King and Estates of Parliament is as antient as any thing can be remembred of the Nation The attempt of altering it in all Ages accounted Treason and the punishment thereof reserved to the Parliament by 25 Edw. 3. The conservancy of the Government being not safely to be lodg'd any where but with the Government it self Offences of this kind not pardonable by the King because it is not in his power to change it This is our Government and thus it is established and for Ages and immemorial time hath thus continued a long Succession of Kings have recognized it to be such And just now when we are under the dread of a Popish Successor some of our Clergy are illuminated into a mystery that hath been concealed from the beginning of Governments to this day from the wisdom of all Princes and Ministers of State That any authority in the Government not derived from the King and that is not to yeild to his absolute Will was rebellious and against the Divine Right and Authority of Kings in the Establishment against which no usuage or prescription to the contrary or in abatement of it is to be allowed That all Rights are ambulatory and depend for their continuance upon his pleasure So that though the Reformation was made here by the Government established by Law and hath acquired civil Rights not to be altered but by the King and the three Estates These men yet speak say you as if they envied the Rights of their own Religion and had a mind to reduce the Church back again into a state and condition of being persecuted and designed she should be stripped of her Legal Immunities and Defensatives and brought back to the deplorable helpless condition of Prayers and Tears do utterly abandon and neglect all the Provisions that God's providence hath made for her protection Nay by this their new Hypothesis they put it by Divine Right into the power of a Popish Successor when he pleaseth at once by a single indisputable and irresistable Edict to destroy our Religion and Government And these opinions you say they are the more inclined to entertain for that they believe no Plot but a Presbyterian Plot for of them they believe all ill and call whom they please by that hated name and boldly avow that Popery is more eligible than Presbytery for by that they shall have greater Revenues and more Authority and Rule over the Lay-men This is a heavy Charge if true but it is imputable I am sure but to a few and not so generally as some malevolent men of the Popish Faction are industriously busie to have it For if it were I confess it might choque the constancy Resolution and Zeal of the most addicted to the service of the Church-men and make them at least very indifferent in their Concerns For these mistakes are so gross and inexcusable that they ought if they could perish by themselves to be permitted to suffer the smart of their own follies and to be corrected by the evils they are drawing down upon themselves with their own hands They deserve to suffer as betrayers of their own Country To be prosecuted with greater shame and ignominy by all of the Reformed Religion than the Traditores were by the Antient Christians These their deserting of the true Christian Faith being much less excusable than their fault that deserved that name and of greater mischief as of deeper malignity How many of the Clergy-men are thus misled we know not but they seem many more than they are because they are most in view and come often under observation frequent publick houses and talk loud because they want the Complement of their Preferments But certainly Sir what you say to be the declared Opinions of some Clergy-men is the business now of the Papists to propagate Hoc Ithacus velit magno mercantur Atridae These are agreeable to and indeed make up the most modern Project and Scheme of the Popish Plot. Since the discovery of their first Design of killing the King and massacring of the Protestants they have taken such courage by observing how little power we have to prevent their Design that they have us in scorn and in the vilest contempt They now think that we are not worth destroying but by our own hands that we are not worthy of their trouble or the charge of Executioners of their providing How entertaining is it to his Holiness to find the Church of England the impregnable Bulwark of the Reformed Religion easily fall into his hands by the unpresidented folly of some of her Sons without the trouble of attacking her either by Force or Argument which have hitherto wanted success and such attempts always attended with dishonour and mischief to his See How pleasant will it be to him to see us perish and our destruction to be from our selves With this he will answer all the irrefragable Apologies of the Church of England for her departure from the Communion of the Romish Church Then he will say with triumph our Church destroyed her self and perished by a Divine Fate for her unwarrantable and Sacrilegious Schism for so he will call our Follies and impute them to Divine infatuations The manner of our destruction will be a better Argument and of more force against the Doctrine of the Reformation than all the Arguments of all the Doctors of that Church to this day For this purpose since the Discovery of the Popish Plot it is that Sir Robert Filmers Books were Re-printed together and recommended by the Title-page and the Publick Gazet to our reading Since the Discovery of the Plot we have had variety of Books Printed to the same purpose viz To prove that all Kings as Kings are absolute by Divine Right Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have had men imployed to search all our antient Records and Histories to find out something more antient than our Parliaments as now constituted that it may serve as a pretence to take them away Since the Discovery of the Popish Plot we have the memory of our late calamitous War revived to raise a Panick fear of another and to make the King believe that the genius of the Nation is Rebellious and that the Protestant Religion it self is to be apprehended by Kings It is difficult to tell how that late unhappy War began or how it came to issue so Tragically in the Death of the late King though we know how it ended viz. The Nation recovered within twelve years after the most deplorable Death of that excellent King into a renowned Loyalty and in spight of a great Armed Power never before foil'd ever victorious then kept on foot for the Interest of a very few men restored our present King may his Reign be long and happy to the Government of his Kingdoms without the least assistance of any of the Cavalier-party and oblig'd a wary General in the head of a factious and republican Army to Loyalty Nay within that time also
that to make Experiments and try Conclusions upon There is little reason to charge the Guilt of the unexpiable Murder of our late Excellent King for which at this day we are doing most severe penances upon Presbytery which was not thought of here in England till the War was begun The heats that produced that unhappy War were from other Causes and Reasons as every body may know But when that War was once begun as no War can be managed by fore-established Rules and Measures it did not stand within the reasons and first designs thereof but was prosecuted and managed by such means and measures as were necessary and possible This will always happen more especially in a Civil War wherein though both parties share in the Causes yet the Guilt to be sure belongs to the Rebels side The Parliament in the Course of the War in their distress prayed Aid of the Scotch Nation who was shortly before entered into the Covenant They refused them any Assistance except they would enter into that Covenant which they had passed upon their own people By this accident that part of the Nation that was engaged in that unnatural War of the Parliaments side were imposed upon by the Scotch Presbytery But after the Covenant was thus imposed they still retained the English Loyalty filled the Town with Protestations and Remonstrances against the Kings feared Murther declared out of their Pulpits against the Actors of that detestable Tragedy were continually contriving to restore our present King to the Government of his Kingdoms and of their instrumentality in his Restoration the King himself is very sensible I wish the Church too were made sensible of the extinction of that prejudice the Scotch Covenant created against her for though God be thanked she hath survived almost all of those deluded Covenanters yet the apprehension of the danger or the remembrance of the evil at least will return with the mention of that name and render it very displeasing I wish I say that prejudice was removed by their frank Declaration of their good liking of her Order in general and by their humble desires to be spared in the matters whereof they yet remain in doubt by the indulgence of the Church That we may not incur the danger of loosing our Religion and Government by the scandal that is given to the Church-men at the old remembrance of what hath been done here by some that were of the Presbyterian Name For this matter of Offence they of the Popish Faction do with mighty advantage to their Villainous design cultivate and improve They stigmatize all that oppose the Popish Plot with the Name of Presbyterians and thereby would denote them Enemies of our Church-Order By this means they have brought many too many Eminent men of our Church to at least a dead Neutrality as if things were come to this pass that they must perish either by that or the Popish Faction and had nothing left them to do but to chuse which way our Church shall be destroyed A cold comfort this would be that whatever way they should take they must assist to the destruction of their Order Upon this rock we are like to be split this makes our deliverance to stick in the birth and upon this hinge the fate of our Religion and Nation will turn Lord what a prodigious thing is this that is come to pass in our age Religion it self must be the devoted thing to the rage and folly of the Priests of that Religion Let them in the Name of God consider what iniquity it is to declame against the faults of others and not endure to hear of their own Crimes To hate one-another for those very proceedings that their own faults occasion where the fault is in both sides the fault is in neither so as they may justly accuse one another and yet they will both fall under a most severe Condemnation to be sure in the next world if they do not both miss their aims and be confounded with guilt and disappointment in this I wish it were considered that scarce any Nation ever yet perished that was so blinded in her own concerns that she had not discerning men enough to have preserved her from the destroying Evil if many good and wise men did not perswade themselves it was better to suffer it than to endeavour to prevent it and from the fears of one Party and the dislike they have conceived against the other determine with themselves to stand Neuters whilst they want Resolution to oppose the dangers that one side threatens and think the disorders of the discontents incorrigible It was a wise Law of Solon That if the Common-wealth at any time should be divided into Factions that the Neuters should be noted with infamy by which every man was obliged to take a side or Party and all the virtuous peaceable and modest were engaged to appear openly in the concernments of the Government he concluded assuredly that by this means Peace would be more easily restored and terms of an accommodation more readily invented and entertained the Factious Knaves of both sides turned out of Office their Evil Designs disappointed and the ruine of the Nation by the Extremities of wicked men prevented For the worst men are most forward in Factions and the greatest beautefeus most honoured by their respective contending Parties before the wise and good interpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Causes of the Differences would be better understood be rendred clear and conspicuous when the honest men such as can have no interest but the publick good whose Authority is more prevalent with the people than the clearest Reason do declare them and those that are mis-led and abused into Extreams would then unite and conspire against those who gave the first occasion to the Divisions and promote them As did the Factions of the Colonnois and the Vrsins who having discovered that Pope Alexander the Sixth set them still at discord and variance amongst themselves so by their Calamities and Falls to encrease the strength and power of his Son Borgia they fell to agreement among themselves and made head against him their common Enemy If all that are true Protestants and true lovers of our Government would declare themselves on the behalf of our Religion and Government in such terms as befit honest men and as the Exigency of our present state shall require we shall find the numbers of Addressers reduced to the Dukes Pensioners Creatures The number of Phanaticks made so few that the Papists would again become the Fautors and Defenders of Fanaticism as they were about ten years since lest the numbers of Fanaticks should not be big enough to make a Scare-crow for the Church of England or the Schism not considerable enough to disgrace her All discerning men see that the late Addresses have been obtain'd by application That the design therein was to make Voices for the discontinuance of Parliaments and for a Popish Succession If the people
the Nation had recovered out of their partial Lapse into Fanaticism bred up great numbers of excellent Scholars who mastered the prejudices of those times were reverenced by the chief of the Presbyterian party and are the beauty and strength of the Church of England at this time The Presbyterians themselves were grown reconcileable to the Church of England and had learnt by woful experience the mischievousness of Schism upon no better pretences than what then might have been satisfied and accommodated When the King and Church were restored Fanaticism had expired if some old peevish and stiff Church-men had not studied obstacles against an universal Accommodation and some crafty States-men had not projected that the continuance of the Schism would be of great service some time or other to destroy the Church of England and change our ancient Government which is now apparently the Popish Plot and if ever it be affected it will be with this trick of affrighting the Church of England with the apprehension of Fanaticism and making them suspicious of Parliaments As many of them as are drawn into an opinion of the disloyalty of our late Parliaments the illusions of the Popish Plot have passed upon them and they are under the power of its fascinations But both the Loyalty of the late Parliaments and also how much it imports the Plotters to have it believed that they design upon the present Government will at once be clearly understood if it be considered what hath been done for the forging of a Protestant Plot which was intended at the first opening to extend to the House of Commons Things so wicked as would make a virtuous man ashamed of the Age he lives in But after all endeavours to find witnesses for their purpose powerful encouragements and great rewards they have drawn none into their assistance but who are publickly known for Rogues or who wanted Bread or had no Reputation to loose If the falshood of this forged Plot had not been utterly improbable they might have procured better seeming and more credible witnesses They might sure have found in this Age men bad enough not already infamous to have testified a probable Lye But so necessary it is to the Popish design that a Protestant Plot be believed that they are not discouraged at the manifest detection of their Conspiracies Perjuries and Subornations but will still go on as if they had a power to work miracles of villany for their Religion which is no better Our modern Politicians have been most observant agreeably to their virtuous make how frauds perjuries and violence have prospered and succeeded in some particular cases and have brought about some designs they imagine such means throughly multiplied to be able to conquer all things which they design But these Arts which have had success by the permission of God when one Villain hath been to destroy another will not pass upon the Protestant Religion Let them seriously in time despair and give over such enterprises For there is no Enchantment against Jacob nor Divination against Israel the Lot of Gods inheritance and his peculiar Care If Mordecai be of the Seed of the Jews Haman shall fall before him It is matter of comfort to us and despair to the Plotters that not one of their Plots yet but hath proved abortive or they have been defeated by their very success Besides pray let it be observed how this Design of lessening our just confidence in Parliaments is otherwise carried on and promoted It is now become the principal business of the Mercenary Writers for the Plot to pick up and cull out all the enormities and irregularities of those times the Vitia temporum and stories of wild pranks of some beastly Fanatical people that exceed the common degeneracy of those ill times into which the Nation by undiscernable degrees so fouly lapsed to make thereof an ugly Vizard and this they clap unduly upon our fifths of the Nation upon all that love and adhere to our Government and Religion to render them suspected of destroying again the English Monarchy and the Protestant Religion even for those very proceedings that they make for preserving both For the service of Popery requires that whatsoever opposes it must be branded with Treason and Fanaticism that such delicate persons as are fond of the name of Loyalty though they understand not in what it consists that hate the name of Fanatick since it is become as common a name of reproach as the Son of a whore though they understand not so well what it means may be sure so to behave themselves as to be reckoned for Loyal and not Fanatical by taking the measures of the one and the other according to the new notion of the Plot-Writers and so become theirs with all their idle prattle But let them make their best of this foolish sort of men if that was all they could effect by this project But they design further upon the Nation viz. to match the fears of Popery with a fear as great of the like Evils to those of Forty one as if these Plotters had power by their interest to raise a new War when we have power and authority in our Government if it were exerted to destroy them by Justice But these State-Mountebanks think it convenient because the Nation was cast into a Frenzy in Forty one therefore now when in perfect health we are to be cast into a Lethargy to prevent our relapse and in the mean time they intend we should perish insensibly and quietly that way they design to destroy us It is since the Discovery of the Popish Plot that Popish Mercinaries have been hired to write virulent Libels against the Church and bitter Invectives against Fanaticks Out of the same Mint came a villanous Libel called Omnia Comestia a Belo against the Church apt to render the Church-men suspicious of another detestable Sacriledge designed and that loathsome Print entitled the Committee or Popery in Masquerade Many parts whereof hath no other reason of belief but that they have been the Subject of some drunken Rhimes in former times but it is in the whole an insufferable Libel against the Nation by its application to this Age. These Mercinaries are the Authors as well of treasonable Libels against the King which they form so as they may seem to come from the Fanatick party to render the King jealous of them as they are of the Libels against the Parliament and their proceedings to breed misunderstandings between the King Parliament and People It is since the Popish Plot was discovered that Fanaticism is represented more intolerable than Popery That the Popish Plot evident to the satisfaction of the King and several Parliaments and of our greatest Judicatures is yet told us not to be so certain as that the Fanaticks are Traitors in their hearts though they own no principles as the Papists do that warrant Treasonable practices And these Mercenaries as frankly as if they had for the dividing of
and Laws design to make them though they do not always answer the good designments of the Government To what purpose then are these new Hypotheses fram'd and published Kings are exempted by their Office and the sacredness of their persons from all fears but the fears of Nature and these can never be discharged Those who do ill will fear ill eternally though their power were made little less than omnipotent for the frame of Humane Nature hath made it necessary to be so Besides God hath made one thing against another There is a divine Nemesis interwoven in the nature of things And God will always govern the World Omne sub regno duriore regnum The great Mogol at his Inauguration swears That his People shall be at peace at home and victorious abroad afflicted neither with Plague nor Famine but enjoy Health and Plenty all his days This seems extraordinary Pompous and Arrogant but it means no more than this that he will govern them so vertuously that Gods Providence shall be always propitious to his People and is no more in plain English than what our Church offers up in her publick Prayers for the King viz. That he may govern us in Wealth Peace and Godliness that he may live long and so govern us ought to be every honest mans Prayers But after all these vain Hypotheses contrived for making Kings Absolute it will be more easie for Kings to make their Reigns unquiet and turn their Kingdoms into Fields of blood But lastly to revive the ancient Zeal of the true Members of the Church of England against Popery To rectify the mistakes of some Gentlemen of the Clergy about the Dissenters And of our late Parliaments and their proceedings in reference to them Let it be considered how unreasonable their apprehensions are of any danger to the Church of England from the desires of the House of Commons of some indulgence or toleration in favour of the Dissenters at this time especially when the Protestant Religion is so shrewdly beset she hath reason now sure to take all such for her Friends that are heartily Enemies to Popery though not so skilful as they should be to ward off its assaults Since the Papists presume to call them Fanaticks though exactly conformable to the Church of England that will not assist to bring on the Popish Plot by dis-believing it and put us in fear of the Fanaticks by taking all the courses imaginable to provoke and exasperate them and to increase their discontents which they maliciously heighten and by falshood and forgeries misrepresent To graft thereupon a Pretence of a Protestant Plot for a pretext to extirpate Protestantism and introduce Popery which they impudently pretend to be of a more firm Allegiance to the Government than the Reformed Religion I pray let it be considered that that which is tolerated is put under disgrace even for that it is tolerated and that which tolerates even for that it tolerates hath the governing Authority and in so much as it indulgeth it obligeth to modesty and reason and if that indulgence should be abused it may and will be retracted It was never intended by the House of Commons that the Church of England should be altered or modelled to an agreeableness to any form or sect of the Separation or prescrib'd to by any of the Dissenters or that she should be made subject to any of their rules or opinions or her Liturgy laid aside for Directories or which is worse undervalued to the prophane way of extemporizing For as generally used and exercised it deserves no milder a stile That the Church should always govern by her own Wisdom in her own Province and in those things that appertain to her can never be deny'd her No man hath reason to say though he hath great cause to dislike the Separation and to have a bad opinion of the Dissenters that he had rather submit to Popery than to any form of the Separation for he need do neither except he pleaseth No man that thus expresseth himself but will be suspected to seek an occasion and pretence to become a Papist and to make a defection from the Church of England But if these Gentlemen have such a displeasure against Schism and Separation which certainly is the worst disease any Church can labour under and at this time threatens the destruction as well of the Protestant Religion it self as it doth to the Professors of all denominations let this sharpen their Zeal against Popery which by its unhallowed arts hath occasioned and exasperated our Schism and put them upon the use of all means to reconcile if possible the Schism that the Papists have already made and by all means endeavour to continue and take away if possible the occasion of it for the time to come And thus defeat the Arts of the Priests and Jesuits for supplanting our Church It is a most deplorable thing that our Church should be kept rent and divided in danger of being lost between Rituality and Scrupulosity Though the Scruples of the Nonconformists which I always thought and do still think groundless and unreasonable have often moved me into some passion against them yet upon consideration I think this their Scrupulosity may be of God and that some men are by him framed to it That he hath provided it as a bar and obstacle in the Natures and Complexions of some devout men against any Innovations whatsoever that dangerous ones may not steal upon the Church for the better maintaining the simplicity and purity of the Christian Religion and Worship But in saying this I have said nothing that is apt to give them a conceit of themselves but rather to humble them For the best men are not govern'd by their Temper and Constitution but correct them by their Reason and determine themselves by a clear and him Judgement What affrightment all this while either to Church or State from this weak and pityable Scrupulosity Where lyes the Treason or Sacriledge nay or so much as contumacy against our Ecclesiastical Governours which is so much upbraided to them The Christian Religion may be prejudiced by addition to as well as substraction from her rule The Church of Rome by her additions hath almost evacuated the Christian Faith Besides there may be a fineness in the outward mode of Religious Worship in it self very justifiable which may be not congenial to men of a course make The Worship of God will always favour of the manners of the people men of dull capacity can scarce admit of any Ceremonies without danger of falling into superstition or hardly escape being vext with endless and incurable scruples about them until for ease of their minds they throw them off But the wisdom of the best Law-makers hath considered in giving Laws what the people would bear and not what is best to be enjoyned and many things have been tolerated by them which they did not approve Ne majoribus malis detur occasio aut etiam
Artificial Defensative and Out-work which is prescribed by great Moralists as necessary to weak Minds to secure their Virtue especially when Virtue it self is out of Repute and disgraced You have persisted constantly in one even Tenor of Life have been Uniform Regular and Consistent with your self There may have been some complyance in appearance to your Lordship but you never yet departed from your self nay you have not so much as incur'd the suspicion of so doing No man makes any Question about your Lordship or what it is you design it is no mans Enquiry no mans doubt You have been always the same and are as every man concludes immutably so You are not unhappy to pass under Conjectures and various Opinions there is no need of a Cryptique man to unriddle any intricacies in the course of your Life Votivâ pateat veluti descripta Tabellâ Vita senis No false insinuations can hurt your Name No Service but what is just will ever be imposed upon you no Mysteries of Iniquity will be committed to your Breast no man will be offended at you but he that hath reason to be displeased with himself and takes himself in a sort reproved by every honest man as every man doth that condemns himself You cannot be disgraced by any Faction but a real dishonour will return upon those that attempt it Every honest man will be sensible if you being reckoned and esteemed a publick good are lessened And you cannot fail of Honour from the worst of men when in Honouring you they Honour themselves and honestate their designs My Lord You represent to us the Condition of the Nation not desperate and incurable whilst you preside in His Majesties Councils for no man can believe you would be an unconcerned Spectator of our Ruine or the Preparations to it or that you would contribute any thing thereto by giving us a vain confidence of a secure condition and suffer your fam'd Integrity to be Suborned to so mischievous a Deceit My Lord Your Lordship hath afforded a mighty recommendation of sincerity and simplicity to the practice if the world you have Honoured thereby the Age wherein you live acquired true Honours to your self and are thereby become a publick Blessing I hope I shall have your Lordships Pardon in making a further advantage of your Lorships Noble Integrity and Wisdom by presuming to offer these Sheets to your Lordships favourable Judgment That I adventure to appear to so great a Judgment is the best Argument I can use to the World for my integrity and honest designment therein and besides the good Opinion of so great a man as your self would give great assurance to my own Conscience If your Lordship doth think any thing therein useful to the World I am sure it will have your Lordships Countenance which will make them more useful since as my Lord Bacon observes The Cause of Laws and Defence of the ancient State hath ever found this Priviledge That such as for their own Interest disturb the same Excuse if they Honour not their Defenders My Lord I shall ever pray for increase of Honour to your Lordship and that full of years you may change this Life for a better to which I am bound for that I esteem you a Publick Good if I had no particular Obligations as I have to your Lordship and for the greatest Reason I take my self Obliged to be in true Honour of your Lordship My Lord Your Lordships Most Obedient Servant THO HUNT THE PREFACE I Cannot but take notice That my honest Design in my Argument and Postscript to serve the Church of England and therein the Nation hath been by many perverted and how it hath been endeavoured to make them loose that effect to which they were sincerely directed I have therein asserted the rightful Authority the Bishops have in the Government represented the just Expectations the Nation hath of their due Exercise of that Authority for the publick good and have endeavoured to remove the great prejudice against their Order especially those that are occasioned by the Mistakes of the Inferiour Clergy for such we have taken notice of as those which do most hurt then esteem and affect them with the greatest dishonour and danger I have therein faithfully defended the Authority and Power of the Bishops in the Government But these I take to be but other Names for the Duty they owe to the Common-wealth Civil Honours and Dignities declare respectively the trusts that the Government hath plac'd in the persons under such Characters and admeasure the Duties and Offices that are expected from them The present state of the Kingdom doth most importunately urge and require that they should perform their duty in its fullest and utmost extent and thereby vindicate the honour of their Order It cannot fail being venerable in the same degrees we find it beneficial All positive Duties indeed have an indefinite latitude and we have a great liberty in the performing of them They are not peccant against the rule of Virtue who do not always exhibit to us the most Excellent Actions It is not expected from the Duty that every man owes to his King and Countrey that he should serve them always to his utmost Capacity and with an Heroical Bravery But he that doth not lend all the assistance to their service which his place requires and his power can perform in the greatest Exigency in the Extreamest need is a wretched Traytor and Betrayer of his Countrey In the Postscript I have by no means lessened the Authority of the Church or narrowed their Capacity of serving the Publick weal. But with great satisfaction considered their Authority and how much they may contribute to the uniting our Distracted Nation almost ruined by our Divisions which are occasioned and promoted by the Enemies of our Church and principally designed for her Destruction If we loose our Government for the sake of her ruine and in order to that we loose it and which is worse if we lose it it must be by the instrumentality of her Clergy if the Government be not preserved the Church must perish Therefore I did not confine my thoughts to a Defence of the Church her Rights but employ'd them for the Preservation of the Church her self and did endeavour to remove some great Prejudices and Mistakes that assist the designs of her Enemies upon her Mistakes to which our Enemies owe all the power they have to hurt us in virtue of these Mistakes their malice is onely considerable it could never have affected us nor we brought within any danger or fear of them if these vain Opinions had not been entertained by some of our Church-men And yet two Discourses so agreeable in all the parts thereof one to another united in Design and that could not possibly but concur to the thoughts of any man that truly and heartily design'd to serve to the prosperity of the Church and State are endeavoured to be set at variance with
themselves and some there are so false and unjust as to suggest That the Argument for the Bishops Right was written to set off the Postscipt with some advantage and that the Author design'd to gain from the Argument a more pardonable liberty of inveighing against the Church-men in the Postscript If this had been the conceit of men of the Popish Faction only and not also of many Gentlemen whom I principally designed to serve and in them the Church of England thereby I should not have thought it worthy my notice For every man understands it is their business and design to divide the Church-men from the Interest of the Church to set the Church against her self To rob the sheep of their shepherds and the pastors of their flocks They know and true it is that no good and useful Constitution can ever be destroyed but by it self i. e. by ceasing to be so And that the people will never part from any thing wherein they find their benefit and advantage except they can deprave our Church they can never hope to destroy her They have corrupted some of our Church-men with Principles that subvert our Government and betray the Rights of our People They have debauched the Manners of our Church-men and lessened their Authority and Esteem with the people The Order is enslav'd by Collation of Preferments upon less worthy men Qui beneficium accepit libertatem vendidit They have raised a bitter zeal against that Separation that they themselves have contriv'd fomented and promoted And it is brought to pass that those are accounted Church-Fanaticks though Conformists that cannot contentedly see and endure the near approaches of ruine both of Church and State These are their fear and their hate The Sons of Anak the Giants of the Land that they they imagine so insuperable that they are for making themselves a Captain and returning back into Egypt Against these they exercise the keenness of their Wit and to supply themselves with matter of Raillery against them they lick up the Vomit of the Popish Priests and whatever is malitiously said by them against the first Reformers is daily repeated by our young Clerks out of the Pulpit with advantages of immodesty and indiscretion for the disservice and dishonour of their Order with the impudent Lies that the Papists have forg'd against Luther Beza and Calvin and other renowned instruments in the Reformation they disparage the Reformation of great service this to the Church of England and the Protestant Religion These young men like Dotterels Apes and Parrots who have no more understanding than those Animals are perpetually repeating any thing though never so destructive to Church and State that is suggested by any Popish Mercenary Writer if he hath but the cunning to bestow an idle Complement upon the Church or calls Rogue and Villain seemingly or in pretence for their sake especially if he can furnish to their young invention any Topicks of Raillery against an imaginary Presbytery and against Parliaments an essential part of our Government and the security of our Liberty A very fair capacity and recommendation this as they imagine to Preferment These are the Men I confess for whose sake I writ the Postscript And if it can conduce any thing either to reform them from their Errors or else to make them of no regard with the People That they be not hereafter taken to speak the sense of the Church of England and we ty'd down to certain ruine by her pretended Authority And especially that she may not hereafter suffer under the scandal of such forward and precocious youths I say if I can obtain by my endeavours any of these effects in any degree I reckon I have performed an agreeable service to the King and Kingdom We have a sort of young men that have left nothing behind them in the University but the taint of a bad example and brought no more Learning with them thence than what serves to make them more assured and more remarkable Coxcombs who will undertake to discourse continually of the Interest of Religion of which they have no manner of sense and of the Constitution of our Government of which they are utterly ignorant These take our degenerate Gentlemen to be the great Supporters of our Religion and Government whose Loyalty consists principally in Rounds of Brimmers and Huzzahs who have not so much leisure from their repeated Excesses and Debauches as to consider that they are not the wiser for their Cups In these Loyal Debauches too many of the young Clergy do most scandalously assist for the service of the Church and for maintaining the honour of their Order This if the Superiour Clergy do not in time redress they will betray our Religion and ruine the Government both in Church and State These degenerate Levites are magnifying perpetually the Priviledges of their Tribe extolling their Order yet in terms that disgrace it but by their Lives they vilifie it The most degenerate off-springs of Noble Families are the greatest Braggadocio's of their Discent Those boast most of their Ancestors who dishonour them by their Relation The Jews did not boast more of their Temple the Templum Domini the Templum Domini at that time when they had filled up the measure of their iniquity and the destruction both of their Temple and Nation was at the door their Temple had not one stone left upon another and they carried into Captivity than these Gentlemen do of the Church of England when Popery is like to be let in upon her by their wicked follies and indiscretions Popery I say which by some Doctrines undermines the very foundation and by others unroofs the Edifice and defaces the Walls of Christian Faith and leaves nothing thereof but Altar-stones for their Idolatrous Sacrifices what ever the fates will be that they are pulling down upon the Nation The Apostolicalness of their Order will not secure it if they do not fill up the duty of their Office no more than the Templum Domini did priviledge the Jewish Church and Nation from destruction A Temple without a Numen and an Undedicated Church are things common and profane They may remember there are Churches of Christ that do make a shift without their Order and Religion need not perish though the Order fail but may subsist much easier than Nations under Change of Governments which yet generally last longer than any one form Nothing can subsist longer or at least to any good purpose than it answers the ends of its Institution and if it do not it is much better that it should not continue than that it should subsist Grotius in his Book De Jure Summarum Potestatum circa Sacra assigns these Reasons for the Discontinuance of Episcopacy in some Churches viz. Longa atque inveterata jam plane Officii Episcopalis depravatio Nomen Eminentia Episcopalis eorum culpâ quibus obtigerat omnem sui reverentiam perdiderat in odium venerat plebis Non debent saith he
res bonae damnari quia sunt qui iis abutuntur sed verso in morem abusu intermitti res ipsas non est infrequens The young men of the Church of England have their Heads filled with the Imagination of a numerous Sect of Presbyterians amongst us and have form'd a frightful Idea and Character of this Imaginary Sect as sworn Enemies to the Episcopal Government Whereas our old Puritans and late Dissenters I speak of the gross of them for they are not answerable for the Fools and Rogues sent amongst them or at least spirited by the Roman Priests no more than any other Party or Division of men are for the Rogues that pass under their numbers or respective denominations have not disliked the Episcopal Government though by their senseless and unaccountable scruples they have depriv'd themselves of the benefit of the Communion of our Church and thereby give so much scandal to the Government and make the Popish Plot considerable which can no longer subsist than they are pleased to continue obstinate in their conceited follies They beg to be re-admitted to have the terms of our Communion made easie by relaxation of a Ceremony or two and a few matters of Scruple To be received again under the Governance and Guidance of our Church and are ready to acknowledge the benefit of the Episcopal Order in the Church of Christ Let this be askt by any man who doubts the truth thereof of any man that is considerable amongst our unhappy Dissenters Dr. Durel in his Book called Vindiciae Ecclesiae Anglicanae tells what a high opinion the Reformed Churches abroad have of our English Episcopacy and that the Bishops were deposed by them because they would not assist but oppos'd the Reformation not of dislike to their Order Mr. Calvin in his Opusc de Necessitate Reformandae Ecclesiae hath declared himself to be of the same mind Talem saith he there nobis Hierarchiam exhibeant in quâ sic emineant Episcopi ut Christo subesse non recusent ut ab illo tanquam vinco capite pendeant ad ipsum referantur in quâ sic inter se fraternam Societatem colant ut non alio modo quam ejus veritati sint colligati Tum vero nullo non anathemate dignos fatear si quis erunt quos non eam revereantur summâque obedientiâ observent His very good liking and great approbation of the Order appears plainly by the earnestness and vehemency of his stile whereby he expresseth himself in the matter Beza de Minist Evangel Gradibus Cap. 23. affirms Essentiale fuit quod ex Dei ordinatione perpetua necesse fuit est erit ut Presbyterio quispiam loco dignitate primus Actioni Gubernandae praesit cum eo quod ipsi divinitus attributum est jure Peter de Moulin Part. 2. Thes 33. Episcopos Angliae inquit post conversionem ad fidem Ejuratum Papismum asserrimus fuisse fideles Dei Servos ne debuisse deserere munus vel Titulum Episcopi Monsieur Drelincourt in his Letters from Geneva upon the happy Restoration of our King 1660 saith Quandoquidem Germania Helvetia suos habent inspectores superintendentes Dania vero ac Suecia suos Episcopos non video cur quis offendi debeat quod Angliae sui etiam sint Episcopi Quod si eadem Regminis forma apud hujus Regni Ecclesias non obtineat id ideo fit quod non convenit cum rerum nostrarum statu cui nihil aptius excogitari potest quam pastorum aequalitas verum si Deus apud quem omnia possibilia in cujus manu sunt Corda Regum ac populorum Monarchae nostro omnibus illius subditis aut saltem maximae eorum parti eam gratiam indulgerent ut reformationem Evangelicam amplecterentur meo quidem judicio impossibile esset inter tantum pastorum numerum aequalitatem retinere compelleret que necessitas ad instituendos quosdam qui aliqua praeeminentiâ gauderent prae caeterîs quique eorum moribus invigilarent The great men of the French Protestant Church though under the state of a severe Persecution who follow the Institutions of Mr. Calvin do at this time applaud the Constitution of our Church and speak of it in terms of high esteem and honour as may be seen in the Letters of Monsieur Moyne Monsieur de l'Angle and Monsieur Claude written to my Lord of London Published by the Dean of Pauls in his Book called the Vnreasonableness of Separation Dr. Durel after he hath in the aforementioned Book shewed that Geneva was a Free City of the Empire of most ancient time That the Soveraign Authority was in the Senate of that City That the Bishop was Chosen by the Canons and Citizens and Swore Allegiance to the Government before he entred the City and that the Consuls of the City did take his Oath That Petrus de Baulme their last Bishop Anno Dom. 1533. being detected of a design to betray the City to the Duke of Savoy fled from the City and at that time the City was and for two years after continued Roman Catholick so that what wrong if any was done to the Bishop was done by the Papists That two years after the Bishop fled from the punishment of his Crimes the Authority of the Senate attempted the Reformation of Religion After this I say Dr. Durel thus concludes Confidenter dicam Genevenses cum Religionem emendarunt Episcopalis regiminis ab Ecclesiâ Eliminatiomem reformationis partem necessariam haud duxisse Besides all amongst us that have the name of Presbyterian called upon them at the pleasure of the Popish Faction subscribe to the Nine and Thirty Articles in what they declare of the Doctrine of the Church of England about Obedience to our King and Governours and are therefore in profession as Loyal as any of those that boast themselves True Sons of the Church of England Indeed Scotland hath been disgrac'd by a vile sort of Presbyterians the onely true Presbyterian Sectaries in the world in any considerable body or union These men have deservedly put that name under eternal infamy by their turbulent and contumacious carriage against the Kingly Authority But to speak the truth this is not imputable so much to Presbytery as to the barbarous Manners and rough Genius of that Nation Though it hath afforded some men in all Ages of great Excellency in all sorts of the most commendable Qualities That Nation was infamous for Disloyalty and a barbarous Treatment of their Kings before Buchanan and Knox were born The Scots boast of One hundred and fifty Kings in Succession in that Kingdom how many Names they have feigned to make out the boast of the Auncientry of their Kingdom we do not know but certain it is they really Imprisoned Deposed and Murdered Fifty of their Kings at least before the time of Mary Queen of Scots whose prosecution was promoted and assisted by the English Bishops A fine Kingdom
us and recover us into a firm Peace and Union by just and necessary provisions for their support Whilst the Government is preserved the Church is safe and secure for no man can fear that the King and the States of the Realm will ever give place to wild Fanaticism and suffer so excellent an Ecclesiastical constitution as we enjoy to be subverted for any Extravagancies that shall deserve the name of Fanaticism But the pretences of our Neuters for their Neutrality are not more groundless than their reasonings are absurd by which they oppose the only remedies to the Evils that now beset us and the greater we fear That absurd Opinion Dominium fundatur in gratiâ is charg'd upon those that are for the Exclusion of the Duke and they think by pronouncing this piece of absurd Latine they have at once put to silence and shame all the reasons of Nature Religion and State that urge it and require it That there is nothing can be more absurd than that Dogma will appear for that almost whole Dutch Systems of false and paltry Theology go to the making of it in the most tolerable sense it can have and for that it hath been improv'd into a most villainous sense to give countenance to the vilest Outrages of the German Anabaptists But Dominium signify'd Property not Government and Rule until our admirably accomplished young Divines of this last Age out of their great skill in the Latine Tongue would have it so for the service of the great Defender of the Protestant Religion and of the Church of England All Rights as well Natural as Civil are forfeitable by Crimes in such measure and degree as Laws appoint and as good Government requires Notwithstanding Grace be not admitted a good Title to any thing that the Saint will desire though of the Roman stamp I confess Natural Rights but they are very few are not controlable by Laws but are by Laws to be defended and the free use of them to be justifyed and allowed most certainly not to be condemned by any Civil Authority A right in Nature every man hath to live until he hath forfeited his Life Whatever he doth that is necessary for his preservation is and ought to be justifyed by all Laws though he kills though he breaks the Civil Inclosure of Property which cannot and was never intended to shut out the Natural Right that every man hath in the last extreamities Every man hath a right to his plank in a Wreck though the owner of the Ship perish by him for want of it All the Authority of all the Legislators in the world united cannot make unlawful any Act that is done in self-preservation Sub moderamine inculpatae tutelae where the man is innocent But Civil Rights are without iniquity alterable and controleable by Laws and by acts of Government ordainable to the publick good Nothing is so intirely perfectly and abstractly Civil as Government the perfect Creature of men in society made by pact and consent and not otherwise most certainly not otherwise and therefore most certainly ordainable by the whole Community for the safety and preservation of the whole to which it is in the reason and nature of it intirely design'd But we are told by some that will not contest the lawfulness of Exclusion That we trouble our selves with the fears of an imaginary danger That we are endeavouring a remedy against the Evil that may never happen That we impertinently trouble our selves about providing that which we may never want or need That the Duke may dye before the King And if the Duke should survive he neither can nor will change our Religion That it is not lawful for any man Occupare facinus quod timet and to destroy the person whom he fears I wish it were considered on the other side That if the Duke dye before the King there is no wrong done to the Duke by Excluding him It is onely his hopes and expectations that are cut off for the preventing our fears a possibility of hurt provided against by shutting out the possibility of effecting it and that not by any hurt to his Person but meerly by disabling it a Remedy proportioned and suited to the disease we desire to be eased of our fears by a just security against them But if the Duke should certainly survive the King and could and would change our Religion they who thus discourse seem to allow it lawful to exclude him But for that they say the Duke if King will not or cannot change our Religion let every man consider his present Will and Power and how far he hath proceeded towards it before he is entred into his Kingdom These silly dreamers dishonour him whilst they pretend to serve him His Princely Virtues make him the more dreadful to a Protestant Kingdom They who thus talk make him a bad man of that bad Religion weak in his conduct and feeble in his power But how can this be when they have instructed the Nation into absolute obedience and have measured the duty of obedience by the Kings pleasure and not by Laws That the pleasure of a King is irresistable some of them will not allow passive obedience to be at all obedience Besides all caution is proportioned to the greatness of the Evils feared No wise man ever left the sum of his Affairs to Chance Where the Evils are not to be remedied or resisted when they happen the caution is just that prevents them If there be no remedy against the Evil we fear but the Exclusion the Exclusion is not onely lawful but commendable And for this we have the Authority of the Illustrious Grotius under his general Doctrine and determination Lib. 2. Cap. 1. De Jure belli ac pacis It is Engraven in Capital Letters upon the Foundation-Stones of all the Governments in the world That any person unfit for Government shall be Excluded from Governing Though Fools cannot read it until the foundations be removed and the Government subverted That his Royal Highness hath rendred himself unfit for the Government hath been declared more than once by the unanimous consent of all the States of the Realm and how far the King hath been of the same opinion may be conjectured by those Expedients that have been offered in several Parliaments by Privy-Councellors and Ministers of State and the Dukes greatest Friends Onely such were those of the late Parliaments that opposed the Bill of Exclusion but even these were for sequestring the Royal and Soveraign Powers and Authorities during the Life of a Popish Successor and to leave him content with the Name of a King onely An Indignity this both to the Name and Office a thing repugnant to the Fundamental Constitutions This tends to destroy the Monarchy it self It points directly to the Evils of the late times and would make the Parliament Sequestrators of the Crown But such absurdities those that appeared most his Friends would run us upon rather than a Popish
Dissolution of that Parliament in the House of Peers upon the reason of an unnatural Prorogation was not long before censured and some great Lords imprisoned therefore proceedings so unwarrantable that it was after thought fit by that House to obliterate the Memory of them so necessary was that Parliament then thought to the service of the Crown The Dissolution of that Parliament gave us reason to fear that the King had no more business for Parliaments By these Dissolutions no publick ends that are intelligible are served no Interest but that of the Plot is gratified no persons of any sort receive their satisfaction but the Plotters who are respited thereby from publick Justice and gain time to bring their Plot to effect This is the end the Papists have served but the King our great Physician of State had another reason that hath gâ—…ned him for he knew the strength of the Plâ—… our Disease and that a Disease that is dangerous is sometimes to be palliated until the season comes to make a thorow Cure for it many times kills the Patient to precipitate the Crisis All these Demonstrations of the Plot are past under every mans observation But that we know so little of it after all this time It is now above three years since the first discovery That the Plotters now ordinarily escape Justice That a great Judge did abate his first Zeal in punishing the Plot lest he should exasperate it and Reason of State might thus require it These things prove the greatness and strength of the Plot as well as the reality of it these declare the Plotters interest is great that the Plot is yet unbroken stanch and hopeful Therefore we are not to believe our selves well and live fine Regimine as the Physicians say but to expect address to and desire our Cure That the Papists think it yet hopeful is evident from the Priests and the Lawyer abjuring their guilt with their last breath We had the honest Confessions of the Convicted Priests and other Traitors of the Popish Treasons of which they stood Convicted in the time of Queen Elizabeth and in the time of King James of the Gun-powder Treason What then could induce our Plotters Convict to utter most solemn Perjuries the next minute before they were to appear to God nothing sure but that they then hoped that the Plot might be executed they did it for the interest and service of their Church and for the better bringing that Plot to effect for which they dyed and for which at their deaths to conceal they adventured Heroically upon lyes and perjuries which if confessed would have been frustrated and become Abortive For it must not be believed that even that Church is so degenerate as to permit and allow men to such impieties for the punctilio's of honor though of the Church it self But while they are not done for the sake of him that commits them but for an important interest of their Church such as the carrying on of this Plot they say they loose their nature by the direction of the intention they become a pure piece of mortification and self-denyal an adventure to trust God in what they do for his sake and for his service and their Casuists will no more call them in this Case lyes or perjuries than Abraham's offering up his Son Isaac though that was at Gods express command was murder But the God of Truth that God who hath declared that when he himself in any entercourse with Mankind interposeth an Oath that the matter under that Oath is irrevocable peremptory and absolute cannot license or dispense with perjurious falshoods for any end whatsoever But I must remark one thing more and that is touching the credit of Dr. Titus Oats and Capt. William Bedloe viz. That they have been incurious in their conversation have followed their own natural course allowed themselves in their passions have been apert and unreserved have not cared who they offended have sought no mans favour seem to care for no mans opinion have valued and supported themselves only by their veracity and have seemed to set all the world at defiance to find a flaw in their evidence and have had little of friendship or esteem but for the sake of their discovery Besides that so long a time hath not afforded a possibility by all the Artifice Interest and unhallowed frauds of Rome to falsify any one part of that evidence But numberless events have given credit and authentickness to their Testimony Did ever any feigned Testimony bear it self up with so much Confidence Bravery and Assurance was there ever any false witness that did not endeavour to render himself acceptable to bespeak favour which draws after it credit and to appear of the most unexceptionable behaviour Their faults and imprudences such as they have been we would not have wanted to make their evidence beyond all exception The undoubted truth of their evidence alone hath given them the civil respect of all honest men and will give the Doctor the publick honours of the Nation in due time I will not recite the innumerable Sham-plots contrived against the Protestants every one of them a Demonstration by it self of the truth of the Popish Plot because I have no design to exasperate but awaken these men that are asleep and secure in this storm This trouble of demonstrating of the Plot may seem unnecessary to the judicious nay to the plain sort of honest upright and well-meaning men and so it would certainly have been had not some young Gentlemen by this paltry thing called Wit been corrupted in their judgments and brought into a Scepticism and wild undetermination in a matter of so great concernment This despicable faculty hath made a famous Gentleman who hath a liberal Dose of it a Writer of Books caused him to waste so much Paper and abuse so many Readers but in all that I have read of him there is nothing true and sincere or truly and sincerely said his Judgment is made false by his Phantasie or he hath serv'd a turn by his Versatile windings and Wily conceits That dangerous faculty that he indulgeth hath imposed upon him which the severe and honest enquirers after truth are concerned to mortify and suppress And I do earnestly recommend to all ingenious Gentlemen that would be rightly instructed and informed neither deceive others nor would be deceived themselves as they love truth and virtue wisdom and sober thoughts to despise this sort of wit in others and repress it in themselves And never allow it to be used but in the hours of mirth in the Relaxations of their minds from serious Contemplations and matters grave and weighty where this prophane thing Wit ought always to be shut out with care Enough hath been said for rectifying the mistakes of any true Protestant especially any Clergy-man of the Church of England which you have objected against them about our Government or Parliament Dissenters from the Church of England and Popery Especially
ne vilescant sine moribus leges There is nothing more exposeth the Authority of Government to contempt than a publick and an open neglect of its Injunctions But where obedience to Laws is exacted under severe penalties where it doth not greatly import the common good to have them observed that Government is unequal and useth its Authority unjustifiably Leges cupiunt ut jure regantur The consideration of the sad effects the Schism in our Church hath occasioned the contempt that it hath brought upon our Ecclesiastical Governours That Religion it self is thereby made the scorn of Atheists That the Papists are thereby furnished with matter of objection reproach and scandal to the Reformation That every Age since it begun hath heightned the malignity of the Schism That it seems now to despise the Cure of the greatest Cassanders These considerations I say make it infinitely desirable to have it utterly extinguished There seems to be now left but one way of accommodating our Divisions and that is that we do not hereafter make those things wherein we differ matter and reason of Division That the Children of the Light and Reformation be at length as wise in this matter as the Church of Rome which is at unity with it self under more and greater differences than those that have troubled the peace of our Church which is sufficiently known to all Learned men Had it not been happy that this Schism had been prevented by the use of the power of the Church in Ecclesiastical dispensations If no Law had been made touching the matters that gave the first occasion to the Schism it had been in the Power of the Church to have prevented it No good Bishop but would have relaxed the Canons that enjoyned these Ceremonies about whose lawfulness there hath been so much Zeal mispent and unwarrantable heat and contention raised for the sake of peace and preservation of the Unity of the Church to men peaceable and otherwise obedient to her injunctions So dangerous it is to make Laws in matters of Religion which takes the conduct of Religion in so much from the Guides of the Church The beginning of contention is like the breaking out of waters saith the wise man and they are assoon as begun more easily ended Before the Contenders have exasperated one another with mutual severities and contumelies which at every return increase until both sides lose either their Vertue or the Reputation of it Can any man imagine that any prejudice can accrew to the Church of England if she did enlarge her Communion by making the conditions of it more easie especially if this may be done without annulling any of her institutions which the better instructed Christians will always and the Weak may in time devoutly observe But till they can they may be received and retained of her Communion and not be rejected by her censures though they do not submit to all of them at present Will it be any prejudice that the Number of her Bishops be increased and that Suffragans be appointed or approved by the present Bishops in partem sollicitudinis as was enacted by the Statute 26 H. 8. cap. 14. Which Law was repealed by 1 2 P. M. and revived by 8 Eliz. cap. 1. These Suffragans were not intended to participate of their Honours or Revenues Had it not been much more eligible to have dispenced with invincible Scruples rather than a Schism should have been occasioned which the longer it continues will be more incurable and with greater difficulty accommodated as it grows likewise more mischievous Is it fit that the peace should be hazarded or the Nation put with reason or without reason in fear of it Or a Kingdom turned into a Shambles for a Ceremony or a Ritual in our publick Worship which if omitted would leave the exercise of it solemn and decent For no man knows the obstinacy of inveterate prejudices founded perhaps in the very Complexions and Natures of the Dissenters hardned also in their way by observing how little effect Laws have had for reducing their Numbers and also how unpracticable any Severity is in the present broken and distracted state of the Nation Why may not Standing at the Sacrament be tolerated though Kneeling is the devoutest gesture and to me most agreeable when it is a posture of Prayer enjoyned in the Primitive Church in their solemn Meetings for Divine Worship between the Feasts of Easter and Whitsontide Why may not the signing of the Cross in Baptism for the sake of Peace and Unity be dispensed with where desired when the Sacrament is entire without it Why may not our publick Liturgie be changed and altered though it may be defended as it is and as it is entertains the devotions of the best men meerly for this reason because it is not liked in some parts of it by some men yet truly devout Besides it is the wish of some excellent persons of the Church of England that our publick Offices were more and those we have not so long and that the Church had a greater Treasury of Prayers and by variety of Forms for the same Office were enlarged in her spirit of Prayer and her publick Devotions heightned Why may not the Rubrick be altered as general scruples shall arise by the Authority of the Church this would not lessen her Authority but advance the esteem of her Wisdom in the exercise of it when she useth it for edification It is much better sure to give place to an innocent opinion when entertained by considerable Numbers though a mistake than to keep up contention and strife Peace in the Church is better than precise and nice Orthodoxness and Union is to be preferred before unnecessary Truth which is of no more importance to our Salvation than one of Euclids Propositions though to be sure not so certain and of less use The business of the Church is not to make men great Clerks to improve us to the subtilty of the Schools but to build men up in the Faith and Love of God by which they may be instructed to every good Work Her aim is not to make men courtly in their behaviour in our Churches but truly devout and true devotion will never fail to make the Publick Worship solemn and advance it beyond a decent formality But I would not be mistaken it is not the Dissenters I intend to befriend but the Church of England for as for them I declare I have no liking to any thing they say or do and am especially dissatisfied with their very bad manners It is difficult to abstain from an invective but that I think it would be thrown away upon them and that they are at present incorrigible This is not the season for instructing their Wisdoms we must wait for the mollia tempora fandi I thus conclude since that excellent person the Dean of Pauls hath been treated by them with such petulancies and rude insults for his Sermon of the mischiefs of Separation If a
discourse managed with almost irresistable reason candour temper and Address be matter of exasperation and they turn again and are more hardned in their obstinacies and become more confirmed in their separating way nothing but their own thoughts and the consideration in what a desperate condition they have brought the Reformed Religion by their Separation will reclaim them But it is expected that Governments should be wise that they manage and controul the Follies and Weaknesses of those committed to their care that they may do the least mischief to themselves and others and by prudent and practicable methods amend and reform them The most froward weiward and stubborn Children give their Parents the most care and opportunities of exercising the most tender love for them though they can take no complacency in their awkerdness The Church of England is concerned to retain all her Children in her Family to shut out none by abdication that their numbers be not few and she be ashamed when she speaks with her Enemy in the Gate Not to provoke any of them to wrath lest they forsake her and turn against her when distresses shall come upon her She hath reason at this time sure to make her Discipline easie and to learn of the Church of Rome to be more comprehensive Their Doctrine of comprehension is so large that it destroys the Religion to increase the number of Professors but I mean no more than that positive and alterable institutions may give place to the peace security and preservation of Religion it self to whose service they were first fram'd and design'd It hath been heretofore of old it hath been said Mores Leges in potestatem pertraxerunt suam Plato formed an Idea to himself of a Common-wealth without respect to the manners of men but he writ another which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say accommodated and fitted to the manners of the people and such as they would bear Origen in his Book against Celsus applies to Moses the Answer of a famous Law-giver who asked 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. whether those Laws he had given to his Citizens were the best the answer was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. not simply the best but the best they would bear And we all know what God permitted to the Jews in the matter of Divorce for the hardness of their Hearts When all is said People must be governed as they can But in the mean time it is pity any of our zeal and indignation should be mispent when we have use for it all against the Church of Rome the source whence all our Divisions spring To which we owe the first Separations that were made in our Church which appears by undeniable Records published by Dr. Stillingfleet in his Book called the Vnreasonableness of Separation How they have propagated multiplied exasperated and promoted our Divisions to tell you would make a Volume besides no Protestant is now to know it I have only this further to observe that the Church of Rome at first only designed by the Arts of dividing us and breaking us into several Communions to disgrace the Reformation to make our spiritual Governours Pastors and Teachers lose their Authority with the People To deprave our Religion with licentious opiniastre and absurd dogmatizing to load our departure from that Church with the mischief of innumerable Schisms and to make us reconcilable to the Tyranny and Impostures of that Church from the vain opinions and licentiousness of the Sectaries who have been seduced managed inflamed and made wild by their imposturous Arts and Deceits This I believe was only at first designed by the Priests but now they apparently design by the Dissenters to destroy the Church or by the Church to destroy the Dissenters that they more easily come to rights with her They imagine the Dissenters are very numerous and that the Nation is fallen into two great parts that the Dissenters numbers are vast But God be thanked they neither make our Grand Jury-men nor the common Halls of the City of London for chusing the Lord-Mayors or Sheriffs And I challenge any man to give me a List of all the Names of Dissenters that were of the House of Commons in our two last Parliaments I am sure they will not make a Number but they reckon the Numbers of Dissenters by the care they have taken to increase it They used great art to continue the Separation when His Majesty was restored Since Laws have been made to raise the Animosities of Dissenters but scarce ever executed for repressing them If for any reason of State the Laws here and there and for a spurt have been exacted secret comforts and supports have been given to their Preachers of greatest Authority with them And when they have seem'd to preach with the courage and zeal of Confessors to their Auditors they have not only been assured of indempnity but have received rewards How prosperously did the work of Separation go on by these Councils of our Achitophels by these means they concluded it would be heightned that it would admit of no terms of an accommodation How insolent were their Harangues more taking with their deluded Auditors while they apprehended them acted with an invincible zeal of Religion What Animations did their People receive to defy the Church and her Authority when their Preachers despised Fines and Imprisonment to their seeming out of pure zeal against her Order It is well known several of them were in Pension and no men have been better received by the D. than J. J. J. O. E. B. and W. P. c. Ringleaders of the Separation Besides that Popish Priests have been taken and executed for preaching in Field-meetings in Scotland They have raised there a sort of Enthusiasts more wild and mischievous than any we had amongst us in the times of licentiousness They have had notwithstanding great Lords that have patronized them who were always well received in their applications in their favour at St. James's and several of their Preachers who were not Priests have received Exhibition and Pensions for their encouragement It was necessary that the Fanaticism planted in Scotland should be very loathsome to make that Nation abate any of their zeal for the Protestant Religion or to neglect their fears and apprehensions of Popery or to make the least step towards it Awake you drowsie Sleepers open your eyes the Sun is risen there is light enough to fill your sight if you would look up and were willing to see Could any thing be conceived more apt to bring the Church of England into contempt and scorn with those of the Separation than to have Laws made in her favour penal Laws which are thought to be of her procurement and not executed Vain and ineffective anger is always returned with contumely scorn and hatred Cupide conculcatur nimis ante metitum And so it hath succeeded in this case nothing hath been more passable than the basest scurrility upon the
Church the Bishops and the Clergie The Atheist the impious and profane have listed themselves Fanaticks that they might have the greater Liberty of reviling Religion it self with impunity Consider how the Church of England is used which is truly the Bulwark of the Protestant Religion About ten years since they designed to slight her works and demolish her by a general Indulgence and Toleration And now they intend to destroy her Garrison those that can and will defend her against Popery By one of their Pamphleteers the Separation is called an Usurpation upon the Government and all the Dissenters as such only Rebels and Traiterous to the King The same Gentleman would perswade the world that the ready way to extirpate Popery is by rooting out of Fanaticism whether saith he the Fanaticks bring on the Jesuits Plot or the Jesuits the Fanaticks is not a farthing matter But in the mean time that the Papists have a Plot on foot needs no proof That any sort of Protestants are engaged in a Plot cannot be proved But all honest Protestants of the Church of England think it more righteous to punish the Deceivers and pity the Deceived and wish them only cut off that make Divisions It is one way of curing or rather of extinguishing the Disease to kill the Patient but no Prince did ever yet provide Cut throats for his People in epidemical Diseases instead of Physicians But if the Papists could arm other Protestants against Dissenters there would be the less work for Papists to do And they will be sure to requite them for this Favour with Polyphemus his Courtesie For to give the Devil his due they are not themselves so fond of Massacres and destruction of Hereticks as to envy that employment to any other that will undertake it They had rather any other party of men should do the drudgery for them Besides what one sort of Protestants shall execute upon another will give them better pretence and more hardiness if they wanted either Pretence or Resolution to destroy such as they call Hereticks to execute the like destruction upon the Church-Protestants who certainly differ more from the Papists than the Separatists do from our Church Surely there is good reason they should be more sharply treated by the Papists than they treated the Dissenters And if they are in such sort used they must lay their hands upon their mouths and be silent before their Persecutors and acknowledge the righteous Judgment of God in bringing such tribulation upon them from their Enemies wherewith they troubled their own Brethren But there are better ways sure of putting an end to the Popish Plot than by putting it in Execution for them That is to say By suppressing that contumacy that is grown so rife in the Dissenters against the Church of England by putting the revilers of her Establishment and Order under the severest Penalties By the Church her condescention and indulgences to those that are weak and scrupulous and the peaceable Dissenters such Condescention will not abate but magnifie her Authority The Church of England will not be by this means lost but her Governance preserv'd especially if the Relaxation that shall be made proceeds from her ex mero motu and is not imposed upon her by any secular Authority Nay she will become by this means more ample and venerable What Glories will then shine upon the heads of the Bishops We shall all rise up and call them blessed They will attain an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and receive divine Honours while they live Their Order will be recovered into the highest Veneration and it will never be after a question in the English Church whether the Order of Bishops be Apostolical The Parliament will make all Laws yield and comply to such happy peaceable and gratious Intendments All the people will honour them as their common Saviours that shall thus snatch us from the very brink of Ruine and render the designs of the implacable Enemies of the Church ready to take effect to the destruction of our Religion and Nation utterly defeated But what punishments can we think too severe upon any that shall be guilty of such insolent Iniquity as not to allow that Liberty to the Church which they seek as a favour from her to themselves that will not let the Church escape their Censures when she graciously exempts them from her Censures and pities their Errors and Follies What Fines and Imprisonments Pillories and Scourgings do they deserve that persecute the Church with Revilings when they themselves are tolerated Their condemnation must be just whatever their doom be themselves being Judges They will suffer as evil doers and disturbers of the peace not for their Religion but for a most extravagant and intolerable unrighteousness They who will not tolerate others are themselves for that reason most intolerable Against these our Laws are to be sharpned and their iniquities to be punished by a Judge But the Statute of 35 Eliz. which punisheth dissatisfaction and peaceable withdrawings from the publick Worship with Exile and Death declares how odly the business of the Separation hath been managed and with what disadvantages to the Church as it doth also the impracticableness of Laws that make perhaps invincible prejudices and modest and peaceable dissatisfactions capitally criminal The execution of this Law is scarce possible It is by no means agreeable either to the Christian temper of our Church or his Majesties great Clemency of which he hath assured us in the general course of his Reign And especially for that that Law hath been very rarely proceeded upon A Gentleman that lay in Cambridge-Goal under the Judgment of that Law was reprieved by his Majesty with a great dislike expressed by him against that and such like severities Whatever extravagances of a few wild Fanaticks of that Age occasioned that Law the state of the Separation and of the Nation being quite altered from what it was then the execution of this Law now would be something like a Sheriffs serving a Writ out of date in another County which can have no effect but mischief to himself While our Dissenters are thus reasonably indulged and strictly obliged to their peaceable behaviour they can give no apprehensions to the Government either in Church or State This is all that is designed and all that they ought to have This certainly would be readily yielded them in this present juncture especially if the Evils of the late unhappy times did not stand upon their score But I perswade my self that as this course if it had been heretofore taken would have prevented one great cause of our late Troubles so it will in such measure prevent them from returning as the Separation can be accounted the cause of them As for the Sacriledge and Spoil which was then made upon our Church it could never have hapned but upon the dissolution of the Government nor can it even happen again That War would have been impossible if the Church-men
had not maintained the Doctrine that Monarchy was Jure Divino in such a sence that made the King absolute and they and the Church in consequence perished by it But God be thanked we see the Church again restored to her endowments grown wiser than to desire to hold that precariously and at pleasure she doth enjoy by an unmovable legal Right Of the three Estates of this Kingdom for to suspect any such thing of the King would be unpardonable Blasphemy there can be no reasonable suspition Though of the House of Commons it is become now lawful to suspect and say any thing that is evil But no man but the Villains that design by dishonouring them to change the Government hath reason to entertain such a thought The Members of the House of Commons in our latest Parliaments were all upon the matter entirely conformable to the Church of England They were persons of the best Estates Reputation and Honour in their Countries And they or such as they are like to make our succeeding Parliaments I have leave to put them under the imprecation of the severest Curse if ever they do sacrilegiously impair the Church of her Revenues And I desire it may be assisted with the hearty and passionate desires of all good Christians that so the Curse I now pronounce may operate upon them who shall incur it He that designs contrives or consents to spoil the Church of any of her Endowments May a secret Curse waste his Substance Let his Children be Vagabonds and beg their bread in desolate places Besides I know it is meditated and designed by many and the best men that use to be sent to Parliaments to redeem in part that infamous Sacriledge that was committed in the times of H. 8. Then Rectories appropriate to Religious Houses which had by Appropriations the cure of the Parish that ought after the dissolution of the Monasteries to be presented to were vested in the Crown whereby not only the Church was robbed but the People cheated of their Tythes which were theirs to give though not to retain their Proemium for the Priests Ministrations which are now often most slenderly and sometimes scandalously performed As also to disincumber her Revenue of the Charges and Impositions of First-fruits and Tenths which were imposed and exacted by the Pope upon his pretence of being the oecumenical Pastor and High-Priest of the Christian Church and at that time likewise conferred upon the Crown and are as unreasonably continued as any thing can be that hath a Law for a pretext But for this a Compensation may be given to the Crown and some way will be found out for augmentation of Vicaridges and re-indowment of Churches that lost all in that unparallel'd Sacriledge committed by the unsatiable Avarice of that haughty and luxurious Prince These designs employ the care of a great number of our principal Gentlemen to purge the sin and dishonour brought upon the Nation by that extraordinary King But if there were reason for any fear that the Nation could again incur the guilt of Sacriledge What warranty can this give to any of the Clergy of our Church to slack or abate the Zeal that is due for the purity of her Doctrine prudence of her Discipline and her commendable decent and intelligible Devotion Are they worthy to be named of her that are ready to dissert her out of fear of a remote possibility that she may not always have such Largesses to give as she now bestows upon her Sons Will they prefer the gift to the Altar and declare all their Godliness to be Gain To suffer Popery for such a consideration to be induced upon her is a far worse and more detestable Sacriledge than that they pretend to fear This is to make the Anathemata of the Temple to inserve to the dishonour of the Numen To desecrate the Altar for the sake of the gift And will by the just Judgment of God I fear bring the abomination of desolation again into our holy places Let none of her Sons for the obtaining a Dignity or a capacity for a double Benefice betray her by neglecting her interest thinking with themselves that she will otherwise be supported for this their doings is no less than the sin of Judas who took money to betray our Lord imagining that he would by a Miracle rescue himself from the hands of those to whom he sold and betrayed him The honest of our Clergy will have little satisfaction when that day comes When they shall be reduced to Prayers and Tears if they are failing in any thing that they may lawfully do to prevent that miserable state their Tears will be as water spilt upon the ground and their Prayers will never find acceptance with God nor be returned into their own bosom Disce Miser pigris non flecti numina vot is Praesentemque adhibe dum facis ipse Deum But above all those fine men are not to pass unreproved who are preparing pretences for their Revolt to the Roman Church They tell us that the Reformation is depraved and Popery it self is much amended since the Reformation that it is not so grosly superstitious though her Superstitions are still enough to stifle Religion nor so fabulous in her Legends she need make no new ones since she gives authority still to the old nor so imposturous in her cheats for her Priests have not been Hocus-pocusses of late used so many tricks of Legerdemain and presented their Puppet-plays of moving and squeaking Images since the Reformation as before But they may know that the reason why we have not maintained the dignity of the Reformation intire is this for that Popery hath not been utterly extirpated from amongst us though their frequent Treasons and their notorious seductions have deserved it By its continuance amongst us and the resorts of their Priests hither it hath created and fomented Divisions amongst us and corrupted her Children from their obedience to her guidance and instructions But she her self is still the same she was the Reformation of the Church is still intire She hath made good her departure from the Church of Rome her Adversaries have not been able to convict her of any fault therein and by an easie victory she hath triumphed over all their oppositions and contradictions And though Popery appear not altogether so deformed by her Priests artificial Dress and the Representations they make of her to seduce us and entice us to come again under her Yoke yet we know she hath more established her Tyranny by the Council of Trent and more corrupted her Morals by her modern Casuists since the Reformation and thereby hath rendred her self more detestable and for ever to be avoided But though it may be true that the Popish world is beholden to the Reformation and Popery it self is thereby amended in some overt things and reformed in those Countries that have not reformed from her For in the Light of the Reformation they have seen Light and have
been ashamed of some of their works of darkness and do not bring into present use some of their most gross Impostures and some worse than Pagan Superstitions Yet when this light is extinguish'd it will be a most dismal and eternal Night upon the Christian world If we return to her our Ears will be bored and we shall be irredeemably enslaved The spirit of Popery if it returns and possesseth us again that hath been walking in the reformed Countries as in dry places seeking rest and finding none and finds us thus swept and garnisht will bring with it seven Devils more wicked than it self and our last estate will be worse than the first The Pride Cruelty and Avarice Domination and Luxury of their Priesthood will be aggravated upon us and the minds of the Laity more lowly depressed by Superstition and Ignorance The Gospel of Cardinal Palavicini will be the Canon of the Christian Religion or it may be something worse for who can tell what will be the Religion that that Church will offer in process of time to the world under the Christian-Name When the Pope by his pretended infallibility may make the Christian Religion what he please by interpreting adding altering or detracting with an uncontroulable Authority For us therefore to become Papists to return to the Church of Rome acknowledge the Popes Infallibility there is no other way to become Papists is virtually to betray the Christian Faith to renounce our Allegiance to our Lord Christ to prefer the Bulls of a profane Pope to the holy Oracles of God and the Revelation of Jesus God blessed for ever With this Religion therefore we can never make an accommodation we may as well make a Covenant with Hell This as Dr. Jackson one of the glories of the Church of England in his Book called The Eternal Truth of Scriptures vehemently admonisheth us admits no terms of parley for any possible reconcilement whose following words to this purpose I shall here transcribe The natural separation of this Island from those Countries wherein this Doctrine is professed shall serve as an everlasting Emblem of the Inhabitants divided Hearts at least in this point of Religion And let them O Lord be cut off speedily from amongst us and their Posterity transported hence never to enjoy again the least good thing this Land affords Let no print of their Memory be extant so much as in a Tree or Stone within our Coast Or let their Names by such as remain here after them be never mentioned or always to their endless shame Who living here amongst us will not imprint these or the like wishes in their Hearts and daily mention them in their Prayers Littora Littoribus contraria fluctibus undas Imprecor arma armis pugnent ipsique Nepotes Which he thus renders Let our forein Coasts joyn Battel in the Main E're this foul Blasphemy Great Britain ever stain Where never let it come but floating in a Flood Of our our Nephews and their Childrens blood I shall only subjoyn my hearty Desires and Prayers that we may all fear God and be zealous for his true Religion Honour the King and firmly adhere to the Government and in our several places steadily oppose and resist those Villains that are given to change That by our Vnion we may defeat the crafty designs of our cruel and implacable Enemies who if they can continue those Divisions they have made amongst us by their wicked Arts will certainly at length destroy us who are bent upon our destruction though they themselves perish with us we cease to be a Nation and our Language be forgotten in a foreign Captivity Sir Now I have given you my Answer to your Reasons to disswade me from publishing the Argument for the Bishops by representing how few of the Clergy can with reason be thought guilty of Opinions so mischievous to the Church and State which you charge to have generally corrupted them and how easily and with little consideration they will be laid aside by them I will make no other Apologie for the publishing this than that I have communicated these thoughts to no Man alive either of the Church of England or any other denomination or consulted any mans advice about it That I can serve to design of no party of men herein nor any particular design of my own I wish they can be serviceable in the least degree to publick good I have had them by me a great while and have considered them under the several varieties of temper that our bodies are disposed to which induce different thoughts and various apprehensions in most things under the several passions that the fluctuation of publick affairs have occasioned under the Ebbs and Flows of Hopes and Fears in reference to the state of the Kingdom for some length of time And finding them to have the same appearance and to give me the same satisfaction in all their several postures and the views that I could take of them I assure my self I was sincere when I thought and that they result meerly from my Judgment such as it is uncorrupted That I am not perverted or biassed by any secret passion or desire of any sort which many times lurk and steal upon us deceive us unawares and undiscernedly abuse us Sir the sum of my Apologie is this that I know my self sincere of honest Intentions moved by nothing but a hearty love and affection to our King Religion and Country And for what any man shall think of me I am not Solicitous Yours T. H. The Great and Weighty CONSIDERATIONS Relating to the Duke of York OR Successor of the Crown Offered to the KING and both Houses of Parliament CONSIDERED WITH An ANSWER to a LETTER from a Gentleman of Quality in the Country to his Friend relating to the Point of Succession to the Crown Whereunto is added A short HISTORICAL COLLECTION touching the same LONDON Printed for the Author and are to be Sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster 1682. TO THE READER I Have in the Postscript offered Reasons of the Lawfulness of an Act of Exclusion which to all true Protestants must needs be desirable if it can be lawfully obtained Yet for the farther satisfaction of unthinking people and Men of weak Minds who are never certain especially in great Matters where Men of Note are divided in their Opinions but for that very Reason where they have no direct Reason to guide them in forming their Judgment remain scrupulous if not doubtful and for that they doubt they must therefore conclude the Matter as to themselves at least unlawful I have Reprinted these Discourses that were Printed near three years since in Answer to two Books written by two Eminent Persons the first supposed to be writ by a great Secretary the other by a notable Lawyer thereto employed under promises and expectations of great Preferments This mans Book especially is highly applauded by the Ducal Party his very words made the stile of the
proceeding upon evident notoriety to exclude one that designs the subverting of it and the destruction of those that are to be governed and protected and hath incurr'd a severer Doom I well hope there are very few in this Nation so ill instructed that doth not think it in the Power of the People to depose a Prince who really undertakes to alienate his Kingdom or to give it up into the hands of another Soveraign Power Or that really acts the Destruction or the Universal Calamity of his People The Learned and Judicious Mr. Falkner than whom there is no person of this Age with the Church of England in greater esteem Who truly merits the high esteem of all men for his excellent Candour and Learning In his Book called Christian Loyalty cannot deny the right to be so upon those cases really happening but is not willing to suppose such Cases can ever happen in Fact He tells us If any such strange Case as is proposed should really happen in the World it would have its great difficulties Grotius he tells us thinks that in this utmost extremity the use of such defence as a last refuge ultimo necessitatis proesidio is not to be condemned provided the care of the common Good be preserved And if this be true saith he it must be upon this Ground that such attempts of ruining do ipso facto include a disclaiming the Governing these persons as Subjects and conseqently of being their Prince and King and then notwithstanding his Proposition saith he would remain True viz. That it is not lawful upon any pretence whatsoever to take Arms against the King All that Mr. Falkner offers in this matter out of his commendable Care and Zeal to Peace and Government is to argue the Cases in Fact impossible and that such suppositions may be the undue imputations of Factious persons against their Soveraign He thinks that Princes may have a Consideration of the Account they must give in the other World of their Government here That they have a regard to their Honour and Esteem and a Respect to their Safety To the quiet and serenity of their own minds and will avoid the Diroe Vltrices and the Tortures of mind that attend Cruelty and the Actors of great mischief and by such Considerations as these be contain'd in their Duty But do these Arguments of his that should reasonably and ordinarily do secure us against the Oppressions of Potentates give us in this juncture any Security are these Considerations Disswasives or Incitements to a Popish Prince to act our Fears and give reality to the Suppositions To any under the Principles and Counsels that guide such a Prince already entred upon the Design and his party obnoxious these Considerations would urge him to proceed and make our Calamity certain These Arguments of his applyed to such a state of things is like a Protestatio contra factum and like the Sophistical Arguments of the Stoicks who would undertake to prove a thing acknowledged and existent and present to be impossible How wild then and transported must this Patriot seem who will undertake to argue the Bill guilty of the highest Iniquity and Injustice Arraign the greatest and Best part of the Nation adjure them to answer it at his Tribunal challenge us for so his Expostulations and Enquiries of us doth import with intentions to over-reach Providence and that we despair of the justness of our Cause or the goodness of God And he tells us That God doth not want our Wickedness to fulfil his Holy Will We answer How far the Providence of God will assist us in this undertaking we know not it is not new in the world for the most Righteous Causes to be unprosperous we are only to do our Duty and leave the Issue and Event thereof to his All-Wise Providence But we know and are most assured of the Justness of the undertaking and we have a good hope in the goodness of God that he will succeed it for that herein we are doing nothing that is evil but fulfilling his Holy and Good Will I mean not that we are certain to obtain what we desire and pursue But it is the will of God concerning us who hath left us in the hands of our own Counsel and hath not told us That he will save us by a Miracle that we should be Loyal to our Soveraign zealously love that excellent Religion and that excellent Government that his Gracious Providence hath established amongst us by Law And also that we desire and endeavour by Law to disable in the understanding of the representative of the Nation a profest Enemy both to our Religion and Government from getting into the Throne that he be not by that advantage of Power enabled to effect his purpose But we are resolved we that will not call that Design Evil tho' it do not succeed nor think that we are not doing the Holy Will of God tho' we should be unprosperous therein and without success If there was an Oracle to Consult we would not know what the Success should be lest our Virtue should lose its Glory No brave man but would despise all Auguries when he is to contend for his Country and things more precious to him than his Life Sortilegis egeant dubij This false Patriot takes Sanctuary in his Revolt from publick Interest and he thinks he is swimming to Shore with his Plank before a Wreck and will fly the Danger before it approaches but we will do our Duty weather the Storm secure of the event for the goodness of the Cause makes us hopeful and we will Triumph in our Integrity tho' disappointed Of any other Will of God save what is his Will for us to do as Citizens Souldiers or Martyrs we are not so sollicitous to know The Noble Roman when advised by his Friend Labienus to Consult the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon as to the event of the War in which he was then engaged Thus answered him Quid Quaeri Labiene Jubes an liber in armis Occubuisse velim potius quam Regna videre An noceat vis ulla bono fortunaque perdat Opposita virtute minus Laudandaque velle Sit satis Et nunquam successu crescit Honestum Scimus haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon I do but right to my Country-men to bear my publick Testimony that their generous and godly Resolutions are agreeable to this Noble Roman But that done I will calmly tell him That we are in a Legal method allowed by the Government contending for its preservation by the Bill of Exclusion and that most certainly he can have no right against a Law for such it will be when that Bill hath the Royal Assent to any thing that he shall forfeit thereby And whether such a Law is not most righteous let God Angels and Men Judge And here it will not be amiss to admonish this Patriot That no man hath a Right to any thing from God and Nature to use his
become Zealots He is a Prince that can deliberate and consider and will conclude that it is better for him to betake himself to a Monastery now before he hath filled the Land with Blood and Slaughter and all the mischiefs that the hellish Plot designs upon us than to take Sanctuary in one hereafter loaded with the melancholy considerations of a lost design and intolerable guilt if he himself should chance to survive and not perish ingloriously in the enterprize never to be gathered to his Fathers and shut out of the Sepulchres of Kings He is a great lover of his Brother as he ought in gratitude to be who lets him live and in his good opinion too after he had departed from his Allegiance and become a Member of another Hostile Polity and Regimen and after in consequence thereof the King's Life is brought in conspicuous danger Besides that it was natural and necessary that attempts upon the Life of the King should ensue upon his publick declaration of himself to be a Papist And we cannot without thinking too meanly of him think him without a foresight thereof there remains therefore no way for him to avoid the guilt of his Brother's Murder we tremble at the probability of it than by renouncing the Crown The King cannot in probability die before him except he falls to the Interest of that Religion which his Highness doth profess So that the Duke will relinquish nothing by the consenting to the Bill but the hopes to succeed upon his Brother's Murder but he would not the one so virtuous we will think him to obtain the other Admit him to be King he must be a King without Subjects for he must be a Slave to one part of the people to destroy the other these may not be the other will not be his Subjects To be an open Enemy is more Princely than to submit to the sordid methods of Falshood and Treachery than to betray us and deceive us in the confidence we justly should have in him if he should succeed to the Crown by a legal appointment He hath already departed from the Government which is Treason in a common person but we will give it in him an honester name and call him onely an Enemy to our State and Religion and his departure to be an overt declaration of Hostility let him therefore be consistent with himself purchase the Government by Conquest by the assistance of the Arms of France his Popish Adherents and home-bred Traitors But let him not assume the Crown by Title and Succession under obligations to govern by Law and to preserve us in our Religion which is our Legal Right and more precious to us than any thing else the Law entitles us unto Let him not add falshood to his mistaken and cruel zeal and do all the mischiefs the Plot designs while he pretends to Govern Let him openly assault us Miscreants subdue us Infidels that already stand Cursed and Excommunicated whom he hath Warrant enough from his Religion to destroy with an utter destruction He is an excellent Son of King Charles the First of blessed Memory who died a Martyr for the Government of Church and State and lost his Life as well as his Government when he could not preserve it any longer by his Sword And do you think that James his Son who carries the Royal Name of his Grandfather though the first of England yet the Sixth of that Name in Scotland will suffer the Government to be altered and to be a King and no King It is more just for him to chuse an Exclusion from the Succession than to suffer the Government to be changed we must therefore suppose him to be willing rather to consent to the Bill and renounce the Succession conformably to the recent example of his never-to-be-forgotten Father than to consent to or be bound by any Act of Parliament that shall alter the Government They are not his Friends nor agreeable to him that would spoil the Government more valuable in his esteem as well as his Father's than a personal Reign That would make him a King in mockery That conspire against the Government it self which he will not he ought not to sustain and endure as long as there is any Iron and Steel in the hands or Blood in the Veins of Loyal Roman Catholicks He is an equal Prince and will not take it so much to Heart that he sees the People of his Nativity not stupid Sots but that they can be sensible of the dangers that he urgeth them with and provide apt remedies against the evils which threaten us But if these Reasons will not obtain his express Consent to that Law for his Exclusion they will be allowed Inducements sufficient enough to pass it and conclude his Assent for the nature of a Law is to be first reasonable and to make those willing that should be consenting to it as reasonable and fit but are not and to render them obedient and submitted For this is one of the greatest benefits of Government that they that cannot or will not chuse what is best for themselves the Laws will chuse for them with regard to the Publick Good For the better clearing the matter of the Constitutions of this Realm in relation to the Succession I thought it necessary to add the substance of an Act of Parliament yet in force made 13 Elizabethae 13 Elizebthae Cap. 1. An Act whereby certain Offences are made Treason FOrasmuch as it is of some doubted whether the Laws and Statutes of this Realm remaining at this present in force are vallable and sufficient enough for the surety and preservation of the Queens most Royal Person in whom consisteth all the happiness and comfort of the whole State and Subjects of the Realm Which thing all Faithful Loving and Dutiful Subjects ought and will with all careful study and zeal cnosider foresee and provide for By the neglecting and passing over whereof with winking Eyes thâ—…e might happen to grow the subversion and ruine of the quiet and most Happy State and present Government of this Realm which God defend Therefore c. to Declare c. during her Maiesties life that the Right of the Crown was in any other Person should be Treason And such Person that should during her Maiesties Life Vsurp the Crown or the Royal Stile Title or Dignity of the Crown or Realm of England c. they and every of them so offending shall be utterly disabled during their natural Lives onely to have or enjoy the Crown or Realm of England or the Style Title or Dignity thereof at any time in Succession Inheritance or otherwise after the Decease of our said Sovereign Lady the Queen as if such Person were dead any Law Custom Pretence or matter whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding After which these words follow And be it further Enacted That if any Person shall in any wise hold and affirm or maintain That the Common Laws of this Realm not altered