn and many about Fustians and 26 about Worsted and Worsted-Weavers and another Statute of Pouledavis but there is that of moment in my Account relating to England's Gain from Crape that after 145 Statutes made to advance our Wooll and Drapery and Dyers and our Woollen Manufactures so much decayed in spight of them all this seeming poor little thing hath without any Act of Parliament enriched us And many are the Foundations of Manufactures laid in our Country Cities and daily growing since the time that Dr. Williams Arch-Bishop of York in his Speech in the Parliament of 1640. in defence of the Bishops Votes observed that Tapsters Brewers Inn-keepers Taylors and Shoo-makers do integrate and make up the body of our Country Cities and Incorporations And tho the Northern Heretics are crasso sub aere nati yet have they as was said compensative Advantages from nature and as if nature meant them more then others for Lords of the Sea and Navigation the Pole of the Magnet which seateth it self North hath been observed to be always the most vigorous and strong Pole to all intents and purposes and the Magnetical Virtue impressed on the Earth is there more strong likewise I mean on the Church Land seized on from the Papal Idlers and Burthens of that Earth to support the necessary defence of the State and therefore will necessarily attract mens Iron and their understandings with Justice to keep it Dr. Heylin in his Geography in Folio tells us that 't is not so much the Authority of Calvin or the Malignant Zeal of Beza or the impetuous Clamors of their Disciples which made the Episcopal Order to grow out of Credit as the Avarice of some great Persons in Court and State who greedily gaped after the poor Remnant of their Possessions But tho nothing like an over-Balance of the Clergy in the wealth of the Kingdom ought to have sunk that Order and its Revenue in England where perhaps ten times as much is spent either on the Law or on Physick as is on the Clergy it need not be wondered at that in those Countries of the North where they are continually standing to their Arms at least of defence and Calculating their Provision for War that the Lutheran Princes as Heylin saith have divided the Episcopal Function from its Revenue assuming to themselves much of the latter and sometime giving part thereof to their Nobility with the Title of Administrators of such a Bishoprick and of super-intendent to those who have there the Pastoral Solicitude and with some proportion of the Revenue for their maintenance not much exceeding what is usually received by Calvinist Ministers And if my Lord Primate Bramhal may pass for a good Casuistical Judge of the Law of God who in p. 39. of his just Vindication of the Church of England speaking of an excessive Revenue of the Clergy and their over-balancing the Layety saith And if the excess be so exorbitant that it is absolutely and evidently destructive to the Constitution of the Common-wealth it is lawful upon some Conditions and Cautions not necessary to be here inserted to prune the superfluous Branches and to reduce them to a right temper and aequilibrium for the preservation and well being of the whole Body Politick and if any Credit ought to be given to the Account of Cardinal Pool shewed to me within these few hours relating to the over-Balance of the old Ecclesiastick Revenue here after he had used all his own diligence and that of others to prepare a Calculation of the same for the Pope and had sent 3 Reams of Paper of this to the Pope that are now in his Archives and had acquainted the Pope therein That it was visible that had not the Church here fallen into the Shipwrack of its Revenues the Ecclesiasticks had here in a short time insensibly rendred themselves Lords of the whole Kingdom and that there were more Colleges and Hospitals in England than in France which exceeds England by two thirds both in Lands and Numbers of People we may very well conclude that had any accidental force in Queen Mary's time renversed the alienation of the Church Lands that force would not have long continued and should any as wild Imaginers may suppose happen for the future here or perhaps in other Kingdoms of the North those Lands would soon appear to all to have such a Magnetical Vertue as is in the Globe of the Earth whereby as to its natural points it disposeth it self to the Poles being so framed and ordered to those points that those parts which are now at the Poles would not naturally abide under the Aequator nor Green-land remain in the place of Magellanica and thus it may be said that if the whole Earth were violently removed it would not forsake its Primitive Points nor pitch in the East or West but very soon return to its Polary position again and resemblingly in any new forced over-balance of those Church Lands the very dull Earth's Animus revertendi to the just libration of States and Kingdoms would soon be apparent and neither the Popes moving the Earth or even
Hereditary Monarchs He knew that a Popish Parliament in England had shewed their Abhorrence of the Pope's being somewhat like an Excluder-General of Kings and an Arbitrary one too as appeared by the Words in the Statute of 25 H. 8. viz. The Pope contrary to the inviolable Grants of Iurisdictions by God immediately to Emperors and Kings hath presumed to invest who should please him to inherit in other mens Kingdoms and Dominions which we your Loyal Subjects Spiritual and Temporal abhor and detest and the practices at Rome for King Iames's Exclusion had made deep impressions in his thoughts As he was a Prince of great Reading he could not but know particularly the many Anti-Monarchical Tenets that were published by many Popish Commentators positive Writers School-men Canonists and never censured by any Index Expurgatorius tho yet several Popish Authors who asserted the Power of Kings were so censured and particularly Bodin de Republicâ and he could not be ignorant of Popes having required several Crowned Heads to swear Fidelity to them and their Successors and that particularly the Pope sent Hubertus to require William the Conqueror â—o swear Allegiance and Fidelity to Him and his Successors and who magnanimously refused so to do and that the Papacy endeavoured to root its Power in the World by obliging men in their Oaths of Fidelity to any particular Pope to swear the same likewise to his Successors according to the common Style in those Oaths viz. Fidelis obediens ero Domino Papae c. suis successoribus and that thus too the Oath of all Popish Bishops at their Consecration runs and that the Great Austrian Family had not more carefully secured to it self the Scepters of the Empire by the Constitution of a King of the Romans than the Papacy had made Provision of that King 's being sworn that he would from that time be a Protector and Defender of the Pope and Church of Rome according to those words in the Oath as I find it set down in Magerus viz. Ego N. Rex Romanorum FVTVRVS Imperator promitto spondeo polliceor atque juro Deo leato Petro me de caetero protectorem atque desensorem fore summi Pontisicis sanctae Ecclesiae Romanae c. He had moreover considered the great Fermentation in the minds of so many Loyal People in England by Queen Elizabeth's being so reserved as She was in the business of the Succession and which as Dr. Matthew Hulton Arch-Bishop of York mentioned in a memorable Sermon he preached before her at White-Hall Gave hopes to Foreigners to attempt fresh Invasions and bred fears in many of her Subjects of a new Conquest and who thereupon very loyally said then The only way in Policy left to quell those hopes and asswage those fears were to Establish the Succession and at last intimating as far as he durst saith my Author the nearness of Blood of our present Sovereign he said plainly That the expectations and presages of all Writers went Northward naming without any Circumlocution Scotland There is an Abstract of this Loyal and Learned Sermon and which throughout pointed at the Succession in the History of some of the Bishops of England in the time of Queen Elizabeth printed in the Year 1653 and the fate of the Sermon was such that tho perhaps it tickled not the Ears of that Queen it so far touched her Conscience that the Historian saith She opened the Window of her Closet and gave the Arch-Bishop thanks for it No doubt but Parsons saying in his Book of the Succession That he thought the Affair about it could not be ended without some War did much heighten the Popular Fears of War happening thereupon and 't is most probable the long fear of War in that Fermentation did variously weaken the Kingdom Nor is it a new thought for the long fears of War to be held to bear some proportion to the mischief of War it self in obstructing Trade and Commerce insomuch that several Writers of the Regalia and fiscal matters among the Tractatus Illustrium have told us That Quando timor belli idem operatur quod ipsum bellum remissio sit conductoribus i. e. of the Revenue and hath Entituled them to defalcations We may imagine by the just effects of our late Fermentation what the state of the Body Politick was in that namely like the state of long tormenting anguish in the Body natural upon the pricking of an Artery and importing often more trouble and danger than the cutting of one And by the great triumphant Flame of joy appearing in the Act of Recognition in King Iames's time and which appears in our Statute-Book as I may say lâ—ke a Pyramid of the Fire of Zealous Loyalty and greater and higher than any former Act of that nature we may judge how overjoyed all the Loyal People of England were on his coming to the Crown and as Pliny in his Panegyrick saith of Nerva's adopting Trajan It was impossible it should have pleased all when it was done except it had pleased all before it was done the same might be applied to the Case of King Iames's Succession to the Crown The very Title of the Act speaks the Triumph of the Hereditary Monarchy viz. A Recognition that the Crown of England is lawfully descended to King James his Progeny and Posterity There was an end of all the dreadful inconveniences of the uncertainty of the Succession and of the fears of the People of what was worse than being torn in pieces by wild Hâ—rses I mean the rending their Consciences by contrary Oaths about the Succession as in Harry the 8th's time There was an end of the â—ears from the growing greatness of France and fears of any Foreign Fremuerunt gentes England was restored to it self and Scotland added to it and tho Boccaline like an airy Iâ—genioso in his Politick Touchstone makes England weigh less on the throwing Scotland into the Scales any one will find that in him but grave Romancery who shall consider what with Oracular Wisdom another-guess Statos-man than Boccaline told Harry the 4th I mean D'Ossat in his long Letter to him from Rome Book 7th and Anno 1601. where he saith That the Pope desisted not to hope that his Maiesty might be perswaded by reason of State to endeavour that the Kingdoms of England and Scotland may not be joyned in the Person of one King considering the great mischiefs that the English alone have done to the French more than all other Nations put together c. And indeed that England is at this day preserved not only from the danger of being overbalanced by France but from the loss of its ancient figure of balancing the World must highly be attributed to the Hereditary Monarchy being fixt in the Line of King Iames and to Scotland being thrown into the Scales as was said and if any one shall tell me by the way that the weight of Scotland was prejudicial to Loyalty in
more and more And it was natural for our Divines in this Conjuncture thus to do when so many factious counterfeit Protestants were by their outcries making Papists of them and publishing infamous Pamphlets that expressly shook the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and of the Church by Law Established and with an intent to shake the same in that time when the Exclusion was designed and as appeared particularly by the reprinting for that purpose the Pamphlet of the Rights of the Kingdom and in which the Author did endeavour to prove the Peoples Right to choose their Bishops The Clergy therefore seeing such Nominal Protestants by that real part of Popery of founding Dominion in Grace thus bent on the ruine of Church and State were concerned to bend all their forces of reason in permonishing People of their danger from that part of Popery Thus as when a Light-house is set up to warn Navigators of a Bank of Sand if yet by the force of the Sea and Wind such Bank happens to be removed the Light-house must be removed likewise the same thing was accordingly done by the Justice and Prudence of our Divines giving us a notification of the Sands of Popery having shifted their place The late Experience that our Church had of its usage under the Great Vsurper and of his putting it out of his Protection as knowing the born and sworn Allegiance of its Church-men and likewise its Doctrine must necessarily make them true Adherents to the King's Heirs and Successors hath necessarily taught them that they cannot externally flourish under any Vsurper whatsoever They know that the Oath that Cromwel's Parliament Enacted to be taken by him was a Canting Oath and to which he was sworn to the uttermost of his Power to uphold and maintain the true reformed Protestant Christian Religion in the Purity thereof as it is contained in the Holy Scriptures of the old and new Testament to the uttermost of his Power and his understanding The Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England was not to expect to be upheld and maintained by him nor can it be upheld or maintained by any Vsurper Dr. Gibbon the Author of the Theological SCHEME averred to me that Mr. Nye and he attending a Committee of Parliament in the times of the Vsurpation that Mr. Nye being desired by the Committee to give them a definition or description of a Minister of the Gospel then answered A Minister of the Gospel is one sent forth by the State to preach the Gospel receiving protection from them and maintenance under them and all others restrained and we know that he and others then treated the Church of England in words and things like an Ecclesia maligrantium and how they were then RESTRAINED ab Officio c. and just as the Faction and Schism of many Nominal Protestants began about 41 to call our Divines Names as I have observed so lately the Popish Plot was made the Vehicle of the Poyson of some Mens Calumny and neither Machiavel nor Iesuit did ever more sledfastly practise the Divide Impera than such men in that Conjuncture did that by weakening us with our Divisions they might at once destroy the Lineal Succession of our Hereditary Monarchs in the Realm and the Succession of Bishops in the Church and our Kings in their Coronation Oaths swearing to keep Peace and Agreement to the Holy Church the Clergy and People Factious and Schismatical Persons having broke their own Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy may be said to have endeavoured to break the King's Oath according to the old known form of the Indictment of some of our Iudges for Bribery in which it was said that our Kings being bound by their Oath to do Iustice to their People such Judges did Violare Sacramentum Domini Regis It hath pleased God by the fierce Zeal of several Non-Conformists for the Exclusion to open the Eyes of many Conscientious and Loyal People among them and to bring them thereby to the Bosom of the Holy Church of England for they seeing such Doubts and Objections as some had raised against the Obligations of our Oaths to be but Scruples and that considerate serious and devout Persons of the Church of England had soon thrown the Scruples away were naturally thereby induced to throw off other Scruples and it was likewise but natural to them to think that their very Doubts and Objections for their having separated from the Church of England were but Scruples And as to doubts tho the Rule is Quod dubitas ne feceris yet not only Sanderson but Ames hath told us that Scruples are not to be regarded for Ames in his Cases of Conscience l. 1. c. 16. viz. Of a scrupulous Conscience having said That a Scruple is a fear of the Mind about what one is to do which vexeth the Conscience as a little Stone in ones shooe troubles the foot he wisely concludes That Multi scrupuli cum non possint commodè tolli contrariâ ratione deponi debent quasi violentiâ quadam dum excluduntur ab omni consultatione and that Scrupulus est formido temeraria sine fundamento atque adeo non potest obligare He there mentions A man being said to be scrupulous in discussing his past Actions or in ordering his futuâ—e ones and I am confident that many of the Loyal late Non-Conformists when they consider their past Actings will now accord to say that many of the clamorous pretences they were tempted to urge for Liberty of Conscience ought to have been as Ames's words are laid aside with violence and I do likewise believe that many of the Pious Members of the Church of England who while the Formido temeraria and sine fundamento carried them to incline to think it lawful to shake the Foundation of the Hereditary Monarchy and the super-structures of their Oaths by new interpretations do with a pious horror think of the poor Vapours pent in their Imaginations that made such Temporary Earthquakes in their Moral Offices of Loyalty and might have made perpetual ones in the Kingdom And that because some of our English Princes long ago whose Titles were cloudy did de facto make use of the Legislative Power to render them clear to the People for any to think that therefore the Monarchy was not then de jure and jure Câ—ronae Hereditary and that therefore after the Liquid Oath of Allegiance made to statuminate the most clear Title of a Crown that can be supposed it could since be lawful for any Parliamentary Power to disturb the Succession and dispense with our Oaths can appear to the Considerate to be nothing but a Scruple unworthy their thoughts And moreover because some of our Princes heretofore desired their Parliaments to intermeddle in setling the Succession for any therefore after the Oaths to think it might be lawful to disturb their Prince with renewed importunities again and again to alter the Course of the Descent after his various Declarations
of the House of Commons on the 20 th of October 1680. and printed by Order of that House and in which Affidavit and Information he was Charged with Endeavours to stifle some Evidence of the Popish Plot and to promote the belief of a Presbyterian one and with encouraging Dugdale to recant what he had sworn and promising to harbour him in his House and that his Lordships Priest should there be his Companion and likewise watch him his Lordship being thereupon desirous that right should be done him by a printed Vindication was pleased to Command my Pen therein and I was the less unwilling to disobey his Commands because in that Conjuncture wherein so many Loyal and Noble Persons were sufferes by the humour of Accusation then regnant I held it a Patriotly thing to withstand its Arbitrariness Sir W. P. in an Excellent Manuscript of his called The Political Anatomy of Ireland hath one Chapter there Of the Government of Ireland apparent or external and the Government internal and he describes the apparent Government there to be by the King and Three Estates and with the Conduct of Courts of Iustice but makes the internal Government there to depend much on the Potent Influence of the many Secular Priests and Fryars on the numerous Irish Roman Catholicks and on those Priests and Fryars being governed by their Bishops and Superiors and on the Ministers of Foreign States governing and directing such Superiors and thus while England was blest with the best external Government namely of Monarchy and with the best Monarch and a Loyal Nobility and Commons yet after the detection of a Popish Plot several Persons under the Notion of Witnesses about the same made so great a Figure in the Government and were so Enthroned in the Minds of the Populace that the Office of the King's Witnesses was as powerful as ever was that of the high Constable of England and the internal Government of the Kingdom was then very much as I may say a Martyrocracy and by that hard name the Noisy part of Protestants Endeavoured to gain Ground as much as ever any peaceable ones did by the old known Name of Martyrology But as all external Forms of Government have some peculiar defects as well as Conveniences so did this internal Government appear to have and those too so dreadful that the Air of Testimony having sometimes got into the wrong place was likely to have made Earth-Quakes in the external Government and as the Militia that after the Epoche of 41 was called the Parliaments Army did before the fatal time of 48 produce the Revolution of the Army's Parliament so were we endangered after the Plot-Epoche of 78 to have heard of the Office of the King's Witnesses changed into another namely of the Witnesses Kings And whoever shall write the English History of that part of time wherein that Martyrocracy was so powerful and domineering will if he shall think fit to give a denomination to that Interval of Time and to found the same on most of the Narratives he shall read or the Sham-Papers that many Papists and Protestants after the Plot Attaqued each other with be thought not absurd if he gives the old Style of Intervallum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 incertum or of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fabulosum It was in the time of the most Triumphant State of this Internal Government that I undertook to weigh its Empire as I have done in p. 33 34 35. discussing the points of Infamous Witnesses and their Infamy and of their Credibility after pardon of Perjury or Crimes and Infany incurred and a bolder man than my self would hardly have dared in that Conjuncture to have sifted their Prerogative and as I may say to have put hungry Wolves into Scales and to have taken the dimensions of the Paws of Lions or to have handled the stings of Serpents without expressing against some of the Romanists Principles he thought Irreligionary all the zeal he thought consistent with Charity and Candour to the Persons of Papists which is so much done in the Body of this Discourse and without the expressing of which my Vindicating a Noble Person from being a Papist had been an absurdity However I have been careful in any Moot-points of Witnesses not to disturb in the least the Measures of the External Government about them and out of the tender regard due to the safety of Monarchs from all Subjects have in p. 205 asserted the Obligation of doing every thing that is fairly to be done to support the Credits of Witnesses produced in the Case of Treason and have there given a particular reason for it and have in p. 36. with a Competent respect mentioned Dugdale on the occasion of the Shamm sworn against the Earl of Anglesy as if his Lordship had undertook to have unjustly patronized him and have shewed my self inclined enough to belief credible Witnesses by the Concurrence of my thoughts with the Iustice of the Nation in Godfrey's Case and the fate of which Person and the Casuistical Principles that allowed it I had perhaps not mentioned but out of a just indignation against the infamous Shamms about it spread by some ill Papists to the dishonour of that Excellent Lord the Earl of Danby But there was another consideration that induced me to write with such a Zeal as aforesaid against such Romanists Principles and their effects and but for which the following Discourse had not swollen to a large Volume I observed that since the late Fermentation in England such a Panique Fear of the Growth of Popery and the numbers of Papists had been by Knaves propagated among Fools that made the English Nation appear somewhat ridiculous abroad and that during its Course many considerable Protestants were so far mis-led as to think the State of the Nation could never be restored to it self but by disturbing the Succession of the Crown in its lawful Course of Descent and therefore resolving to do my utmost to free the Land from the Burthen of another guess Perjury by the general Violence done to our Oaths Promissory I mean to those of Allegiance and Supremacy then that of any Witnesses in their Oaths Assertory I thought fit at large to shew the Vanity of any Mens fearing that Popery can ever humanly speaking be the National Religion of England and to direct them that they may not by the imaginary danger of Popery to come run with all their swelling Sails on the Rock of it at present by founding Dominion in Grace and out-rage those Oaths that do at present bind us without reserve to pay Allegiance to the King's Heirs after his demise And for any one who being concerned to see so many of his Country-men lying as it were on the Ground and dejected with unaccountable fears of the extermination of their Religion and themselves and besmearing themselves with the dreadful guilt of their great Oaths was resolved to endeavour to help them up and by perswasion gently to lead them
Popery but some of their old stock Tho some Presbyterians have not hitherto learned that Modesty and Policy from the Papists as to leave off their unjust valuing themselves on their Numbers yet as I know not of any number of Gentlemen that would choose to live in any Parish in England under the severity of that Church Government and who would not rather desire to be exterminated from their Native Country than to live in it with Presbytery Paramount so neither do I believe that Presbytery would be endured by many of our illiterate Mechanicks now more than heretofore if they were taught its rigour And tho likewise another Sect of Dissenters more Gentlemanly than that of the Presbyterians I mean the Independants do in the little Pamphlets they write trouble us much with proclaiming their Numbers and as if they were not only the sober but the major part of the Nation they are very ridiculous in trying to make themselves that way dreadful contrary to what is in Fact true I believe that the number of those who in the late times listed themselves in the particular gathered Churches and subjected themselves to their Laws and Contribution to their Pastorage was always inconsiderable and as an Argument of that 't is in this Discourse mentioned that the Pastors of the most Opulent of those Churches in London did most readily quit their Posts when they could obtain Head-ships of Colleges and that in a Conjuncture when Independancy was in a manner the form of Church Government owned by the State. These Churches were always very few in the Country and are now fewer and scarce visible unless we will call the Bands of Quakers by the name of Churches and a name I do not hear they think fit to use I am of opinion that under the Christian Religion so much â—uller of Mystery than the Pagan Iewish and Turkish its Divine Planter did necessarily make Christians loving one another the Characteristical Mark of their being such and under the noble freedom allowed by the Protestaâ—ts Religion to try all things and to trust no Religionary Tenets but what they have tryed a Heterodoxy as to some speculative supposed Tenets of the Church of England may among some inquisitive persons have long gained ground and still do so There was in London an Independant Church under Cromwel's Government and Mr. Biddell was their Pastor and among other Tenets denominable as those of Religion they owned these following viz. That the Fathers under the old Covenant had only Tempâ—ral Promises and That the Vniversal Obedience performed to the Commands of God and Christ was the saving Faith and That Christ rose again only by the Power of the Father and not his own and That justifying Faith is not the pure gift of God but may be acquired by mens natural Abilities and That Faith cannot believe any thing contrary to or above reason and That there is no Original Sin and That Christ hath not the same body now in glory in which he suffered and rose again and That the Saints shall not have the same body in Heaven that they had on Earth and That Christ was not Lord or King before his Resurrection or Priest before his Ascension and That the Sainâ—s shall not before the day of Iudgment enjoy the Bliss of Heaven and That God doth not certainly know Future Contingences and That there is not any Authority of Fathers or General Councils in determining Matters of Faith and That Christ before his death had not any Dominioâ— over the Angels and That Christ by dying made not satisfaction for us and 't is possible that such Religionary Tenets as these which are far from being de lanâ caprinâ and are contrary to the Articles of our Church may not be extirpated tho yet I believe there will never be any Fermentation in our Church or State produced here by them if in course of time any of them should happen to be the Sentiments of any of our Princes and much less that any Prince if so opining would consute others as Hereticks with Fire and Sword and as Calvin coâ—futed Servetus There was likewise in our Metropolis another Independant Church of which Mr. Iohn Goodwin was the Pastor and by which Church the Tenets of Arminiâ—s were received and which tho they have ceased to ferment the State yet the opinions of men equally pious and learned will in all likelihood be always different about the same and as to these Tenets the Questions are not such as are called Questiones Domitianae or of catching of Flies But there is a sort of Questions that is little better and that in our busie World will not usurp the time they have done and that is such as are of the Nature of that I have spoke of toward the Close of this Discourse that made the fermentation in a Church of Separatists that went hence to Amsterdam namely Whether Aron's Ephod were blew or Sea-green and tho I have asserted it That mens liberty of professing Religionary Tenets may be reckoned as a part of their Purchace by Christ's Blood yet methinks to make the Son of God leave the Bosom of his â—ather and take a Journey from Heaven to Earth to impress on it right Notions about the lawfulness of signing Children with the Cross or of mens kneeling at the Sacrament or standing at the Creed or bowing at the name of Iesus or of placing the Communion Table in the East or of wearing Surplices Tippets Lawn-sleeves or square Caps or of keeping of Holy-days or singing Psalms to Organs and to resolve the World in some plain points as namely Whether the Soveraign Power may not lawfully enjoyn the observance of the external Circumstances of Divine Worship which every man doth in his own Family or Whether it be not as lawful for the Sovereign Power to enjoyn kneeling at the Sacrament as 't is for private Persons to command their Flocks not to kneel and the resolving who doth most hurt by Christian Liberty either the Magistrate who commanding me to kneel telâ—s me the thing is in its own nature indifferent and that he doth not and cannot change the nature of things in themselves or my private Pastor who shall tell me That my not kneeling is necessary to salvation and the resolving the Question Whether I may lawfully â—oyn in a set form of Prayer with a Congregation when 't is plain that another man 's conceived or extempore Prayer is as much a form to me or to another as any printed Prayer can be or the resolving what Mr. Gataker in his Book of Lots calls a frivolous Question as made by some Separatists viz. What Warrant have you to use this or that Form of Prayer or to pray upon a Book and to which he answers That it is Warrant sufficient that we are enjoyned to use Prayer Confession of Sin and Supplication for Pardon c. No set Form thereof determined therefore any fit Form warrantable this Form that we
let men see how the Pastorage of the Church of England treats them like Gentlemen and may serve to awaken their Compassion for their deluded Country-men whom they see frâ—ghtened by their Teachers into a fancy of the unlawfulness of a Ceremony and yet embolden'd by them into the belief and practice of a Covenant without the King's Consent and from which Persons we should perhaps quickly receive Alarms of Persecution if the Government should impose any Covenant or Test on them in order to Loyalty tho never so necessary for the publick Peace But the World is aweary of the umbrage Sedition hath found among denominations of Churches and of judging of Trees by their Shadows or otherwise than by their Fruit that is by their Principles and for the happiness of the present State of England after we have by many Religion-Traders been troubled with almost as many Marks of true and false Churches as there are of Merchants Goods Nature seems to have directed the People to agree in this indeleble Character and Mark of a false Church namely one whose Principles are Disloyal The Genius of England is so bent upon Loyalty in this Conjuncture that a disloyal Principle doth jar in the Ears of ordinary thinking men like a false string in the Ears of a Critical Lutenist and the which he knows that Art or Nature can never tune and upon any Churches valuing themselves on the intrinsic worth or the weight of their Principles as most opposite to Falshood men generally now take into their hands the Touch-stone and the Scales of Loyalty and do presently suspect any Church that refuseth to bring its Principles to be touch'd and weigh'd and they will not now allow the Reputation of a visible Church to any body of Men whose Principles relating to Loyalty shall not first be made visible Nor can it be otherwise thought by the impartial than that Mens Consciousness of somewhat of the Turpitude of some of their Principles restrains them from bringing them to appear in publick View and according as Cicero in his de fin bon mal answers Epicurus who said that he would not publish his Opinion lest the people might perhaps take offence at it viz. Aut tu eadem ista dic in judicio aut si coronam times dic in senatu Nunquam facies Cur nisi quod turpis est Oratio I who thus urge the Reasonableness and Necessity of mens being Confessors of their Principles of Loyalty have frankly exposed one of mine own in p. 131. and which I say there that I account the great fundamental one for the quiet of the World as well as of a Man 's own Conscience viz. That no man is warranted by any Intention of advancing Religion to invade the right of the Sovereign Power that is inherent in Princes by the municipal Laws of their Countreys and I have mention'd the same in p. 136. as owned by the Non-conforming Divines in King Iames his time Tho I believe as firmly as any man that the Christian Religion doth plainly forbid the Resistance of Authority and that his Majesties Royal Power is immediately from God and no way depends on any previous Election or Approbation of the people yet since the Sons of the Church of England are sufficiently taught both that Doctrine and likewise that human Laws in the point of their Allegiance do bind the Conscience and since other men who err in Principles of Loyalty may sooner be brought to see the Absurdity of their Error by the known Laws of the Land than by Argumentations from Scripture which may admit of Controversy and since his Majesty hath been pleased to expect the Measures of our Obedience from the Laws and that our English Clergy while in the late Conjuncture they have so universally preach'd up Loyalty have so religiously accorded with the Measures of the Laws and have therein as I may say shewed themselves Apostolical Pastours and since the persons whose Complaints of the danger of Popery are most loud do joyn therewith their Exclamations against Arbitrary or Illegal Power and seem to joyn Issue in the point that they are willing that the Power that is by Law inherent in the Crown should be preserved to it I thought it most useful in the present Conjuncture to assert the Principle in these Terms I have done and I the rather chose to do it because I thought that the security of the Crown is by some Laws well provided for whose Obligation admits of no Doubt I mean those whereby Men have been obliged to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy But moreover as I consider'd it to be one great valuable Right inherent by Law in our Princes to secure the Continuance of the Succession in their Line so I likewise judged the legal Right of Princes to Succeed according to Proximity of Blood to be unalterable and therefore having my eye on the prevention of further Scandal to Protestancy from the Exclusion I introduced that Principle so worded as aforesaid that by dilating thereon as I have done I might bring the Reader the better prepared to my Casuistical Discussion of the Oaths The Reader will find at the end of this Discourse the Casuistical Discussion of the Obligation to the King's Heirs and Successors resulting from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy by me promised in p. 214 and the occasion of my writing which is likewise there mentioned It was wholly writ in the time that the Question of the Succession made the greatest noise among us and was then by me Communicated to several of my Friends in Terms as herewith printed without any thing since added or diminished and both it and the Discourse which contains so many things naturally Previous to the Consideration of that Question would have been long since published but partly for the various Accidents of Business and Sickness that necessarily interrupted me in the Writing of the latter And tho perhaps the Publication of the former in the time of the Sessions of our late Parliaments might have been more significant than after the Volly of Loyal Addresses shot of manifesting the general just zeal against the Exclusion of which Addresses I yet observed none to mention any thing of the Obligations to Allegiance to the King's Heirs and Successors from the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy it may be said that the subsequent Births of Fate have not restrained the possibility of its usefulness in future times and tho Heaven may be propitious to our Land in the blessing it according to the Loyal Style of the Addresses namely in his Majesties Line continuing on the English Throne as long as the Sun and Moon endure yet many and many may be the Conjunctures when a supposed Heterodox Prince shining like the Sun in the Firmament of the English State and regularly moving in the Line of the Law and his own Religion may attract the dull Vapours of Fears and Jealousies again as another glorious Prince hath done and
great Oracle of the Law Sir E. Coke could err so grossly by his Credulity and inadvertence as he did when he tells us 2. Instit. and de statuto Iudaismi that from December 17th An. 50. Hen. 3. till Shrove-tide 2. Edv. 1. which was about 7 years the Crown had 4,20,000 l. 15s 6d Sterl de exitibus Iudaeorum And he there attempts to prove it by Records and refers to Rot. patent An. 3. E. 1. m. 17. 26. Middleton reddit Computa But at the rate of Silver being now thrice in value per Ounce to what it was then the Crown would have had then for those 7 years from the Iews as Money now goeth about 1,2,60,000 l. and none can think that the King would have thought a 15 th giâ—en by the Commons to have been an adequate Reward for the expulsion of the Iews had they been such beneficial Guests to him as Coke mentioned We may therefore naturally as to this say Credat Iudaeus c. and Mr. Prynn hath in the second Part of his Demurrer to the Iews c. most plainly shewn Sir E. Coke's mistake in the Record by him cited I hope to be able in my intended Review to give some such further indications of the numbers of the People of England exceeding all the Totals of cautious Calculators I have referred to as may be variously useful to the publick as well as perfectly satisfactory to the Curious among whom the Enquiring into the Totals of the Numbers of People in States and Kingdoms and their chief Cities is of late become as much in request as was the enquiring before of the number and strength of their Ships of War. I have mentioned before how some men of great Name have published it that they think the People of England and Wales are but 2 Millions and shall here take notice that a Book lately printed Entituled Isaaci Vossii variarum observationum liber and Dedicated to his Majesty doth in p. 66 represent somewhat of the Judgment of that Learned Person and who in various sorts of useful Learning is deservedly held not inferior to any one in Europe relating to the Numbers of People in Spain and France Italy England Scotland and Ireland Denmark Sweeden c. and where the People in England Scotland and Ireland are represented to be Two Millions But had he been so fortunate as to see some of the Manuscript Discourses of Sir W. P. giving an account of the People of Ireland to be about 11 hundred thousand after he had Surveyed that Kingdom as Surveyor General and after he had critically perused all the Books relating to the Chimney Money and the late Poles and found that of the People of Ireland who paid their Pole-Money in the year 1661 the Number was 3,60,000 I doubt not but he would have concurred in opinion with him of the Total of the Number of the People in Ireland and I likewise believe that if he had seen some late Estimates of the Numbers of People in Scotland made by inquisitive Persons born and bred in that Kingdom he would have been easily inclined to judge the People of Ireland and Scotland to be at least 2 Millions As I think that Learned Man was much short in his Estimate of the Numbers of People in his Majesties Realms so I likewise think that he was in that of the numbers of the People in France in accounting them to be but five Millions Cardinal Pool I think did very judiciously estimate France to exceed us a 3d part in the number of People as I have mentioned in this Discourse and the Author of The reasonable defence of the seasonable Discourse answering a Romanist who asserted that Popish Countries were as populous as the Reformed hath clearly enough shewn that Englands not being fully peopled is not to be attributed to the Reformation but partly to our being drained by our Plantations c. and he saith in p. 31 If Spain which hath Plantations be compared with us we are much more populous as we are also than Italy which hath none at all 'T is true France exceeds us not having had that drain of Plantations till of late and that sparingly in respect of us and possibly somewhat of the populousness of France may be owing to the Reformation as not obliging any to caelibate But if the Learned Author of that Reasonable Defence who doth so well and carefully weigh the Nations there in the Balance of his Judgment had considered what hath been by Sir William Temple remarked in his Excellent Survey of the Constitutions and Interests of the Empire Sweden Denmark Spain Holland France c. viz. That the common People of France are as little considerable in the Government as the Children so that the Nobless and the Souldiers may in a manner be esteemed the Nation he would have agreed that tho France may exceed us in the Numbers of our People it doth not in the weight of our Numbers as I may say by reason of the considerable weight of our Common People in the Balance of the State and especially if he had likewise considered what the ingenious Author of the Book called The power of Parliaments mentions in p. 162 of the English man to man as allowable to be a third stronger than the French and so I believe generally Northern Nations may be allow'd to that proportion to exceed Southern And here by the way it occurring to me that the Author of the Reasonable Defence hath in p. 24 took Notice of his Roman-Catholick Adversaries instance of the Treaty of Munster as upon which so many Papist and Protestant Princes Noblemen and Gentlemen have either Bishopricks Abbies or the like CONFIRMED to them by the Pope and to make out what he had said that none but the Author of The seasonable Discourse fancies the Pope cannot be tied to an agreement as well as other Governors and that the Author of The Reasonable Defence hath impugned that instance by saying But if after all this there be no such matter if the Pope have been so far from confirming those Grants as to protest against them by his Legate in the Treaty and afterward in a particular Bull hath damned them to the Pitt of Hell what shall we say to the honesty and credit of the Author c. I am glad that by my Historical Scheme of the factum of that Peace I have done that which may prevent both these Authors and other Persons from being further mistaken therein Most certainly as I have shewn the Pope did not by any Grant CONFIRM them but they may be truly said to have Confirmed the Papal Religion as far as the prevention of the Ruine of the Empire and Emperor and the Roman Catholick Princes of the Empire and their Subjects may be judged to have amounted to the Confirmation of that Religion But that the Emperor and Princes and States of the Empire did as perfectly slight Pope Innocent the 10ths Bull of the Nullity of that
we have of late found cause to judge that that Doctrine and those Principles have been believed and practised by others of them and with such Artifice to amuse and divert the incautelous Loyal from the apprehension thereof as was practised by several of the Papists a little before the Gun-powder Treason for as at the end of the Papists supplication to the King and the States of the Parliament in the year 1604 they undertake that as to the Loyalty of their Priests they shall readily take their Corporal Oaths for continuing their true Allegiance to his Majesty or the State or in Case that be not thought assurance enough that they shall give in sufficient Sureties one or more who shall stand bound life for life for the performance of the said Allegiance and further that if any of their number be not able to put in such Security that then they will all joyn in such supplication to the Pope for recalling such Priests out of the Land and thus by the Offer of Security attempted to lull the State in a secure sleep and dream of their Loyalty so have many of our Protestant would-be's by the publication of their NO PROTESTANT PLOT so lately before their plotted Out-rage done what was tantamount to keep our Country from being awake to observe the March of their Principles till it should be surprized with the suddenness of Sampson's Alarm when it came to be said The true Protestants are upon thee I mean those who falsly call themselves so I know no true Son of the Church of England owning a greater propension to afford favour to Heterodox Religionaries in points denominable by Religion than what my natural temper and habitual inclination prompt me to And tho some men are apt to have a sharper regret against others for differing from them in judgment than for a material injury I am naturally so far from such an humour as to be more pleased with and to think my self better diverted by the Conversation of the Learned whose Sentiments differ from mine in most points Philosophical and in many Theological than by theirs who perfectly agree in opining with me therein and do fancy to my self that I have the fortune hereby for my hâ—mour to accord with that of the generality of men of the gayest temper in the Age how different soever their Religions are and do suppose that if such a captioâ—s fiery Bigot as Bishop Bonner were now living the ingenious Maimbourg would scorn to keep him Company But the present State of Christendom making Loyalty a Vertue of Necessity here in England as I have shewn in this Discourse I would abhor the Conversation of any Dissenter I thought Dis loyal as of a Person not only wicked but stupid and on this Rock as I may say of Loyalty being likely so long to continue Essential to our continuing a Nation have I built my Conjecture of the future happy State of England It is a possible thing that the serenity of its Future State may be for some little time over-cast by Clouds of Discontent if the Balance of Trade should long continue to be against us and that then forlorn Paupers instead of fearing Popery would for a while fear nothing at all for Nescit plebs jejuna timere But I have cited the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for accounting not above one in 4000 to have starved and I having in p. 185 cited the Author of Britannia languens for saying that he heard of no new improving Manufacture in England but that of Periwigs did give my Judgment that the Ebb of our Trade hath been at the lowest point and that Nature will necessarily hasten its improvement and having observed in p. 66 that after a long Age of Luxury a contrary humour reigns as long in the World again I have said that of that contrary humour I think we now see the Tide coming in and have assigned one late Woollen Manufacture by which England hath gained double as much as for 76 years it lately did by the Balance of Trade But if any one of our true Protestant Plotters should be supposed ever to inveigle any of the poorer Mobile to fly out into tumultuous Disorder or Commotion any such Commotion making an Exception from my general Rule of England's necessary future pacific State would both certainly firmare regulam and make the Odium of the Loyal Populace so keen against all Principles and Doctrines of Resistance as to exterminate the same from our Soyl for ever and to deter men as much from daring to propagate the same in England as in those two most Famous Receptacles of Heterodox Religionaries I mean Amsterdam and Constantinople Any one who will accord with me how necessary it was for the confounding of Dis-loyalty that I should point out the fatal time when our Trade was confounded viz. in Ianuary 1648 and any Reader of this Discourse will find the obvious way mentioned how a Child of ten years of Age may know when the Balance of Trade is against us and how long it hath been so tho not to what proportion and so whether I have been too sanguine in my fancy by predicting in effect that it will be for us and long so continue time will shew But if I am out in my Measures as to that point I am sure the Divines of the Church of England will gain Cento per Cento thereby as to the point of their absolute usefulness and necessary encouragement under a Prince of what resolution soever and upon a wanton supposition that they had all withdrawn themselves to the remotest parts of the Earth it would be any Princes interest to invite them back again at any rate and that for their persisting in the preaching up of Loyalty as they have done for several years and thereby so much helped to preserve us from weltring in one anothers blood It is excellently observed by Lucius Antistius Constans in his De jure Ecclesiasticorum that the CLERGY is necessary to console us with the World to come as to the hardships daily occurring to us in this as well as to direct us in our Course to that World. And if contrary to my expectation Heaven should think fit to punish the past Rebellions and present murmurings of so many of our Land by any future diminution of our Trade and when we should be enforced to work the harder for the necessary support of our Families and of the Government 10000 Preachers of Loyalty will be an useful Treasure both to the Prince and People Fuller in his Church-History mentions that in the year 1619 It was complained of that the Grantees of Papists forfeitures generally favoured them by Compositions for lâ—ght Sums But the famous Book of The Right and Iurisdiction of the Prelate and the Prince printed A. D. 1617. saith in the Epistle Dedicatory to the English Catholicks You have this long time suffered as violent and furious a Persecution as ever the Jews did under an
to the Divine Benignity that they were not made Flies or Toads I disturb not the Piety of their thoughts but know that it was not possible to make me that is to say endued as I am with a Rational Soul to have been a Fly or a Toad which Creatures by their very Natures are devoyd thereof And thus tho sometimes some Protestant may turn such a Papist who hath an understanding sway'd by secular Interests and sensual Appetites yet in the condition of that excellent manly understanding of your Lordships which has so absolute a Soveraignty over all brutish inclinations whereby you and all others whom Heaven hath favour'd with such Endowments do as much transcend degenerate Mankind as they do Beasts the Errors of such Doctrines will be too gross for you to be able to swallow Nor is it more possible for your Lordship to believe such Popery acceptable after you have surveyed the several parts of it with your penetrating Judgment unwearied diligence and the incomparable Candor worthy of a lover of truth and indeed worthy of your self then it was possible for Sir Francis Drake after he had sailed round the Earth to believe the Opinions of St. Augustine and Lactantius who deny'd its rotundity To celebrate your Lordships accurate knowledge of and constant Zeal for the Protestant Religion among the happy few that have the honour of your retired converse were to gild Gold and to fear the possibility of its appearing upon any Enquiry that you are not of that Religion is to think or fear that Gold can be destroyed I have upon my occasional debates with some Persons that would make you a Papist whether you will or no call'd to mind some discourse I had with you long since concerning your Birth and Education and thereupon considering the closeness of your Education in the Protestant Religion have as much wondered at thinking how it was possible for any Principles of such Popery to get into your Mind as at Wild Beasts getting into Islands While I consider how the first thoughts of Childhood ripening into Youth are like the first Occupants claiming and generally keeping possession during life I am apt when I hear of any man's owning any Brutish or Savage Tenets to think of the Egg of such a Crocodile and from what Animal it came And he that shall look back on your Lordships beginning will find you descended of Noble and Renowned Parents both by Father and Mother who likewise were esteemed as I may say Noble Bereans for searching into the Scripture and thereupon owning the Protestant Faith In a word of a whole Family of Consessors if Sir Iohn Perrot Lord Deputy of Ireland your Great Grandfather your Grandfather Annesley an Eminent Commander at Sea and a principal Undertaker in Munster in the Reign of that blessed Queen Elizabeth that great Statesman Francis Lord Mount Norris and Viscount of Valentia a Faithful Servant to the Crown in many great Employments and among the rest Principal Secretary of State Vice-Treasurer and Treasurer at Wars in Ireland to two great Kings of Famous Memory King Iames and King Charles the First and the Family of the Phillipses of Picton Castle in Pembrokeshire out of which your Mother came have their just respect allow'd them Your Lordship being born in Dublin received there your Name in Baptisme at the Nomination of your Noble Sponsor Arthur Lord Chichester who had been Deputy of Ireland Eleven Years and for whose Name the Protestants of that Kingdom have still a great Veneration I remember you further acquainted me that at your age of Ten Years the Scene of your Education was removed to England and that afterward you spent Four Years in Magdalen-College in the University of Oxford where you enjoyed the Learned Conversation of Dr. Frewen then President of that College and since that Archbishop of York and of Dr. Hammond and from whom and other Persons of that University many have been made acquainted that your Lordship was then an Ornament of that place and an Eminent Proficient in all Academical Learning and that you there performed Exercise for your Degree with the general applause of that place And there where you came to that great Mart of Knowledge with so great a stock of Natural Reason and improved the same with so much Logick and conversed so many Years with the great Champions of the Church of England I am sure if I may without affectation use a School Term your Lordship could have no Motus primo primus to approve any Papal imposition upon Reason I remember that you told me That your Father transplanted you thence to the Society of Lincolns-Inn where with unwearied steps your diligence it seems overcame the craggy ascent of the Study of the Common Law of England But where the pleasant height of it Compensated your pain in the way and gave you not the Landscap of one Valley but the Prospect of all the Land of the People of England beneath it fenced in with the enclosure of Property of men according to the Scripture expressions sitting under their Vines and Fig-Trees and none making them afraid where the Pastures are cloth'd with Flocks and the Valley covered with Corn that they shout for joy and sing where our Oxen are strong to labour and no breaking in nor going out and no complaining in our streets and of a Numerous brave Nation not capable of being enslaved by any Wills or Passions but their own And sure where you learn'd the Science of this Noble Law that is a Law of Liberty your self and your Brethren in that Honourable Society must needs eccho back that great exclamation of the Peers of England Nolumus Leges Angliae mutari and not endure the servitude of the Law of the Pope or which is all one his will. Yet moreover such was my Lord Mount Norris his Zeal that you might by all means imaginable be confirmed in your aversion against the Papal Usurpations and Arbitrary Government that he then sent you to Foreign Parts that you might see those Monsters you had here but read of which occasioned your travelling into France Savoy and many Parts of Italy I have been told that your Father the Lord Mount-Norris his Commands and his Concerns both Domestick and Publick call'd you from Rome to England toward the Year 1640. when several Parliamentary Addresses and Remonstrances against the Papists and encrease of their Power and Numbers had been made The Thunder of the Parliament had then at that time so cleared the Air of England from the infection of Popery that I suppose none will think you could be then tainted with it And the Civil Wars of England afterwards breaking out when both Parties appealed to God for the decision of their Cause by the Sword and contested with each other in Publick Declarations about which of them was the greater enemy to Popery it had not only been very impolitick but extreamly ridiculous for any man at that time by being a fautor
and likewise any one that owned any of those Pernitious Principles that strike at the heart of the Civil Government and that they would presently give his Majesty an accompt of all their own Names Places of abode and Numbers of their Families and that they would not live in nor come to the Court nor into any of our Cities or great Towns without leave obtain'd pursuant to the Statute of the 35 th of Elizabeth Ch. 2. wherein 't is Enacted under several Penalties That they shall not remove above Five miles from their dwellings and to give in their Names to the Constables Headborough and Minister c. and that the people might be delivered not only from any danger by them but any fears that might fall on a wise man either of their power or numbers encreasing I should joyfully entertain such an invention But what way of that kind is practicable I am altogether ignorant But do suppose that the present Lawes Oaths and Tests ought to continue till with the Consent of His Majesty and Lords and Commons in Parliament we are further secured I know that we ought to be much more vigilant over English Papists then over any Forrainers for that 't is a kind of a Rule that Angli nil modicum in Religione possunt and therefore that no Popish Priest who is a Subject to England can with the public safety live here Your Lordship hath I think as comprehensive a knowledg of the affairs of Ireland as any man can have and therefore I shall here tell you that a Gentleman of Ireland told me that in the times of the usurpt powers 't was in the Act of Settlement for Ireland by the Parliament declared that it was not their intent after almost a National Rebellion to extirpate the whole Irish Nation but that after an exception of certain persons as to Life and Estate the Act orders some Irish to be banish'd the Kingdom and other Irish to be transplanted to some part of Ireland allowing them such proportion of Land and Estate there as they should have had of their own elsewhere in Ireland if they had not been removed What effect that Transplantation had I know not but I suppose it easier to remove a handful of men from one corner of the Land to another then 't was to remove almost a Nation And do suppose there are some Papists in England as innocent of this late Plot as there were some in Ireland of that Rebellion The Dean of Canterbury doth in his incomparable Sermon before the House of Commons on the 5 th of November 1678 acknowledg the Piety and Charity of several persons who lived and dyed in the Roman Communion as Erasmus Father Paul Thuanus and many others who had in truth more goodness then the Principles of that Religion do either incline men to or allow of And so I think my self bound in justice to Judge in that manner of some Papists of my acquaintance Thus the Epicureans of old tho their Principle of making happiness consist in pleasure was detestable gained this point that many of their Sect were honest men And so much Tully acknowledged to be true but with a Salvo to his exception against their Doctrine Speaking of Epicurus and his Followers L. 2. De Finibus Boni Mali he saith Ac mihi quidem videtur quod ipse vir bonus fuit multi Epicurei fuerunt bodie sunt in amicitirs fideles in omni vita constantes graves nec voluptate sed officio consilia moderantes It seems to me that Epicurus was a good man and many of his Sect have been and are faithful in their friendships and constant and serious men in every condition of life and managing the conduct of their life 's by duty and not pleasure But then saith he hoc videtur major vis honestatis minor voluptatis and afterwards he saith atque ut caeteri existimantur dicere melius quam facere sic hi mihi videntur melius facere quam dicere As much as if he had said No thanks to their Principles but their honest inclinations the force of honesty shew'd it self more Predominant in them then that of pleasure and as other mens Principles are accounted better then their Practises these mens Practises are better then their Principles It is I think Gods standing Miracle in the world who is able to make a divulsion between the formal and the vital Act namely to make fire not burn to keep some men from undoing themselves and Mankind by the genuine consequences of the Opinions they profess in matters of Religion And thus it is happy for the World that Caliginosa nocte premit Deus nepotes discursus And he can by an Omnipotent easiness when he pleaseth Divert a mans understanding from seeing any first-born consequence from his opinion as well as a more remote one Moreover the Divine Power doth in the Government of the World interpose it self sometimes between professed Notions or Principles themselves and mans intellectual faculties Good men sometimes do not believe even the existence of that and of some other divine Attributes where the things to be believed are to be seen by the light of Nature And bad men habituated to lying sometimes do at last believe the lyes and shamms themselves made though yet for the most part it happens what is perfectly worthy of the Divine Power and goodness when men are with Candor and purity of mind seeking after Truth that-Heaven does so influence their understandings as that they are not by false lights artificial seduced to believe any thing against the light of Nature nor given up by weak arguments to strong delusions These things considered I think that that great Divine of our Age the Lord Bishop of Lincoln hath with a Noble modesty and charity in the Title of his unanswered and unanswerable Book against Popery exprest the Principles of that Religion when really believed to be pernicious And having said all this I need not trouble your Lordship or my self much further about finding a way to prevent the Papists from troubling us but do suppose that the Papists themselves are most concerned to labour in such an invention And instead of their being led by any hellish Principles to destroy any City of Course by Sinister means That is by burning it they may if they please in their Devotion address to Heaven for that favour to its old chosen People on Earth mentioned in Psalm 107. v. 7. And he led them forth by the right way that they might go to a City of Habitation I suppose that after so eminent a Person as the Lord High Chancellor of England in his Speech at the Condemnation of the Lord Stafford made that great interogation Does any man now begin to doubt how London came to be burnt and after the Vote of the last Parliament the last day of their Sitting in these words viz. Resolved That it is the Opinion of this House That
defensive arms to hurtful animals by whom they often Suffered and sometimes by their very Shepherds who in Sheering them would cut their Skins Apollo told them that no Beasts were so much the Favorites of him and of men as they for that whereas others with great anxiety were forced in the Night the time of rest and sleep to seek their Food that they could not do with safety in the day Men the Lords of the Earth bought at dear rates pasture grounds for Sheep and that tho men did make Nets feed Dogs and lay snares for hurtful Beasts they employed Shepherds and Dogs to guard Sheep and that no Shepherds could deal ill with their Flocks without being chiefly cruel to themselves and that therefore their security lay in not being able to fright their Shepherds Thus every one is naturally abhorr'd who attacks a Naked man and from such a one Lions themselves either through fear or generosity have made their Retreat The holy Writ affords us a memorable Instance of the Divine displeasure in the 38 th of Ezekiels Prophesie against Gog and Magog who are there branded as the Invaders of a defensless City 'T is there mention'd in v. 10 th and 11 th Thus saith the Lord God it shall also come to pass that at the same time shall things come into thy mind and thou shalt think an evil thought and v. 11 th And thou shalt say I will go up to the Land of unwalled Villages I will go to them that are at rest that dwell safely all of them dwelling without walls and having neither Bars nor Gates and in v. 12 th to take a spoil and to take a prey to turn thy hand upon the desolate places that are now inhabited and upon the people that are gather'd out of the Nations which have gotten Cattel and goods that dwell in the MIDST or navel of the land But it then follows v. 14. Therefore Son of man Prophecy and say unto Gog Thus saith the Lord God in that day when my people of Israel dwells safely shalt thou not know it that is thou shalt know it to thy sorrow and by thy bitter experience of my wrath what it is to disturb my harmless and quiet people in the World. The Comparing of the following 16 th and 18 th v. shew this to be the meaning of v. 14 th And I believe if any of the people of Gog and Magog were allowed by the Law to live apart by themselves they might in any defenceless City be as secure from danger or fear of the Protestant Israel as they pleased It hath been well observed by a great Enquirer into humane Nature That a restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death is a general inclination of all mankind and the cause of this is not alwaies that a man hopes for a more intensive delight then he has already attained to or that he cannot be content with a moderate power but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well which he hath present without the acquisition of more And from hence it is that Kings whose power is greatest turn their endeavours to the Assuring it at home by Laws or abroad by Warrs But as much as it is the inclination of the unthinking or brutish part of Mankind that power should be like the Crocodile alwaies growing the soberer few do know that power will destroy it self if it shall be still ascending and hath not a Center wherein to rest and be quiet just as fire would perish in nature and destroy it self if there were not an Element allow'd it wherein to leave burning And that therefore Augustus wisely designed a Law de cohibendis imperii finibus And that the experience of Antient and Modern times hath taught the teachable part of mankind That great Empires have sunk under their weight and have lost the length of their power by the widening it and that Kings whose power is greatest as was said sometimes turn their endeavours to the Assureing it at home by Laws which by giving it some bound are like letters about the edges of our coyn Decus tutamen to it the which makes it so Sacred that 't would be both Treasonable and Ridiculous to clip it and that as the Bees by their King have given the world an instance in Nature of Kingly power so they have likewise another of Kings governing by the power of Laws 'T is a common observation That tho Bees are little angry fighting Creatures upon occasion and leave their stings in the wounds they make Rex tamen apum sine aculeo est the King of the Bees is without any sting and the curious work of the Hive goes on with a great deal of Geometry and idle Drones are thence as it were legally expel'd who would there invade property Nor need the King of the Bees say the Naturalists have a sting for the whole Hive defends and guards him as thinking that they are all to perish if their King be destroyed And this would be the case of the Papists if they would be content so to part with the sting of their Power that it could not hurt either King or Kingdom and might not come to lose it self by so doing they would have the Posse of every County to defend them they would have the Laws and the whole Hive of English men to guard them the very Anger of the Protestants would be a defensive Wall of Fire round about them 'T is true that wild Animals are by their constant fears of danger habituated to more cunning then Tame ones of the same species but all their little cunning renders them not so safe as the great wisdom protection of the Law doth the other and ranging and out-lying Deer thrive not so well as those that are in the Forrests And here it falls in my way to observe that the Kings cautioning by the Law of the Forrests that the Mastiffs shall have the Power took from them of hurting the Deer may well insinuate into us the reason and equity of all our Laws that hinder its being in the power of a man to be a Wolf to another and of the Power inherent by the Law of Nature in all Soveraign Princes to restrain any undue Power of Subjects from violating the Public peace As the Law of God and Nature command both Iustice and Mercy to be shewn to Beasts so doth the Law of England provide that any mans person and Estate should be seized into the Kings hands in case of some wild cruelty to his Beasts for he would appear in the eye of the Law an Idiot or a Lunatic that should put his Horses or Asses to the Sword. That which I mention'd of the Laws providing that the Mastiffs of any Inhabitants in Forrests shall not have Power to hurt the Deer is called by the Forrest Law Lawing of Mastiffs or the Expeditating them that is the three Claws of their Fore-foot to the Skin
very gravely that when once he was vehement in prayer before a Crucifix at Naples he heard this voice bene de me scripsisti Thoma none likewise in that age laught at the Pope for saying bene de me scripsisti Moses The world then brought no quo warranto against the Popes Charter derived thus in his Canon Law from Moses nor that gloss on it which says Since the Earth is seven times bigger then the Moon and the Sun eight times bigger then the Earth the Papal Power must Consequently be fifty seven times bigger then the Regal dignity Our English World will no more allow of the logical Consequence of that doughty argument of Bellarmine Lib. 1. de Pont. ca. 2. sect denique sect sed There is one King among Bees therefore there ought to be one Commander chief Teacher and visible Monarch in the Vniversal Church then they would allow that argument of the Bees to give our neighbour Monarch a right to an Vniversal Temporal Monarchy The Popes vociferating of that Text Behold two Swords and while their adherents held so many Thousands in their hands might then pass muster for as good an argument of his right to Spiritual and Civil power as the words that the Lillies spin not did for the Salic Law with the help of another Army then one of Commentators The Renewall of the Popes Charter by Pasce oves was not then disallowed either for the fleecing of many Millions of Christians or killing some hundreds of thousands in the German Empire according to what has been observed by the famous Erastus in his Theses p. 72. propter excommunicatos Imperatores Reges aliquot Centena millia hominum trucidata sunt in imperio Germanico And perhaps the Popes plea for making the World a great Slaughter-house might then be admitted by the authority of the Text Arise Peter kill and eat Conculcabis super aspidem basilicum then went for a claim of Divine Right to make the head of the World to be trampled on by the foot of a bald-pated Fryar But if the Papacy the light that was in the World then was darkness as the Scripture Expression is How great was that darkness And as the Popes continued art was then to Conceal Nature so 't was not then held tanti for art in others to be Curious in following Nature when an Opinion was imbibed that the Pope could change the very Nature of things according to that saying I have been shewn in the Canon Law glo in C. proposuit de Conc. praeb c. 5. de trans◠ep Papa mutare potest rerum substantialia de Iustitia injustitiam facere mutando Iura corrigendo adeóque quadrata aequare rotundis et rotundis quadrata And for my part I should not have repined at the Popes assuming to himself the honour of the light that rules by day if he could have illuminated the World with the demonstration of the quadrature of the Circle which that gloss pretends to a great Knowable thing as Aristotle said tho not known and which secret all the penetrating Mathematicians from Archimedes down to Mr. Hobbs have wooed with very great passion and could not enjoy But during the Egyptian plague of darkness that many Ages then lay under our famous Countreyman Wicliff alarm'd the Lethargic World and he assail'd several gross Errors of Popery with its own weapons of Metaphysics and School Divinity and by means of the noise his Two hundred Volumes made in the World he dispers'd a great terror in that dark Age and as one saith Sir Iohn Old-Castle Lord Cobham and the Lollards being awaken'd out of their first sleep were desirous to rise before it was day and before the appointed time was Come for the Reforming the abuses in the Church and between that time and morning most men fell asleep again as fast as ever but yet long before the dawn of the Reformation the doctrine of Wicliffe had made such a fermentation in our English World that in the Year of our Lord 1422 that great States-man Chichley Archbishop of Canterbury in a Letter to Pope Martine the Fifth Complain'd That there were then so many here in England infected with the heresies of Wicliff and Husse that without force of an Army they could not be supprest Whereupon the Pope sent two Cardinals to the Arch-Bishop to Cause a Tenth to be gather'd of all Spiritual and Religious men and the money to be Laid in the Chamber Apostolic and if that were not sufficient the residue to be made up of Chalices Candlestics and other implements of the Church as the Acts and Monuments Attest And it is not unknown that long before viz. in Harry the Fifth's time Chichley foreseeing that a Storm was coming from the Commons on Church-Lands diverted it by engaging England in its darling popular War with France and caus'd the Clergy to contribute very liberally to it But that fermentation that Chichley said could not in the Year 1422 be checkt in peoples Minds otherwise then as aforesaid soon out-grew the power of any Army to allay for in less than Thirty years afterward the Invention of Printing came into the World by which one man could transmit more notices of things in a Day then another could by writing in a Year and which did as much out-do the publication of notions by the Goosquill as the invention of Gun-powder did the killing Force of the gray-goose-wing and which did as it were revive the old Miracle of the Gift of Tongues and Cloven too I may Call them for their being divided from the Sentiments of the Papal Holy Church and made Learning begin to fly like lightning through the World to the Controuling and detecting of the Popes Excommunicating Thunder and which shew'd the World its true face in the stream of time and shew'd the greet Fisherman of Rome dancing in the Nett and which was the true speaking Trumpet whereby a single Author could preach to the diocess of the World. And that great birth of Fate the taking of Constantinople within three years after the Invention of Printing occasioning the World's acquiring the knowledge in the West that it lost in the East and dispersing the Learned Greeks Theodore Gaza Iohn Lascaris Manuel Chrysaloras and many others to teach the Greek Tongue where they went the Press was thereby furnished with Glad tidings for the Curious World and Erasmus and many learned Papists did soon imbibe the knowledge of that learned Language and he complained in a Letter to the Archbishop of Mentz That the Friars would fain have made it Heresy to speak Greek So pleasant was it then to consider that that barbarous Generation instead of knowing Heresy to be Greek voted Greek to be Heresy and that they who had murdered so many thousands for being Heretics knew not what the very word in its original language imported The Sagacity of Erasmus could not then but easily see through the Cobwebs of the School-Divines totam Theologiam a
Divines of the Church of England have been how ever so much adored there and had such offerings from their adorers the substantial and learned Divines of our Church there may on occasion well say quid non speremus During that late persecution of the Divines of the Church of England in the times of the Usurped Powers who therein exercised all the cruelty they durst it might be truly said of the Doctrine of that Church and the fire of the zeal of the Laity in providing for the liberal maintenance of many of its Clergy as it is of Lime in the Emblem Mediis accendor in undis What burning and shining lights then in the midst of a perverse Generation were among others of the Church of England in London Bishop Gunning Bishop Wild Bishop Mossom Nor did their numerous Congregations in the least for want of plentiful Oblations to them starve the Cause of Religion The last forementioned person at the Funeral of Bishop Wild in a Printed Panegyric of his Life takes occasion to speak of the Oblations in those times afforded him and saith p. 7. And whereas some good Obadiahs did then hide and feed the Lord's Prophets it was his care to Communicate to others what himself received for his own support Many Ministers sequestred many Widows afflicted many Royalists imprisoned and almost famished can testifie the diffusive bounty of his hand dispensing to others in reliefs of Charity what himself received of others in offerings of Devotion And as if that Iron Age had been the Golden one of the Church of England he doth so pathetically represent the internal glories of that Church in that conjuncture that any one who would draw an Historical Painting of the State of the Primitive Church to the exactness and bigness of the life might best do it by the Church of England sitting in that posture he describes These are his words p. 6 And here I cannot but recount with joy amidst all this Funeral sorrow what were then the holy ardours of all fervent devotions in Fastings and Prayer and solemn Humiliations Ay in Festival and Sacramental Solemnities O the lift up praying and yet sometime down cast weeping Eyes of humble Penitents O the often extended and yet as often enfolded arms of suppliant Votaries Vpon days of Solemnity O how early and how eager were the peoples devotions that certainly then if ever the Kingdom of Heaven suffered violence so many with Jacob then wrestling with God in Prayer not letting him go till he gave them a blessing c. Thus was that great Magazine of Learning and Piety Dr. Hammond in the late time of the Persecution of the Church of England the Magazine then likewise of mighty Alms insomuch that Serenus Cressy saith in his Epistle Apologetical Printed in the year 1674 p. 48. Dr. Hammond in those days inviting me into England assured me I should be provided of a convenient place to dwell in and a sufficient subsistence to live comfortably and withal that not any one should molest me about my Religion and Conscience I had reason to believe that this invitation was an effect of a cordial Friendship and I was also inform'd that he was well enabled to make good his promise as having the disposal of great Charities and the most zealous promoter of Alms-giving that liv'd in England since the change of Religion Thus while as noble Confessors they forsook Houses and Land they according to the Evangelical promise received the effects of Houses and Lands and praedial Tithes an hundred fold in this Life with the Gospel Salvo as I may call it of Persecutions And as in the primitive and best times when the Christian Pastors had no Tenths but the Decumani fluctus or Ten Persecutions and many Christians were decimated for Martyrdom that Community of Goods that was never read of to be practised but in Vtopia and that Renunciation of that dear thing called Property for the defence whereof Political Government is supposed to have been chiefly invented did so much glorifie the Christian Morality to the confounding all examples of the most sublime Morals of the Heathens that the Pastors had the Christians All at their Feet and did tread on Oblations at every step they took so likewise those great Divines beforementioned and many others found that Primitive Temper revived in some of the Lay-Members of the Church of England by their generous Offerings and Contributions which adorn'd the Gospel and supported its Ministers and which Laity though cruelly decimated by the Usurpers yet were then Rich in good works ready to distribute and willing to Communicate and by their forementioned great liberality in Oblations exceeding the rate of Tenths did lay up in store a good Foundation against the time to come for the Pastors that shall be their Successors in Persecution that may secure their expectations of good Pastures in our Cities and of having a Table prepared for them in the presence of their Enemies come what can come from Popery Moreover by such an accident only can the great Cities in England be freed from some illiterate Pastors of gather'd Churches who without having their Quarters beaten up by Penal Laws will disappear there when the excellent try'd Veterans of the Church of England shall come to Garrison them Those little Sheep-stealers of others Flocks will then no longer attempt there to have Common of Pasture without Number but will by all be numbred and found too light 'T will be visible to all that the Divines of the Church of England can with ease Preach in as plain a manner as the other and that the other can not with pains Preach as Learnedly and Rationally as they We see that many ridiculous Lay-Preachers who in the late times did set up a kind of Religion-Trade in great Cities and did gather Churches and likewise gather there some maintenance have thence silently took their march on the occasion of the more Learned Presbyterian Divines ejected from their Livings retiring thither and there having constant auditories partly resembling the guise of gathered Churches And the disproportion in intellectual Talents being generally as great between them and the Divines of the Church of England as is that between them and the Lay-Preachers they must there prove Bankrupt necessarily as the others did Dr. Glanvil in his Book called The Zealous and Impartial Protestant did but right to the Episcopal Clergy of England when he ascribes to them the honour of having by their Learned Writings Confuted exposed triumph'd over the numerous Errours of Popery and there names Bishop Iewel Bishop Morton Bishop Andrews Archbishop Laud Bishop Hall Bishop Davenant Archbishop Vsher Archbishop Bramhal Bishop Taylor Bishop Cozens Dr. Hammond Mr. Chillingworth Mr. Mead Dean Stillingfleet Dean Tillotson Dean Lloyd Dr. Henry More Dr. Brevint And speaking of the Episcopal Clergy of the City of London saith How many Learned Substantial Convictive Sermons have they Preach'd against the Popish Doctrines and Practice since our late fears
taught to know the Numbers of all people but our own But in this State of improvement that the World is arrived at I do account that all who shall hereafter employ their Pens about that greatest exercise of humane Wit and Judgment call'd History and shall not found the weight of their Remarques upon the Numbers of the People they write of will no more be termed grave Authors or indeed ought but grave nothings and such who deal irreverently with a World that is weary of trifles and from which they are to expect no other Doom then that of the Annales Volusi And though as to the faetus populi as well as to the faetus pecuniae called faenus accidents may happen that may cross the Rule of encrease in both Cases as in the latter by Bankrupts and in the former by Plague or War c. and thus once as to the Romans Censa sunt Civium Capita 270 Millia and in the following enrollment but 137 Ex quo numero apparuit saith the Historian quantum hominum tot praeliorum adversa fortuna populi Romani abstulisset as if he would infer that the losses they received from Hanibal had swept away 133000 Citizens yet do such exceptions but confirm the Rule the which may be made out by continued mean proportionals But this by the way If my Lord Herbert who mentions pag. 121 of his History That in the Year 1522 Warrants were issued out Commanding the Certificates of the Names of all above sixteen Years old had set down the total number of the persons certified he had much more obliged the World then by many things in his History I do not remember that any of our Historians of those times do relate the Numbers of the Religious Persons that all the suppressed Monasteries contain'd We are told by Godwin in his Annals That the number of the Abbies that were in England is not easily cast up and the Names of the chiefest and whose Abbots had voices among the Peers in Parliament he thereupon enumerates But Weaver in his Funeral Monuments p. 104 mentioning That all the Religious Houses under the Yearly value of 200 l. being given to the King and that they were all worth per annum 20941 l. saith That the Religious Persons put out of the same were above Ten Thousand My Lord Herbert p. 441 speaking of that sort of Monasteries being dissolved in the 27 th year of the King's Reign makes Thirty or Thirty two Thousand pound yearly thereby fall into the King's hand And p. 507 makes the total yearly value of all the Religious Houses suppressed to be 161100 l. It may therefore be thence infer'd that if Thirty Thousand pound yearly maintain'd 10000 Religious Persons that there were maintain'd by the 161100 l. above 50000 Religious Persons or Regulars And according to the aforesaid rate of the yearly value of the Land viz. 161100 l. the allowance to each came to somewhat above 3 l. per annum the which shews that those Lands were not sold to half the value because less then double that Sum cannot be imagined to have maintain'd such a person then I do account that supposing the Parishes to have been then in England and Wales as Cambden in his Britannia says 9284 that the Secular Clergy added to the Number of the Regular only the last said Number For then the Canon Law which requires that Orders shall not be given to Men without Titles being strictly executed there were perhaps not more Parish Priests in England And the adding to those Numbers the Dignitaries viz. Two Archbishops and 24 Bishops and 26 Deans and 60 Arch-Deacons and 544 Prebendarys and several Rural Deans doth enlarge the Sum to another Thousand of Persons who lived by the Altar Moreover there being then estimated to live in Oxford and Cambridge about Sixty Thousand Students who in expectation of Church-preferment as either Regulars or Seculars abstain'd from Marriage I account that the Number of Persons then ty'd by Caelibate from encreasing and multiplying the people to be above 120000 as at present above double that Number are in France What accrued to the Secular Clergy then or since by Tithes ought not to have been looked on by any one with an evil Eye as I suppose by Mr. Fish it was not For as to the nature of the payment of Tithes according to the judgment of Sir W. P. in his Book of Taxes and Contributions p. 58 It may be said to be no Tax or Levy in England whatever it might have been in the first age of its Institution And this notion of his may be extended even to that which is called a Tenth but is revera a Fifth I mean the Tith of arables in regard of the charge of Culture and Seed which is ordinarily at least as much as the Rent of the Land because it is a charge equally incumbent on all proprietors of such Land and for that the true notion of Wealth and Riches depends on comparison and 't is only the inequality in the proportion of the Tax that is the sting thereof But that which Mr. Fish chiefly level'd his Calculations at was the excessive share in the Wealth of the Kingdom the Monks and Fryars had who did so little for its preservation and the encrease of its Numbers What an infinite number of people saith he might have been encreased to have peopled the Realm if this sort of Folk had been married like other Men Instead of using his Rhetorical Expression of infinite I shall affirm that these 120000 adult able persons living in Celibate might according to the notion of the Observator of the Bills of Mortality That every marriage one with another produceth four Children viz. Two apiece for each Sex have more then doubled their number in the same age by which any one may well conclude that as the number of the people of England is now vastly encreased by the dissolution of Abbies so it would likewise be so diminished by their re-establishment To effect therefore to lessen thus the number of the people of England when the French King with great wisdom has by the Revival of the Roman Immunity of the Ius trium librorum and the application of others laid so a great Foundation for the growing populousness of France would too much expose us to his power and derision The Divine Wisdom's allotting to the Levitical Tribe the affluent quota it enjoy'd is very justly took notice of by those who discourse of the Clerical Revenue The Author of the Present State of England saith That our Ancestors according to the pattern of God's ancient people the Iews judged it expedient to allot large Revenues to the English Clergy and that the English Clergy were the best provided for of any Clergy in the whole World except only the Nation of the Iews among whom the Tribe of Levi being not the Fourth part of the twelve Tribes as appears in the Book of Numbers yet had as Mr. Selden
be affirm'd That all Monkish hopes of our Ploughmen happening again to be over-run by Shepherds are very extravagant and Popery will grosly err if it shall think that Poverty will ever compel this sort of men to the turpitude of taking up illegal Arms for it or that it can eradicate their innate hatred against it The Subsistence that the Plough afforded our Husbandmen in their Trade made few of them in Comparison of those of other Trades become Souldiers in our late Civil Warrs Nor were they then observ'd to favour those hyhocritical Religion-Traders the Land was then pester'd with Nor indeed can they who really Till and Improve the Earth naturally affect those who pretend to Cultivate Heaven and by necessity of Nature it must still come to pass that they who acquire their own bread by rearing it for others with hard labour will have an aversion against those who can subsist luxuriously by cheating others of it with easie Tricks and against any attempts for a Resetled Monkery which would after the mode of the Pyed Piper demand an unconscionable rate for trying to rid us of a few haeretical Mice and which too tho our Land should pay would yet depopulate it of its Children And here I cannot forbear to Observe That there happen'd one thing so momentous that it can never be forgot while the English Nation has a Being and which did among our people in the Country Convey a fresh sense of the Pestilential nature of Popery and of the encreasing Danger of its infection and that is that the Body of our Clergy of the Church of England did generally from the Press and Pulpit for some Years together send so many strong Antidotes against Popery round the Kingdom Every Pulpit almost from one end of the Land to the other did resound as I may say with a Seasonable discourse against Popery It may be with Justice apply'd to those Discourses of our Divines That they alarmed more than our English World or perhaps the Roman and that the World elsewhere did ring with their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I here allude to those words in the Epistle to the Romans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Their sound went into all the Earth and their words to the ends of the World. There is no doubt but their Sound was heard to Rome by the help of the Iesuits intelligence and that our Divines knew when they so Preach'd and Writ they had pass'd the Rubicon and that 't was in vain like Cranmer to try to be reconciled to irreconcileable Rome and that 't would be as much in vain in any Course of future time to use politic whispers in Commendation of Popery after their former loudness against it as for one who told a Husband that he saw such an one strugling to ravish his Wife to say afterward that he was a very Civil Gentleman Our Fanaticks therefore do by nothing more deserve that Name then by nick-naming the Body of the Clergy of the Church of England as fautors of Popery since 't was but of yesterday that almost all our First and Second Rate Divines did like Capital Ships as I may say one after another attaque the Fleet of the Romanists and discharge their Thunder upon them but as my Lord Bacon hath observ'd That in great Sounds the Continuance is more than momentany and that the noyse of Great Ordnance of which the Sound is carry'd many miles on the Land and much further on the Sea will there come to the Ear not in the instant of the shooting off but an hour or more later the which must needs be the Continuance of the first Sound Thus too I hope that the aforesaid late 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our Capital Divines against Popery which has been heard far and near among our Countery Inhabitants and will I believe Continue audible among them during the hour of life will in part of that hour sooner or later be heard with regard by our weaker Brethren But what a Daemon then in understanding or God of Eloquence had he need to think himself and to be thought too such by others who Imagines to talk England both out of its Manna of Religion and what is better then its Flesh-Pots too and to persuade us by bringing in Monkery again to have our Land ore-run with Flocks of Sheep and to want hands to Work their Fleeces or as I may say to fancy to have Manufacture without hands and for want thereof to make our Sheep almost useless but only to eat and in that way too to be chiefly appropriated to the Stomachs of Lubbers and who would allow our Land Flocks of Sheep but not Dogs to guard them I mean a sufficient growing Populacy in the Land to defend both it and the very Flocks in it and I may add too who would almost make the Wooll of our Sheep useless but only to send into Forrain Parts and who would abdicate from the Land that benefit of the continual passing of our Wooll here through so many hands busy'd in Trade and thence fill'd with Wealth in the way of Interest upon Interest intended by Nature for the maintenance and subsistance of our People so multiplying as aforesaid and preparing Tables for all new Guests here let them come into the World never so fast and would have us Consent to the diminution of the Number of our People when for want of our being fully stock'd with them so great a part of our Land lyes fallow every Year as doth not in Countreys sufficiently Populous and where the Lands value will quit the cost of the Manuring Alas when through the Divine Blessing England shall arrive at the state of being fully Peopled and being got beyond Pasture that first improvement of a thin Peopled Country shall likewise have Compleated that second of Tillage that our being better Peopled will occasion there will lie a third in our View to employ the Labours of our Consummate Populacy namely that of Gardening and to oblige us that the Earth shall produce nothing but what is exactly useful and instead of going back from Tillage to Pasture we must naturally go forward from Tillage to Gardening whereby one Acre may be made to maintain Twenty persons whereas now 't is observ'd that 20 Acres generally throughout England maintain but a fourth of that number viz. 5. persons And when we are thus furnished with as many People as by Tillage or Gardening can well live on the Land 't is then and not before that our encreasing Populousness will push on greater numbers of our Inhabitants to live on the Sea which none will choose to do that can live on the Shoare and 't is only such a state of populacy that can naturally make us Masters of the Fishing-Trade to compass which all our Projects before whether by Acts of Parliament or Companies and Stock will be but Chymerical Moreover 't is only such a state of Populacy that will exonerate us of those burdens of
the Earth and scandals to Heaven I mean all Religion-Traders whether Popish or Fanatical those vilest of Nominales who cheat in nomine Domini and such likewise who disquiet States by assuming the Trade of World-menders and everlasting Propounders that are like busie Insects flying in the Eys of Mankind and whom Sir E. Coke in the 85. Ch. of his Institutes which is entituled against Monopolists Propounders and Projectors deservedly brands and Atheists that would reform a Church Bankrupts in their particular Trades that would advance Trade in general Defiers of Justice who would amend the Law and wasting that time as Censors of the Manners of Kings for not paying their Debts which they should employ in acquiring Assets to pay their own In fine Undertakers to Cure Church and State as Confident as the Quack who said in his Bills He Cureth all Diseases both cureable and incureable All these sorts of men whose Trade is talking and whose talk is cheat will only come to be Bankrupt by being heaved out of all places by the Generations of Useful Traders multiplying there Nature that has been long laying its Siege to such Idlers in places of resort will then at last carry on its works so far as to leave them no Earth to play their Engines upon and such unprofitable people will be as naturally extruded out of our Towns as are Women and Children out of Places besieged nor can all the humming of their Propositions procure them more continuance in such places of business then the noyse of Drones entitle them to a residence in the Hive and it will as little quit Cost to have them planted in our Cities as for a Gardiner that pays a high Rent to have beds for weeds Of the Improvement of great quantities of Land by Gardening the Ilands of Iersey and Guernsey are examples and we have a Pleasant and Profitable Prospect of such Improvement near our Metropolis and other Great Cities and I doubt not but England may flourish so as to become the Garden of the World and do as little doubt of any Course of time bringing the Pope again to say as Matthew Paris tells us he did Verè hortus Noster deliciarum est Anglia as I do of that honest Monk's sleeping till the Resurrection or Mr. Coleman's having any more Dreams of a Paradise in the Gardens of Wooburn 'T is hard for a Visionaire not to fancy any thing possible but he who shall pronounce that England can from its present improvement and populousness be driven back ad primordia rerum and that the many cultivated understandings in it and who have reduced Knowledge ad firmam by calculation can be reduced to the Calculation only of Beads and be imposed on like the Indians to part with their Gold for Beads and that half the Land of England now inhabited by three Millions of People as all estimates make to be the least that half of it contains will be delivered up to 50000 Regulars and to persons that the Laws in being allow not so much as a Foot of Earth for Graves and that it is not of equal detriment to a Country to have half the Land made unprofitable and become Bog or the like as to be long in perpetuity to unprofitable people and that such as make property their God which they who over value the things of this Life do and are the Majority of any Country will idlely sacrifice it to those real Impropriators who make but a Property as I may say of God I mean those hypocritical Idlers who only by a Religion-Craft without any service useful to Mankind claim a great Quota of the Profits of others labours and that when we are going on so fast toward the exactest culture by Gardening which excludes all Weeds the old inimicus homo shall find six Millions asleep to give him an opportunity to sow Tares and to ask half the Land for his pains I say he who shall pronounce as aforesaid is one that looks but at few things and so de facili shoots his Bolt and is one that we may think to be a fool without being in danger of Hell Fire and Holy Churches great work of the Conversion of three Kingdoms to the end that it may Convert half the Land again to its use is likely to prove as fruitless as the Christian endeavours to recover the Holy Land. There is such a strong Rampart of living Earth against the assaults of Popery in this kind I mean the Number of our Protestants and particularly of those employ'd in Tilling the Land that Popery cannot dissolve and let it pipe never so plausibly we shall be like the deaf Adder stopping our Ears by laying them against the Earth we are possest of My Lord They who have observed the Intervals of your pleasure when you have had some breathing times for retirement from the fatigue of Affairs of State know that the contriving the improvement of your Ground by Tillage and Planting and Gardening hath been at once your care and your delight And I believe Cicero's Cato Major doth not describe the pleasure of old Age in the improvement of the Earth with greater hight then your Lordship is able to do and your example in this thing may Crown both that of Tully and the Aged Hero's by him there commemorated for delighting in Husbandry and indeed it may be supposed but natural for old Age being so near the Earth its Center to move with a quicker sort of delight toward it and especially among Christians to whom the dull Earth Aided by the acuteness of St. Paul I referr to his similitude of the Corn is so kind and greateful for their culture of it as to Court them with an Embleme of their Resurrection and to teach them a surer way then Galilaeus had found out to Transplant the Earth into Heaven But now methinks to one that has so curious and perfect a Sence of this solid and manly pleasure that the Culture of the Earth affords as your Lordship the very Idea of England's Degeneracy from its thriving State of Agriculture to poor solitary pasture how unpracticable soever the thing is must necessarily carry some horrour with it to be imagined and the very telling it to you that some vain Popish Projectors would rob us not only of the Culture of Learning but even of that of the very Earth must give your thoughts a Nausea instead of such a Noble Extacy as fill'd the whole Soul of Erasmus who in his old Age in a Letter to Budaeus speaking of Sir Thomas More 's and other mens Works that did then begin to beautifie the World with Learning cryes out Deum immortalem quod seculum video brevi futurum Vtinam contingat rejuvenescere And as I am sure you would not desire to Renew your Youth like the Eagle only to live in an Age of buzzards so you know too much of the course of nature to wish your Life a day shorter for fear of the
Millions of Souls But there scarce needs any other Medium whereby to evince that the Progress of the Reformation hath vastly encreased the value of our Land and proportion of our Commerce then that it hath so vastly encreased the number of our People a Fact that I have already proved and have shewn what Depopulaors or dispeoplers of the Kingdom the Monks were and have made some Calculations of the numbers of the Religious Persons living in Celibate and the effects thereof in restraining formerly the growth of the Numbers of the People but do find that I was extremely short in assigning the number of those whom Popery made to live in Celibate to be but 120000. I was glad to gain a rise for somewhat like an Estimate of the numbers of all the Religious persons in Monasteries by finding it in Weavers Monuments that the Religious Persons put out of the Religious Houses under the yearly value of 200 l. were above 10000 and that therein Weaver agrees with Sanders de Schismate c. but I made no Estimate of the numbers of Friers Mendicant the which were very great and I was too short on the accounting that there were perhaps no more Secular Priests then Benefices in England for thô the Rule of the Canon Law allows not Orders to be given to Men without a Title yet it admits an exception in the Case of Men who can live on their own patrimony and it still took the Title to be a Curate as current Coyn for one to a living and moreover the livelihoods that many unbeneficed Secular Priests acquired by saying particular Masses did pass for Titles and thus in France it being conceived that the Secular Priests unbeneficed are about 6 times as many as the beneficiaries we may thence guess what the proportions of their numbers were in England But yet further to discourse of the growth of the numbers of the people of England before and since the Reformation I shall acquaint your Lordship that you may easily find among the Records of the Exchequer what the number of the people of England was in the Year 1522 when Harry the 8 th as I cited it out of my Lord Herberts History p. 121 Caused Warrants to be Issued out Commanding the Certificates of the number of all above 16 years old to be returned and by an Index or Repertory of the Matters of State in the Exchequer that I have I can readily direct the finding it out there and moreover by the accounts of the Pole Acts in former times a considerable indication of the numbers of the people in those days may be had And if we may guess at the encrease of the people of England from that of London I can easily satisfie any person about the prodigious growth of that City in numbers of people and consequently in wealth since the abandoning of the Papacy I have by me an account of the proportions of the Shires of England City of London in a Tax of 50000 l. long since in Edward the 3 ds time and in which Surry bore the same proportion with London and in which London and Surry and Middlesex paid but about 1500 l. which was but about a 16 th part And in Harry the 8 ths times it hapned that Cardinal Pool excited divers Princes of Christendom to invade England a fit man he was who had been then a Traytor to come here and absolve Hereticks but Holling shead in his Chronicle of Harry the 8 th p. 947 tells us That the King having heard of the Treasonable practices of the Cardinal did Anno 1539 make a Survey of his Naval Strength and did ride to the Sea-Coasts and that Sir William Foreman Knight then Major of London was commanded to certifie the names of all the Men within the City and liberties thereof between the age of 16 and 60 whereupon the said Mayor and his Brethren each one in his Ward by the Oath of the Common-Council and Constable took the number of Men Arms and Weapons and after well considering of the matter by view of their Books they thought it not expedient to admit the whole number certified for apt and able men and therefore assembling themselves again they chose forth the most able persons and put by the residue especially such as had no Armour But when they were credibly advertised by Thomas Cromwel Lord Privy-Seal to whom the City was greatly beholden that the King himself would see the People of the City Muster in a convenient number and not to set forth all their power but to leave some at home to keep the City c. then he saith the number beside the Whifflers and other Waiters was 15000. But the Observator on the Bills of Mortality hath in his last Observations on that Subject told us That there are in London about 6 hundred and 70000 Souls and thô I know that some Parishes are included within the Bills of Mortality for the said City that formerly were not yet the said Observator having told us that there are in London more Males then Females and it being true that there are as many above the Age of sixteen as are under it and that the Sexagenarii are but a 6 th part of Mankind and the Quota of the numbers resulting from the Parishes added being likewise shewn us by that Observator let any one judge how vast the number of able Men certifiable between 16 and 60 is grown to be since that year of Harry the 8 th before mentioned It must be acknowledged that the thanks of the Age are due to the Observator on the Bills of Mortality for those solid and rational Calculations he hath brought to light relating to the numbers of our people but such is the modesty of that excellent Author that I have often heard him wish that a thing of so great publick importance to be certainly known might be so by an actual numbring of them and the truth is it is much to be pittied that by the care of Magistrates an exact number of the people as well of London as of all other places in the Realm hath not with diligence been made and preserved the knowledge whereof is the Substratum of all political measures that can be taken as to a Nations strength or riches and the part thereof that is spareable for Colonies and the value of the branches of the publick Revenue and the equality in proportioning any Taxes or Levies by Act of Parliament and the satisfying the World about the value of our Alliances a thing one would think somewhat necessary when 't is published in Print that a Forraign Minister who hath spent much time here and is deservedly famous for being a Critical Judge in the Politicks and in many sorts of Learning makes the people of England to be but two Millions and when a late famous French Author of la Politique Francoise who sets up with his Goose-quill to be a Governor of the World reproacheth us
after his manner with the fewness of our people and saith How insolent soever the English are they must confess that all the Brittish Islands laid together do not equal the half of our Continent either in extent c. or number of Men in Wealth in Valour Industry and Vnderstanding Mr. Iames Howel in his Londinopolis Printed Anno 1657 saith That in the Year 1636 King Charles sending to the Lord Major of London to make a Scrutiny of what Roman Catholicks there were in London he took occasion thereby to make a Cense of all the people and that there were of Men Women and Children above 7 hundred thousand that lived within the Barrs of his Iurisdiction alone and this being 21 years ago 't is thought by all probable computation that London hath more now by a third part then it had then In his Parallel of London there with other great Cities in the World he observes that the weekly Bills of Mortality in Amsterdam come but to about 60 a week whence saith he It may be inferr'd that London is about 5 times as populous more dying in a week commonly in London then 300. And as to the quantity of the people in London there is no doubt to be made but that if in the year 1636 there lived 700,000 within the Barrs of the Lord Majors Iurisdiction there lived then so many more in the other Parishes within the Bills of Mortality and that there live in this year within the Bills of Mortality more then double the number that did in the year 1636 and at that Rate their number would now amount to near two Millions But I am to suspect that there was no such return of any Cense of the people within the Barrs of the Lords Majors Iurisdiction in the year 1636 as is before mentioned and do suppose that Mr. Howel did in that point mistake partly for that I think him mistaken in his Allegation before as to the people of Paris being returned as above a Million of Souls at the last Câ—nse made there and do as to their number give more credit to the Bishop of Rhodes who in his History of Harry the 4 th written since the year 1660 saith in part 2d That there were in Paris when 't was block'd up only 200000 persons and that there were then retired thence 100000 of the Inhabitants so that in those times there were no more then 300,000 Souls in Paris whereas 't is now believed there are twice as many and partly because I find it mentioned by the curious Observator on the Bills of Mortality p. 113 and 114. That Anno 1631 Ann. 7. Caroli 1. The number of Men Women and Children in the several Wards of London and Liberties taken in August 1631. by special Command of the Lords of his Majesties Privy-Council came in all but to 130178 and finally because the said curious Observator for that name I give that Author after my Lord Chief Iustice Hales hath given or adjudged it to him in his Origination of Mankind having by rational Calculations proved that their dyes within the Bills of Mortality a thirtieth part or one in thirty yearly and that there dyes ordinarily there 22000 per Annum that if there were there according to Howel a Million and an half of people it would follow that there must dye but 1 out of 70 per Annum and that they must live one with another 70 years There is an ingenious Author and that is the Author of the present State of England who tells us in his 2 d part That in 1588 there went forth from the Queen Commissions to Muster in all parts of England all Men that were of perfect Sence and Limbs from the Age of 16 to 60 except Noblemen Clergy-men Vniversity Students Lawyers Officers and such as had any publick charges leaving only in every Parish so many Husbandmen as were sufficient to Till the Ground In all those Musters there were then numbred three Millions but of those fit for War about 600,000 I would scarce desire better Evidence for an Opinion that the people of England were in all 12 Millions then that 3 Millions of Males between 16 and 60 were then returned for the said Observator having by Calculation assured us that there are about as many Females as Males and about as many people under the Age of 16 as are above it the said opinion would stand firm and unshaken There is too another Author who much enlargeth the number of the people of England and that is Gerard Matynes in his Lex Mercatoria first Printed in the year 1622 and there in Cap. 46. he makes them to be 16 Millions and 800,000 but any one will hardly take his word for it who considers that he there makes the people of Scotland to be 9 Millions who are but about one Million and reckons 5500 Parishes in Ireland where there were never more then 2 thousand 2 hundred Parishes But 't is the fate of Nations to have their numbers sometimes inconsiderately Assigned by considerable Authors and thus it happened particularly to France from an error of Campanella who in his discourse of the Spanish Mochy C. 24. saith that France hath in it 27000 Parishes and 100 and 50 Millions of Souls At this rate there would be in the Parishes in France one with another 5555 Souls whereas Sir W. P. in a Manuscript discourse of his saith That a substantial Author in his Treatise concerning France sets it down as an extraordinary Case if a Parish in France hath in it 600 Souls We have too an Author of great Vogue for the Politicks Sir Robert Cotton who in his Abstract of the Records of the Tower touching the Kings Revenue hath these words viz. That London which is not the 24th part in people of the Kingdom had in it found above 800,000 by a late enquiry by the Order of the late Queen meaning Queen Elizabeth But so far have we been from enabling our Political Writers to satisfie themselves in the Numbers of our People that we have not done it yet as to the very Numbers of Parishes wherein Blunt tells us in his Law Lexicon that our Authors differ and we generally reckon them as they were before many new ones have been built One late writer has accounted the Parishes in England and Wales to be 10260 and Mr. Adams sayes in his Villare Anglicum p. 408. That he is of opinion that there are about 1500 Parishes in England and Wales not valued in the Kings Books and of which he can get no account so as to make the same perfect and 't will be difficult for him to do it unless the several persons concern'd in the particulars give an account of it Cambden in his Britannia Printed Anno 1607 when he reckons the Parish Churches in the Bishoprick of Durham and in Northumberland to be 118 adds praeter sacella plurima and saith in Yorkshire Parishes besides Chappels and Parishes to which many Chappels are
subject that are equal to great Parishes c. Moreover the Grants from the Crown of Extraparochial Titles in several Counties may serve for an indication of great numbers of people that are not Inhabitant in Parishes and so likewise may the Multitudes of those people who live in Forrests and which places are generally accounted by the Law to be Extraparochial The Number of Parsonages and Vicarages in Edward the 1 sts valuation whereof there is a Manuscript Copy in the Bodleian Library was about 8900 and into that number the Chappels are not accounted but of the Chappels many since have grown up into Parsonages and this would likewise induce one to think the number of our Parishes at this time to be greater then the common Estimate especially when according to the Kings Books which respect the valuation in Harry the 8 ths time the number of them is considerably above 9000. But what may seem more strange is that some men of Thought and Learning have attempted even by Calculation to prove that the people of England have for a very long space of time decreased in their numbers and particularly the Author of a Book in Quarto called An account of the French Vsurpation on the Trade of England and the great damage the English yearly sustain by their Commerce Printed in the Year 1679 and Writ with excellence of Calculation in some parts thereof and yet that Author doth p. 16 say And I can easily believe that 1000 years since this Nation had a much greater stock of people then now it hath for the Rome-Scot or Peter-pence which was but one Penny a Chimney granted by Offa and Ina Saxon Kings to the Pope did amount to 50000 yearly and the Hearth-money which is two Shillings the Hearth and one Stack of Chimneys may have many Hearths doth not amount to 300,000l yearly whereas if the number of Chimneys charged with the Romescot had been two Shillings a Chimney it would have amounted to 1,200,000 l. yearly So that we may conclude there were then more Buildings and Chimneys and so by consequence more people But had that Author considered that the Romescot or denarius sancti Petri was only an annual Penny from every Family or Houshold and that it amounted to 300 Marks and a Noble yearly as Blunt says by that reckoning it would have appeared that there were not then in all England 50000 Families liable to that Duty whereas there are now above a Million of such Families so that now the people and Families of England are twenty times as many as they were then which agrees pretty well with my Lord Chief Iustice Hales's reckoning That great person in his Primitive Origination of Mankind yields that the people of England are at least 6 Millions and doth too in Page 205 say That he doth not know any thing rendred clearer to the view then the gradual encrease of Mankind by the curious and strict Observations on the Bills of Mortality and doth very elaborately make a comparison between the numbers of the people in Glocestershire and particularly some great Towns and Burroughs there as Thornbury and Tedbury as they were at the time of the making up of Domesday Book and as they now are and shews That there are very many more Vills and Hamlets now then there were then and few Villages or Towns or Parishes then which continue not to this day and that the number of Inhabitants now is above 20 times more through the general extent of the Country then at that time and afterward saith if we should institute a later Comparison viz. between the present time and the beginning of Queen Elizabeth which is not above 112 years since and compare the number of Trained Soldiers then and now the number of Subsidy men then and now they will easily give us an account of a very great encrease and multiplication of people within this Kingdom even to admiration It would be no difficult thing to fortifie the observation of the great gradual encrease of the people and particularly of those in the Parishes of Glocestershire by the shewing the encrease of their worth and riches in the several publick Valuations and their present real value from whence their growth in the numbers of their Inhabitants may be well inferr'd as for example in Edward the 1 sts Valuation Tedbury is valued Ecclesia de Tedbury 36. m. i. e. Marks and in Harry the 8ths Valuation is valued at 36l 13 s 2d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum Thornbury in Edward the 1 sts valuation is valued at 47 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 120 l. per Annum Berkley in Edward the 1 sts Valuation comes to 36 Marks and a half and in Harry the 8 ths to 32 l. 14s 8d and is now worth about 100 l. per Annum I have instanced in these places as referred to by Hales and shall here as to Gloster only further observe that there are more places in the Decanatus Glocestriae in Harry the 8 ths valuation then were in Edward the 1 sts as for instance Edward the 1 sts Valuation doth in the rural Deanry of Glocester comprize 6 Churches and a Chappel but Harry the 8 th doth in the Deanery contain above 20 Churches and a Chappel I shall here corroborate his Lordships remark of the encrease of Families in another Town in Glocestershire which he calls Dursilege and which is in Edward the 1 sts Valuation called Dursly and valued as a rectory there at 10 Marks per Annum and in Harry the 8 ths as a Rectory at 10 l. 14s 3d. and is now let for 72 l. yearly I have observ'd a suitable difference between the former valuations of other Livings in that County and their present real values His Lordship having before justly acknowledged that it was a laborious piece of work to make a Calculation of the number of Inhabitants at this day throughout England did however in a way very worthy of his great judgment adapt his Estimate to the extent of one entire County for had he gone less and restrained it to this or that Parish the gradual encrease of the People there might have fallen short by particular accidents and to this purpose we have it in Mr. Bentham's Christian Conflict p. 322. that 11 Mannors in Northamptonshire have been enclosed with depopulation and have vomited out their former desolate owners and their posterity Many ingenious persons have applyed their thoughts to several ways of Calculation whereby to discover the total of the number of the People in England and in the Investigation thereof some concern'd in the management of the Hearth-money have reckon'd that in England and Wales the number of Hearths of rich and poor is 2 Millions and 6 hundred thousand and that at a Medium there are between 4 and 5 persons to a Hearth and accounting but 4 persons to a Hearth they suppose that at that
places that made no returns as for example in the Arch-Deaconry of Colchester 11 Parishes made no returns and in the Decanatus Tendring twelve Parishes in the Decanatus Colcestre seven Parishes in the Decanatus Lexden ten Parishes in Decanatus Witham eleven Parishes in the Arch-Deaconry of Middlesex and Decanatus Braugling and Harlow fourteen Parishes in the Decanatus Dunmo◠7 Parishes in the Decanatus Henningam 9 Parishes in the Decanatus of Middlesex 16 Parishes some of which were St. Clements Danes St. Mary le Bow Vxbridge and in the Arch-Deacony of London St. Bartholomew Exchange are therein express'd to have made no returns it may hence seem rational for any Man to suppose in general that the number of the People of England reverâ is very great beyond the said total of 5,199,567 and that it would have risen to a much greater number if exact returns had been made of all the heads of Families in England and Wales and much more if all Persons in all Families above the Age of 16 had been return'd But yet according to the Returns that were de facto made in that Survey I observ'd that in some where the totals for Counties were cast up that they doubled the totals of the People return'd for the same Counties upon the Poll Act of 66. as for example the Poll for Devonshire and Cornwel was fourteen thousand three hundred Pound and the number return'd for those Counties by the Bishops Survey was two hundred and thirteen thousand doubling which number for those under the Age of Communicants there makes 426000 Souls there so then the 14000 l. at 12 d. the Head makes there 280000 Shillings or Persons at 12 d. a Head to which as I shew'd the number in the Bishops Survey is double And further to shew the Omissions of great Numbers of People returnable in that Survey I shall acquaint your Lordship that in the year 1676. in the which the Bishops Survey was made there dy'd within the Bills of Mortality 18730. and according to the rule of 1 in 30. there yearly dying there will be suppos'd to have then liv'd there 533,170 and the total of the People return'd of all Persuasions of Religion above the Age of 16 in the whole Diocess of London in the year 76. was 286,347 and the doubling of that number for those under the Age of 16 in that Diocess makes the total of the People there then to be 572,694 But here it is to be Considered that tho the Peculiars of the Arch-Bishoprick of Canterbury in London were de facto return'd then within the Survey of the Diocess of London yet the great and populous Parishes in Southwark and others in Surry within the District of the Bills of Mortality were not return'd with any respect to the Diocess of London but were in that Survey by the Bishop of Winton return'd as belonging to his Lordships Diocess and that in a late year of ordinary health viz. in Anno 1677. there dyed in the Parishes in Surry that are within the Bills of Mortallity 2803. and therefore according to the Rule of the 30 th part then dying there it is to be judged that there then lived there 81287. and therefore we being to Substract that last mention'd Number out of the 533,170 then the number of all the Souls in the other Places in the Bills of Mortallity will be 451,983 and so at that rate the number of all the Souls within the whole Diocess of London will be but 120,711 more then those that were in the other Places within the Bills of Mortallity the which Diocess takes in all the other Places in Middlesex that are without the Bills of Mortallity and all Essex and part of Hartfordshire And to conclude this point the omissions of Great Parts of the Numbers of the People and particulary of Sons Daughters Servants being supposed to be in other places proportionable I am hence induced to believe that on the occasion of any actual and exact Survey of the People of England to be made their number will rise to a greater height then what it hath been advanced to by the most judicious Calculators And now if after all this one should tell me that any vast encrease of the numbers of the People of England beyond the quota supposed by Cautious Calculators is incredible and to be added to the number of things incredible I will answer him out of Salust Incredibile est memoratu quantum adepta libertate in brevi Romana Civitas creverit and will tell him that 't is almost incredible to relate how much we have gain'd by our abandoning Popery and its Incredibility and the almost incredibile as well as intolerable Servitude that the Papacy so often oppressed both our Kings and People with We are told by the Observator on the Bills of Mortallity that anxiety of mind hinders Breeding and from sharp anxieties of divers kinds hath the Protestant Religion rescued English minds and from their former daily yariness for their daily Bread and their fears of being Arbitrarily dispossest of it What Princes as I may say are the English Infantry and even the Boors of Holland to the Pesants of France who with Chains on do propagate their Species and Servitude it self And what pity was it that Commerce which with its infant Smiles cheer'd our Isle in the Reign of Edward the 6 th was almost frighted away from it by the Frowns and Arbitrary Practices of Queen Mary and that after that Edward the 6 th consulting the Advancement of our Trade had legally Suppressed the Corporation of Merchant-Strangers and null'd their Monopoly Queen Mary endeavour'd the Suppression of our Native Merchants and that too by Illegal Impositions It is not denyable that in the fourth year of her Reign she did lay an Impost upon our Cloth and one who had been a Iudge of the Realm and who had no spight to her Story mentioning it in his Book call'd The Rights of the People Concerning Impositions saith there This Religious Prince Inviron'd with infinite Troubles in the Church and Commonwealth and Impoverish'd by her Devotion in Renouncing the Profits of the Church Lands that were in the Crown was the first that made Digression from the steps of her worthy Progenitors in putting on that imposition without assent of Parliament And the same Author in pag. 91. mentions another unjust Imposition of hers on Gascoyn Wines And her expulsion of the Dutch Church and their Pastors from London and her Canselling of the Legal Priviledges that Edward the 6 th for himself his Heirs and Successors gave them and other Strangers by his Letters Patents was an Arbitrary blow given to the Trade of the Kingdom in general and of that City in particulars The Copy of her Proclamation for the Expelling them is Printed in Fox in which they are stiled a Multitude of evil disposed Persons being Born out of her Highnesses Dominions in other sundry Nations flying from the Obeysance of the Princes and Rulers
of Father Parsons about the Succession part 2 d where he weighs the several parties of England in the Ballance of State and saith It is well known that in the Realm of England at this day there are three different and opposite Bodies of Religion that are of most bulk and do carry most sway and power which three Bodies are commonly known by the Names of Protestant Puritants and Papists and afterward speaking of the Great Power of the Protestant Party for wealth and force He saith p. 140. A chief Member of the Protestant Body is the Clergy of England especially the Bishops and the other Men in Ecclesiastical Dignities which are like to be a great back to this Party at that day c. meaning the time after the death of Queen Elizabeth when her Successor should enter on the Stage and then having weighed the Puritan Party and its interest he saith The third Body of Religion which are those of the Roman who call themselves Catholicks which is the least in shew at this present by reason of the Laws and Tides of the time that run against them yet are they of no small consideration in this Affair to him that weighs things indifferently and this in respect as well of their Party at home as their friends abroad for at home they being of two sorts as the World knows the one more upâ—n that discover themselves which are the Recusants and the other more close and privy that accommodate themselves to all external preceedings of the time and State so as they cannot be known or at leastwise not much touch'd we may imagine that their Number is not small throughout the Realm c. The Vigour of the hopes that Popery had in that Conjuncture appears out of that great Historical Letter of D'Ossat to his King Anno 1601 where he makes such a judicious abstract of this goodly Book of Parsons for so he calls it Ce beau livre and Animadversions on it and saith 'T is about four years ago that the Pope did Create in England a certain Arciprestre to the end that all Ecclesiasticks and Catholicks of the Realm should have one to whom to go and have recourse about the things relating to the Catholick Religion and by means thereof to be united among themselves and to understand what shall be good to be done for their preservation and the re-establishment of the Catholick Religion and some have given his Holiness to understand that by that means he would make a great Party of the Catholicks in England for what he would effect and then acquaints the King That the Pope had sent three Briefs to his Nuntio in the Low-Countreys for him to keep till the death of Queen Elizabeth and after that to send them to England one to the Ecclesiasticks another to the Nobility and another to the third Estate by which the said three Estates are admonished and exhorted by his Holiness to remain united together to receive a Catholick King that his Holiness shall name and such a one who shall appear acceptable to them and honourable and all this for the Honour and Glory of God and for the restoring the Catholick Religion c. Here was it seems one Brief more sent to England then Mr. Marvel mentions in his Growth of Popery where he saith That the Pope sent two Briefs in order to exclude King James from the Succession to the Crown In fine Popery was in a Storm during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth and in it the Papists were sometimes carried up to the Skyes and then down again and in their Enterprizes with variety of success in some conjunctures their fortune was to reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and as in a Storm many hands are necessary so on the whole matter they found need of the numbers of more hands then they could command and their Numbers decreased in the ballance of the people here as much by the King of Spains Ambition as did the numbers of the Papists in the United Provinces thereby And as they look'd big on the account of their numbers in the latter end of Queen Elizabeth's Reign so they did in the beginning of King Iames's and as D'Ossat said in that Letter to Villeroy of April 2d 1603. You will find that the Spaniards who are most troubled about this Event meaning of the Succession will be the first to Congratulate the King of Scotland so it happen'd here with the Papists as appears by a Book in 4 to Printed for Ioseph Barnes at Oxford Anno 1604 called A Consideration of the Papists Reasons of State and Religion for toleration of Popery in England intimated in their supplication to the Kings Majesty and the States of the present Parliament where in their Supplication at large Printed they in the beginning thereof in a profession too as inauspicious as was possibly say that His Majesties direct Title to the Imperial Crown of the Realm both by Lineal Descent and Priority of Blood and your Highness most quiet access to the same do exceedingly possess and englad our hearts The Tide of the Succession against which they had striven was made by Fate to run smooth and clear and they were resolved to appear on the Surface of it with a nos poma natamus Gabriel Powel of St. Maryhall in Oxford the Publisher of that Book saith in his Animadversion on the said beginning of that supplication How can Papists without blushing acknowledge his Majesties Title to the Crown of England to be direct seeing they have heretofore most indirectly and most unjustly oppugned the same which Traiteâ—ous Parsons confesseth albeit for excuse he assureth himself that whatsoever hath been said writ or done by any Catholick against his Majesty which with some others might breed disgust hath been directed to this end to make his Majesty first a Catholick and then our King as if Treason and Treachery against his Highness could make him a Catholick and impugning of his direct and just Title tended to make him King. Rob. Parsons in his Treatise of three Conversions in the dedicat Addition to the Catholicks But tho they gave themselves as it were an Act of Oblivion as to the many Treasons of Parsons his Book of the Succession yet in this supplication they forgot not again in effect to use Parsons his division of the people of England into three parts and so to shape the Estimates of their Numbers and they say in their first reason of State the World knows that there are three Kinds of Subjects in the Realm the Protestant the Puritan and the Catholicks affected and by general report the subject Catholickly affected is not inferiour to the Protestant or Puritan either in number or alliance c. And saith Powel in his Notes on that Clause If by Catholickly affected you mean plainly Papists the World knows that in comparison of the Protestants they are but as it were a handful of Thieves among honest Subjects however
to have wherewithal to eat Bread if they be executed according to the said Proclamation It was but about October 1673 that the House of Commons in an Address to the King took occasion to say It is now more then one Age that the Subjects have lived in continual apprehensions of the encrease of Popery and the decay of the Protestant Religion but what Mr. Coleman's apprehensions were of the Growth of Popery on the 5th of February 1674 I have shewn before and am of opinion That though possibly in the following course of time to the birth of the Popish Plot the coming of many Romish Missionaries here might make some accession to the Number of the Papists that however the Laity of them here Inhabitants hath in its Numbers sensibly decreased and will do so more and more till the most timid Protestants shall be no more aggrieved at their Number then of that of the Muggletonians or of the Sweet Singers of Israel That the discovery of the Popish Plot hath had a natural Tendency to the abating the Number of their perswasion must be granted by all who believe there was one and who know that the blustring attempts of the Conspirators to subvert the Protestant Religion and which have therein failed must end in the better settlement of it as all Storms that do not overthrow a Tree confirm its growth Mr. Care in his History of the Popish Plot mentions That the Iesuites and Seminary Priests in England at the time of the Plot were about 1800 a Number far inferior to that in the Conjuncture in King Iames ' s time before mention'd And short of the Number mention'd by Prynne in a Book of his Printed Anno 1659 called A True and Perfect Narrative of what was done spoken by and between Mr. Prynne the old and new forcibly Secluded Members and those now sitting c. where he saith p. 44 That an English Lord return'd from Rome about four years since averr'd that the Provincial of the English Iesuites when he went to see the Colledge in Rome assured him That they had then above 1500 of their Society of Iesuites in England able to work in several Professions and Trades which they had there taken upon them the better to Support and Secure themselves from being discovered and infuse their Principles into the vulgar People Mr. Coleman complains of a Conjuncture as to Popery that he writ in that tho the Harvest was great the Labourers were very few but Mr. Prynne supposeth the Labouring Jesuites who wrought in the Trade of Religion and in other Trades too were here after the year 50 above 1500 and it may therefore be well conceived that there were many Jesuites here beside who could only manage their Tools in the former Trade and perhaps as many Seminary Priests as Jesuites And no doubt without some hint of notification from some one of the Iesuits Provincials their Number in any Protestant State can hardly be conjectured in regard of their Proteus-like varying their Shapes accordingly as a Description of them is given in the Book called The Emperor and the Empire betray'd where 't is said There are in the Society of Iesus Men of several sorts some of which are dispens'd with not only to lay aside the Habit but to marry and bear all sorts of Dignities and he further presumes to say That the Emperor was thus in this Order in his younger days Mr. Prynne in p. 42. of that Book averrs That Oliver Cromwel declared to his Parliament Anno 1654 That the Emissaries of the Iesuites then came over in great swarms and that they had then fixed in England an Episcopal Power with Arch-Deacons and other Persons to pervert the People a thing they never since the Reformation I think attempted in any Conjuncture till Quarto Caroli and then as appears out of Rushworth ' s Collections in a Conference between the Lords and Commons and managed by Secretary Cook he said There was at that time a Popish Hierarchy established in England that they had a Bishop Consecrated by the Pope and that Bishop had his subalternate Officers of all kinds as Vicars General Arch-Deacons Rural Deans Apparitors and that they were not Nominal or Titular Officers only but they all Executed their Iurisdictions and made their ordinary Visitations throughout the Kingdom kept Courts and determin'd Ecclesiastical Causes But it appears not that they had any such Hierarchy here at the time of the Plot or that they have any thing like it at this time in this Realm Mr. Prynne tells us in p. 49. of that Book That in that Conjuncture in Cromwel's time above 30000 Popish Pamphlets were permitted to be Printed and Vended in England and that of this the London Stationers complain'd in Print But 't is very little that they have Printed here since the King's Restauration and the same private Presses which gave Birth to the few Pamphlets they printed would have done it to as many Volumes as ever Tostatus as Mr. Prynne writ if they had pleased The great Number of the Protestants must still be naturally attractive of the lesser to it for the preservation of their Persons tho at the price of the diminution of their Numbers as a drop is best preserved in the Sea tho it be there swallowed up This Notion is well confirm'd by Edmund Spencer in his Observations of the History of Ireland in former times where he shews in what course of time a handful of English planted among the Numerous Irish must of necessity become Irish as indeed his own Family there did as I am told and that Cromwel speaking to the Grand-child of Spencer in English that on the account of the Fame of his Ancestor he should enjoy his Estate was not by him understood And there is no doubt but time will illuminate the Papists as to the Pope's Politicks being inconvenient to them and only convenient to himself For the same Principle in Politicks that makes every lesser State have a regret against being United to a greater namely for fear of its being absorbed thereby a Notion lately in vogue when the Union of England and Scotland was agitated engageth the Pope to keep the Papists from a Coalition with the Protestants here that would drown the visibility of their Numbers and consequently the appearance of the Numbers of his Subjects in this Realm for so in effect they are The true Cause therefore in Nature that made the Pope by his Bull in Queen Elizabeth's time prohibit the Papists from continuing to come to our Churches and to our Common-Prayer a thing they would else still have done was the Pope's being enabled by such Prohibitions to put Marks on his Sheep whereby to know them and their Numbers And which had he forborn there had probably been no Number of them returnable in the Bishops Survey 'T is therefore not to be wondred that our Church got nothing but the destruction of its Hierarchy in the last Age by the Policy
Civil Wars observes well That there were at first in the Parliaments Army a great many London Apprentices who for want of experience in the War would have been fearful enough of death and wounds approaching visibly in glistering Swords but for want of judgement scarce thought of such death as comes invisibly in a Bullet and therefore were very hardly to be driven out of the Field And now therefore should any Great Person descend to ask my poor Opinion of the proportion of the danger we are in of a Relapse into the Plague of War I would give it by bringing the Doctrine of Dulce bellum c. into use and application thus namely I would Calculate the number of the inexperts now here living and who were not living in the time of the last War a thing not hard to do sufficiently for my purpose and thus I essayed to do it the last year when I fancied to employ my thoughts on that Subject diverting my self with these Queries 1. What part of the People of England now living are inexperts i. e. who are now alive that were born since the year in which our Wars ended or were then Children viz. Of such years as not to have experienced or been sensible of the miseries and inconvenience of the War 2. What numbers of those who lived in 1641 about which time the War may be supposed to have begun are now dead 3. What proportion of those now living who lived in that time of the War did gain by the War for it may be said that perhaps War may be sweet to such surviving experts 4. The War of Ireland ending about the year 1653 how many may the number of such inexperts there be supposed to be 5. The People of Scotland being now above a Million as are the People of Ireland and the Scotch War ending at Worcester Fight September the 3 d 1651. How many are now living in Scotland that lived there that day and what may be the number of the inexperts there In order to the satisfying my self in these Queries tho I know that many do make the Civil Wars of England to end with the surrender of Oxford in Mid-summer 1646 yet because several Acts of War in England were committed long after 1646 viz. in Lancashire Kent at Colchester Worcester I supposed not the English War to end till 1651 about the same time with that of Scotland both Kingdoms as they are but one Island so intermixing and bringing mutual Calamities on one another and besides a few years at that distance of time would not much alter the State of this Case so then as to the first and last Queries I thus concluded that the People of this Island in the year 1651 were and always are about one half of them under the age of 16 before which time as they are reckoned unfit for War so may they likewise be thought inexperts as to the miseries thereof and the other half above that age and that of this latter half more then one other Moyety are dead in these 28 or 29 years which have passed from 51 to near 80. For if we reckon only Arithmetically without any Consideration of Geomerrical proportion in the Case which with reason enough the Observator on the Bills of Mortality takes in yet 28 ½ the number of years in 51 in which the said half are supposed dead and 27 ½ for the years of the other half surviving and fifteen for the Age of the Inexperts from 1651 makes 72 the full Age of Man so that the surviving Experts are not a fourth of the whole And again at least one half of this fourth either through forgetfulness by Age or Dotage or for want of understanding all their whole life time may be very well counted among the Inexperts also And thus the Inexperts will be above seven eighth parts of the whole People And if in answer to the third Query we shall add the Number of the Gainers by the War which perhaps some will estimate but small and of those who lost by the Peace and Settlement on the Kings Restoration with the Heirs Executors and Principal Legatees of both and to these three last sorts the War was so very sweet that they may very well be reckoned for the Equivalent of three or four or perhaps many times more the number of the other common Inexperts we may on the whole matter judging modestly conclude the Inexperts of all the former sorts not to be less then 9 10 nine Tenths of the whole People and to these also they who have spent their Estates and cannot well live in Peace may be properly added I satisfied my self as to the fourth Query concerning Ireland that it may bear at least the same proportion with what was asserted in relation to Great Brittain and tho the War in the former lasted some years longer yet there are other Considerations obvious enough that would more then ballance that As for the Query about how many are now dead who were living in 41 the Principles I have variously discoursed of out of the Observations on the Bills of Mortality may easily satisfie Curiosity therein I account that of the Lords Temporal in the Kings Long Parliament that sate the 8 th of May 1661. there were dead 77 at the Dissolution of that Parliament in Ianuary the 25 th 1678. And of the 26 Bishops that sate on the 8th of May in that Parliament only 2 were alive in the 25 th of Ianuary 1678. And of the House of Commons which sate in the 8th of May 1661. And consisted of about 520 odd Members there died during their sitting viz. in 17 Years and 8 Months 307 Members viz. in each year about 1 17 th part which is one in about 30 of the whole of that House every year And these things considered we may well conclude that of the Parliament that sate on the 3 d of November 1640 there are few living and I think that of that turbulent House of Commons scarce 16 are now living and that of the Assembly of Divines that met the first of Iuly 1643. all the Divines except 2 are dead The Sculls of many of those hot Spurrs of Church and State that troubled us so much on the Stage of the World have perhaps since diverted us in the Scene in Hamlet and no doubt but of the poor handful of surviving Experts of them the most considerate are not now considering how by any Projects to put the World either in Tune or out of it but are tuning their fancies to the still Musick of the Grave We see that many of the Sons of the Divines of that Assembly and of other Presbyterians are true Sons of the Church of England and are of the Clergy in it But tho I am no Concurrer with their Estimates that make the number of those who gain'd by the War to be small for as the Judicious Author of the Regal Apology Printed in the Year 1648 and by the
Oxford Antiquities said to be Dr. Bate the late Eminent Physitian in p. 49 estimates That the Revenues of King Queen Bishops Deans and Chapters and Delinquents in the hands of those Vsurpers were almost one Moiety of the Kingdom besides many rich Offices c and as to the multiplicity of Offices then a very ingenious Pamphlet written in those days call'd the City Alarum with a Treatise of the Excise mentions in p. 33. That 't was easie to demonstrate that more then 200,000 l. per Annum was then consumed by superfluous Officers which by the way sufficiently shews the ill Managery of the publick Treasure in those days and tho I have put the rate of the Heirs of such above that of common Inexperts yet I am not without hopes that possibly some what like a sort of Experience that many of those Heirs have from the latest Histories and Traditional Accounts had of the breath of the People having blown away that mighty Ballance of Land out of the hands of the unjust Possâ—ssors and all their Models of Government built thereon and of many of their Ancestors who had by their Swords acquired ample shares of the Spoyles of the Crown and Church and Cavaliers Estates growing ashamed of their unjust Victories and the Yoke they have brought upon themselves and the Kingdom and affraid of their Estates and Liberties not being ensureable under a fluctuating Military Oligarchy thought it the best of their Game to aspire with their All to the feet of their Lawful Soveraign and to be his Restorers without Capitulation may incline a considerable part of such and who are not desperate in their Fortunes and have perhaps inherited the Blessiing of their Ancestors penitence by their Peaceable Morals to make such an exception in this case as may confirm the Rule and make them according to the expression before used become sound parts of the State. Another momentous thing cannot but be obvious to the thoughts of the Considerate among them and all Orders or Parties of men here that if the devesting the unjust Proprietors of about half the Land of England by the necessary Course of the Law at the Kings Restoration did in making so many persons and their dependants Paupers and useless in the improvement of the Land and many to be Nusances in it as troublesome Sollicitors and Barrettors and many likewise to withdraw to our Forraign Plantations and to our insula Sanctorum call'd Ireland unavoidably make the price of our Land sink to the proportion it hath since done that if any Sons of Belial and disloyal persons should be ever able by a new Commotion to introduce the old Confusions among us and dispossess the Proprietors of about half our Land as formerly that England it self would turn Ireland and our Land perhaps be valuable but at ten years purchase And tho the Experts now in being among us are comparatively few yet is the work of the Loyal part of them so easie to demonstrate to their Vicinage every where the dreadful inconvenience of essaying to mend the World by War that one Harvy could not more easily among the judicious propagate a general Notion of the Circulation of the Blood then may a thousand of these shew to Millions of others the impious folly of Blood guiltiness again incircling our Land and especially when all our Blood and our Treasure is necessary to be preserved for the Defence of the Realm in a Conjuncture that hath put Christendom in procinctu and therefore 't is but according to the Course of Nature that in such a season the generality of Peoples minds here should manifest such an Abhorrence of both the Irish and English in 41 and that the Religion-Trade which had us at its feet being now at ours if it should again struggle to get uppermost as formerly is to expect from so many to find the salute of the rising blow And as I love to think of these things without asperity or offering the least Violence to the Sacredness of the great Established Amnesty so do I observe the same inclination to be very prevalent among the weightier persons of the several Parties The smalness of the Number of Persons now living that wanted that Amnesty makes men generally concur in not esteeming it taâ—ti to wish it broken but tho most of our former Empirical State-Physicians are covered with Earth their Errors are not and People seem generally sensible that both the present and in likelyhood the future State of England will not allow of Political Physicians trying more Experiments on us and particularly the former churlish ones that succeeded ill and especially in a Conjuncture when nature is by necessity leading us to a Convalescence As in Boccalines Politick Touch-stone Where the Monarchy of Spain is represented throwing her Physician out of the Window and Apollo desiring to know the Cause of it she told him how about 40 years ago she asking Counsel of her Physician he prescribed her a tedious and chargeable Purge of divers Oyls of Holy Leagues of Insurrections of People of Rebellions of Cauteries and other very painful Medicines that had wasted and weakened her spirits and that he prescribing just such another Purge as before was therefore thrown out at Window so would such Purges and such Purgers as we were troubled with forty years ago be here deservedly dealt with now How ridiculous will any Demagogue now appear that should in an English Parliament harangue it against supplying the King in such a manner as Sir Iohn Elliot and Mr. Pym did 4 to Caroli who then as Rushworth's Collections tells us moved in the House of Commons not to yield the King Tunnage and Poundage till they had first settled Religion touching the Points of Ariminianism They might as well have moved that the King might have no Money till they had found out the Longitude and likewise discovered the Quadrature of the Circle and they by that motion would have ensured to him the name of Pochi-Dinari that my Lord Herbert in his Harry the 8 th says was given to Maximilian the Emperor for his famed want of Money But that wantonness of Popularity did shew the worse in those two great Demagogues of their Age for the ingratitude it carried with it they moving so in the House of Commons as they did so soon after the great Royal Concessions as to the Petition of Right and might well excuse the Great Earl of Strafford's then quitting their Company But I shall here observe to your Lordship that after the discovery of the Gun-powder Treason viz. 3 Iacobi the Parliament gave him three Subsidies and six Fifteenths and Tenths of the Layety and four Subsidies of the Clergy all which by estimation amounted to 453000 l. and it was but just in them then so to supply the Crown after the detection of that Conspiracy because it appeared by several Examinations That if it had taken effect an Association of Forraign Roman Catholick Princes by a Solemn Oath
water and the Sea and like that they are apt to be eating towards the Roots of the Powers of Soveraigns but while the Mountains of their Power are bottom'd on Natural Justice all the preying of the Sea of the People there makes but the promontory more surely guarded and appear more majestic as well as be more inaccessible And of this Sea of the Peoples as I would wish every Prince in the just observance of the Municipal Laws of his Country to espouse the Interest as much as the Duke of Venice doth his Adriatic yet should I see one for fear of Popular Envy or Obloquy forbearing to administer Iustice and to follow the real last Dictates of his practical understanding rightly informed and servily giving up himself to obey any mens pretended ones I should think it to be as extravagant a Madness as Hydrophoby or fear of water on the biting of a Mad Dog and while a Sovereign observes the immutable Principles of Justice he may acquiesce in the results of Providence and expect that the troubling of the waters may be like that of the Angel before the time of healing or a Conjuncture of the Peoples being possessed of healing Principles and in fine a King when he finds the Waters of Popular Discontent more tumultuous by Religionary Parties as two Seas meeting as for example Papists and Presbyterians he may depend on his being near Land that being always near where two Seas meet and let every Prince be assured that 't is not only Popery but Atheisme in Masquerade to do an unjust Act to support Religion I know that it hath been incident to some good men to strain pretences beyond the nature of things for justice Causes of War abroad in the World to advance the Protestant Religion And thus in the last Age the Crown and Populace of England being clutter'd with the Affair of the Palatinate the Prince Palatine had here many well-wishers to his Title for the Bohemian Crown and Rushworth tells us in his 1st Vol. Ann. 1619. That he being Elected King of Bohemia craved Advice of his Father in Law the King of Great Brittain touching the acceptation of that Royal Dignity and that when this Affair was debated in the Kings Council Arch-Bishop Abbot whose infirmity would not suffer him to be present at the Consultation wrote his mind to Sir R. Nauton the Kings Secretary viz. That God had set up this Prince his Majesties Son in Law as a Mark of Honour throughout all Christendome to propagate the Gospel and protect the Oppressed That for his own part he dares not but give advice to follow where God leads apprehending the work of God in this and that of Hungary that by the Pâ—ece and Peece the Kings of the Earth that gave their power to the Beast shall leave the Whore and make her desolate that he was satisfied in Conscience that the Bohemians had just Cause to reject that Proud and Bloody Man who had taken a Course to make that Kingdom not Elective in taking it by Donation of another c. And concludes Let all our Spirits be gathered up to animate this Business that the World may take notice that we are awake when God calls Rushworth saith that King Iames disavowed the Act of his accepting that Crown and would never grace his Son in Law with the Style of his new Dignity And in King Charles the Firsts time in the Common-Prayer relating to the Royal Family the Prayer runs for Frederick Prince Palatine of the Rhine and the Lady Elizabeth his Wife yet in the Assemblies Directory afterward as to the Prayer for the Royal Family that Lady Elizabeth is Styled Queen of Bohemia But our Princes not being satisfied it seems that the Palatine of the Rhine had a just Title to the Bohemian Crown thought it not just for them to assert it However that Arch-Bishop Abbot the Achilles of the Protestants here in his Generation thought that the English Crown ought to descend in its true Line of Succession whatever profession of Religion any Member thereof should own appears out of Mr. Pryns Introduction to the History of the Arch Bishop of Canterburies Tryal where having in p. 3. mentioned the Articles sent by King Iames to his Embassador in Spain in order to the Match with the Infanta and that one was That the Children of this Marriage shall no way be compelled or constrained in point of Conscience of Religion wherefore there is no doubt that their Title shall be prejudiced in case it should please God that they should prove Catholicks and in p. 6. Cited the same in Latin out of the French Mercury Tom. 9. as offered from England Quod liberi ex hoc matrimonio oriundi non cogentur neque compellentur in causâ religionis vel conscientiae neque leges contra Catholicos attingent illos in casu siquis eorum fuerit Catholicus non ob hoc perdet jus successionis in Regna Dominia Magnae Britanniae and afterward in p. 7. mentioned it as an Additional Article offer'd from England That the King of Great Brittain and Prince of Wales should bind themselves by Oath for the observance of the Articles and that the Privy Council should Sign the same under their hands c. He in p. 43. mentions Arch-Bishop Abbots among other Privy-Counsellers accordingly Signing those Articles and further in p. 46. mentions the Oath of the Privy-Council for the observance of those Articles as far as lay in them and had before given an account not only of Arch-Bishop Abbots but of other magna nomina of the Clergy and Layety in the Council that Signed the same and particularly of John Bishop of Lincoln Keeper of the Great Seal Lionel Earl of Middlesex Lord High Treasurer of England Henry Viscount Mandevile Lord President of the Council Edward Earl of Worcester Lord Privy-Seal Lewis Duke of Richmond and Lennox Lord High Steward of the Houshold James Marquess of Hamilton James Earl of Carlile Lancelot Bishop of Winchester Oliver Viscount Grandison Arthur Baron Chichester of Belfast Lord Treasurer of Ireland Sir Thomas Edmonds Kt. Treasurer of the Houshold Sir John Suckling Comptroller of the Houshold Sir George Calvert and Sir Edward Conway Principal Secretaries of State Sir Richard Weston Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Julius Caesar Master of the Rolls who had done the same Mr. Pryn afterward in p. 69. having mentioned the Dissolution of the Spanish Match gives an account of the bringing on the Marriage with France and saith It was concluded in the life of King James the Articles concerning Religion being the same almost Verbatim with those formerly agreed on in the Spanish Treaty and so easily condescended to without much Debate and referreth there to the Rot. tractationis ratificationis matrimonii inter Dom. Carolum Regem Dom. Henrettam Mariam sororem Regis Franc. 1 Car. in the Rolls The Demagogues of the old long Parliament who made such loud Out-cries of the danger of Popery
which in so short a space have broach'd or entertain'd above 160 Errors many of them damnable And therefore I do not wonder that in a Pamphlet called The exact Collection of the Debates in the House of Commons in the last Parliament one Member is there brought in observing in his Speech concerning the Dissenters that 't is not probable that ever they will have a King of their opinion nor yet a Parliament by the best discoveries they had made of their strength at the last Election For according to the best Calculations that I can make they could not bring in above 1. in 20. The present Gentlemanly Temper appearing in the People of England as to the not having Aversion or Resentments of Anger against any Mens persons or their Converse by reason of their asserting controvertible points that are capable of the name of Religion must naturally make any ashamed to vex their patience and disturb their security by asserting Principles that really are Irreligion If any one did rake in the dust of Libraries for Names of absolete Heresies to render the Papists or any else the fouler thereby he would in effect but needlessly foul his own fingers as for example if any one should say the Papists have borrowed their Practice of extreme Unction from the Valentinians and Heracleonites their Notion of the Orders and Quires of Angels from the Archonticks the use and worshipping of Images from the Carpocratians the praying to the Virgin-Mary from the Colliridians the Veneration of the Cross from the Armenians the Baptism by Women from Marcion the Baptizing in an unknown Tongue from the Marcosians and the voluntary Poverty and single Life of Priests from the Apostolici the using of small Bells in Celebrating the Mysteries of Religion from the Meletians Nor would any be much concern'd whether any old or new unheard of Hereticks communicated the Disease of these Notions to the weak minds of the erring since it doth not infect Humane Society And there are several Traditions mentioned in some of the Ancient Fathers as Apostolical which tho the Papists do not observe yet the World would not make any angry Exclamations against them if it heard they did as namely the mixture of Milk and Honey given to them that are newly Baptized the abstaining from washing a whole Week after Oblations for the Birth-day yearly not to fast or kneel in Prayer or worshipping of God on the the Lords Day nor between Easter and Whitsuntide all which are mentioned in Tertullian Nor would any be now angry with another that held either part of the Question viz. If the Hallelujah may be sung in Lent The great Controversy about Easter that heretofore put all the World in a Rattle and almost shook it to pieces what a Toy is it self now reputed insomuch that our latest Ascertainers here of the time of its Celebration seemed not to think it tanti to be awake when they were about it and tho our lately having in our Almanacks two Easters in one year easily awakened the Non-Conformists to take notice of it and to say that therefore they could not give their unfeigned assent and consent to all and every thing contained and prescribed in and by the Book intituled the Book of Common Prayer c. And tho thereupon a person of the Royal Society very profoundly knowing in all the Mathematical Sciences and likewise in the knowledge of Theology and of the Canon Law and the Ecclesiastical Law of England hath published an infallible way of fixing Easter for ever and that it may be no longer a Fugitive from the Rule of its Practice as it often is at present nor dance away from it self as I may say in allusion to the vulgar error of the Suns dancing on Easter day and fixing it so as perhaps none else could have done nor possibly himself any other way yet hath this great right done to that great day been by the generality of people not so much regarded as would an Advice to a Painter or such like Composure have been Any one that would design to make another fermentation in the World by the terms of Homo-ousios and Homoi-ousios would no more effect it than by the Criticks Controversy in Boccaline whether Consumptum should be spelled with a p or no to which purpose I heard one cite it out of Luther that he said anima mea odit terminum istum Homo-ousion tho yet he knew Homo-ousios was the right opinion and Homoi-ousios the wrong And that one word Heresy that hath produced such furious Tempests in the World that have torn up States and Kingdoms by the Roots how is it now generally among men of ingenuity and wit here reduced to its quiet and primitive signification viz. the taking of an opinion or a private opinion without reference to truth or falshood and to import nothing more of affront then when used by Tully as Non sum in eadem tecum haeresi I am not of your opinion and the common Vogue of Heretics amounts to opiniátre and Heresy to opiniátrete and as a Whirl-wind may be supposed to have blown some one thing into its place as each other thing out of it so have the Whirl-winds Heresy hath disturbed the World by happened at last to blow its signification into its right and original State. Our Courts Christian which in order to the Salus animae might still prosecute Men for Heresy as well as Vsury have given no Heretics or Vsurers any Cause of Complaint for molestation tho yet in the Articles of Visitation this is one is there any person a known or reputed Heretick or Schismatick But as in the Diocesess in the Country and even in the Cities there the Church-wardens having not troubled themselves to know what Animal a Heretick is so neither is our Layety in our Metropolis in the humour to mind the Genus and Differentia in the definition of a Heretick Nor will they be ever likely to make any such Presentment as Mr. Nath. Bacon said in one of his printed Discourses he hath seen made formerly by some of St. Mary Overies Item we saine that John Stephens is a man we cannot well tell what to make of him and that he hath Books we know not what they are Our English Genius is so improved by the excellent temper and discourses of that breed of rational Divines our Church of England hath been blest with since the King's Restoration that it generally abhors the thoughts of punishing a Heretick as such with death as a severity that hath in it the turpitude of injustice and cruelty And since the very Fathers and Schoolmen could never agree about the point who are formally Hereticks and that the acutest among them make the formality of Heresy to consist in Pertinacy or Contumacy which are inward Acts of the Mind and which none but the Scrutator renum can know it may well seem shameful for any to agree in punishing it with death What a shameful narrowness of
may give the least Addition of trouble to any Member of the Realm whose Principles and Practices are not justly suspected to threaten the disturbance of the whole and my being informed by some of my Correspondents who are very impartial observers of things that many of the Dissenters of this Age have made the Press send forth several of the Antimoniarchical Principles of the former and as if they designed to revive its Rebellion and that tho the same Laws that have secured our Religion have likewise secured the Power of the Militia solely to the King and Enacted that it is not lawful on any pretence to take up Arms c. yet that the Government is justly apprehensive of many Dissenters and their Pastors owning the former Doctrine of Resistance I could wish as I did in behalf of the Papists that they would themselves offer to his Majesty's Consideration such a way of a Test or Assurance of their being become sound parts of the State and that they aim at no power of disturbing it and as to his Royal Wisdom may appear substantial and satisfactory till they do so I wish that not only the Magistracy but all private loyal persons would have such a regardful eye on them as is had in Foreign parts on those that come for Prattiques from infected places and bring no Letters of Health and that they would have Prattique or Commerce with such of them which would soon enforce them to live by themselves I have in this Discourse already acknowledged it to your Lordships just praise that you are not of too narrow a Spirit or Principles as to Protestant Dissenters as supposing that you had such Sentiments of the usage fit to be afforded to some of them that our Learned Bishop of Winchester own'd in a Letter to your Lordship which you once shewed me and I was as ready to be their Excusator as any of the Church of England could be till I saw their ingratitude so instrumental in Cancelling the Declaration of Indulgence and still out of a natural inclination do as I said in the Case of the Papists wish them all that share of the Royal Favour that would not undo themselves and others and as I said in the Case of the Papists do suppose the continuance of the old Laws against Protestant Recusants necessary in this Conjuncture that the King in whom the Executive Power of the Laws is lodged may sharpen the edge against any one of the Party that should be an aggressor against the Peace of the Kingdom and especially considering how often many of the Puritans have took the advantage of the publick pressures of the Crown in former Ages and that while it was in procinctu to withstand a Foreign Invasion My Lord Keeper Puckering's Observation of their Temper expressed in his memorable Speech is known to all and the present apprehensions in the Government of danger from Dissenters have sufficiently evinced the Prudence of his Majesty's Measures in not repealing the Penal Clauses in our Statutes against Protestant Recusants When they who were regarded as weak Brethren do now fortiter Calumniari and Libel the Government and call whom they will Iulian 't is necessary that the Prince by having the power of the Penal Laws in his hand should be able to discriminate those who have not yet discriminated themselves and in the Case of Persons stupid and perverse 't is fitter that Children should be Lachrymists than old men When the Divines of the Church of England have of late from one end of the Land to the other alarmed the People with Exhortations against Disloyalty as loud as those in a late Conjuncture against Popery and the King's Ministers were informed of the Altum silentium in the Conventicles as to any making the English Bibles there support the Rights of our English Kings and that the Iulians there were Apostates from the Principles of the Non-Conformists in King Iames's time and had forgot how Reynolds Whitaker Cartwright Dod Traverse c. had in their Writings disowned the assigning it as a Cause of the Primitive Obedience Quia deerant vire and that a new Sect of false weak Brethren had learned to urge the deerant vires 't was time for the King to keep the strength of the old Laws in his hands and occasionally to arm them against the petulant insolence of any Seditious Protestant or Popish Recusants I have been far from recommending in this Discourse the Exterminium haereticorum or Extirpation of any Recusants but have endeavoured with the sedateness requisite in a Philosophical or Political Disquisition to give my Judgment of the Natural Causes that induce me to expect the Extermination only of things or Principles Relionary and indeed to speak more properly of that part of Mens Principles only that is irreligionary and against Nature and to expect such parts being luce delenda I expect not that all the Debates of the Religionary part of Presbytery should here among all men cease tho yet I have conjectured that they who should write professedly of that Subject here would want Readers and as I believe too Discoursers of the Latitudinarian Hypothesis would likewise and do think that many little Religionary Speculative Notions about the meaning of some obscure passages in Scripture may to some of our Dissenters seem great and employ their time in Debates and as when the famous Ainsworth and Broughton heretofore had before their Congregations of Dissenters who went hence to Holland many and fierce disputes about the Controvesie whether Aarons ephod were blew or Sea-green a Controversie that puzzled all the Dyers of Amsterdam as Fuller says of it in his Church History as well as it did our separatists there that took so much pains to be therein illuminated and which I think the light of a Farthing Candle brought in any night among them might have easily settled or as I may say deleted in regard that blew and yellow making a green the yellow of the flame of the Candle would have made what appeared blew by day to have seem'd green at night and prevented their further Anathematising one another as Schismaticks about the same And as I beforementioned it out of a late Book of a Divine of the Church of England that some of the Reliogionary parts of Popery he instanceth in viz. Invocation of Saints Transubstantiation Purgatory are and will be learnedly and voluminously defended to the Worlds end I believe the same may be so in Popish Countries abroad and that the same will be believed by many Persons here tho yet the voluminous discussion of the same hath long been and is like to be out of fashion here and reflections on the same en passant or only in short Treatises may be thought by our Divines sufficient to guide their Auditors from mistakes therein and effectually to confute and I believe that our English Church will never be troubled with the growth of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation under any Prince we
it saith Concessimus Deo hac praesenti charta confirmavimus pro nobis HAEREDIBVS nostris in perpetuum quod Ecclesia Anglicana libera sit habeat omnia jura sua integra libertates suas illaesas and whereby the British Churches are secured under a Prince of any Religion from Foreign Arbitrary impositions But indeed the Style current in Magna Charta is that our Kings for themselves and their Heirs forever did grant the Customs and Liberties contained in that Charter to our Ancestors and their Heirs for ever Our Ancestors had no occasion to spend time in seeking Knots in a Bull-rush or hidden Sense in the words HEIRS and the King's HEIRS when so anciently as by the Oath of Fealty which every Person above fourteen years old and every Tythingman was obliged to take publickly at the Court-Leet within which he lived they were sworn to the King and his HEIRS and that Oath was taken a fresh every year by all the Subjects under Edward the Confessor and William the first and is thus set down by Pryn in his Concordia Discors viz. I A. B. do swear that FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS I will be Faithful and Loyal to our Lord the King AND HIS HEIRS c. The instances are innumerable of Allegiance anciently Sworn to our Kings and their Heirs and this one for example occureth to me as Sworn in the time of Edward the 4th viz. Sovereign Lord I Henry Percy become your Subject and Leige-man and promit to God and you that hereafter I Faith and Troth shall bear to you as to my Sovereign Leige-Lord and to your Heirs Kings of England of Life and Limb and of Earthly Worship to Live and Die against all Earthly People and to you and to your Commandments I shall be Obeysant as God me help and his Holy Evangâ—lists 27. Oct. 9. Ed. 4. Claus. 9. Ed. 4. m. 13. in dorso Mr. Pryn likewise in that Book of his beforemention'd saith that there was an ancient Oath of Fealty and Allegiance both by the Subjects of England and Kings Bishops Nobles and Subjects of Scotland made to the Kings of England and Their Heirs as Supreme Lords of Scotland in these words viz. Ero fidelis legalis fidemque legalitatem servabo Henrico Regi Angliae haeredibus suis de vitâ membris terreno honore contra omnes qui possunt vivere mori nunquam pro aliquo portabo arma nec ero in consilio vel auxilio contra eum vel Haeredes suos c. which Oath he saith William King of Scots and all his Nobles Swore to King Henry the second haeredibus suis sicut ligio Domino suo and John Balliol John Comyn with all the Nobles of Scotland to King Edward the first and his Heirs He there likewise gives an account how the Nobles of England Swore Fealty to Richard King of England and to his Heirs against all men and how the Citizens of London Swore the like Oath and That if King Richard should die without Issue they would receive Earl John his Brother for their King and Lord juraverunt ei fidelitatem Contra omnes homines salva fidelitate Richardi Regis fratris sui as Hoveden relates And he moreover cites the Record of the Writ issued to all the Sheriffs of England soon after the Birth of Edward the 1 st Son and Heir to King Henry the 3 d. To Summon all Persons above 12 years old to Swear Fealty to him as Heir to the King and to submit themselves faithfully to him as their Liege Lord after his Death This form of the Oath in the Writ is there mention'd to that effect viz. Quod ipsi salvo homagio fidelitate nostrâ quâ nobis tenentur cui in vitâ nostrâ nullo modo renunciare volumus fideles eritis Edwardo filio nostro primogenito ita quod si de nobis humanitus Contigerit eidem tanquam Haeredi nostro domino suo ligio erunt fideliter intendentes eum pro domino suo ligio habentes And he there shews how they were Summon'd and Sworn accordingly and further how in the Parliament of H. 4. The Lords Spiritual and Tempâ—ral and Commons were Sworn to bear Faith and true Allegiance to the King to the Prince and his Issue and to every one of his Sons severally succeeding to the Crown of England And he there mentions more Oaths taken to our Kings and their Heirs of the like Nature The Consideration hereof would make any one wonder at the Confidence of a late Learned Lawyer and positive pretender to Omniscience in our English Antiquities and Records who in his Detestable Book called The Rights of the Kingdom and which contains a farrago of Impious Anti-monarchical Principles and Printed in London 1649. and there to the Scandal of the English and Protestant Name lately Re-printed by some Factious Anti-Papists hath averred That our Allegiance was of old tyed to the Kings Person not unto his Heirs and for the Kings Heirs saith he there I find them not in our Allegiance And he mentions the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance as enjoyn'd in Queen Elizabeth's and King Iames's time respectively to be the first that were made to the Kings Person and his HEIRS and SVCCESSORS But to return to the Cause in hand 'T is sufficient for the Obligation I press that HEIRS and SUCCESORS are so clearly expressed in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy And tho the Statute of 1 â— Elizabethae in the Clause of the Annexing Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction to the Crown useth the style of Your Highness your Heirs and Successors Kings or Queens of this Realm shall have full Power c. as the Statue of the Supremacy 26o. Henry 8th runs in the Style of our Sovereign Lord his Heirs and Successors Kings of this Realms shall be taken accepted and reputed the only Supreme Head and tho the Oath in the 35 th H. the 8 th Cap. 1. that relates to the bearing Faith Truth and true Allegiance to the Kings Majesty and to his Heirs and Successors c. be further thus expressed viz. And that I shall accept repute and take the Kings Majesty his Heirs and Successors when they or any of them shall enjoy his place to be the only Supreme Head c. and tho' the old Oath of the Mayor of London and other Cities and Towns throughout England and of Bayliffs or other chief Officers where there are no Mayors runs in the style of Swearing That they shall well and Loyally Serve the King in the Office of Mayor in the City of L. and the same City shall keep surely and safely to the use of our Lord the King of England and of his Heirs Kings of England might give occasion for that great empty and big-sounding Sophism of Sir W. I. in his famous Speech wherein he said That we are Sworn to the King his Heirs and Lawful Successors but not Obliged to any during
Contention between the words Heirs and Successors tho with as little sense as was in Sir W. I's fancy of Treason whereby he would have set the Assertory and the Promissory Clauses in the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy at variance nay the Promissory Clause at variance with it self There was a Book writ by a late Lawyer called Historical Discourses of the Vniformity of the Government of England first printed in the Year 1647 and reprinted by some Factious Anti-Papists since the Epoche of our Fears and Iealousies of Popery and with that former year in the Title which was an ill ominous sign of the fatal time such Persons would have driven us back upon if they could where in p. 279 of the 2d part ill reflections are made on the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy which Oaths saith the Author do make much Parly concerning Inheritance and Heirs but that they do not hold forth any such Obligation to Heirs otherwise than as supposing them to be Successors and in that Relation only His design is too plainly express'd viz. to strike at the Rights of our Hereditary Monarchy and to invite Parliaments to interlope in controuling the Succession of the Crown and he saith That the Doctrine he there insinuates doth not go down well with those that do pretend to Prerogative aided by the Act of Recognition made to King James and the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance and I shall say that I hope it never will and 't is pity but a Book that in so many places of it impeacheth the old known Rights of the Crown should in this Conjuncture of Loyalty find some Person at leisure ex professo to make Animadversions on it and the rather for that the Author doth in the Vehicle of somewhat like Witt and his affectation of which is by People of middling Capacities who generally make the greater part of Mankind judged to be Witt dispense his Poysons Yet as to the signification of HEIRS and SUCCESSORS he had before in his first part saved any one the labour of shewing their Identity for there in p. 109 and in his Chapter of the Laws of Property of Lands and Goods under the Saxons he quoted Tacitus about some of the Customs of the Germans which he judged remain'd here with them and which shewed that HEIRS and SUCCESSORS passed then as current Coyn for the same thing according to the words of Tacitus HAEREDES SVCCESSORES cuique liberi nullum est testamentum and thus Englished by that Author viz. the HEIRS and SVCCESSORS to every one are his Children and there is no Testamentary Power to DISHERIT or ALTER the COVRSE of DESCENT which by CVSTOM or Law is setled And as was shewed the Term of LAWFVL annexed to SUCCESSORS hath nailed the Canon of that Sophism and exposed the ridiculousness of any Cavilling or Calumnious Interpretation about Heirs and Successors tho yet without the interposal of the word LAWFVL the plain sense of the words Heirs and Successors in the Oaths would clearly enough have obliged us to the same Persons We say that id possumus quod jure possumus and none are to be construed Heirs or Successors but such who are so in the Eye of the Law and with reference to Proximity of Blood i. e. they who are meant for such by the Law in the Due Course of their Descent But I hope that England's happy Future State will so far influence Loyalty as to incline all Conscientious Protestants to leave of all senseless Cavilling about the sense of the plain words in those Oaths and to agree to employ their most serious and constant thoughts about the extent of the Moral Offices that relate to their bearing True Faith and Allegiance to the King his Heirs and Successors and other very important matters in the Promissory Clauses most clearly expressed in order to the discharge of their Allegiance and the duties of Loyalty viz. DEFENDING him and them to the uttermost of our Power against all Conspiracies that shall be made against his or their Persons their Crown and Dignity as the Oath of Allegiance runs and to our ASSISTING and DEFENDING to our Power all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences and Authorities granted or belonging to the King's Highness his Heirs and Successors There are no unweigh'd and idle words in the Promissory Clauses and we are to make it our business with the judgment of discretion to consider the sense of the same and to retain it in our Memories and mens not doing which hath been the Cause of the Ebb of Loyalty in some Conjunctures According to the Degrees of mens intellectual Talents and particularly the Talent of understanding beyond other men the Laws natural and positive and the Lex terrae some are beyond others morally bound to defend the particular momentous points relating to all Iurisdictions Privileges Preheminences granted or belonging to the King and his Heirs and Successors and therefore a disloyal Divine and a disloyal Lawyer are things that do particularly hear very ill But as there is a great part of the Moral Offices expressed in these Oaths sufficiently plain and obvious to vulgar Capacities and which with their Native Light do strike common understandings so the extent of these Offices ought to employ the Meditations of all the Takers of these Oaths and how low soever their Talents lie they are to use all the means they can and particularly that of the Consilium peritorum as any occasion shall offer it self for their defence of any of the Privileges or Preheminences belonging to the Crown Our duty in this kind is very well expressed by Sanderson in his third Lecture where speaking of the Subjects Obligations by Oaths of this Nature he saith Doubtless the Subject to his Power is obliged to defend all Rights which appear either by Law or Custom Legitimate whether defined by the written Law or in force through the long use of time or Prescription that is so far as they are known or may Morally be known But he is not equally obliged to the Observation of all those which are controverted Thus therefore as to any Iurisdiction Privilege or Preheminence of the Crown that might seem doubtful the swearer is many times bound to the use of means that it may be Morally known to him as Sanderson's words are Yet what I have urged in this sixth Conclusion as Obligatory to us by virtue of the Oaths is sufficiently plain and there is no occasion for employing a great Genius and penetrating Understanding and Witt to discover that it is one of the Privileges of the Crown to be Hereditary and that the Taker of the Oaths is indissolubly bound to defend that Right There are several explicatory Notions of the word DEFEND and its extent that often occur in the Authors that treat expressly of the Ius Protectitium seu defensorium among whom I account Magerus de Advocatiâ armatâ or of the Right of Protection given by Sovereign Powers to be instar
Happiness he tho differing from me in speculative points yet hath by his Practical Devotion proportioned his means to that end better than I have done Moreover because it is a dishonourable thing for any man to receive a Religion in gross and servilely to own all the Religionary Sentiments that the Major part of any Church seem to do I will not so much as in my secret thoughts charge such a Person with owning all the Religionary Tenets of the Church of Rome and much less with owning any one of the Tenets that is Irreligionary how justly soever chargeable either on the Papacy or any of its Adherents I who am a Son of the Church of England have considered how its Constitution hath been prop'd up in various ways and on different Hypotheses by several of the Fathers and great Writers in that Church before Arch-Bishop Laud's time and since and how some of them in some points receded from its Articles and that many of them did in several Doctrines of importance variously interpret its Articles My Conversation with several Divines of that Church who are equally Learned and Pious hath let me see that in many Theological speculative points they differ much from one another and yet retain perfect Charity for one another and their Notions as to which points they have in prudence not troubled the Populace with And yet even in our very Protestant Populace in this Conjuncture of Zeal against Popery I have observed so much Candour expressed to Protestant Writers who have asserted some speculative points that seemed to agree with the Doctrines of the Church ofâ— Rome that no one man hath either called them Papists or Protestants in Masquerade for so doing I have not heard of any who hath censured Mr. Baxter as a Papist or Popishly affected since Dr. Tully in his printed Letter to him p. 21. desiring him to take his Balance and weigh more diligently that he might see the very small odds between His Iustification and the Council of Trents addeth for to me neither of them turns the Scale upon the other There was likewise after the beginning of the Popular Out-cryes of the Danger of Popery a Learned Metrophysical Book of Dr. Glisson who was Professor of Physick in Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society Printed and Dedicated to the EARL of SHAFTSBVRY and in the 28th Chapter there viz. De substantiarum penetrabilitate mutatâ quantitate the Dr. saith That 't is better to admit Penetration than a Vacuum however we have been taught from our Child-hood to believe that there is no penetration of Bodies and Dimensions and doth Combat those old Notions of Philosophy with which Transubstantiation was opposed formerly and yet was never censured so much as Popishly affected for so writing nor have I observed any one to blame him for it or to have animadverted on his Book I have likewise observed that several Protestant Divines have not been in the least reproached or censured as maintainers of Purgatory when they have professed their Beliefs that the Souls of good Men after Death go to a good Hades and of bad Men to a bad one and are to stay in those common receptacles till the day of Judgment It is hence obvious that there are ingenious Protestants who do not take up their Religion in gross and that the fear of Popery or hatred of it is not generally so much founded on the Speculative Religionary Propositions maintained by Papists as partly on the Arbitrary Power claimed by the Pope to impose Creeds on men and by which Power he may if he pleaseth command them to believe that there are no Antipodes and excommunicate any who believe there are as one Pope long since did and partly on his claiming a Power to disturb the measures of their Loyalty to their Princes In such a Conjuncture therefore as this when 't is so much out of fashion to think any one the less a Christian or the less a Protestant for differing from others of the Church of England in such point as aforesaid it would be an aggravation of the immorality of our not acknowledging the honour due to any Person of the Roman-Catholick Communion because supposed to own Speculative Religionary Tenets of this Nature and which too have no influence no Mens Conversation with each other or on their Actions as they are Members of any Civil Society and as one saith would be still the same with all the Consequences of them tho there were no other Person besides one's self in the World. And therefore as I will rashly charge no Protestant with the servile resignation of his reason to any true Church nor look on him as one who doth More balantium antecedentem Ducem sequi so I will not without just ground and certain proof charge any Papist with the taking up his Religion in gross from the Papal Chair nor with the owning all the Religionary Tenets that many Romanists do and much less with any one of the Irreligionary Tenets imputable to any Order of the Church of Rome or to the Papacy To think any Papist the less a Christian for owning such Tenets which being held by some Protestants we think them not the less Christians for doth most notoriously come under the Sin of Acceptio personarum and is contrary to that Precept of St. Iames viz. My Brethren have not the faith of our Lord Iesus Christ the Lord of Glory with respect of Persons and by which accepting of some mens Persons the duty of honouring all men and valuing their real worth is manifestly outraged I will by no means therefore rashly charge any particular Papist with owning the Tenet that he is implicitly to obey the Commands of the Pope without weighing the Justice of them for I find the contrary Tenet own'd in print by the seven Divines of Venice as Ames mentions it in the Preface to his Puritanismus Anglicanus where he saith In Tractatu illo Iudiciosissimo à septem Theologis meaning those of Venice de interdicto Papae conscripto verbatim ponitur nervosè firmatur haec propositio viz. Christianus praecepto sibi facto etiam à Pontifice summo obedientiam praestare non debet nisi prius praeceptum examinaverit quantam materia subjecta requirit an sit conveniens legitimum obligatorium is qui siâ—e illo examine praecepti sibi injuncti caeco quodam impetu obedit peccat And do not many of the Church of Rome by their being picque'z d' honneur upon the being called Papists give some indication thereby of their being not obliged to pay an absolute blind Obedience to the Pope And tho Bellarmine and several of the Popes Parasites have called those Hereticks that believe not the Iure-Divinity of the Popes Monarchy over the World yet all the Gibelline Papists of old made it HERESY to say that the Emperor was not by Divine Right Lord of the World. Moreover tho some Papists have writ opprobriously of the Scripture and called
Loyalty that any Christian who hath taken these Oaths shall think sufficient doth most certainly take the name of Loyalty and Protestancy and of Christianity and even of God in vain and as the Scripture implies that there is a Repentance to be repented of I shall say that such a mans Protestancy is to be protested against And when we consider that the Presbyterian Author of the EXERCITATION beforementioned hath in p. 41. with so much Loyalty and Reason told us in terms That Obedience is owing to Princes without condition of Religion or Iustice on their part performed and the Scripture is clear for an irrespective and in regard of the Rulers Demeanor absolute subjection Exod. 20. 12. 21. 25. Rom. 13. 1 2 c. Tit. 3. 1. 1 Pet. 2. 13. 1 Sam. 24. 6 7. 26. 9 10 11. Jer. 27. 12. 29. 7. Matth. 22. 21. and hath told us in p. 56. That our Oaths put no condition on the Prince but are all absolute and irrespective and run without ifs or ands in like manner as the Obligation of Subjects Allegiance to their Sovereign is irrespective according to Divine Institution methinks it should make any Son of the Church of England to start at the thought of his being out-done in Loyalty and sworn Allegiance by a Covenanting Presbyterian for such that Author was and at the thought of any ones having taken those Oaths relating to the King his Heirs and Successors and afterward interlining the interpretation of them with ifs and ands and at the thought of such an interlineation not appearing as ill in the Court of Conscience as any would do in a Court of Law. But the truth is the Church of England appearing in this late Religionary Fermentation to have so incorporated this Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty into its Constitution beyond any other Church in the World and likewise the Doctrine of Charity and Moderation toward all Christians whether Foreigners or Domesticks whether whole Churches or single Persons as Primate Bramhal's words are that the same doth now as I may say strike the Eyes of all indifferent men and enforce it self on the thoughts of any who do but for Curiosity walk about this Sion and go round about her and tell the Towers thereof I mean do consider its Prayers Homilies Articles Canons and Ecclesiastical Constitutions it hath hereby been necessarily made like the Eagle to renew its youth and to be invigorated as with a new Soul after its Enemies thought it dead or asleep and after Mr. Hooker's shrewd guessing that after the Year 1677. That what followed would be likely to be small joy to them who should behold it For the Doctrine of absolute and irrespective Loyalty being Essential to the Peace of Kingdoms and likely to be so more and more to the Worlds end and the Church of England appearing as by consent of Parties to be THE Church that overtowers all others in the Principles for THAT Sort of Loyalty as well as in the august Principles of Charity for all Christians according to the saying of Magnes amoris amor it must naturally attract the love of thoâ—e in other Churches and supposing that any Church or People love themselves and cannot be preserved but by Loyalty Nature will direct the World to a growing love for the Church of England and therefore I am no Visionaire in predicting from natural Causes That what shall follow to the Church of England will be great joy to those who shall behold it to the very end of time And nothing could possibly in my opinion have brought it to this firm State of its Glory but the disloyal Principles and Practices of some of its Competitors and particularly the just and dreadful apprehensions given to considerate men upon some Nominal Protestants and Nominal Property-men having founded Dominion in Grace and yet having reproached the Church of England and its Divines with Popery and invited the Protestant Mobile to make a Schism from it on such an account and printed many Seditious Pamphlets for the Establishing the IF or AND-Loyalty or indeed which is all one an absolute Disloyalty and in such a Conjuncture when it would have been not more pernicious to the particular Souls of the Disloyal than to the Body of the whole Nation and to the State of Christendom Thus through the Divine Omnipotence which can bring good out of evil hath our late Fermentation been made perfective to our Church as well as the Hereditary Monarchy and the Rule of God's governing the World by the Prayers of his Church and Lusts of his Enemies been here exemplified and as the Air that is the Steem of the dull Earth or the Textura halituum terrae as Gassendus calls it is made by nature to be the Vehicle of those Beams of the Sun that dazle our Eyes thus have the Fumes exhaled by such mens Lusts of Disloyalty and Malice that darken'd their own understandings and would have obscured the glory of the Church of England been made instrumental in dispersing its brightness through the World and even in the opening of the Eyes of many to behold it with amazement and that service hath been done our Church thereby which by all the Pens of its Iewel and Hooker and Sanderson could never be effected England that had so much the Carriage and the Trade of the World till the Munster Peace of 48 could bear the Civil War after 41 and breathe under it and flourish after it but as the State of the World abroad and at home now is and likely to be our ALL must depend upon the Principles and Practice of Loyalty and therefore this new Soul I spake of as now animating the Church of England must be immortal and it may well say to it self under any Prince that can come Soul take thy ease thou hast Loyalty and the Principles of it laid up for many years and England did not before 48 more excel other Realms in Trade than its Church doth now other Churches in absolute and irrespective Loyalty That great Iudge of Churches and their Principles Arch-Bishop Laud having in p. 36. of his famous Star-Chamber Speech remarked the dangerous Consequence of avowing That the Popish Religâ—ion is Rebellion saith That some Principles of theirs teach Rebellion is apparently true c. and I shall add that some Principles of our late Covenanting Dissenteâ—s have taught it is apparently true and for such of the latter who believed and practised these Principles to reproach any Papists with Disâ—oyalty is as apparently ridiculous as was Mr. Prynn's writing two Voluminous Tractates of The Disloyalty of Papists at the time when he was making so great a Figure in the late Rebellion But however suitably to the Moral Offices urged by Ames of not condemning whole Parties of men on the account of the guilt of some Persons I have under this Conclusion cited the loyal Principles of some Recusants of all sorts pertinent to my Scope and because the irrespective Loyalty
41 I shall answer him that its weight hath in this present Conjuncture of 81 afforded Loyalty so great a Compensation by that late Act of Parliament there acknowledging and asserting the Right of the Succession c. and which begins thus viz. The Estates of Parliament considering that the Kings of this Realm deriving their Royal Power from God Almighty alone do succeed lineally thereunto according to the known Degrees of Proximity in Blood c. that as Historians tell us how in the dark barbarous times many hundreds of years since men repaired from all Countries to Ireland to learn the Liberal Arts and Sciences I shall say that they may now profitably go to Scotland to learn Loyalty and I doubt not but that Kingdom which is so notorious for its mortal or immortal hatred of Popery call it which you will and even of that very part of it which I call the Religionary one of it having thus by the Exterminium of that irreligionary part of it viz. That Dominion is founded in Grace taught us Loyalty in the establishing the Hereditary Lineal Succession may be as instrumental in giving Loyalty in the Body of the People here its temperamentum ad pondus as it was formerly in oppressing us with its weight as a gravamen and be an occasion of blessing our Land with such a joyful Conjuncture of time as ensued after King Iames's Succession as I have before mentioned and to the Consideration of which I shall return England that had formerly by reason of the uncertainty of the Succession being like the Erratica Delos a floating Island and that too in Seas of Blood and did then appear like it afterward fixed and blessed with a Pacifick and Oracular King and as strong a Foundation for the Hereditary Monarchy as could be wished was shortly after in danger of being again unfixed by the Outrage of the Gun-Powder Treason and the Principles that legitimated that practice being really believed and practised and an account of the practice of which Treason we have in the Statute of 3 o Iacobi c. 2. as likewise of the fiery Principles that animated the Actors to it in Thuanus and in King Iames his Premonition to all Christian Monarchs p. 10. a general reference is made to the violent bloody Maxims that the Powder-Traytors maintained and by occasion whereof after the designed outrage against the Lineal Succession of the Prince and the Hereditary Monarchy being in danger while such bloody Principles and Maxims were not exterminated it was in ordinary prudence requisite to apply the extraordinary Remedy of the Oath of Allegiance to rivet that Fundamental Maxim of the Crown the stronger in Nature viz. That the King never dies And the Addition of those words in the Promissory Clause of the Oath of Allegiance viz. HIS or THEIR Persons THEIR Crown and Dignity and which words were not in the Oath of Supremacy was a plain indication of the intention of the Law-givers to tye Mens Souls to the Hereditary Monarchy in the Due and Legal Course of Descent And moreover with a prospect to mens having a conscientious regard to the King's Heirs and Successors the Fathers of our Church then probably in the Preface of the Collect in the Common-prayer for the Prince and the King's Children as overjoyed with the sight of King James 's being enriched with a most Royal Progeny as the words in the Act of the Recognition are did cause these words to be inserted Who art the Father of thine Elect and of their SEED The Preface to the Act requiring the Oath of Allegiance hath in it the expression of Loyalty and Allegiance unto the King's Majesty and the CROWN of England and mentions the design of the Gun-powder Treason as tending to the subversion of the whole State and therefore if in the ancient times of Popery and when the Pope was generally revered here as a 13th Apostle upon any emergent Papal Usurpations which gave just cause of apprehending future ones intended and particularly in the Case of the Pope's Mandates or Bulls which were called Gratiae expectativae or provisiones and pretendedly issued out of the Pope's pious care to see a Church provided of a Successor before it needed our Kings did think themselves obliged to provide Statutes against Provisors whereby the Ius patronatus was secured to them and their Subjects and by Statutes of Praemunire did as it were build Forts before the Enemies coming the Premuniment of the Hereditary Monarchy by the Oath of Allegiance was most necessary to prevent any Papal Gratiae expectativae of the Crown and the Popes impious care to provide a Successor to its Hereditary Rights The Premuniment of some Laws by others is no new thing nor yet a new word however some idle Criticks have accounted the word praemunire in our Statutes to be barbarous for Grotius in his De jure belli c. l. 2. c. 5. § 14. speaking of some Laws of the Iews saith In quarum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut Hebraei loqâ—untur praemunimentum additae sunt leges caeterae and according to the sense of some taking praemunire for praemonere the constant premonition of Heavens great Monitor called Conscience and which is the pulse of the Soul and like the Pulse is Fidelis nuncius vitae aut mortis to warn men by this Oath to defend the Lineal Succession of the Crown was no less necessary and King Iames's setling the Premonition in the minds of his own Subjects was but naturally previous to his Premonition sent abroad to Foreign Princes and States And how far Harry the 7th's Statute by which no Person who should serve the King for the time being c. should therefore be attainted or impeached might induce the Government to secure the undoubted Rights of Succession by the Oath of Allegiance being framed as it was and rooting our Loyalty thereby the deeper into our Consciences and by the fear of our being justly impeached in the Court of Conscience in omnem eventum if we defended not those Rights of Succession is obvious to Consideration As I have thus in this Conclusion shewed that it was the Law-givers intention particularly in the Oath of Allegiance to oblige us to pay our Allegiance not only to the King but to his Heirs and Successors in the Legal Course of Descent so I might here further Ex superabundanti dilate on such intention being to secure the same without any respect to the Religion of such Heirs and Successors A Prince of such profound Learning and Observation as King Iames could not be ignorant of what hath been since by the Loyal Writers of the Succession so clearly and strongly asserted viz. That the Succession to the Crown is inseparably annext to the Proximity of Blood by the Laws of GOD and NATVRE and That Statute-Laws contrariant to those are null and void and That the Hereditary Monarchy was indisputably founded on inherent Birth-right according to the Style of the Act of Recognition
of the revocableness of Wills if I have lawfully sworn to continue such a man my Heir or Executor of my Will or Legatee therein can I then at my pleasure with a Salvo to Conscience alter it therein And if a Father hath sworn to give his Children such a part of his Estate by his Will as by the Civil Law is due to them out of his Estate when he dies shall he then be allowed in the Court of Conscience to alter such bequest Ad libitum This comes a little home to our Case for we have before hand sworn to pay the King's Heirs at the Descent of the Crown the Allegiance that will be due to them then by inherent Birthright St. Paul writing to the Romans alludes to that Custom of the Roman Laws and which is yet retained in Germany and many other places viz. And if Children then Heirs and makes them certainly Haeredes viventis and when any by the Civil Law were Haeredes ab intestato or Heirs at Law that Law as it made no difference between Land and Goods so neither did it between Eldest and Youngest nor Male and Female but divided the whole Estate real and personal equally among the Children and the Law tying Parents to leave a Quota in their Wills to their Children St. Paul's Consequence was good i. e. if Children then Heirs We know that the Heirs of our Kings are not such as that Law called Haeredes Testamentarii but they succeeding by the right Divine and Inherent Birthright may be said to be Haeredes legitimi and when in the King's Life-time the Law hath enjoyned men by a Liquid Oath to defend all Privileges Preheminences belonging to the King's Heirs and Successors can it be either Law or Sense to say they are now no Heirs and that any who have taken that Oath may actually exclude such Heirs because they are not actual Successors and as if too none could be a Successor but an actual one according to that old Dicterium That no Prince ever put to death his Successor But to shew further how grosly Sir W. I. was mistaken in his interpretation and applying of the saying out of the Civil Law viz. Nemo est haeres viventis I shall refer to Paulus de Castro as Eminent a Commentator on the Civil Law as any one whatsoever who doth on the Digest De liberis Posthumis l. Gallus § etiam n. 3 o 4 to discuss the point of Haeres viventis and where he saith Nota quod filius vel alius descendens in potestate patris qui tenet primum locum dicitur esse suus haeres etiam vivente patre and then objects the saying That Vivens non habet haeredem ergo non suum haeredem and he answers That istud verbum HAERES idem significat quod DOMINVS c. potest sumi duobus modis 1 o propriè prout est Successor in Vniversum jus quod defunctus habuit meaning haeres as the same with an Executor by the Law of England isto modo vivens non potest habere haeredem 2 do Sumitur strictè c. impropriè pro filio vel nepote vel alio descendente qui teneat primum locum in suitate isto modo vivens potest habere haeredem sicut enim filius VIVENTE patre dicitur DOMINVS bonorum paternorum licet impropriè it a potest dici HAERES prout istud verbum sumitur pro Domino He had before spoke of the General Rule That Haeres suus dicitur quem nemo praecedit and he there mentions what likewise all the Books agree in That Haeredes sui necessarii dicuntur liberi qui in familiâ proximum à patre gradem obtinent sui quia haereditatem tanquam suam necessarii quia jure antiquo retinere cogebantur He intends there I suppose by the jus antiquum that Law of the 12 Tables viz. Intestatorum haeredes primò suorum haeredum velint nolintve sunto We find in the New Testament such Heir judged to be Lord of all Gal. 4. 1. And thus Grotius on that place in the Hebrews whom he hath appointed Heir of all things saith That by Heir is meant Lord Nam Latinis Haeres idem quod herus Christus in coelum evectus rerum omnium est Dominus à patre scilicet hoc jure accepto The very Institutes likewise tell us § ult De haered qualit That pro haerede gerere est pro Domino gerere veteres enim haeredes pro Dominis appellabant And such Lords of all then were the Heirs that tho ordinarily they could not have their Legitima pars in their Fathers life-time and so we find it but in the Parable in St. Luke that the Prodigal Son said Father give me the Portion of Goods that falleth to me and he divided unto them his Living yet if the Father were re verâ a Prodigal the Son might by imploring the Office of the Judge obtain in the Fathers life-time somewhat like the legitima to be allowed for his subsistance And moreover Grotius on the other place of Scripture Si autem filii haeredes saith Sententia est conveniens non tantum Israelitico Numerorum 28. sed etiam Gentium juri Nam lex quaedam tacita liberis haereditatem parentum addicit L. Cum initio ff De bonis damnatorum Sed magis est ut jus Hebraeum respexerit Paulus ideóque 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hic sunt 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 filii non quod non utrique sexui Christianorum aptari possint quae dicit sed quod jure Mosis filii necessariò haeâ—edes filiae non nisi filiis deficientibus None need therefore wonder at De Castro's having pronounced the Heir to be the same thing with Dominus and at his leaving it out of doubt that direct Descendants are a mans Heirs in his life-time because they are such as are called Heirs at Law. And there is little room for doubting here in England who are Heirs at Law to private Persons for Sir Edward Coke hath to this purpose said that throughout his time viz. Ne duas quidem quaestiones adverti de jure haereditatum but God be thanked there can be no room for any in the Case of the Crown King Iames when he Erected the Monument for his Mother on the Northside of her Grand-father Harry the 7th's Tomb and put these words in the Inscription viz. Coronae Angliae dum vixit certae indubitatae haeredis necessarily implied that there was another Sovereign living while She was thus Heir to the Crown Let any one consider how many real Solecisms Sir. W. I's imagined one must occasion Is it not a Solecism to say I cannot now promise a future lawful thing viz. Allegiance to the King's Heirs at the time of the Descent of the Crown since nothing can be promised but what is Future In the Body of the Civil Law matters of right are sometimes founded on trite
whatsoever It is a certain Rule about Oaths That Iuramentum non extenditur ad ea de quibus cogitatum non est and so is this other viz. Non licet nobis interpretatione taciâ—â comminisci conditiones nisi quae vel publico jure receptae sunt vel ex re ipsa aut verbis quibusdam manifestè colliguntur and I may add another That Minimè mutanda sunt quae interpretationem certam semper habuerunt But as it hath appeared to all a superfluous thing ever to have the Judges consulted about any being Heirs to the King in his life-time and wherein there is no Dignus vindice nodus so likewise tho Contra captiones ex actu ambiguo nascentes remedio est protestatio quae declaratione intentionis actum madificatur jusque in posterum competens conservat yet no man was ever found so ridiculous as to make any Protestation at the time of his taking these Oaths concerning this new sense of the word Heirs and what is a greater reflection on our Excluders as to their Non-observance of the Promissory Clause relating to the King's Heirs is that the Excluders were embarqued in their Exclusion and half-Sea over in their prosecution of it and had thrown away their Compass of the common sense of the Oaths before the new one of Haeres viventis was found or heard of an interpretation that I believe the very Author of the Sheriffs Case would have held scandalous and which indeed amounts not to so much as a Scruple of Conscience or to more than a Quirk of Law. It hath long been the Custom of Spain not to make any men Iudges who have been Advocates as supposing that their straining the Law as Practitioners for their Clients might make them the less Candid in their Judgment of the Law on the Tribunal but the truth is the giving Judgment in the Court of Conscience that this new-found interpretation of the word Heirs would in that Court indemnify the Takers of the Oaths may well seem unworthy of the dignity of any Iudge or Counsellor or conscientious Attorney and any one of those whom the old Comaedian calls the Leguleiorum faeces decemdrachmariâ— not wholly steer'd by Trick As great a Iudge in that Court as ever our Nation or perhaps Christendom bred I mean our Bishop Sanderson having in his 2d Lecture of Oaths said That we become guilty of the hainous Crime of Perjury if a milder interpretation of an Oath chance to deceive us doth well mind us of the profitable Rule which in doubtful matters commands the choice of the safer part And thus the Casuists generally giving us that Rule that in all doubtful matters we are to incline to the safer side and that therein 't is safer to think a thing to be Sin than not and in order to the great EXCLVSION of Perjury telling us That Cum de ancipiti perjurio in futurum quaeritur illa est benignior sententia quae Conscientiae tutior atque ita quae crimen interpretatur ut excludat and that when ever we recede from the literal sense of an Oath to the intention of the Law-giver we ought to be very sure of that intention if we will be saâ—e from the danger of Perjury I think that new interpretation so clearly contrary both to the literal sense of the Oath and the intention of the Law-giver as I have shewn was a very unsafe trick for men to put upon their Consciences But as the word Heir is a plain word so it is likewise as plain that some men by the Haeres viventis would put a Trick on the State for let any one go to dissect all the meaning that can be in the Haeres viventis in plain English and it will be neither better nor worse than to make the sense of the Imposer of the Oaths be that men should observe the Promissory Clauses relating to the King's Heirs and Successors only on the terms of the Objection of Rebus sic stantibus which I have before mentioned and fully answered Nor can any men evade their being by the Oaths obliged to defend the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy and thus prop up such their new interpretation of Heirs by Virtue of the expired Statute of the 13th of Elizabeth which some have raised such dust with that made it Treason to affirm That the Laws and Statutes do not bind the Right of the Crown and its Descent Limitation Inheritance or Governance It is not an expired Statute nor any one in being can make the Obligation of our Oaths to the King's Heirs and Successors to expire We were in Conscience and by the Law which is by some termed Communis sponsio Regni obliged before our Oaths taken to defend the Rights of the King's Heirs and Successors in all just ways but if any men should be so vain as to think that we were not before obliged to them on the account of the Hereditary Monarchy yet it is most certain that an Oath doth often induce an Obligation where there was none before and we are not now considering what WAS Treason but what IS Perjury An Act of Parliament may inflict the Vltimum supplicium on that which perhaps is not Malum in se as for example The Exportation of Wooll tho when we have a glut of it nay by the 28th of Harry the 8th c. 7. touching the Succession of the Crown the not taking of the contrary Oaths is made Treason But I need not here say more than that if any in the 13th Year of Queen Elizabeth had took the Oath of Supremacy enjoyned in the first Year of her Reign and did not observe the Promissory Clause therein they did offend God and their Consciences thereby But I have mentioned it that Arch-Bishop Hutton notwithstanding that 13th of Elizabeth made it a Praemunire to speak of any Person being her Heir and Successor except the same were the natural Issue of her Body did publickly in his Sermon before her discharge that Promissory part of the Oath by asserting King Iames his Right to succeed her and was publickly by her thanked for it On the whole matter we are not bound by these Oaths to look backward on other mens actings but to look forward on our own Enough has been said of too much that was done to oppose King Iames's Succession and of the necessity of the Oath of Allâ—giance to secure England to the Royal Line and by it and the providing of the fortius vinculum on the emergency of the Gun-powder Treason was but sutable to the general prudence of all States and the expression of Allegiance to be paid to the King's Heirs and Successors when Kings and Queens of this Realm which was in some former Oaths was not in this necessary nor yet in the Oath of Supremacy because of the great Fundamental Clause in both before mentioned viz. The King IS the only Supreme Governor c. he IS ONLY Supreme and so none co-ordinate or equal to
to the Persons of the Papists and likewise of the Divines of our Church but was afterwards sufficiently sensible of their intolerable rancour and animosities against both and of the infamous use and application they made of the Iesuits Doctrine of Calumny and of the Weapons they borrowed from Parson's of the Succession to promote the detestable Exclusion and of their borrowing from Athens and old Rome the Thunderbolts of their old REPVBLICAN Curses viz. of ENEMY c. and throwing them at the most Loyal of our Patriots and absurdly calling them Enemies to the King and Kingdom because they asseâ—ted the Rights of the Hereditary Monarchy in opposing the Exclusion By that kind of Republican Curses they gave us the omen of what they would have been at And so extravagant was the use of that anathema in the late Conjuncture that when one in a great Assembly moved against Sir G. I. a Person that all the Loyal must own for his steadiness to the Hereditary Monarchy and for his having first kindled that great Zeal for Loyalty which doth now like a wall of Fire defend our Metropolis that he might be voted such an Enemy as aforesaid a Burgess for that City as I was info m'd did Ridiculously and Presumtuously move that he might be voted an Enemy to Mankind But it was easie for such as had took Gods name in vain so to take Mankinds I shall not degenerate from the Moral Offices of Charity to mens Persons if I call the Exâ—lusion that would have broke the Balance of the Monarchy that was the old Balance of the World enmity to Mankind but shall without my here calling any men names leave it to the soft voice of God's Herald called Conscience to suggest it that tho a man who was deluded a while by the error of the Exclusion that would have been so fatal to the Realm might by reason of any good intentions so for a while ill guided not deserve perhaps to be judged to be an enemy to the King and Kingdom formaliter yet that if after Consideration and all thoughts made about his Sworn Allegiance he doth not make a stand but shall at any time again endeavour the going over the Rubicon of the Bloud Royal in its Line of Succession stated by God and Nature and the defending his false-steps beyond it by Association or Arms â—I say I shall leave it to Conscience to tell him or warn him by the indeleble Characters of natural right there so legibly Engraved how much he will deserve the censure of such an enemy as hath been mentioned and shall be glad he may be thereby to better effect warn'd then Caesar was from his Vsurpatioâ— by the great Senatus Consultum which Rivallius in his History of the Civil Law Printed in the year 1530. saith that he saw remaining Engraved on a Marble Pillar by the River Rubicon viz. Iussu mandatúve P. R. Commilito armate quisquis es Manipularisve Centuriove turmaeve legionarie hic sistito vexillumve sinito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa ductum commeatumve traducito Si quis hujusce jussionis ergo adâ—ersus praecepta ierit fueritve adjudicatus esto P. R. H. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit penatesque è sacris penetralibus asportaverit S. P. Q. R. Sanctio Plebisciti Sâ— ve C. He likewise saith that In Portu Arimini alterum est adhuc ejusdem sententiae senatusconsultum and which appearing to be a Noble piece of Curiosity and expressive of the same sense wiâ—h the former tho with some difference of words I shall here entertain the Reader with viz. Imp. Mil. Tiro armate quisquis es hic sistito vexillumve sinito arma deponito nec citra hunc amnem Rubiconem signa arma exercitumve traducito Si quis ergo adversus praecepta ierit feceritve adjudicatus esto Hostis P. R. ac si contra patriam arma tulerit sacrosve penates è penetralibus asportaverit Sanctio plebisciti senatusconsulti ultra hos fines arma proferre liceat nemini Rivallius having cited these Senatusconsulta saith that Quibus senatusconsultis Caesar fortassis territus cum è Galliâ rediens ad Rubiconem usque pervenisset adversus Pompeium populumque Romanum bellum gesturus esset militibus dixisse fertur et etiam nunc regredi possimus quod si Ponticulum transierimus omnia armis agenda erunt And thus let all members of theâ— true Church Militant in these Realms by what name or title soever known who have been tempted to think the Exclusion lawful thank Heaven that they have lived to repent of the same and that even now they may go back from the sinfullness of such thought and consider that if they had passed over this Rubicon they were to expect beside the fate of their Involving their Country in War the other tremendous one of being found fighters against God to whom they were sworn I have little further to add but to acquaint the Judicious READER that I desire if he findeth any thing here-said that he may reasonably think to be not according to the Theological measures of the Church of England or the Political ones of the State or against the moral Offices of Charity toward the Persons of 〈◊〉 men or against the Internal Communion due from all Christians to all Christians tho I know of no such thing here said it may by him be taken as non dictum There is no keeping of Passion in number weight and measure and particularly of that of Anger The Excellent Bishop of Downe that was Doctor Ieremy Taylor hath often told me That when he was to return an answer to a Friends Letter that had Anger in it he never concern'd himself to return an answer to the angry part of it because he considered that the anger of his Friend was over before the Letters arrival But against all the Irreligionary Principles of the Iesuits and particularly that of the Founding Dominion in Grace I would crave aid from Posterity for the continuance of my Indignation in the known words of O me propè lassum juvate Posteri but that the Pope hath saved me the labour and so I hope those Principles in them are retiring to theâ—r Eternal rest and I desire not to hinder their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that no pious Roman Catholick may labour under the weight of being Censured as one who is necessarily to believe and practice some Principles beforementioned out of the LATERAN Council I have mentioned various things that may be of use to that effect and perhaps more satisfactory than what hath by any of their Church been said who have denyed it to be a General Council Such denyal will not effectually do their work since Cardinal Perron hath as I said shew'd it to be a general one and his reputation for his profound Judgment and Learning being so great and such that the late Learned Lord Faulkland the Secretary of State was wont to say That Baronius and
thoughts of their worship to the Consecrated Bread. But I believe there are others who do not intentionally direct their adoration to any Creature in that Sacrament and only to the Person of Christ our Lord and as when Abimelâ—â—h mistook Sara from her Husband being informed by Abraham that She was his Sister God was pleased to acknowledge That he did it in the simplicity of his heart so I shall leave such to their Master and without particular ground charge no particular Person of them with the guilt of Formal Idolatry and should much rather choose to absolve a Church from approving Idolatry than to render the Persons in it liable as Idolaters to be in a Christian State dealt with according to the rigor or as some Calvinsts call it the Equity of the Iewish Law. As we justly remember the Bigottish Cruelty of the Marian days so we must be so just to our selves as not to forget how some Nominal Protestants and such too as were magni nominis did long ago and as they do still accuâ—e the Discipline of the Church of England and its decent Ceremonies with the guilt of Idolatry and how fatal both to our Church and State so false and base and spightful an Accusation hath proved Mr. Hobs in his History of our late Civil Wars attributes somewhat of the success of the disloyal Enemies of our Church to the natural Cause of their fighting with spight We know that not only Mr. H. Iacob in his Exposition of the 2d Commandment printed in the Year 1610. hath thus charged our Church with Idolatry in express words but that Ames himself did so in effect in his Puritanismus Anglicanus that Year printed and as Learned and Pious a Man as he was his Cases of Conscience shewing him tainted with the Tenet of Monk Gratian and Calvin and our Assembly-men about the Iudicial Law for he saith there That that Law tho not appertaining to Christistians Sub ratione legis sperialiter obligantis yet is so sub ratione doctrinae quatenus vel generali suâ naturâ vel proportionis aequitâ—te exhibet sempeâ— nobis optimam juris noturalis determinationem one might easily gueâ—s from such a Principle when believed and practised what quarter the Church of England or any Church accused of Idolatry could expect The truth is that on the Division of the World by some into 30 parts and rendring 19 thereof to be down-right Idolaters and 6 Mahumetans and 5 Christians it may well seem a deplorable absurdity that the Christian Quota should be so much addicted both to call one another Idolaters and to Sacrifice one another as such beyond the superstitious rage of the Heathen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mr. Iacob in his said Exposition calls the Lutherans Idolaters for having Images in their Churches and what may well seem strange is that when Cromwel the Vsurper being inclined to tolerate the Iews and appointing a Meeting of his Ministers of State and his Divines to debate the lawfulness of it at that time Fiennes his Lord-Keeper declared it then unlawful for that the Iews were Idolaters as worshipping God out of Christ and whereby he implied in effect that Adam was an Idolater Thus apt have Enthusiasts been to play with Idolatry but a shameful thing it is to our English understandings not to have a just general apprehension of the aim of some factious Anti-Papists to set up new real Idolatry in the State while they are vexing us with their old Nominal Idolatry in the Church I here refer to all that would outrage the Hereditary Monarchy and I call any Crime of that Nature by the name of Idolatry as our judicious Sanderson hath done in his Learned Lecture De legum humanarum causâ efficiente § 15. where having shewn how Kings are called Gods Psalm 82. 6. Quod ipsius Dei in terris vices gerant idque Deo ipsis Conferente hanc potestatem non populi suffragiis EGO dixi Dii estis he thus goes on to ask very properly Poteritne populus aliquis sine turpis idololatriae crimine sibi Deos constituere cum sit uniuscujusque hominis ei qui ipsius vicem gerat potestatem vicariam suâ authoritate demandare non alieno arbitratu Audebitne quisquam mortalium id Iuris sibi arrâ—gare ut qui Dei in terris Minister Vice-Deus futurus sit omnem illam suam authoritatem potestatem ab ipso sibi collatam agnoscat Let all such then who did AVDERE thus in the Affair of our Hereditary Monarchy and to have the Vice-Deus futurus moulded by their fancies consider how great a Casuist hath loaded them with Idolatry and moreover remember how the inspired Prophet did make Rebellion as the Sin of Witchcraft and contumacy or stubborness as Idolatry I was contented with finding one thing asked by the ingenious Author of the Compendium because I supposed and that then even by Calculation I might resolve the doubt and which I have held my self obliged to do viz. Can it be said that the Monarchy of England hath gotten by the Reformation and what desperate Enemies that hath created us may be easily imagined that nothing but Popery or at least its Principles can make it again emerge or lasting but was sorry and ashamed to find that Authors had cause to cite the disloyal Pamphlet of Pereat Papa as asserting the lawfulness of proceeding against Idolaters as is there mentioned and that he likewise had so much reason to make so great a Remark on the Exclusion in the foregoing Page viz. He who believes he can disinherit a lawful Successor on the account of Religion will hardly find Arguments of force to keep the Prince in being on his Throne whenever this happens to be imputed to him Moreover I was ashamed after the effort of the Idolatry in the Exclusion and of the Mobile's worshipping a Plot-Witness with the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Non-Conformist Author of the Book called The peaceable Design printed in the year 1675. speaking so tenderly of the Papists then in the words of The Papist in our account is but one sort of Recusants and the conscientious and peaceable among them must be held in the same predicament with those among our selves that likewise refuse to come to Common-Prayer yet reprinting his Book in the year 1680. doth thus alter the former passage and say The Papist is one whose worship to us is Idolatry and we cannot therefore allow them the liberty of publick assembling themselves as others of the Separation When the Non-Conformists had a while after the Declaration of Indulgence idolized both it and the Papists for being supposed to have had some hand in the procuring it and were as soon weary of it as Children of their Images yet it seems that presently after the noise of the Popish Plot the Non-Conformists Censure of Transubstantiation was transubstantiated and their Religion grew to be Idolatry as if the ill actings or shams of either
a few or many indigent or dissolute Persons ought to be turned on the whole Body of Papists or especially on their Religion it self and their Religionary Tenets But many of the Non-Conformists then being abandoned to sham the very Church of England and its Discipline with Idolatry and with a participating in the PLOT to bring in POPERY according to what Arch-Bishop Land's Star-Chamber Speech mentions as the Style of the Libels in those days That there were then great Plots in hand and dangerous Plots to change the Religion established and to bring in Romish Superstition the sagacious Loyal began to see that they made but a Stalking-horse of the Plot of the Church of Rome to shoot at the Hereditary Monarchy and by outcries against the Church of Rome to bring in a Roman Republick and to make themselves the Idols of the People in a popular State while they complained of the Idolatries of Churches But there remains somewhat else to be said as to this point of calling or thinking every particular Papist an Idolater and that is what I shall further urge out of the great Speech aforesaid of the Arch-Bishop of Bourges who knew well enough that Papists had in their Writings frequently called Hereticks Idolaters and as accordingly the Author of a Popish Pamphlet printed in London in the Year 1663 Entituled Miracles not ceased hath done and where his words are The Protestant Religion is a Cheat and Heathenism the Protestant Bishops are Cheaters and Priests of Baal the Protestant Religion is ridiculous and idolatrous yet this Arch-Bishop in that Speech having as I said cleared his Prince tho a Protestant from the guilt of Heresy and Pertinacy doth likewise there particularly say he is no Idolater and where he likewise hath with great judgment and loyalty taught us that as to those Constitutions in the Civil Law whereby Manichees and Arrians are excluded from Magistracy and publick Office It was to be understood to be only in the Case of Inferiour Magistrates and not of Sovereign Princes who cannot be disinherited of their Rights without the destruction of the whole Government and People and to decree any thing of whom did only belong to the Iurisdiction of God Almighty There is another thing that inclines me to think my self Morally bound not to call all Papists Idolaters and to wipe off the stain of Idolatry from the Church of Rome as much as any of the Fathers of our Church have done and that is the Conversion of England from Heathenish Idolatry that Gregory the Great was God's Great Instrument in many hundred of years ago HAving thus Finished my Casuistical Discussion I shall be glad if the Result thereof may by the Blessing of God whose both the Deceived and the Deceiver are according to the words of Iob 12. 16. be in all such Protestants who have been deceived into a belief and practice of the Irreligionary Tenet of Popery viz. Of Dominion being founded in Grace a more exuberant Compassion to all Loyal Papists who have not believed and practised that Tenet and may have erred in Popish Tenets Religionary 'T is both visible and palpable that such Excluders and Nominal Protestants while they accused Papists of being deluded into a Plot to destroy the King were themselves deluded into a Practice that would ipso facto have destroyed the Hereditary Monarchy 'T is most plain that by being so deceived they have given occasion to Papists to reproach Protestants by saying to this effect You see how vain your attempts are to leave Popery and its Tenets and as he who would by running or riding or sailing to any remote places imagine to be able to get from being under the Covering of the Heavens would give any one occasion to upbraid his vanity by telling him he could not do it for that the further he went from being under one part of the Heavens he would but Compass the being nearer to another part thereof so while you would get from being under the Predominance of one part of Popery you obtain but to be the nearer to another part of it You have run from the belief of Purgatory to the Tenet of founding dominion in Grace and there being no steady hand among you to hold the balance that Tenet practised by you would instead of a Purgatory hereafter make a present Hell upon Earth You are got from the Council of Trent and yet the odiosa materia in the very Council of Lateran which you charge upon us as a general one is approved believed and practised by you And you would Exterminate the King's Heirs and Successors as Heterodox in Religion and have in effect obsolved your selves from your Oaths Promissory in their behalfs Thus therefore doâ—h the Vniversality of our Catholick and Heavenly Religion seem to be naturally made like that of the Heavens from which there is no escaping Thou who abhorrest Idols dost thou commit Sacrilege and abhor the Sacredness of the Regal Power and of thy own Oaths And thou who abhorrest Superstition in things wilt thou idolize words and imagine there can be Sacredness in letters Doth not every one know that even literae significantes Sacras sententias non significant eas in quantum sacrae sunt sed in quantum sunt res ergò literae non sunt Sacrae Doth not the very word Sacred likewise signifie accursed Can therefore the name of true Protestant Legitimate a Calumnious interpretation of Oaths more than the name of the Society of Jesus Legitimate the Doctrine of Calumny or more than the world Catholick Monopolized formerly by the Donatists and Arrians could justifie or Sanctifie their Tenets Will your name of Reformation weigh any thing if while you are come out from among the Religionary Tenets of our Church you remain in the Babel of the Irreligionary ones approvâ—d by some of our Popes and Doctors and Schoolmen and which we grant that if believed and practised would bring every Kingdom to confusion and not only into a diversity of Languages but into an alteration of the Hereditary Government and Transubstantiate even that If you are angry with us for mistaking Saint Peter ' s Successors as you think will you not be angry with your selves for mistaking the Successors of your Kings so easily to be known Since you may think him a wise Child who knoweth his true Spiritual Father as well as his true Natural one will you reproach our understandings for not knowing that true Spiritual one and what is the true Church when you seem thus not to know your true Political Father or who is to be in the course of the descent the true King Will not you pity us for our Implicit Faith in the Guides of the Church in things wherein we cannot hurt you when your selves do by Implicit Faith follow the Demagogues in the State in matters that would destroy us all When Brutus after he had given the blow to Caesar found cause to exclaim of Vertues being an empty Name will