in the Decree runs in these Words Possession and Strength give a Right to Govern and Success in a Cause or Enterprize proclaims it to be lawful and just to justify it is to comply with the Will of God because it is to follow the Conduct of his Providence And then in the Margent over against it they cite Hobbs Owen Baxter and Jenkins and in the next Impression I hope they will put your Name in that glorious Company to shew the Sense of Mankind I ground my Confidence in this Appeal upon Discourses which I and others have had with several worthy Members of the Convocation who have been so free as to tell us that they could not be of your Opinion nay some of them have told me frankly that they abhorred your Principle and could never have taken the Oath upon it I believe you would be angry with them should I tell you their Names but I do not know why they may not contradict you as well as you have contradicted the Bishop of St. Asaph for contrary to his Sermon entituled God's ways of disposing Kingdoms which he preached before the Queen You in your Fast-Sermon preached not long after before her in June the last year and printed as his was by her Majesties Special Command tell us That God doth not always determine what is right and wrong by the Events of War for he is the Sovereign Judge of the World P. 25. and may often punish a wicked Nation by unjust Oppressors as he did the Israelites The good Lord be merciful to the poor Jacobites who are like never to be converted at this rate when one of you so apparently contradicts another and each part of the Contradiction hath Royal Authority on its side I do not say that you designedly contradicted the Bishop and I had almost said your self too for that Proposition seems to look very foul upon your Doctrine of Providence and almost needs an Explication and in good Truth Doctor the Sense of Mankind and the natural Notions are on the other side of the Controversy and if you do not carefully prevent them they will obtrude upon you and carry you to contradict your self as your Father Hobs did in his History of the Civil Wars who before he was aware of it run into the Arbitrary distinction betwixt Supream Strength and Right to govern For to the Question Who had the Supream Power when there was no Parliament P. 252. If by Power saith he you mean the Right to Govern no Body had it but if you mean the Supream Strength that was clearly in Cromwel who was obeyed as General of the Forces in England Scotland and Ireland Here Doctor I stopt a little to review the Authorities I have brought against you and I find that as a Man who has many Witnesses at a Tryal may forget to call some so I have forgot two Testimonies against you which I desire may be now heard speak The first is the Testimony of the Judges and Peers in Queen Mary's time and the second is that of the First Parliament of William and Mary c. p. 32 33. The former at the Tryal of the Duke of Northumberland made Answer to the Duke Querying by way of Plea Whether a Man acting by the Authority of the Great Seal and Order of the Privy Council could become thereby Guilty of Treason That the Great Seal of One that was not Lawful Queen could give no Authority nor Indemnity to those that acted on such a Warrant The latter in several of their Acts as in that for a Poll towards reducing Ireland 1 Gul. Mar 1 May 1689. and that for the Relief of their Majesties Protestant Subjects in Ireland 1 Gul. Mar. Jan. 27. 1689. declared the Irish then under King James ' Possession and actual Government to owe their Obedience to King William and for breach thereof to be Rebels though King James had been solemnly recognized by the Estates of the Realm But now Doctor after all these Testimonies against you perhaps you will reply that these are only Testimonies as to the Sense but not as to the Practise of Men whereas you have Asserted the Reasonings of some among our selves to be not only against the General Sense but the General Practice of Mankind in all Revolutions and that this is apparently on your side But if you or any for you object this against me I pray you to consider that the Practises of Men are to be tryed by Principles and not Principles by the General Practises of men for Mankind Doctor is a very corrupt Creature apt to act against the most acknowledged Principles of Truth and Falshood Good and Evil which God has engraven on all men's hearts as the Common Law or Common Sense or Common Notions of all mankind And as they will act against these Common Notions or the Law of Nature so will they act against the Law of Grace or the Notions of revealed Religion more especially they will act against both in times of Persecution when Ease Safety Honour and Preferment attend those who take part with Error against Truth and Wrong against Right and Danger Trouble Disgrace and poverty those who side with Truth against Errour and Right against Wrong In such hard Cases Doctor few will choose the Suffering side but the generality of men will act not only against the general Sense of mankind but against the inward Sence and Checks of their own Consciences as in the Idolatrous Reign of Ahab when Idolatry was the general practise of the Jews in the Arrian Reign of Valens when the Arrian Doctrine denying Jesus to be true God was the general profession and Arrian Worship the general practise of Christians Sir Simon Dew's Journal p. 23. in the Popish Reign of Queen Mary when all the Clergy of the Church of England but one hundred seventy seven turn'd Papists after Popery was throughly settled by Parliament and recognized by the Estates of the Realm and so became the Providential Religion of the Church so in the late French Persecution the generality of Protestants preferring Ease and Safety before a good Conscience turn'd Converts to Popery against their own Faith and Principles and as for those few which did not the Bp. of Meaux might have told them That they had nothing to support them but some uncertain Reasonings which contradict the general Practice of Mankind in all Revolutions of Religion You see Doctor what a poor Argument the general Practice of mankind is in Revolutions where the great majority will go with the Stream of Power and Preferment And therefore we are bid not to follow a multitude to doe Evil but to stick to Principles against Men's Practices and the Precepts of natural and revealed Religion against Men's Examples be they never so many and great For in truth Doctor few Men will doe their duty in any kind and therefore there are but few that will be saved especially in such an Age of latitude
desire for his Return as by drinking to his Health and happy Restauration and at other times by sending up devout Ejaculations for it and saying Amen if others did so And Sir your own Memory and your Conscience can inform you that these are Truths and no Inventions and how they agree with your Preface to your Case of Allegiance and the Conclusion of your Vindication of it let the Readers and especially the Lawyers judge In that Preface you tell us that you had stuck in your former Opinion to this day had you not been relieved by Bp. Overall's Convocation-Book But how did that relieve you Or when did the pretended Doctrine in it begin to operate on your Understanding and remove your former difficulty I am sure that it was sent you Sheet by Sheet from the Press and had no Operation upon you at the first reading but happening to lie in the Bookseller's Shop some time before it was Published for want of the Preface the News of it brought abundance of Clergy-Men and others to read it there and some that had taken the Oaths thinking these Passages made for them they discovered them and formed Arguments from them to justfy their own Complyance but you dispised them for wresting the Words of the Convocation and used to observe upon that occasion how Men would be glad of any pretences and catch at any Twiggs to bear up themselves against their own Consciences This was in December before you took the Oaths and no Body that I ever met with perceived you to be of any other Opinion 'till after the Victory of the Boyne For in that interim you behaved your self among your Brethren as you had done formerly particularly you shewed Complacency enough at the Victory which the French had over us by Sea in hopes it would hasten another Revolution and accordingly taking Horse at a Gentleman's Door who then thought you deserved a better you told him that you now hoped by Michaelmas to have a better Horse This was but a little while before the News of the Boyne Victory came to Town and then Doctor it was that Bp. Overall's Book gave you greater Freedom and Liberty of Thinking then you first discovered your New Notions and Inclinations to your Brethren then you thought it high time to emancipate your self from your stupid Church of England Loyalty and the slavish Principles of it the Rights of irresistible Authority and the Duties of Passive Obedience All vanished then upon New Light for Egeria appear'd to you upon the Banks of the Boyne and inspired you with New and Freer Notions and shewed you in that glorious Scene how your former Reasonings contradicted the General Sense of Mankind and had no foundation in Reason or Nature and revealed unto you a Divine and safer Principle upon which you might Swear Allegiance without the Imputation of Apostacy or renouncing the Doctrine of the Church of England to WILHELMVS NASS ANG SCOT HIBER ADEODATVS AVGVSTVS and also swear it back again to King James if ever he should recover the Throne in a recuperative War But to make out your Hypothesis of a Thorough Settlement the better you were willing also to have Limerick taken before you took the Oath and therefore you wrote to a Friend then at Dublin to send you word assoon as that Town was taken because as he knew it concerned you much to know it But Doctor as you say of the Nature of things that Town was pretty stubborn and you were in haste and could not stay for the Surrender of it but the new Settlement was sufficient for your purpose without it or perhaps the R.R. Welch Prophet assured you it would be taken and that was enough to a willing and well disposed Mind And now Doctor upon an impartial Review of your former Principles and Practice will you seriously tell me did you not think your self as wise and considering a Man before you took the Oaths as since And could you well have born it if any Man had then dogmatically told you that your Reasonings were uncertain and that your Opinion was contrary to the General Sense of Mankind or that it was rejected by the most sober and considering Men Alas What shall we inferiour Mortals and little Writers do thus to have Sherlock against Sherlock Which of the two shall we believe Sherlock saying or Sherlock unsaying what he said and for what he suffered Sherlock confessing or Sherlock retracting his Confession Sherlock deprived or Sherlock restored and higher preferred Sherlock baffling others or Sherlock by others miserably baffled Sherlock with the Generality of Writers or Sherlock against the Generality of them Sherlock with the learned and venerable Writers of Authority or Sherlock with a few little fanatical Writers of no Authority Sherlock saying and proving or Sherlock barely saying and appealing but not proving what he saith But as the learned Author of the Reply to your Vindication * aa p. 106 111. See also p. 11. hath observed methinks you should have but little Stomach to appeal to the general Sense of Mankind to which your fundamental Doctrine and the Arguments that support it are contrary except John Goodwin and his Fellows be the Sense of Mankind And in another †a. Postscript place he observes that when he had urged you in his first Book to shew any one approved Author of your side the Controversy you only produced two Calvin and Grotius against the first of which he tells you there is just Exception and that the other is directly against you And it is now a year since his Answer came out and any Man of tolerable Modesty would have produced more and better Authors on his side before he had asserted from the Pulpit and the Press that his Adversary's Reasonings were rejected by the most sober and considering Men and contradicted the general Sense of Mankind For God's sake Doctor what privilege have you above other Men thus to impose upon the World and treat your Adversaries at this rate Have your new Principles set you free from the slavish Doctrine of Modesty as well as that of Loyalty Or have you acquired the Authority of an Oracle that Mankind is bound to receive Maxims from you and to believe without examining what you say Perhaps you may be prolocutor the next sitting of the Convocation or if you have not the Chair you will have the next Seat to it and notwithstanding this Advantage and so many London Livings in your Disposal I desire and challenge you to propose your Doctrine and the Reasonings that support it to the two Houses to try whether they will approve or condemn it Their Authority you will needs allow to be great and venerable and I dare appeal to them as Judges of the Controversy not doubting but that they will be of the same Mind with the Convocation at Oxford where the Doctors and Masters in July 1683 damned your Doctrine in the Censure of the following Proposition which
A VINDICATION OF Some among Our Selves AGAINST THE False Principles OF Dr. SHERLOCK In a Letter to the Doctor occasioned by the Sermon which he preached at the Temple-Church on the 29th of May 1692. In which Letter are also contained Reflexions on some other of the Doctor 's Sermons published since he took the Oath LONDON Printed in the Year MDCXCII To the Worshipful the Masters of the Bench of the Inner-Temple Gentlemen IT is the general Opinion of the World That you desired your Master to publish the Sermon which he preached before you on the 29th of May that the Doctrine he delivered in it might come to publick Trial and excite some among our selves to give it a publick Refutation Having little to do this long Vacation I thought it would help away the time to write my own Reflexions upon it in form of an Answer and such as it is I humbly present it to you desiring no other Favour from you than that you would please to read it over if it scape the Inquisitors of the Press and happen to get abroad Your Study and Profession is the Law and it is the Defence of Law and of Justice which is founded on Law that I have undertaken against the Doctor of whom in the following Discourse I have here and there given some Account as well as of his Principles that the World may judge of both Ld. Chancellor Ellesmere in his Speech touching the Posthati p. 33. A great and eminent Lawyer divides the Law of England into Three Parts the First of which respects the Church and it is called Lex Ecclesiae the Second respects the Crown and is called Lex Coronae the Third respects the Subjects in Common and it is called Lex Terrae And if Providential Possession according to your Master's Doctrine can supersede the second part of the Law and contrary to it give an Usurper a Divine Right to the Crown and all the Possessions Authority and Prerogatives that belong unto it then I do not see but it must in like manner supersede the other two parts also and by consequence give a Divine Right to the Church of England if he can recover Possession of it and the King himself a Divine Right to the Estates and other Rights of the People if he can get Possession of them I believe it will not please the Reverend Doctor to see his Doctrine improved into these Consequences not only because they are displeasing to others but ungrateful to himself who hath a very tender regard to his own Rights both as a Church-man and a Subject though he make so light of those of the Crown But Gentlemen I am not here to dispute against him but by the Dedication of the following Treatise to testifie to the World the great Zeal I have for Law and Justice and the great Esteem I have for you as Professors of the one and Patrons of the other and that I am upon both Accounts Gentlemen Your most obedient Servant To the READER THE Reader is desired to take Notice that in the Margin of the following Discourse a. Signifies An Answer to a late Pamphlet entitled Obedience and Submission to the present Government demonstrated from Bishop Overall's Convocation-Book with a Postscript aa An Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Vindication of the Case of Allegiance due to Sovereign princes aaa An Answer to a Letter to Dr. Sherlock written in Vindication of that part of Josephus's History which gives the Account of Jaddus's Submission to Alexander against the Answer to the Piece entituled Obedience and Submission to the Present Government b. The Title of an Usurper after a thorough Settlement examined in Answer to Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance due to Sovereign Powers c. The Duty of Allegiance settled upon its true Grounds according to Scripture Reason and the Opinion of the Church in Answer to a late Book of Dr. William Sherlock entituled The Case of Allegiance due to Sovereign Powers c. d. Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance considered with some Remarks upon his Vindication e. An Examination of the Arguments drawn from Scripture and Reason in Dr. Sherlock's Case of Allegiance and his Vindication of it f. s Dr. Sherlock's Fast Sermon before the Queen f. Precept and Providence c. g. Case of Allegiance to a King in Possession h. Great Britain's Just Complaints c. â„ž In Sect. 13. signifies Reverse â„ž â„ž In the same Sect. signifies Reverses xxx Dr. Sherlock's Sermon preached on the 30th of January before the House of Commons xxix His Sermon preached in the Temple Church on the 29th of May. ADVERTISEMENT THE Reader may be pleased to observe that this Book written against Dr. Sherlock's Sermon preached at the Temple Church on the 29th of May last is also a full Answer to the greatest part of Dr. Tillotson's scandalous Sermon lately preached at Whitehall on the 27th of October and since published by him under the Character of John Lord Archbishop of Canterbury THE CONTENTS 1. THE Masters of the Bench of the Middle Temple did not concurr with the Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple in desiring Dr. Sherlock to print his Sermon A Censure of some of his late Sermons 2. The Disagreement betwixt Dr. Sherlock in his Case of Allegiance and in his Sermon preached on the 30th of January before the House of Commons 3. Dr. Sherlock betraid the Doctrine of Nonresistance in his Sermon before the House 4. Dr. Sherlock's new way of preaching against Rebellion prejudicial to all Governments especially in loose and discontented Times 5. Dr. Sherlock's undecent Flatteries 6. The distinction betwixt God's Permission and Appointment the best Cure of Dr. Sherlock's Amazement at Providence 7. The Prince of Orange at his landing no Prince according to Dr. Sherlock's Principles He is offended at the Bp. of London for the Speech which he made to the Prince at St. James's He wrote an Answer to Dr. Burnet's Enquiry into the present State of Affairs Himself confuted out of that Answer 8. Providential Right as tottering a Foundation of the Monarchy as that of the Power of the People Dr. Sherlock bewailed the Silence and Passiveness of the Clergy at the time of the Revolution How much he is altered as to his Opinion of Persecution He put the Bishop of Chichester upon making his death-bed Declaration Several of his Sayings His Profession or Protestation of Loyalty to her Majesty by the last Judgment not reconcilable with his present Principles 9. Justice as well as Charity and Fervency necessary to make Prayers acceptable to God Dr. Patrick's Jewish Hypocrisie commended 10 11 12. The Reasonings of Dr. Sherlock's Adversaries not contradictory to the general Sense of Mankind proved by the Authority of most learned wise and sober Men especially of our own Nation containing a particular account of Dr. Sherlock's former Opinion and Practice and some account of his Conversion The Practice of Men to be tried by Principles the great Majority commonly in the wrong in
King and by supposing in the next Paragraph That it was lawfull in a limitted Monarchy But is this the way of arguing against Resistance which not long ago was such a damnable sin especially on the 30th of January I protest to you Dr. should I hear you speak at this tender rate from the Pulpit against Adultery I should think you had a design upon some Ladies in the Congregation and that you intended they should understand by you that you thought it no sin Formerly on the 30th of January Resistance was a most damnable sin and the Doctrine of it Popish Diabolical Doctrine and the sin of the day was the Murder of a King but now it seems Dr. you will not dispute the lawfulness of resisting the King it may be lawfull for any thing you know to the contrary even on the 30th of January the sin of which day now it seems P. 19. lies in the Murder of a Good King who kept the Laws and was a Zealous Patron of the Church of England of a King of such Virtues as are rarely found in meaner Persons nay which would have adorned an Hermet's Cell But had he been a King that had broken the Laws and stretch'd his Prerogative to set up an Ecclesiastical Commission against the Church of England then the killing of him had been no Murder at least no such barbarous Murder But Dr. at this rate of Preaching on the 30th of January Kings and Queens had need take care of themselves for I do not see but they are upon their Behaviour Quam diu bene se gesserint and do not break the Laws but if they do so let them do it at their peril xxix p. 21. For every irregularity in their motions is soon felt and causes very fatal Convulsions in the State or as a much better Subject said by way of Apology for Charles I. There is no time past Judge Jenkins in his Works p. 28. present nor will there be time to come so long as Men manage the Laws but the Laws will be broken more or less So Dr. in your Temple-Sermon to exhort us to pray for Kings you tell us That it is very difficult to govern a Family xxix p. 24 25 26. and that Princes are liable to mistakes like other Men and that they are exposed to misinformations by Court-Flatterers and subject to greater Temptations than other Men But Dr. If it be lawfull to take up Arms against the King in a limitted Monarchy which you were contented to suppose before the House and others of your Brethren plainly assert then God help Kings of such Monarchies xxx p. 23. especially where the Springs and Fountains of Government are poysoned and where the Nation is already divided into Parties both in Church and State Such Kings be they by Providence only or Law and Providence together it matters not they had need look to their hits when their best pretended Friends are willing to suppose it is lawfull to take up Arms against them All your Apologies and Panegyricks upon their Majesties and Exhortations to pray for them can never make them amends for such a supposition and they must indeed stand in need of more and better Prayers than yours if they have no better a Title to the Crown than that of Possession which you have found out for them and that too no longer than they keep the Laws 4. These Dr. to use your own Language are very loose Notions of Government and Obedience and dangerous at such a time as this when so many Malecontents in both Kingdoms complain of the breach of Laws See h. If you will go to Scotland you shall hear two sort of discontented Men clamour loudly against the Government the Jacobite Episcoparians and the Presbyterians the latter are so impudent as to charge King William down right with the breach of the Original Contract and the former complain of torturing Strangers against Law and the Articles of Government of exercising illegal and unheard of Severities upon the complying Clergy worse than Dragooning of abolishing Episcopacy and thereby altering the Constitution of the Government and of the Murder and Massacre of a Laird and his Clan in cold blood after they had laid down their Arms and submitted to the Government And you cannot be ignorant of the Complaints which are made at home by restless and disaffected Spirits of pretended Illegal and Arbitrary Commitments of Men for High Treason and not to mention the Reflections which have been made in and out of Parliament upon Mr. Ashton's Trial you cannot but hear what a din this grumbling and disaffected Faction make of excessive Fines and Bail contrary as they clamour to our English Liberties and the Articles of Government And they bring one Example among others of a poor Boy about thirteen years old who was Arraign'd and Try'd at the Old-Baily and condemned to the Pillory and after he endured this Discipline and many other cruel hardships was Fined at the Court of the Old-Baily above threescore times more than he and his Parents are worth Sir These things considered you should have thundered with your old Zeal and demonstrations against Resistance as a damnable sin and taught Submission and Obedience to their Majesties upon the account of their Office and Character and not purely upon the account of their Virtues as you used to do in former Sermons And let me tell you Dr. that the most effectual way of serving their Majesties in the Pulpit and especially on the 30th of January is to Preach up the unconditional Duty of Subjects to Kings as Kings xxx p. 23. whether they be good or bad This was the Strict Loyalty and Obedience which you tell us was so earnestly pressed on the Consciences of Men before the Revolution and made the People so passive in it But by your favour Dr. not so passive for not to put you in mind of the vast numbers in the West and the North Mrs. Sherlock her self sent in a Man and Horse to the assistance of the Prince of Orange and whether it was with your Connivance or Approbation God and your own Conscience can best tell But however that was this is certain that it is most for the Interest of Princes as well as most becoming Divines to set the King as a King and not as an Hero before the People and to convince their Consciences of the inviolable Duty which results from their relation to him as Subjects independant of his moral Qualities but the other way of Preaching which you have taken up serves only to beget a precarious and doubtful sense of Duty in the People who as your Sermon before the House shews can soon be made to have the worst Opinion of the best of Kings 5. The Sandersons and Hammonds of former times who guarded the Pulpit from all suspicion of Flattery would never have Preached so much in commendation of their Royal Masters as you have Preached in the praise
turn Arian as take it and another Gentleman That you had considered all that had been written or could be said for taking of it and that you were sure if you should take it you should never rest till you had gone to the same place where you took it and vomit it up again You told another you thought if you should take it you should be tempted to destroy your self after you took it and wondered that the Government should impose an Oath upon Men's Consciences which would make them hate it for imposing of it nay so confident were you then that you suffered for Righteousness that you took the Courage to tell your Murmuring Wife That she would lose her Reward for Suffering but you should have yours and to another you said with an Accent that impressed the words upon his Memory Our Sufferings if any thing can will save the Church and stand upon Record for it against the Papists in times to come and help to attone the displeasure of God Nay you then thought the Justice of your Cause so plain and the other so indefensible that laying one of your Hands upon the other you said unto a Person of Quality These Hands should restore King James but that my Wife hath tied them up from Writing And another of your common sayings was We have a very good Cause but lose it for want of a Press A Man famous for such sayings concerning the Cause when you were a Sufferer for it should have more Discretion if not more Respect for his old Brethren than to go about to rob them of the Glory of their Sufferings The Testimony of a good Conscience is all they have left to support them under their Calamity and it is very hard to make the World believe they have no pretence to that and that there are no Grievances P. 23. unless Monarchy and the Church of England are remaining Grievances This was bravely said by Ecebolius for Fifteen Hundred Pounds a Year but whether there are Grievances or no Grievances Suffering for Conscience or no such Sufferings these Men are persuaded that it is not only for the Church but for the Monarchy and Royal Family that they suffer and that neither that nor these can long subsist nor any lasting Peace or true Loyalty be established among us but upon the Moral and Political Principles for which they are persuaded they witness a good Confession before God and Men. As for your Principles they think them of all other the most vile and selfish and to be detested of all Sovereign States and Princes that have any better Title than Possession For your Principles allow Subjects though tied with never so many Oaths to turn to an Usurper as fast as he gains Power before he is settled in the Throne and after he is settled in it by pure force they oblige them to transfer their whole Allegiance to him and therefore you deceived her Majesty when in the Dedication of your Book of the Last Judgment you professed to her with all the sincerity which the Subject requires That you were her most faithful Subject and Servant For a faithful Subject will adhere to his Sovereign in times of Adversity as well as Prosperity and serve him when he is out as well as when he is in the Throne with Life Limb and Terrene Honour But your Allegiance by your Principles is a Flattering Shifting and Time-serving Allegiance which you would carry with your Prayers from her Majesty to her greatest Enemies and begin to Flatter and Serve them from the first moment you came under their Power Such Faithful and Obedient Subjects as you are like to Summer Flies you 'll make a great shew and buz for your King in fair Weather when the Sun shines but in Storms and Tempests you will hide your Heads in the long Night-time or Winter of Adversity you will say If he cannot defend himself let him go and if he go as many brave Kings have been forced to do why then Doctor you are not Men of stupid and slavish Loyalty to your old Master but like the Gnat in the Fable you 'll fly to Court in Swarms to caress your new dear Providential Master and transfer your Allegiance to him for fear of being Crush'd 9. From your Sermon before the House I beg leave good Doctor to make some Reflections upon your Temple-Church Sermon in which as in your Fast-Sermon before the Queen you speak the Truth but not the whole Truth on the Subject of Prayer especially of publick Prayer * P. 8 9. by the Bishop and Ministers and whole Congregation You tell us That †P. 9. Prayers are the most Noble Exercise of Charity and that they are most acceptable to God because they are offered up in the Spirit of Charity And in your Fast Sermon you tell us That ‡ P. 26 27. Faith and Prayer are more powerful than Arms and that fervent and importunate Prayers are the most sure way to Conquer our Enemies and to prevail with God for a Blessing upon our Arms. Now Doctor all this as Some observe was said a thousand times in the great Rebellion when the Preachers of the Times made God a Party to their Wickedness and ascribed all their Success to Prayer They cited Gideon and Barach and Samson and Hezekiah as you ‖ f s p. 26 27. do But then after the Restauration our Church Divines used to observe that Justice as well as Charity was necessary to make Prayers acceptable to God and that the Fanatick Preachers though they talked so much of Prayer and of Faith and Charity and Fervency in Prayer and produced the Worthies of Scripture for Examples to shew the power of Prayer yet they never said one word of Justice without which Faith in Prayer is but a false Enthusiastical Persuasion Fervency Enthusiastical Heat all pretences to Charity Hypocrisie And Prayers themselves tho' never so frequent or long but an Abomination to the Lord. Dr. Patrick is very large on this Subject in his Jewish Hypocrisie which I commend to all Men's reading for his sake In that Discourse he shews at large how the Spirit of Pharisaisme was long regnant in the Jewish Church before the time of the Pharisees and that it consisted in a Great but Hypocritical Zeal for Fasting and Praying and all Religious Duties and under that Cloak to commit Injustice Rapine and Oppression as our Lord observed of the Pharisees That they devoured Widows Houses and for a pretence made long Prayers To this purpose our Clergy used generally to preach on Publick Fasts and Thanksgivings and truly there is so much Hypocrisie regnant in the World that they did well in doing so but now of late as if Astraea were returned from Heaven and the Golden Age restored we have either nothing or very little said of Justice upon Publick Fasts and Thanksgivings of Justice the most Difficult as well as Divine Virtue without which there is no Charity nor
hath more offended against the King and the Realm than the King hath done against him or us Thus Sir spoke that Heroick Prelate in the Court of Parliament and his practice was answerable to what he spoke For he chose not the safer but the juster side as all good Men ought to do He knew while he spoke that Bonds and Persecutions would attend him nevertheless he spoke freely and after speaking was committed to Prison and after that was crushed with many other brave Men by the Usurper against whom they rose up Afterwards about the sixth year of his Reign Rich. Scroop A. B. of York with the L. Maubray Marshal of England H. Piercy E. of Northumberland L. Bardolf and * As I suppose the Earls of Salisbury Huntington Glocester the Lords Clarenden Roper with divers other Knights and Esquires and after that the Lord Thomas Piercy Earl of Worcester and Lord Henry Piercy Son and Heir to the Earl of Northumberland many others published an Excommunication and †In the first Volume of Fox's Acts and Monuments in the Reign of H. IV. Remonstrance consisting of several Articles against Henry which they fixed upon the doors of Churches and Monasteries to be read of all It begins thus IN THE NAME OF GOD Amen Before the Lord Jesus Christ Judge of the quick and the dead We not long since became bound by Oath upon the Sacred Evangelical Book unto our Sovereign Lord Richard late King of England that we as long as we lived should bear true Allegiance and Fidelity towards him and his Heirs succeeding him in the Kingdom by just Title Right and Line according to the Statutes and custom of this Realm have here taken unto us certain Articles subscribed in form following to be proponed heard and tried before the just Judge Christ Jesus and the whole World but if which God forbid by Force Fear or Violence of wicked Persons we shall be cast in Prison or by violent death be prevented so as in this World we shall not be able to prove the said Articles as we wish then we do appeal to the High Coelestial Judge that he may judge and discern the same in the day of his Supream Judgment First We depose say and except and intend to prove against Lord Henry Darby commonly called King of England himself pretending the same but without all Right and Title thereunto and against his Adherents Fautors Complices that they have ever been are and will be Traitors Invaders and destroyers of God's Church and of our Sovereign Lord Richard late King of England his Heirs his Kingdom and Commonwealth as shall hereafter manifestly appear In the second Article they declare him forsworn perjured and excommunicate for that he conspired against his Sovereign Lord King Richard In the fourth they recite by what wrong illegal and false means he exalted himself into the Throne of the Kingdom and then describing the miserable State of the Nation which followed after his Usurpation they again pronounce him Perjured and Excommunicate In the fifth Article they set forth in what a barbarous and inhumane manner Henry and his Accomplices imprisoned and murdered K. Richard and then cry out Wherefore O England arise stand up and avenge the Cause the Death and Injury of thy King and Prince if thou do not take this for certain that the Righteous God will destroy thee by strange Invasions and Forreign Power and avenge himself on thee for this so horrible an Act. In the seventh they depose against him for putting to death not only Lords Spiritual and other Religious Men but also divers of the Lords Temporal there Named for which they pronounce him Excommunicate In the ninth they say and depose that the Realm of England never flourished nor prospered after he Tyrannically took upon him the Government of it And in the last they depose and protest for themselves and K. Richard and his Heirs the Clergy Commonwealth of the whole Realm that they intended neither in Word nor Deed to offend any State of Men in the Realm but to prevent the approaching Destruction of it and beseeching all Men to favour them and their Designs whereof the first was to exalt to the Kingdom the true and lawfull Heir and him to Crown in Kingly Throne with the Diadem of England Upon publishing these Articles much people resorted to the Archbishop but he being circumvented by the Earl of Westmoreland who pretended to join with him dismissed his Forces at his persuasion upon which he was immediately made Prisoner and beheaded at York with the Earl Marshal and divers York shire Gentlemen and Citizens of York who had joined with him The Earl of Northumberland and Lord Bardolph escaped and held out two years longer before they were crushed by the Usurper but at last they were both slain Fighting in the Field against him You see Doctor in this Remonstrance how the Archbishop and Lords that joined with him contrary to the general sense of Mankind unking'd this Providential King for want of a Legal Title and Remonstrated against him as a Perjured Traytor and Vsurper and when he lay upon his Death-bed he himself also began to be of their Opinion contrary to the general sense of Mankind when his guilty Conscience forced him to tell his Son That he had no good Title to the Crown but he not inferior to his Father in Ambition snatched it from his Pillow and plainly told him That as he had got it by the Sword so by the Sword he would keep it And in truth Doctor your Title by Providence against Law is Sword Title and your Providential Kings Sword-Kings for in all Kingdoms the Sword is King where their lawfull Prince is not the Sword or Supream Force Rules all and that Supream Crushing Force which by God's permission gets and keeps possession makes your Providential Kings 12. I have hitherto shewed you what Opinion many Wise and Considering Men had of Henry IV. and his Reign for want of Legal Right and Title And I now proceed to shew the sense that a whole Parliament had of him and of his Son and Grand-Son's Succession the latter sitting in the Throne This appears from Roll. Parl. 39 Henry VI. as it is in Cotton's Abridgement or rather from the Record at large as it is to be seen as it was lately printed in an Answer by a skillful and faithful hand to The unreasonableness of the new Separation upon account of the Oaths This Roll gives an account how Richard Duke of York Father of Edward IV. brought to the Parliament Chamber in writing not a Petition but a Claim to the Crown of which Henry had been long fully and quietly possessed and his Title which was only Succession by Birth-right being fully made appear it was the Opinion of all the Lords that it could not be defeated That single Title by Proximity of Blood was thought sufficient to supersede all the patch'd Titles of Henry and all that could be said in
enquiring after it for though it was printed yet whether at Xantippe's Instance or any other Cause of Fear you suppressed all the Coppies but two which happened to get abroad and one of those fell into my Hands After this on the 8th of April following you went to a learned Gentleman to persuade him not to be present at the Coronation and though their Majesties had been recognized by the Estates and were then in full Providential Possession yet you told him you had rather take the Oath twenty times than bear a part in it But about the beginning of May after you wrote a Discourse for taking the Oaths entituled The Lawfulness of taking the New Oath of Allegiance to King William and Queen Mary stated upon the strictest Principles of Church of England Loyalty and after you had finished it you sent it as I understand by a Letter from the West to Dr. Bu by which I understand Dr. Burnet but that Discourse plainly supposing the Government to be an Vsurpation and that Non-resistence was reserved as a Duty to King James from whom it could not be suspended it was not thought fit to be published This Book was seen and perused by many particularly two or three Clergymen at Tunbridge in August following said they had read it But to doe you Justice Doctor before this you did all you could to suppress it because it would not hold but it was now too late to attempt the suppression of it for Copies had got abroad into several Hands and I have one of them at your Ladies Service who I suppose was not against writing of it Upon Conviction this Paper would not hold then you grew very warm against the Oath for in the latter end of June or beginning of July you affirmed that the taking of it was not onely a recognizing but making the P. of Orange King as yet then Providence had not made him so adding that though you could actually forbear assisting King James yet you could not swear never to assist him that being not consistent with an Acknowledgment of his Right and that the more you thought of the Oath the worse you liked it and would have nothing to doe with it Remember this good Doctor and then consider if it doth not become a Man that said and did such things then to rant and swagger against some among our selves now It was now about this time that you were in the highth of your Fevour against the Government and the Oaths which discovered it self by many Symptomes upon several occasions When you first heard the News of a Fast which happened to be at your House in the Temple How a Fast said you I 'll warrant you we shall have dainty Prayers Prayers said Dr. Sharp that I am more affraid of than the Oaths And what Must we have Sermons too I 'll give them a Sermon that they shall not thank me for and accordingly you did so Your Text I remember was The Lord is a Man of War the Lord of Hosts is his Name and then you preached contrary point blank to what you have since printed and the drift of your Discourse was so plainly levelled against the Government and the Intention of the day that you gave great Offence to their Majesties good Subjects who filled the Town with Complaints against you but you valued not that but was pleased with it delighting to give some among us an account of what you had preached and how you had met with them About this time also you wrote a Discourse against taking the Oaths which you shewed to a Learned and Reverend Divine on the 29th of July I suppose it was your Letter to Dr. Williams whose Answer to it you despised as Stuff that did not deserve a Reply though one who saw it saith you stole your Argument from Jaddus and other things out of it which you have put in your Case of Allegiance In August out comes the first part of the History of Passive Obedience which you caressed into the World and were so taken with it that you went to a very learned Man who since became your Antagonist to pray him to write a Sheet of Conclusions not against some but against other men upon the Doctrines and Principles collected in it and that he might not mistake your design you left it in writing with him and he still hath the Original in the following Words The Doctrine of Nonresistance and Passive Obedience is founded on an irresible Authority consider then what are the Rights of an irresistible Authority and what the Duties of Passive Obedience 1. The Rights of Sovereign and irresistible Authority are that he cannot forfeit his Crown that he cannot be judged or deposed by his Subjects and Abdication and Desertion are but other names for this and therefore when once King he is always so till Death or voluntary or legal Resignation 2. Nonresistence does not onely signifie not to fight against the King but 1. That upon no pretence we must renounce his Right 2. We must never set his Crown upon another's Head 3. We must not transfer our Allegiance to another In this Month also dyed the Bp. of Chichester of everlasting Memory to whom as a Person of Honor can testifie you went about four or five days before he dyed to move him to make his Declaration About the same time you sent a Paper to Oxford against taking the Oath I have forgot the Title of it but I remember a passage in it to this purpose That as Usurpers seize upon the Lands and Houses and Fortifications of the King for their own use and turn them to their own Service against Law so against Law they seize upon the Laws themselves and use them against their first Intention to their own Service and the destruction of the King and his faithfull Subjects for whose defence they were made About the beginning of September you wrote an Apology for the Nonswearers which you designed for your Masterpiece and in December following a malitious Pamphlet coming out against the Bishops entituled A Letter out of the Countrey c. you began an Answer to it in defence of them but staying out too long where you wrote it Mrs. Satan and Sherlock took you to task and succeeded so well as to make you confess where you had been and about what and then it was no great Conquest to make you send for your Papers by six a Clock next morning and offer them as an Holocaust to atone her displeasure In all this time that you were so warm and zealous against the Oath you helped to disperse the few small Pamphlets that were printed against taking of it and expressed much trouble that others that were larger could not get abroad particularly you were very zealous for Printing The Case of Allegiance to a King in Possession which you then thought an admirable Piece and upon all occasions you were wont to express your Affection and Duty to King James and your
as this wherein loose Principles make loose Practices so that you will find very few Men of strict or if you please Doctor of stupid and slavish Vertue In particular if you please to look about I believe you will find almost as few men of stupid and slavish Sobriety or stupid and slavish Chastity as of stupid and slavish Loyalty Nay if the general Complaints be true there are but very few of stupid and slavish Justice and Honesty For why should a Man of Honour as the Cardinal said be a Slave to his Word or to his Oath either especially of late Dr. Tillotson's Serm. of Hell-Torments since we can hardly tell how to reconcile the eternal Misery of Hell with the Justice and Goodness of God who notwithstanding all his Threatenings of it in Scripture is free to doe what he pleases But this Doctor doth not belong to you but to some of those Nine Men who you told * In a Letter to a Friend containing some Queries about the New Commission for making Alterations in the Liturgy Canons c. of the Church of England sent to the Press by Dr. Sherlock and published a little before the first Sitting of the Convocation us not long before you took the Oath had Latitude enough to conform to a Church de facto which had Power on its side and Tenderness and Moderation enough to part with any thing but their Church Preferments When you were at the Writing of that Letter †p 5. the A. Bp. and other Bishops and Clergymen under Suspension were as eminent for a prudent and well tempered Zeal as for their constant Loyalty but now their well tempered Zeal though not one degree altered from its Temper is factious and their constant Loyalty stupid and slavish Allegiance and what else you will hereafter be pleased to call it or them 13. Having now I hope vindicated the Opinions and Reasonings of some among our selves from Singularity and Novelty by shewing that they do not contradict the general Sense of Mankind but are the very Sense of the wisest and best part of it I come now to examine what you say for I cannot call what you say Arguments against them p. 15. who as you tell the World withdraw from our Communion because we pray for K. William and Q. Mary but they say and I fear are able to prove it too that it is you that have withdrawn from them and their Communion and that the Schism and the causes of it is in you and not in them But to let that pass you assert that St. Paul in your Text makes no difference of Kings but that they do but I tell you Sir that they make as little difference as St. Paul for they grant that he commands us to pray for all Kings but then they say that the Usurpers of Kingdoms as long as they remain so are not Kings nor within the Intention of your Text. But you tell us they say That St. Paul means only Lawful and Rightful Kings it is true they do say so but then they also say that there are no Kings but what are Lawful or have the Legal Right and that all others exercising the Kingly Power in any Kingdom against Law are onely called Kings as Idols are called Idols but are not true Kings You tell us again the Commandment is general to pray for Kings and they say so too but then they tell you that this doth not bind them to pray for Usurpers who call themselves Kings and are so called by those who set them up against Law but are not so But then you think you ask them a very confounding Question though they have answered it an hundred times before viz. Whether there is any such Distinction as this in Scripture that we must not pray for all Kings but onely for Legal Kings To this they answer that all Kings in the nature of the thing and in Scripture intendment are Legal Kings as all Husbands and Wives in the sense of the Scriptures are Husbands and Wives by lawful Wedlock though an Adulterer may sometimes usurp the Name of a Husband as did the pretended Husband of the Samaritan Woman whom our Saviour told her for that reason was not her Husband And as the Duty of Wives to their Husbands commanded by the Apostle is in no danger by asserting that they must not be subject to any but Rightful Husbands So neither to answer your trifling Question are Subjects in any danger of being delivered from the Duty in your Text of praying for Kings by teaching that we must pray for none but lawful Kings But then you tell us that this distinction of lawful Kings from Kings that are not lawful * p. 17. is Arbitrary and that it hath no †p. 20. solid Foundation in Reason and Nature but they have told you over and over that it is a Real and no Arbitrary distinction founded upon the common Notions of Right and Wrong Truth and Falshood and that it is a distinction not of a thing from it self which is Arbitrary but of a thing from what it is not and that it is as necessary for Subjects to make this distinction between Kings as for Children and Wives to distinguish betwixt lawful and unlawful Husbands and Fathers or Clergy-men to distinguish between Canonical and Uncanonical Bishops or to distinguish in Religion between the true God and Idols who are worshipped in the stile of Gods And therefore to come to your Latria and Dulia to which you foolishly compare this distinction p. 1◠they return it upon you and say that the Scriptures appropriate the Allegiance of Subjects of which praying is a part to lawful Kings but that you are more than a Papist in Politicks because you are for giving away not only Dulia or half Allegiance but Latria or the whole Allegiance Ibid. from True to Idol-Kings And then as for avoiding the Duty of the Fifth Commandment by the Vow Corban which you misapply to them that returns upon your self for they have shew'd you again and again in their Answers that that Commandment directs the Duty of it to true and lawful both natural and civil Parents and have made it appear that you are one of the Pharisees who have endeavoured to make that and other Commandments of none effect by giving the Name of Kings to pure Providential Usurpers though they are no more Kings by possessing the lawful Kings Throne than Idols are Gods by possessing the Temple of the true God Idols have all the Ensigns of Divinity as you say the other have of Majesty and by God's own Providence come to be invested with all the Religious Rights and Ceremonies of the true God and often happen to be worshipped and recognized for Gods by the People and Estates of Idolatrous Realms but for all that they are but abominable Idols that ought to be thrown down and broken in pieces and the more cursed and abominable by
Law gives to Sovereign Power he is King and King no sooner than he hath that Right I have now answered every thing in your Sermon relating to the Controversie concerning Kings and I here declare that I have onely defended the Principles and Reasonings of your Adversaries against you but if they be mistaken in Law and misapply them and this to the wrong Object let them answer themselves for their Mistake My design and business is only to rescue your Text and that in Rom. 13.1 and the Duties there commanded from the mere Providential to the Legal King but if those Men have so little Wit Law or Philosophy nay so little common Sense as of two Pretenders to the Crown at any time not to know which hath the legal Title their Mistake may prove fatal but I have nothing to doe with that I am sure Dr. you have done their Majesties much Disservice by awarding the legal Right from them and giving them instead of it an airy Title by Providence which Athaliah Absolom and Cromwel had and every prosperous Usurper can pretend to and I am confident had they been rightly informed of the nature of your Principle and of that loose and fickle and worthless Allegiance which Princes only get by it they would have had your Case of Allegiance censured as it deserves and instead of preferring you had punished you as the underminer of their Throne I am certain had you wrote and preached so in any of the former Protestant Raigns you would have been severely censured and punished by the Laws of Church and State and if as you tell us the Revolution hath made no Alteration in Government it is not yet too late to bring you to condign Punishment 15. I thought I should have made an end but finding some other Passages in your Sermon upon which the Reader may expect I should make some Reflections I cannot well pass them over First then I cannot but animadvert upon the great and undecent Liberty you take of speaking of the FRENCH KING in this and almost all your Sermons whereas in France that Antichristian Tyrant as you modestly call him will not suffer the greatest of his Clergy to bring so much as a railing Accusation against their Majesties or meddle with their Administration as you and the Bp. of St. Asaph and I know not how many more presume to do with his But who made you Judges over him He is God's Minister and God's annointed Servant and who art thou that judgest another Man's Servant To his own Master he standeth or falleth And what have you to doe to impeach him of Tyranny Persecution and Oppression Do you know the reasons of his Actions or can you tell what may be said to justifie or excuse the worst thing that he ever did You told Dr. Burrnet at Ely-house when he spoke reproachfully of King James that Crowned Heads ought not to be so treated but now Dr. you make no difficulty of treating the greatest of Crowned Heads at a much worse rate tho' he is God's ordinance on a double account both as a Legal and Providential King One would think to read in what a losty and insolent manner you speak of him that you were your self IMP. PON. MAX. or some great Prophet that had received Commission from Heaven to arraign Kings Certainly there is something very extraordinary in you something very divine or very diabolical that of late you have a Mouth given you speaking Blasphemies against Kings and against a King who has as many and great Vertues as any King in the World * f. s p. 10 11 12. Persecutor Oppressor Enslaver of Mens Bodies and Souls Tyrant and antichristian Tyrant This Dr. sounds like the Language of the Beast not of a Minister of the Church of England it runs in the Style of an Excommunication Bull and as you are as great as the Pope in your own Opinion so you have learnt to huff and hector Kings But what are you thus to take upon you You who but the other day were digging in Gravel-lane for Bread to what an height are you come from almost nothing and a Conventicle to defie Crowned Heads But we know from whence all this comes even from a most servile Spirit that cares not what it saith or doth so it humor the Times and please the People Of this no man hath been more guilty than you and I will give you and the World an instance of it Sometimes Liberty and Indulgence to Dissenters were in vogue and sometimes not and accordingly you watcht the Opportunities and wrote pro and con on it on both sides You were for it in your Preface to your Religious Assemblies and you were against it in your Answer to Whitby and your Reflexions upon the Plot but for it again in your Sermon before the Ld. Mayor a little before the Revolution and I doubt not but another Crisis would make you once more against it From this Time-serving and Self-seeking Principle it comes that the French K. is made the common place of Satyr in your and other such Clergy-mens Sermons He hath taken the part of K. James and that makes him so great a Tyrant but had he been against him and the Confederate Power for him then they had been the Tyrants and Oppressors and he that is now a Nero a Dioclesian had then been a most excellent Prince How many Declamations had Dr. Sherlock by this time made for him and against them if he had been our Allie and his victorious Legions employed in our Service Then we had heard again from the Pulpits the old Philippicks against Spain and the Inquisition the Pulpits would have rung then with Invectives against the Pope the Emperor and the Hungarian Persecutions and we should have been told again of Amboyna and all the Injuries and Insults of the Dutch But as the Case now stands nothing must be said against them the French K. is the only Antichrist and all the Tyrants in Europe a very Devil in humane shape Well Dr. you know many men have made Speeches in praise of the Plague and Famine and Tyrants and therefore for once let us defend a Paradox and try what may be said for Busiris or rather for the Hercules of France You tell us he invades the Liberties of Europe but I protest that is News to me for I never heard before that he made War with Europe Sweden Denmark Poland Switzerland Italy and Russia as I take it are all in Europe but I hear them not complain of him for usurping on their Liberties or pretend to have any Reprisals to make upon him Besides Dr. I am not able to understand what are the Liberties of Europe and desire to know where they are or in what Code or Charter one may find them If Europe have any Liberties it must be a Community but I never read of the Community of Europe tho' I have of that of Asia which was a Community of 13 Cities in
Estates of the Realm This Doctour I fear is the Spirit and these the Principles generally speaking of the Refugees and this Spirit and these Principles of which they give so many Signs obliged the King for his own Security to send their Ministers out of his Kingdom but he did not send them away empty he did not send them to the Galleys as you know who did What I have said Doctour is out of justice and not out of kindness to the French Monarch I am none of those that wish he may prevail and bear all before him like a Torrent but I do not like that he should be ignorantly and partially traduc'd by every soul mouth'd Pulpitier when were it not for his invincible Mistake in Religion he would be thought even by you one of the bravest Princes that ever wore a Crown Nor have I any ill Will at his Protestant Subjects I have been as great a Reliever of them in proportion to my Ability as any other Man in the Kingdom and should be glad to see a Vindication of them that I might have a better Opinion of them I grant the King hath persecuted them with very great Severity and made havock of their Church and am as sorry as you can be for it and for the Cause of it but then are there no persecutors among the Confederate Princes Look about you Doctor set the Acts and Edicts and Executions of other Princes against his and then you will find that other Protestants besides the French have been dragoon'd and lost their Estates their Lives their Liberties and their Countrey for Conscience sake In short the French Apologists tell us that the King persecuted them because they intended to persecute him This their own Consciences can tell them whether it be true or no and if it be true then their destruction is of themselves and they have brought down their Ruine upon their own Heads The Bishop of St. Asaph who foretold the Downfall of their King hath now foretold his Conversion and their Restitution It is some Months ago since he foretold that this would happen within a year God grant his Prediction may prove true it would make his Majesty a Constantine to his People But yet I fear that would not satisfie some Men nor reconcile their ulcerated Minds to him unless with the Popish Religion he quitted the Interests of King James This Doctor is another crowned Head against whom you love to croak All your malicious Speeches and Slanders of him and particularly those in your first and second Letter concerning the French Invasion are filed up in Heaven and shall be brought in Evidence against you at the great Day of Judgment when without publick and bitter Repentance you will appear at the left Hand with Cromwell Bradshaw Cook Milton and Thom. Good win and be sent with those Worthies of the Old Cause into your own place You cannot be content with sober and wise Men among your Brethren to say nothing of him or when you speak to speak of him as they do with Decency and Respect but you fall upon him as the Mob did at Feversham with a brutal Rage without any Regard to his Royal Name and Person or to her Majesty and the Princess whom you dishonour in reproaching of him For let me tell you Doctor the Disgrace of the Chief always terminates in the Clan and the Men of Honour will tell you they are bound to revenge it as soon as they have the Opportunity 16. In this Sermon you also upbraid him with his Misfortunes which no good Man can think of without the greatest degree of Compassion scornfully calling him the late unfortunate Prince It is true Doctor he is unfortunate but you should have remembred what Solon said of Croesus and that what happens to Kings may also happen to Divines You live now in great Prosperity and State but God may yet bring you down He can when he pleases take off the Wheels of your Chariot turn your Silver Candelesticks into Brass and your Wax Candles into Tallow and reduce you even beyond your first principals yet before you dye I wish this may not happen to you nor none of those who insult over the Calamities of that unfortunate Prince but if it do so remember you saw the Anguish of his Soul and had no Pity for him and then say therefore if this Distress come upon us One of the Nine Men when he heard him pitied had the Barbarity to say Why what matter is it He is but a Bastard St. Alban 's Bastard and it is great pity that her Majesty had not been told of it before he put on his Lawn Slieves We commonly say Misfortunes are no Crimes and before you upbraid him with them again remember his Father the Martyr of the Church of England was unfortunate before him and had this also added to the rest of his Misfortunes that he was reviled and had in derision by such Sons of the Earth as you But God supported him by his Grace and made him more than Conqueror and the same God which supported the Father hath also upheld the Son under his Misfortunes which let me tell you had never come upon him had you and your Brethren the Clergy done their Duty as some of them did And therefore methinks you should take no pleasure in ripping up his Misfortunes which are your Crimes He was unfortunate in you more than in his Lay Subjects You might have saved him as well as your Religion if you would have preached but half as much for him as you did for that but your general Silence in the needfull time betrayed him to all his Misfortunes and Now such as you among your Brethren are very sorry that they are not greater and mad against the suffering Remnant because they do not renounce him in his Misfortunes and murmur against God that hath preserved him and laid Help upon one that is mighty for him a mighty Prince who hath long maintain'd more Legions than the Roman Empire did at the highest Pitch of Greatness and who perhaps one day like Augustus and Trajan may inscribe upon his Medals coined upon such glorious Occasions REX PARTHIS REX ARMENIS DATVS for God seldom raises Princes to that Greatness but he hath something extraordinary for them to doe I must also remind you of another great Blessing which God who remembers Mercy in Judgment has bestowed upon him and thereby enabled him the better to bear the loss of his Kingdoms He hath given him of his most virtuous Queen a Royal * See the Observator published Monday Aug. 21. and Wednesday Aug. 23. 1682. Son and Daughter by whom I trust the Royal Family will be multiplied into many Branches and come to be restored to its antient Rights and Glory The Seed of the Royal Martyr is in them and I hope it is no Crime to pray that God would give them the sure Mercies of David and let them grow up like
Dutch and the Dutch as our Friends and Allies And by consequence it would be false Logick and a foul Reflexion upon some to say that they invited the Dutch to conquer us Well but your meaning is that you wonder that any English Protestants should invite the French to place King James in his Throne again For my part I know no such English Protestants as invite the French upon any score but Have you not left King James the legal Right to the Throne And do not you allow him to prosecute it and recover it if he can And doth not the Law from which as you grant he hath his Right to prosecute and recover permit him also to seek Aid from the French as well as from the Dutch or Spaniards And I dare say if these would bring him in it would be all one to him and to you too Ay but the French are Papists And was not the last Pope but one a Papist And was not S privately sent to him and did not he send a Nuncio privately hither And are not the Spaniards Inquisition-Papists Or did the French ever do so base a thing as to say they were French and no Christians or have they not as much natural Humanity as any other men But they are arbitrary Masters But what have we to doe with them as Masters And do not those that have to doe with them find them as good Masters as some find their Neighbours And come Doctor tell me plainly would you not accept of Help from the French if you stood in need of it Nay Would you not onely accept of it but be very glad of it too And therefore can you blame your old Master if he seeks for Help from France since you to recover much less than Three Kingdoms would doe the same thing If he had choice of Assistance you might have some colour to blame him for accepting of French Help and be angry with those who consider the French as his Allies But here Doctor lies the Secret of your Displeasure It is not the French as French or any other thing but as King James's Friends and Allies that you and other Men hate them You are affraid of him and would hate the Dutch as well as the French if they were his Friends And the reason why you hate him is not that he is popish or arbitrary but because if he recover his Throne you will lose your Chair This Doctor is the hidden but true Resource of all the Venom you disgorge upon him and the French You know you have sinned beyond 〈…〉 like the Trumpeter in the * In Sir Roger L'Estrange's Aesop's Fables Fable which with the Reflexion upon it I recommend to your 〈…〉 could you have been secured of Pardon and more Preferment upon his Restoration I believe you would never have written your two Letters against the French Invasion nor have done the part of Shimei and Milton against him as you have lately done It is observed for your Honour that neither you nor the other Pamphietiers preach'd or published one word against him before our late Victory over the French Fleet and I am confident if they had been victorious the World had never seen your Temple Sermon nor Letters nor the Pretences of the French Invasion examined by that or any other hand On the contrary we should have had Books and Sermons of another make and to another Tune from the same Quarter and Apologies for King James and the most arbitrary of his Proceedings upon those very Topicks from which p. 23 24 25 26. you shew in three particulars how needfull it is to pray for Kings I would to God Doctor you would seriously read them over again and apply them to your old Master and if you will doe so I heartily pray God that while you read and so apply them he would pour out upon you the Spirit of Prayer and Supplication that you may look upon him whom you have pierced and mourn for him and all the Evils you have done against him as one mourneth for his onely Son The last thing I observe is a Contradiction of what you say p. 27. by what you say in p. 29. In the former place you truly tell us That No Prince can take our Religion from us if we resolve to keep it but they may disturb the Quiet and peaceable Enjoyment of it which was the state of the Church under the Heathen and persecuting Emperours This Doctor looks like something spoken by the Author of Christian Prudence or one of those Men who distinguish between Religion and the Externals of Religion to shew the Fallacies and Dis-ingenuity of others that will not distinguish between our Religion and the Peace Profit and Honours which by Law attend the Profession and Administration of it But then you forget your self again and run into this modish Fallacy in the latter place where you tell us That we owe our Religion to K. William which cannot be true if King James could not take it from us as indeed he could not let him have done the worst you can imagine if we had had the Faith and Constancy of the Church under the persecuting Emperours Had we followed their blessed Example no Persecution could have hurt our Religion but like the Persecutions in primitive Times would have made it more august and venerable and established it for ever whereas it is now evil spoken of for your sakes and seems to be drawing on to a fatal End in Theism Atheism Schisms Heresies and Enthusiasm and an utter Contempt of the Clergy of which you have as much reason to be sensible as any other Man But what need I to observe this Contradiction in you who have contradicted your self so often that it will take up a great part of your Time and Thoughts to 〈…〉 view and censure your own Writings and finally 〈…〉 what you will stand to and what you 〈…〉 and what you will have put in the collection of your Works and what you will have left out of it I know this is no acceptable Work to a great and haughty Writer but Doctor it is a Work necessary to be done and comfort gour self with the Example of the great St. Augustin and set about it presently while it is called day lest the Night come upon you when you cannot work You are bound in Honour and Conscience to do it and the World expects it from you and will censure you when you are dead if you leave it undone Consider therefore Doctor which of your contradictory Pieces is fit to stand in the Collection of your Works to declare your last Opinion of things Must the Old Case of Nonresistence or the New Case of Allegiance make part of them Will you stand by your Discourse concerning the Knowledge of Jesus Christ and our Vnion and Communion with him and the Defence and Continuation of that discourse or will you stand by the Discourse concerning the Nature Vnity and Communion of the Catholick Church which Dr. Clegget told you was a flat Contradiction to the two former and which you have been told again and again the Dissenters make ill use of against the Church of England Shall your Sermons before or your Sermons since you took the Oath make part of that Collection By which of your two Faces will you be represented to Posterity the Face that looks backward before your Apostacy or the Face that looks forward since you Apostatized from your Principles And will you finally stand to your Tritheistical Notion of the Trinity which hath so exposed you to the Arrians and Socinians or will you retract it These are things Doctor that will require your most mature and serious Thoughts and God grant that you may so determine about them as may be most for his Glory the Honour of the Church of England and that of your own Memory in Ages to come Amen FINIS ERRATA IN the Dedication page 1. line ult after give insert the Pope In the Contents § 7. l. 2. for is r. was § 18. l. 4. for view r. review In the Book p. 1. l. 14. after believe dele the Semi colon p. 2. l. 39. after as it was put a Comma p. 5. l. 39. l. by r. in p. 12. l. 26. r. reveal l. 29. after for r. the Prayers of p. 13. l. 40. r. persist p. 14. l. 14. r. Belisarius p. 19. l. 20. r. Moubray p. 22. l. 12. for feared r. seared l. 23. r. will ever be p. 34. l. 19. l. Idols r. Gods and for Kings r. Gods p. 36. l. 5. r. to the Discretion l 36. r. CONSTANTIAL p. 37. l. 6 f. Pomana r. Roma l. 22. r. a little of his Skill in Coins p. 38. l. 23. r. dispute with l. 31. r. commands p. 39. l. 22. r. and that they are as